Sandy said in a surprised voice, as if saying something she hadn't realized she knew. "There were service ships. They serviced the television eyes on the outside, and they drilled at launching missiles, and so on. They were modified fighting ships, made over after ships didn't fight any more."
She hesitated, then went on.
"It's odd that I didn't think of telling Joe this! Some of the food supply came from Earth at the time my cube was made. As a quartermaster officer, I was authorized to allow hunting on Earth in case of need. So the serviceships went to Earth and came back with mammoths tied to the outside of their hulls. They had to be re-hydrated, though. Frozen though they were, they dried out in the long trip through vacuum from Earth."
Then she shivered a little.
Pam looked at her strangely. Holmes raised his eyebrows. He'd had one experience of training-cubes. Sandy'd had quite another. Holmes felt that instinctive slight resentment a man feels when he lacks a position of authority in the presence of a woman.
"In my time—in the cube's time—there was even a hunting camp on Earth. Otherwise there simply wouldn't be enough to eat! Women were clamoring to be sent to Earth to help with the food supply. To be sent to hunt for food was a reward for exemplary service."
"Which is interesting," observed Holmes, "but irrelevant. How was the asteroid normally supplied? How did the garrison leave? Where did it come from? Where did it go? Maybe the answer's in this box. If it is," he added, "it'll be in the same language as the inscription, and we can't read it."
Archaeologists on Earth would have been enraptured by any part of the fortress, but anything which promised to explain as much as Holmes had guessed the case could, would be a treasure past any price.
But the five people in the asteroid had much more immediate and much more urgent problems to think of. They went on a little farther and came to a storeroom which had been filled with something, but now held only the remains of packing-cases. They looked ready to crumble if touched.
"There used to be weapons stored here," Sandy said. "Hand-weapons. Not for the defense of the fortress, but for the—discipline police. For the men who kept the others obedient to orders."