Doc sorted the particles as best he could and found two types, one definitely inorganic. He conferred with Rosco on the inorganic residue. Rosco thought this might be the remains of a tiny pararadio transceiver. Possibly each of the people had carried one around with him, or built into him.
"We're only guessing that they were people," Doc said cautiously, "though it would seem safe to assume it, since we've found dust everywhere people could be expected to be. What we need is a whole corpse."
While patrols were out looking for bodies Rosco tested his theory by sending a radio signal from one of the towers and watching a feeble reaction in the dust.
"If we can assume that they were people," Rosco said, "they apparently communicated over distances by personalized radio. Maybe through a mechanism built into the skull. Would that mean there wouldn't be any written language, Ernest?"
Ernest Hotaling shrugged. "Not necessarily. I should think they'd have kept records of some kind. They could have been written, or taped—or chipped into stone, for that matter."
He asked the lieutenant to enlarge his search. "Bring me anything that looks like a book, or parchment, or microfilm, or tape. If it's chipped in stone," he added with a grin, "I'll come to it."
Meanwhile they ran off the film that had been grinding away automatically ever since the planetoid came within photoradar range of the ship. The film confirmed what the lookout reported—there had been lights on the nightside.
Furthermore, one of the sensitized strips at the side of the film showed that signals, which had been going out from the tower tops in a steady stream, increased furiously as the Pringle approached. Then, as the ship came closer, they stopped altogether. At the same instant the lights on the nightside of the planetoid went out. The film showed that the road movement the skipper had seen stopped then, too.
Ernest tried to analyze the signals reproduced on the film. He had small success. If they represented a language, it would take years before he could even guess what they meant. The only thing he was sure of was that the signals, just before they died, had become a thousand times more powerful.
"Maybe that's what killed them," Rosco said.