“A logical conclusion from the animistic viewpoint,” said Thwaite. He frowned over the delicate task of starting the film, inquired offhandedly, “You got the photostat of the label inscription? What did you make of it?”
“Not much more than Henderson did on Mars. There’s the date of the recording and the place—the longitude doesn’t mean anything to us because we still don’t know where the Martians fixed their zero meridian. But it was near the equator and, the text indicates, in a tropical forest—probably in Africa or South America.
“Then there’s the sentence Henderson couldn’t make out. It’s obscure and rather badly defaced, but it’s evidently a comment—unfavorable—on the subject-matter of the recording. In it appears twice a sort of interjection-adverb that in other contexts implies revulsion—something like ugh!”
“Funny. Looks like the Martians saw something on Earth they didn’t like. Too bad we can’t reproduce the visual record yet.”
Dalton said soberly, “The Martian’s vocabulary indicates that for all their physical difference from us they had emotions very much like human beings’. Whatever they saw must have been something we wouldn’t have liked either.”
The reproducer hummed softly. Thwaite closed the motor switch and the ancient film slid smoothly from its casing. Out of the speaker burst a strange medley of whirrings, clicks, chirps, trills and modulated drones and buzzings—a sound like the voice of grasshoppers in a drought-stricken field of summer.
Dalton listened raptly, as if by sheer concentration he might even now be able to guess at connections between the sounds of spoken Martian—heard now for the first time—and the written symbols that he had been working over for years. But he couldn’t, of course—that would require a painstaking correlation analysis.
“Evidently it’s an introduction or commentary,” said the archeologist. “Our photocell examination showed the wave-patterns of the initial and final portions of the film were typically Martian—but the middle part isn’t. The middle part is whatever they recorded here on Earth.”
“If only that last part is a translation….” said Dalton hopefully. Then the alien susurration ceased coming from the reproducer and he closed his mouth abruptly and leaned forward.
For the space of a caught breath there was silence. Then another voice came in, the voice of Earth hundreds of centuries dead.