"So this is where you disappeared to," Franz Almrid said, wiping his hands in a futile gesture to rid them of the ash.

"Yes." I was beaming with pride. In the morning light the hole was even better than I had thought.

"What is it?" Almrid's voice held open sarcasm as he looked at the figures on the wall. "Looks like spermatozoa in formation with math symbols."

"It does at that," I admitted, determined not to fight with Almrid. The very fact that there had been something worth discovering on this planet had made him furious.

"You really think you're going to get sense out of that?" He gave a derisive laugh. "You're kidding yourself, Jhirinki."

I was spared the problem of answering him by Josh Markham, who was lowered into the hole on the new cable rig.

"Looks good, Pete," Josh said, craning his corded neck, trying to see it all without turning around. "What's next?"

"Well, that wall," I told him, pointing to the farthest one, "is probably not worth much. It's too scarred and faded. But this"—I looked at the longer wall with its bright surface and clear markings—"is a treasure."

It was as if I had finally lured a much-sought mistress into my bed. That wall, with its thousands of glyphs in neatly horizontal lines was more than I had ever hoped to have for myself.

"You're a damned romantic, that's what you are," Josh said with a chuckle. "Well, while you're busy down here, we'll just go along and dig up a few square miles of ash, in case there might be a city down there."

I'd told him that there might be, late late last night after I had reported the find. In the morning I wondered if I'd been right, but let it go. The chance was worth a look.

"If you're sure this is a building, where is the door? Or did they all tumble in the way you did?" Almrid's icy tone stopped both Josh and me.

I hated to admit it, but Almrid had a point. If this had been a building there had to be a way in and out of it. And no matter what size or shape the inhabitants a door is a door is a door.

"Maybe in the floor?" Josh suggested. "This is pretty high up, judging from the few readings we can get around here. Maybe this was an attic or sun room." He looked at me hopefully, his big hands rubbing at the ash.

"It's possible." Looking around the room I knew there was an answer. I just had to be left alone to find it with my instincts and my pores.

"There's nothing for us peasants to do but dig," Almrid said acidly. "All right, Professor. We'll do it your way." He went to the sling and was hauled out of the hole.

"Don't let him bother you, Pete," Josh said with all the reassurance he could muster. "He doesn't like the place and can't figure out why."

"I know."

A short silence fell.

"Well, I'll leave you to your work. Call if you need help."

"I will," I promised him as he rose through the hole.

When he was gone I circled the room again, looking at the wall with the glyphs. There was a key somewhere. There had to be. I could find it if I thought about it. Again I came to the bench-like affair. Again I studied the surface of the shoe end. It was smooth and faintly luminous. For a moment it seemed to be the reflection of one of the suns—and then I realized that neither was shining down directly. This made me wonder.

I sat on the half-chair (which was a bit too low and too small for comfort). This might be the clue I wanted. In my annoyance I tapped the cool, faintly glowing sheet of—was it stone? The echo sounded unused. I went on tapping absent-mindedly as I tried to take stock of the wall and the room.

Blink.

I was so startled that I raised my hand. The light, if there had been a light, stopped.

But now I had a hope. Gently I tapped the surface again. Then firmly.

BLINK.

Then I put my hands full and solidly onto the surface of the table, pressing it, willing the light to continue. "Come on, light," I pleaded with it. "Blink."

Almost ridiculously, it did. First there was a flicker, then a wavering opacity and finally a bright glow.

"What the bloody hell is this?" I asked of the air joyously. Since there was no one but me to answer, I shook my head in ignorance.

The light in the table was increasing, growing brilliant. Symbols formed on it:

The symbols faded but the light stayed on, full and strong. I hesitated—then, taking my stylus, I made a small circle on the table and put nine dots leading out from it, adding little points for the moons. When this was done, I drew a box around Terra and waited.

The machine buzzed.

On a guess I wiped the marks away.

In a moment the machine showed two circles and a series of dots, putting a box around the fourth one. This was the fourth planet, but the machine showed only three moons. This bothered me, but there was no way to question the machine about it. I would have to wait.

But we were on the right track.

I duplicated the Sol system diagram and boxed Terra and labeled it.

The machine made the planets again, with the puzzling moons.

"All right. Now that we're introduced, let's get down to languages."

The machine began to hum, making periodic squeaks. I couldn't have it malfunction now. I fumbled over the sides, looking for knobs or dials that might help. The hum and the squeaks merged into a rising wail.

"Wait a bit," I told it.

I moved my hands again, rubbing the sides firmly until a single dot appeared on the screen in front of me and I heard, very clearly the single word: "Gei."

My hands began to shake. I sensed that this was a machine intended to teach, to inform. The concept was not unfamiliar to human archeologists—men of many eras had left time capsules or other record of their passing for future centuries to find. Whoever had left this artifact had known what he was about. The implications took a little time to sink in.

The machine formed another dot directly above the first and called it: "Shy."

It was giving me the elements of language. Those two symbols were part of the name of the planet.

A vertical line connected the two dots and the dots faded out. "Sti," said the machine in its parody of a voice.

I took out my scanner and trained it on the table top. The scanner would give the Nordenskjold a record of all this in case something went wrong down here.

"Pete! Pete! Answer me!" The commkit beside me sounded put out. The voice was Sumiko's, high and overcontrolled. I wondered if she had been calling for long. I had been absorbed.

I stood up stiffly from the bench, muscles protesting, and reached for the kit.

"Pete—" it went in my ear.

"Yeo. I'm here. What is it?"

"This is Sumiko. I've finished the tests on the silt from your digs. You're right. It is ash."

"I know. Look," I said, rushing on, "I may be way off, but I think you might find some evidence of volcanic or—I don't know, earthquakes, maybe, a long time ago. There'd be a lot of them, occurring all at once or with little warning. The diagram I've found down here shows only three moons. Either we've got the wrong planet or things have changed upstairs—"

"What diagram?" she interrupted.

"There's a device down here that teaches the language," I admitted reluctantly. "It seems to be programmed to communicate with strangers—I mean beings possibly alien to whoever or whatever made it, which suggests that the culture of which it was a part anticipated being wiped out. The device and I have just begun to come together on basics—I should get the rest in a few days."

"You'll let me know?" This was said too quickly.

"Sure, Sumiko." Right then, I wanted her to find what she was seeking, too. There had to be something here to compensate for the terrible hunger at the back of her eyes.

"You'll need tools," she said decisively.

"Maybe some digging tools. Brushes for the walls. Levers and a couple of files. There's a pack in my shelter."

"Is that all? I'll bring them along."

"Thank you." There was jealousy in me as I spoke. I was not yet ready to share my hole, my wall. Not with anyone. Not even Sumiko, the one person who might understand what I felt.

"I'll be there as soon as the captain is ready to come over."

In some surprise I asked her, "Is he down on the surface? I didn't think he was planning to come."

"He and Wolton have been going over the whole camp for about the last hour. He's had Almrid and Dominguiz in. I gave them my report earlier."

A prickle ran along my spine, a feeling that gravity had shifted, immeasurably, under my feet. The captain had gone to the soil chemist and a biophysicist before the archeologist on a planet with digs. Something wasn't right.

"Pete?"

"What?"

"I'll see you later?"

"Yeah," I said. "It's going to be interesting." And with that I signed off.

Standing there in my hole, with the language of Shy-gei-ath waiting for me, I frowned, wondering what had gone wrong. No one had come in with a negative report. There had been no warnings about the virology level or the functional radiation ratings that usually got the captain on the ground long enough to get everyone back to the ship.

I remembered my scraped back from the evening before, but that couldn't figure in anything. The injury itched unpleasantly under the thin surface suit and there had been some trouble getting it to scab over. But that was hardly enough to worry about. What was Captain Tamoshoe doing down here, anyway? Why had he come?

The machine was reciting "co-rel-sti-gei" , "sa-che-sti-gei" , "co-sa-che-sti-gei" when I finally heard the noise above me. I tapped the machine on what I'd come to think of as the HOLD button and waited for visitors.

They took their time. Once I heard Franz Almrid swear, use cold words with venom I had never heard from him before.

"Jhirinki," he said, turning his trademark grin on me, a display of large white teeth in a face only slightly lighter than his black captain's uniform. And in that face, which dictated eyes of obsidian, Captain Tamoshoe's smouldered the impossible blue of Aegean waters.

"What's wrong, Captain?"

But he didn't answer me, not right away. He got off the sling and began to walk around the hole. "Have you been able to decipher this?" he asked me, pointing at my wall.

I knew that there was something very wrong then. "That section you're pointing to reads from right to left: 'Thir de-lom-st-gei jhae emh bis lom-de-sti-gei.' Second line: 'Thu shy-ens emh thu lom-qua-fer-de-sti-gei sir-ath-gei.' "

"Which means?"

"That is what the wall says, sir. In fact, right now I can read out loud every word up there and make the symbol for it if I hear it spoken. But I don't know what it means, because this machine does not have a way to tell me until it has explained to me all the elements of its language. But the communications center on the ship will have records of this so I can work from them, if necessary."

Captain Tamoshoe looked at me evenly for about a minute, an eternity. "I am sorry, Jhirinki. The commcenter didn't pick up the relay. Almrid and Wolton were too busy wrangling to center the channel."

"I don't understand—" and as I said it I did understand.

"Radiology reported a variance last night. This place was hot. That little machine of yours has been running along on plutonium and the room was sealed. You fell into a vat of radon gas—" He stopped. Then: "There's isn't much danger on the surface of course, but we don't know how many of these things there are. I am sorry, Jhirinki."

"Wait—" Josh Markham appeared in the hole, hanging onto the sling too tightly, his large face drawn and his eyes heavy. "Captain?"

"I have told him what I could. You can explain it more thoroughly if necessary. Are we ready to ferry up?"

"Almost."

Again Captain Tamoshoe: "It is a pity. This is surely the find of a lifetime." He turned back to me, blue eyes hooded. "Well, perhaps you will be able to reconstruct much of this from memory, do you think? There's isn't much time and it would be a shame to lose all of it."

"How do you mean, lose it?" I was frightened then, not of the radiation that had slid in through my respirator into my bones, but of leaving Shy-gei-ath. I had come so far. I did not want to leave.

"Looks like this one was more trouble than it was worth, Pete," Markham said, trying to keep his tone light and failing.

"No."

"Pete—"

"No," I told them again, stepping back to the teaching machine. "I've almost got it all. I'm so close to the meaning of it. It won't take too much longer. I'll be out of here in no time."

"Wait—" I said, licking my lips. "What is the treatment for radon? Can't I take decontamination and then come back? It's gone now—and I'd be safe."

"I am sorry, but we'll have to put the place in quarantine until we know how much potential danger remains," Captain Tamoshoe said apologetically. "You understand the necessity, don't you? When all investigations have been made we can come back."

"But what about that?" I pointed to the wall, already hazing from the dust filtering down. "How much longer will that be here once the ash goes in? The other wall is almost useless. This one will be ruined."

"There may be others."

"And maybe there aren't." I knew I was starting to sweat. "And the machine will be ruined."

Captain Tamoshoe shook his head. "I can recommend speed and claim emergency status on the artifacts. The Navy is aware of the value of this sort of find. We might be able to have full Class Nine suits authorized."

"You've got to leave, Pete." Markham had taken a step toward me. I stepped back.

"Commander Markham," the captain said quietly.

"Take a look at your hands, Pete." Josh shot an angry look at Captain Tamoshoe as he spoke.

"What about my hands?" But as I looked down and saw what looked like varicose veins in my palms I closed the marks inside my fists.

"The skiff is waiting, Pete."

"Let it wait." And as Josh started toward me I raised the commkit over my head. "Don't try it, Josh—I will use this."

It wasn't much of a weapon, but it made Josh stop. "You stupid kid," he said dispassionately. "You're going to die."

"Am I?" I asked Captain Tamoshoe.

"Almost certainly," he answered me.

Without moving from the place I stood I said, "Get out of here, Josh. I want to talk to the captain."

Josh looked at me with an expression I had once seen in my father's eyes. Then, with a nod to the captain, he let himself be hoisted out of the hole.

"He wants you to live, Jhirinki. And you were not assigned to my ship to die."

In the stillness that followed his words I realized that he and I were the only people left here, that the others were back at the ferry, waiting to leave Shy-gei-ath. I felt an enormous loneliness fall over me, dark and heavy.

"Why not come back?"

I shook my head. "No. This is what I'm all about. I've spent my life learning to do what has to be done here. I can't leave when I'm this close."

"Have you a choice?"

For just a moment I knew panic. Then: "Will I last all that much longer if I leave?"

"No. Not that much longer."

"Then I'll stay."

"But what will you do, Jhirinki?"

The strange part was that I knew the answer. "As long as I can, I'll describe the forms to you, the way the machine did for me. You can leave me a skiff relay, can't you?" Not waiting for an answer I hurried on. "I'll try to translate what I've found and you can record it for the Margien Language Institute."

Captain Tamoshoe considered this. "I've always thought," he remarked absently, "that a man's death should be as much in his hands as his life. You'll get the relay."

"And food?"

He didn't answer me, so I knew. "Thank you, Captain."

"Goodbye, Peter Jhirinki," he said as he left.

A half-dozen lines were left. Lines that wavered in front of me, milky with haze.

"Pete!"

But that wasn't my machine. It was someone I used to know. Why would Josh call me? What did he want?

"Pete, for God's sake!"

"What?"

That must have been what he wanted to hear. But I couldn't hold my commkit steady. My hands had gone funny. Purple. The tendons were soft, spongy.

"… translations?"

That mattered to me. That was important. More important than my strange hands. I had to tell them.

"A few words—"

"What words?"

"Shy-gei-ath." Like Terra and Terrans.

The twin suns were hot above me, but it was dark. I burned and burned and it was dark. If I looked at the floor I could see my face. But I didn't do that.

"The wall, Pete. The wall."

From here on the floor I could watch my wall as I told them about it. I knew what it meant at last.

"Shy, infinitive verb. To be. Active sense. Gei, infinitive verb. To be. Passive sense. Shy-sti-gei, to be alive. Sti-gei, to exist. Shy-sti, to conceive. They build from there." Was that sound me?

"But the wall, Pete."

It was an effort, but I began to read. But breathing hurt and I got slower and slower. " 'In the time of the Fourth Moon, I sought out a high place and made it safe against the end of Shy-gei-ath.' "

"Go on."

" 'Against the end … it happened I found this place and required a stronghold to be built. The time was short for we could see in the night in the Fourth Moon. Waters would soon rise, the mountains change and Rel-ath-gei would consume all.' " That would quiet them, the noisy ones above me. I looked at the wall through darkening eyes, turning on the floor to read the end of the story.

"Peter! Answer me!"

I kicked the commkit, laughing.

"What about the place name. What does that mean? We've got most of what we need to crack it, Peter. What does the name mean?"

Reluctantly I pulled myself across the floor, feeling like a slug, not a man. Just a bit more and they'd leave me alone with my wall. I'd earned that.

"The word?" I asked the commkit.

"Shy-gei-ath," the tinny voice prompted.

"Shy-gei-ath. This place. Here." But that wasn't quite right, I thought as I watched the ash sifting through the hole. "Shy-gei-ath. To be … to …"

"Go on; tell us. What does it mean?"

So I told them. "To be home."

Language has always interested me. How people say things influences how they think. The obsessive desire to know has also interested me. It was not my conscious intention to combine those particular interests in a story, but they seem to be there.

Somewhere in a large box of background material in my office closet there are two legal-sized foolscap notebooks crammed full of shy-gei-an language, with grammar and forms and usage as well as a very large vocabulary. One of these years I may dig it out and do something more with it.

When the story appeared in If magazine, there were a few "minor" changes: the first word had been dropped and three short paragraphs had been added. Here the story is returned to its original form.

I don't usually write in the first person—my characters are very definite, very separate individuals in my mind and, for the most part, I give them the same third-person integrity that I give my friends. But Peter was an exception, and the story is, I think, stronger for the reader sharing Peter's head.