Pan-Federation
Telecast System commentator with the expedition.

"I know you are," the old Turco-German was saying. "That's why, when
they asked me to name another archaeologist for this expedition, I named
you."

He hadn't named Tony Lattimer; Lattimer had been pushed onto the
expedition by his university. There'd been a lot of high-level
string-pulling to that; she wished she knew the whole story. She'd
managed to keep clear of universities and university politics; all her
digs had been sponsored by non-academic foundations or art museums.

"You have an excellent standing: much better than my own, at your age.
That's why it disturbs me to see you jeopardizing it by this insistence
that the Martian language can be translated. I can't, really, see how
you can hope to succeed."

She shrugged and drank some more of her cocktail, then lit another
cigarette. It was getting tiresome to try to verbalize something she
only felt.

"Neither do I, now, but I will. Maybe I'll find something like the
picture-books Sachiko was talking about. A child's primer, maybe; surely
they had things like that. And if I don't. I'll find something else.
We've only been here six months. I can wait the rest of my life, if I
have to, but I'll do it sometime."

"I can't wait so long," von Ohlmhorst said. "The rest of my life will
only be a few years, and when the _Schiaparelli_ orbits in, I'll be
going back to Terra on the _Cyrano_."

"I wish you wouldn't. This is a whole new world of archaeology.
Literally."

"Yes." He finished the cocktail and looked at his pipe as though
wondering whether to re-light it so soon before dinner, then put it in
his pocket. "A whole new world--but I've grown old, and it isn't for me.
I've spent my life studying the Hittites. I can speak the Hittite
language, though maybe King Muwatallis wouldn't be able to understand my
modern Turkish accent. But the things I'd have to learn here--chemistry,
physics, engineering, how to run analytic tests on steel girders and
beryllo-silver alloys and plastics and silicones. I'm more at home with
a civilization that rode in chariots and fought with swords and was just
learning how to work iron. Mars is for young people. This expedition is
a cadre of leadership--not only the Space Force people, who'll be the
commanders of the main expedition, but us scientists, too. And I'm just
an old cavalry general who can't learn to command tanks and aircraft.
You'll have time to learn