Pulling out his medikit, Jason circled the piled bodies. Something stirred in their midst and a crashing shot plowed into it.

Then he reached the girl and pushed the analyzer probes against the scratch. The machine clicked and Meta jumped as the antitoxin needle stabbed down. She realized for the first time what Jason was doing.

“Thank you. I didn’t notice,” she said. “There were so many of them and they came out so fast.”

Poli had a powerful battery lamp and, by unspoken agreement, Jason carried it. Crippled though he was, the old man was still a Pyrran when it came to handling a gun. They slowly made their way down the refuse-laden stairs.

“What a stench!” Jason grimaced. “‘Without these filter plugs in my nose, I think the smell alone would kill me.”

Something hurled itself into the beam of light and a shot stopped it in midair. The rats had been there a long time and resented the intrusion.

At the foot of the stairs they looked around. There had been books and records there at one time. They had been systematically chewed, eaten and destroyed for decades.

“I like the care you take with your old books,” Jason said disgustedly. “Remind me not to loan you any.”

“They could have been of no importance,” Meta said coolly, “or they would be filed correctly in the library upstairs.”

Jason wandered gloomily through the rooms. Nothing remained of any value. Fragments and scraps of writing and printing.

Never enough in one spot to bother collecting. With the toe of one armored boot, he kicked angrily at a pile of debris, ready to give up the search. There was a glint of rusty metal under the dirt.

“Hold this!” He gave the light to Mete and, forgetting the danger for a moment, began scratching aside the rubble. A flat metal box with a dial lock built into it was revealed.

“Why that’s a log box!” Mete said, surprised.

“That’s what I thought,” Jason said. “And if it is-we may be in luck after all.”

11

11

Resealing the cellar, they carried the box back to Jason’s new office. Only after spraying with decontaminant did they examine it closely. Meta picked out engraved letters on the lid.

“S.T. POLLUX VICTORY-that must be the name of the spacer this log came from. But I don’t recognize the class, or whatever it is the initials S.T. stand for.”