Indeed, the epic poem mentioned the Klikiss race numerous times, but only in passing, giving no details about the culture of the vanished civilization. Margaret’s scholar son Anton, studying ancient records at a university on Earth, had told her that it wasn’t clear whether the Ildirans had encountered the living Klikiss, or only their remnants. Their lack of interest in the topic struck her as incurious to the point of narrow-mindedness.

In the early years of Terran and Ildiran cooperation, human “colony prospectors” had scouted the unclaimed habitable worlds listed in Solar Navy records. One team, a woman named Madeleine Robinson and her two sons, had gone to Llaro, where they were astonished to find ruined cities and numerous dormant Klikiss robots, which they had accidentally reawakened. Since then, dozens of other Klikiss sites had been surveyed, and many more of the black beetlelike machines had turned up. The Ildirans, though, had known about them for centuries.

Now, the three ancient Klikiss robots who had surprisingly requested to join the Rheindic Co expedition used their massive mechanical strength to erect a weather tower at the camp perimeter. Finished with that task, the three big machines moved with a weird gait on flexible fingerlike legs toward marker stakes in the dry ground, where they began to raise the walls of a heavy storage shed.

Margaret looked at her hastily sketched site diagram and hurried over to the nearest alien robot. “Not there. You’re five meters off position.”

“It belongs here,” the robot said in a thin, humming voice.

“Which one are you? Sirix? Or Dekyk?” The trio looked identical to her.

“I am Ilkot. That is Dekyk.” The beetlelike robot gestured with two segmented worker arms that extended from his ellipsoidal torso. “Sirix instructed us to place the structure here.”

Frowning, Margaret allowed that the position of the shed made no real difference, though she didn’t understand the Klikiss robots or their occasional incomprehensible stubbornness. It was another example of how different these machines were from a “Competent Computerized Companion” like DD, who followed orders like a faithful servant.

She and Louis had been thrilled when three of the sentient Klikiss machines had volunteered to join them at Rheindic Co. The harmless Klikiss robots, though oblivious to human orders or plans, occasionally offered assistance in construction or exploration projects that interested them. These three wanted to participate in investigating their lost civilization, professing equal curiosity to solve the mystery of their vanished creators.

And to learn why they could remember nothing.

Only a few thousand of the machines remained, scattered and shut down during the last days of the vanished civilization and now awakened from their slumber. Unfortunately, every one of their memory cores had been wiped clean of all data that could provide clues to the fate of the alien race.