On equipment tags, document headings, and appended to certain notes, the linguistics section had found examples of Lunarian words which matched exactly some of the labels on the calendar, just as Hunt had suggested they might. While this proved nothing, it did add further plausibility to the idea that these words indicated dates of some kind.

Then something else that seemed to connect with the calendar appeared from a totally unexpected direction. Site-preparation work in progress near Lunar Tycho Base Three turned up fragments of metal fabrications and structures. They looked like the ruins of some kind of installation. The more thorough probe that followed yielded no fewer than fourteen more bodies, or more accurately, bits of bodies from which at least fourteen individuals of both sexes could be identified. Clearly, none of the bodies was in anything approaching the condition of Charlie's. They had all been literally blown to pieces. The remains comprised little more than splinters of charred bone scattered among scorched tatters of space suits. Apart from suggesting that besides being physically the same as humans, the Lunarians had been every bit as accident-prone, these discoveries provided no new information—until the discovery of the wrist unit. About the size of a large cigarette pack, not including the wrist bracelet, the device carried on its upper face four windows that looked like miniature electronic displays. From their size and shape, the windows seemed to have been intended to display character data rather than pictures, and the device was thought to be a chronometer or a computing-calculating aid; maybe it was both—and other things besides.

After a perfunctory examination at Tycho Three the unit had been shipped to Earth along with some other items. It eventually found its way to the Navcomms laboratories near Houston, where the gadgets from Charlie's backpack were being studied. After some preliminary experimenting the casing was safely removed, but detailed inspection of the complex molecular circuits inside revealed nothing particularly meaningful. Having no better ideas, the Navcomms engineers resorted to applying low voltages to random points to see what happened. Sure enough, when particular sequences of binary patterns were injected into one row of contacts, an assortment of Lunarian symbols appeared across the windows. This left nobody any the wiser until Hunt, who happened to be visiting the lab, recognized one sequence of the alphabetic sets as the months that appeared on the calendar. Hence, at least one of the functions performed by the wrist unit seemed closely related to the table in the diary. Whether or not this had anything to do with recording the passage of time remained to be seen, but at least odd things looked as if they were beginning to tie up.