They cleared the frame and climbed through. There were about twenty chairs, but they were small. For children. They saw cabinets under the windows. Derek used his cutter to open them. “I feel kind of guilty doing this,” he said. “God knows how long this stuff has been here. And we’re wrecking it.”

“You’re thinking about it the wrong way,” Ken said. “It was left for us to find.”

There were stuffed animals and building blocks and boxes that held, possibly, jigsaw puzzles. The pictures on the lids had faded to weak smears. There were also dolls and board games that could not be opened and a friendly looking octopus with too many tentacles.

“It’s a kindergarten,” said Beth.

They saw blankets and pillows and cups.

Several of the dolls carried a vague resemblance to the statue outside the church. Except that the heroic aspect had been replaced by an amiable, cuddly attitude. “Maybe we’re going to find out,” said Hutch, “that intelligent species have a lot more in common than anything that separates them.” It was the same feeling she’d gotten years before when she first stood on Iapetus and looked up at the winged statue that seemed to be challenging Saturn.

Beth Squires’s Notes

One of the most emotional moments of my life. . . .

—Sunday, April 6, 2256

17.

Our old mother nature has pleasant and cheery tones enough for us when she comes in her dress of blue and gold over the eastern hilltops; but when she follows us upstairs to our beds in her suit of black velvet and diamonds, every creak of her sandals and every whisper of her lips is full of mystery and fear.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Professor at the Breakfast Table, 1860

In the end, they were all glad to get away from it. Hutch had been to numerous extraterrestrial archeological sites, but there’d been something different about this one. Normally, they stoked her curiosity and left her with an admiration for the accomplishments of a species that she had never really known. Maybe it was because she’d never seen ruins before on a completely lifeless world. Maybe it was because she’d never before felt that she’d touched the lives of the lost occupants.

Everyone had been shaken by the experience. “It may have been thousands of years since it happened,” said Beth, “but it doesn’t matter. Usually, you put something that far in the past, and you don’t get emotionally tangled in it. But this is different. Those little frozen teddy bears were tough to take.”

Derek was simply staring out at the night as Hutch prepared to ease the Eiferman out of orbit. “There’ll be a lot of people who will want to put together another expedition. To come back here and take a long look at the place. Maybe this’ll be enough to get past the politicians.”

“I doubt it,” said Hutch. She activated the allcomm. “Everybody belt down.”