Feet sounded on the metal steps below the outer door of the side lock. It opened to admit Trevany, wearing a khaki bush shirt and tan jeans streaked and stained from the previous few days’ work. He came through the open inner door and glanced at Harry’s hand while Kieran stood up and moved to the galley sink to wash his hands. “I’m glad we didn’t waste any time. You’re earning your keep already,” Trevany commented.
“I’ll try not to lose anybody,” Kieran promised.
“This guy’s okay,” Harry told Trevany. “It’s not as if we’re scheduling any transplants or heart surgery.”
“How does the hand feel?” Trevany asked.
“Pretty good.”
“Will you be able to work with it, do you think?”
“Sure, no problem.”
“First Pierre, now this already. And we haven’t even left yet.” Trevany shook his head. “Don’t tell me there’s a jinx or something on this expedition.”
“I didn’t think scientists believed in jinxes,” Kieran said, reaching for a towel.
“I didn’t, once. Now I’ve seen too many strange things to scoff at anything. Who was it who said that a man can’t begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows?”
“Epictetus, I think, wasn’t it?”
“Hm. I do believe you’re right.” Trevany looked mildly surprised.
“Well, I’ve got a few things left to do,” Harry said, getting up. “Thanks for patching me up, Doc . . . er, Knight. Let’s hope that’s about the worst you have to do, eh? Glad to have you aboard.” He left the way Trevany had entered, closing the outer door behind him. The sounds of objects rattling and being put into drawers and closets came from the lab section behind the bunk area to the rear, where Juanita Anavarez, Trevany’s Peruvian scientific partner, was inventorying instruments and equipment.
Kieran put the items he had been using back in the medical box. “So, Walter,” he said as he closed and fastened the lid, “what’s it all about? The expedition. I’m going to know in a matter of days anyway, and you’ve no idea what the curiosity is doing to my tranquility.”
Trevany lowered himself onto one of the end seats and eased back to rest himself, his hands braced on the table. “Do you remember when you first came out here—when you were looking for leads on that woman, Elaine Corley? You were curious about Earth’s ancient Technolithic culture.”
“Right,” Kieran said over his shoulder as he pushed the box back into its stowage space above the bench seat. “Whether their disappearance was connected with whatever happened on Mars.”
“They’re called that because of the huge stone edifices they built in places like the Middle East, northern India, Central and South America—with a technical skill that was lost. The constructions were all works of the same, or very closely related, people.”
“So it wasn’t the pharaohs who built the pyramids?” Kieran said. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard the suggestion. “There was an old song that said it was the Irish, but I never really believed it.” He sat down, interested now, at the other end of the table, facing Trevany.
“Oh, the pharaohs built some,” Trevany replied. “The Sahure Pyramid, for example, dates from the Fifth Dynasty around 2450 B.C. It’s a dilapidated ruin, with little to tell it apart from a mound of desert rubble—nothing like the Giza complex, built from blocks weighing tens, hundreds of tons in some cases, cut and laid with machine precision. You see what it means? The later Egyptians tried to copy structures that they found, which went back to far earlier than the Dynastic Period. But they didn’t know how. The knowledge was gone.”
“It’s what a lot of the books still say, though, isn’t it?” Kieran said.
“Ah, the tyranny of nineteenth-century English Egyptologists, reaching down through time.” Trevany showed his teeth. “The Giza pyramids are supposedly from the Fourth Dynasty—the big one was allegedly put up by Khufu—Cheops—around 2550. Do you really think standards could have declined that much in so short a time?”
“Sounds pretty drastic, all right,” Kieran agreed. “So why do you say `allegedly’? What are the reasons for believing it wasn’t?”
“The whole case rests on one piece of evidence. You can judge for yourself how solid it is. Want to hear the story?”