Part 3

Lee started toward them, thought better of it, and walked sullenly out of the room. He went to his office, sat fidgeting at his desk for a while, then called her on the intercom. She was not at her office or her quarters, so the equipment automatically paged her. When her face finally showed on the viewscreen, Lee could see that she was still in the conference room, which was now empty, except for her and Richards.

"What is it, Sid?"

"Uh ... can you come down to my office for a minute? Right now?"

She quickly covered her surprise. "Of course. I'll be right down."

* * * * *

Within a few minutes, she was entering his office. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing," he said, gesturing her to a chair. "I just wanted to get you out of the grips of that All-American physicist."

"What? Why, you jealous old goat!"

"Never mind. If you want to listen to propositions, please make sure I'm out of earshot."

She laughed. "Is that what you brought me down here for?"

"Yes."

"I'm flattered."

"Don't be cute."

"He's a very nice boy."

He frowned. "All right, so I'm foolish and juvenile...."

"And he's so interesting," she went on, paying no attention. "He was telling me all about glaciers. In Switzerland. Near this ski lodge. Seems the glaciers have been growing during the past few years. Something I should really be sure to see."

"Sounds fascinating," Lee grumbled.

"Oh, it is. The glaciers, that is. They were retreating, you know, until a few years ago. Now they're growing again. Goes in cycles, it seems...."

Lee suddenly stiffened. "Great God of our forefathers!"

"What now?"

Instead of answering, he scrambled out of his chair and went to the floor-to-ceiling bookcase that lined one wall of the office.

"Sid, what's the matter? Did I say something...."

But he was not listening to her. "That's it," he was muttering, "That _must_ be it."

Elaine watched him paw through the shelves of books, desperately searching for something.

"Can I help?" she asked.

"No. I think ..." he snatched at a book and riffled through it. "Yes! Look at it!"

He wheeled and shoved the open book at her. She nearly dropped it as he ducked back around his desk and rummaged through a pile of papers.

"Here it is. Look at them!" he shouted, handing her a sheet of paper. "Put them side by side and look at them."

The book was opened to a graph, Elaine saw, that showed the advance and retreat of the Ice Age glaciers over the past million years on Earth. The sheet of paper was Childe's graph of the wave patterns of the machine's antennas.

Her face went pale as she looked at the two graphs, side by side. "They ... they're the same ... almost identical."

"It all fits together now," Lee said, drumming his fingers on the desktop in a restless tattoo. "The machine beams gravity waves into the interplanetary plasma between the Sun and Mercury. The effect is infinitesimal, by our short-term standards, but over a hundred thousand years or so, the cumulative effect must be enough to block off a small fraction of the Sun's radiation. The Earth goes into a deep freeze for a few millennia!"

"But why?" Elaine asked. "Why did the Others build it?"

* * * * *

Lee paced nervously across the room. "Think a minute. They had beaten the Earthmen in a bitter interstellar war. They had done their best to wipe out the human race. What better way to insure their victory than by subjecting our homeworld to violent climate changes? They probably thought they were guaranteeing the complete extinction of mankind."

"But the Ice Ages didn't destroy man," Elaine said.

"No. They reduced him to the level of a beast, though. Those few survivors of the interstellar war were robbed of their civilization. They had to go back to living in caves, to fighting the other animals for sheer survival. They made it, though, and re-learned what was lost, and built a new civilization."

"Then the machine failed its purpose."

"Right," Lee said. "But remember, it's only an automatic machine. Those who made it, the Others, they're still out there among the stars somewhere. They're going to be mighty upset when they find out that we're not dead."

"It's ... terrifying ... in a way."

"The important thing is that we _understand_. Now we can face them, wherever they are. They're no more intelligent than we are. We've proved that by learning what the machine is all about. They may be older, and they certainly know more tricks, but they're not on a completely higher plain of mental development."

Elaine leaned back in her seat. "Well, it's over. At last it's ended. We can leave Titan for good now."

"Leave? Not likely. Now we can finally start to tear the machinery apart and see how it works. We've just been sniffing around it so far, treating it like a museum exhibit. Now we can shut the damned thing off and start dissecting it. There's a lot to be done, a whole new technology to be learned. How does it work? Who are the Others and where did they come from? There are more questions to answer now than ever."

"That means that you won't be leaving Titan?" she asked.

"Not for a while. How about you?"

She thought for a moment, then answered, "If you're right about all this, then there should be a lot of archeological evidence awaiting discovery on the Moon. Maybe I should organize a team...."

"Then you're leaving anyway," he said.

"For a while, Sid. I'll be back in time."

"Stay off the ski slopes."

She grinned and got up from her chair. Lee kissed her, and she turned away and went to the door. She looked back to say a final word, but he was already at his desk, punching buttons on the automatic secretary:

"All right, you mechanical marvel, call the department heads to the conference room for a meeting in five minutes. And take a message for the Terran Council Science Committee--Gentlemen: It is my belief that the question of the alien machinery on Titan is now essentially solved...."

THE END