Ivar Jorgenson

“ He ripped his legs free of the sand that had bound them for centuries—and, serving the function for which he had been built millennia ago, he took us on a guided tour of the civilization that had been and had built him.
Ozymandias was a fabulous storehouse of archaeological data. We could mine him for years.
His people, he told us, had called themselves the Thaiquens (or so it sounded) —they had lived and thrived for three hundred thousand years, and in the declining days of their history had built him, as an indestructible guide to their indestructible cities. ”

“ He was annoyed, but he was smart enough to know he didn't have much of a case to make against Leopold.
The rest of us—four archaeologists and seven military men; they outnumbered us a trifle—watched eagerly as our superiors battled. My eyes strayed through the porthole and I looked at the dry windblown plain, marked here and there with the stumps of what might have been massive monuments millennia ago.
Mattern said bleakly, "The world is of utterly no strategic consequence. Why, it's so old that even the vestiges of civilization have turned to dust!" ”

“ In any event, once we had thrashed out the matter of whether or not we were going to stay here or pull up and head for the next planet on our schedule, the five of us set to work. We knew we had only a week—Mattern would never grant us an extension unless we came up with something good enough to change his mind, which was improbable—and we wanted to get as much done in that week as possible. With the sky as full of worlds as it is, this planet might never be visited by Earth scientists again. ”

“ Planet Four reminded me in many ways of Mars—except that Mars, of course, had never known intelligent life of any kind, at least none that had troubled to leave a hint of its existence, while this planet had obviously had a flourishing civilization at a time when Pithecanthropus was Earth's noblest being. ”

“ He's a storehouse of data on the ancient Thaiquen weapons. We've already learned things from him that are unbelievable in their scope. Why do you think this planet is bare of life, Dr. Leopold? Not even a blade of grass? A million years won't do that. But a superweapon will. The Thaiquens developed that weapon. And others, too. Weapons that can make your hair curl. And Ozymandias knows every detail of them. Do you think we can waste time letting you people fool with that robot, when he's loaded with military information that can make America totally impregnable? ”

“ None bore present life. None of the planets we had ever visited had been found to hold intelligent life, though many had in the past.
Our job was to comb through the assigned worlds with diligence. Leopold, leading our group, had the task of doing pure archaeological research on the dead civilizations; Mattern and his men had the more immediately practical job of looking for fissionable material, leftover alien weapons, possible sources of lithium or tritium for fusion, and other such militarily useful things. ”

“ Marshall said.
"And it won't melt in the rain," Webster added.
"But—suppose it walks away?" Gerhardt demanded. "It can do that, can it not?"
Leopold said, "Of course. But where would it go? It will remain where it is, I think. If it moves, we can always trace it with the radar. Back to the base, now; it grows late."
We climbed back into our halftracks. The robot, silent once again, planted knee-deep in the sand, outlined against the darkening sky, swivelled to face us and lifted one thick arm in a kind of salute.
"Remember," Leopold warned us as we left. "Not one word about this to Mattern!" ”

“ Leopold demanded—with a quiver taking the authority out of his voice.
"I mean," said Mattern quietly, "the robot you named Ozymandias. Just why did you decide not to tell me about it?"
"I had every intention of doing so before our departure," Leopold said.
Mattern shrugged. "Be that as it may. You concealed the existence of your find. But your manner last night led us to investigate the area—and since the detectors showed a metal object some twenty miles to the west, we headed that way. Ozymandias was quite surprised to learn that there were other Earthmen here." ”

“ But the public temper over the last few hundred years in America has frowned on purely military expeditions. And so, as a sop to the nation's conscience, five archaeologists of little empirical consequence so far as national security mattered were tacked onto the expedition.
Us.
Mattern made it quite clear at the outset that his boys were the Really Important members of the expedition, and that we were simply ballast. In a way, we had to agree. Tension was mounting once again on our sadly disunited planet ”

“ It's a safe bet that everything radioactive on this planet has long since decomposed. But there's always the possibility of lithium, you know."
"Or pure tritium," Leopold said acidly. Mattern merely laughed, and made no reply.
Half an hour later we were bound westward again to the point where we had left Ozymandias. Gerhardt, Webster and I rode together in one halftrack, and Leopold and Marshall occupied the other. The third, with two of Mattern's men and the prospecting equipment, ventured off to the southeast toward the area Marshall and Webster had fruitlessly combed the day before. ”

“ Mattern won't do anything of the sort."
"He thinks we're dead weight on the expedition," Gerhardt insisted. "What better way to get rid of us?"
The halftrack breasted a hump in the desert. I kept wishing a vulture would squeal somewhere, but there was not even that. Life had left this world ages ago. I said, "Mattern doesn't have much use for us, sure. ”

“ The sand had pretty well covered everything, but we could see foundations jutting up here and there, weathered lumps of structural concrete and reinforced metal. We got out and unpacked the power-shovel. ”