My spine tingled. "Did you engrave them, Dr. Lanvin?" I demanded. I was eight or nine, then.
"I could have, Buggsie," he answered, using my nickname. "With a micro-manipulator and a diamond-chip. Only I didn't."
"I wish I knew," he replied. "A friend of mine collected some two thousand of these tiny, non-ferrous--not iron-bearing, that is--meteors, floating free in the asteroid belt, and mailed them to me. My microscope revealed this unusual one. The symbols are about the same as those used by the beings of Planet X in their full-sized inscriptions, before some vast nuclear charge from Mars blew up their world. But no man can read such writing. That's about all I know--yet."
This remained almost our only information on this particular subject, until years later.
We might all have been blown to Kingdom Come there on the Moon, had any of the lab experiments gotten seriously out of control. There were minor blasts. But I lived out my time there safely. I even worked in those labs myself for several months, and by then even the stars seemed technologically nearer. Dr. Lanvin had left the Moon, accepting a professorship at the University of Chicago, and it was soon decided that I'd be sent there to complete my education.
Mom said an odd thing as she and Dad saw me off at the Tycho spaceport: "I wish we were going there, too, Charlie. I wish we had a little country place, far off from everything, and a cow and some chickens."
"That's a primitive mouthful for a modern woman, with no idea of modern farming, let alone such an antique setup," Dad chuckled. "Well, sometimes I yearn for simplicity, too. We're weak, slow-adjusting characters, left a little behind by the onrush of the times. So long, Charlie, watch yourself. It seems funny that I, an Earthian, have a son who'll actually have to get used to Earth."
Yes, that turned around situation, characteristic of our era, seemed odd. I was nervous about my big, sophisticated, native planet, as if it was an alien world! As a youngster, men had kidded me that I couldn't even endure its huge gravity!
The new university outside Chicago proper was beautiful. As arranged, I went to live at Dr. Lanvin's house. I adjusted to Terra, even though, within twenty-four hours of my arrival, there was a catastrophe that couldn't have happened in a previous age.