The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

who had refused to subscribe to the report that Warlock had no native intelligent life and therefore was ready and waiting for human settlement because it was technically an empty world. But to continue to cling to that belief without a single concrete proof was certainly a sign of mental imbalance.
    And Thorvald was regarding him now with frowning impatience. You were supposed to humor delusions, weren’t you? Only, could you surrender and humor a wild idea which might mean your death? If Thorvald wanted to go island-hopping in chance of discovering what never had existed, Shann need not accompany him. And if the officer tried to use force, well, Shann was armed with a stunner, and had, he believed, more control over the wolverines. Perhaps if he merely gave lip agreement to this project.… Only he didn’t believe, noting the light deep in those gray eyes holding on him, that anybody could talk Thorvald out of this particular obsession.
    “You don’t believe me, do you?” The impatience arose hotly in that demand.
    “Why shouldn’t I?” Shann tried to temporize. “You’ve had a lot of exploration experience; you should know about such things. I don’t pretend to be any authority.”
    Thorvald refolded the map and placed it in the case. Then he pulled at the sealing of his blouse, groping in an inner secret pocket. He uncurled his fingers to display his treasure.
    On his palm lay a coin-shaped medallion, bone-white but possessing an odd luster which bone would not normally show. And it was carved. Shann put out a finger, though he had a strange reluctance to touch the object. When he did he experienced a sensation close to the tingle of a mild electric shock. And once he had made that contact, he was also impelled to pick up that disk and examine it more closely.
    The carved pattern was very intricate and had been done with great delicacy and skill, though the whorls, oddly shaped knobs, ribbon tracings, made no connected design he could determine. After a moment or two of study, Shann became aware that his eyes, following those twists and twirls, were “fixed,” that it required a distinct effort to look away from the thing. Feeling some of that same alarm as he had known when he first heard the wailing of the Throg hound, he let the disk fall back into Thorvald’s hold, even more disturbed when he discovered that to relinquish his grasp required some exercise of will.
    “What is it?”
    Thorvald restored the coin to his hiding place.
    “You tell me. I can say this much, there is no listing for anything even remotely akin to this in the Archives.”
    Shann’s eyes widened. He absently rubbed the fingers which had held the bone coin—if it was a coin—back and forth across the torn front of his blouse. That tingle…did he still feel it? Or was his imagination at work again? But an object not listed in the exhaustive Survey Archives would mean some totally new civilization, a new stellar race.
    “It is definitely a created article,” the Survey officer continued. “And it was found on the beach of one of those sea islands.”
    “Throg?” But Shann already knew the answer to that.
    “Throg work— this ?” Thorvald was openly scornful. “Throgs have no conception of such art. You must have seen their metal plates—those are the beetle-heads’ idea of beauty. Have those the slightest resemblance to this?”
    “Then who made it?”
    “Either Warlock has—or once had—a native race advanced enough in a well-established form of civilization to develop such a sophisticated type of art, or there have been other visitors from space here before us and the Throgs. And the latter possibility I don’t believe—”
    “Why?”
    “Because this was carved of bone or an allied substance. We haven’t been quite able to identify it in the labs, but it is basically organic material. It was found exposed to the weather and yet it is in perfect condition, could have been carved any time within the past five years. It has been handled, yes, but not roughly. And we have come across evidences of no other star-cruising races or species save ourselves and the Throgs. No, I say this was made here on Warlock, not too long ago, and by intelligent beings of a very high grade of civilization.”
    “But they would have cities,” protested Shann. “We’ve been here for months, explored all over this continent. We would have seen them or some traces of them.”
    “An old race, maybe,” Thorvald mused, “a