Excerpt of The Martian Marauders by Michael D. Smith

The cave wasn't more than fifteen by twenty feet, and seemed decidedly primitive. There was one pillar extending from floor to ceiling towards the back, and a table–like object on either side of it, all apparently carved out of rock. The hieroglyphs were everywhere, on the pillar, tables, walls, and ceiling, and now that Phil nudged some dust aside with his boot, he could see they were even on the floor.

"Get that Mein Führer guy in the camo suit back in here––" West snapped.

Ken Garrison hurried out of the cave and returned in a moment with Meintgeister the archeologist.

"Uh, yessir, and how may I be of assistance here?" Meintgeister said.

West pulled a heat blaster and aimed it at the wall opposite him. "What's all this crap mean on the walls and everywhere? You guys figure it out yet?"

"Uh, no, sir, not really, we only discovered the cave yesterday, as you know, and really haven't had time yet to explore all of it, or the ruins on the other side, and underground. Those ruins have been carbon–dated to a much later time period than this cave, which may in fact have been the original settlement at this site––"

"You can't translate this stuff?" West said. "McNarri here says they're Egyptian hieroglyphics."

"Well, sir, I would venture to say that the likelihood of Martian hieroglyphics being at all related to Egyptian ... I mean ... what I mean to say ... I mean, could you please not point your weapon at the hieroglyphics themselves? I would hate to think what a chance ray would do to––"

West grimaced, and Phil was surprised to see him holster his weapon in response. "Have it your way, dude. If you can't translate it, we'll have to do it ourselves. You there––Reynolds?"

"Yes, sir," said Craig Reynolds of Typhoon I.

"There's a USSF Translator in Rover 1. Bring it back here."

Reynolds nodded. "Yessir."

As he ducked through the cave entrance Meintgeister said: "The USSF has translators capable of ...?"

West shrugged. "Top secret, of course. We developed 'em to deal with thousands of AC languages, some written, some not. Sometimes it's pretty accurate. Other times ... let's just say this latest version just came out last month and it's the best we've got."

"You mean we're past Version 4.8?" Phil put in.

"Version 7.0," West said. "No combat units have gotten past 4.8 yet." Now Reynolds returned with a white box eighteen inches square and six inches high. "Sperry, since you're familiar with 4.8, you should be able to handle 7.0," West went on. "The interface is more or less the same."

"Sure," Phil said, moving to the box and unfolding its scanner, pulling out the control unit and taking measurements of the cave.

"I ... had no idea ..." Meintgeister babbled, staring at the display panel Phil unfolded from the back of the machine. The scanner dish panned the ceiling and walls as Phil calibrated the control unit, inputting every word he could think of to describe cave, wall drawings, language, pillar, tables, humanoid ...

"And you'll continue to have no idea," West snarled. "You breathe a word of this and we'll have you shipped off the Alpha Centauri to study their archeological sites! You get me?"

"Of ... of course, sir!" Meintgeister said. "It's just that ... with ... with such a tool ... what we could accomplish ... our own translation systems are so primitive ..."

"Oh, I imagine the technology will filter down over time," West said. "In a few years you'll have the equivalent of 7.0. Of course the USSF will have complete telepathic translators by that time, eh?" For some reason West decided to slap the camouflaged Meintgeister so hard and jovially on the back that the archeologist stumbled and went down.

"Uh ... yessir ..." Meintgeister said from his knees. "We'll ... look forward to it, sir ..."

From outside Phil could hear a woman's hiss: "Why is Larold sucking that moron's––"

Phil tuned that out along with the USSF men's chatter, their eager useless speculation about the hieroglyphics, and continued to adjust the Translator. In fact he'd been assigned Translator duties on board the Wrathspike, and had sometimes been called on to obtain data from the wreckage of AC ships. Usually you didn't get much. Phil's greatest accomplishment was the small hinged panel he'd managed to translate as "MASS RESTRICTION LEVEL FOUR."

"Not sure what we'll get," Phil grunted, "but I'm ready for a first run." He wasn't anywhere as excited as the others inside the cave. He'd never been impressed by archeology, on Earth, in Alpha Centauri, and now here on Mars. A dingy little cave with some pictures, so what? He could imagine primitive Martian beings––he tried not to assume they were like the photographs of those things found at the Space Carpet last night––simpering around this table, tossing their little pots about in some idiotic religious rite, obtaining some illusory sense of satisfaction so they could go on hunting Martian mastodons or whatever they used to hunt here. What a tedious little life––led by animals!

The initial display seemed to confirm this sense of futility and self–delusion:

CAVE ... HOLY ... MEETING GROUND ... WE ... HOLY WE ... GREAT DESERT ROCK ... HOLY ROCK OF WE ...

"Sheesh," Phil muttered, even as his Typhoon crewmates, Meintgeister, and Major West whooped at the words appearing on the display.

Phil programmed the curved white scanner to rotate around the room.

CAVE ... DEDICATED ... HOPES ... WE ... HOLY PILLAR OF

"Man, this isn't much ..." Phil said.

OUR FONDEST GOD

"Huh ..." Joe said. "So this thing is really translating Martian?"