Foundation and Earth - Isaac Asimov [138]
“Co-ordinates?” Trevize sounded dumbfounded. “That list gives the co-ordinates, too?”
“They give three figures for each and I presume those are co-ordinates. What else can they be?”
Trevize did not answer. He opened a small compartment in the portion of the space suit that covered his right thigh and took out a compact device with wire connecting it to the compartment. He put it up to his eyes and carefully focused it on the inscription on the wall, his sheathed fingers making a difficult job out of something that would ordinarily have been a moment’s work.
“Camera?” asked Pelorat unnecessarily.
“It will feed the image directly into the ship’s computer,” said Trevize.
He took several photographs from different angles, then said, “Wait! I’ve got to get higher. Help me, Janov.”
Pelorat clasped his hands together, stirrup-fashion, but Trevize shook his head. “That won’t support my weight. Get on your hands and knees.”
Pelorat did so, laboriously, and, as laboriously, Trevize, having tucked the camera into its compartment again, stepped on Pelorat’s shoulders and from them on to the pedestal of the statue. He tried to rock the statue carefully to judge its firmness, then placed his foot on one bent knee and used it as a base for pushing himself upward and catching the armless shoulder. Wedging his toes against some unevenness at the chest, he lifted himself and, finally, after several grunts, managed to sit on the shoulder. To those long-dead who had revered the statue and what it represented, what Trevize did would have seemed blasphemy, and Trevize was sufficiently influenced by that thought to try to sit lightly.
“You’ll fall and hurt yourself,” Pelorat called out anxiously.
“I’m not going to fall and hurt myself, but you might deafen me.” Trevize unslung his camera and focused once more. Several more photographs were taken and then he replaced the camera yet again and carefully lowered himself till his feet touched the pedestal. He jumped to the ground and the vibration of his contact was apparently the final push, for the still intact arm crumbled, and produced a small heap of rubble at the foot of the statue. It made virtually no noise as it fell.
Trevize froze, his first impulse being that of finding a place to hide before the watchman came and caught him. Amazing, he thought afterward, how quickly one relives the days of one’s childhood in a situation like that—when you’ve accidentally broken something that looks important. It lasted only a moment, but it cut deeply.
Pelorat’s voice was hollow, as befitted one who had witnessed and even abetted an act of vandalism, but he managed to find words of comfort. “It’s—it’s all right, Golan. It was about to come down by itself, anyway.”
He walked over to the pieces on the pedestal and floor as though he were going to demonstrate the point, reached out for one of the larger fragments, and then said, “Golan, come here.”
Trevize approached and Pelorat, pointing at a piece of stone that had clearly been the portion of the arm that had been joined to the shoulder, said, “What is this?”
Trevize stared. There was a patch of fuzz, bright green in color. Trevize rubbed it gently with his suited finger. It scraped off without trouble.
“It looks a lot like moss,” he said.
“The life-without-mind that you mentioned?”
“I’m not completely sure how far without mind. Bliss, I imagine, would insist that this had consciousness, too—but she would claim this stone also had it.”
Pelorat said, “Do you suppose that moss stuff is what’s crumbling the rock?”
Trevize said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if it helped. The world has plenty of sunlight and it has some water. Half what atmosphere it has is water vapor. The rest is nitrogen and inert gases. Just a trace of carbon dioxide, which would lead one to suppose there’s no plant life—but it could be that the carbon dioxide is low because it is virtually all incorporated into the rocky crust. Now if this rock