H. Beam Piper

To translate writings, you need a key to the code—and if the last writer of Martian died forty thousand years before the first writer of Earth was born ... how could the Martian be translated...? An expedition from Earth to Mars discovers a deserted city, the remains of an advanced civilization t...

Readers who remember the Hon. Stephen Silk, diplomat extraordinary, in Lone Star Planet (FU, March 1957), later published as A Planet For Texans (Ace Books), will find the present story a challenging departure—this possibility that the history we know may not be absolute . . . .