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 has some carbonate in it, perhaps this moss breaks it down by secreting acid, and then makes use of the carbon dioxide generated. This may be the dominant remaining form of life on this planet."
"Fascinating," said Pelorat.
"Undoubtedly," said Trevize, "but only in a limited way. The co-ordinates of the Spacer worlds are rather more interesting but what we really want are the co-ordinates of Earth. If they're not here, they may be elsewhere in the building-or in another building. Come, Janov."
"But you know-"began Pelorat.
"No, no," said Trevize impatiently. "We'll talk later. We've got to see what else, if anything, this building can give us. It's getting warmer." He looked.the small temperature reading on the back of his left glove. "Come, Janov."
They tramped through the rooms, walking as gently as possible, not because they were making sounds in the ordinary sense, or because there was anyone to hear them, but because they were a little shy of doing further damage through vibration.
They kicked up some dust, which moved a short way upward and settled quickly through the thin air, and they left footmarks behind them.
Occasionally, in some dim corner, one or the other would silently point out more samples of moss that were growing. There seemed a little comfort in the presence of life, however low in the scale, something that lifted the deadly, suffocating feel of walking through a dead world, especially one in which artifacts all about showed that once, long ago, it had been an elaborately living one.
And then, Pelorat said, "I think this must be a library."
Trevize looked about curiously. There were shelves and, as he looked more narrowly, what the corner of his eye had dismissed as mere ornamentation, seemed as though they might well be book-films. Gingerly, he reached for one. They were thick and clumsy and then he realized they were only cases. He fumbled with his thick fingers to open one, and inside he saw several discs. They were thick, too, and seemed brittle, though he did not test that.
He said, "Unbelievably primitive."
"Thousands of years old," said Pelorat apologetically, as though defending the old Melpomenians against the accusation of retarded technology.
Trevize pointed to the spine of the film where there were dim curlicues of the ornate lettering that the ancients had used. "Is that the title? What does it say?"
Pelorat studied it. "I'm not really sure, old man. I think one of the words refers to microscopic life. It's a word for 'microorganism,' perhaps. I suspect these are technical microbiological terms which I wouldn't understand even in Standard Galactic."
"Probably," said Trevize morosely. "And, equally probably, it wouldn't do us any good even if we could read it. We're not interested in germs. Do me a favor, Janov. Glance through some of these books and see if there's anything there with an interesting title. While you're doing that, I'll look over these book-viewers."
"Is that what they are?" said Pelorat, wondering. They were squat, cubical structures, topped by a slanted screen and a curved extension at the top that might serve as an elbow rest or a place on which to put an electro-notepad-if they had had such on Melpomenia.
Trevize said, "if this is a library, they must have book-viewers of one kind or another, and this seems as though it might suit."
He brushed the dust off the screen very gingerly and was relieved that the screen, whatever it might be made of, did not crumble at his touch. He manipulated the controls lightly, one after another. Nothing happened. He tried another book-viewer, then another, with the same negative results.
He wasn't surprised. Even if the device were to remain in working order for twenty millennia in a thin atmosphere and was resistant to water vapor, there was still the question of the power source. Stored energy had a way of leaking, no matter what was done to stop it. That was another aspect of the all embracing, irresistible second law of thermodynamics.
Pelorat was behind him. "Golan?"
"Yes."
"I have a book-film here-"
"What kind?"
"I think it's a history of space flight."
"Perfect but it won't do us any good if I can't make this viewer work."
His hands clenched in frustration.
"We could take the film back to the ship."
"I wouldn't know how to adapt it to our viewer. It wouldn't fit and our scanning system is sure to be incompatible."