They stood at the half-crumbled gate to the city as they had so many times before, gazing at the incredible but magnificent ruin.
If those words from a poet out of their near-forgotten past did not actually echo through each of them, the concept and feeling of those lines did. And through each mind, as they had through the minds of thousands of others who had peered and pecked through similar ruins on over two dozen other dead planets, those endless and apparently unanswerable questions kept running.
Who were they who could build with such magnificence?
Why did they die?
“Since this is your first trip as graduate students to a Markovian ruin,” Skander’s reedy voice said through their radios, startling them out of their awe, “I will give a brief introduction to you. I apologize if I am redundant, but this will be a good refresher nonetheless.
“Jared Markov discovered the first of these ruins centuries ago, on a planet over a hundred light-years distant from this spot. It was our race’s first experience with signs of intelligence in this galaxy of ours, and the discovery caused a tremendous amount of excitement. Those ruins were dated at over a quarter of a million standard years old—and they were the youngest discovered to date. It became obvious that, while our race still grubbed on its home world fiddling with the new discovery of fire, someone else—these people—had a vast interstellar empire of still unknown dimensions. All we know is that as we have pressed inward in the galaxy these remains get more and more numerous. And, as yet, we haven’t a clue as to who they were.”
“Are there no artifacts of any sort?” came a disbelieving female voice.
“None, as you should know, Citizen Jainet,” came the formal reply in a mildly reproving tone. “That is what is so infuriating about it all. The cities, yes, about which some things can be inferred about their builders, but no furniture, no pictures, nothing of an even remotely utilitarian nature. The rooms, as you will see, are quite barren. Also, no cemeteries; indeed, nothing mechanical at all, either.”