The cell was alive.

But the energy was not electrical—that was why it had never been picked up. He had no idea what it was, but it behaved like standard electrical energy. It just didn’t measure or appear as electricity should.

The discovery had been an accident, he reflected, three years before. Some careless student had been playing with the screen to get good-looking effects and had left it that way. He had switched it on the next day without noticing anything unusual, then set up the usual energy-detection program for another dull run-through.

It was only a glimpse, a flicker, but he had seen it—and worked on his own for months more to get a filter system that would show that energy photographically.

He had tested the classical samples from other digs, even had one sent to him by a supply ship. They had all been dead.

But not this one.

Somewhere, forty or so kilometers beneath them, the Markovian brain was still alive.

“What is that, Professor?” Skander heard a voice behind him. He quickly flipped the screen off and whirled around in one anxious moment.

It was Varnett, that perennial look of innocence on his permanently childlike face.

“Nothing, nothing,” he covered excitedly, the anxiety in his voice betraying the lie. “Just putting on some playful programs to see what the electrical charges in the cell might have looked like.”

Varnett seemed skeptical. “Looked pretty real to me,” he said stubbornly. “If you’ve made a major breakthrough you ought to tell us about it. I mean—”

“No, no, it’s nothing,” Skander protested angrily. Then, regaining his composure, he said, “That will be all, Citizen Varnett! Leave me now!”

Varnett shrugged and left.

Skander sat in his chair for several minutes.