"A beer. I must have refreshment. Will you join me?"

"I abstain from all alcoholic and caffeine-containing beverages." He glared at me glassily through his menacing monocle as I refilled my mug. I sipped and sat and waved him into action. His voice washed over me in turgid waves and soon had me half-asleep-but the content of his talk woke me up fast enough. He went on far too long, with far too many digressions, but despite this it was fascinating stuff to listen to.

A stripped-down version wouldn't have been half as much fun for him and would have taken only a few minutes to tell. Simply, Galaksia Universitato had sent an expedition to a reported archeological site on a distant world — where they had uncovered an artifact of non-human origin.

"You must be kidding," I said. "Mankind has explored a great part of the galaxy in the last thirty-two thousand years and no trace of an alien race has ever been found."

He sniffed loudly. "I do not 'kid' as you say in your simple demotic. I have pictorial proof here, photographs sent back by the expedition. The artifact was uncovered in a stratum at least a million years old and resembles nothing in any data base existent in the known universe."

He took a print from his inner pocket and passed it over to me. I took it and looked at it, then turned it around since there was no indication of which was top or bottom. A twisted hunk of incongruous angles and forms resembling nothing I had ever seen before.

"It looks alien enough to be alien," I said. Looking at it was beginning to hurt my eyes so I dropped it onto the table. "What does it do, or what is it made of or whatever?"

"I haven't the slightest idea since it was never conveyed to the university. It was, I must say, interrupted in its journey and it is essential that it be recovered."