"These stone disks were found in a series of geometrically formed caves in the Tibetan borderlands...they have spiral grooves, and the grooves are composed of tiny hieroglyphics. The disks are some kind of ceramic, with traces of cobalt bonded to tritium. You know where tritium comes from, Terry?"

"Nuclear fusion, Wallace. Don't play with me."

"That's right, Terry. But no-one on this planet knows how to bond it to cobalt in a lattice structure. The goddamn disks are nearly indestructible, and they are electronically charged in some mysterious way that resonates when you stimulate the disk with the right frequency. Don't ask me. Anyway, the only trace of these 'glyphs is from these disks, and the only known trace of these disks was from the Peking Museum of Pre-Histpory, back in the 1930s."

"Well, so what? What do the hieroglyphs mean?"

"I'm not finished. The scientists date these damn disks -- there were over 100 of them originally -- to about 216,000 years ago. They're associated with a race of very short people, about three feet tall with large braincases fore their height, who were found in that region."

"Wallace, you're talking nonsense. 216,000 years ago, nobody was writing things down on stone disks."

"I hear ya, but that what the carbon says. And that's what the legends about the Drxopas people's origins says, except they make it a bit more."

"What? Well, where were these origins?"

"Somewhere the other side of Sirius."

Theresa Argent, for the first time in he rlife, was out of words.

"Oh, and Terry? One other thing...you know anyone about three feet tall with an Eastern descent? I do. That gal from the circus. Tell Frank we'll get him the translations as soon as we can get someone to figgure the damn alphabet out...gotta run..."

She sat there ignoring the handpiece. staring at the paneling and the bookshelves, until the rage and tears subsided. Then she went to the wall, raised an oak panel, and poured herself a double of MacAulay single malt.