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vessel on a particular date. Commander Bridger completed a Headquarters course on logistics with honors." And much later, "Captain Bridger will go aboard the ship Imperial, there to take command of said ship, and all personnel aboard, conducting himself with honor and in accordance with Imperial naval regulations." It was all there. The thousands of entries which mark off the predictable path of a military career.
    Just out of curiosity he ran the file forward to where the first annual psych profile after the Battle of Hell should have been. It wasn't there. The screen lit up with "For Imperial Eyes Only. Enter access code." McCade leaned back, an amused smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. So they didn't want him reading what the shrinks had to say. No sweat. It didn't take a bulkhead full of degrees to know Bridger had been operating on about half-power. And at least he knew what they weren't telling him. But what if they'd simply deleted information? He'd have no way to know it was missing. And it would be Walt's style. The old "just tell 'em what they need to know" routine. Grimly he turned his attention back to the screen. He'd have to assume some things were missing.
    The next regular entry recorded Bridger's assignment to the Academy as an instructor. He taught mostly naval history. And the regular evaluations by the head of the history department suggested Bridger was good at it. His interest in history even extended to his own time. This was the part Swanson-Pierce had mentioned. McCade read the subsequent information with interest. After the loss of his family, Bridger often used his leaves to make one-man expeditions to the artifact worlds.
    Many of the artifact worlds were discovered during the early days of space exploration. They were empty of intelligent life, except in a few cases where other life forms native to that particular planet had gained sentience after the disappearance of the original builders. The fact that they'd had time to do so suggested the Builders had been gone a very long time indeed. In any case, the fantastic ruins and artifacts the Builders had left behind gave mute testimony to an advanced civilization whose people had occupied and ruled many systems. The similarities between artifacts found on different worlds left no doubt as to their mutual membership in the same empire.
    But archeologists discovered little more than that. Oh, they had plenty of theories, but very little to base them on. For one thing, the evidence was so ancient that the ravages of time had reduced most of it to little more than enigmatic hints at what must have been a magnificent race and culture. But, every now and then, some lucky person or group would stumble onto a hidden cache of artifacts protected, by luck or happenstance, from the elements. Over time all sorts of things had been discovered in this manner, including a variety of machinery, art works, precious stones, written documents, and a great deal of thus far unidentifiable, but nonetheless interesting junk.
    So each year countless academic and private expeditions were launched in an effort to find a hidden chamber deep inside the ruins of some artifact planet which would reveal the nature of those who preceded both man and Il Ronn into space. Some sought knowledge, and others sought the riches knowledge can bring, but so far no one had really succeeded. But while none had yet managed to strip bare the secrets of the Builders, quite a few did find something for their trouble, and McCade was intrigued to learn that Bridger was among them.
    At the time, the press made quite a fuss over it, probably because Bridger was a war hero more than anything else. Then too Bridger's find turned out to be quite controversial, or at least the centerpiece of it was.
    What made Bridger's find special was a large metal plate. Its composition was similar to durasteel. Inscribed on its surface was writing in what was clearly two different languages. One was the