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either way.”
    “What does the inscription say?”
    “The banner says
New World Coming.
And the lines on the back of the cup seem to be a designator.
IFR171.
And another term I’m not sure about.”
    “So the cup is, what, from an office somewhere?”
    “The letters probably stand for
Interstellar Fleet Registry.”
    “It’s from a ship?” I asked.
    “Oh, yes. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that.”
    Amy tugged at my arm. “What’s it worth?”
    Alex counseled patience. “Jacob, the other term is probably the ship’s name.”
    “I think that is correct, sir. It translates as
Searcher.
Or
Explorer.
Something along those lines.”
    The lamps went off. Alex lifted the object gently and placed it on the desk. He looked at it through a magnifier. “It’s in reasonably good condition,” he said.
    Amy could hardly be restrained. “Thank God. I needed
something
to go right.” Alex smiled. She was already thinking what she would be able to buy. “How can it be that old?” she asked. “My drapes are new, and they’re already falling apart.”
    “It’s a ceramic,” he told her. “Ceramics can last a long time.” He produced a soft cloth and began gently to wipe the thing.
    She asked again how much we would pay.
    Alex made the face he always used when he didn’t want to answer a question directly. “We’re not normally buyers,” he said. “We’ll do some research, Amy. Then test the market. But I’d guess, if you’re patient, it will bring a decent price.”
    “A couple hundred?”
    Alex smiled paternally. “I wouldn’t be surprised,” he said.
    She clapped her hands. “Wonderful.” She looked at me, and turned back toward Alex. “What do I do next?”
    “You needn’t do anything. Let’s take this one step at a time. First we want to find out precisely what we have.”
    “All right.”
    “Have you proof of ownership?”
    Uh-oh. Her face changed. Her lips parted and the smile vanished. “It was
given
to me.”
    “By your former boyfriend.”
    “Yes. But I own it. It’s mine.”
    Alex nodded. “Okay. We’ll have to provide a document to go with it. To certify that you have the right to make the sale.”
    “That’s okay.” She looked uncertain.
    “Very good. Why don’t you leave it with us, and we’ll see what more we can find out, and get back to you.”
     
     
    “What do you think?” I asked when she was gone.
    He looked pleased. “Nine thousand years? Somebody will be delighted to pay substantially for the privilege of putting this on the mantel.”
    “You think it’s really from a ship?”
    He was looking at the cup through the magnifier again. “Probably not. It comes out of the era when they were just getting interstellars up and running. It’s more likely to have been part of a giveaway program or to have been sold in a souvenir shop. Not that it matters: I doubt it would be possible to establish whether it was actually on shipboard or not.”
    What we really wanted, of course, was that yes, it had traveled with the
Searcher
, and that preferably it had belonged to the captain. Ideally, we would also find out that the
Searcher
was in the record somewhere, that it had accomplished something spectacular, or better yet, gotten wrecked, and, to top everything, its captain would be known to history.
    “See to it, Chase. Put Jacob on the job, and find out whatever you can.”
     
THREE
     
There is an almost mystical attraction for us in the notion of the lost world, of an Atlantis out there somewhere, a place where the routine problems of ordinary life have been banished, where everyone lives in a castle, where there’s a party every night, where every woman is stunning and every man noble and brave.
— Lescue Harkin,
Memory, Myth, and Mind,
1376
     
     
    The Third Millennium was a long time ago, and the record is notoriously incomplete. We know who the political leaders were, we know when and how the wars started (if not always
why
), we know the principal