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Poet, I need tell you nothing.”
    He strode off, pushed open the swing door and disappeared inside.
    Open-mouthed, Jed watched him go. “What’s eating him, Lania?”
    “Oh, he’s just being his usual old, cold self,” she said.
    They stood and hurried after their captain.
     
     
    L ANIA HAD ALWAYS found museums rather sad places, the termini of relics from cultures long dead and almost forgotten. As a child on the old colony world of Xaria, she’d spent hours in the cultural history museum of the capital city, staring solemnly at the artefacts of races, both alien and human, who had had their day and died.
    It was a poignant reminder that the spread of her own people through this sector of the galaxy was but a passing show across the vast face of the universe.
    Now, as they walked reverently through dusty halls with half-emptied cases to their left and right, she knew that even sadder than the museums of her childhood were museums like this one: museums whose exhibits stood in mute testimony, not only to long dead civilisations, but to a present and future bereft of citizens to gaze upon the wonders of ages past.
    A terrible melancholy seemed to fill the echoing halls, an atmosphere which demanded silence from the trio as if they were treading the sacred precincts of a cathedral.
    Lania found herself whispering, “Do you know where the statuette was kept?”
    If Ed was still upset with her, he didn’t show it. “The dealer said it was in a hall given over to the remains of the Hhar civilisation, the race which became extinct here a million years ago.”
    Ed gestured along the length of the vast central hall, indicating an opening to his right. They came to the archway and paused on the threshold.
    “It’s almost untouched,” Ed said. “I don’t know whether to be sad about that, or glad.”
    Jed looked at him. “Because the statue’ll be easier to find?”
    Ed smiled. “Something like that, Jed.”
    Lania watched Ed as he stepped into the chamber containing rows of cases of Hhar artefacts. There were times, she thought, when he exhibited more compassion towards things and ideas than towards real, living people.
    A row of glass cabinets lined the walls and ran down the centre of the room. Ed said, “A small statue of an alien figure, about as long as my hand, carved from grey stone.”
    He moved to the left-most series of cases, while Jed checked the central aisle and Lania began peering into the cabinets to the right.
    She wondered why none of the Hhar artefacts had been salvaged, either by staff or the looters who came afterwards. Were these pieces worth nothing, these exquisitely carved representations of wild Hesperidian animals, admittedly primitive but nevertheless carved with care and a knowledge of the subject? Like their creators, they were destined to be lost in the mists of time.
    In the third case was a small carving of what looked like a scaled lion. She worked out how to open the case, reached inside and picked up the cold, heavy object.
    She turned the carving, admiring the intricacy of the detail, the fidelity the ancient artisan had brought to the leaping musculature and the ferocious head.
    “Lania?” Ed called. “Found it?”
    “No – just this.” She held it up. “To remember Hesperides by, Ed.”
    She slipped the carving into her pouch and moved to the next case. Five minutes later she came to the last one and admitted defeat. Ed was still peering into a cabinet across the chamber, a gangly, professorial figure absorbed in antiquities, when Jed called out, “Here, boss. I think I’ve found it!”
    Lania moved to his side and Ed joined them. The statuette occupied a cabinet of its own, standing on a black velvet plinth. It was as Ed had described it, perhaps ten centimetres tall and iron-grey, an attenuated alien figure with long legs and short arms and a long, thin head.
    Jed was fumbling in an attempt to open the case. Lania eased him aside and showed him how.
    Ed reached into