Free The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford and Other Classic Stories by Philip K. Dick Page B

isn’t worth it,” he grunted. He stared into the dark yawning hold. “Or is it?”
    Nasha clicked on her hand lamp, shining the beam down the stairs. The steps were thick with dusk and rubble. At the bottom was a steel door.
    “Come on,” Tance said excitedly. He started down the stairs. They watched him reach the door and pull hopefully on it without success. “Give a hand!”
    “All right.” They came gingerly after him. Doric examined the door. It was bolted shut, locked. There was an inscription on the door but he could not read it.
    “Now what?” Nasha said.
    Doric took out his hand weapon. “Stand back. I can’t think of any other way.” He pressed the switch. The bottom of the door glowed red. Presently it began to crumble. Doric clicked the weapon off. “I think we can get through. Let’s try.”
    The door came apart easily. In a few minutes they had carried it away in pieces and stacked the pieces on the first step. Then they went on, flashing the light ahead of them.
    They were in a vault. Dust lay everywhere, on everything, inches thick. Wood crates lined the walls, huge boxes and crates, packages and containers. Tance looked around curiously, his eyes bright.
    “What exactly are all these?” he murmured. “Something valuable, I would think.” He picked up a round drum and opened it. A spool fell to the floor, unwinding a black ribbon. He examined it, holding it up to the light.
    “Look at this!”
    They came around him. “Pictures,” Nasha said. “Tiny pictures.”
    “Records of some kind.” Tance closed the spool up in the drum again. “Look, hundreds of drums.” He flashed the light around. “And those crates. Let’s open one.”
    Doric was already prying at the wood. The wood had turned brittle and dry. He managed to pull a section away.
    It was a picture. A boy in a blue garment, smiling pleasantly, staring ahead, young and handsome. He seemed almost alive, ready to move toward them in the light of the hand lamp. It was one of them, one of the ruined race, the race that had perished.
    For a long time they stared at the picture. At last Doric replaced the board.
    “All these other crates,” Nasha said. “More pictures. And these drums. What are in the boxes?”
    “This is their treasure,” Tance said, almost to himself. “Here are their pictures, their records. Probably all their literature is here, their stories, their myths, their ideas about the universe.”
    “And their history,” Nasha said. “We’ll be able to trace their development and find out what it was that made them become what they were.”
    Doric was wandering around the vault. “Odd,” he murmured. “Even at the end, even after they had begun to fight they still knew, someplace down inside them, that their real treasure was this, their books and pictures, their myths. Even after their big cities and buildings and industries were destroyed they probably hoped to come back and find this. After everything else was gone.”
    “When we get back home we can agitate for a mission to come here,” Tance said. “All this can be loaded up and taken back. We’ll be leaving about—”
    He stopped.
    “Yes,” Doric said dryly. “We’ll be leaving about three day-periods from now. We’ll fix the ship, then take off. Soon we’ll be home, that is, if nothing happens. Like being shot down by that—”
    “Oh, stop it,” Nasha said impatiently. “Leave him alone. He’s right: all this must be taken back home, sooner or later. We’ll have to solve the problem of the gun. We have no choice.”
    Doric nodded. “What’s your solution, then? As soon as we leave the ground we’ll be shot down.” His face twisted bitterly. “They’ve guarded their treasure too well. Instead of being preserved it will lie here until it rots. It serves them right.”
    “How?”
    “Don’t you see? This was the only way they knew, building a gun and setting it up to shoot anything that came along. They were so certain that