Little by little it came to him. Once -- long ago, in connection with his geological life-work -- he had read of something like that cube. It had to do with those debatable and disquieting clay fragments called the Eltdown Shards, dug up from pre-carboniferous strata in southern England thirty years before. Their shape and markings were so queer that a few scholars hinted at artificiality, and made wild conjectures about them and their origin. They came, clearly, from a time when no human beings could exist on the globe -- but their contours and figurings were damnably puzzling. That was how they got their name.