"So how are you making out, Butler One?"
"Miss O’Malley, the pattern of movements appears to be a request that we remove this small portion of land around which he has been pacing. In anticipation of your request, I used my probe scanner to detect that there is something buried below. I have pinpointed it to be under the centre of the circle he paces."

"Well it's only dirt, and we could pull off a plate sized circle of grass if it would help solve the mystery that's frightening those people," thought Ann.

She flew over to the shed and returned with a shovel. Using her exolimbs, she had soon unearthed a small spherical container at the bottom of the three feet deep cylindrical hole that she had made in the ground.

"Butler One analyze this, and find out how to open it."

The robot had soon opened the chest, and Ann found that it contained a cube. On one side was an arrow pointing to the edge which linked with another side. She turned the cube, so that the first side was the 'top'. The arrow pointed down to one of the four 'wall' sides. This side had an arrow which pointed to the second wall.

The arrows were only small marks carved into the far side of the squares. The second wall had an arrow pointing to the third. The third wall had an arrow pointing to the bottom. The arrows only occupied a small place. The rest of each square was like a page of symbols.

"What does it mean, Butler One?"

"Both the sphere and the cube are made of an infinitely durable metal, Miss O’Malley. It will take me some time to study the symbols, and help you to understand the message."

I'll start filling in this hole, before I grow impatient," said Ann, "You go to work on the cube. Do the arrows suggest the order of the pages, if the sides are pages to be read, I mean?"

"Yes, Miss O’Malley."

Ann found some extra dirt from an old mud pile,  and used it to make up for the space which had been occuppied by the sphere. She even managed to put the slice of grassy dirt back on the top, where the hole had briefly been. She waited another ten minutes before Butler One spoke. He had translated the complex symbols.

"Translations complete, Miss O’Malley."

"Read the message, Butler One."
Ann had learnt that politeness and gratitude were wasted on a robot.

"The message reads as follows:

            'I am of alien origin. I landed on earth thousands of years before this message will be

            read. My landing was an accident. During my long life of about forty earth days, I

            spent most of them stranded on your planet. So I dug a place to leave the message you

            are now finding. I hope you have been able to translate it. I will soon be unable to

            continue to appear and point to its location. We beings have a luminescent exterior

            which is normal on our world, but on earth it would not be seen until it passed

            through thousands of your earth years. On my visit to earth I am invisible to the       people of this time, but for nearly forty days, I will be seen here in the future. It is             important that my message be found, because my spaceship was destroyed in the      accident which brought me here. I barely escaped with my life. Because of the    enormous amounts of energy our bodies expend, to create this involuntary    luminescence, we are unable to live for more than forty earth days. Our bodies burn       themselves out because of a compulsory freak of nature.

            However my message to you earth people is important. You who have found this

            should know that there will always be unusual wonders for people whose minds are

            open to them. The store of amazing, extraordinary anomalies is available only to a

            few, but to those few, it will never expire.'