Can anyone offer any help with this..? I read it at school around 1976 but cannot remember the title nor the author. Thank you in advance!
A lone astronaut called - I think- Steve is stranded on a distant planet when his ship runs low on fuel.
His only companion is - again I think - a parrot. The fuel his ship uses is a filament or wire which is kept on a spool.
On exploring the locale he has landed in he discovers a huge building half-buried in a mountainside. He enters the building and discovers it is a museum filled with thousands of glass cases containing preserved specimens of various life forms as well as machines.
There is a robot curator that does repairs and, as the astronaut finds out, prepares cases for new exhibits.
On analysing the wire in one of the machines he discovers that is suitable as fuel for his ship so he winds a length of it onto his ships spool and leaves the planet just ahead of the robot collecting him and his parrot as museum exhibits...