"_To the intelligent life form, on the Third Planet, System K, Greetings from the dying world of Dyran. You have located our rocket from the hypnotichord built into the fins, and, by opening it, you have demonstrated a condition of rationality that we are able to help. We speak to you now through hypnotic pictures which you are translating into the symbology of your own society. Our astronomers predict that our planetary system will shortly be destroyed, because our sun is dying. It is useless for us to try to escape, for no world that we can find within the limits of our telescope has the particular combination of atmospheric gases which we need in order to live. The only sky-body that we have ever studied that gives any indication of higher life forms is yours. To you, then, we send the substance of our knowledge, the laws and principles that we have developed over a period of two million years since our recorded history began. We could have sent our machines, our libraries of records, yet the chance that you would not comprehend them alone is too great. Instead we send our learning capsules, which we use in the instruction of our young. Break the container which is sealed into this rocket and consume one of the colored spheres. It is, basically, a stimulant to the cerebral cortex of any reasoning animal which already has a memory of the past and a concept of the future. Long ago we discovered that, unaided, the mind will function with only a small portion of its specialized cells. This stimulant forces conscious activity upon all parts of the cortex; in the process of stimulation, your brain will receive the full knowledge of basic principles which we ourselves have developed. We send you fifty of these only, but it will be enough. You have not, on your planet, the material with which to make additional capsules for your people, but you will not need them. The fifty who learn from these will become teachers for the rest. Carry on for us the culture that we have made on the dying world of Dyran._" * * * * * The gray mist faded and Elvin stood up. He felt refreshed, alert; his mind bubbled again with schemes. He looked at the bottle of colored spheres still standing on his desk, and he knew they were no more than bubble gum or candy. On Friday night, while he telephoned, the tenth graders at the Schermerhorn party had started their bubble gum contest, but instead of gum they had by accident absorbed the accumulated knowledge of Dyran, a culture more than three hundred times as old as the earth's!