"Friends, we need _your_ help, _your_ knowledge. I _know_ you don't want the human race to vanish without a _trace_, as though it had never existed. I'm _sure_ it thrills you to realize that some researcher, _far_ in the _future_, will one day use the very knowledge that _you_ gave. Think what it means to leave _your_ personal imprint indelibly on cosmic history!" He paused and leaned forward. "Will you help us?" The faces glowed, the hands went up, the voices cried that they would. Dazzled by the success of the sell, Clocker watched the people happily and flatteredly follow their frock-coated guides toward the various buildings, which appeared to have been laid out according to very broad categories of human occupation. He found himself impelled along with the chattering, excited woman in the housecoat toward a cerise structure marked SPORTS AND RACKETS. It seemed that she had been angry at not having been interviewed for a recent epic survey, and this was her chance to decant the experiences of twenty years. Clocker stopped listening to her gabble and looked for the building that Zelda would probably be in. He saw ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT, but when he tried to go there, he felt some compulsion keep him heading toward his own destination. Looking back helplessly, he went inside. * * * * * He found that he was in a cubicle with a fatherly kind of man who had thin gray hair, kindly eyes and a firm jaw, and who introduced himself as Eric Barnes. He took Clocker's name, age, specific trade, and gave him a serial number which, he explained, would go on file at the central archives on his home planet, cross-indexed in multiple ways for instant reference. "Now," said Barnes, "here is our problem, Mr. Locke. We are making two kinds of perpetual records. One is written; more precisely, microscribed. The other is a wonderfully exact duplicate of your cerebral pattern--in more durable material than brain matter, of course." "Of course," Clocker said, nodding like an obedient patsy. "The verbal record is difficult enough, since much of the data you give us must be, by its nature, foreign to us. The duplication of your cerebral pattern, however, is even more troublesome. Besides the inevitable distortion caused by a distance of 10,000 light-years and the fields of gravitation and radiation of all types intervening, the substance we use in place of brain cells absorbs memory quite slowly." Barnes smiled reassuringly. "But you'll be happy to know that the impression, once made, can _never_ be lost or erased!" "Delighted," Clocker said flatly. "Tickled to pieces." "I knew you would be. Well, let us proceed. First, a basic description of horse racing." Clocker began to give it. Barnes held him down to a single sentence--"To check reception and retention," he said.