The other men he felt more sure of. Norris--a top physicist at White Sands, thoroughly familiar with man's attempts at space flight. Lizio, an electronics engineer, with an alert, intelligent face, and excellent reputation. Reassured by their competence he joined them as they bent over the larger volume. They found upon each drawing what certainly indicated a scale. Preceding the last, persistently identical symbol was a tailless arrow pointing left. They quickly named the last symbol "scale" and the arrow "equals." "I'll do some measuring," Lizio said, and left. Winthrop and Norris began listing the various symbols, noting their frequency of appearance and relative positions. An hour later Lizio returned, and began comparing his measurements with symbols on the drawings. "They're definitely drawn to different scales," he said. "The symbols and measurements are not alike. That means different identifiable numbers. Lads, we can crack the math!" They arrived at a unit, found that one hundred ninety-six units equaled slightly less than one meter, and from the precisely-marked drawings managed to label the symbols from one to fourteen. The fifteen symbol proved to be a fourteen followed by a one. They were interrupted then as the book was taken to the Astoria signal center for photostating. They talked, while General Hill telephonically cut red tape to have computers rushed to them. Suddenly Rabin cried, "I know the ship's point of origin!" He displayed the book's center-spread, a beautiful skyscape from the plundered planet's surface. The stars and constellations seemed unfamiliar at first, but as Rabin remarked their luminosities and relative positions Norris exclaimed, "Of course--_Sirius_!" Winthrop's troubled mind soared. Sirius! Over two and a half parsecs, eight and a half light years from the Solar System. Small wonder the crew was in a big sleep! Knowledge of the ship's apparent point of origin kindled a deeper fire--the necessity to find out what they could _while_ they could. Even if the ship's occupants proved friendly they just might be firmly reticent. The computers came, and an intense Benton Allan and his associates--a young man who immediately buried his thin, bespectacled nose in the math, and bent his thin frame to the instruments. The ship swarmed with technicians. Engineers examined the gyros and swore without hesitation that they could be duplicated. Others studied the electronics computer tied into the bulkhead instrument and its related schematics, or huddled excitedly with astronomers and spatiologists. One by one they tied the schematics and drawings to the instruments and equipment, at length realizing that nothing in the volume related to the ship forward of the bulkhead. They'd been talking it over. "If you were in a spaceship," Winthrop said, "you'd certainly keep on hand the mechanics of what keeps your living quarters livable. There'll be another book up forward." They left it at that.