Step by step (and each step, I came afterwards to feel, represented a Limanoran generation) they traced it back to its secret. Most of all were they aided in their researches by investigations outside of the atmosphere; there they captured in the tubes of their psychometers the form of energy that constituted human soul. And in their laboratories they were able to study it at leisure. For long I felt that these pictures of the future were unlikely to be realised. Yet the steps in the process were so gradual, and the scene representing each so vivid that I came in after years to accept it as well within the range of Limanoran possibilities; for I realised at last how far into the future imagination could pioneer, and what a vast number of ages one of these predictive dramas would cover. My sense of time was crude and weak during my earlier years in the island, and it was difficult for me to appreciate the passage of cosmic periods, such as were often implied in the scenes representing the publication of a book by the Fraloomiamo. I afterwards listened to the book of Human Sculpture itself, as it uttered itself from a loud-sounding linasan or reproducer of speech. This automaton-reader had the long strip of irelium constituting a Limanoran book fed into it off the cylinder on which the book was kept rolled. It gave the sound and every intonation of the author’s voice, so that there was no difficulty in following his every thought as it found expression. I never came to be able to read those books on the irelium rolls themselves under a microscope, as the Limanorans could, and preferred to use my hearing instead of my eyes. There was no possibility of ambiguity if I listened to the words as they came hot from the thinker’s own lips. A new and more esoteric kind of book tended to supersede this at a later period. It consisted of an electrogram of the author’s thoughts, as they developed and shaped themselves, flashed on to long moving strips of labramor or electricity-sponge by his active magnetic sense; this placed in an idrosan or electrograph affected the firla of the receiver so that he followed the whole process of thinking. Such a permanent record of creative thought in its process of creating was of measureless value to such a people as this, for every economy of time and intelligence meant a quickening of their march into the nobler future. But for many ages the effort of electrographing the thought was too much except for the most powerful of mature creative minds; and that of receiving the flash of the electrogram through the firla was within the capacity of none but those who had developed their magnetic faculty to great refinement of power.