The first task was to rig the ship with absorbing screens to prevent radar echoes and nullify this means of locating them from Earth. It was a relatively easy project and one that was completed by the end of their first twenty-four hours in space. That left only astronomical means by which they could be detected from Earth, and with each passing hour, this possibility became more remote. Underwood, however, could not put off the uneasiness that beset him in the face of the pursuit he knew must surely come. Six days out and a hundred thousand light years from Earth, Phyfe uncovered the first evidence that fortune was with them. He and Dreyer, along with Terry and Underwood and the other semanticists and archeologists, were working in the single large chamber allotted to study of the records. Phyfe's sudden exclamation burst upon the silence of the room. He held up a small metal roll, fused on the outside, but unrolled in a spiral coil where he had broken the fused portions away. "This looks as if it might have been the log of one of the refugee ships," he said. "Look at it." Underwood bent over the small machine they had devised for supplying the correction radiation which would render the characters visible. Normally, they stood out against their dull, metallic background like white fire, but these were dim almost to the point of obliteration. He read slowly, aloud. "Meathes. 2192903. One _detela_ since leaving Sirenia. Lookout reports Dragboran vessels within range. A thousand of them, which means we are outnumbered ten to one. Flight bearings 3827--" Underwood looked up. He could read no further. "Those last figures--" "Could they be the relationship between his own fleet and the home planet?" said Phyfe. "More likely it would be the bearings of the Dragboran fleet in relation to the Sirenians. In any case, such figures would be a clue to the location of the worlds, because they would be related to their Galactic references. That's the catch, though, finding those references. To us, they would be entirely arbitrary. But if this is a log, it may give the location of the planets and their Galaxy that we can identify. If we can work out the changes in astronomical positions that take place in five hundred thousand years." He took the roll from the machine and examined it more closely. "It's almost hopeless to get any more out of this. Is there any other specimen that was found in the same locality?" Phyfe checked the records and shook his head. "This was found stuck to a completely fused mass of iron, apparently part of the ship in which it lay when the Dragbora struck. We may as well send it to the lab for restoration. If it becomes possible to read it, it may help." * * * * *