_Each man has in him the seeds of his own immortality. He must progress or he must die. And the race is like the man. Who shall say what path that progression shall take? A man cannot know his own future. Neither does the race. This is the Book of Nard, first of the Elder Race. With encouragement to all peoples who come after us, we leave this short transcript of our past._ Angus lifted his eyes. He stared at the smiling Guardian, who nodded. Quickly the pirate touched the parchment, spread the pages wide. His keen blue eyes scanned the etchings while he read the record of those who had gone on. He scanned mathematical and astronomical formulae, chemical equations, biological charts. He whispered, "The entire history of the race, told in the achievements of its scientists!" "It is all that lives." "I don't understand it, of course. I catch a thought, here and there. But the entire equation...." "You don't understand it?" "No." The old man smiled. He said suddenly, "Would you like to see some of those achievements in action? Would you like to see the worlds in three-dimensional space, the island universes, the galaxies, the stars and their planets?" Angus said, "I've been out among the Six Worlds. I've seen other systems through telescopes." The old man laughed. It was a spontaneous, happy sort of laugh. "I don't mean that way. Come, let me show you what my race can do." Angus caught him smiling oddly, the corners of his lips drawing down, as though he shared a queer joke only with himself. They did not use the stairway this time. They stepped into a bare room walled and ceilinged and floored with shining steel. The old man touched a stud on the door. The room of the book was gone. * * * * * In its stead, there was a round chamber with a transparent dome that revealed stars twinkling uncounted miles above. In the middle of the otherwise unfurnished room stood a low, flat dais set with chairs riveted on their curving metal legs into the dais. A bank of controls was set flush in the floor of the platform. The old man led him to the dais. He smiled, bending over the control panel, "This is the kind of observatory your race will have, someday. You won't have to depend on polished mirrors and light and thick lenses. Basically the principle of the thing is the same as that of the teleport room we used to come over here. We just make use of coordinated space and time factors. It's like steering a boat on an uncharted ocean. If you know where your lodestar is you can go anywhere you want." He turned and reached for a chair. "We're ready now. You are perfectly safe, no matter what you see, or think you see. Just relax." The reflected light in the room was fading. Blackness came down through the transparent dome and surrounded them. It was like the Staratarium Red Angus had visited on Mawk--or it was, until Angus saw stars beside and below him.