Dusty leaned forward again, looking along the yellow-greenish line that marked the Transgalactic course. At the far end he noted the wink ... wink ... wink of the star-beacon, not much different than it had appeared in Scyth Radnor's spacecraft. "Where," he asked, "does their course lead from Sol?" "The prospectus, of course, is not shown as finished," said Gant. "But we can show it momentarily." He pressed a button and a dotted line of yellow-green flashed into view, extending from the end of the solid line out and out until it was lost to their view through the star-field toward the outward Spiral Cluster. Dusty looked at the line. "I suppose it isn't to scale or anything," he said. "But I can't help hoping--Gant, look, suppose this model were truly to scale, couldn't they save themselves a beacon here?" "Save a beacon?" Dusty nodded and the little spreckles blinked at his eyes. Gant shook his head. "This model was built in the hope that we could play gods standing in our galaxy with a measuring stick. We failed because we are no nearer to the stature of gods than this model is to the stature of the galaxy itself. We cannot play gods, Dusty Britton." "I'm not trying to play God," said Dusty solemnly. "I'm just thinking that if you can move a planet away from a star you want to convert into a three-day variable, you might be able to take your barytrine field and slap it around this star here," Dusty pointed to one with a forefinger, "Then you move it aside and that gives you a long run from this beacon to that beacon--missing Sol by a full inch, or--eight-and-a-third light-years." Gant blinked. Slowly, he said, "Move the star--" and let his voice trail away into a mutter. "Move the interfering star--" he repeated again. "Then--my Lord!" "What's the matter?" asked Dusty. "Yours is the glimmer of an idea that makes for the birth of a new concept!" breathed Gant. "Take it from there, Dusty. Don't you see? Move a star and straighten out one dogleg, move two and iron out the course even more. Maybe we could drill a free channel completely through from Marandis to the Spiral Cluster. Maybe from Marandis to Star's End, to Vannevarre, to Rescrustes--perhaps from Laranonne to Ultimane across the whole galaxy, a hundred thousand light-years of free flight without a change in course. I--" A tiny spot of light came crawling along the yellow-green course to disappear into the tiny pinpoint of light that represented Sol. Gant said, "That must have been Transgalactic, returning to Sol to--" then Gant jumped. "Dusty! Come on! There's no time to waste!" He hit the buttons on the control panel viciously and the little flying catwalk swung noiselessly back across thousands of light-years of scaled distance to fit into its niche once more. The circular catwalk rose high above the wispy model to its former position. XIII