The first table bore a number of short groups of symbols, completely lost on him. There were flowing, cursive characters; then a line of wedge-shaped pictures; line after line of characters differing only slightly; and finally, at the very bottom, something he could understand. There was pictured a figure that brought a quick smile of apprehension to Rog's face--an old man, bowed with age. Beside him was a young child, enclosed in a red circle that set him off from the old man. A word leaped to his lips.... Not, perhaps, the word that the artist had intended, but close enough. "Beginning!" was the thought that came from his lips. * * * * * After that the messages in the words and pictures made more sense to him. Stupefied, trembling with excitement at this thing that was happening to him, he went on and on. He ignored the symbols as mere decorations, and read the pictures, hurrying from one group to the next. He stared long and amazed at amazingly life-like representations of the life of a tribe such as his own. The men and women even looked like his did--short, squat, hairy. The scenes showed them killing great animals somewhat similar to the ones on whose meat they lived, portrayed them chipping flint holes, and doing the other dozens of things life demanded of them. But as he went on the life changed. From cave-houses the migration was to peculiar dwellings of poles and boughs, making box-like affairs in which men and women lived. The tribe-folk, even, changed. They grew more upright and less hairy, and their faces looked something like the reflection that stared back at Rog from quiet forest pools. The message of the pictures did not by any means unfold fully to Rog, but from the chain of scenes he began to grasp something. Life steadily became more and more complex, as though it were working toward something--with a purpose. Men grew taller, their dwellings bigger, their weapons stranger and apparently more efficient. He saw small tribal conflicts broaden into great wars between numbers of tribes. He gaped at inventions which he could not begin to comprehend. Before his startled gaze caves gave way to great dwelling-places so large that men looked like ants beside them. He had to smile at the fanciful picturization of a man flying through the air in a fantastic machine. But as Rog neared the end of the exhibit, he realized that the story, if story it was, did not satisfy him. In his crude, barbaric way, he had great visions of improving life so that death was not such a stern, everpresent reality, and men would have time for things other than eating and sleeping and mating. He was a philosopher, if such a thing were conceivable of a man who lived on raw meat. And this story did not appeal to him, for as far as he could tell men grew more and more dissatisfied, instead of contented....