“At the same time, I’m going to push up my transmitter power again. I hope to be able to beam the output much more narrowly, and so greatly increase the energy concentration. But this will involve all sorts of mechanical difficulties, and I’ll need more assistance.”

I promised to do my utmost to get further aid, and the Professor hopes that you will soon be able to visit his laboratory yourself. In the meantime I am attaching a photograph of the vision screen, which although not as clear as the original will, I hope, prove beyond doubt that our observations are not mistaken.

I am well aware that our grant to the Interplanetary Society has brought us dangerously near the total estimate for the year, but surely even the crossing of space is less important than the immediate investigation of this discovery which may have the most profound effects on the philosophy and the future of the whole human race.

I sat back and looked at Karn. There was much in the document I had not understood, but the main outlines were clear enough.

“Yes,” I said, “this is it! Where’s that photograph?”

He handed it over. The quality was poor, for it had been copied many times before reaching us. But the pattern was unmistakable and I recognized it at once.

“They were good scientists,” I said admiringly. “That’s Callastheon, all right. So we’ve found the truth at last, even if it has taken us three hundred years to do it.”

“Is that surprising,” asked Karn, “when you consider the mountain of stuff we’ve had to translate and the difficulty of copying it before it evaporates?”