scope has the particular combination of
atmospheric gases which we need in order to live. The only sky-body that
we have ever studied that gives any indication of higher life forms is
yours. To you, then, we send the substance of our knowledge, the laws
and principles that we have developed over a period of two million years
since our recorded history began. We could have sent our machines, our
libraries of records, yet the chance that you would not comprehend them
alone is too great. Instead we send our learning capsules, which we use
in the instruction of our young. Break the container which is sealed
into this rocket and consume one of the colored spheres. It is,
basically, a stimulant to the cerebral cortex of any reasoning animal
which already has a memory of the past and a concept of the future. Long
ago we discovered that, unaided, the mind will function with only a
small portion of its specialized cells. This stimulant forces conscious
activity upon all parts of the cortex; in the process of stimulation,
your brain will receive the full knowledge of basic principles which we
ourselves have developed. We send you fifty of these only, but it will
be enough. You have not, on your planet, the material with which to make
additional capsules for your people, but you will not need them. The
fifty who learn from these will become teachers for the rest. Carry on
for us the culture that we have made on the dying world of Dyran._"

* * * * *

The gray mist faded and Elvin stood up. He felt refreshed, alert; his
mind bubbled again with schemes. He looked at the bottle of colored
spheres still standing on his desk, and he knew they were no more than
bubble gum or candy. On Friday night, while he telephoned, the tenth
graders at the Schermerhorn party had started their bubble gum contest,
but instead of gum they had by accident absorbed the accumulated
knowledge of Dyran, a culture more than three hundred times as old as
the earth's!

It was overwhelmingly clear what had happened after that. Thirty
adolescents, suddenly possessing more knowledge than the world had ever
known, had run riot, playing with hypnotism, the transmutation of
matter, the Law of Degravitation, the fourth dimensional transposition
of whole city blocks. Within two days their energetic curiosity, their
adolescent love of excitement and experiment, had thrown the world into
crisis. By this time, Elvin concluded, they would