ight be of flimsy enough materials, plastic probably, to push
off the edge, from which it would fall exactly where he needed it.

He dragged a chair over, climbed up on its seat and then onto the table.
He saw at once that the box would be immovable. There was an affair that
might be a dynamotor attached to one side, various objects sticking out
of the other, and four stacks of thick coils on top. He was turning
away, hoping to find another door in one of the first rooms, when his
eye was attracted to a square plate among the things on the right side
of the box. The plate was glass, for its surface shone under the blue
light, and he thought he saw the pin-point twinkling of stars in it.

On a hunch, he walked over to it. He knew quite a lot of astronomy and
if this happened to be a telescope, he might be able to determine their
location.

The field of the plate was full of stars, but in patterns he had never
seen. He could not understand it. It was not a painting, for the stars
twinkled. Where the blazes was the thing focused?

A huge dial beside the plate had a pointer and scores of notches, each
labeled with a couple of squiggly characters. He turned the pointer
experimentally. The screen blurred, showed a planet with rings: Saturn.

"Neat," he said to himself, and turned the pointer another notch. He got
a view of a landscape, trees of olive green and crimson, seen from
above. He tried other notches.

Finally, just as he had reminded himself that he had to hurry, he saw a
familiar globe swim onto the glass. It was Earth, with the two Americas
clearly defined.

What in hell...?

He pushed the pointer on, and was given another landscape, this time of
prosaic hue, a meadow with a cow in it. He clicked the thing another
notch and got a constellation pattern again. He pushed it back to the
cow.

He felt his heart thudding fast, too fast; and he hoped with all his
faculties that he wouldn't conk out before he had solved this riddle.
There were other dials, other pointers, a little behind the first. He
turned one slowly.

The cow grew larger until it almost filled the screen. Only when he
could see nothing but its broad placid back did he realize that he was
looking at this scene, as at the others, from _above_.

He tried a third pointer. The land whipped by beneath his gaze. He came
to a city, the buildings reaching up to him in a wonderful illusion of
depth.

Then it dawned on him what the machine was, and