* *

In the cabin of the scout-ship they broke the cylinder open into two
perfect halves. It came apart easily, a shell of paper-thin but
remarkably strong metal, protecting the tightly packed contents.

There was no question what the cylinder was, even though there was
nothing inside that looked even slightly familiar at first examination.
There were several hundred very tiny thin discs of metal that fit on the
spindle of a small instrument that was packed with them. There were
spools of film, thin as tissue but amazingly strong. Examined against
the light in the cabin, the film seemed to carry no image at all ... but
there was another small machine that accepted the loose end of the film,
and a series of lenses that glowed brightly with no apparent source of
power. There was a thick block of shiny metal covered on one side with
almost invisible scratches....

A time capsule, beyond doubt. A confusing treasure, at first glance, but
the idea was perfectly clear. A hard shell of metal protecting the
records collected inside....

_Against what? A planetary explosion? Some sort of cosmic disaster that
had blown a planet and its people into the fragments that now filled the
Asteroid Belt?_

At the bottom of the cylinder was a small tube of metal. They examined
it carefully, trying to guess what it was supposed to be. At the bottom
was a tiny stud. When they pressed it, the cylinder began to expand and
unfold, layer upon layer of thin glistening metallic material that
spread out into a sheet that stretched halfway across the cabin.

They stared down at it. The metal seemed to have a life of its own,
glowing and glinting, focussing light into pinpoints on its surface.

It was a map.

At one side, a glowing ball with a fiery corona, an unmistakeable
symbol that any intelligent creature in the universe that was able to
perceive it at all would recognize as a star. Around it, in clearly
marked orbits, ten planets. The third planet had a single satellite, the
fourth two tiny ones. The sixth eleven. The seventh planet had ten, and
was encircled by glowing rings.

But the fifth planet was broken into four parts.

Beyond the tenth planet there was nothing across a vast expanse of the
map ... but at the far side was another star symbol, this one a double
star with four planetary bodies.

They stared at the glowing map, speechless. There could be no mistaking
the meaning of the thing that lay before them, marked in