st. "How to
make buttonholes and press clothes?"

The man who looked like a banker had his chin up and a pleased
expression on his pudgy face.

"I always knew I'd be appreciated some day," he stated smugly. "I can
tell them things about finance that those idiots in the main office
can't even guess at."

Mr. Calhoun stood up beside Dr. Harding on the rostrum. He seemed
infinitely benign as he raised his hands and his deep voice.

"Friends, we need _your_ help, _your_ knowledge. I _know_ you don't want
the human race to vanish without a _trace_, as though it had never
existed. I'm _sure_ it thrills you to realize that some researcher,
_far_ in the _future_, will one day use the very knowledge that _you_
gave. Think what it means to leave _your_ personal imprint indelibly on
cosmic history!" He paused and leaned forward. "Will you help us?"

The faces glowed, the hands went up, the voices cried that they would.

Dazzled by the success of the sell, Clocker watched the people happily
and flatteredly follow their frock-coated guides toward the various
buildings, which appeared to have been laid out according to very broad
categories of human occupation.

He found himself impelled along with the chattering, excited woman in
the housecoat toward a cerise structure marked SPORTS AND RACKETS. It
seemed that she had been angry at not having been interviewed for a
recent epic survey, and this was her chance to decant the experiences of
twenty years.

Clocker stopped listening to her gabble and looked for the building that
Zelda would probably be in. He saw ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT, but when he
tried to go there, he felt some compulsion keep him heading toward his
own destination.

Looking back helplessly, he went inside.

* * * * *

He found that he was in a cubicle with a fatherly kind of man who had
thin gray hair, kindly eyes and a firm jaw, and who introduced himself
as Eric Barnes. He took Clocker's name, age, specific trade, and gave
him a serial number which, he explained, would go on file at the central
archives on his home planet, cross-indexed in multiple ways for instant
reference.

"Now," said Barnes, "here is our problem, Mr. Locke. We are making two
kinds of perpetual records. One is written; more precisely,
microscribed. The other is a wonderfully exact duplicate of your
cerebral pattern--in more durable material than brain matter, of
course."

"Of course," Clocker said,