nd haven't started yet. I haven't
found our solar system, the green one, or their own. It's too heavy to
move around now, because of the acceleration we're using--come on over
here and give it a look."

The "chart" was a strip of some parchment-like material, or film,
apparently miles in length, wound upon reels at each end of the machine.
One section of the film was always under the viewing mechanism--an
optical system projecting an undistorted image into a visiplate plate
somewhat similar to their own--and at the touch of a lever, a small
atomic motor turned the reels and moved the film through the projector.

It was not an ordinary star-chart: it was three-dimensional,
ultra-stereoscopic. The eye did not perceive a flat surface, but beheld
an actual, extremely narrow wedge of space as seen from the center of
the galaxy. Each of the closer stars was seen in its true position in
space and in its true perspective, and each was clearly identified by
number. In the background were faint stars and nebulous masses of light,
too distant to be resolved into separate stars--a true representation of
the actual sky. As both men stared, fascinated, into the visiplate,
Seaton touched the lever and they apparently traveled directly along the
center line of that ever-widening wedge. As they proceeded, the nearer
stars grew brighter and larger, soon becoming suns, with their planets
and then the satellites of the planets plainly visible, and finally
passing out of the picture behind the observers. The fainter stars
became bright, grew into suns and solar systems, and were passed in
turn. The chart unrolled, and the nebulous masses of light were
approached, became composed of faint stars, which developed as had the
others, and were passed.

Finally, when the picture filled the entire visiplate, they arrived at
the outermost edge of the galaxy. No more stars were visible: they saw
empty space stretching for inconceivably vast distances before them. But
beyond that indescribable and incomprehensible vacuum they saw faint
lenticular bodies of light, which were also named, and which each man
knew to be other galaxies, charted and named by the almost unlimited
power of the Fenachrone astronomers, but not as yet explored. As the
magic scroll unrolled still farther, they found themselves back in the
center of the galaxy, starting outward in the wedge adjacent to the one
which they had just traversed. Seaton cut off the motor and wiped his