products of the ancient Stroid culture from the destruction that came upon the world. But the records did not even hint as to the nature of that destruction and they said nothing about the objects in the room.

The scientists were a bit disappointed by the little revealed to them so far, but, as expected, there were instructions to enter the next lower level. There, an entirely different situation confronted them.

The chamber into which they came after winding down a long, spiral stairway, narrow, yet with the same high steps as before, was spherical in shape and seemed to be concentric with the outer shell of the repository. It contained a single object.

The object was a cube in the center of the chamber, about two feet on a side. From the corners of the cube, long supports of complicated spring structure led to the inner surface of the spherical chamber. It appeared to be a highly effective shock mounting for whatever was contained within the cube.

The sight before the men was impressive in simplicity, yet was anticlimactic, for there was nothing here of the great wonders that they had expected. There was only the suspended cube—and a book.

Quickly, Phyfe advanced along the narrow catwalk that led from the opening to the cube. The book lay on a shelf fastened to the side of the cube. Phyfe opened it to the first sheet and read haltingly and laboriously:

"Greetings, Unknown Friends, Greetings to you from the Great One. By the token that you are now reading this, you have proven yourselves mentally capable of understanding the new world of knowledge and discovery that may be yours.

"I am Demarzule, the Great One the greatest of great Sirenia—and the last. And within the storehouse of my mind is the vast knowledge that made Sirenia the greatest world in all the Universe.

"Great as it was, however, destruction came to the world of Sirenia. But her knowledge and her wonders shall never pass. In ages after, new worlds will rise and beings will inhabit them, and they will come to a minimum plane of knowledge that will assure their appreciation of the wonders that may be theirs from the world of Sirenia.

"You have minimum technical knowledge, else you could not have created the radiation necessary to render the storehouse penetrable. You have a minimum semantic knowledge, else you could not have understood my words that have brought 

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