The records, written or printed on great sheets of a curiously
tenacious cellulose fabric were bound into books that opened from
the top, and were kept in individual cases of a strange, extremely
light, rustless metal of greyish hue, decorated with mathematical
designs and bearing the title in the Great Race's curvilinear
hieroglyphs.
These cases were stored in tiers of rectangular vaults-like
closed, locked shelves - wrought of the same rustless metal and
fastened by knobs with intricate turnings. My own history was
assigned a specific place in the vaults of the lowest or vertebrate
level - the section devoted to the culture of mankind and of the
furry and reptilian races immediately preceding it in terrestrial
dominance.
But none of the dreams ever gave me a full picture of
