“Indeed,” said Malachi. “And there is no one there to answer their questions. The Help Desk is swamped. This will be a challenging assignment. Do you think you can manage it?”

“Yes,” replied Lenora instantly, though in her heart she was not quite sure.

“Excellent,” said Malachi. “Follow me.” They left Calendars and went into the hallway. They soon came to a platform from which stairs wound off in all directions, up and down. They hurried down some steps, up some steps (Lenora had completely lost her way at this point—she thought the maze of stairways could use a few signs), and tiptoed through a vast reading room in which hundreds of people were studiously bent over books in perfect silence. Lenora looked at all the people reading and learning, and thought about the words Knowledge Is a Light and what they might mean. She remembered Starpoint Seventeen’s giant glowing calendar in the sky and wondered if the phrase meant that knowledge is like the sun in the sky, shining down on everything. But no, that didn’t seem quite right somehow …

She continued to ponder this as they left the reading room and found themselves in another large hallway lined with bookshelves. They passed two rooms that appeared to be completely empty. Above the first was a sign: SHRINKING ROOM. Librarians were going into it but none were coming out. The other was the UNSHRINKING ROOM, and it was just the opposite.

“What are those for?” asked Lenora.

“Some of our patrons are very small,” replied Malachi. She came to a halt at the end of the hallway, where it formed a T with another hallway, equally large, along which an enormous stream of library patrons was hurrying. “You can find your way from here. Simply follow the crowd.” With that, she whirled away and was gone.

Cartography was not difficult to find. Everyone was flowing in the same direction, talking excitedly about the new globe. Children were pulling their parents along by the hand. Soon they were rushing down a set of wide, sweeping steps and then across a bridge that arched over a brook of babbling water.

Lenora paused (briefly, because she knew Cartography needed her) for a look. At the other end of the bridge, where the hallway resumed, was a set of steps going down to a dock with several empty canoes. The brook had the most inviting grassy banks (Lenora assumed they somehow got enough sun from the skylights above), and it curved under the bridge before going around a bend. Down the brook, patrons were paddling canoes. A sign on the dock said HYDROLOGY, with an arrow pointing downstream. Lenora was tempted to grab a paddle and voyage off. But she had a job to do. The scientific study of the movement of water on Earth and other planets would have to wait for another time.

She reached Cartography and gasped.