Lenora decided. “I would like to work wherever that girl is going,” she said to Malachi, or would have said to Malachi, if Malachi were still there. Which she was not.

When Lenora had first come to the library, she was fazed by the Chief Answerer’s sudden disappearances, but no longer. She ran after the mother and daughter. And as she went, she thought about the millions of stars in the Milky Way, gleaming against the void, and she wondered again about the words Knowledge Is a Light, and if they meant that knowledge was like the stars, seeming very close but actually far away, because you can’t know everything (though she wondered about Malachi). But no, that didn’t seem quite right somehow …

They came to a wide, steep stairway. On both sides there were ornate banisters, and Lenora was glad of these, because the height of the stairway looked rather uncomfortable. The freckled girl began to run up the stairs as fast as she could, leaving her distressed mother plodding behind. Lenora ran, too, thinking this energetic girl might need keeping an eye on.

The library fell away on both sides as the stairs went up and up. And up. And up some more. Lenora was beginning to wonder if the steps would ever lead anywhere, when at last they approached a majestic archway, above which HISTORY OF SCIENCE was chiseled in large, glorious letters.

The section was not particularly big, as Lenora had expected for such a grandiose topic. It was not that much bigger than Calendars, in fact. But while the section lacked in size, its books didn’t. The suffering shelves groaned and sagged under the weight of the biggest books Lenora had ever seen. A few of them were sitting on wheeled carts, which Lenora imagined must be the only way you could move such heavy volumes.

There were other things, too, like a ceiling that was mostly a skylight through which the sun shone (leaving the whole section comfortably warm). And there was the Help Desk, which was covered in tools Lenora recognized, like rulers and compasses and microscopes, and tools she didn’t recognize, like sextants and calipers and anemometers (she would look those up later). But there was little time to notice anything else, because the energetic girl was racing around the section in all directions, and patrons sitting at stone tables reading enormous books were casting annoyed glances in her direction.

Lenora went straight to the girl, hoping a book would be just the thing to calm her down. “Hello,” she said. “How may I help you?”

“Oh, a librarian!” said the girl, stopping her racing for just a moment. “I want the biggest book you have. I have so many questions!”

“So I’ve heard,” said Lenora. “Why don’t you sit still for just a moment while I find it?”