For a week after that the work piled up on Limpkin's desk as the miniature Victory flew on a thousand imaginary voyages to a million different worlds. And at the end of each trip, when the great starship had been moored in a turquoise bay, a party was sent ashore only to find that the new world was the one they had left so many years ago, but changed into something fine and beautiful.
On the eighth day a messenger was sent from the Office of Reconstruction to notify Toriman that an appointment had been made for him and Limpkin with the King and Council.
But the messenger returned saying that the General had contracted a slight virus and his physician had insisted he stay in bed. In his place the General had sent twenty-eight carriages with the contents of his library on the ship in them. He also sent the keys to the Black Libraries at Dartmoor and Iriam; they had not been opened for a thousand years, for their contents had been adjudged by successive Churches to be too heretical and dangerous to be absorbed by the human mind.
Despite Toriman's absence, the audience with George XXVIII and his Council was successful, although Limpkin felt that he had not conveyed the grand scope of the design as well as he might have. In place of the General's commanding language he had used graphs and maps and charts. And when he left he noticed that several Councilors, as they waited for their carriages, glanced up at the night sky and quietly moved their lips.