Leaping to the next tier, he raced through the stacks marking the works of Nathan and Newton, O'Neill ... Ovid.... Then on to Parker, Pater, Pepys, Plato, Poe.... Racine, Rousseau.... Sandburg ... Santayana....
What an astounding haul this would be! The masterpieces of the ages, to be whisked across space, from star system to star system, until at last they reached his homeland, where they would grow and multiply a million-fold, generation into generation, down through the millenniums of universal time.
Back to the A-sections! Adams, Aeschylus, Anderson, Aristotle....
On to the B-sections! Bacon ... Balzac ... Benet ... Bronte ... Byron....
It was like drinking a heady burgundy. Each new title whetted his taste for more.
Inevitably, the very magnitude of the thing began to have its sobering effect. Was it actually possible to get so much material out of the vaults? Off the Earth?
The leader caught up with him in the K-sections and motioned him not to mark off any more books. They'd have a hard time getting those Walther had already chalked.
Walther rode up with the next elevator load. On the way down, he indicated to the servo-robot that he wanted to go all the way to the bottom level. There he stepped out of the elevator and stood in the darkness for a moment to steady himself from the excitement of marking so many books.
Then he swept his flashlight beam slowly around the vault.
It was like turning on a light in a tomb that had been sealed for centuries. Certainly this tomb had been sealed, to all except the Digesters and the servo-robot attendants.