Confused thoughts and vague remembrances plagued him. Wearily Dusty shook his head. For here, up close to the sprinkles themselves, he knew that they were not scaled. How could the scale show a binary when the size of the stars was scaled at a half light-year in diameter? If that bright one were Sirius as he supposed, it was a single blob because Sirius and its companion were quite lost in the half light-year diameter of the glowing spot that represented the system. And so, of course, was Centauri. No, one could not scale a hundred-thousand light-years down to a thousand feet and hope to retain enough detail to calculate a course.
He nodded unhappily and looked along the green-yellow line that ended at Sol and realized that at least at one place in the course there was a change of direction that was so shallow that the diameter of the line representing the course was so wide that the ship, in actuality, only traversed space from one side of the line to the other, changed course, and returned to the first side.
Dusty leaned forward again, looking along the yellow-greenish line that marked the Transgalactic course. At the far end he noted the wink ... wink ... wink of the star-beacon, not much different than it had appeared in Scyth Radnor's spacecraft. "Where," he asked, "does their course lead from Sol?"
"The prospectus, of course, is not shown as finished," said Gant. "But we can show it momentarily." He pressed a button and a dotted line of yellow-green flashed into view, extending from the end of the solid line out and out until it was lost to their view through the star-field toward the outward Spiral Cluster.
Dusty looked at the line. "I suppose it isn't to scale or anything," he said. "But I can't help hoping—Gant, look, suppose this model were truly to scale, couldn't they save themselves a beacon here?"
"Save a beacon?"
Dusty nodded and the little spreckles blinked at his eyes. Gant shook his head. "This model was built in the hope that we could play gods standing in our galaxy with a measuring stick. We failed because we are no nearer to the stature of gods than this model is to the stature of the galaxy itself. We cannot play gods, Dusty Britton."
"I'm not trying to play God," said Dusty solemnly. "I'm just thinking that if you can move a planet away from a star you want to convert into a three-day variable, you might be able to take your barytrine field and slap it around this star here," Dusty pointed to one with a forefinger, "Then you move it aside and that gives you a long run from this beacon to that beacon—missing Sol by a full inch, or—eight-and-a-third light-years."
Gant blinked. Slowly, he said, "Move the star—" and let his voice trail away into a mutter. "Move the interfering star—" he repeated again. "Then—my Lord!"