
The mysteries are basically incidental - the effect achieved only by looking at the 'history' through a tube. This is the neatest thing about the book, and I feel a bit let down that it rather sprawls towards the end, actually telling the space opera rather than just implying it. Then again, perhaps the odd sort of ghost-vision effect, of staring at something random until it starts to get a shape, wouldn't have been so strong. So I disagree that the ending was too abrupt - to the contrary: it wasn't abrupt enough. But what we were supposed to see in this juxtaposition of the two still remains, well, a mystery.