“Right.” McLaurin nodded. “I see your point. Now before I’d accept your statements in re the ‘speed of light’ thing, I’d want opinions from some IP physicists.”
“Then let’s have a conference, because something’s got to be done soon. I don’t know why we haven’t heard further from that fellow.”
“Privately—we have,” McLaurin said in a slightly worried tone. “He was detected by the instruments of every IP observatory I suspect. We got the reports but didn’t know what to make of them. They indicated so many funny things, they were sent in as accidental misreadings of the instruments. But since all the observatories reported them, similar misreadings, at about the same times, that is with variations of only a few hours, we thought something must have been up. The only thing was the phenomena were reported progressively from Pluto to Neptune, clear across the solar system, in a definite progression, but at a velocity of crossing that didn’t tie in with any conceivable force. They crossed faster than the velocity of light. That ship must have spent about half an hour off each planet before passing on to the next. And, accepting your faster-than-light explanation, we can understand it.”
“Then I think you have proof.”
“If we have, what would you do about it?”
“Get to work on those ‘misreadings’ of the instruments for one thing, and for a second, and more important, line every IP ship with paraffin blocks six inches thick.”
“Paraffin—why?”
“The easiest form of hydrogen to get. You can’t use solid hydrogen, because that melts too easily. Water can be turned into steam too easily, and requires more work. Paraffin is a solid that’s largely hydrogen. That’s what they’ve always used on neutrons since they discovered them. Confine your paraffin between tungsten walls, and you’ll stop the secondary protons as well as the neutrons.”
“Hmmm—I suppose so. How about seeing those physicists?”
“I’d like to see them today, sir. The sooner you get started on this work, the better it will be for the IP.”
“Having seen me, will you join up in the IP again?” asked McLaurin.
“No, sir, I don’t think I will. I have another field you know, in which I may be more useful. Cole here’s a better technician than fighter—and a darned good fighter, too—and I think that an inexperienced space-captain is a lot less useful than a second-rate physicist at work in a laboratory. If we hope to get anywhere, or for that matter, I suspect, stay anywhere, we’ll have to do a lot of research pretty promptly.”
“What’s your explanation of that ship?”
“One of two things: an inventor of some other system trying out his latest toy, or an expedition sent out by a planetary government for exploration. I favor the latter for two reasons: that ship was big. No inventor would build a thing that size, requiring a crew of several hundred men to try out his invention. A government would build just about that if they wanted to send out an expedition. If it were an inventor, he’d be interested in meeting other people, to see what they had in the way of science, and probably he’d want to do it in a peaceable way. That fellow wasn’t interested in peace, by any means. So I think it’s a government ship, and an unfriendly government. They sent that ship out either for scientific research, for trade research and exploration, or for acquisitive exploration. If they were out for scientific research, they’d proceed as would the inventor, to establish friendly communication. If they were out for trade, the same would apply. If they were out for acquisitive exploration, they’d investigate the planets, the sun, the people, only to the extent of learning how best to overcome them. They’d want to get a sample of our people, and a sample of our weapons. They’d want samples of our machinery, our literature and our technology. That’s exactly what that ship got.
“Somebody, somewhere out there in space, either doesn’t like their home, or wants more home. They’ve been out looking for one. I’ll bet they sent out hundreds of expeditions to thousands of nearby stars, gradually going further and further, seeking a planetary system. This is probably the one and only one they found. It’s a good one too. It has planets at all temperatures, of all sizes. It is a fairly compact one, it has a stable sun that will last far longer than any race can hope to.”
“Hmm—how can there be good and bad planetary systems?” asked McLaurin. “I’d never thought of that.”
Kendall laughed. “Mighty easy. How’d you like to live on a planet of a Cepheid Variable? Pleasant situation, with the radiation flaring up and down. How’d you like to live on a planet of Antares? That blasted sun is so big, to have a comfortable planet you’d have to be at least ten billion miles out. Then if you had an interplanetary commerce, you’d have to struggle with orbits tens of billions of miles across instead of mere millions. Further, you’d have a sun so blasted big, it would take an impossible amount of energy to lift the ship up from one planet to another. If your trip was, say, twenty billions of miles to the next planet, you’d be fighting a gravity as bad as the solar gravity at Earth here all the way—no decline with a little distance like that.”
“H-m-m-m—quite true. Then I should say that Mira would take the prize. It’s a red giant, and it’s an irregular variable. The sunlight there would be as unstable as the weather in New England. It’s almost as big as Antares, and it won’t hold still. Now that would make a bad planetary system.”
“It would!” Kendall laughed. But as we know—he laughed too soon, and he shouldn’t have used the conditional. He should have said, “It does!”
III
Gresth Gkae, Commander of Expeditionary Force 93, of the Planet Sthor, was returning homeward with joyful mind. In the lock of his great ship, lay the T-247. In her cargo holds lay various items of machinery, mining supplies, foods, and records. And in her log books lay the records of many readings on the nine larger planets of a highly satisfactory planetary system.
Gresth Gkae had spent no less than three ultra-wearing years going from one sun to another in a definitely mapped out section of space. He had investigated only eleven stars in that time, eleven stars, progressively further from the titanic red-flaming sun he knew as “the” sun. He knew it as “the” sun, and had several other appellations for it. Mira was so-named by Earthmen because it was indeed a “wonder” star, in Latin, mirare means “to wonder.” Irregularly, and for no apparent reason it would change its rate of radiation. So far as those inhabitants of Sthor and her sister world Asthor knew, there was no reason. It just did it. Perhaps with malicious intent to be annoying. If so, it was exceptionally successful. Sthor and Asthor experienced, periodically, a young ice age. When Mira decided to take a rest, Sthor and Asthor froze up, from the poles most of the way to the equators. Then Mira would stretch herself a little, move about restlessly and Sthor and Asthor would become uninhabitably hot, anywhere within twenty degrees of the equator.
Those Sthorian people had evolved in a way that made the conditions endurable for savage or uncivilized people, but when a scientific civilization with a well-ordered mode of existence tried to establish itself, Mira was all sorts of a nuisance.
Gresth Gkae was a peculiar individual to human ways of thinking. He stood some seven feet tall, on his strange, double-kneed legs and his four toed feet. His body was covered with little, short feather-like things that moved now with a volition of their own. They were moving very slowly and regularly. The space-ship was heated to a comfortable temperature, and the little fans were helping to cool Gresth Gkae. Had it been cold, every little feather would have lain down close against its neighbors, forming an admirable, wind-proof and cold-proof blanket.