Time For The Stars

XII TAU CETI

By the time we were a few light-hours from Tan Ceil we knew that we had not drawn a blank; by stereo and doppler-stereo Harry Gates had photographed half a dozen planets. Harry was not only senior planetologist; he was boss of the research department. I suppose he had enough degrees to string like beads, but I called him "Harry" because everybody did. He was not the sort you call "Doctor"; he was eager and seemed younger than he was.

To Harry the universe was a complicated toy somebody had given him; he wanted to take it apart and see what made it go. He was delighted with it and willing to discuss it with anybody at any time. I got acquainted with him in the bottle-washing business because Harry didn't treat lab assistants like robots; he treated them like people and did not mind that he knew so much more than they did—he even seemed to think that he could learn something from them.

How lie found time to marry Barbara Kuiper I don't know, but Barbara was a torch watchstander, so it probably started as a discussion of physics and drifted over into biology and sociology; Harry was interested in everything. But he didn't find time to he around the night their first baby was born, as that was the night he photographed the planet he named Constance, after the baby. There was objection to this, because everybody wanted to name it, but the Captain decided that the ancient rule applied: finders of astronomical objects were entitled to name them.

Finding Constance was not an accident. (I mean the planet, not the baby; the baby wasn't lost.) Harry wanted a planet about fifty to fifty-one million miles from Tau, or perhaps I should say that the LRF wanted one of that distance. You see, while Tan Ceti is a close relative of the Sun, by spectral types, Tau is smaller and gives off only about three-tenths as much sunshine—so, by the same old tired inverse square law you use to plan the lights for a living room or to arrange a photoflash picture, a planet fifty million miles from Tau would catch the same amount of sunlight as a planet ninety-three million miles from Sol, which is where Earth sits. We weren't looking for just any planet, or we would have stayed home in the Solar System; we wanted a reasonable facsimile of Earth or it would not he worth colonizing.

If you go up on your roof on a dear night, the stars look so plentiful you would think that planets very much like Earth must he as common as eggs in a hen yard. Well, they are: Harry estimates that there arc between a hundred thousand and a hundred million of them in our own Milky Way-and you can multiply that figure by anything you like for the whole universe.

The hitch is that they aren't conveniently at hand. Tau Ceti was only eleven light-years from Earth; most stars in our own Galaxy average more like fifty thousand light-years from Earth. Even the Long Range Foundation did not think in those terms; unless a star was within a hundred light-years or so it was silly to think of colonizing it even with torchships. Sure, a torchship can go as far as necessary, even across the Galaxy—but who is going to he interested in receiving its real estate reports after a couple of ice ages have come and gone? The population problem would he solved one way or another long before then... maybe the way the Kilkenny cats solved theirs.

But there are only fifteen-hundred-odd stars within a hundred light-years of Earth and only about a hundred and sixty of these are of the same general spectral type as the Sun. Project Lebensraum hoped to check not more than half of these, say seventy-five at the outside—less since we had lost the Vasco da Gama.

If even one real Earth-type planet was turned up in the search, the project would pay off. But there was no certainty that it would. A Sol-type star might not have an Earth-type planet; a planet might be too close to the fire, or too far, or too small to hold an atmosphere, or too heavy for humanity's fallen arches, or just too short on the H₂0 that figures into everything we do.

Or it might be populated by some rough characters with notions about finders-keepers.

The Vasco da Gama had had the best chance to find the first Earth-type planet as the star she had been beading for, Alpha Centauri Able, is the only star in this part of the world which really is a twin of the Sun. (Able's companion, Alpha Centauri Baker, is a different sort, spectral type K.) We had the next best chance, even though Tan Ceti is less like the Sun than is Alpha Centauri-B, for the next closest G-type is about thirteen light years from Earth... which gave us a two-year edge over the Magellan and nearly four over the Nautilus.

Provided we found anything, that is. You can imagine how jubilant we were when Tau Ceti turned out to have pay dirt.

Harry was jubilant, too, but fur the wrong reasons. I had wandered into the observatory, hoping to get a sight of the sky—one of the Elsie's shortcomings was that it was almost impossible to see out—when he grabbed me and said, "Look at this, pal!"

I looked at it. It was a sheet of paper with figures on it; it could have been Mama O'Toole's crop-rotation schedule.

"What is it?"

"Can't you read? It's Bodes Law, that's what it is!"

I thought back. Let me see.., no, that was Ohm's Law—then I remembered; Bode's Law was a simple geometrical progression that described the distances of the Solar planets from the Sun. Nobody had ever been able to find a reason for it and it didn't work well in some cases, though I seemed to remember that Neptune, or maybe Pluto, had been discovered by calculations that made use of it. It looked like an accidental relationship.

"What of it?" I asked.

"'What of it?' the man says! Good grief! This is the most important thing since Newton got conked with the apple."

"Maybe so, Harry, but I m a little slow today. I thought Bode's Law was just an accident. Why couldn't it be an accident here, too?"

Accident! Look, Tom, if you roll a seven once, that's an accident. When you roll a seven eight hundred times in a row, somebody has loaded the dice."

"But this is only twice."

"It's not the same thing. Get me a big enough sheet of paper and I'll write down the number of zeros it takes to describe how unlikely this 'accident' is." He looked thoughtful. "Tommie, old friend, this is going to be the key that unlocks how planets are made. They'll bury us right alongside Galileo for this. Mmm... Tom, we can't afford to spend much time in this neighborhood; we've got to get out and take a look at the Beta Hydri system and make sure it checks the same way—just to convince the mossbacks back Earthside, for it will, it will! I gotta go tell the Captain we'll have to change the schedule." He stuffed the paper in a pocket and hurried away. I looked around but the anti- radiation shutters were over the observatory ports; I didn't get to see out.

Naturally the Captain did not change the schedule; we were out there looking for farm land, not trying to unscrew the inscrutable. A few weeks later we were in orbit around Constance. It put us into free-fall for the first time during the trip, for we had not even been so during acceleration- deceleration change-over but had done it in a skew path instead; chief engineers don't like to shut a torch down unless there is time for an overhaul before starting up again—there was the case of the Peter the Great who shut hers off, couldn't light up again; and fell into the Sun. '

I didn't like free-fall. But it's all right if you don't overload your stomach.

Harry did not seem disappointed. He had a whole new planet to play with, so he tabled Bode's Law and got busy. We stayed in orbit, a thousand miles up, while research found out everything possible about Connie without actually touching it: direct visual search, radiation survey, absorption-spectra of her atmosphere. She had two moons, one a nice size, though smaller than Luna, so they were able to measure her surface gravity exactly.

She certainly looked like a home away from home. Commander Frick had his boys and girls set up a relay tank in the mess room, with color and exaggerated stereo, so that we all could see. Connie looked like the pictures they show of Earth from space stations, green and blue and brown and half covered with clouds and wearing polar ice like skullcaps. Her air pressure was lower than ours but her oxygen ratio was higher; we could breathe it. Absorption spectra showed higher carbon dioxide but not as high as Earth had during the Coal Age.

She was smaller but had a little more land area than Earth; her oceans were smaller. Every dispatch back to Earth carried good news and I even managed to get Pat's mind off his profit-and-loss for a while... he had incorporated us as "Bartlett Brothers, Inc." and seemed to expect me to be interested in the bookkeeping simply because my accumulated LRF salary had gone into the capitalization. Shucks, I hadn't touched money for so long I had forgotten anybody used the stuff.

Naturally our first effort was to find out if anybody was already in occupation... intelligent animal life I mean, capable of using tools, building things, and organizing. If there was, we were under orders to scoot out of there without landing, find fuel somewhere else in that system, and let a later party attempt to set up friendly relations; the LRF did not want to repeat the horrible mistake that had been made with Mars.

But the electro-magnetic spectrum showed nothing at all, from gamma radiation right up to the longest radio wavelengths. If there were people down there, they didn't use radio and they didn't show city lights and they didn't have atomic power. Nor did they have aircraft, nor roads, nor traffic on the surface of their oceans, nor anything that looked like cities. So we moved down just outside the atmosphere in an "orange slice" pole-to-pole orbit that let us patrol the whole surface, a new sector each half turn.

Then we searched visually, by photography, and by radar. We didn't miss anything more conspicuous than a beaver dam, I'm sure. No cities, no houses, no roads, no bridges, no ships, nobody home; Oh, animals, surely—we could see herds gazing on the plains and we got lesser glimpses of other things. But it looked like a squatter's paradise.

The Captain sent a dispatch: "I am preparing to land."

I promptly volunteered for the reconnaissance party. First I braced my uncle Major Lucas to let me join his guard. He told me to go roll my hoop. "If you think I have any use for an untrained recruit, you're crazier than you apparently think I am. If you wanted to soldier, you should have thought of it as soon as we torched off."

"But you've got men from all the departments in your guard."

"Every one of 'em trained soldiers. Seriously, Tom, I can't afford it. I need men who will protect me; not somebody so green I'll have to protect him. Sorry."

So I tackled Harry Gates to let me join the scientific party the ship's guard would protect. He said, "Certainly, why not? Plenty of dirty work that my gang of prima donnas won't want to do. You can start by checking this inventory."

So I checked while he counted. Presently he said, "How does it feel to be a little green man in a flying saucer?"

"What?"

"An oofoe. We're an oofoe, do you realize that?"

I finally understood him-an U.F.O., an "unidentified flying object." There were accounts of the U.F.O. hysteria in all the histories of space flight. "I suppose we are an U.F.O., sort of."

"It's exactly what we are. The U.F.O.'s were survey ships, just as we are. They looked us over, didn't like what they saw, and went away. If they hadn't found Earth crawling with hostile natives, they would have landed and set up housekeeping, just as we are going to do."

"Harry, do you really believe the U.F.O.'s were anything but imagination or mistakes in reporting? I thought that theory was exploded long ago."

"Take another look at the evidence, Tom. There was something going on up in our sky shortly before we took up space jumping ourselves. Sure, most of the reports were phonies. But some weren't. You have to believe evidence when you have it in front of you, or else the universe is just too fantastic. Surely you don't think that human beings are the only ones who ever built star ships?"

"Well... maybe not. But if somebody else has, why haven't they visited us long ago?"

"Simple arithmetic, pal; it's a big universe and we're just one small corner of it. Or maybe they did. That's my own notion; they surveyed us end Earth wasn't what they wanted—maybe us, maybe the climate. So the U.F.O.'s went away." He considered it. "Maybe they landed just long enough to fuel."

That was all I got out of my tenure as a member of the scientific party; when Harry submitted my name an his list, the Captain drew a line through it. "No special communicators will leave the ship."

That settled it; the Captain had a will of iron. Van got to go, as his brother had been killed in an accident while we were at peak—so I called Pat and told him about Van and suggested that Pat drop dead. He didn't see anything funny in it.

The Elsie landed in ocean comfortably deep, then they used the auxiliaries to bring her close to the shore. She floated high out of the water, as two-thirds of her tanks were empty, burned up, the water completely disintegrated in boosting us first up to the speed of light, then backing us down again. The engineers were already overhauling her torch before we reached final anchorage. So far as I know, none of them volunteered for the landing party; I think that to most of the engineers the stop on Constance was just a chance to pick up more boost mass and take care of repairs and overhauls they had been unable to do while underway. They didn't care where they were or where they were going so long as the torch worked and all the machinery ticked. Dr. Devereaux told me that the Staff Metallurgist had been out to Pluto six times and had never set foot on any planet but Earth.

"Is that normal?" I asked, thinking how fussy Doc had been about everybody else, including me.

"For his breed of cat, it's robust mental health. Any other breed I would lock up and feed through the keyhole."

Sam Rojas was as annoyed as I was at the discrimination against us telepaths; he had counted on planting his feet on strange soil, like Balboa and Columbus and Lundy. He came around to see me about it. "Tom, are you going to stand for it?"

"Well, I don't want to—but what can we do?

"I've been talking to some of the others. It's simple. We don't."

"We don't what?"

"Mmm... we just don't. Tom, ever since we slowed down, I've detected a falling off in my telepathic ability. It seems to be affecting all of us—those I've talked to. How about yourself?"

"Why, I haven't—"

"Think hard," he interrupted. "Surely you've noticed it. Why, I doubt if I could raise my twin right now. It must have something to do with where we are... maybe there is something odd about the radiation of Tau Ceti, or something. Or maybe it comes from Connie. Who knows? And, for that matter, who can check on us?"

I began to get the pattern. I didn't answer, because it was a tempting idea.

"If we can't communicate," he went on, "we ought to be useful for something else... like the landing party, for instance. Once we are out of range of this mysterious influence probably we would be able to make our reports back to Earth all right. Or maybe it would turn out that some of the girls who didn't want to go with the landing party could manage to get in touch with Earth and carry the reports ... provided us freaks weren't discriminated against."

"It's an idea," I admitted.

"Think about it. You'll find your special talent getting weaker and weaker. Me, I'm stone deaf already." He went away.

I toyed with the idea. I knew the Captain would recognize a strike when he saw one... but what could he do? Call us all liars and hang us by our thumbs until we gave in? How could he be certain that we hadn't all gone sour as m-r's? The answer was that he could not be certain; nobody but a mind reader knows what it feels like, nobody but the mind reader himself can tell that he is doing it. When we slipped out of contact at peak he hadn't doubted us, he had just accepted it. He would have to accept it now, no matter what he thought.

For he had to have us; we were indispensable.

Dad used to he arbitration representative in his guild local; I remembered his saying once that the only strike worth calling was one in which the workers were so badly needed that the strike would be won before a walkout. That was the pinch we had the Captain in; he had to have us. No strikebreakers closer than eleven light-years. He wouldn't dare get rough with us.

Except that any one of us could break the strike. Let's see—Van was out of it and so was Cas Warner; they were no longer telepaired, their twins were dead. Pru's sister Patience was still alive, but that telepair had never been mended after peak—her sister had refused the risky drugs and hypnosis routine and they never got back into rapport. Miss Gamma did not count, because the ships her two sisters were in were still peaking, so we were cut off from sidewise relay back to Earth until one of them decelerated. Not counting Sam and myself, whom did that leave? And could they be counted on? There was Rupe, Gloria, Anna, and Dusty... and Unc of course. And Mei-Ling.

Yes, they were solid. Making us feel that we were freaks when we first came aboard had consolidated us, Even if one or two didn't feel right about it, nobody would let the others down. Not even Mei-Ling who was married to an outsider. It would work. If Sam could line them up.

I wanted to go dirtside the worst way.., and maybe this was the worst way, but I still wanted to.

Just the same, there was something sneaky about it, like a kid spending his Sunday School collection money.

Sam had until noon the next day to get it lined up, because we were down to one watch a day. A continuous communication watch was not necessary and them was more ship's work to do now that we were getting ready to explore. I tabled the matter and went down to tag the rats that would he used by the scientific survey.

But I did not have to wait until the following day; Unc called us together that evening and we crowded into his room—all but Miss Gamma and Van and Pru and Cas. Unc looked around, looking horse-faced and sad, and said he was sorry we couldn't all sit down but he wouldn't keep us long. Then he started a meandering speech about how he thought of us all as his children and he had grown to love us and we would always be his children, no matter what. Then he started talking about the dignity of being a human being.

"A man pays his bills, keeps himself clean, respects other people, and keeps his word. He gets no credit for this; he has to do this much just to stay even with himself. A ticket to heaven comes higher."

He paused and added, "Especially he keeps his promises." He looked around and added, "That's all I had to say. Oh, I might as well make one announcement while we are here. Rupe has had to shift the watch list around a little bit." He picked out Sam Rojas with his eyes. "Sam, I want you to take next watch, tomorrow noon. Will you do it?"

There wasn't a sound for about three heart heats. Then Sam said slowly, "Why, I guess so, Unc, if you want me to."

"I'd he much obliged, Sam. One way and another, I don't want to put anybody else on that watch... and I wouldn't feel like standing it myself if you couldn't do it. I guess I would just have to tell the Captain there wasn't anybody available. So I'm pleased that you'll do it."

"Uh, why, sure, Unc. Don't worry about it,"

And that was the end of the strike.

Unc didn't let us go quite yet. "I thought I'd tell you about the change in the watch list while I had you here and save Rupe from having to take it around to have you initial it. But I called you together to ask you about something else. The landing party will be leaving the ship before long. Nice as Constance looks, I understand that it will he risky... diseases that we don't know about; animals that might turn out to he deadly in ways we didn't expect, almost anything. It occurred to me that we might be able to help. We could send one of us with the landing party and keep one of us on watch in the ship—and we could arrange for their telepairs to relay by telephone. That way we'd always be in touch with the landing party, even if radios broke down or no matter what. It would be a lot of extra work and no glory.., but it would be worth it if it saved the life of one shipmate."

Sam said suddenly, "Who are you figuring on to go with the landing party, Unc?"

"Why, I don't know. It isn't expected of us and we don't rate special-hazard pay, so I wouldn't feel like ordering anybody—I doubt if the Captain would back me up. But I was hoping for enough volunteers so that we could rotate the dirtside watch." He blinked and looked unsure of himself. "But nobody is expected to volunteer. I guess you had better let me know privately. "

He didn't have to wait; we all volunteered. Even Mei- Ling did and then got mad and cried when Unc pointed out gently that she had better have her husband's consent—which she wasn't going to get; the Travers family was expecting a third.

Unc tackled the Captain the next morning. I wanted to hang around and hear the outcome but there was too much work to do. I was surprised, a half hour later, to be paged by speaker down in the lab; I washed my hands and hurried up to the Old Man's cabin.

Unc was there, looking glum, and the Captain was looking stern. I tried to call Unc on the Sugar-Pie band, to find out where things stood, but for once he ignored me. The Captain looked at me coldly and said, "Bartlett, Mr. McNeil has proposed a plan whereby the people in your department want to help out in the dirtside survey. I'll tell you right off that I have turned it down. The offer is appreciated—but I have no more intention of risking people in your special category in such duty than I would approve of modifying the ship's torch to sterilize the dinner dishes. First things first!"

He drummed on his desk. "Nevertheless, the suggestion has merit. I won't risk your whole department... but I might risk one special communicator to increase the safeguards for the landing party. Now it occurred in me that we have one sidewise pair right in this ship, without having to relay through Earth. You and Mr. McNeil. Well? What have you to say?"

I started to say, "Sure!"—then thought frantically. If I got to go after all that had happened, Sam was going to take a very dark view of it... and so was everybody. They might think I had framed it.

"Well? Speak up!"

Doggone, no matter what they thought, it wasn't a thing you could refuse. "Captain, you know perfectly well I volunteered for the landing party several days ago."

"So you did. All right, I'll take your consent for granted.

But you misunderstood me. You aren't going; that will he Mr. McNeil's job. You'll stay here and keep in touch with him."

I was so surprised that I almost missed the next thing the Captain said. I shot a remark to Unc privately: ("What's this, Unc? Don't you know that all of them will think you swindled them?")

This time he answered me, distress in his voice: "I know it, son. He took me by surprise."

("Well, what are you going to do?")

"I don't know. I'm wrong both ways."

Sugar Pie suddenly cut in with, "Hey! What are you two fussing about?"

Unc said gently: "Go away, honey. This is man talk."

"Well!" But she didn't interrupt again. Perhaps she listened.

The Captain was saying: "—in any doubly-manned position, we will never risk the younger when the older can serve.

That is standard and applies as much to Captain Urqhardt and myself as it does to any other two. The mission comes first. Bartlett, your expected usefulness is at least forty years longer than that of Mr. McNeil. Therefore he must be preferred for a risk task. Very well, gentlemen. You'll receive instructions later."

("Unc—what are you going to tell Sam? Maybe you agree—I don't!")

"Don't joggle my elbow, son." He went on aloud: "No, Captain."

The Captain stared. "Why, you old scoundrel! Are you that fond of your skin?"

Unc faced him right back. "It's the only one I have, Captain. But that doesn't have anything to do with the case. And maybe you were a little hasty in calling me names."

"Eh?" The Captain turned red. "I'm sorry, McNeil. I take that back. But I think you owe me an explanation for your attitude."

"I'm going to give it, sir. We're old men, both of us. I can get along without setting foot on this planet and so can you. But it looks different to young people. You know perfectly well that my people volunteered for the landing party not because they are angels, not scientists, not philanthropists... but because they are aching to go ashore. You know that; you told me as much, not ten minutes ago. If you are honest with yourself, you know that most of these children would never have signed up for this trip if they had suspected that they were to be locked up, never permitted to have what they call an "adventure.' They didn't sign up for money; they signed up for the far horizons. Now you rob them of their reasonable expectations."

The Captain looked grim. He clenched end unclenched a fist, then said, "There may be something in what you say. But I must make the decisions; I can't delegate that. My decision stands. You go and Bartlett stays."

I said: ("Tell him he won't get a darn' message through!")

Unc didn't answer me. "I'm afraid not, Captain. This is a volunteer job... and I'm not volunteering."

The Captain said slowly, "I'm not sure that volunteering is necessary. My authority to define a man's duty is broad. I rather think you are refusing duty."

"Not so; Captain. I didn't say I wouldn't take your orders; I just said I was not volunteering. But I'd ask for written orders, I think, and I would endorse them: 'Accepted under protest,' and ask to have a copy transmitted to the Foundation. I don't volunteer."

"But-confound it, man! You volunteered with the rest. That's what you came in here for. And I picked you."

Unc shook his head. "Not quite, Captain. We volunteered as a group. You turned us down as a group. If I gave you the impression that I was volunteering, any other way, I am sorry... but that's how it is. Now if you will excuse me, sir, I'll go back and tell my people you won't have us."

The Captain turned pink again. Then he suddenly started to roar with laughter. He jumped up and put his arm around Unc's narrow shoulders. "You old scoundrel! You are an old scoundrel, a mutinous black-hearted scoundrel. You make me long for the days of bread-and-water and the rope's end. Now sit back down and we'll work this out. Bartlett, you can go,"

I left, reluctantly, and then stayed away from the other freaks because I didn't want to answer questions. But Unc was thoughtful; he called me, mind to mind, as soon as he was out of the Captain's cabin and told me the upshot. It was a compromise. He and I and Rupe and Sam would rotate, with the first trick (considered to be the most dangerous) to be his. The girls would take the shipside watch, with Dusty classed with them because of age. But a bone was thrown to them: once medicine and research classed the planet as safe, they would be allowed sightseeing, one at a time. "I had to twist his arm on that part," Unc admitted, "but he agreed."

Then it turned out to be an anticlimax; Connie was about as dangerous as Kansas. Before any human went outside the ship other than encased in a quarantine suit we exposed rats and canaries and hamsters to natural atmosphere; they loved it. When the first party went ashore, still in quarantine suits but breathing Connie's air after it had passed through electrostatic precipitators, two more experimental animals went with them-Bernhard van Houten and Percival the Pig.

Van had been down in the dumps ever since his twin was killed; he volunteered and I think Dr. Devereaux urged the Captain to let him. Somebody had to do it; you can make all the microscopic and chemical tests you like—the day comes when a living man has to expose his. skin to a planet to find out if it is friendly. As Dr. Babcock says, eventually you must climb the tree. So Van went ashore without a quarantine suit, wearing shorts and shirt and shoes and looking like a scoutmaster.

Percival the Pig did not volunteer, but he thought it was a picnic. He was penned in natural bush and allowed to forage, eating anything from Connie's soil that he thought was fit to eat. A pig has advantages as an experimental animal; he eats anything, just as rats and men do, and I understand that his metabolism is much like ours—pigs even catch many of the same diseases. If Percival prospered, it was almost certain that we would, particularly as Percy had not been given the inoculations that we had, not even the wide-spectrum G.A.R. serum which is supposed to give some protection even against diseases mankind has never encountered before.

Percy got fat, eating anything and drinking brook water, Van got a sunburn and then tanned. Both were healthy and the pioneer party took off their quarantine suits. Then almost everybody (even Percy) came down with a three-day fever and a touch of diarrhea, but everybody recovered and nobody caught it twice.

They rotated after that and all but Uncle Steve and Harry and certain ones whom they picked swapped with someone in the ship. Half of the second party were inoculated with serum made from the blood of those who bad recovered from three-day fever; most of these did not catch it. But the ones who returned were not allowed back in the ship at once; they were quarantined on a temporary deck rigged above the top bulge of the Elsie.

I don't mean to say that the planet was just like a city park—you can get killed, even in Kansas. There was a big, lizardlike carnivore who was no bargain. One of those got Lefty Gomez the first time our people ran into one and the beast would have killed at least two more if Lefty had been the kind of man who insists on living forever. I would never have figured Lefty as a hero—he was assistant pastry cook and dry-stores keeper back in the ship—but Uncle Steve says that ultimate courage is the commonest human virtue and that seven out of ten are Medal of Honor men, given the circumstances.

Maybe so. I must be one of the other three. I don't think I would have stood my ground and kept poking away at the thing's eyes, armed only with a campfire spit.

But tyrannosaurus ceti was not dangerous enough to give the planet a down check, once we knew he was there and what he was. Any big cat would have been much more dangerous, because cats are smart and he was stupid. You had to shoot first, but an explosive bullet made him lie down and be a rug. He had no real defense against men and someday men would exterminate him.

The shore party camped within sight of the ship on the edge of beautiful Babcock Bay, where we were anchored. The two helicopters patrolled each day, always together so that one could rescue the men in the other if it went down, and never more than a few hundred miles from base. Patrols on foot never went more than ten miles from base; we weren't trying to conquer the country, but simply trying to find out if men could conquer and hold it. They could... at least around Babcock Bay... and where men can get a toe hold they usually hang on.

My turn did not come until the fourth rotation and by then they were even letting women go ashore; the worry part Was over.

The oddest thing about being outdoors was the sensation of weather; I had been in air-conditioning for two years and I had forgotten rain and wind and sunshine in your face. Aboard the Elsie the engineer on watch used to cycle the temperature and humidity and ozone content on a random schedule, which was supposed to be good for our metabolisms. But it wasn't weather; it was more like kissing your sister.

The first drop of rain I felt startled me; I didn't know what it was. Then I was running up and down and dancing like a kid and trying to catch it in my mouth. It was rain, real rain and it was wonderful!

I couldn't sleep that night. A breeze on my face and the sounds of others sleeping around me and the distant noises of live things outside our snooper fences and the lack of perfect darkness all kept me awake. A ship is alive, too, and has its noises, but they are different from those outdoors; a planet is alive in another way.

I got up quietly and tip-toed outside. In front of the men's quarters about fifty feet away I could see the guardsman on watch. He did not notice me, as he had his head bent over dials and displays from the inner and outer fences and from the screen over us. I did not want to talk, so I went around behind the hut, out of sight of even the dim light from his instruments. Then I stopped and looked up.

It was the first good view of the sky I had had since we had left Earth and the night was clear. I stood there, dazzled and a little drunk from it.

Then I started trying to pick out constellations.

It was not hard; eleven light-years is just down the street for most stars. The Dipper was overhead, looking a little more battered than it does from Earth but perfectly recognizable. Orion blazed near the horizon ahead of me but Procyon had moved over a long way and Sirius was not even in sight—skidded below the skyline, probably, for Sirius is even closer to the Earth than is Tau Ceti and our position would shift him right across the sky. I tried to do a spherical triangle backwards in my head to figure where to look for Sirius and got dizzy and gave up.

Then I tried to find Sol. I knew where he would be, in Boötes, between Arcturus and Virgo—but I had to find Bootes, before I could look for Father Sol.

Boötes was behind me, as close to the skyline as Orion was on the other side. Arcturus had shifted a little and spoiled the club shape of Bootes but there was no doubt in my mind.

There it was! A yellow-white star, the color of Capella, but dimmer, about second magnitude, which was right, both position and magnitude. Besides, it had to be the Sun, because there hadn't been any star that bright in that location when Pat and I were studying for our astrogation merit badge. It was the Sun.

I stared at it, in a thoughtful melancholy, warm rather than sad. I wondered what Pat was doing? Walking the baby, maybe. Or maybe not; I couldn't remember what the Greenwich ought to be. There he was, thirty years old and a couple of kids, the best part of his life behind him... and here I was, just old enough to be finishing my sophomore year in college if I were home.

No, I wouldn't be; I'd be Pat's age.

But I wasn't thirty.

I cheered up and decided that I had the best break after all, even if it had seemed not so good at first. I sighed and walled around a bit, not worrying, for not even one of those lizard brutes could get close to our night defenses without bringing thunder and lightning down around his ears. If he had ears. Percy's pen was not far in that rear direction; he heard me and came to his fence, so I walked up and scratched his snout. "Nice place, eh, boy?" I was thinking that when the Elsie did get home—and I no longer believed Uncle Steve's dire predictions—when I did get back, I would still be in my early twenties, just a good age to emigrate. And Connie looked like a fine place to come back to.

Percy answered with a snuffling grunt which I interpreted to mean: "You didn't bring me anything to eat? A fine way to treat a pal!" Percy and I were old friends; aboard ship I fed him, along with his brothers and the hamsters and the rats.

"Percy, you're a pig."

He did not argue but continued to snuffle into my empty hand. I was thinking that eleven light-years wasn't far; it was about right. The stars were still familiar.

Presently Percy got tired of it and so did I, so I wiped my hand on my pants and went back to bed.