Blish,James – And all the Stars a Stage

WARNING. STAND BY. STAND BY. YELLOW WARNING ONE FOR PLANET-FALL. STAND BY.”

8

For a ship’s computer to pick out a possibly likely system and sound a

preliminary warning of this kind was not unique; it had happened twice

before in the fleet as a whole-though never to the Javelin-but both these

incidents had proven to be false alarms. All the same, since the event was

novel to the Javelin herself, it created an almost undiluted ecstasy of

excitement.

Since Ertak bad issued his Yellow Warning One to all hands, the excitement

was not confined to the crew. Even before human observers were able to

examine in detail what the computer thought it had found, everyone on board

the Javelin was looking at his neighbor, thinking, Maybe, maybe we have reached

our unknown goal; maybe this is It.

After his first look at the tapes and at the star itself, however, Kamblin

was puzzled.

“It’s certainly an intensely luminous star,” he said, “as most stars

go-especially only three light years away from it. Its absolute luminosity

appears to be about sixty, and its surface temperature is upwards of

104

And all the Stars a Stage 105

15,000 degrees. That’s by no means as big a sun as the model the computers

are set to scan for.”

“I don’t see how they could have made a mistake,” Jom said, frowning. “They

shouldn’t have been fooled by so simple a thing as the comparative nearness

of the object.”

“Well, no,” Kamblin agreed. “They’re also supposed to search for planets,

and the tape says this star has at least one. We have to bear in mind that