Blish,James – And all the Stars a Stage

“Quite so; thus we rule out starting inside a planetary orbit without being

aware of it. Proceed, Mr. Birn.”

By the time the javelin was within a light year of the blue-wbite sun, the

fever had percolated thoroughly through the crew and the stand-bys, and

thence down to the passengers. Jorn, however, was beginning to feel

familiar harbingers of letdown, which he suspected were shared by several

other officers. It had now become visible that the star did indeed have

planets-the computer estimated a total of ten. This was promising enough,

and yet at the same time vaguely disappointing. After all, the system they

had quitted had 116. All but two of those, or three counting the home

planet, bad been utterly hopeless from the view of human usefulness. To

find so much smaller a number of planets here seemed to cut the odds for

finding even one hospitable world below the point of credibility.

“Let’s not prejudge the case on so little evidence,” Ertak said abruptly to

no one in particular. “We win see what the actual situation is very

shortly. Ailiss, any detectable redundancy anywhere in the electromagnetic

spectrum?”

“No, Director, just solar noise so far.”

“Well, keep scanning; thaes not significant at this distance. To all hands:

We are now preparing to enter this system. Yellow Warning Two is now in

effect.”

There was the beginning of a muted stir throughout

And all the Stars a Stage 107

the Javeline, as battle gear and drop ships began to be readied. jom, going

for his own gear, wondered how Ertak had been so quick to detect the first