Blish,James – And all the Stars a Stage

either. We have never seen a blue-wbite super-giant star except in

pictures-and in one of those pictures, we saw it blow up. If this little

yellow star has a livable planet, we think we ought to try it. There’s-

there’s something to be said for a star thaes good for another five

thousand million years.”

Quite so, Jorn thought, reading the tone as well as the words. And though

you are far from being as excited as we would have been, at your age, about

making another planet-fall, still you’re contemptuous of our laxness; and

convinced that whatever this planet-fall may turn out to involve, youll

make a better job of it than we would have.

And you ought to have the chance. What can it

186 James Blish

matter to the rest of us now, the tiny remnant? One death is as good as

another, if death is what you are courting.

And after Ertak, it was clear that almost anything was better than dying in

bed.

‘Very good,” he said. “I agree. We will sit down,”

And then he had to grin as he watched the boy’s tense belligerence sag

sidewise into surprise.

The continents passed across the master screen, and then were replaced,

again and again, by enormous oceans. There was a lot of water here, for

sure.

There were also several inarguable cities. Jorn studied the photographs

anxiously, despite his inner resignation; but the towns were uniformly

mud-brick affairs, each structure heaped squatly into a pyramid, with the

levels connected by ramps. Beyond the ziggurats were slums, and beyond

these, enormous acres of tilled fields; it looked as though as many as five