“I knew it was a variable star in the radio frequencies, but
what about visible light?”
“If we could mount an RF antenna big enough, we’d have
the Sun in a moment,” Hammersmith said in a preoccupied
voice. “But with light it’s more complicated. . . . Um. If thafs
the Sun, we must be even farther away from it than I thought.
Dr. Hoyle, will you take my watch, please, and take my
pulse?”
“Your pulse?” Hoyle said, startled. “Are you feeling ill?
The air is”
“I feel fine, I’ve breathed thinner air than this and lived,”
Hammersmfth said irritably. “Just take my pulse for a starter,
then take everyone else’s here and give me the average. I’d
use the whole shipload if I had the time, but I don’t. If none
of you experts knows what I’m doing I’m not going to waste
what time I’ve got explaining it to you now. Goddam it,
there are lives involved, remember?”
His lips thinned, Arpe nodded silently to Hoyle; he did not
trust himself to speak. The physician shrugged his shoulders
and began collecting pulse rates, starting with the big explorer.
After a while he had an average and passed it to Hammer-
smith on a slip of paper torn from his report book.
“Good,” Hammersmith said. “Mr. Stauffer, please feed this
into Bessie there. Allow for a permitted range of variation of
two per cent, and bleed the figure out into a hundred and six
increments and decrements each; then tell me what the per-
centage is now. Can do?”
“Simple enough.” Stauffer programmed the tape. The
computer jammered out the answer almost before the second