Ross swallowed. “If that stuff is supposed to mean anything to me,” he declared, “it doesn’t.”
Haarland frowned. “But Marconi said——— Well, never mind.” He snapped off the projector. “That was the ship’s log, Ross. It doesn’t matter if you can’t read it; you wouldn’t, I suppose, have had much call for that sort of thing working for Oldham. It is a mathematical description of the routing of this ship, from the time it was space-
launched until it arrived here yesterday. It took a long time, Ross. The reason that it took a long tune is partly that it came from far away. But, even more, there is another reason. We were not this ship’s destination! Not the original destination. We weren’t even the first alternate—or the second alternate. To be exact, Ross, we were the seventh choice for this ship.”
Ross let go of his stanchion, floated a yard, and flailed back to it. “That’s ridiculous, Mr. Haarland,” he protested. “Besides, what has all this to do with——”
“Bear with an old man,” said Haarland, with an amused gleam in his eye.
There was very little he could do but bear with him, Ross thought sourly. “Go on,” he said.
Haarland said professorially, “It is conceivable, of course, that a planet might be asleep at the switch. We could believe it, I suppose, if it seemed that the first-choice planet somehow didn’t pick the ship up when this longliner came into radar range. In that event, of course, it would orbit once or twice on automatics, and then select for its first alternate target—which it did. It might be a human failure in the GCA station—once.” He nodded earnestly. “Once, Ross. Not six times. No planet passes up a trading ship.”
“Mr. Haarland,” Ross exploded, “it seems to me that you’re contradicting yourself all over the place. Did six planets pass this ship up or didn’t six planets pass this ship up? Which is it? And why would anybody pass a longliner up anyhow?”
Haarland asked, “Suppose the planets were vacant?”
“What?” Ross was shaken. “But that’s silly! I mean, even I know that the star charts show which planets are inhabited and which aren’t.”
“And suppose the star charts are wrong. Suppose the planets have become vacant. The people have died off, perhaps; their culture decayed.”
Decay. Death and decay.
Ross was silent for a long time. He took a deep breath. He said at last, “Sorry. I won’t interrupt again.”
Haarland’s expression was a weft of triumph and relief.
“Six planets passed this ship up. Remember Leverett’s ship fifteen years ago? Three planets passed that one before it came to us. Nine different planets, all listed on the traditional star charts as inhabited, civilized, equipped with GCA radars, and everything else needed. Nine planets out of communication, Ross.”
Decay, thought Ross. Aloud he said, “Tell me why.”
Haarland shook his head. “No,” he said strongly, “I want you to tell me. I’ll tell you what I can. I’ll tell you the message that this ship brought to me. I’ll tell you all I know, all I’ve told Marconi that he isn’t man enough to use, and the things that Marconi will never learn, as well. But why nine planets that used to be pretty much like our own planet are now out of communication, that you’ll have to tell me.”
Forward rockets boomed; the braking blasts hurled Ross against the forward bulkhead. Haarland rummaged under the cot for space suits. He flung one at Ross.
“Put it on,” he ordered. “Come to the airlock. I’ll show you what you can use to find out the answers.” He slid into the pressure suit, dived weightless down the corridor, Ross zooming after.
They stood in the airlock, helmets sealed. Wordlessly Haarland opened the pet cocks, heaved on the lock door. He gestured with an arm.
Floating alongside them was a ship, a ship like none Ross had ever seen before.
4
PICTURE Leif s longboat bobbing in the swells outside Ambrose Light, while the twentieth-century liners steam past; a tiny, ancient thing, related to the new giants only as the Eohippus resembles the horse.
The ship that Haarland revealed was fully as great a contrast. Ross knew spaceships as well as any grounder could, both the lumbering interplanet freighters and the titanic longliners. But the ship that swung around Halsey’s Planet was a midget (fueled rocket ships must be huge); its jets were absurdly tiny, clearly incapable of blasting away from planetary gravity; its entire hull length was unbroken and sheer (did the pilot dare fly blind?).