We are headed now for a little G-type star so dim from Earth that it doesn’t rate a name, nor even a Greek-letter constellation designation, but just a catalog number. From Earth it lies in Phoenix, between Hydrus the Sea Serpent and Cetus the Whale. (“Hydrus,” not “Hydra”-Hydra is six R.A. hours over and farther north.) Unc called it a “Whistle Stop” so that is what we dubbed it, because you can’t reel off a Palomar Catalog number each time you speak of where you are going. No doubt it will get an impressive name if it turns out to have a planet half as good as Connie. Incidentally, Connie will he colonized in spite of the epidemic we may have picked up there; the first shiploads are on their way. Whatever the bug was that bit us (and it very possibly may have come from Earth), it is no worse than half a dozen other diseases men have had and have fought back at and licked. At least, that is the official view and the pioneer ships are going on the assumption that they will probably catch it and have to conquer it.
Personally, I figure that one way of dying is as dangerous as another; when you’re dead, you’re dead-even if you die from “nothing serious.” And the Plague, bad as it was, didn’t kill me.
“Whistle Stop” wasn’t worth a stop. We’re on our way to Beta Ceti, sixty-three light-years from Earth.
I wish Dusty were still hooked up to transmit pictures; I would like one of my great-grandniece Vicky. I know what she looks like-carroty red hair, freckles across her nose, green eyes, a big mouth and braces on her teeth. At present she is sporting a black eye as well, picked up at school when somebody called her a freak and she resented it-I would love to have seen that fight! Oh, I know what she looks like but I’d like a picture anyhow.
It is funny how our family has run to girls. No, when I add it up, counting all descendants of my sisters as well as my brother, it comes out about even. But Maude and Pat had two girls and no boys, and I went away and did not get married, so the Bartlett name has died out,
I certainly would like to have a picture of Vicky. I know she is homely, but I’ll bet she is cute, too-the kind of tomboy who always has scabs on her knees because she won’t play the ladylike games. She generally hangs around for a while after we are through transmitting and we talk. Probably she is just being polite, for she obviously thinks of me as being as old as her great-grandfather Bartlett even though her mother has told her that I am not. I suppose it depends on where you sit. I ought to be in my last year in college now, but she knows that I am Pat’s twin.
If she wants to put a long white beard on me, that is all right with me, for the sake of her company. She was in a hurry this morning but nice about it. “Will you excuse me, please, Uncle Tom? I’ve got to go study for a quiz in algebra.”
(“Realio trulio?”) I said.
“Realio trulio, cross my heart. I’d like to stay.”
(“Run along, Freckle Face. Say hello to the folks.”)
“ Bye! I’ll call you a little early tomorrow.”
She really is a nice child.
XIV ELYSIA
Beta Ceti is a big star in the main spectral sequence, almost big enough to be classed as a giant-a small giant, thirty-seven times as bright as the Sun. It looks so bright from Earth that it has a name of its own, Deneb Kaitos, but we never call it that because “Deneb” brings to mind the other Deneb, Alpha Cygni, which is a real giant in a different part of the sky almost sixteen hundred light-years away.
Since Beta Ceti is so much brighter than the Sun, the planet we had been looking for, if it existed at all, had to be nearly six hundred million miles out, farther than Jupiter is from Sol.