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the parsecs until the matrix on the Cross reacted. And yet in one sense no time at all had passed; and no self-respecting mathematician would have called the “beam” by such a name. It was, however, a signal, the only signal which relativity physics allowed to go faster than light—and, after all, it did not really go, it simply was.

Despite the pill inside him, Ryerson felt as if the bottom had dropped out of the world. He grabbed for a handhold. The after-image of the transmitter chamber yielded to the coils and banks of the receiver room on a spaceship. He hung weight­less, a thousand billion billion kilometers from Earth.

VI.

1~!~ ORWARD of the ‘casting chambers, “above” them during .L’ acceleration, were fuel deck, gyros, and air renewal plant. Then you passed through the observation deck, where instruments and laboratory equipment crowded together. A flimsy wall around the shaftway marked off the living quar­ters: folding bunks, galley, bath, table, benches, shelves, and lockers, all crammed into a six-meter circle.

Seiichi Nakamura wrapped one leg casually around a stan­chion, to keep himself from drifting in air currents, and made a ceremony out of leafing through the log-book in his hands. It gave the others a chance to calm down, and the yellow-haired boy, David Ryerson, seemed to need it. The astrophysicist, Maclaren, achieved the unusual feat of lounging in free fall; he puffed an expensive Earth-side cigarette and wrinkled his pa­trician nose at the pervading smell of an old ship, two hundred years of cooking and sweat and machine oil. The big, ugly young engineer, Sverdlov, merely looked sullen. Nakamura had never met any of them before.

“Well, gentlemen,” he said at last. “Pardon me, I had to check the data recorded by the last pilot. Now I know approxi­mately where we are at.” He laughed with polite self-depreca­tion. “Of course you are all familiar with the articles. The pilot is captain. His duty is to guide the ship where the chief scien­tist—Dr. Maclaren-san in this case—wishes, within the limits of safety as determined by his own judgment. In case of my death or disability, command devolves upon the engineer, ah, Sverdlov-san, and you are to return home as soon as practica­

ble. Yes-s-s. But I am sure we will all have a most pleasant and instructive expedition together.”

He felt the banality of his words. It was the law, and a wise one, that authority be defined at once if there were non-Guild personnel aboard. Some pilots contented themselves with reading the regulations aloud, but it had always seemed an unnecessarily cold procedure to Nakamura. Only . . . he saw a sick bewilderment in Ryerson’s eyes, supercilious humor in Maclaren’s, angry impatience in Sverdlov’s . . . his attempt at friendliness had gone flat.

“We do not operate so formally,” he went on in a lame fash­ion. “We shall post a schedule of housekeeping duties and help each other, yes? Well. That is for later. Now as to the star, we have some approximate data and estimates taken by previous watches. It appears to have about four times the mass of Sol; its radius is hardly more than twice Earth’s, possibly less; it emits detectably only in the lower radio frequencies, and even that is feeble. I have here a quick reading of the spectrum which may interest you, Dr. Maclaren.”

T

HE big dark man reached out for it. His brows went up. “Now this,” he said, “is the weirdest collection of wave lengths I ever saw.” He flickered experienced eyes along the column of numbers. “Seems to be a lot of triplets, but the lines appear so broad, judging from the probable errors given, that I can’t be sure without more careful . . . hm-m-m.” Glancing back at Nakamura: “Just where are we with relation to the star?”

“Approximately two million kilometers from the center of its mass. We are being drawn toward it, of course, since an orbit has not yet been established, but have enough radial velocity of our own to—”

“Never mind.” The sophistication dropped from Maclaren like a tunic. He said with a boy’s eagerness, “I would like to get as near the star as possible. How close do you think you can put us?”