bvious, but where did she come from?" "She was not born of starlight and foam!" chuckled Chara, and her laughter had a surprisingly high, resonant note to it, "merely from the raft of an albumin factory. We were moored on the fringe of the Sargasso Sea where we were cultivating Chlorella u and where I was working as a biologist." "Be that as it may," said Cart Sann, "but from that moment for me you were a daughter of the Mediterranean, born of foam. You were fated to be the model for my future picture. I had been waiting a whole year." "May we come and look at it?" asked Veda Kong. "Please do, but not during working hours. You had better come in the evening. I work very slowly and cannot tolerate anybody's presence when I am painting." "Do you use colours?" "Our work has changed very little during the thousands of years that people have painted pictures. The laws of optics and the human eye have remained the same. We have become more receptive to certain tones, new chromokatoptric colours" with internal reflexions contained in the paint layer have been invented, there are a few new methods of harmonizing colours, that's all; on the whole the artist of antiquity worked in very much the same way as I do today. In some respects he did better. He had confidence and patience-we've become more dashing and less confident of ourselves. At times strict nalvete is better for art. But I'm digressing again! It's time for us to go. Come along, Chara!" They all stood still and watched the artist and his model as they walked away. "Now I know who he is," murmured Veda, "I've seen the Daughter of Gondwana." "So have I," said Evda Nahl and Mven Mass together. "Gondwana, is that from the land of the Goods in India?" asked Darr Veter. "No, it is the collective name for the southern continents. In general it is the land of the ancient black race." "And what is this Daughter of the Black People like?" "It is a simple picture. There is a plateau, the fire of blinding sunlight, the fringe of a formidable tropical forest and in the foreground, a black-skinned girl, walking alone. One half of her face and her firm, tangibly hard, cast-metal body is drenched with blazing sunlight, the other half of her is in deep, transparent half-shadow. A necklace of white animal's teeth hangs from her neck, her short hair is gathered at the crown of her head and covered with a wreath of fiery red blossoms. Her right arm is raised over her head to push aside the last branches of a tree that bar her way, with her left hand she is pushing a thorny stalk away from her knee. In the halted movement, in the free breathing, and in the strong sweep of the arm there is carefree youth, young life merging with nature into a single whole that is as change able as a river in flood.... This oneness is to be understood as knowledge, the intuitive understanding of the world. In her dark eyes, gazing over a sea of bluish grass towards the faintly visible outlines of mountains, there is a clearly felt uneasiness, the expectation of great trials in the new, freshly discovered world!" Evda Nahl stopped. "It isn't exactly expectation, it is tormenting certainty. She feels the hard lot of the black people and tries to comprehend it," added Veda Kong. "But how did Cart Sann manage to convey the idea? Perhaps it is in the raising of the thin eyebrows, the neck inclined slightly forward, the open, defenceless back of her head.... And those amazing eyes, filled with the dark wisdom of ancient nature.... The strangest thing of all is that you feel, at the same time, carefree, dancing strength and alarming knowledge." "It's a pity I haven't seen it," said Darr Veter. "I must go to the Palace of History and take a look at it. I can imagine the colours but I can't imagine the girl's pose." "The pose?" Evda Nahl stopped, threw the towel from her shoulders, raised her right arm high over her head, leaned slightly backward and turned half facing Darr Veter. Her long leg was slightly raised as though making a short step and not completing it, her toes just touching the ground. Her supple body seemed to blossom forth. They all stood still in frank admiration. "Evda, I could never have imagined you like that!" exclaimed Darr Veter, "you're dangerous. You're like the half exposed blade of a dagger!" "Veter, those clumsy compliments again," laughed Veda, "why half and not fully exposed?" "He's quite right," smiled Evda Nahl, relaxing to her normal self, "not fully. Our new acquaintance, Chara Nandi, is a fully drawn and gleaming blade, to use the epic language of Darr Veter." "I can't believe that anybody can compare with you!" came a hoarse voice from amongst the boulders. Only then did Evda Nahl notice the red hair cut ere brosee and the blue eyes that were gazing at her adoringly with a look such as she had never before seen on anybody's face. "I am Renn Bose!" said the red-headed man, bashfully, as his short, narrow-shouldered figure appeared from behind a boulder. "We were looking for you," said Veda, taking the physicist by the hand, "this is Darr Veter." Renn Bose blushed and the freckles on his face and neck stood out even more prominently than before. "I stayed up there for some time," said Renn Bose, pointing to a rocky slope. "There is an ancient tomb there." "It is the grave of a famous poet who lived a very long time ago," announced Veda. "There's an inscription on the tomb, here it is." The physicist unrolled a thin metal sheet with four rows of blue symbols on it. "Those are European letters, symbols that were in use before the world linear alphabet was introduced. They had clumsy shapes that were inherited from the still older pictograms. But I know that language." "Then read it, Veda!" "Be quiet for a few minutes!" she demanded and they all obediently sat down on the rocks. Very soon Veda stood before the seated people and read her improvised translation: Thoughts and events and our dreams are all fleeting, Vanquished by time like a ship lost at sea... Leaving this world on my journey of journeys, Earth's dearest obsession I'm talting with me... "That's exquisite!" Evda Nahl rose to her knees. "A modern poet couldn't have said anything better about the power of time. I should like to know which of Earth's obsessions he thought the best and took with him in his last thoughts." "He no doubt thought of a beautiful woman," said Renn Bose, impetuously gazing at Evda Nahl. Or did she imagine it? A boat of transparent plastic containing two people appeared in the distance. "Here comes Miyiko with Sherliss, one of our mechanics, he goes everywhere with her. Oh, no," Veda corrected herself, "it's Frith Don himself, the Director of the Maritime Expedition. Good-bye, Veter, you three will want to stay together so I'll take Evda with me!" The two women ran down to the gentle waves and swam together to the island. The boat turned towards them but Veda waved to them to go on. Renn Bose, standing motionless, watched the swimmers. "Wake up, Renn, let's get down to business!" Mven Mass called to him. The physicist smiled in shy confusion. A stretch of firm sand between two ridges of rock was turned into a scientific auditorium. Renn Bose, using fragments of seashells, drew and wrote in the sand, in his excitement he fell flat, his body rubbing out what he had written and drawn so that he had to draw it all again. Mven Mass expressed his agreement or encouraged the physicist with abrupt exclamations. Darr Veter, resting his elbows on his knees, wiped away the perspiration that broke out on his forehead from the effort he was making to understand. At last the red-headed physicist stopped talking, and sat back on the sand breathing heavily. "Yes, Renn Bose," said Darr Veter after a lengthy pause, "you have made a discovery of outstanding importance." "I did not do it alone. The ancient mathematician Geiaenberg propounded the principle of indefiniteness, the impossibility of accurately defining the position of tiny particles. The impossible has become possible now that we understand mutual transitions, that is, we know the repagular calculus." At about the same time scientists discovered the circular meson cloud in the atomic nucleus, that is, they came very near to an understanding of anti-gravitation." "We'll accept that as true. I'm not a specialist in bipolar mathematics," particularly the repagular calculus which studies the obstacles to transition. But I realize that your work with the shadow functions is new in principle, although we ordinary people cannot properly understand it unless we have mathematical clairvoyance. I can, however, conceive of the tremendous significance of the discovery. There is one thing ..." Darr Veter hesitated. "What, what is there?" asked Mven Mass, anxiously. "How can we do it experimentally? I don't think we can create a sufficiently powerful electromagnetic field...." "To balance the gravitational field and obtain a state of transition?" inquired Renn Bose. "Exactly. Beyond the limits of the system, space will remain outside our influence." "That's true, but, as always in dialectics, we must look for a solution in the opposite. Suppose we obtain an anti-gravitational shadow vectorally and not discretely." "Ah! But how?" Swiftly, Renn Bose drew three straight lines and a narrow sector with an arc of greater radius intersecting them. "This was known before bipolar mathematics. Two thousand and five hundred years ago it was called the Problem of the Fourth Dimension. In those times there was a widespread conception of multidimensional space; the shadow properties of gravitation, however, were unknown and people attempted to find an analogy with electromagnetic fields which led them to believe that points of singularity meant that matter had disappeared or had been changed into something that could be named but could not be explained. How could they have had any conception of space with their limited knowledge of the nature of phenomena? But our ancestors could guess- you sec, they realized that if the distance from, say, star A to the centre of Earth along line OA is twenty quintillion kilometres, then the distance to the same star by vector OB will equal zero ... in practice, not zero but approaching it. They said that zero time would be achieved if the velocity of motion were equal to the velocity of light. Remember that the cochlear calculus2" has been only recently discovered!" "Spiral motion was known thousands of years ago," Mven Mass remarked cautiously, interrupting the scientist. Kenn Bose dismissed the remark disdainfully. "They knew the motion but not the laws! It's like this, if the gravitational field and the electromagnetic field are two sides of one and the same property of matter and if space is a function of gravitation, then the function of the electromagnetic field is antispace. The transition from one to the other yields the vector shadow function, zero space, which is known in everyday language as the speed of light. I believe it to be possible to achieve zero space in any direction. Mven Mass wants to visit the planet of Epsilon Tucanae-it's all the same to me as long as I can set up the experiment! As long as I can set up the experiment!" repeated the physicist, lowering his short white eyelashes wearily. "You will need not only the outer stations and Earth's energy, as Mven Mass pointed out, but some sort of an installation as well. Such an installation cannot be simple or easily erected." "In that respect we're lucky. We can use Corr Yule's installation near the Tibetan Observatory. Experiments for the investigation of space were carried out there a hundred and seventy years ago. There will have to be some adjustments and, as far as volunteers to help me are concerned, I can get five, ten, twenty thousand any time I like. I have only to call for them and they will take leave of absence and come." "You seem to have thought of everything. There is only one other consideration, but it is the most important- the danger of the experiment. There may be the most unexpected results; in conformity with the law of big numbers we cannot make a preliminary attempt on a small scale. We must take the extraterrestrial scale from the start." "What scientist would be afraid of risk?" asked Renn Bose, shrugging his shoulders. "I wasn't thinking of personal risk! I know that there will be thousands of volunteers as soon as they are required for some dangerous and novel enterprise. The experiment will also involve the outer stations, the observatories, the whole system of installations that has cost mankind a tremendous amount of labour. These are installations that have opened a window into the Cosmos, that have put mankind in contact with the life, knowledge and creative activity of other populated worlds. This window is mankind's greatest achievement: do you think that you, or I, or any other individual or group of individuals has the right to take the risk of closing it, even for a short time? I would like to know whether you feel that you have that right and on what grounds?" "I have and on good grounds," said Mven Mass, rising to his feet. "You have been at archaeological excavations -do not the billions of unknown skeletons in unknown graves appeal to us? Do they not reproach us and make demands of us? I visualize billions of human lives that have passed, lives in which youth, beauty and the joy of life slipped away like sand through one's fingers-they demand that we lay bare the great mystery of time, that we struggle against it! Victory over space is victory over time, that is why I'm sure that I'm right, that's why I believe in the greatness of the proposed experiment!" "My feelings are different," said Renn Bose. "But they form the other side of the same thing. Space still cannot be overcome in the Cosmos, it keeps the worlds apart and prevents us from discovering planets with populations similar to ours, prevents us from joining them in one family that would be infinitely rich in its joy and strength. This would be the greatest transformation since the Era of World Unity, since the days when mankind finally put an end to the separate existence of the nations and merged into one, in this way making the greatest progress towards a new stage in the conquest of nature. Every new step in this direction is more important than anything else, more important than any other investigations or knowledge." Renn Bose had scarcely finished when Mven Mass spoke again. "There is one other thing, a personal one. In my youth I had a collection of old historical novels. There was one story about your ancestors, Darr Veter. Some great conqueror, some fierce destroyer of human life of whom there were so many in the epochs of the lower forms of society, launched an attack against them. The story was about a strong youth who was madly in love. His girl was captured and taken away-'driven off"" was the word used in those days. Can you imagine it? Men and women were bound and driven off to the country of the conqueror like cattle. The youth was separated from his beloved by thousands of miles. The geography of Earth was unknown, riding and pack animals were the only means of transport. The world of those days was more mysterious and vast, more dangerous and difficult to cross than Cosmic space is for us today. The young hero hunted for his dream, for years he wandered terribly dangerous paths until he found her in the depths of the Asian mountains. It is difficult to define the impression I had when I was younger, but it still seems to me that I, too, could go through all the obstacles of the Cosmos to the one I loved!" Darr Veter smiled wanly. "I can understand your feelings but I cannot get clear for myself what logical grounds there are for comparing a Russian story to your urge to get into the Cosmos. I understand Renn Bose better. Of course, you warned us that this was personal...." Darr Veter stopped. He sat silent so long that Mven Mass began to fidget. "Now I understand why it was that people used to smoke, drink, bolster themselves up with drugs at moments of uncertainty, anxiety or loneliness. At this moment I feel just as alone and uncertain-I don't know what to say to you. Who am I to forbid a great experiment? But then, how can I permit it? You must turn to the Council, then...." "No, that won't do." Mven Mass stood up and his huge body was tensed as though he were in mortal danger. "Answer us: would you make the experiment? As Director of the Outer Stations, not as Renn Bose, he is different...." 'No!" answered Darr Veter, firmly. "I should wait." "What for?" "The erection of an experimental installation on the Moon;' "And power for it?" "The lesser gravity of the Moon and the smaller scale of the experiment will make only a few Q-stations necessary." "But that would take hundreds of years and I should never see it!" "You wouldn't, but as far as the human race is concerned it doesn't matter whether it's now or a generation later." "But it's the end for me, the end of my dream! And for Renn...." "To me it means that it's impossible to check up my work experimentally and make corrections-it means I cannot continue!" "One mind is not enough. Ask the Council." ''Your ideas and your words are the Council's decision given in advance. We have nothing to expect from them," said Mven Mass softly. "You're right. The Council will refuse." "I shan't ask you anything else. I feel guilty, Renn and I have put the heavy burden of decision upon you." "That is my duty as one older in experience. It is not your fault that the task seems magnificent and extremely dangerous. That is what upsets me so much, makes it hard to bear." Renn Bose was the first to suggest returning to the temporary dwellings of the expedition. The three downcast men plodded through the sand, each in his own way feeling the bitter sorrow of having to reject an experiment such as had never before been tried. Darr Veter cast occasional side glances at his companions and felt that it was harder for him than for them. There was a bold recklessness in his nature that he had had to fight against all his life. It made him something like an old-time brigand-why had he felt such joy and satisfaction in his mischievous battle with the bull? In his heart he was indignant, he was full of protest against a decision that was wise but not bold. CHAPTER SIX. THE LEGEND OF THE BLUE SUNS Dr. Louma Lasvy and Eon Thai, the biologist, dragged their heavy weight slowly towards him from the ship's sick bay. Erg Noor went to meet them. "Nisa?" "Alive, but...." "Dying?" "Not yet. She is totally paralysed. Her respiration is extraordinarily low. Her heart is functioning-one beat in a hundred seconds. It is not death but it is absolute collapse which may last a long, an indefinitely long time." "Is there any possibility that she may regain consciousness and suffer?" "None whatever." "Are you sure?" The look in the commander's eyes was sharp and insistent, but the doctor was not at all put out. "Absolutely sure!" Erg Noor looked inquiringly at the biologist. He nodded his affirmation. "What do you intend to do?" "Keep her in an even temperature, absolute repose and weak light. If the collapse does not progress... what does it matter ... let her sleep till we reach Earth. Then she can go to the Institute of Nerve Currents. The injury is due to some form of current, her spacesuit was holed in three places. It is a good thing that she was scarcely breathing!" "I noticed the holes and sealed them with my plaster," said the biologist. In silent gratitude Erg Noor squeezed his arm above the elbow. "Only ..." began Louma, "we'd better get her away from high gravitation as quickly as we can ... and ... at the same time there's danger, not so much in the acceleration of the take-off as in the return to normal gravitation." "I see, you're afraid the pulse will get even slower. But the heart is not a pendulum that accelerates its oscillations in a field of high gravitation, is it?" "The rhythm of impulses in the organism, in general, follows the same laws. If the heartbeats slow down to, say, one in two hundred seconds, then the brain will not get a sufficient supply of blood, and...." Erg Noor fell into such deep thought that he forgot that he was not alone: he suddenly came to himself and sighed deeply. His companions waited patiently. "Would it not be a way out if the organism were to be submitted to higher pressures in an atmosphere enriched with oxygen?" asked the commander cautiously, and by the satisfied smile of the faces of Louma Lasvy and Eon Thai he knew that the idea was the right one. "Saturate the blood with the gas under increased pressure, good.... Of course, we must take precautions against thrombosis and-let her heart beat once in two hundred seconds, it will come right later." Eon's smile showed his white teeth under a black moustache and gave his stern face a look of youthfulness and reckless merriment. "The organism will remain paralysed but will live," said Louma with relief. "Let's go and get the chamber ready. I want to use the big silicolloid hood that we took for Zirda. We can get a floating armchair inside it to make a bed for her during the take-off. After acceleration ceases we can make her a proper bed." "As soon as you're ready report to the control tower. We're not staying here a minute longer than necessary ... we've had enough of the darkness and weight of the black world!" The crew hurried to their various sections of the ship, each of them struggling against excess weight as best he could. The signals for the take-off resounded like a song of victory. With feelings of such absolute relief as they had never before experienced the people of the expedition entrusted themselves to the soft embraces of the landing chairs. A take-off from a heavy planet is a difficult and dangerous undertaking. The acceleration necessary to escape its gravity would strain the very limit of human endurance and the slightest mistake on the part of the pilot might lead to the death of them all. There was a deafening roar of the planet motors as Erg Noor directed the spaceship at a tangent to the horizon. The levers of the hydraulic chairs were pressed lower and lower under the influence of growing weight. In a moment the levers would reach the limit and then, under the pressure of acceleration the frail human bones might be broken as they would be on an anvil. The commander's hands, lying on the buttons that controlled the ship's machinery, were unbearably heavy. But his strong fingers were at work and Tantra, describing a huge, flattened arc, rose higher and higher out of thick darkness into the transparent blackness of infinity. Erg Noor kept his eyes fixed on the red line of the horizontal leveller-it wavered in its unstable equilibrium, indicating that the ship showed a tendency to stop its climb and travel on the downward arc. The heavy planet had still not given up its prisoner. Erg Noor decided to switch on the anameson motors whose power was sufficient to lift the spaceship from any planet. Their ringing vibration made the whole ship shudder. The red line rose about half an inch above the zero line. A little more.... Through the upper inspection periscope the commander saw that Tantra was covered with a fine layer of blue flame that flowed slowly towards the stern of the vessel. The atmosphere had been passed! In empty space vestigial electric currents, following the law of superconductivity, flowed along the vessel's hull. The stars had again become needles of light and Tantra, escaping, flew farther and farther from the dread planet. The burden of gravity decreased with every minute. The body became lighter and lighter, the artificial gravitation machine began to hum and after so many days under the pressure of the black planet terrestrial gravity seemed indescribably small. The people jumped up from their chairs. Ingrid, Louma and Eon performed intricate passages from a fantastic dance. The inevitable reaction, however, soon set in and the greater part of the crew fell into a brief sleep that gave temporary repose. Only Erg Noor, Pel Lynn, Pour Hyss and Louma Lasvy remained awake. The spaceship's temporary course had to be worked out to avoid the belt of ice and meteoroids by describing an arc perpendicular to the plane of rotation of star T's system. After this the ship could be brought up to its normal subphotonic speed and work could be begun on the computation of the real course. The doctor kept watch over Nisa's condition after the take-off and the return to normal terrestrial gravity. She was soon able to reassure all those who were awake by her report that the pulse had reached a constant of one beat in a hundred and ten seconds. This was not mortal as long as there was an excess supply of oxygen. Louma Lasvy proposed using a tiratron,21 an electronic cardiac exciter, and neurosecretory stimulators.22 The walls of the ship whined for fifty-five hours from the vibration of anameson motors until, at last, the speedometer showed that they had attained a speed of nine hundred and seventy million kilometres an hour, very close to the safety limit. In the course of a terrestrial 24-hour day their distance from the iron star increased by more than 20,000 million kilometres. It is difficult to describe the relief felt by all thirteen members of the expedition after their severe trials-the murdered planet, the loss of Algrab and the awful black sun. The joy of liberation was not complete, one member of the expedition, young Nisa Creet, lay motionless in a special partition of the sick bay in a cataleptic half sleep and half death. The five women on the ship, Ingrid, Louma, the second electronic engineer, the geologist, and lone Marr, the teacher of rhythmic gymnastics (who was also keeper of the food stores, radio operator and collector of scientific material), gathered as though for an ancient funeral rite. Nisa's body, divested of all clothing and washed with the special solutions TM and AS, had been laid out on a thick hand-stitched carpet of the softest Mediterranean sponges. This carpet was placed on a pneumatic mattress under a dome of transparent, rosy-hued silicolloid. An accurate air-condition controller would keep the necessary temperature, pressure and composition of the air inside the hood constant for many years. Soft rubber blocks kept Nisa fixed in one position which Louma intended to change once a month. She was more afraid of bed-sores than of anything else-they could come from absolute motionlessness. Louma, therefore, decided that a watch had to be kept over Nisa's body and herself refused to take her periods of long sleep during the first year or two of the journey. Nisa's cataleptic state continued. The only improvement Louma could effect was an increase in pulse-beats to one a minute. Little as this was, it was sufficient to enable them to stop the oxygen saturation which was harmful to the lungs.... Four months passed. The spaceship was following its real, computed course home, avoiding the belt of free meteoroids. The crew, worn out with their adventures and hard toil, were sunk in a seven-months' sleep. This time there were four instead of the three people awake on board: Erg Noor and Pour Hyss, whose tour of duty it was, were joined by Louma Lasvy and Eon Thai. The commander, after having got out of a graver situation than any spaceship commander had ever been in before, felt very lonely. The four years' journey back to Earth seemed endless to him. He did not deceive himself -they were endless because he could hope to save his fearless auburn-haired astronavigator, whom he had come to love, only on Earth. For a long time he put off doing what he would otherwise have done on the day after the take-off-running through the electronic stereofilms from Parus-he had wanted to see them together with Nisa and with her hear the first news from those wonderful worlds, the planets of the blue star of the terrestrial night sky. He had wanted Nisa to share with him the pleasure of seeing the boldest romantic dreams of the past and present coming true- the discovery of new stellar worlds, the future distant islands of human civilization. But at last they were brought out.... The films had been taken at a distance of eight parsecs from the Sun eighty years before and, although they had been lying in the open ship on the black planet of star T they were in excellent condition. The hemispherical stereo-screen took the four members of Tantra's crew back to where blue Vega shone high above them. There were many sudden changes of subject-the screen was filled by the dazzlingly blue star which was followed by casual, minute-long pictures of life on board the ship. The 28-year-old commander of the expedition, unbelievably young for his post, worked at the computers while still younger astronomers made observations. The films showed obligatory daily sport and dances that the young people had brought to acrobatic perfection. A mocking voice announced that the biologist had maintained the championship all the way to Vega. That girl with short, flaxen hair, was demonstrating the most difficult exercises twisting her magnificently developed body into all sorts of improbable poses. As they looked at the perfectly natural images with all the normal colour tones on the hemispherical screen, they forgot that these happy, vigorous young astronauts had long before been devoured by the foul monsters of the black planet. The terse chronicle of expedition life soon passed. The light amplifiers in the projector began to hum; so brightly did the blue star glow that even this pale reproduction forced people to put on protective glasses. The star was almost three times our Sun in diameter and mass-colossal, greatly flattened and madly rotating with an equatorial speed of three hundred kilometres a second, a ball of indescribably luminous gas with a surface temperature of 11,000° C. and a corona of rosy-pearl flame spreading millions of kilometres around it. It seemed as though Vega's rays would crush everything they met in their path as they thrust out their mighty million-kilometre long spears into space. The planet nearest to the blue star was hidden in their glow, but no ship from Earth or from any of her neighbours on the Great Circle could plunge into that ocean of fire. The visual image was followed by a vocal report on observations that had been made and the almost phantom lines of stereometric drawings showed the positions of Vega's first and second planets. Parus could not approach even the second planet whose orbit was a hundred million kilometres from the star. Monstrous protuberances flew out of the depths of an ocean of transparent violet flame, the stellar atmosphere, and stretched like all-consuming arms into space. So great was Vega's energy that the star emitted light of the strongest quanta, the violet and invisible parts of the spectrum. Even when human eyes were protected by a triple filter it aroused the horrible effect of an invisible but mortally dangerous phantom. They could see photon storms flashing past, those that had managed to overcome the star's gravitation. Their distant reverberations shook and tossed Parus dangerously. The cosmic ray meters and instruments measuring other non-elastic radiations refused to function. Dangerous ionization began to grow, even inside the well-protected ship. They could only guess at the extent of the furious radial energy that poured out into the emptiness of space in a monstrous stream. The commander of Parus navigated his ship cautiously towards the third planet-a big planet with but a thin layer of transparent atmosphere. It looked as though the fiery breath of the blue star had driven away the cover of light gases for they trailed in a weakly glowing tail behind the planet on her dark side. They recorded the destructive evaporation of fluorine, poisonous carbon monoxide, and the dead density of the inert gases-nothing terrestrial could have lived for a second in that atmosphere. The great heat of the blue sun made inert mineral substances active. Sharp spears, ribs, vertical battlemented walls of stone, red like fresh wounds or black like empty pits, rose out of the bowels of the planet. On the plateaux of lava, swept by violent gales, there were fissures and abysses belching forth molten magma like streaks of blood-red fire. Dense clouds of ash whirled high into the air, blindingly blue on the illuminated side and impenetrably black on the dark side. Streaks of lightning thousands of miles long struck in all directions, evidence of the electric saturation of the dead atmosphere. The awful violet phantom of the huge sun, the black sky, half covered by the pearly corona, and below, on the planet, the crimson contrasting shadows on a wild chaos of rock, the fiery crevices, cracks and circles, the constant flashes of green lightning-all this had been picked up by the stereotelescopes and the electron films had recorded it with unimpassioned, inhuman precision. Behind the machines, however, were the emotions of the travellers, the protest of reason against the senseless power of destruction and the piling up of dead matter, the consciousness of the hostility of this world of furious cosmic fire. The four viewers, hypnotized by the sight, exchanged glances of approval when a voice announced that Parus would move on to the fourth planet. The human selection of events reduced the time factor and in a few seconds the outer planet of Vega appeared under the spaceship's keel telescopes; in size it was comparable with Earth. Parus descended sharply, the crew had evidently decided to explore the last planet in the hope that they would find a world, if not beautiful, then at least fit to bear life. Erg Noor caught himself mentally repeating those words-"at least." Most likely those who navigated Parus had similar ideas as they studied the planet's surface through their telescopes. "At least"-with those two syllables they bade farewell to the dream of the beautiful worlds of Vega, of the discovery of pearls of planets on the far side of outer space for the sake of which people of Earth had voluntarily agreed to forty-five years of imprisonment in a spaceship. Carried away by the pictures passing before his eyes, Erg Noor did not think of that immediately. In the depths pf the hemispherical screen he raced over the surface of he fantastically distant planet. To the great grief of the travellers, of those who were dead and those still living, The planet turned out to be like our nearest neighbour in he solar system, the planet Mars, which they had known since childhood. The same thin envelope of transparent as with a blackish-green, permanently cloudless sky, the same level surface of desert continents with chains of eroded mountains. The difference was that on Mars there "was a searing cold night and very sharp changes in the daytime temperature. There were shallow swamps on Mars, like huge puddles, that had evaporated until they were almost dry, there were rare and scanty rains and hoarfrosts, faint life in the form of gangrenous plants and peculiar apathetic burrowing animals. Here, however, the raging flames of the blue sun kept the temperature of the planet so high that it breathed heat like Earth's hottest deserts. What little vapour there was rose to the upper layer of the atmosphere and the huge plains were overshadowed by vortices of hot currents in the constantly disturbed atmosphere. The planet rotated at high speed, like the others. The cold of night had broken the rocks up into a sea of sand; orange, violet, green, bluish or dazzlingly white patches of sand drowned parts of the planet that from a distance had the appearance of seas of imaginary vegetation. The chains of eroded mountains, higher than those on Mars but just as lifeless, were covered with a shining black or brown crust. The blue sun, with its powerful ultra-violet radiation, had destroyed the minerals and evaporated the lighter elements. It seemed that the light, sandy plains were radiating flames. Erg Noor recalled that at the time when only a small part and not the majority of Earth's population had been scientists, many artists and writers had dreamed of people on other planets who had adapted themselves to life at high temperatures. It was a poetic and beautiful notion, it increased faith in the power of the human race -people on the fire-breathing planets of the blue sun meeting their terrestrial brethren! Erg Noor, like many others, had been impressed by a picture he had seen in the museum of the eastern sector of the southern inhabited zone: a hazy horizon on a plain of crimson sand, a grey, burning-hot sky and under it faceless human figures in temperature suits throwing blue-black shadows of improbably clear definition. They stood at the corner of some metal structure that was at white heat in dynamic poses that showed their amazement. Beside the structure stood an undraped female figure with her red hair hanging loose. Her light-coloured skin gleamed more brightly than the sand in the glaring light, blue and vermilion shadows stressed every line of her tall and graceful figure, the symbol of the victory of beautiful life over the forces of the Cosmos. Beautiful, that was the most important thing of all. For even the adaptation of animal life that reduced it to a formless devourer with but a faint spark of life in it, might be termed a victory. It was a bold and quite unreal dream that contradicted the laws of biological development, laws that were far better known in the Great Circle Era than they had been when the picture was painted. Erg Noor gave a shudder as the surface of the planet rushed towards him. The unknown pilot of Parus was bringing his ship down. Sand cones, black cliffs, deposits of some shining green crystals flashed past. The spaceship was flying in a regular spiral round the planet from pole to pole. There was not a sign of water or at least of the most primitive vegetable life. Again that "at least" how accommodating the human mind could be! Then came the nostalgia of loneliness, the feeling that the ship was lost in the dead distance, was in the power of the flaming blue star. Erg Noor could feel the hopes of those who took the film, who were watching the planet, could feel them as though they were his own. If there had only been at least the remains of some past life! How well known is this t