twenty-three days out, Beta Eridani wasalmost directly in our path for Rigel. Slightly less than a third of thedistance to the midpoint, in over half the time. But our speed was stillincreasing 200 miles a second every second, almost four times the speedof light in an hour. Our watches went on with a not altogetherdisagreeable monotony.
There was no star to mark the middle of our journey. Only, toward theclose of one of my watches, a blue light which I had never noticed cameon beside the indicator dials, and I saw that we had covered 233light-years, half the estimated distance to Rigel. The speed markerindicated 3975 times the speed of light. I wakened Garth.
"You could have done it yourself," he complained, sleepily, "but Isuppose it's just as well."
He went over to the board and started warming up the rear gravityprojector.
"We'll turn one off as the other goes on. Each take one control, and goa notch at a time." He began counting, "One, two, three ..."
On the twentieth count, my dial was down to zero, his up to maximumdeceleration, and I pulled out my switch. Garth snapped sideways a leveron the indicators. Though nothing seemed to happen, I knew that thespeed dial would creep backward, and the distance dial progress at aslower and slower rate. While I was trying to see the motion, Garth hadgone back to bed. I turned again to the glass and looked out at Rigel,on the cross hairs, and Kappa Orionis, over to the left, and the greatnebula reaching over a quarter of the view with its faint gaseousstreamers.
* * * * *
And so we swept on through space, with Rigel a great blue glory ahead,and new stars, invisible at greater distances, flaring up in front of usand then fading into the background as we passed. For a long time we hadbeen able to see that Rigel, as inferred from spectroscopic evidence,was a double star--a fainter, greener blue companion revolving with itaround their common center of gravity. Beyond Kappa Orionis, threehundred light-years from the sun, the space between the two was quiteevident. Beyond four hundred light-years, the brilliance of the vaststar was so great that it dimmed all the other stars by comparison, andmade the nebula seem a mere faint gauze. And yet even with this gradualchange, our arrival was a surprise.
When he relieved me at my watch, Garth seemed dissatisfied with ourprogress. "It must be farther than they've figured. I'll stick attwenty-five times light speed, and slow down after we get there bytaking an orbit."
"I'd have said it was nearer than the estimate," I tried to argue, butwas too sleepy to remember my reasons. Propped up on one elbow, I lookedaround and out at the stars. There was a bright splash of light, Inoticed, where the telescope concentrated the radiation of Rigel at onespot on the screen. I slept, and then Garth was shouting in my ear:
"We're there!"
I opened my eyes, blinked, and shut them again in the glare.
"I've gone around three or four times trying to slow down. We're there,and there's a planet to land on."
* * * * *
At last I could see. Out the window opposite me, Rigel was a blue-whitedisk half the size of the sun, but brighter, with the companion star asort of faint reflection five or ten degrees to the side. And stillbeyond, as I shaded my eyes, I could see swimming in the black a speckwith the unmistakable glow of reflected light.
With both gravity projectors in readiness, we pulled out of our orbitand straight across toward the planet, letting the attraction of Rigelfight against our still tremendous speed. For a while, the pull of thebig star was almost overpowering. Then we got past, and into thegravitational field of the planet. We spiralled down around it, lookingfor a landing place and trying to match our speed with its rotationalvelocity.
From rather unreliable observations, the planet seemed a good dealsmaller than the moon, and yet so dense as to have a greatergravitational attraction. The atmosphere was cloudless, and the surfacea forbidding expanse of sand. The globe whirled at a rate that must giveit a day of approximately five hours. We angled down, picking a spotjust within the lighted area.
A landing was quite feasible. As we broke through the atmosphere, wecould see that the sand, although blotched with dark patches here andthere, was comparatively smooth. At one place there was a leveloutcropping of rock, and over this we hung. It was hard work, watchingthrough the single small port in the floor as we settled down. Finallythe view was too small to be of any use. I ran to the side window, onlyto find my eyes blinded by Rigel's blaze. Then we had landed, and almostat the same moment Rigel set. Half overlapped by the greater star, thefaint companion had been hidden in its glare. Now, in the dusk, a cornerof it hung ghostlike on the horizon, and then too had disappeared.
* * * * *
I flashed on our lights, while Garth cut out the projector and the floorgravity machine. The increase in weight was apparent, but notparticularly unpleasant. After a few minutes of walking up and down Igot used to it.
Through a stop-cock in the wall, Garth had drawn in a tube of gas fromthe atmosphere outside, and was analyzing it with a spectroscope.
"We can go out," he said. "It's unbreathable, but we'll be able to usethe space suits. Mostly fluorine. It would eat your lungs out likethat!"
"And the suits?"
"Fortunately, they've been covered with helio-beryllium paint, and thehelmet glass is the same stuff. Not even that atmosphere can touch it. Isuppose there can be no life on the place. With all this sand, it wouldhave to be based on silicon instead of carbon--and it would have tobreathe fluorine!"
He got out the suits--rather like a diver's with the body ofmetal-painted cloth, and the helmet of the metal itself. On theshoulders was an air supply cylinder. The helmets were fixed with radio,so we could have talked to each other even in airless space. We saidalmost anything to try it out.
"Glad you brought two, and we don't have to explore in shifts."
"Yes, I was prepared for emergencies."
"Shall we wait for daylight to go out?"
"I can't see why. And these outfits will probably feel better in thecool. Let's see."
* * * * *
We shot a searchlight beam out the window. There was a slight drop downfrom the rock where we rested, then the sandy plain stretching out. Onlyfar off were those dark patches that looked like old seaweed on adried-up ocean bed, and might prove dangerous footing. The rest seemedhard packed.
My heart was pounding as we went into the air-lock and fastened theinner door behind us.
"We go straight out now," Garth explained. "Coming back, it will benecessary to press this button and let the pump get rid of thepoisonous, air before going in."
I opened the outer door and started to step out, then realized thatthere was a five-foot drop to the ground.
"Go ahead and jump," Garth said. "There's a ladder inside I should havebrought, but it would be too much trouble to go back through the lockfor it. Either of us can jump eight feet at home, and we'll get back upsomehow."
I jumped, failing to allow for the slightly greater gravity, and fellsprawling. Garth got down more successfully, in spite of a long packageof some sort he carried in his hand.
Scrambling down from the cliff and walking out on the sand, I tried toget used to the combination of greater weight and the awkward suit. If Istepped very deliberately it was all right, but an attempt to run sankmy feet in the sand and brought me up staggering. There was no troubleseeing through the glass of my helmet over wide angles. Standing on theelevation by the _Comet_, his space-suit shining in the light from thewindows, Garth looked like a metallic monster, some creature of thisstrange world. And I must have presented to him much the sameappearance, silhouetted dark and forbidding against the stars.
* * * * *
The stars! I looked up, and beheld the most marvelous sight of the wholetrip--the Great Nebula of Orion seen from a distance of less than onehundred and fifty light-years its own width.
A great luminous curtain, fifty degrees across, I co
uld just take it allin with my eye. The central brilliancy as big as the sun, a smaller oneabove it, and then the whole mass of gas stretching over the sky. Thewhole thing aglow with the green light of nebulium and blazing with thestars behind it. It was stupendous, beyond words.
I started to call Garth, then saw that he was looking up as well. Foralmost half an hour I watched, as the edge of the nebula sank below thehorizon. Then its light began to dim. Turning, I saw that the skyopposite was already gray. The dawn!
Why, the sun had just set. Then I realized. It was over an hour since wehad landed, and a full night would be scarcely two hours and a half. Ifwe were in a summer latitude, the shorter period of darkness was naturalenough. And yet it was still hard to believe as, within ten minutes, itwas as bright as Earth-light on the moon. Still clearer and clearer grewthe light. The stars were almost