"It seems like everybody should be hearing it. But we shouldn't get
excited, should we? We mustn't hope too hard." He bit his lip. "But
there _should_ be life there, don't you think, Captain?"
"There may be."
"Nine years, Captain. Think of it. It's taken us nine years to get here.
There's _got_ to be life."
"Prepare for deceleration, Lieutenant."
Lieutenant Gunderson's tall, slim body sagged for an instant. Then his
eyes brightened.
"Yes, sir!"
----
Captain Sam Wiley continued to stare at the beautiful gray globe in the
visi-screen. He was not like Gunderson, with boyish eagerness and
anxiety flowing out of him in a ceaseless babble. His emotion was as
great, or greater, but it was imprisoned within him, like swirling,
foaming liquid inside a corked jug.
It wouldn't do to encourage the men too much. Because, if they were
disappointed....
He shook his silver-thatched head. There it was, he thought. A new
world. A world that, perhaps, held life.
Life. It was a word uttered only with reverence, for throughout the
Solar System, with the exception of on Earth, there had been only death.
First it was the Moon, airless and lifeless. That had been expected, of
course.
But Mars. For centuries men had dreamed of Mars and written of Mars with
its canals and dead cities, with its ancient men and strange animals.
Everyone _knew_ there was or had been life on Mars.
The flaming rockets reached Mars, and the canals became volcanic
crevices, and the dead cities became jagged peaks of red stone, and the
endless sands were smooth, smooth, smooth, untouched by feet of living
creatures. There was plant-life, a species of green-red lichen in the
Polar regions. But nowhere was there real life.
Then Venus, with its dust and wind. No life there. Not even the stars to
make one think of home. Only the dust and wind, a dark veil of death
screaming eternally over hot dry land.
And Jupiter, with its seas of ice; and hot Mercury, a cracked, withered
mummy of a planet, baked as hard and dry as an ancient walnut in a
furnace.
Next, the airless, rocky asteroids, and frozen Saturn with its swirling
ammonia snows. And last, the white, silent worlds, Uranus, Neptune, and
Pluto.
World after world, all dead, with no sign of life, no reminder of life,
and no promise of life.
Thus the loneliness had grown. It was not a child of Earth. It was not
born in the hearts of those who scurried along city pavements or of
those in the green fields or of those in the cool, clean houses.
It was a child of the incredible distances, of the infinite night, of
emptiness and silence. It was born in the hearts of the slit-eyed men,
the oldish young men, the spacemen.
For without life on other worlds, where was the sky's challenge? Why go
on and on to discover only worlds of death?
The dream of the spacemen turned from the planets to the stars.
Somewhere in the galaxy or in other galaxies there _had_ to be life.
Life was a wonderful and precious thing. It wasn't right that it should
be confined to a single, tiny planet. If it were, then life would seem
meaningless. Mankind would be a freak, a cosmic accident.
And now the _Wanderer_ was on the first interstellar flight, hurtling
through the dark spaces to Proxima Centauri. Moving silently, as if
motionless, yet at a speed of 160,000 miles a second. And ahead loomed
the great, gray planet, the only planet of the sun, growing larger,
larger, each instant....
----
A gentle, murmuring hum filled the ship. The indicator lights on the
control panel glowed like a swarm of pink eyes.
"Deceleration compensator adjusted for 12 G's, sir," reported Lieutenant
Gunderson.
Captain Wiley nodded, still studying the image of the planet.
"There--there's something else, Captain."
"Yes?"
"It's Brown, sir. He's drunk."
Captain Wiley turned, a scowl on his hard, lined face. "Drunk? Where'd
he get the stuff?"
"He saved it, sir, saved it for nine years. Said he was going to drink
it when we discovered life."
"We haven't discovered life yet."
"I know. He said he wouldn't set foot on the planet if he was sober.
Said if there isn't life there, he couldn't take it--unless he was
drunk."