"I have to," Walton said. "The director of Popeek is paid to produce
two or three miracles per hour. One gets used to it, after a while.
Tell me about these aliens, Colonel McLeod."
McLeod swung a briefcase to Walton's desk and flipped the magneseal. He
handed Walton a thick sheaf of glossy color photos.
"The first dozen or so are scenes of the planet," McLeod explained.
"It's Procyon VIII--number eight out of sixteen, unless we missed a
couple. We checked sixteen worlds in the system, anyway. Ten of 'em
were methane giants; we didn't even bother to land. Two were ammonia
supergiants, even less pleasant. Three small ones had no atmosphere
at all worth speaking about, and were no more livable looking than
Mercury. And the remaining one was the one we call New Earth. Take a
look, sir."
Walton looked. The photos showed rolling hills covered with
close-packed shrubbery, flowing rivers, a lovely sunrise. Several of
the shots were of indigenous life--a wizened little four-handed monkey,
a six-legged doglike thing, a toothy bird.
"Life runs to six limbs there," Walton observed. "But how livable can
this place be? Unless your photos are sour, that grass is _blue_ ...
and the water's peculiar looking, too. What sort of tests did you run?"
"It's the light, sir. Procyon's a double star; that faint companion
gets up in the sky and does tricky things to the camera. That grass may
look blue, but it's a chlorophyll-based photosynthesizer all the same.
And the water's nothing but H_{2}O, even with that purple tinge."