[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Comet March 41.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Planet sighted!" sang out Kendall, eye glued to the electro-telescope.
"Where away?" rang Fred Broster from his place at the controls.
"Five point on ten left from star. Point three seven above theelliptic," came Kendall's voice again from the forward observationwindow.
"You're daft and dreaming. Snap into it and look again," Brosteryelled, staring hard at the automatically-recording space-chart."There's nothing here but a particularly empty species of nothingness."
The captain's keen gray eyes stared carefully at the glowing panelbefore him. On it shone out tiny points of light which revealed eachof the different bodies through whose vicinity the Astralite waspassing. A remarkable device actuated by delicate gravital detectorswhich marked out every body they approached.
And according to this chart, there was no such planet recorded in thedepths of the device as that which Kendall had sighted.
"I'm not dreaming. Your chart is wrong if you can't find it there,"Kendall remarked after a pause, still staring through the lens of theinstrument.
Broster examined the chart again. No; there positively was no planetcircling the star as his observer claimed.
"Come away from there!" he called, straightening up. "Dr. Seaward, willyou please take the observer's place and check."
Seaward dropped the calculations in hand, walked across the controlroom of the great interstellar explorer, up to the very tip. Kendallstood aside while the doctor applied his eye to the lens.
"It's there all right, Broster. A little red disk exactly where hecalled it off; the chart's wrong."
Broster ran a hand through his chestnut hair, a puzzled look in hiseyes. He glared at the space-chart for a moment, as if loath to believethat that faithful instrument could have gone haywire. Then he pickedhis way over to the electro-telescope to verify the sighting personally.
A moment later, the three were looking at each other wonderingly.All realized what this might mean: if that space-chart failed them,it might be all over with any possibility ever of returning home.Space-navigating in the bounds of the solar system was one thing; thereit didn't matter whether you ran by chart or by observation. But herein the bounds of cosmic space, thousands of light-years from the sun,where they had to navigate in the blackness of interstellar distances,the space-chart was all-important. Bodies out here were dark; therewere no stars nearby from which they could reflect light....
"That chart will have to be overhauled," murmured the captain. "If it'sgone wrong...."
"What about this planet? It's the only one around this star," put inKendall, jerking a thumb in its general direction.
"Head toward it; we may as well give it the once-over."
The huge ship pursued its unvarying course toward the approaching star.At a single light-year away, they decelerated, slowed down. Riding thestrange eka-gravity waves, the little-known carrier-waves for light andgravity which seemed to travel as fast in relation to light as lightin