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 thought to all those who have flown to dead ^planets without water or atmosphere, who have searched in vain for ruins, for the remains of towns and buildings in the accidental shapes of the crevices, in the details of the lifeless rocks and in the precipices of mountains that had never known life.

The earth of that distant world, scorched, churned up by violent storms, without any trace of a shadow, flashed swiftly across the screen. Erg Noor, recognizing the collapse of an ancient dream, strove to imagine how such an incorrect conception of the planets of the blue sun could have arisen.

“Our terrestrial brothers will be disappointed when they know this,” said the biologist, softly, moving closer to the commander. ‘‘For many thousands of years millions of people on Earth have gazed at Vega. On summer evenings in the north all young people, all those who loved and dreamed, turned their eyes to the sky. In the summer Vega, bright and blue, stands almost in the zenith, how could one not admire it? Many centuries ago people knew quite a lot about the stars. But by some strange freak of thought they did not suspect that almost every slowly rotating star with a strong magnetic field had its planets in the same way as almost all planets have their satellites. They did not know of this law but when they were overtaken by bitter loneliness they dreamed of fellow-beings in other worlds, and, more than elsewhere, on Vega, the blue sun. I remember translations from some of the ancient languages of beautiful poems about semi-divine people from the blue star….”

“I dreamed about Vega after the Parus communication,” confessed Erg Noor, turning to Eon Thai, “and in my hope that my dream would come true I read my own meaning into that communication. Today it is obvious that thousands of years of longing for distant, beautiful worlds have impaired my vision and that of many clever and serious people.”

“How do you understand the Parus communication now?”

“Quite simply. ‘Vega’s four planets quite lifeless. Nothing more beautiful than our Earth, what happiness to return.’ “

“You’re right,” exclaimed the biologist, “why didn’t we think of it before?”

“Perhaps somebody did, but not we astronauts and not the Council. That is to our honour — bold dreams and not sceptical disappointment bring victory in life.”

The flight round the planet, as shown on the screen, was over. It was followed by the records made by the robot station that had been put out to study surface conditions on the planet. Next came a loud explosion as the geological bomb[20] was dropped. The huge cloud of mineral dust thrown up by the bomb explosion reached the keel of the spaceship where powerful suction pumps drew samples into the filtering side-channels of the vessel. Several samples of mineral dust from the sands and mountains of the scorched planet were put into silicolloid test-tubes and samples of the upper layers of the atmosphere were put into quartz containers. Parus set off on its long journey back home, a journey it was not fated to finish. Now the terrestrial sister ship of Parus was carrying back to the people of Earth everything that the lost travellers had won at the cost of such patient endeavour.