The Blue Star

BY FLETCHER PRATT
NEW YORK : TWAYNE PUBLISHERS, INC.
COPYRIGHT 1952 BY TWAYNE PUBLISHERS, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PORTION OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRINTED WITHOUT PERMISSION EXCEPT BRIEF QUOTATIONS EMBODIED IN CRITICAL ARTICLES OR REVIEWS. FOR INFORMATION, ADDRESS TWAYNE PUBLISHERS, INC., 34 EAST 23D STREET, N. Y. 10. MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Penfield twirled the stem of his port-glass between thumb and finger.
“I don’t agree,” he said. “It’s nothing but egocentric vanity to consider our form of life as unique among those on the millions of worlds that must exist.”
“How do you know they exist?” said Hodge.
“Observation,” said McCall. “The astronomers have proved that other stars beside our sun have planets.”
“You’re playing into his hands,” observed Penfield, the heavy eyebrows twitching as he cracked a nut. “The statistical approach is better. Why doesn’t this glass of port suddenly boil and spout all over the ceiling? You’ve never seen a glass of port behave that way, but the molecules that compose it are in constant motion, and any physicist will tell you that there’s no reason why they can’t all decide to move in the same direction at once. There’s only an overwhelming possibility that it won’t happen. To believe that we, on this earth, one of the planets of a minor star, are the only form of intelligent life, is like expecting the port to boil any moment.”
“There are a good many possibilities for intelligent life, though,” said McCall. “Some Swede who wrote in German—I think his name was Lundmark—has looked into the list. He says, for instance, that a chlorine-silicon cycle would maintain life quite as well as the oxygen-carbon system this planet has, and there’s no particular reason why nature should favor one form more than the other. Oxygen is a very active element to be floating around free in such quantities as we have it.”
“All right,” said Hodge, “can’t it be that the cycle you mention is the normal one, and ours is the eccentricity?”