There was nothing more to do.
PLANET V was death. The analyzer told the story. The atmosphere was mostly methane. The gravity thirty times too great. The pressure beneath the boiling clouds of methane close to a thousand atmospheres.
There were other factors, too. But any one of those three would have been enough.
Jon Hoff pulled the ship out of its orbit, headed it sunward. Back at the telescope, he found Planet II, locked it in the sights, tied in the computator and sat down to wait again.
One chance more and that was all they had. For of all the planets, only two had atmospheres. It had to be Planet II or none.
And if the second planet turned out to be death as well, what then?
There was one answer. There could be no other.
Head the ship toward another star, build up velocity and hope—hope that in another several generations the Folk could find a planet they could live on.
He was hungry—his belly gaunt and sore. He had found a water cooler with a few cups of liquid still intact, but he'd drunk the last of that two days before.
Joshua had not come back. There had been no sign from the Folk. Twice he had opened the door and gone out into the corridor, ready to make a dash for food and water, then reconsidered and gone back in again.