Samms was shaken by the calm finality with which the Rigellian dismissed all possibility of the usefulness of inter-stellar exploration, but stuck doggedly to his purpose.
"However slight the chance, I must find and talk to this man. I suppose he is now out in deep space somewhere. Have you any idea where?"
"He is now in his home city, accumulating funds and manufacturing fuel with which to continue his pointless activities. That city is named ... that is, in your English you might call it ... Suntown? Sunberg? No, it must be more specific ... Rigelsville? Rigel City?"
"Rigelston, I would translate it?" Samms hazarded.
"Exactly—Rigelston." The professor marked its location upon a globular mental map far more accurate and far more detailed than the globe which Captain Winfield and his lieutenant were then studying.
"Thanks. Now, can you and will you get in touch with this explorer and ask him to call a meeting of his full crew and any others who might be interested in the project I have outlined?"
"I can. I will. He and his kind are not quite sane, of course, as you know; but I do not believe that even they are so insane as to be willing to subject themselves to the environment of your vessel."
"They will not be asked to come here. The meeting will be held in Rigelston. If necessary, I shall insist that it be held there."
"You would? I perceive that you would. It is strange ... yes, fantastic ... you are quarrelsome, pugnacious, anti-social, vicious, small-bodied and small-brained; timid, nervous, and highly and senselessly excitable; unbalanced and unsane; as sheerly monstrous mentally as you are physically...." These outrageous thoughts were sent as casually and as impersonally as though the sender were discussing the weather. He paused, then went on: "And yet, to further such a completely visionary project, you are eager to subject yourself to conditions whose counterparts I could not force myself, under any circumstances whatever, to meet. It may be ... it must be true that there is an extension of the principle of working together for the common good which my mind, for lack of pertinent data, has not been able to grasp. I am now en rapport with Dronvire the explorer."
"Ask him, please, not to identify himself to me. I do not want to go into that meeting with any preconceived ideas."