"I remember something of the kind. My impression was, though, that the space-ship company furnished.... Oh!" The tone of Samms' thought alerted sharply. "That was Spaceways, under cover?"
"Definitely. Our best guess is that there were quite a few shiploads of women disappeared about that time, instead of one. Austine's College had more students that year than ever before or since. It was the extras, not the regulars, who went on that cruise; the ones who figured it would be more convenient to disappear in space than to become ordinary missing persons."
"But Rod! That would mean ... but where?"
"It means just that. And finding out 'where' will run into a project. There are over two thousand million suns in this galaxy, and the best estimate is that there are more than that many planets habitable by beings more or less human in type. You know how much of the galaxy has been explored and how fast the work of exploring the rest of it is going. Your guess is just as good as mine as to where those spacemen and engineers and their wives and girl-friends are now. I am sure, though, of four things; none of which we can ever begin to prove. One; they didn't die in space. Two; they landed on a comfortable and very well equipped Tellurian planet. Three; they built a fleet there. Four; that fleet attacked the Hill."
"Murgatroyd, do you suppose?" Although surprised by Kinnison's tremendous report, Samms was not dismayed.
"No idea. No data—yet."
"And they'll keep on building," Samms said. "They had a fleet much larger than the one they expected to meet. Now they'll build one larger than all our combined forces. And since the politicians will always know what we are doing ... or it might be ... I wonder...?"
"You can stop wondering." Kinnison grinned savagely.
"What do you mean?"
"Just what you were going to think about. You know the edge of the galaxy closest to Tellus, where that big rift cuts in?"