"Nine years, Captain. Think of it. It's taken us nine years to get here. There's got to be life."
"Prepare for deceleration, Lieutenant."
Lieutenant Gunderson's tall, slim body sagged for an instant. Then his eyes brightened.
"Yes, sir!"
————
Captain Sam Wiley continued to stare at the beautiful gray globe in the visi-screen. He was not like Gunderson, with boyish eagerness and anxiety flowing out of him in a ceaseless babble. His emotion was as great, or greater, but it was imprisoned within him, like swirling, foaming liquid inside a corked jug.
It wouldn't do to encourage the men too much. Because, if they were disappointed....
He shook his silver-thatched head. There it was, he thought. A new world. A world that, perhaps, held life.
Life. It was a word uttered only with reverence, for throughout the Solar System, with the exception of on Earth, there had been only death.
First it was the Moon, airless and lifeless. That had been expected, of course.