His worry gave him something to do, at least.
But then as the days added into kilodays, and Ertene continued on and on and on in its course through the heavens, and no Terran forces came to contest or to seek, Guy became used to the idea that Ertene's barrier was far more obscure than the proverbial needle in the haystack. A magnet, well plied, will show the fallacy of that platitude, but trying to see nothing against a field of black—impossible.
Guy knew that his no-radiation detectors were being used. He suspected deeper developments, and fumed and fretted because he could not know what they were. His imagination cooked up many ideas, possible and impossible, for the finding of such a minute bubble in space. And it all reduced to one thing.
Mephisto had been unfound for hundreds of years of space travel and exploration. Men suspected the possibility of inner- and outer-planets and went on the search for them. They failed until the Ertinian science provided Guy with an instrument to locate such bodies.
Ertene's chances were excellent.
And the mathematicians of Ertene spent kilodays in deep theory and high abstractions and decided that the law of probabilities prohibited the finding of Ertene.
And instead of feeling concern at the idea of fighting his own people, Guy looked upon the vortex projectors in the same light as a fire department in a city of pure metal.
Guy's life changed as a result of this. Like the man on vacation, he began to seek something to do. The job of lanee was unexciting and drab after the life of activity he knew on Terra.
On every hand he saw things that would be hailed as miraculous on Terra. Medical science was far ahead of Terra's in spite of the drive of necessity; Ertene's science had gone forward passively and the diseases were gone completely from the planet. Their accident-surgery could stand a bit of Terran influence just as the Terrans could stand some of Ertinian vaccine and antibody discoveries.