Edith agreed solemnly but was obviously unconvinced.
"Look," he hastened to add, "if all this was put here for the benefit of Terrans, we're expected to use it. If we are incidental in some grand plan encompassing a billion suns in a thousand galaxies, loss of one sun won't matter."
"I suppose that's logic," she said. "I'd prefer not to talk about it too much. I know it should be done, but it still seems all wrong somehow."
"We've got to know. Remember there's a lot of truth in the whole thing," he said thoughtfully. "And also a lot of untruth. They did tell me the way to interstellar travel—in a slightly slaunchwise fashion. They told you about the disintegration-process. Now, darn it, Edith, did they scare us away from planetary tries because they knew it would damage the system or for another reason? How do we know the thing would ruin a planet and ultimately the system? Answer, we do not."
She nodded glumly. "I suppose that it is a step toward the final solution."
"Right, and as soon as we can get a nice system, we'll try it!"
"This is Procyon," said Tom Barden. "Or so they tell me, I wouldn't know."
The star was a small disk almost dead ahead; its light shone down through the fore dome of the ship augmenting the lights in the observation room.
"Sentiment again," she said. "I'd prefer a system more distant."