"Then I'd better shut down."
Chat Honger shook his head. "We've got a job to do. We're behind schedule now, fellows, because of this question. We've got a beacon to start here, I say let's get along with it and bedamned to the—"
"You can't," said Bren. "The first time you put down in the log that this is a middle sequence flare-star, right smack-dab in the middle of Yalt Gangrow's Diagram, the Bureau of Colonization is going to ask you if you took a look for habitable planets. Then—then what, Scyth?"
Scyth Radnor shrugged. "The answer is 'yes' we took a look and we found one, just at the right distance, the right size, and the right conditioning. To say nothing of upper atmosphere and other data made by observation. So Planet Three is about as habitable as Marandis itself."
Chat grunted. "Looked for any signs of life?"
Scyth nodded. "The phanobands are as dead as you-know-what. The machinus fields are all as dead as one might expect this far from any established route. There are a few bits and dabs of stuff on the radiomagnetic spectrum which show a recurrent pattern too fast to be anything of natural phenomena, however. I say we ought to take a look."
Chat shook his head slowly. "I didn't expect to find it inhabited. But even knowing it is habitable is—"
Bren said, "If mere habitability is all you're after we can go ahead and establish our beacon and leave Planet Three to be handled later. A beacon wouldn't ruin the planet itself, you know."
Scyth said, "We'd better take a look-see anyhow. That last computation on the radiomagnetic stuff looked too much like man-made radiation to me."
Bren Hallow smiled. "Look," he said slowly, "If this planet is inhabited, how come the Bureau of Colonization doesn't know about it. Not one case in the history of Marandis shows the discovery of an inhabited planet that—"