“Precisely, Ben. The question is: How did this strange substance get into the tube of an Interplanetary rocket called the Astra? To answer that we checked on the ship. The Astra is one of the few ships which have ever gone beyond Ventura B!”
“I almost expected to hear that,” Sessions said.
“It adds up, all right, doesn’t it? A foreign substance, a foreign system. But this substance had been made into a plate. That means the work of intelligent beings.”
“Who took the Astra on that trip?” Sessions asked, his body tense.
“A licensed space explorer named Murchison. Two others went with him but he returned alone. Claims they fell into a chasm.”
“But no explorer has reported life beyond Ventura B,” Sessions said, taking up the thread of thought. He whistled softly. “You must have been busy this last week.”
“Busy is no word for it. It’s only three years since anyone has been allowed to go outside our system. For the purpose of science Interstellar Flight granted permits to six licensed explorers. All returned with charts showing only a desolate waste. In our own quiet way we have checked on each of these six men, including Murchison, in the last week.”
“And . . . ?”
“And we discovered something very interesting. The six who returned from beyond Ventura B were not the same six who went! They are identical in every facial, bodily, and mental characteristic, identical enough to fool even the families of the lost explorers. But when we secretly photographed them with infra-red light we found that their skins contained elements foreign to our system!”