"Yes, I do. They give us light, and hope for the future, and more than that, a frame of reference when we fly through the dark reaches of our universe. They're more than beautiful—they're necessary." As he turned to leave, Hawkins chuckled to himself. Just let the head-shrinker try to read a neurosis into that!
It took them three weeks from the day they arrived back in normal space to make sure that they had found a sun with planets, and another three weeks from then to make landfall on the second of the four satellites this particular solar system had to offer. Almost from the very beginning they were elated with their luck, for the planet seemed to be a first class find. The Sunward and her crew had been exploring this section of space for more than six years, and out of the thirty-eight systems they had investigated, this was the first that offered any promise of eventual human habitation.
Man had been in space less then one hundred years. At first he had thrown himself towards the stars with crude rocket-driven craft. A few years later he had invented a type of atomic drive which allowed him to approach the speed of light. But it was the discovery of the subspace technique of travel which had theoretically given him the whole universe to live in. There were drawbacks, however, and they were important ones. To tear himself from the matrix of normal space he still needed huge machines, and probably always would. This meant the building of exceedingly large space vessels, like the Sunward, which could contain not only the equipment necessary to propel him into the blackness of subspace, but which also could be equipped with the mammoth control mechanisms necessary to regulate the change-over. The switch to subspace could never be made near the surface of a planet, for the field forces generated during the change had far-flung effects and were quite capable, even under tightest control, of tearing loose a huge chunk of a planet and dropping it into subspace with the ship. Big ships meant big money, and even now there were fewer than a thousand of the large exploration craft in operation. Each ship could average fewer than ten new worlds a year. So while man had taken a lease on the universe, it seemed that at his present rate of exploration a great many centuries would pass before he finished the charting of even the stars in his own back yard.
But if at times he became discouraged at the immensity of the task, there were always moments of great joy which helped to spur a man on.
The men of the Sunward named the new star Clarion, and the habitable planet they called Trellis. It was the second of three large and one very small planets which circled Clarion. The Sunward spent more than two weeks circling over Trellis, making maps and checking the atmosphere. Then the council of scientists on board picked a landing site and Captain Hawkins brought the ship down on the spot they had chosen. Exactly twenty-seven days from the hour they landed, the council voted unanimously that Trellis was safe for human habitation, and Allen Hawkins gave the orders to have the hatches opened to the Trellian air.
The Captain, as was customary, was the first man to set foot on the soil. He led the brief ceremonies that claimed the world as Earth's own and then planted the Terran flag. He also took the customary measure of declaring it a ship's holiday, and even threw out the first baseball when the inevitable game started up later in the afternoon. But he didn't stay to watch, preferring to stroll around the landscape by himself for a little while.
He had been walking for a little more than an hour, traveling in a wide circle around the ship, when he came upon Dr. Broussard, sitting quietly under a shady tree, a book in one hand and a container of beer in the other. The beer looked good and cold, and the shade looked comfortable. "Mind if I join you?" Hawkins asked, and since he was Captain of the ship, scarcely waited for an invitation before he sat down and opened himself a beer. It tasted as good as it had looked, and Hawkins soon found himself in an expansive mood. "Tell me, Broussard," he said good-naturedly. "How come you aren't out snooping around, making sure that the crew's libidos aren't acting up or something."
Cocking an ear towards the distant ball field, rife with the excited noise that always accompanies such a game, Broussard replied, "It sounds to me as if the crew is getting about as much libidinal discharge as I could hope for under the circumstances. That being the case, I saw no reason why the ship's alienist shouldn't have a little time off."
Hawkins leaned back comfortably against the tree. "Alienist. That's a pretty strange word these days, Broussard. Used to be what they called psychiatrists in England back in the old days, right?" Hawkins was of vaguely English descent and felt it behooved him to know such things.