"But we want to investigate for planets to land on, don't we?" asked Morey.
"Sure," agreed Fuller. "But do we have to hunt at random for them? Can't we look for stars like our own sun? Won't they be more apt to have planets like Sol's?"
"It's an idea," replied Morey.
"Well, why not try it then?" Fuller continued logically. "Let's pick out a G-0 type sun and head for it."
They were now well out toward the edge of the Galaxy, some thirty thousand light years from home. Since they had originally headed out along the narrow diameter of the lens-shaped mass of stars that forms our Island Universe, they would reach the edge soon.
"We won't have much chance of finding a G-0 this far out," Arcot pointed out. "We're about out of stars. We've left most of the Galaxy behind us."
"Then let's go on to another of the galactic nebulae," said Morey, looking out into the almost unbroken night of intergalactic space. Only here and there could they see a star, separated from its nearest neighbor by thousands of light years of empty space.
"You know," said Wade slowly, "I've been wondering about the progress along scientific lines that a race out here might make. I mean, suppose that one of those lonely stars had planets, and suppose intelligent life evolved on one of those planets. I think their progress would be much slower."
"I see what you mean," Arcot said. "To us, of Earth, the stars are gigantic furnaces a few light years away. They're titanic tests tubes of nature, with automatic reading devices attached, hung in the sky for us to watch. We have learned more about space from the stars than all the experiments of the physicists of Earth ever secured for us. It was in the atoms of the suns that we first counted the rate of revolutions of the electrons about their nuclei."
"Couldn't they have watched their own sun?" Fuller asked.