Paul Avery whispered, "Good Lord! A planet, here? But it's impossible!"
Sheila Moore sprang up.
"No! Remember the old legends about Vulcan, the planet between Mercury and the Sun? Nobody believed in it, because they could never find it. But they could never explain Mercury's crazy orbit, either, except by the gravitational interference of another body."
Avery said, "Surely the Mercurian observatories would have found it?" A pulse began to beat in his strong white throat.
"It's there," snapped Falken impatiently. "And we'll crash it in a minute if we ... Sheila! Sheila Moore!"
The dull glare from the ports caught the proud, bleak lines of his gypsy face, the sudden fire in his blue eyes.
"This is a world, Sheila! It might be a world for us, a world where Unregenerates could live, and wait!"
She gasped and stared at him, and Paul Avery said:
"Look at it, Falken! No one, nothing could live there."
Falken said softly, "Afraid to land and see?"