Jensen started. He went very pale.
"It's too late to do anything about it," said Nordenfeld. "It's probably nonsense anyhow. But what is it?"
Jensen stammered out his story. It explained why there were so many passengers for the Star Queen. It even explained his departure from Altaira. But it was only a rumor—the kind of rumor that starts up untraceably and can never be verified. This one was officially denied by the Altairan planetary government. But it was widely believed by the sort of people who usually were well-informed. Those who could sent their families up to the Star Queen. And that was why Jensen had been tense and worried until the liner had actually left Altaira behind. Then he felt safe.
Nordenfeld's jaw set as Jensen told his tale. He made no comment, but when Jensen was through he nodded and went away, leaving his drink unfinished. Jensen couldn't see his face; it was hard as granite.
And Nordenfeld, the ship's doctor of the Star Queen, went into the nearest bathroom and was violently sick. It was a reaction to what he'd just learned.
There were stars which were so far away that their distance didn't mean anything. There were planets beyond counting in a single star cluster, let alone the galaxy. There were comets and gas clouds in space, and worlds where there was life, and other worlds where life was impossible. The quantity of matter which was associated with life was infinitesimal, and the quantity associated with consciousness—animal life—was so much less that the difference couldn't be expressed. But the amount of animal life which could reason was so minute by comparison that the nearest ratio would be that of a single atom to a sun. Mankind, in fact, was the least impressive fraction of the smallest category of substance in the galaxy.
But men did curious things.
There was the cutting off of the Star Queen's short-distance drive before she'd gotten well away from Altaira. There had been a lift-ship locked to the liner's passenger airlock. When the last passenger entered the big ship—a little girl—the airlocks disconnected and the lift-ship pulled swiftly away.
It was not quite two miles from the Star Queen when its emergency airlocks opened and spacesuited figures plunged out of it to emptiness. Simultaneously, the ports of the lift-ship glowed and almost immediately the whole plating turned cherry-red, crimson, and then orange, from unlimited heat developed within it.