[A] Earth's sun, from Earth, is of magnitude roughly minus thirty-six.
CHAPTER 6
A large part of the firmament was blotted out by the blindingly bright half-disk of Weald, as it shone in the sunshine. It had ice-caps at its poles, and there were seas, and the mottled look of land which had that carefully maintained balance of woodland and cultivated areas which was so effective in climate control. The Med Ship floated free, and Calhoun fretfully monitored all the beacon frequencies known to man.
There was relative silence inside the ship. Maril watched Calhoun in a sort of despairing indecision. The four young blueskins still slept, still bound hand and foot upon the control-room floor. Murgatroyd regarded them, and Maril, and Calhoun in turn, and his small and furry forehead wrinkled helplessly.
"They can't have landed what I'm looking for!" protested Calhoun as his search had no result. "They can't. It would be too sensible for them to have done it!"
Murgatroyd said "Chee!" in a subdued voice.
"But where the devil did they put them?" demanded Calhoun. "A polar orbit would be ridiculous! They—" Then he grunted in disgust. "Oh! Of course! Now, where's the landing-grid?"
He worked busily for minutes, checking the position of the Wealdian landing-grid—mapped in the Sector Directory—against the look of continents and seas on the half-disk so plainly visible outside. He found what he wanted. He put on the ship's solar-system drive.
"I wish," he complained to Maril, "I wish I could think straight the first time! And it's so obvious! If you want to put something out in space, and not have it interfere with traffic, in what sort of orbit and at what distance will you put it?"