Horrified, Dona stared at him. She went pale.
"Oh—horrible! The sky would be black—always! Never a glimmer of light. No stars. No moons. No sun. The plants would die and rot, and the people would grow bleached and pale, and finally they'd starve."
"All but the little gang hidden away in a well-provisioned hide-out," said Kim grimly. "I think that's what's happened to Ades, or is happening. And this is the solar system where the little trick was worked out. I'd hoped simply to raid the generator and find out how it worked, which would be dangerous enough. Look!"
He pointed to the projected image of the sun. There was a tiny dot against its surface. It was almost, it seemed, bathed in the tentacular arms of flaming gases flung up from the sun's surface.
"There's the planet," said Kim. "At its closest to the sun! With the shield up, so that nothing can reach its surface. Nothing! And that includes space-ships such as this. And at that distance, Dona, the hard radiation from the sun would go right through the Starshine and kill us in seconds before we could get within millions of miles of the planet. If there's any place in the Universe that's unapproachable, there it is. It may be anything up to three months before the shield goes down even for fractions of a second at a time. And my guess is that the people on Ades won't last that long. They've had days in which to grow hopeless already. Want to gamble?"
Dona looked at him. He regarded her steadily.
"Whatever you say, Kim."
"Sixteen million lives on Ades, besides other aspects of the situation," said Kim. "The odds against us are probably about the same, sixteen million to one. That makes it a fair bet. We'll try."
He got up and began to tinker with the radiation-operated relay which turned off the transmitter-drive. Presently he looked up.
"I'm glad I married you, Dona," he said gruffly.