III
The Lotus went on toward Planet Five, leaving a world which should have been alive and wasn't, to go to a world which should not exist, but did. On the way there was argument which became embittered. In theory, the discoveries made by a Survey ship became automatically available to all the world. But the discovery of Three in the state it was in would have political results on Earth.
It was—and is—a fact that nobody really believes in death until he sees a dead man. And nobody can believe in the destruction of a planet unless he's seen the corpse or color photographs of it. But that was precisely what the Lotus had to carry back to Earth. The WDA nations would see those pictures and read the facts. They would believe in atomic war and the complete sterilization of a world. The Com nations would not see the pictures. They would continue to believe that the West—the WDA—was decadent and enslaved to tyrannical warmongers, and obviously could not resist the splendid armed forces of the Com association. And they wouldn't really believe there could be more than isolated, crazy resistance to their valiant troops. So they'd back their leaders with enthusiasm, and the Western peoples at most would be merely desperate.
The Lotus arrived at Planet Four—which by the Lauriac laws should have been similar to Mars. It was almost its twin. It had ice-caps of hoarfrost and its atmosphere was thin and barely contaminated by oxygen. A base could be maintained here, of course, provided one had a source of supply. A base here, incidentally, would have much the value of the Com base on Luna.
The Lotus did not find that base. It found no cities or signs of settlement. But it did find a bombcrater, miles across and it seemed miles deep. There was an accumulation of reddish dust at its bottom, trapped from the thin winds that blew over this half-frozen world.
The Lotus went on to Planet Five.
The sun, so far out, was very small and its warmth was barely perceptible. But there was vegetation. The surface temperature was above freezing. The Lauriac Laws had predicted that the central metallic core would be small, and the greater part of its mass should be stony. The radioactives in Earth's thin rocky crust produce a constant flow of heat from the interior to the surface. It is considered that it is enough heat to melt a fraction of an inch of ice in a year. On this planet, with a crust many hundreds instead of mere scores of miles thickness, the internal heat was greater. The world was not frozen, and life existed here. It was a pallid, unnatural sort of life which had developed to live in starlight with a feeble assist from a very bright nearby star which happened to be its sun.
There was a base here, too. Kelley located it when he found a resonant return of certain frequencies from the ground. It was not a reflection, but resonance. And so they found the base.
It had been built by engineers the humans on the Lotus could only admire. There were gigantic doors which could admit the Lotus herself. They were rusted shut and had to be opened with explosives. There were galleries and tunnels and laboratories. There were missile launchers and missile-storage chambers. There was a giant dome housing a telescope men had not even dreamed of equalling. It was not an optical telescope.
Ultimately they found a mortuary, where the members of the garrison were placed when they died. The Lotus was not equipped for the archeological and technological studies the base called for. Its function was to scout out things for especially qualified expeditions to study. And, of course, there was the political situation back on Earth....