Bowman's chin hit his wishbone. A pint-sized Aurora Borealis played over his gills. "M-mission?" he gargled.
"Yes, Captain. It is my pleasure to inform you that to the Pegasus has been allotted the honor of investigating our recent cosmic visitor, Caltech VI. Yup, yup!
"You will be equipped with motion-picture, meteorological and analytical devices, and will lift gravs at 19.03 Solar Constant Time tomorrow. I need not assure you that with you go the best wishes of our great organization—"
I didn't hear the rest. I was too busy stifling an impulse to wham Brophy over the conk with a blunt instrument. I glimpsed the pans of Larkin, Evans, Weir, and the rest of the boys, and knew I wasn't alone in my reaction.
This was a hellbuster of an assignment! Caltech VI was the latest addition to Sol's family, a space-wandering planet that, from God-knows-where, had recently swum within the gravitational attraction of our sun—and taken up residence between Mars and the asteroids.
From the beginning it had been a trouble-maker. I needn't tell even the ground-grippingest Earthlubber of you that the solar system is weighed on such a hair-trigger balance that any considerable outside influence will throw it haywire. Caltech VI—named after the old, 200-inch platter that had spotted it—had raised a terrific rumpus settling into an orbit. It had caused howling storms on Mars, ionic disturbances on mighty Jupiter, and blasted a half hundred planetoids clear out of existence.
Astronomers agreed the newcomer could not last very long. A couple thousand years at the most. Inevitably it would be torn to pieces by the titanic tug-o'-war eternally waged by Jupiter and the Sun. But in the meantime, according to the Fraunhofer analysis, there were valuable ores on the interloper. Somebody, the first person or group, who set claim-stakes on Caltech's soil, would clean up big.
Fine, hush? Swell! I should have been joyful at the prospect of dipping into this celestial gravy, eh? But maybe I forgot to mention that already three expeditions had gone out from Earth and one from Venus. All of them had reported successful landings on the planet, then—silence!
Cap Bowman had gathered up his scattered wits, now, and began volleying protests like a skeet-chucker.
"But, Colonel!" he howled, "The Pegasus isn't good enough for that sort of job. We're a freighter! Our plates are worn, our hypatomics old-fashioned—"