"Then you'll let me go out there among the Mandmoora?"
"I'm sorry, miss. Out of the question. Definitely out. We've evacuated all the Mandmoora who want to go. What remains is a hard core of Mandmooranian fanatics who refuse to leave their native planet under any circumstances. They've got an island just off shore here, you see. They're sun-worshippers. Ironical, isn't it? Sun-worshippers. Their sun about to go nova on them, boiling all the oceans of this waterworld and killing every speck of life on Mandmoora, and they're sun-worshippers. They just won't go. They want to stay. They say we can't make them go and they're right, we can't. Poor devils. They'll be boiled and broiled alive, all three thousands of 'em. But this headquarters can't send men out to their island after them. They'd resist and it would mean bloodshed, on both sides. We won't have it."
The Colonel's haggard face brightened, and he went on: "There's your story, Miss Crowley. Three thousand die-hard sun-worshippers, facing certain death at the altar of the very deity they adore. File that story from Deneb, Miss Crowley."
"It's been filed a hundred times already," Jane said, shaking her head. "You know it has."
The Colonel shrugged. "I refuse to authorize your going out to Mandmoora Island. Be reasonable, miss, can't you? We have evacuated a hundred million Mandmoorans in history's greatest mass exodus. Three thousand fanatics don't want out. Three thousand fanatics will broil with their world, then. That's all."
"But if they could be led to understand."
"I thought you wanted a story. A human interest story, wasn't it?"
"I was only thinking out loud."
"I've given you the only story you'll get here. Why should your video service expect more than the others?"
"No reason, I guess," Jane knew now that the answer was definitely no. She was hardly listening to the Colonel as he went on. There had to be another way, somewhere, somehow. It was the story of the century—and there wasn't another newsman on Mandmoora with a chance to scoop her. Which also meant that if Jane didn't get the story, the rest of the civilized galaxy wouldn't, either, except for watered-down public information releases.