"A carrier wave with audio modulation," he said with disbelief all over his face.
Larson remained calm. "I hear you, lad. Don't shout." He studied the signal and frowned deeply. "It's faint, but you can get a fix."
As they played with the instruments I looked forward through the green shield that protected us from Alpha C's heavy radiation. Our destination star was now a brilliant blob dominating our piece of heaven. It was a difficult thing to grasp that we had travelled almost 26 trillion miles—in five days, ship's time.
Mac said, "It's a planet, sure enough, but that audio—"
Larson snapped, "Forget the audio! Give me a bearing, and let's be getting on course. That may be the only planet in the system, and I don't want to lose it."
His arms pumped and his big hands pawed at the controls as he brought the inertialess drive into manual manipulations.
For the next few, tense hours we stalked the planet at a discreetly low velocity. When his navigation problem was complete and we were on a slow approach orbit, Mac began playing with the communication rig again.
The ship's intercom was cut in, and we had to chase people out as excitement mounted over our discovery. Finally, when his elbow had been jostled once too often, Larson ordered the control room cleared of all hands but Hulbert and me.
When we were alone Larson said, "This is fantastic."
Mac's face was tied into an amazed scowl, too, as he studied the feeble little patterns on his wave analyzer. "You said it," he breathed. "We've got ourselves a sweet little earth-type planet, if we can believe the spectro, and unless I'm stark space-happy, there's something or somebody down there beaming a broadcast smack in our direction, following us around like the string on a yo-yo."