Winston K. Marks

“ 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." ”

“ We approached the stars before us at such a velocity that their light impinged at a rate above the visible violet spectrum.
Mac blurted out, "It will never work out."
"What won't?"
"Colonization. Not at these unholy distances, even if we do find an earth-type planet or two. People won't leave everything behind them like this. I—I feel cut off. Something's gone, everything, everybody we knew back there. It's terrible to consider!"
I sat down beside him, stared out into the India-ink and faced a few over-due realities myself. Our chances of finding a habitable planet were remote. ”

“ We were the pioneers on the first starship, the first to try out the Larson Drive in deep space. At last, man's travel would be measured in parsecs, for our destination was 26 trillion miles down near the celestial south pole. ”

“ A man's voice: "—lcome to New Columbia. Welcome, Albert E. Come in, please. Welcome to New Columbia. Welcome, Albert E. Come in please."
It repeated over and over. Larson let his breath go first with a nervous snort. Mac and Larson both looked at me as if maybe I had something to do with it. Hands trembling, Mac picked up the microphone and reached for the transmitter switch. Larson grabbed the mike from his hand. "Not so fast, dammit!"
"But they know we're up here," Mac protested. "They even know the name of our ship!" ”

“ Their space-time theory provided, they claimed, a neat device for survival on our high-velocity journey.
The faster a body moves in reference to another, the slower time appears to act on the moving body. If, they said, man could travel at the speed of light, supposedly time would stand still for him. ”

“ Of all the morbid nonsense. Yearning for the obituary column, the sports page and the headlines. But then people are rarely sensible when something disturbs their tidy little universe that they take for granted. ”

“ If we don't find an inhabitable planet we won't have accomplished much."
"You are wrong," he said quickly. "We have already served our purpose."
"Testing the Drive, you mean?"
He nodded. "This morning in our last radio contact with earth I dispatched the word. The Larson Drive is successful. We have passed from our solar system on schedule, and our measurements of ship-objective time check out with the theory—roughly, at least."
He spread his hands out on the table. "This was our primary goal. The expedition ahead is subsidiary. Colonization may result from our exploration, true ”