OPERATION INTERSTELLAR _By_ George O. Smith CENTURY PUBLICATIONS Chicago Published by Century Publications, 139 N. Clark St., Chicago 2, Ill. _Printed in the United States of America_ Characters and situations in this book are fictional and any similarity to actual persons or places is purely coincidental. Permission to use some of the refrains from the ballad: THE CYCLOTRONIST'S NIGHTMARE by Arthur Roberts of The State University of Iowa was graciously granted, and is hereby acknowledged with sincere appreciation. Cover by Malcolm Smith _Copyright 1950, Century Publications_ [Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] CHAPTER 1 Paul Grayson walked the city street slowly. He was sauntering towards the spaceport, but he was in no hurry. He had allowed himself plenty of time to breathe the fresh spring air, to listen to the myriad of sounds made by his fellow men, and to revel in the grand freedom that being out in the open gave him. Soon enough he would be breathing canned air, pungent with the odor of compressor oil and the tang of the greenery used to replenish the oxygen, unable to walk freely more than a few dozen steps, and unable to see what lies beyond his viewports. Occasionally his eyes looked along the low southern sky towards Alpha Centauri. Proxima, of course, could not be resolved by the naked eye, much less the stinking little overheated mote that rotated about Proxima. Obviously unfit for human life and patently incapable of spawning life of its own, it was Paul Grayson's destination, and would be his home for a few days or a few weeks depending entirely upon whether things went good or bad. Only during the last four out of two thousand millions of years of its life had this planet been useful. Man needed a place to stand; not to move the earth with Archimedes's lever but to survey the galaxy. Proxima Centauri I was the only planet in the trinary and as bad as it was, it was useful for a space station.