"I know. He said he wouldn’t set foot on the planet if he was sober. Said if there isn’t life there, he couldn’t take it—unless he was drunk." Captain Wiley grunted. "All right." They looked at the world. "Wouldn’t it be wonderful, Captain? Just think—to meet another race. It wouldn’t matter what they were like, would it? If they were primitive, we could teach them things. If they were ahead of us, they could teach us. You know what I’d like? To have someone meet us, to gather around us. It wouldn’t matter if they were afraid of us or even if they tried to kill us. We’d know that we aren’t alone." "I know what you mean," said Captain Wiley. Some of his emotion overflowed the prison of his body. "There’s no thrill in landing on dead worlds. If no one’s there to see you, you don’t feel like a hero." "That’s it, Captain! That’s why I came on this crazy trip. I guess that’s why we all came. I...." Captain Wiley cleared his throat. "Lieutenant, commence deceleration. 6 G’s." "Yes, sir!" The planet grew bigger, filling the entire visi-screen. Someone coughed behind Captain Wiley. "Sir, the men would like to look at the screen. They can’t see the planet out of the ports yet." The speaker was Doyle, the ship’s Engineer, a dry, tight-skinned little man. "Sure." Captain Wiley stepped aside. Doyle looked, then Parker and Fong. Just three of them, for Watkins had sliced his wrists the fourth year out. And Brown was drunk. As they looked, a realization came to Captain Wiley. The men were getting old. The years had passed so gradually that he’d never really noticed it before. Lieutenant Gunderson had been a kid just out of Space Academy. Parker and Doyle and Fong, too, had been in their twenties. They had been boys. And now something was gone—the sharp eyes and sure movements of youth, the smooth skin and thick, soft hair. Now they had become men. And yet for a few moments, as they gazed at the screen, they seemed like happy, expectant children. "I wish Brown could see this," Doyle murmured. "He says now he isn’t going to get off his couch till we land and discover life. Says he won’t dare look for himself." "The planet’s right for life," said Fong, the dark-faced astro-physicist. "Atmosphere forty per cent oxygen, lots of water vapor. No poisonous gases, according to spectroscopic analyses. It should be ideal for life." "There _is_ life there," said Parker, the radarman. "You know why? Because we’ve given up eighteen years of our lives. Nine years to get here, nine to get back. I’m thirty now. I was twenty-one when we left Earth. I gave up all those good years. They say that you can have something if you pay enough for it. Well, we’ve paid for this. There has to be a—a sort of universal justice. That’s why I know there’s life here, life that moves and thinks—maybe even life we can talk to." "You need a drink," said Fong. "It’s getting bigger," murmured Lieutenant Gunderson.