He went to make his report just as the system constants began to reach the skipper. The local sun's mass was 1.3 sols. The solar rotation period was thirty-four days. There were sunspots of perfectly familiar kinds. The Lauriac Laws about the size and distribution of planets in a sol-type system were borne out. One was small, and its sunward side was probably at a low red heat. This was like Mercury. Planet Two, like its analogue Venus in the home system, would be resolutely unoccupiable by man. Planet Four--analogous to Mars--was smaller than Three and had a very thin atmosphere. There were gas-giants in orbits six and seven. Then a novelty Lauriac's laws predicted things about fifth planets, too, but they'd never been verified because fifth planets were unstable. They blew up. Only fragments--asteroids--had so far been noted where fifth planets of sol-type suns ought to be. But there was a fifth planet here, rolling magnificently through emptiness. It matched the Lauriac predictions. It had an atmosphere, which should contain oxygen. It was the first sol-system fifth planet ever observed. There was a babble in the skipper's office as the discoverers of the fifth planet told him about it. Nolan said curtly, "I've something more urgent to report. Planet Three ought to be like Earth. It was. It isn't, any longer. It's dead!" Nobody paid attention. There was a fifth planet! It was unparalleled! All the theories about the absence of fifth planets could now be checked! "I'm telling you," said Nolan sharply, "that the third planet's dead! It was alive, and something happened to it! It has seas and clouds and ice-caps, and they're water! But its land surface is pure desert! Where life can exist, it does. Always! Life did exist here. Now it doesn't." He turned to the skipper, "Maybe bug-eyed monsters killed it, skipper. It looks to me like murder!" Then they stared at him. He spread out his pictures. He pointed out this item and that. They were conclusive. Nobody else might have realized the facts behind them quite so soon, but when put together they fitted. "Familiar, eh?" asked Nolan sardonically. "You recognize the pictures like them before. They weren't made with cameras, like these, but artists drew them from descriptions of what would happen. Here it's happened! I think," he added, looking at the skipper, "that this is more important than fifth planets. I think we'd better go over and get what information we can and take it home. Death like this implies life a lot like men. If non-human creatures can do something as human as this, we'd better get the word back home so something can be done to get ready before we find them--or they find us." The skipper went carefully over the pictures. On one he put his finger on a feature Nolan hadn't mentioned. He seemed to wince. "I think you win, Nolan," he said painfully. "We'll send a drone down. I doubt we can land, but this ought to be checked. Immediately. Maybe I should add--inconspicuously."