Both of the astronomers were heartily sick of spending so much of their observational time with recalcitrant equipment; and in making observations of the globe from which they had come. After all, why should an astronomer be interested in Earth? Though admittedly this was the first observatory in man's entire history that had had the opportunity for such a careful scrutiny. "This flare business, that our captive Indian was predicting," Jerry asked. "Think there's anything to it? Or am I just learning rumors about my profession from lay sources?" "A rather presumptuous prediction, though he may be right." Perk's clipped tone was partly English, partly the hauteur of the professional. To him, solar phenomena were strictly sourced on the sun, and if they were to be understood at all, it would be in reference to the internal dynamics of the sun itself. "The torroidal magnetic fields dividing the slowly rotating polar regions from the more rapid rotation near the solar equator," he said slowly, rather pedantically, but as though talking to himself, "should have far more effective control over solar phenomena than the periodic unbalance created by the off-center gravitic fields when the inner planets bunch on the same side of their solar orbits. "To imply otherwise would be rather like saying that the grain of sand is responsible for the tides. "Yet," he added honestly, "the records compiled by some of the communications interests that used to be greatly disturbed by the solar flares' influence on radio communications, seem to indicate that there is a connection. So there is the possibility, however remote, that our captive redskin might be right; or rather, that there is a force involved that makes the two coincidental." But even as he talked, an unnoticed needle on the board began an unusual, wiggling dance, far different from its ordinary, slow averaging reactions. Twice, without being noticed, it swung rapidly towards the red line on its meter face; and then on its third approach the radiation counter swung over the red line and triggered an alarm. From only one source in their environment could they expect that level of X-ray intensity. Without so much as a pause for thought, as the alarm screamed, barely glancing at the counter, Perk reached for the intercom switch and intoned the chant that man had learned was the great emergency of space: "Flare, flare, flare--take cover." Simultaneously, he flipped three switches putting the observatory, the only completely unshielded area within the satellite, on automatic, to record as much as it could of the progress of the solar flare with its incomplete equipment, while he and Jerry dove through the open air lock down the central well to the emergency shield room in the center of the hub.