worlds with methane atmospheres
and lifeless rocks without atmospheres and even earth-sized,
earth-type planets, with oceans and oxygen and warmth. But no life. No
life anywhere.

That was one of the basics they had lost, years ago--their belief that
life would arise on any planet capable of supporting it.

"We could take a spectrographic analysis of some of those high
magnitude stars," Carhill said. Then abruptly he straightened, eyes
alight, his hand on the last chart. "We don't need it after all.
Look! There's Sirius, and here it is on the plates. That means Alpha
Centauri must be--"

He paused. He frowned and ran his hand over the plate to where the
first magnitude star was photographed. "It must be. Alpha Centauri. It
has to be!"

"Except that it's over five degrees out of position." Hugh looked at
the plate, and then at the chart, and then back at the plate again.
And then he knew what it was that he had feared subconsciously all
along.

"You're right, Amos," he said slowly. "There's Alpha Centauri--about
twenty light years away. And there's Sirius, and Arcturus and
Betelgeuse and all the others." He pointed them out, one by one, in
their unfamiliar locations on the plates. "But they're all out of
position, in reference to each other."

* * * * *

He stopped. The others stared back at him, not saying anything. Little
by little the faith began to drain out of their eyes.

"What does it mean?" Martha Carhill's voice was only a whisper.

"It means that we discarded one basic too many," Hugh McCann said.
"Relativity. The theory that our subjective time, here on the ship,
would differ from objective time outside."

"No," Amos Carhill said slowly. "No, it's a mistake. That's all. We
haven't gone into the future. We can't have. It isn't possible that
more time has elapsed outside the ship than--"

"Why not?" Hugh said softly. "Why not millions of years? We've
exceeded the speed of light, many times."

"Which disproves that space-time theory in itself!" Carhill shouted.

"Does it?" Hugh said. "Or does it just mean we never really understood
space-time at all?" He didn't wait for them to answer. He pointed at
the small, far from brilliant, star that lay beyond Alpha Centauri on
the plates. "That's probably Sol. If it is, we can find out the truth
soon enough."

He looked at their faces and wondered what their reactions would be,
if the truth was what he feared.

*