t least as far away as another star. That means not less
than four and a half light-years away--Proxima Centauri being the
nearest star after our Sun, and four and a half light-years from us.
Their observations were imperfect. They found more planets and problems
than they had supposed. So they had to make a second trip to get enough
supplies to finish their Sun-tap base constructions. It took them thirty
years between the first stations and the ones that completed the job.

"And that, too, suggests that only one ship was originally involved
here. Of course, maybe they came back with more the second time, but it
still looks as if the main force hasn't arrived. And won't, until after
the Sun novas."

"Then that means," said Burl quickly, "that we are still dealing with
just a small and isolated group?"

"Maybe," said Haines. "Just what constitutes a small group may be hard
to say. I rather think they'd have brought the engineers and at least an
advance working party of settlers with them the second trip in. But
they are still short of available ships--they're still not aware of what
we may be going to do."

"Why is that?" asked Burl.

Haines looked thoughtful. "This is conjecture. But if they planted any
spies among our Earth people, there's been no contact, because otherwise
they'd have known we could track and crack their base as soon as it
started. This means that they still haven't had scouting ships to spare
for checking up on what they did the first time. No checkup means no
spare personnel to do the checking. They just assumed that we hadn't
caught on, and started operations by remote control as they had
originally planned."

"And that also may mean that these people are hard up," said Ferrati.
"Wherever they came from, their civilization has been great, but it's
gone to seed. They plan to seize another solar system, start over again,
and they haven't the manpower to do an adequate job--and they haven't
the abundance of material needed to set up simple check and guard
stations, such as any major Earth nation would have the sense to do."

"Why, that means we've got a fighting chance to lick 'em," said Burl
joyfully. "I kept thinking we'd run into more than we could cope with."

"We've got a fighting chance, all right," said Haines. "We may be able
to rip up their Sun-tap layouts, but what if we meet the main explorer
ship itself? Anybody who can cross interstellar space and warp the power
of the Sun, can p