captain-scientist replied, soberly. "Mechanically,
the ship is as nearly perfect as our finest minds can make her. She is
stocked for two years. All the iron-bearing suns within reach have been
plotted. Everything is ready except the iron. Of course the Council
refused to allow us any of the national supply--how much were you able
to purchase for us in the market?"

"Nearly ten pounds...."

"Ten pounds! Why, the securities we left with you could not have bought
two pounds, even at the price then prevailing!"

"No, but you have friends. Many of us believe in you, and have dipped
into our own resources. You and your fellow scientists of the expedition
have each contributed his entire personal fortune; why should not some
of the rest of us also contribute, as private citizens?"

"Wonderful--we thank you. Ten pounds!" The captain's great triangular
eyes glowed with an intense violet light. "At least a year of cruising.
But ... what if, after all, we should be wrong?"

"In that case you shall have consumed ten pounds of irreplaceable
metal." The Secretary was unmoved. "That is the viewpoint of the Council
and of almost everyone else. It is not the waste of treasure they object
to; it is the fact that ten pounds of iron will be forever lost."

"A high price, truly," the Columbus of Nevia assented. "And after all, I
may be wrong."

"You probably are wrong," his host made startling answer. "It is
practically certain--it is almost a demonstrable mathematical fact--that
no other sun within hundreds of thousands of light-years of our own has
a planet. In all probability Nevia is the only planet in the entire
Universe. We are very probably the only intelligent life in the
Universe. There is only one chance in numberless millions that anywhere
within the cruising range of your newly perfected space-ship there may
be an iron-bearing planet upon which you can effect a landing. There is
a larger chance, however, that you may be able to find a small, cold,
iron-bearing cosmic body--small enough so that you can capture it.
Although there are no mathematics by which to evaluate the probability
of such an occurrence, it is upon that larger chance that some of us are
staking a portion of our wealth. We expect no return whatever, but if
you _should_ by some miracle happen to succeed, what then? Deep seas
being made shallow, civilization extending itself over the globe,
science advancing by leaps and bounds, Nevia becoming populated as