Astounding Science Fiction (British edition) — page 47: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

SHARE OUR WORLD 45 took her shoulders in his hands, and, staring straight into her eyes—wiggled his nose vigorously and solemnly, several times. Chang pressed her nose to his and wiggled back. II. Tim BALcH and Ranji Sumer had set aside that evening for looking at overdue reports from Chang and sev- eral others, so they’d be briefed as well as possible before leaving for the northern hemisphere. The reports didn’t come. The meteorologists gave them only a brief tape with two dia- grams, showing information to collect on local thermal updrafis. That was O.K., but Balch was irked in spite of himself by Chang’s note, which said, “No time, so no report. I have to nurse my nibbly tonight. Seem to be finding out something. This response to electric current may be important. Try to bring me back two specimens, one from nearby and one from the other hemisphere—if they’re active there. If you haven’t got anyone to take movies of the ones near the ship while you’re gone, I’ll do it.” “How do you like that?’ said Balch. “Terse, Tim; easily understood,” smiled Sumer. They had nothing else to do, so they made out a detailed plan of their trip; topical, not chronological, be- cause they couldn’t know in what order to do things when their knowl- edge of the terrain they were to cover was so vague. The drawing up of the plan was made the occasion for a thorough discussion. When they were done they sat and looked at each other; and simultaneously suggested chess. On the eighty-day trip from Procyon this had been a major occu- pation for everyone aboard; in total man-hours it had easily surpassed all serious jobs put together. It had also been the occasion for the first bad feeling between Chang and Balch. She’d said something to the effect that he didn’t play to win, which after all was the object of the game, he was satisfied if he made a few ingenious combinations, and ‘‘when that hap- pens it goes to your head.” He’d answered, “Well, Ranji says I get foo involved in winning. Take your choice.” “I don’t know, Balch, but there must be some reason why you never play a defensive game.” “Against you, I don’t need to.”” He was sorry now he’d said that, it was sort of arrogant, but he didn’t see why it had brought on such a grim silence. After that Chang had always stood by when Balch played either of the Streloffs or Judy Jones—the only people on board who beat him regularly. 7 From the arrival on Four till to- night, there’d been no chess games between Balch and Sumer, and proba- bly none on the ship. There was no time. The ship was not capable of returning to Procyon. The one “non- velocity’’ message to there which they had the energy to send, they’d sent already; it had said that it was not necessary for rescue ships to follow them. Any further messages would have to go at merely the speed of light. So their program was this: Establish themselves on Four, find sources of food, minerals, and power; send back a light-speed message calling for colonists to follow them; then simply keep themselves alive and try to trans- form Four into a world the colonists could settle. It was a big job for their small ex- pedition. And they had to hurry. The biggest need for speed was right now; their only food so far was what they’d conniclsoooks:c© inn