Astounding Science Fiction (UK Edition) — page 17: what you’re looking at

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

There had been the time when her battle- ship had run into the outer fringes of a sun; and there was the cataclysm of the storm, just past. But those had been impersonal menaces to be met with technical. virtuosities and the hard training of the service. This was different. | All the way back to the segment of ship she tried to fathom what the difference meant. It seemed to her finally that she had it. “Spectrum featureless.” Maltby gave his findings over the astro. “No dark lines at all; two of the yellow bands so immensely in- tense that they hurt my eyes. As you sug- gested, apparently what we have here is a blue sun whose strong violet radiation is cut off by the atmosphere. “However,” he finished, “the uniqueness of that effect is confined to our planet here, a derivation of the thick atmosphere. Any questions?” *“‘No-o!” The astrophysicist looked thoughtful. “And I can give you no further instructions. Tll have to examine this material. Will you ask Lady Laurr to come in? Like to speak to her privately, if you please.” ; “Of course.” When she had come, Maltby went out- side and watched the moon come up. Dark- ness—he had noticed it the previous night— brought a vague, overall violet haze. Ex- plained now! An eighty-degree temperature on a planet that, the angular diameter of the sun being what it was, would have been minus one hundred eighty degrees, if the sun’s appar- ent color had been real. A blue sun, one of five hundred thous- and— Interesting but— Maltby smiled savagely—Captain Planston’s “No further instructions!” had a finality about it that— He shivered involuntarily. And after a moment tried to picture himself sitting, like this, a year hence, staring up at an un- changed moon. Ten years, twenty— He grew aware that the woman had come to the doorway and was gazing at him where he sat on the chair. Maltby looked up. The stream of white light from inside the ship caught the queer expression on her face, gave her a strange, bicached look after the yellowness that had seemed a part of her complexion all day. “We shall receive no more astro-radio calls,” she said and, turning, went inside. Maltby nodded to himself, almost idly. It was hard and brutal, this abrupt cutting Ccomiclbooks.c©