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suns here averaged only one light year, instead of the four that was normal to
the part of the galaxy he had come from, he had not stopped to think of what
the result would be in terms of vision. Faced with such a spangling of stars,
how could any people ever have begun to group them into constellations, even
through an atmosphere which would cut down their apparent numbers somewhat?
Malis itself was quite as astonishing in its own way. Tech-nically, it was an
Earth-type planet, but of that class it was a monster, a good 10,000 miles in
diameter, or about 31,500 miles around at its equator.
And yet, like all Earth-type planets, it was only a minor member of its
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system. Its sun, a blue-white giant, had a family of twenty-four planets, of
which the grandest was a gas giant so huge that it was almost a
'grey ghost' - a dwarf semi-star just slightly short of the mass that would
have kindled it into nuclear flame. This body had nineteen satellites, one of
which was itself as big as Venus or the Earth; the number of satellites in the
Malis system as a whole was more than a hundred. The outermost world of this
immense, complex array was almost a third of a light year away from its
primary. Anyone unfortunate enough to have to live on its eternally frozen
surface would have been unable to tell by the naked eye which of the
thou-sands of stars in his sky was his sun.
And someone did live there. The computer, making a quick sweep with all the
Argo's detectors, reported that all of the planets, except the fourteen gas
giants, and every sat-ellite with a diameter greater than a thousand miles
were oc-cupied in one way or another. Some of these settlements, like the one
on the outermost planet, were obviously only the equivalents of small
garrisons; others, like the one on the
Earth-size satellite of the grey ghost, were so large that one would have to
call the world 'populated'. Of these, which were only colonies and which were
truly inhabited was a question the computer found itself unable to settle,
except for Malis itself which was so obviously the kingpin of the whole
complex that the computer did not hesitate to rule that the race that lived on
Malis had evolved there.
'Surface gravity, one point-six-seven gees,' Sandbag re-ported. 'Getting
around down there is going to be like trying to walk in the world's worst
express elevator. The air looks all right: oxygen, about five per cent, but
the computer says the surface air pressure is twenty-one pounds per square
inch, so we won't have to wear respirators.'
'Anything potentially poisonous, Jerry?'
'No, sir; nothing but the situation. But there is one oddity. The spectograms
show almost all the noble gases. It's strong-est on xenon, but there's even a
faint helium line.'
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'Not too surprising,' Dr Langer said. 'Anybody who could charge the inside of
a Martian satellite with xenon had to have a readily available supply of it.
And that, in turn, presupposed a big, heavy planet But what about radon? Inert
or not, I don't think I'd want to breathe much of that. After all, it's
radioactive, and this planet is plenty big enough to have held on to its whole
supply since creation.'
'Almost none,' Sandbag reported. 'Only the helium line is fainter.'
Looking very pleased with himself, Dr Langer addressed himself to the keyboard
of the computer. The machine promptly clattered and spat out a piece of tape.
'Just on the basis of simple radioactive decay, this planet is a minimum of
six million years older than the
Earth is. The more likely figure is about thirty-five million years. No doubt
about it - Malis had to be the dominant world in all the Heart Stars, and is
probably the world that organized the Hegemony in the first place. Gentlemen,
we are about to meet a people that has been civilized for longer than the
whole evolutionary history of the human race.'
Jack mopped his forehead. 'It makes me feel like a fly looking down the mouth
of a cannon.'
'Hmmm,' Dr Langer said. 'Now there's an idea! Nobody ever aims a cannon at a
fly intentionally. Do you gentlemen think you might manage to impersonate
flies while we're on Malis? You especially, Jerry?'
'Why -I guess so, sir. Sure! Why not? No, what I mean is - sure. But why?'
'Well, I think we've pretty much had our fill of being pets. And I think that
the more insignificant we make ourselves seem, the more we're likely to come
through this all right and with the information we were sent out to get.
Nobody ever makes pets of insects, either - not that I ever heard of.'
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'I'm going to enjoy watching Sandbag trying to be in-significant,' Jack said,
grinning.
'Why, you ape, I can be twice as insignificant as you with-out half trying!'
'And in twice as loud a voice, too.'
'Stow that,' Dr Langer said sharply. 'Prepare for landing.'
This, Jack thought with no little awe, is what I've always imagined the Hall
of the Mountain King would look like. The audience room of the Hegemon of
Malis was so huge that its ceiling could not be seen;
Jack had the uneasy feeling, which he knew to be nonsense but could not
dismiss, that its roof might be obscured by clouds. It was rather like being
inside the world's - or the universe's - most enormous cathedral, though there
was nothing in the least cathedral-like in its atmosphere.
The place was artificially lit, and along the walls at regular intervals were
placed a large number of machines, no two alike. About half of them seemed to
be control consoles, but the functions of the others couldn't even be guessed.
But there was no clutter; the general feeling was one of great austerity. This
was the chamber of judgment of a warrior race, and if it was now becoming
decadent or was in any other way in decline, as Dr Langer had hoped, Jack
could see no evidence of it around them.
There was a good reason for the size of the hall. On this planet it was
difficult to tell the difference between archi-tecture and geology, especially
from a distance. The Malans had long ago been through the metal-and-glass
building fad and the insane waste of scarce raw materials it involved; they
had gone
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back to the monumental masonry style of their earliest civilized ancestors,
except that the present tita-nic piles of stone had really been built to last
nearly for ever. Like the local mountains they resembled, nothing could
des-troy them except weathering or a geological overturn, since the Malans had
built none of them in any of the planet's earthquake zones; and the Malans had
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