As noted before, Janus Pitt did not often allow himself the luxury of self-pity. In anyone else, he would consider such a thing a despicable sign of weakness and self-indulgence. There were, however, times when he sadly rebelled at the fact that the people of Rotor were only too willing to leave all of the unpleasant decisions to him.

There was a Council, yes - duly elected, and meticulously involved in passing laws and in making decisions - all but the important ones, the ones that dealt with the future of Rotor.

That was left to him.

It was not even consciously left to him. The matters of importance were simply ignored, simply rendered nonexistent by mutual unspoken agreement.

Here they were in an empty system, leisurely building new Settlements, absently convinced that time stretched infinitely before them. Everywhere was the calm assumption that once they had filled this new asteroid belt (generations from now, and a matter of no immediate concern to anyone presently alive) the hyper-assistance technique would have improved to the point where it would be comparatively easy to seek out and occupy new planets.

Time existed in plenty. Time blended into eternity.

Only to Pitt himself was it left to consider the fact that time was short, that at any given moment, without warning, time might come to an end.

When would Nemesis be discovered back in the Solar System? When would some Settlement decide to follow

Rotor's lead?

It had to come someday. With Nemesis inexorably moving in the direction of the Sun, it would eventually reach that point - still far distant, of course, but close enough - at which the people of the Solar System would have to be blind not to see it.

Pitt's computer, with the aid of a programmer who was convinced he was working out a problem of academic interest only, had estimated that by the end of a thousand years, the discovery of Nemesis would be inevitable, and that the Settlements would begin to disperse.

Pitt had then put the question: Would the Settlements come to Nemesis?

The answer was no. By that time, hyper-assistance would be far more efficient, far cheaper. The Settlements would know more about the nearer stars - which of them had planets, and what kind. They would not bother with a red dwarf star, but would head out for the

Sun-like stars.

And that would leave Earth itself, which would be desperate. Afraid of space, clearly degenerate already, and sinking farther into slime and misery as a thousand years passed and the doom of Nemesis became apparent, what would they do? They could not undertake long trips. They were Earthpeople. Surfacebound. They would have to wait for Nemesis to get reasonably close. They could not hope to go anywhere else.

Pitt had the vision of a ramshackle world trying to find security in the more tightly held system of Nemesis, trying to find refuge in a star with a system built tightly enough together to hold in place while it was destroying that of the Sun it passed.

It was a terrible scenario, and yet inevitable. Why could not Nemesis have been receding from the Sun? How everything would be changed. The discovery of Nemesis would have become somewhat less likely with time and, if the discovery came to pass, Nemesis would become ever less desirable - and less possible - as a place of refuge. If it were receding, Earth would not even need a refuge.

But that was not the way it was. The Earthmen would come; ragtag degenerating Earthmen of every variety of makeshift and abnormal culture, flooding in. What could the Rotorians do but destroy them while they were still in space? But would they have a Janus Pitt to show them that there was no choice but that? Would they have Janus Pitts, between now and then, to make sure that Rotor had the weapons and the resolution to prepare for this and to do it when the time came?

But the computer's analysis was, after all, a deceitfully optimistic one. The discovery of Nemesis by the Solar System must come about within a thousand years, said the computer. But how much within? What if the discovery came tomorrow? What if it had come three years ago? Might some Settlement, groping for the nearest star, knowing nothing useful about farther ones, be following in Rotor's trail now ?

Each day, Pitt woke up wondering: Is this the day?

Why was this misery reserved for him? Why did everyone else sleep quietly in the lap of eternity, while only he himself was left to deal each day with the possibility of a kind of doom?

He had done something about it, of course. He had set up a Scanning Service throughout the asteroid belt, a body whose function it was to supervise the automated receptors that constantly swept the sky, and to detect at as great a distance as possible the copious waste-energy disposal of an approaching Settlement.

It had taken some time to set it all up properly, but for a dozen years now, every scrap of dubious information had been followed up, and, every once in a while, something seemed sufficiently questionable to be referred to Pitt. And every time it happened, it set off the clanging of an alarm bell in Pitt's head.

It turned out always to be nothing - so far - and the initial relief was always followed by a kind of rage against the Scanners. If anything was uncertain, they washed their hands of it, let it go, turned it over to Pitt. Let him deal with it, let him suffer, let him make the hard decisions.

It was at this point that Pitt's self-pity became lachrymose, and he would begin to stir uneasily at the possibility that he might be showing weakness.

There was this one, for instance. Pitt fingered the report that his computer had uncoded, and that had inspired this mental self-pitying survey of his own continuous, unbearable and underappreciated service to the Rotorian people.

This was the first report that had been referred to him in four months, and it seemed to him that it was of minimal importance. A suspicious energy source was approaching, but allowing for its probable distance, it was an unusually small source - a smaller source by some four orders of magnitude than one would expect of a Settlement. It was a source so small that it was all but inseparable from noise.

They might have spared him this. The report that it was of a peculiar wavelength pattern that seemed to make it of human origin was ridiculous. How could they tell anything about a source so weak - except that it was not a Settlement, and therefore could not be of human origin, whatever the wavelength pattern?

Those idiot Scanners must not annoy me in this fashion, thought Pitt.

He tossed the report aside petulantly, and picked up the latest report from Ranay D'Aubisson. That girl Marlene did not have the Plague, even yet. She madly persisted in putting herself in danger in more and more elaborate ways - and yet remained unharmed.

Pitt sighed. Perhaps it didn't matter. The girl seemed to want to remain on Erythro, and if she remained, that might be as good as having her come down with the Plague. In fact, it would force Eugenia Insigna to stay on Erythro, too, and he would be rid of both of them. To be sure, he would feel safer if D'Aubisson, rather than Genarr, were in charge of the Dome and could oversee both mother and daughter. That would have to be arranged in the near future in some way that would not make Genarr a martyr.

Would it be safe to make him Commissioner of New Rotor? That would certainly rate as a promotion and he would be unlikely to refuse the position, especially since, in theory, it would place him on an even rank with Pitt himself. Or would that give Genarr a bit too much of the reality of power in addition to the appearance? Was there an alternative?

He would have to think of it.

Ridiculous! How much easier it would all have been if that girl Marlene had only done something as simple as getting the Plague.

In a spasm of irritation at Marlene's refusal to do so, he picked up the report on the energy source again.

Look at that! A little puff of energy and they bothered him with it. He wasn't going to stand for it. He punched a memo into the computer for instant transmission. He was not to be bothered by minutiae. Keep an eye out for a Settlement!

Onboard the Superluminal , the discoveries came like a series of hammer blows, one after the other.

They were still at a great distance from the Neighbor Star when it became apparent that it possessed a planet.

‘A planet!’ said Crile Fisher with tense triumph. ‘I knew -’

‘No,’ said Tessa Wendel hastily, ‘it's not what you think. Get it through your head, Crile, that there are planets and planets. Virtually every star has some sort of planetary system or other. After all, more than half the stars in the Galaxy are multiple-star systems, and planets are just stars that are too small to be stars, you see. This planet we see isn't habitable. If it were habitable, we wouldn't see it at this distance, especially in the dim light of the Neighbor Star.’

‘You mean, it's a gas giant.’

‘Of course it is. I would have been more surprised if there hadn't been one than at finding out that one exists.’

‘But if there's a large planet, there may be small planets, too.’

‘Maybe,’ conceded Wendel, ‘but scarcely habitable ones. They'll either be too cold for life, or their rotation will be locked and they'll be showing only one side to the star, which would make it too warm on one side and too cold on the other. All that Rotor could do - if it were here - would be to place itself in orbit around the star, or possibly around the gas giant.’

‘That might be exactly what they've done.’

‘For all these years?’ Wendel shrugged. ‘It's conceivable, I suppose, but you can't count on it, Crile.’

The next blows were more startling ones.

‘A satellite?’ said Tessa Wendel. ‘Well, why not? Jupiter has four sizable ones. Why should it be surprising that this gas giant has one?’

‘It's not a satellite like any that exists in the Solar System, Captain,’ said Henry Jarlow. ‘It's roughly the size of Earth - from the measurements I've been able to make.’

‘Well,’ said Wendel, maintaining her indifference, ‘what follows from that?’

‘Nothing, necessarily,’ said Jarlow, ‘but the satellite shows peculiar characteristics. I wish I were an astronomer.’

‘At the moment,’ said Wendel, ‘I wish someone on the ship was, but please go on. You're not completely ignorant of astronomy.’