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Sirius. He rolled over on the other side-and then became conscious of the slightly cold airstream from the ventilator hitting him on his left cheek. Perhaps if he ignored it, the sensation would sink below the threshold of consciousness. However, the very effort of pretending it wasn’t there focused attention upon the annoyance.

On the other side of the thin partition, the ship’s plumbing once again advertised its presence with a series of soft thumps. There was an air bubble somewhere in the system, and Duncan knew, with a deadly certainty, that all the engineering skills aboard Sirius would be unable to exorcise it before the end of the voyage.

And what was that? It was a rasping, whistling sound, so irregular that no well-adjusted mechanism could possibly have produced it. As Duncan lay in the darkness, racking his brains to think of an explanation, his annoyance slowly grew to alarm. Should he call the steward and report that something had gone wrong?

He was still trying to make up his mind when a sudden explosive change in pitch and intensity left him in no doubt as to the sound’s origin. Groaning and cursing his luck, Duncan resigned himself to a sleepless night.

Dr. Chung snored..

Someone was gently shaking him. He mumbled “Go away,” then swam groggily upward from the depths of slumber.

“If you don’t hurry,” said Dr. Chung, “you’re going to miss

breakfast.”

THE LONGEST VOYAGE

1 Tis is the Captain speaking. We will be performing a final out-of-ecliptic velocity trim during the next fifteen minutes. This will be your last opportunity for a good view of Saturn, and we are orientating the ship so that it will be visible through the B Lounge windows. Thank you.”

Thank you, thought Duncan, though he was a little less grateful when he reached B Lounge. This time, too many other passengers had been tipped off by the stewards. Nevertheless, he managed to obtain a good vantage point, even though he had to stand.

Though the journey had scarcely begun, Saturn already seemed far away. The planet had dwindled to a quarter of its accustomed size; it was now only twice as large as the Moon would appear from Earth.

Yet though it had shrunk in size, it had gained in impressiveness. Sirius had risen several degrees out of the planet’s equatorial plane, and now at last he could see the rings in all their glory. Thin, concentric silver haloes, they looked so artificial that it was almost impossible to believe that they were not the work of some cosmic craftsman whose raw materials were worlds. Although at first sight they appeared to be solid, when he looked more carefully Duncan could see the planet glimmering through them, its

Ilow light contrasting strangely with their immacuaet’e, snowy whiteness. A hundred thousand kilometers below, the shadow of the rings lay in a dusky band along the equator; it could easily have been taken for an unusually dark cloud belt, rather than something whose cause lay far out in space.

The two main divisions of the rings were apparent at the most casual glance, but a more careful inspection revealed at least a dozen fainter

boundaries where there were abrupt changes in brightness between adjacent sections. Ever since the rings had been discovered, back in the seventeenth century, mathematicians like Dr. Chung had been trying to account for their structure. It had long been known that the attractions of

Saturn’s many moons segregated the billions of orbiting particles into separate bands, but the details, of the process were still unclear.

There was also a certain amount of variation within the individual bands themselves. The outermost ring, for example, showed a distinct mottling or beadiness, and a tiny clot of light was clearly visible near its eastern extremity. Was this, Duncan wondered, a moon about to be born-or the last remnants of one that had been destroyed?

Rather diffidently, he put the question to Dr. Chung.

“Both possibilities have been considered,” she said. “My studies indicate the former. That condensation may, with luck, become another satellite in a few thousand years.”

“I can’t agree, Doctor,” interjected another passenger. “It’s merely a statistical fluctuation in the particle density. They’re quite common, and seldom last more than a few years.”

“The smaller ones-yes. But this is too intense, and too near the edge of the B-ting.”

“But Vanderplas’ analysis of the Janus problem … At that moment, it became rather like the shootout in an old time Western movie. The two scientists reached simultaneously for their hip computers and then retreated, muttering equations, to the back of the lounge.

Thereafter, they completely ignored the real Saturn they had come so far to study-and which, in all probability, they would never see again.

“Captain speaking. We have concluded our velocity trim and are re orientating the ship into the plane of the ecliptic. I hope you had a good view-Saturn will be a long way off next time you see it.”