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turbulence had triggered in the first place.
    Still, the idea was intriguing, and, because of the discussions it generated, it kept a lot of minds occupied that might otherwise have tended to brood about their seemingly hopeless situation. The only person it affected badly was Dr. Crandall, who saw it only as making his situation all the worse. But, then, from the moment Crandall had returned to the bridge, it had been apparent that anything unexpected or unfamiliar affected Crandall badly—and that included virtually everything in this unknown sector of space.
    Despite everyone's best efforts to be understanding and sympathetic and even optimistic about finding a way back to Federation space, Crandall's despair and anger only seemed to grow greater. And when he learned that the Enterprise was not going to continue to hold its position near where the gate had originally existed but was going to "go exploring," he exploded.
    "My God, Kirk!" he shouted, his face paling. "If that gate is going to reappear, it's going to reappear here, not fifty parsecs away! Can't you at least wait a few more days before taking off on this wild goose chase?"
    "In the first place," Kirk pointed out with deliberate calm, "there is no evidence suggesting that the gate is going to reappear here as opposed to anywhere else. For all we know, it hasn't disappeared at all. It may have simply moved, or possibly it's flickering on and off, the way some of the ones we were originally investigating apparently did. In the second place, none of the systems we will be visiting in this first foray is more than a standard day away at even moderate warp speeds. And if we don't find anything on this first leg of our 'wild goose chase,' we'll return here to check. As we will continue to do if future legs become necessary. With the density of stars in this sector, we could visit a new system every day for months and still not be more than a standard week away."
    But Crandall would not be pacified. "And what happens when you run into another of those—those booby traps?" he almost screamed. "One that's a little more advanced? We could all be vaporized and never even know what hit us!"
    And so it had gone. In the end, Crandall had stormed off the bridge, red-faced and trembling. McCoy had followed, offering Crandall first a sedative and then some of the well-aged Scotch he had been saving since his last birthday, but Crandall stiffly and angrily refused everything. He was still in his stateroom the next day when the Enterprise dropped to sublight velocity twenty A.U. out from the first star on the list.
    It was virtually a twin to Sol, its diameter a few thousand kilometers greater, its surface temperature a few hundred degrees higher. It even had a scattering of sunspots, a phenomenon that had turned out to be relatively rare among suns with habitable planets, though no one had yet advanced an acceptable theory to account for that rarity.
    One planet, roughly earth-sized, was well within the zone in which terrestrial life could exist. It was one of seven planets, including the almost inevitable gas giants and a tiny ball of frozen methane at eighteen A.U.
    Their first discovery, as they held their position on the fringe of the system, was the hulk of what had once been an observation satellite thousands or tens of thousands of years ago, still orbiting the outermost planet. That, however, was the only indication of life they found. As far as they could tell from that distance, there were no other artificial satellites anywhere in the system, no ships of any kind, and no detectable communications activity in either the electromagnetic or subspace spectra. It appeared to be, despite the remains of the observation satellite, a dead system, and as Kirk ordered the Enterprise forward, the feeling began to take hold that they were slowly easing their way across the threshold of a mausoleum. Chief Engineer Scott seemed the most affected despite his protests that he