This is not to say that the entire solar system was systematically probed. Compared to the vastness of space, a rocket ship is something infinitesimally small, smaller even than an atom in relation to Earth. Still, they searched high and low, anywhere the ships might have been—assuming, of course, the pilots had not simply abandoned their assigned sector. But then, what reason would they have had to leave it? They had received no radio commands or distress calls, nor were they the victims of any collision—that much, at least, had been established.

All indications were that Thomas and Wilmer had evaporated, spaceships and all, like drops of water on a blazing hot grill.

A layman endowed with some imagination, unlike his more pedestrian colleague, would have hastened to attribute the mysterious disappearances to those enigmatic creatures from other planets, creatures possessed of an awesome yet sinister intelligence who are always on the prowl in space.

But who in that advanced age of manned space exploration still believed in the existence of such creatures, not one of which had ever been encountered in the known universe? By this time the number of jokes about “creatures from outer space” far exceeded the number of cubic kilometers contained in the solar system. No one, except for the greenest recruits, whose only flight experience was in a chair suspended from the laboratory ceiling, would have bet a plugged nickel on them. If there were any inhabitants on other stars, then only on ones belonging to a distant galaxy.

Add up the handful of primitive mollusks, lichens, bacteria, infusoria—all unknown on Earth—and you have the grand total of many years’ expeditions. Even were such creatures to exist, would they really have nothing better to do than to ambush measly little patrolships in one of the most desolate, godforsaken regions of space? And how could they get within striking distance without being noticed?