hrough the center.

"Look at the first six orbits, Jupiter's right on the line. And
Mercury won't be leaving until Jupe crosses that line." The "line"
that Mike had indicated with his pencil across the screen would have,
in the first display shown all but one of the first six planets
already on the same side of the sun and in the new display, two days
later, it showed all six of the planets bunched in the 180 deg. arc with
Earth only a few degrees from the center of that arc.

"Hadn't thought to check before," he said, "but that's about as
predictable as anything the planets can tell you. We can expect a
flare, and probably a dilly."

"Why, Mike? If a solar flare were due, U.N. Labs wouldn't have
scheduled us this way. What makes you so sure that means there's a
solar flare coming? I thought they weren't predictable?"

"It's fairly new research--but fairly old superstition," Mike said.
"You play with horoscopes--but my people have been watching the stars
and predicting for many moons. I remember what they used to say around
the old tribal fires.

"When the planets line up on one side of the sun, you get trouble from
man and beast and nature. We weren't worried about radio propagation
in those days, but we were worried about seasons, and how we felt, and
when the buffalo would be restless.

"More recently some of the radio propagation analysts have been
worrying about the magnetic storms that blank out communications on
Earth occasionally when old Sol opens up with a broadside of protons.
Surely plays hell with communications equipment.

"Yep, there's a flare coming. Whether it's caused by gravitational
pull, when you get the planets to one side of Sol; or whether it's
magnetism--I just don't know."

"Shucks," she said, "we had a five-planet line-up in 1961; and nothing
happened; nothing at all. The seers--come to think of it, some of them
were Indians, but from India," she added, "not Amerinds--the seers all
predicted major catastrophes and the end of the world and all kinds of
things, and nothing happened."

"Bessie," Mike's voice was serious. "I remember 1961 as well as you
do. You had several factors that were different then--but you had
solar flares then. Quite spectacular ones. You just weren't out here,
where they make a difference of life or death.

"Don't let anybody hold us too long getting this station lined up and
counted down and tested out. Because we've got things building up out
there, and we