"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 may get that flare, and it may not be two days coming," he finished.
With that the Amerind sprang catlike to a hand-hold on the edge of the central tunnel and vanished back towards the engineering station, from which he would control the test-spin of the big wheel.