1
Picnic
by Scott Carpenter
artwork by Gary Mitchell
The ship Folded spacetime, and in an instant jumped a thousand light-years to the next Possible. From the destination point, ten thousand meters above the planet's surface, the ship's computer quickly confirmed what Jim's eyes had already told him: the planet was a "hit." Habitable, and earth-like to a score of 76 on the Hoffman Scale.
Jim landed the ship on the daylight side, in a meadow that lay within hiking distance of a large lake. Trees that could pass for lodgepole pines surrounded the meadow, and white-capped mountains presided over the scene.
Nancy's eyes shone with delight. "It's beautiful!" she said. "Perfect for our picnic."
"Just the two of us," Jim said. At least until he registered the planet later, but even then it might be thousands of years before anyone visited the place again. There were more than a million habitable worlds already on record at the Hall of Exploration, and the Survey listed a billion more Possibles. Still, this was his third discovery in the four weeks since he had received his pilot's license. No small achievement for a seventeen-year-old, he thought.
"This is way better than Gundar's World," Nancy said. Then, with satisfaction, "Jenny is going to be so jealous."
She was right on both counts, although Jim didn't care about Jenny or what she thought. He did care about finding new worlds, however. When his dad grudgingly let him use the ship for the weekend, it was with the understanding that Jim was going camping on Gundar's World with his friends. But Gundar's was overcrowded, and majorly uncool. The Fold parameters for