 What would have happened if the Centaurus Expedition hadn’t failed?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1949. In the last hours the star ahead had grown brighter by many magnitudes, and had changed its color from a dazzling blue through white to the normal yellow, of a GO sun. The great chamber, a full cross-section of the vessel, had been at first a fuel hold. At the voyage's beginning eighty per cent of the fifteen-hundred-foot cylinder had been engines and fuel; but as the immense stores were spent and the holds became radioactively safe, the crew had spread out from its original cramped quarters. A feverish buzz arose; the captain gestured for silence and went on, "It is still only a featureless disk to the telescope. Earth's still there." He said, with a touch of tolerant amusement, "What did you think might have happened to Earth? It won't be the same world we left, the world we knew and fitted in...." He had already set up on the calculator a course that would carry them to Earth. And we don't know what changes have taken place on Earth. As the Quest III's fuel stores and the hope of success in man's mightiest venture had dwindled, so the strength had gone out of him. Weeks and months had passed for the Quest III in interstellar flight while years and decades had raced by on the home world.
 People from Earth would have colonized the Procyon system.
 People from Earth would have colonized the Procyon system.  Captain Llud would have become a hero.  The other two Quest ships would have been launched.  Humanity would have died out.