Bridge could be considered as the last and the mightiest of
them all.”
“Not by me,” Helmuth said. “The building of gigantic proj-
ects for ritual purposesdoing a thing for the sake of doing
itis the last act of an already dead culture. Look at the
pyramids in Egypt for an example. Or an even more idiotic
and more enormous example, bigger than anything human
beings have accomplished yet, the laying out of the ‘Diagram
of Power’ over the whole face of Mars. If the Martians had
put all that energy into survival instead, they’d probably be
alive yet.”
“Agreed,” Wagoner said.
“All right. Then maybe you’ll also agree that the essence
of a vital culture is its ability to defend itself. The West has
beaten off the Soviets for a century nowbut as far as I can
see, the Bridge is the West’s ‘Diagram of Power’, its pyra-
mids, or what have you. All the money and the resources that
went into the Bridge are going to be badly needed, and won’t
be there, when the next Soviet attack comes.”
“Which will be very shortly, I’m told,” Wagoner said, with
complete calm. “Furthermore, it will be successful, and in part
it will be successful for the very reasons you’ve outlined.
For a man who’s been cut off from the Earth for years,
Helmuth, you seem to know more about what’s going on
down there than most of the general populace does.”
“Nothing promotes an interest in Earth like being off it,”
Helmuth said. “And there’s plenty of time to read out here.”
Either the drink was stronger than he had expected, or the
senator’s calm concurrence in the collapse of Helmuth’s entire