We’re extending it to cover as much territory as possible, and to increase its stablility, not to span the distance between places. There’s no point to reproaching it because it doesn’t span a real gapbetween, say, Dover and Calais. It’s a bridge to knowledge, and that’s far more important. Why can’t you see that?”
“I can see that; that’s what I was talking about,” Helmuth said, trying to control his impatience. “I have as much common sense as the average child. What I was trying to point out is that meeting colossalness with colossal-nessout hereis a mug’s game. It’s a game Jupiter will always win, without the slightest effort. What if the engineers who built the Dover-Calais bridge had been limited to broom-straws for their structural members? They could have got the bridge up somehow, sure, and made it strong enough to carry light traffic on a fair day. But what would you have had left of it after the first winter storm came down the Channel from the North Sea? The whole approach is idiotic!”
“All right,” Dillon said reasonably. “You have a point.
Now you’re being reasonable. What better approach have you to suggest? Should we abandon Jupiter entirely because it’s too big for us?”
“No,” Helmuth said. “Or maybe, yes. I don’t know. I don’t have any easy answer. I just know that this one is no answer at allit’s just a cumbersome evasion.”
Dillon smiled. “You’re depressed, and no wonder. Sleep it off, Bob, if you canyou might even come up with that answer. In the meantimewell, when you stop to think about it, the surface of Jupiter isn’t any more hostile, inherently, than the surface of Jupiter V, except in degree. If you stepped out of this building naked, you’d die just as fast as you would on Jupiter. Try to look at it that way.”