We’ve come a long way from you, Richelieu, he thought. I wish we hadn’t.
“Yes, it is possible to build such a spacecraft,” said the Engineer. “Indeed, preliminary designs were drawn up more than a century ago. They showed what the magnitude of the undertaking must be. That is a major reason why it was never done.”
“It can’t be so far beyond the one I was flitting around the Solar System in,” Hanno protested. “And the robotic vessels already push the speed of light.”
“You should have studied the subject more thoroughly before you broached your proposal.”
Hanno bit his lip. “I tried,”
“It is transhumanly complex,” the Psychologist conceded. “We ourselves are employing only a semitechnical summary.”
“The basic principles involved ought to be obvious,” the Engineer said. “Robots have no need of life support, including the comforts necessary for human sanity, and they require minimal protection. For them, an interstellar carrier can be of very low mass, with small payload. Nevertheless, each represents a substantial investment, notably in antimatter.”
“’Investment’ means resources diverted from other uses,” observed the Economist. “Modern society is productive, rich, yes, but not infinitely so. There are projects closer to home, that an increasing body of opinion maintains should be started.”
“The sheer size of the universe defeats us,” sighed the Astronomer. “Consider. We have received the first beam-casts from robots that have gone about a hundred and fifty light-years. It will take longer before we hear from those few we have sent farther. The present sphere of communication contains an estimated forty thousand stars, much too many for us to have dispatched a vessel to each, the more so when the vast majority are dim red dwarfs or cold sub-dwarfs. The suns not too unlike Sol have generally proved disappointing. True, a flood of scientific discoveries already overwhelms the rate at which we can properly assimilate them; but the public finds little of it especially exciting, and nothing that could be considered a revolutionary revelation.”
“I know all that, of course I do—“ Hanno began.
The Engineer interrupted him: “You ask for a manned ship that can reach the same speeds. We grant you, no matter how long-lived you are, anything else makes little sense. Even for a handful of people, especially if they hope to found a colony, the hull must be spacious, correspondingly massive; and the mass of their necessities will exceed that by a large factor. Those necessities include laser and magne-tohydrodynamic systems able to shield against radiation as well as to draw in sufficient interstellar gas for the reaction drive. The drive in turn will consume an amount of antimatter that will deplete our reserves here in the Solar System for years to come. It is not quickly or easily produced, you know.
“Moreover, the robot craft are standardized. A scaleup such as you have in mind demands complete, basic redesign. The preliminary work stored in the database indicates how much computer capability it will take—enough to significantly curtail operations elsewhere. Production, likewise, cannot use existing parts or facilities. Whole new plants, both nanotechnological and mechanical, and a whole new organization, must come into being. The time from startup to departure may well be as long as a decade, during which various elements of society will endure noticeable inconvenience.
“In short, you wish to impose a huge cost on mankind, in order to send a few individuals to a distant planet which, it seems, may be habitable for them.”
Yes, Hanno thought, the job will beggar the Pyramids. And after a while the Pharaohs stopped building pyramids. It was too expensive. Nobody wanted it any more.
Aloud, with a stiff smile: “I am aware of everything you’ve told me, at least in a general way. I’m also aware that today’s world can do the job without imposing hardship on anyone. Please don’t poor-mouth me. You must see some merit in my idea, or we wouldn’t be having this meeting.”
“You Survivors are unique,” murmured the Artist. “To this day, you keep a certain appeal, and a certain special interest for those who care about whence we came.”
“And where we may be going!” Hanno exclaimed. “I’m talking about the future, all humanity’s. Earth and Sol won’t hist forever. We can make our race immortal.”