“Humankind will deal with geological problems when they arise,” the Astronomer said. “They won’t for several billion years.”
Hanno refrained from saying: I think anything that might be called human will be long extinct by then, here. Death, or transfiguration? I don’t know. To me, it hardly matters which.
“Any idea of large-scale interstellar colonization is ludicrous,” declared the Economist.
“If it could be done,” said the Astronomer, “it would have been done already, and we would know about it.”
Yes, I’ve heard the argument, over and over, from the twentieth century onward. If the Others exist, where are They? Why have Their exploring robots, at least, never visited Earth? We ourselves, we’re interested enough to send follow-ups to those primitive sapients we’ve found. What little we’ve learned thus far has touched our thinking, our arts, our spirits in subtle ways—if nothing else, as much as Africa touched Europe when the white man opened it up. If only life and awareness weren’t so seldom, so incidental or accidental. I think we’d be out there today, seeking, had the loneliness not reached in to freeze us.
Nevertheless, They exist!
“We must be patient,” the Astronomer went on. “It seems clear that They are. In due course, robots will get there; or we may establish direct communication earlier.”
Across light-centuries- That long between question and answer.
“We don’t know what They are like,” Hanno said. “What the x many different Theys are like. You’ve read the written proposal I submitted. Haven’t you? I went over each of the old arguments. They get down to simply this, that we do not know. What we do know is what we are capable of.”
“The limits of feasibility are contained within the limits of possibility,” declared the Economist.
“Yes, we have studied your report,” the Sociologist said. “The reasons you give for mounting the enterprise are logically inadequate. True, some thousands of individuals believe they would like to go. They feel frustrated, bewildered, out of place, confined, or otherwise discontented. They dream of a fresh start on a fresh world. Most of them are immature and will outgrow it. Most of the rest are visionaries who would retreat, shocked, if offered the opportunity in reality. You are left with perhaps a few score, for whose emotional convenience you want the entire society to pay a high share-cost.”
“They’re the ones that matter.”
“Do they, when they are so selfish that they will actually subject their descendants—for they will reproduce if they live—to the hazards and deprivations?”
Hanno’s grin was stark. “All parents have always made that kind of decision. It’s in the nature of things. Would you deny your race the opportunities, discoveries, whole new ways of thinking and working and living, that this civilization forecloses?”
“Your point is not ill taken,” said the Psychologist. “Still, you must agree that success is not guaranteed. On the contrary, you would take a rather wild gamble. It is not yet proven that any of the half-score planets thus far found which seem to have Earthlike environments and biochemistries, is not a long-range death trap.”
“We could look farther if need be. We’ve got the tune. What we need is something worth doing with it.”
“You would indeed find marvels,” said the Artist. “Perhaps you could understand them and convey them back to us in fashions that no robot is, quite able to.”
Hanno nodded. “I have a notion that intelligent life can only communicate fully with its own kind. Maybe I’m wrong, but how can we be certain before we’ve tried? We build our limitations and the limitations of our knowledge into our machines and their programs. Yes, they learn, adapt, modify themselves according to experience; the best of them think; but it’s always along machine lines. What do we know about experiences they can’t handle? Maybe scientific theory is complete, maybe not; but in any case it’s a mighty big universe yonder. Much too big and full for us to predict. We need more than one breed of explorer.”
The Engineer frowned. “So your petition maintains. Did you imagine its contentions are new? They have been brought up again and again, to be rejected as insufficient. The probability of success, and the value of any success that might be had, are too slight in relation to cost.”