So how did people like Howard Kalens feel about Chiron? Colman wondered. Did they think they could possess a whole planet? Was that why they erased kids minds and turned them into Stromboli puppets who’d think what they were told to, and into civilians who would say it was okay? But why did the people let them do it? Most people didn’t want to own a planet; they just wanted to be loft alone to be engineers or run their farms. Because they played along with the rules that said they were
better if they thought the way the rules said they should, and no good if they didn’t.
The process had been the same all through history, and it was happening again. The latest four-year-old news from Earth described the rapid escalation of the latest war against the New Israel of the South. Only this time the EAF was getting involved. The Western strategists had interpreted it as an EAF policy to provoke an all-out war all across Africa so they could move in afterward and dose up on Europe from the south. Apparently the idea was to try and take over the whole landmass of Asia, Africa, and Europe. Why did they want to take over the whole of Asia, Africa, and Europe? Colman didn’t know. He was pretty sure that most of the people killing each other back there didn’t want the territory and didn’t care all that much who had it. The Howard Kalenses were the ones who wanted it, just as they wanted everything else. Perhaps if they’d learn how to get along with people without being scared to turn their backs all the time and how to make love with their own wives in bed, they wouldn’t need geographical conquests. And ‘yet they could tell everybody it made them better than the people were, and the people believed it.
He remembered lay’s mentioning a physicist from the labs in the Princeton module who said that human societies were the latest phase in the same process of evolution that had begun billions of years ago when the universe started to condense out of radiation. Evolution was a business of survival. Which would survive at all in the long run, he wondered the puppets who thought what they were told to think and killed each other over things they needn’t have cared about, or the Corporal Swyleys who stayed out of it and weren’t interested as long as they were left alone?
Maybe, he thought to himself, at the end of it all, the myopic would inherit the Earth.
CHAPTER 9
ON THE DAY officially designated December 28, 2080, in the chronological system that would apply until the ship switched over to the Chironian calendar, the Mayflower 11 entered the planetary system of Alpha Centauri at a speed of 2837 miles per second, reducing, with its main drive still ‘firing at maximum power. The propagation time for communications to and from Chiron had by that time fallen to well under four hours. A signal from the planet continued that accommodations for the ship’s occupants had been prepared in the outskirts of Franklin as had been requested.
December 31, 2080
Distance to Chiron 1.9 billion miles; speed down to 1100 miles per second. Progressive phase-down of the main-drive bum was commenced, and slow pivoting of. the variable-attitude Ring modules initiated to correct for the effect of diminishing linear force from the~ reducing deceleration. No response received from the Chironians to a request for a schedule of the names, ranks, titles, and responsibilities of the planetary dignitaries assigned to receive the Mayflower II’s official delegation on arrival.
January 5, 2081
Speed 300 miles per second; distance to destination, 493 million miles. Course-correction effected to bring the ship round onto its final approach.
January 8, 2081
At 8 million miles, defenses brought to full alert and advance screen of remote-control interceptors deployed 50,000 miles ahead of ship to cover final approach. Response from Chiron neutral.
January 9, 2081
Communications round-trip delay to Chiron, twenty-two seconds. Formal arrangements for reception procedures still not concluded. Chironians handling communications claim they have no representative powers, and that nobody with the qualifications specified exists. Mayflower II’s defenses brought to combat readiness.