V.
T
HE Authority booked first-class passages for all expeditionary personnel, which in the case of a hop up to the
Moon meant a direct ferry traveling at one gee all the way. Standing by the observation window, an untasted drink in his
hand, David Ryerson remarked: “You know, this is only the third time I’ve been off Earth. And the other two, we transshipped at Satellite and went free-fall most of the way.”
“Sounds like fun,” said Maclaren. “I must try it sometime.”
“You . . . in your line of work . . . you must go to the Moon quite often,” said Ryerson shyly.
Maclaren nodded. “Mount Ambarzumian Observatory, on Farside. Still a little dust and gas to bother us, of course, but I’ll let the purists go out to Plato Satellite and bring me back their plates.”
“And—No. Forgive me.” Ryerson shook his blond head.
“Go on.” Maclaren, seated in a voluptuous formfit lounger, offered a box of cigarettes. He thought he knew Ryerson’s type, serious, gifted, ambitious, but awe-smitten at the gimcrack fact of someone’s hereditary technic rank. “Go ahead,” he invited. “I don’t embarrass easy.”
“I was only wondering . . . who paid for all your trips . the observatory or—”
“Great ancestors! The observatory?” Maclaren threw back his head and laughed with the heartiness of a man who had never had to be very cautious. It rang above the low music and cultivated chatter; even the ecdysiast paused an instant on her stage.
“My dear old colleague,” said Maclaren, “I not only pay my own freight, I am expected to contribute generously toward the expenses of the institution. At least,” he added, “my father is. But where else would money for pure research come from? You can’t tax it out of the lower commons, y’ know. They haven’t got it. The upper commons are already taxed to the limit, short of pushing them back down into the hand-to-mouth masses. And the Protectorate rests on a technic class serving but not paying. That’s the theory, anyhow: in practice, of course, a lot of ‘em do neither. But how else would you support abstract science, except by patronage? Thank the Powers for the human snob instinct, it keeps both research and art alive.”
Ryerson looked alarmed; glanced about as if expecting momentary arrest, finally lowered himself to the edge of a chair and almost whispered: “Yes, sir, yes, I know, naturally. I was
just not so . . . so familiar with the details of . . . financing.”
“Eh? But how could you have ~missed leariiing? You trained to be a scientist, didn’t you?”
Ryerson stared out at Earth, sprawling splendor across the constellations. “I set out to be a spaceman,” he said, blushing. “But in the last couple of years I got more interested in gravitics, had to concentrate too much on catching up in that field to
well . . . also, I was planning to emigrate, so I wasn’t interested in—The colonies need trained men. The opportunities—”
Pioneering is an unlimited chance to become the biggest frog, provided the puddle is small enough, thought Maclaren. But he asked aloud, politely, “Where to?”
“Rama. The third planet of Washington 5584.”
“Hm-m-m? Oh, yes. The new one, the GO dwarf. Uh, how far from here?”
“Ninety-seven light-years. Rama has just passed the five-year survey test.” Ryerson leaned forward, losing shyness in his enthusiasm. “Actually, sir, Rama is the most nearly terrestroid planet they have yet found. The biochemistry is so similar to Earth’s that one can even eat some of the native plants and— Oh, and there are climatic zones, oceans, forests, mountains, a single big moon—”
“And thirty years of isolation,” said Maclaren. “Nothing connecting you to the universe but a voice.”
Ryerson reddened again. “Does that matter so much?” he asked aggressively. “Are we losing a great deal by that?”
“I suppose not,” said Maclaren.
Your lives, perhaps, he thought. Remember the Shadow Plague on New Kashmir? Or your children—there was the mutation virus on Gondwana. Five years is not long enough to learn a planet; the thirty-year quarantine is an arbitrary minimum. And, of course, there are the more obvious and spectacular things, which merely kill colonists without threatening the human race. Storms, quakes, morasses, volcanoes, meteorites. Cumulative poisoning. Wild animals. Unsuspected half-intelligent aborigines. Strangeness, loneliness, madness. It’s no wonder the colonies which survive develop their own cultures. It’s no wonder they come to think of Earth as a parasite on their