‘It was thought that the lunar vacuum would provide ideal conditions for research. Unfortunately, the fools were already busy up there, erecting their hotels and supermarkets and buggy parks and drilling for this and that. As you know, they have now almost finished construction on a subway designed to carry busybodies back and forth to their nasty little offices and eateries.
‘At great expense, we built our ring – our superconducting search ring. Useless!’
‘You did not find your smudge, I hear.’
‘It is not to be found on the Moon. The drilling and the subway vibration have driven it off. Certainly experts argue about whether that was so – but experts will argue about anything. It has still to be discovered.’ Gunther went on to explain that the high-energy detection of the Beta Smudge nearly two decades ago had merely disclosed a further something, a mess of resonances – another smudge. Gunther’s bank was prepared to fund a different sort of research, to pin down a hidden symmetry monopole.
‘And if you find it?’ Anstruther asked, not concealing his scepticism.
‘Then the world is changed … And I’ll have changed it!’ Gunther puffed out his chest and clenched his hands. ‘Leo, the Americans and the Russians have tried to find this particle, and others, without success. It has an almost mystical importance. This elusive little gizmo so far remains little more than an hypothesis, but it is believed to be responsible for assigning mass to all other kinds of particle in the universe. Can you imagine its importance?’
‘We’re talking about a destroyer of worlds?’
Gunther gestured dismissively. ‘In the wrong hands, yes, I suppose so. But in the right hands this elusive smudge will provide ultimate power, power to travel right across the galaxy at speeds exceeding the speed of light.’
Anstruther snorted to show he regarded such talk as ridiculous.
‘Well, that’s all hypothetical and I’m no expert,’ said Gunther, defensively, and went on, laying emphasis on his words. ‘I am not yet ruined and I wish for this quest to be continued. It can be continued only on Mars. I know I can raise the money. We can find the Omega Smudge there, and transcend Einstein’s equations – if we fight today to keep Mars free of the terraformers.’
Anstruther gave me a glance, as if to show that he was aware of Gunther’s bluster. All he asked, coolly, was, ‘What in practical terms do you have against terraforming?’
‘Our search needs silence – absence of vibration. Mars is the only silent place left in the habitable universe, my friend!’
When the bell rang for the afternoon session, the delegates trooped back to their places in a more sober mood than previously. The delegate for Nicaragua gave voice to a general uncertainty.
‘We are required to pronounce judgement on the future of Mars. But can “judgement” possibly be a proper description for what will conclude our discussions? Are we not just seeking to relieve ourselves of a situation of moral complexity? How can we judge wisely on what is almost entirely an unknown? Let us therefore decide that Mars is sacrosanct, if only for a while. I suggest that it comes under UN jurisdiction, and that the UN forbids any reckless developments on that planet – at least until we have made doubly sure that no life exists there.’
Thomas Gunther rose to support this plea.
‘Mars must come under UN jurisdiction, as the delegate from Nicaragua says. Any other decision would be a disgrace. The story of colonisation must not be repeated, with its dismal chapters of land devastation and exploitation of workers. Anyone who ventures to Mars must be assured that his rights are guaranteed right here. By maintaining the Red Planet for science, we shall give the world notice that the days of land-grabbing are finally over.
‘We want a White Mars.
‘This is not an economic decision but a moral one. Some delegates will remember the bitter arguments that raged when we were deciding to move the international dateline from the Pacific to the middle of the Atlantic. That was a development dictated purely by financial interests, for mere convenience of trade between the Republic of California and their partners of the Pacrim. We must now make a more serious decision, in which financial interest plays no part.