Space by James A. Michener
“That’s how we solved the objections you made forty years ago!”
Mott took no sides in this debate, but he had always attended to the quiet sardonic guesses of salty Freeman Dyson of Princeton, and if Dyson now argued that both communication and travel might be practical sooner than some thought, he was inclined to go along, but after one evening session, when debate had sizzled, he walked alone under the Vermont stars and acknowledged that he had for some time been harboring a thought which stunned him when said aloud: “Perhaps we are unique. Perhaps we’re the only planet that developed life. Perhaps ...”
[800] A voice hailed him: “That you, Mott?” It was Strabismus. “The ideas thunder at you like railway trains,” he said.
“That’s why we hold these sessions.”
“Cold turkey? What’s your personal guess as to how many others there might be?”
As they walked side by side through the starry night Mott answered honestly: °I was just about to concede that Earth might be unique-”
“But you didn’t?”
“No, Strabismus. I think all our fractions were far too conservative. My calculations permit about two million societies with whom we could interact.”
They looked for a light, and when they found a lamppost Strabismus took a scrap of paper from his pocket. “My fractions are bigger, too. I come up with about a million.” He folded the paper, returned it to his pocket, and said, “But these are figures for those in the know. The general population, it would only confuse them.”
“And you intend to keep them confused?”
“I intend to work with them as I find them.”
“You mean use them.”
“They want to be used.”
“We’ll resume in the morning!”
Like many great conflagrations, the fundamental fight began with a fire so small that a child could have extinguished it, and when it started, no one could have foreseen its destructive potential. It centered on the fraction f1, the portion of eligible planets on which life actually develops, for what started out to be a problem in biology quickly became a question of metaphysical and religious values. The scientist who presented the basic data used an unfortunate term; he said that life would evolve compulsively whenever the primordial soup had the right components, temperature, pressure and general surroundings, and he believed that these rules must prevail throughout the universe, so that the genesis of life was possible in billions of imagined situations.
The religionists and some of the lay observers found “ this phrase primordial soup wildly offensive and withdrew any conciliatory gestures they may have made during the first days of the conference. One fiery Baptist, the Reverend Hosea Kellog of the Red River Bible University, [801] shouted, “Man was placed on this Earth by the personal intervention of God, as a man entire, and not as a cauldron of bubbling chemicals.” Quickly the debate ran wild, leading to this improbable exchange:
“Are you claiming, Reverend Kellog, that God saves only those who accept Jesus Christ? And all the rest are condemned to eternal hell?”
“That’s what the Bible says.”
“Does this mean that all Jews are so condemned?”
“Especially the Jews. They had a chance to accept Jesus and they denied him. They stand condemned.”
“And all the people in Asia who never heard of Jesus? And all those in Africa? And all the Unitarians in this country, and the non-believers?”
“They are all condemned.”
“And the millions who died before Christ appeared? They could never have known him. Are they, too, in everlasting hell?”
“They are.”
Even Reverend Strabismus found such doctrine too extreme, and he surprised the assembly by refuting it: “My Bible preaches hope for all. I was a Jew but saw the light, and I’m convinced that God welcomes me into His heaven. But this does not mean that I condemn the other Jews in this assembly or in this nation who have not seen the true way. If God is big enough to have set in motion the kind of universe we’ve been describing, He’s big enough to find a place in it for a handful of Jews and Buddhists.”
“Anathema!” shouted Kellog. “I rue the day I granted you a degree in theology.”
Strabismus had far more friends in the hall than Kellog, and this condemnation of their leader was offensive, so a brawl erupted, and soon scientists were defending their right to exist, while Kellog’s men condemned them anew. The affair would have destroyed the workshop had not Dr. Mott gaveled the contestants to order and then abruptly terminated the stormy session.
He had little on which to congratulate himself, for at seven the next morning his phone began to jangle, and in quick succession he had three agitated calls from NASA headquarters and a stern one from Senator Pope: “You were sent there to keep those tigers in their cages, Stanley. [802] Throw them some warm meat and bring this thing under control.”
“How did you hear about it?”
“New York Times, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor. Front pages are full of it. Do you think you should terminate the workshop?”
“Never.”
“Then knock some sense into their heads. That’s your job.”
He skipped breakfast, spending the time drafting a few concise notes which he hoped would quieten things, but when he stood at the podium he could see that the conferees were still eager for battle, and he knew he must conciliate them:
“Yesterday evening we witnessed an unfortunate manifestation of the ancient and unnecessary quarrel between religion and science, and the chair feels obligated to make a statement.
“I would remind my scientific brethren, to whom personally I owe so much, that whereas each arriving piece of new evidence supports the theory of an original big bang which launched at least this portion of the cosmos into being, no one, and I repeat no one, has provided even one acceptable scientific guess as to what agency activated that primordial bang. If our religious participants insist that it was God, their reasoning is at least as good as anyone else’s, and I think better.
“Now I must remind my religious brethren, and I feel justified in using that familial word, since my father was a clergyman, that all available evidence does point to a very old beginning for our Earth and to an immensely old beginning for our universe. Even though I believe in God as firmly as I do, I simply cannot deny the evidence, and I hold it to be the task of knowing men to reconcile the two points of view which erupted here last night with such violence.
“My conclusions are threefold, and because this question is so vital to this workshop and to humanity in general, I have taken the precaution of writing them [803] down on this small slip of paper lest I misspeak myself on what is proving to be the heart of this meeting.
“First, society cannot exist without a referee to judge the good and evil of any proposed act. Without this constant guidance, encouragement, and censorship we must revert to barbarism, as we have seen societies do in our lifetime. Science has not the moral force to provide this guidance, nor has politics. Only an ethical system can do this, and our inherited ethical systems have been given the hallowed name religion.
“Second, I am not much concerned with the doctrinal debates and differences of religion, nor are many of my scientific brethren, but I am deeply supportive of the solid work religion does in helping to structure society. I would not wish to live in any community which lacked churches. I have sometimes phrased it this way: If I were an unmarried young man of twenty-four, sent by my corporation to a new job in its Detroit plant, there is no possibility whatever that I would go to a bar to find my wife, or to a dance hall. I would join a church, or associate myself with a library or college, because I would want to meet people who supported the same ideals I did. Most sensible citizens support churches, and therefore the religious impulse which creates them.
“Third, as a scientist who did not attain that august title till he was a mature man of forty-four, so that he did not accept generalizations easily, I cannot deny or obscu
“I am told that last night Reverend Hosea Kellog of Red River Bible University and Professor Hiram Hellweiter of Indiana University came to blows during the heat of their debate. Such partisanship is understandable and certainly forgivable, for [804] decisions of great moment confront us, and it is inevitable that defense of one’s priorities should become furious. But in the quietness of this beautiful morning I ask you two distinguished gentlemen to embrace, as I embrace each of you.
“For all of us must grapple with problems of tremendous import, and we must strive together in harmony, not in destructive discord. We can now reach out to the farthest galaxies and peel back the layers of confusion which in the past have obscured our understandings. What shall we do with this new knowledge? We have seen that we can harness the hydrogen atom. But how will we utilize and discipline that capacity? And perhaps of even greater significance and peril, we can now move into the structure of the human gene to create new forms of life. How can we supervise the exercise of that terrible power?
“Finally, the time may not be far distant when we shall be summoned back to this hall to discuss in secret not the exploration of other galaxies but the steps in which America can utilize her stations in space in mortal warfare with some other power which has also learned how to function in this medium and is determined to use it to destroy us.
“This first assembly of great minds must not be divided. We must work as partners in our exploration into the structure of matter, into the workings of the human mind, and into society’s chances for survival. If we divide, we can destroy ourselves. If we unite, we can bring order to a threatened Earth.”
When he sat down, the participants, most of whom sought the conciliation he represented, cheered, but he was so exhausted nervously that he could not resume conduct of the session and excused himself. As he walked unsteadily toward the rear of the hall he felt his arm being taken by Leopold Strabismus, who whispered as he led their way to the sun-filled lawn, “Forget them for a moment. They’re resuming where they left off last night.”
[805] “I noticed that you stayed out of that fray, Leopold. Uncharacteristic.”
“I wanted to find out what the more sensible men like you believed.”
“All of us scientists are convinced that this Earth upon which you and I stand this afternoon was brought out of chaos four and a half billion-”
“There it is, Mott! You said it yourself. Brought out of chaos. Who brought it out?”
“That has never concerned me. It could easily have been God. Or the Primal Force. Or Divine Chance. I have no problem with that whatever.”
“There’s the difference. Men like me want to nail things down.”
“So you halt the teaching of evolution? You put a stopper on geology?”
“The common man must not be confused.”
Mott pointed over his shoulder toward the noisy session. “Practically every man in there, including you and me, is a common man, and for sure we were the sons of common men. If we can grapple with these questions, and one day solve the easier ones, why not the common man? You and I are the common man.”
And so the grand debate continued. It had started eons ago along the camel trails in Mesopotamia and in the barren highlands of Judea. Ancestors of Mott and Strabismus had chosen opposing sides in Assyria and at Stonehenge. These precise questions had been raised in the temples of Thebes and Machu Picchu, and in the ancient universities of Bologna and Oxford. Now they were being revived on a hillside in Vermont, and a thousand years from now they would still be debated on some other planet orbiting some other star in some other galaxy.
THE END.
APPENDIX
THE FOUR FAMILIES
Mott, Stanley. Born Newton, Massachusetts, 1918.
Mott, Rachel Lindquist. Born Worcester, Massachusetts, 1920.
Millard, born 1943.
Christopher, born 1950.
Pope, John. Born Clay, Fremont, 1927.,U.S. Navy.
Pope, Penny Hardesty. Born Clay, Fremont, 1927.
Grant, Norman. Born Clay, Fremont, 1914.
Grant, Elinor Stidham. Born Clay, Fremont, 1917.
Marcia, born 1939.
Kolff, Dieter. Born near Munich, Germany, 1907.
Kolff, Liesl. Born Peenemünde, Germany, 1916.
Magnus, born 1947.
THE SOLID SIX ASTRONAUTS
Claggett, Randolph. Born Creede, Texas, 1929. U.S. Marine Corps.
Claggett, Debby Dee Cawthorn Rodgers. Born Laredo, Texas, 1926.
Lee, Charles “Hickory.” Born Teacup, Tennessee, 1933. U.S. Army.
Lee, Sandra Perry. Born Nashville, Tennessee, 1937.
Jensen, Harry. Born Orangeburg, South Carolina, 1933. U.S. Air Force.
Jensen, Inger Olestad. Born Loon River, Minnesota, 1935.
Bell, Timothy. Born Little Rock, Arkansas, 1934. Civilian test pilot.
Bell, Cluny. Born Little Rock, Arkansas, 1937.
Cater, Edward. Born Kosciusko, Mississippi, 1931. U.S. Air Force.
Cater, Gloria. Born Kosciusko, Mississippi, 1931.
Pope, John. (See The Four Families above)
THE OTHERS
Von Braun, Wernher. Born Wirsitz, Germany, 1912.
Funkhauser, Helmut. Born Hamburg, Germany, 1896.
Butler, Gawain. Born Detroit, Michigan, 1921.
Glancey, Michael. Born Magnolia, Red River, 1904.
Strabismus, Leopold. Born (Scorcella, Martin) Mount Vernon, New York, 1925.
Thompson, Tucker. Born Columbus, Ohio, 1912.
Rhee, Cynthia. Born (Rhee, Soon-Ka) Osaka, Japan, 1936.
James A. Michener, Space
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