"Anderson, Poul - Explorationsl" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Poul)

EXPLORATIONS

by Poul Anderson

When Jim Baen and I were first discussing this book, what should go into it, he suggested that the motif and title be "The Ways of Love." I felt this was too limited a theme, and we settled on "Explorations." Each story deals with some aspect of humanity's future movement into the cosmos, which we both hope so much will come to pass. Then Jim noticed, to our mutual surprise, that each is also a love story anyway.

On second thought, perhaps this is no coincidence. The Greeks distinguished three emotions which English lumps together as "love." Yet are the three kinds really unrelated? Might not sexual love (eros), love for God (agape), and every other sort of affection (phile, from which we get such words as ' 'philosophy'' and * 'philanthropy") spring from a common source, or even be different faces of the same mystery?

How shall we think of that emotion which drives human beings to explore?

Romanticists to the contrary, it is not universal in our species. At least, in many people it is subordinate to other desires. They are apt to resent public attention given to anything except the objects of their own yearnings. Explorers, including scientists of every description, are usually more tolerant, though this may be a matter of necessity rather than temperament.

After all, they are forever a minority, striving to get a small share of society's resources in support of their undertakings; they must compromise. Demagogues, whose claims can be unlimited, are always free to denounce them.

A case very much in point is that of the American space program. We have been told it is useless, an extravagance we can no longer afford-at any rate, until that day when the politicians have collected enough taxes, enacted enough laws, and established enough bureaucracies to abolish poverty, disease, inequality, war, crime, pollution, inflation, urban sprawl, and wrong thinking. We have also been told that the public no longer cares, that space no longer has a constituency.

Both these assertions are false.

If we put rhetoric aside for a moment and look at a few facts, it is evident that, though the space program has had it share of human inefficiencies and absurdities, it has never been a losing proposition. It has, rather, already repaid the modest investment in it, and returned a huge profit as well.

Modest? Of course. The budget of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration-for all of its varied activities-peaked at about the time of Apollo 11. Yet even in those palmy days it got less than 8 percent of the amount that the federal government spent on health, education, and welfare (a figure which takes no account of state and municipal undertakings or of private charities). It would be unkind to compare the actual accomplishments, but at least we can deny that NASA has ever taken bread out of the mouths of the poor.

Profit? Certainly. The revolution in meteorology alone, brought about by weather satellites, proves that claim. The lives saved because hurricanes can be accurately predicted offer a spectacular example. However, precise forecasts as a routine matter, year after year, are the open-ended payoff, especially for agriculture and transportation, and thus for mankind. Or think of communications. Never mind if many television shows strike you as inane; never mind, even, educational uses in primitive areas which could not otherwise be reached-the fact is that transmission over great distances was bound to come and that relaying through space is cheaper than relaying across the surface. Cash economies are mere shorthand for labor set free and natural resources conserved. -

Landsats and seasats give us information by which we can make better use of those resources: for example, by identifying plant disease in remote areas, while it is still readily treatable. By examining the cosmic environment of our planet and comparing it with its neighbors, we have come to a better understanding of it: for example, studies of the chemistry of the atmosphere of Venus gave us our first clue to the menace that fluorocarbons were posing to our own ozone layer. Not much further off is a real comprehension of geophysics. The practical, humane applications of such knowledge are obvious: for example, earthquake predictions, perhaps eventual earthquake prevention. Meanwhile, astrophysics has long been a key to the full description and hence control of matter and energy; and the best place for that research is above the air. We can also expect deeper insights into how life works. Early biological experiments in space have indicated how little we know today, how badly we need to carry on studies under conditions found nowhere else. A golden age of medicine and food production may well be a result.

, But, some say, can't we save money by doing this with unmanned probes, vehicles, robots, devices?

Machines are invaluable aids. Still, could they have had and shared the direct experiences of a Cook, Stanley, Lyell, Darwin, Boas, or, more recently, Cousteau, Leakey, Goodall? A human being is the only computer that continuously reprograms itself, the only sensor system that records data it is not planned to detect, the only thing that gives a damn.

Six fleeting visits to a single barren globe scarcely constitute exploration. If we stop now, it will be as if European mariners had stopped when Columbus reported his failure to reach India-which he never actually did, because he never knew how much more grand his discovery was. What he found brought legions overseas. What the astronauts have found in the tiny time granted them is astonishingly great: not material wealth, but the stuff of knowledge, whence all else arises. Shall we end the enterprise at its very beginning?

I have emphasized knowledge, that being the one absolutely certain gain. However, a permanent human presence in space should also yield nearly unlimited economic returns. As solar collectors achieve their full potential out yonder, we should have all the energy we can ever use, free, clean, inexhaustible. We should have abundant raw materials, no longer taken out of the hide of Mother Earth. We should have industries moving to locations where they cannot harm her, and entire new industries coming into existence. We should become able to abolish poverty, if not the other ills that our race keeps visiting upon itself, and abolish poverty not only in America but throughout the world. What this would mean to the spirit is incalculable.

As for the falsehood that the public has lost interest, the popularity of science fiction suffices to disprove that. We have, besides, the many thousands who undergo expense and discomfort to watch space events in person, the many millions who breathlessly follow every one on television and in the newspapers. We have a large and growing volume of mail to Washington, urging a revitalized program. (It would help mightily if you would send such letters, brief and respectful, to your national legislators and the President.) Oh, yes, the people care.

And so we return to the theme with which we began, love and its indivisibility. Maybe the reason why some cannot imagine what we have to gain beyond Earth is that they have not let heaven touch their hearts.

I say to them, "Go out, the next clear night. Look up."

THE SATURN GAME

If we would understand what happened, which is vital if we would avoid repeated and worse tragedies in the future, we must begin by dismissing all accusations. Nobody was negligent; no action was foolish. For who could have predicted the eventuality, or recognized its nature, until too late? Rather should we appreciate the spirit with which those people struggled against disaster, inward and outward, after they knew. The fact is that thresholds exist throughout reality, and that things on their far sides are altogether different from things on their hither sides. The Chronos crossed more than an abyss, it crossed a threshold of human experience. -Francis L. Minamoto, Death Under Saturn: A Dissenting View (Apollo University Communications, Leyburg, Luna, 2057)

"The City of Ice is now on my horizon," Kendrick says. Its towers gleam blue. "My griffin spreads his wings to glide." Wind whistles among those great, rainbow-shimmering pinions. His cloak blows back from his shoulders; the air strikes through his ring-mail and sheathes him in cold. "I lean over and peer after you." The spear in his left hand counterbalances him. Its head flickers palely with the moonlight that Wayland Smith hammered into the steel.

"Yes, I see the griffin," Ricia tells him, "high and far, like a comet above the courtyard walls. I run out from under the portico for a better look. A guard tries to stop me, grabs my sleeve, but I tear the spider-silk apart and dash forth into the open." The elven castle wavers as if its sculptured ice were turning to smoke. Passionately, she cries, "Is it in truth you, my darling?"

"Hold, there!" warns Alvarlan from his cave of arcana ten thousand leagues away. "I send your mind the message that if the King suspects this is Sir Kendrick of the Isles, he will raise a dragon against him, or spirit you off beyond-any chance of rescue. Go back. Princess of Maranoa. Pretend you decide that it is only an eagle. I will cast a belief-spell on your words."