I think this is part and parcel of their doctrine of non-interference.
Think. They put the Solar System machine opposite Earth, and we didn't dream it existed till we had developed a substantial capability in space. But the machine in the other system orbits much more handily, in a stable path, sixty degrees ahead of the planet we'll probably be colonizing, clearly visible to any astronomers there. However, apparently no astronomers, no truly thinking (The view settles on a point of sapphire, infinitely lovely.) creatures, are native to it: nobody that might be lured by the sight into feverish, unbalanced efforts or a deadly struggle for control
The Voice said the Others love us. They must; they have given us a whole new world. But they must love all sentient races. I suspect a breed like ours, with its history of war, oppression, rapine, and exploitation, would bring disaster if it burst overnight into the galaxy. I suspect also that we are not unusually bad or shortsighted, that many a species would become an equal menace if it got the chance.
At the same time, the Others seemingly refuse to take us, or anybody, under tutelage. I am sure that, from their viewpoint, they have far better things to do. And from the viewpoint of our well-being, they may feel it would be wrong to domesticate us.
So they leave us our free will, they permit us to use their star gates, but they make no further gifts. We must endure the frustration of seeing Alpha Centauri and Sirius shining still unattainable in our skies, until we have groped our own way out into the cosmos. I hope that they hope the long, cooperative effort that this requires will mature us a little. .
(View of a spacecraft completing her path. Suddenly she vanishes. View of the T machine in the Phoebean System. Suddenly the spacecraft appears, about half a million kilometers from the cylinder.
(Shots taken on the original faring. FernЗndez-DЗvila, Tonari, and Napier stare from their cramped cabin. They babble. Two of them offer prayers. Presently they master themselves and look outward with trained eyes. A groundling cannot see constellations in space; the visible stars are too many. An astronaut can. Here, none are familiar. After a while, the men think they can puzzle out a few, changed though the shapes are; and extragalactic objects do not appear different. They reckon roughly that they have gone more than one hundred and less than five hundred light-years northwest of Sol.)
VOICE
-The planet that will interest you most is in the sky hard by the Crab Nebula. . .
NARRATOR
The world we have since named Demeter- (Stopped-down view of Phoebus. View of Discoverer's cabin and three men stunned with glory.)
VOICE
Your ship has not the reserves to go there. You had best return to the Solar System at once. Surely more vessels, outfitted to explore, will come after. You yourselves may be aboard.
(Scenes of the path back through the gate being traced out, not the least like the earlier pattern. Scenes of emergence at the other end, of jubilation, of solemnity, of the long haul home. Scenes of tumult, parades, ceremonies, parties, extravagant predictions, and in between an occasional word of foreboding.)
NARRATOR
-we are at last ready to send our first colonists. Beforehand, we had to spend years of research, learning the most elementary things about Demeter. The Others promised it would be worth our trouble, but not that it would be Eden. .
(The home of a famous spaceman)
PERNANDEZ-DAVILA
-The price is high per person we send, and we cannot tell what they might send back that would repay it. On this account, we hear protests, we hear demands that the whole program be dropped. Well, I maintain that the stimulus to space technology it has given, the order-of-magnitude improvement in ships and instruments, has already recouped the entire cost plus a high profit. Then there's the scientific revolution, especially in biology, that we've gotten out of Demeter. An entire independent set of life forms! We need decades, maybe centuries, to examine them further, with their implications for medicine, genetics, agriculture, mariculture, and who can foresee what else? That requires a permanent settlement.
Beyond this, in the crassest economic terms, I claim that within a generation, humans on Demeter will be returning Earth's investment to Earth a thousand times over. Remember what America meant to Europe. Remember what Luna and the satellites mean to us today.
Far beyond this, think of the imponderables and unpredictables: challenge, opportunity, enlightenment, freedom. .
The beginning of our growth toward the Others. .
Joelle found that a sequel had been added. She thought it was equally honest, but the honesty was that of a later generation.
It went into Demetrian history. No more than a few thousand individuals per year could be boosted to the gate and landed on the planet. Conveyance capacity did expand as the colony started to yield dividends-but slowly, because of conflicting claims on that wealth. Emigrants went under national auspices, according to an elaborate quota setup. However, through bribery or lawful agreement, many traveled under flags different from their own.
The reasons for going were as various as the people who went. Ambition, adventure, utopian visions were among them. But certain governments subsidized the departure of dissident citizens, and pressured them to accept; certain ones aimed to found outposts of power for themselves; certain more had crazier motives, as did assorted unofficial organizations and individuals.
Initially, everybody must live in or near Eopolis, and close cooperation was a requirement of survival. A notion that the Others might be somewhere around, watching, reinforced solidarity. This faded with time, and meanwhile population and the economy grew. Likewise did knowledge. People learned how to live independently of the city. The countryside became a patchwork of ethnic clusters and social contracts.
At last a Demetrian legislature was a perceived necessity. It remained subordinate to the Union, represented by the governor general, and its authority was further limited by the fact that most communities ran most of their affairs without reference to it.
Elsewhere, time had also been riding. What precarious order had prevailed on Earth had broken down, and the Troubles begun. No few rhetoricians claimed that the fact of the Others brought this on; it was too disturbing, too provocative of heresy; there were things man was never meant to know. In Joelle's opinion-derived in large part from conversations with Dan Brodersen, who was thoroughly opinionated-that was nonsense. If anything, the miracle was that the equilibrium had lasted, seesawing, until then; and the fact of the Others gave enough pause for reflection that lunacy did not lay waste the entire globe. Be this as it may, indisputable was that, though millions died and whole nations went under, the world survived. Civilization survived, in more areas than not. Space endeavors survived; no important hiatus occurred beyond Earth, whether in industry, exploration, or the settlement of Demeter.
One ongoing effort was reckoned more important than even the dispatching of unmanned probes toward neighbor stars. It was the sending of such craft through the gates, along arbitrary paths, programmed to return from wherever they went by taking equally arbitrary paths. None did.
Slowly, mankind appeared to settle down. In Lima they signed the Covenant.
(The office of a famous astrophysicist, still alive.)
ROSSET
-the theory we've been developing says that a T machine has a finite range. We estimate it as five hundred light-years in space, perhaps more, perhaps less. The point is that if you want to go across a greater span than that, you must go through an intermediate machine, which acts as a relay.
