That was all.
Afterward the Industrialist said, "You'll pardon me. I can't conceive
your playing so elaborate a hoax. You really spoke to them?"
"As I speak to you. At least, in a sense. They can project thoughts."
"I gathered that must be so from your letter. How, I wonder."
"I could not say. I asked them and, of course, they were vague. Or
perhaps it was just that I could not understand. It involves a projector
for the focussing of thought and, even more than that, conscious
attention on the part of both projector and receptor. It was quite a
while before I realized they were trying to think at me. Such
thought-projectors may be part of the science they will give us."
"Perhaps," said the Industrialist. "Yet think of the changes it would
bring to society. A thought-projector!"
"Why not? Change would be good for us."
"I don't think so."
"It is only in old age that change is unwelcome," said the Astronomer,
"and races can be old as well as individuals."
The Industrialist pointed out the window. "You see that road. It was
built Beforethewars. I don't know exactly when. It is as good now as the
day it was built. We couldn't possibly duplicate it now. The race was
young when that was built, eh?"
"Then? Yes! At least they weren't afraid of new things."
"No. I wish they had been. Where is the society of Beforethewars?
Destroyed, Doctor! What good were youth and new things? We are better
off now. The world is peaceful and jogs along. The race goes nowhere but
after all, there is nowhere to go. _They_ proved that. The men who built
the road. I will speak with your visitors as I agreed, if they come. But
I think I will only ask them to go."
"The race is not going nowhere," said the Astronomer, earnestly. "It is
going toward final destruction. My university has a smaller student body
each year. Fewer books are written. Less work is done. An old man sleeps
in the sun and his days are peaceful and unchanging, but each day finds
him nearer death all the same."
"Well, well," said the Industrialist.
"No, don't dismiss it. Listen. Before I wrote you, I investigated your
position in the planetary economy."
"And you found me solvent?" interrupted the Industrialist, smiling.
"Why, yes. Oh, I see, you are joking. And yet--perhaps the joke is not
far off. You are less solvent than your father and he was less solvent
than his father. Perhaps your son will no longer be solvent. It becomes
too troublesome for the planet to support even the industries that still
exist, though they are toothpicks to the oak trees of Beforethewars. We
will be back to village economy and then to what? The caves?"
"And the infusion of fresh technological knowledge will be the changing
of all that?"
"Not just the new knowledge. Rather the whole effect of change, of a
broadening of horizons. Look, sir, I chose you to approach in this
matter not only because you were rich and influential with government
officials, but because you had an unusual reputation, for these days, of
daring to break with tradition. Our people will resist change and you
would know how to handle them, how to see to it that--that--"
"That the youth of the race is revived?"
"Yes."
"With its atomic bombs?"
"The atomic bombs," returned the Astronomer, "need not be the end of
civilization. These visitors of mine had their atomic bomb, or whatever
their equivalent was on their own worlds, and survived it, because they
didn't give up. Don't you see? It wasn't the bomb that defeated us, but
our own shell shock. This may be the last chance to reverse the
process."
[Illustration]
"Tell me," said the Industrialist, "what do these friends from space
want in return?"
The Astronomer hesitated. He said, "I will be truthful with you. They
come from a denser planet. Ours is richer in the lighter atoms."
"They want magnesium? Aluminum?"
"No, sir. Carbon and hydrogen. They want coal and oil."
"Really?"
The Astronomer said, quickly, "You are going to ask why creatures who
have mastered space travel, and therefore atomic power, would want coal
and oil. I can't answer that."
The Industrialist smiled. "But I can. This is the best evidence yet of
the truth of your story. Superficially, atomic power would seem to
preclude the use of coal and oil. However, quite apart from the energy
gained by their combustion they remain, and always will remain, the
basic raw material for all organic chemistry. Plastics, dyes,
pharmaceuticals, solvents. Industry could not exist without them, even
in an atomic age. Still, if coal and oil are the low price for which
they would sell us the troubles and tortures of racial youth, my answer
is that the commodity would be dear if offered gratis."