The Wapshot Scandal (26 page)

“The number of civilizations with whom we might possibly communicate depends upon six factors. One: The rate at which stars like our sun are being formed. Two: The fraction of such stars that have planets. Three: The fraction of such planets that can sustain life. Four: The fraction of livable planets upon which life has arisen. Five: The fraction of the latter that have produced beings with a technology adequate for interstellar communication. Six: The longevity of this high technology. About one in three million stars has the probability of a civilization in orbit. However, this could still mean millions of such civilizations within our galaxy alone and, as you gentlemen all know, there are billions of galaxies.” The hypocritical smile again passed over his face. Gas? Coverly wondered. “It seems unlikely to me,” he went on, “that technologies would develop on a planet covered with water. Some of my colleagues are enthusiastic about the intelligence of the dolphin but it seems to me that the dolphin is not likely to develop an interest in interstellar space.” He waited for the hesitant and scattered laughter to abate. “The twenty-one-centimeter band—that is, one thousand four hundred and twenty megacycles—emitted by the colliding atoms of hydrogen throughout space has produced some interesting signals, especially from Tau Ceti, but I am very skeptical about their coherence. I do believe that scientists in every advanced civilization will have discovered that the energy value of each unit or quantum of radiation, whether in the form of light or radio waves, equals its frequency times a value known to us, and perhaps to some of you, as Planck’s Constant.

“Optical masers appear to be our most promising means of interstellar communication.” Now he was deep in his classroom manner and nothing would stop him until he had inflicted on them all the tedium, excitement and pain of a lecture period. “The optical version of these masers can produce a beam of light so intense and narrow that, if transmitted from the earth, it would illuminate a small portion of the moon.” Again there was the fleeting, the sugary smile. “Extraneous wavelengths are eliminated so that unlike most light beams this one is pure enough to be modulated for voice transmission. A maser system could be detected with our present technology if it were transmitting from a solar system ten light years away. We must study the spectra of light from nearby stars for emission lines of peculiar sharpness and strength. This would be unmistakable evidence of maser transmissions from a planet orbiting that star. The light signals would be elaborately coded. In the case of a system one thousand light years away it would take two thousand years to ask a question and receive an answer. A superior civilization would load its signal beam with vast amounts of information. A highly advanced civilization, having triumphed over hunger, disease and war, would naturally turn its energies into the search for other worlds. However, a highly advanced civilization might take another direction.” Here his voice so grated with censoriousness and reproach that it woke two senators who were dozing. “A highly advanced civilization might well destroy itself with luxury, alcoholism, sexual license, sloth, greed and corruption. I feel that our own civilization is seriously threatened by biological and mental degeneration.

“But to get back to your original question.” He used the smile this time to indicate a change of scenery; they were in another part of the forest. “The earth-moon system extends its influence for a considerable distance into space. The earth’s gravity, magnetism and reflected radiation have no appreciable influence. At the climax of the sunspot cycle the sun erupts, putting clouds of gas into space. Magnetic storms of great violence usually break out on earth a day or so later. But the nature of interplanetary space is absolutely unknown. We know nothing about the shape, composition and magnetic characteristics of the clouds from the sun. We don’t even know whether they follow a spiraling or a direct path. Mapping the solar system is virtually impossible because of the uncertainty as to the precise distance between the planets and the sun.”

“Dr. Cameron?” Another senator had been recognized.

“Yes.”

“We have some sworn testimony here on the subject of what some of your colleagues have described as an ungovernable temper. Dr. Pewters testified that on August 14th, during a discussion of the feasibility of moon travel, you tore down the Venetian blinds in his office and stamped on them.” Cameron smiled indulgently. “Hugh Tompkins, an enlisted man and a driver from the motor pool, claims that when he was delayed, through no fault of his own, in reaching your office, you slapped him several times in the face, ripped the buttons off his uniform and used obscene language. Miss Helen Eckert, a stewardess for Pan-American Airlines, states that when your flight from Europe was forced to land in Chicago rather than in New York you created such a disturbance that you seriously threatened the safety of the flight. Dr. Winslow Turner states that during a symposium on interstellar travel you threw a heavy glass ashtray at him, cutting his face severely. There is a deposition here, from the doctor who stitched up the cut.”

“I plead guilty to all these offenses,” the doctor said charmingly.

“Dr. Cameron?” asked another senator.

“Yes.”

“Critics of your administration at Talifer state that you have neither terminated, suspended nor reduced experiments that have so far cost the government six hundred million dollars and that appear to be fruitless. They state that a total of four hundred and seventeen million has been spent on abortive missiles and another fifty-six million on inoperative tracking experiments. They state that your administration has been characterized by mismanagement, waste and duplication.”

“I don’t, in this instance, know what you mean by fruitless, abortive and inoperative, Senator,” Cameron said. “Talifer is an experimental station and our work cannot be reduced to linear mathematics. All my decisions, viewed in the full light of all factors, seem to me to have been proper at the time and I assume full responsibility for them all.”

“Dr. Cameron?” The next senator to be recognized was a stout man and seemed oddly shy for a politician.

“Yes.”

“My question is perhaps not germane, it involves my constituents, indeed it involves their well-being, their health, but as you know the microbes that breed in missile fuel have been traced to an outbreak of respiratory disease in the vicinity of Talifer.”

“I beg your pardon, Senator, but there is absolutely no scientific proof tracing these microbes to the unfortunate outbreak of respiratory disease. No scientific proof at all. We do know that microbes breed in the fuel—a fungus of the genus Loremendrum that produces airborne spores and special mutants. These are no more significant than the microbes that breed in gasoline, kerosene and jet fuel. In volumes so large a concentration of contaminants can quickly become a troublesome amount of residue.”

“Dr. Cameron?” One saw this time an old man, slim and with the extraordinary pallor of an uncommonly long life span. Indeed, he seemed more dead than alive. At a little distance his shaking hands appeared to be bone. He wore a piped vest and a well-cut suit and had the stance of a dandy, a dandy’s air of self-esteem. His nose was enormous and purple and hooked to the bridge was a pince-nez from which depended a long, black ribbon. His voice was not feeble but he spoke with that helplessness before emotion of the very old and now and then dried, with a broad linen handkerchief, a trickle of saliva that ran down his chin.

“Yes,” the doctor said.

“I was born in a small town, Dr. Cameron,” the old man said. “I think the difference between this noisy and public world in which we now live and the world I remember is quite real, quite real.” There was an embarrassing pause as he seemed to wait for his heart to pump enough blood for his brain to carry on. “Men of my age, I know, are inclined to think sentimentally of the past and yet even after discounting these deplorable sentiments I think I can find much in the past that is genuinely praiseworthy. However . . .” He seemed again to have forgotten what he planned to say; seemed again to be waiting for the blood to rise. “However, I have lived through five wars, all of them bloody, crushing, costly and unjust, and I think inescapable, but in spite of this evidence of man’s inability to live peacefully with his kind I do hope that the world, with all its manifest imperfections, will be preserved.” He dried his cheeks with his handkerchief. “I am told that you are famous, that you are great, that you are esteemed and honored everywhere and I respect your honors unequivocally but at the same time I find in your thinking some narrowness, some unwillingness, I should say, to acknowledge those simple ties that bind us to one another and to the gardens of the earth.” He dried his tears again and his old shoulders shook with a sob. “We possess Promethean powers but don’t we lack the awe, the humility, that primitive man brought to the sacred fire? Isn’t this a time for uncommon awe, supreme humility? If I should have to make some final statement, and I shall very soon for I am nearing the end of my journey, it would be in the nature of a thanksgiving for stout-hearted friends, lovely women, blue skies, the bread and wine of life. Please don’t destroy the earth, Dr. Cameron,” he sobbed. “Oh, please, please don’t destroy the earth.”

Cameron courteously overlooked this outburst and the questioning went on.

“Is it true, Dr. Cameron, that you believe in the inevitability of hydrogen warfare?”

“Yes.”

“Would you give us an estimate of the number of survivors?”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t. It would be the roughest guesswork. I think there will be a substantial number of survivors.”

“In the case of reverses, Dr. Cameron, would you be in favor of destroying the planet?”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I would. If we cannot survive, then we are entitled to destroy the planet.”

“Who would decide that we had reached the ultimate point of survival?”

“I do not know.”

The old man, having dried his tears, was up on his feet again. “Dr. Cameron, Dr. Cameron,” he asked, “don’t you think that there might be some bond of warmth amongst the peoples of the earth that has been underestimated?”

“Some what?” Cameron was not discourteous, but he was dry.

“Some bond of human warmth,” the old man said.

“Men and women,” the doctor said, “are chemical entities, easily assessable, easily altered by the artificial increase or elimination of chromosomal structures, much more predictable, much more malleable, than some plant life and in many cases much less interesting.”

“Is it true, Dr. Cameron,” the old man went on, “that your reading is confined to
Western Romances
?”

“I think I read as much as most men of my generation,” the doctor replied. “I sometimes go to the movies. I watch television.”

“But isn’t it true, Dr. Cameron,” the old man asked, “that the humanities have not been a part of your education?”

“You are talking to a musician,” the doctor said.

“Did I understand you to say that you’re a musician?”

“Yes, Senator. I am a violinist. You seem to have suggested that my lack of familiarity in the humanities would account for my cool-headedness about the demolition of the planet. This is not true. I love music and music is surely one of the most exalted of the arts.”

“Did I understand you to say that you play the violin?”

“Yes, Senator, I play the violin.”

He opened the violin case, took out an instrument, which he rosined and tuned, and played a Bach air. It was a simple piece of beginner’s music and he played it no better than any child but when he finished there was a round of applause. He put the violin away.

“Thank you, Dr. Cameron, thank you.” It was the old man who was once more on his feet. “Your music was charming and reminded me of a reverie I often enjoy when some man from another planet who has seen our earth says to his friends: ‘Come, come, let us rush to the earth. It is shaped like an egg, covered with fertile seas and continents, warmed and lighted by the sun. It has churches of indescribable beauty raised to gods that have never been seen, cities whose distant roofs and smokestacks will make your heart leap, auditoriums in which people listen to music of the most serious import and thousands of museums where man’s drive to celebrate life is recorded and preserved. Oh, let us rush to see this world! They have invented musical instruments to stir the finest aspirations. They have invented games to catch the hearts of the young. They have invented ceremonies to exalt the love of men and women. Oh, let us rush to see this world!’” He sat down.

“Dr. Cameron?” It was the voice of a senator who had just come in. “You have a son?”

“I had a son,” the doctor said. There was a splendid edge to his voice.

“You mean to say that your son is dead?”

“My son is in a hospital. He is an incurable invalid.”

“What is the nature of his illness?”

“He is suffering from a glandular deficiency.”

“What is the name of the hospital?”

“I don’t recall.”

“Is it the Pennsylvania State Hospital for the Insane?”

The doctor colored, he seemed touched. He was on the defensive for a moment. Then he rallied.

“I don’t recall.”

“In discussing your son’s illness has the subject of your treatment of him ever arisen?”

“All the discussions of my son’s illness,” the doctor said forcefully, “have unfortunately been confined to psychiatrists. These discussions are not sympathetic to me because psychiatry is not a science. My son is suffering from a glandular deficiency and no idle investigation of his past life will alter this fact.”

“Do you recall an incident when your son was four years old and you punished him with a cane?”

“I don’t recall any specific incident. I probably punished the boy.”

“You admit to punishing the boy?”

“Of course. My life is highly disciplined. I cannot tolerate a hint of disobedience or unreliability in my organization, my associates or myself. My life, my work, involving the security of the planet, would have been impossible if I had relaxed this point of view.”