THE nurse came in, pushing the breakfast cart ahead of her. Her hair was blonde, her complexion flawless and fairly radiating the pinkness of good health. Her uniform, made of one of the inorganic plastics, was spotless: white.
"Good morning, Great grandpa John,” she said cheerfully. “How are you today.” It was not a question. It was a ritual she had been, carefully trained in.
"Eh?” John said. He watched her come toward the bed. “You're a new one,” he said. His eyes took on a sly look. “Purty, too. What's your name?"
"Ada.” She began transferring the dishes to the bed stand.
"Ada what?"
"Ada Blake.” She smiled affectionately and unfolded the napkin to spread under his chin.
"Blake?” he echoed, frowning. “Say, maybe you aren't a great-granddaughter of mine ay tal. What was your mother's maiden name?"
"Ada White.” The, nurse dipped a spoon into the synthetic cereal and brought it towards John's mouth.
He pushed it away and scooted himself up to a sitting position. “I can feed myself,” he said curtly.
Smiling, she relinquished the spoon.
"White?” he said, “Your mother's name was White. That don't help. Blake and White.” He chewed thoughtfully. “What were your grandmothers’ maiden names?"
Ada's face dimpled in a smile. “Joan Winstead, and-” She touched the tip of a finger to her chin and gazed ceilingward while John watched her with impatience. “And Shirl Daven—"
"Shirl Davenport!” John said. “That's the one. Daughter of mine.” He looked at the nurse with a twinkle in his eyes. “So you're a great-granddaughter of mine. Thought so. What did you say your name was again?"
"Ada. Ada Blake."
"Ada.” John said the name as though sampling its flavor. Then he nodded his head in approval.
Ada waited. Every morning the ritual was exactly the same, down to the last intonation, the lengths of the individual pauses in conversation—even to the way Great grandpa John got cereal on his chin with the third spoonful.
"Guess all of your generation are great-grandchildren of mine,” John said absently.
"Yes, Great grandpa John,” Ada said, softly, reverently.
Then she smiled, and her smile was a mask for her inner feelings. It took tremendous will power to keep to the ritual at this point, rather than follow her own natural impulses and drop to her knees in worship.
No words could ever describe the simple wonder of being in Great grandpa John's presence, of seeing Him portray fresh surprise, curiosity, pride, and other mortal traits, always the same way, each day, in his simple lesson of living, just as though he were not the Captain...
"Yup,” Great grandpa John said quietly. He looked thoughtful for a moment, then frowned at a recollection.
He was going to have to kill all of them. He mustn't forget that! Somehow, some way, he was going to have to kill them all, down to the last great-great-grandchild.
He had made up his mind about it last night.
The logic of it, the necessity of it, had hit him with numbing clarity, followed by a wave of anger toward the whole human race for not having seen something so obvious and so inevitable and taken steps to avoid it—avoid all this.
Some things are obvious to everyone. If you take a loaded gun and point it at someone and pull the trigger you will kill or wound him. If you are a good shot and you take careful aim the outcome is certain.
In the same way, with the same inevitability, a lot of human situations that can happen out among the stars are just as predictably fatal. And what can happen will happen sooner or later, unless steps are taken to avoid it.
It would have been so simple for the human race to have thought of that before going out into space, for it to have explored the hypothetical situations for their potential dangers, and to have thought out ahead of time what should be done and condensed it all into a book that would be required reading for anyone going into space.
If there had been such a book, John Davenport reflected grimly, then when the Polaris Explorer crashed, he and the others would all have known that the one thing they must NOT do was have children, start a colony cut off from the rest of humanity. Not without seeds from which to grow vegetation. Not without some other form of animal life, even if it were only some insect species.
The trouble had been that other forms of life were taken for granted and their influence on the human mind was too subtle to be consciously understood. The fact of other forms of life was a vital element in shaping human orientation toward reality. Without it—
Yesterday John Davenport had finally seen what would result. A grandson of his, Paul Winstead, now in his early fifties, had paid him a social visit. That is, he had always considered such visits to be social visits, but now he wasn't so sure. For a long time now he hadn't felt up to having anyone but a nurse around, but every so often he felt lonesome, and there was always a waiting list of those who wanted to call on him.
He hadn't seen Paul for two years, Paul had said, but the last time he could remember seeing Paul was at least thirty years ago. The boy hadn't changed much. He'd always been respectful. The thing is, he was someone to talk to.
"Yup,” John had said, reminiscing, “every kid should have a pet or two. When I was a kid I had a dog. A dog is—well, instead of hands and feet it has four feet, but they're very small. The dog is all covered with hair, and it has a tail. A tail is an extension of the spinal cord."
And John had gone on and on, describing the dog. Paul Winstead had been a good listener, nodding and smiling and seeming to get a mental picture of what a dog was like. But he had to use extra imagination.
Then, in a pause, while John was trying to choose a word that would describe what he wanted to say, Paul Winstead had said, very quietly, “You need have no fear, Grandfather John, we have passed the test."
"Test?” John had said. “What test?"
Paul Winstead had chuckled. “We knew that there must be a hidden lesson in your stories,” he had said. “Just as your seeming to forget all the time is a living lesson for us to always be alert and meet life every day with renewed interest and excitement, even though nothing new may happen, so also your stories of impossible forms of life are a great lesson to make us see the wonder of our being the only possible life form."
"But that isn't so!” John had said. Was Paul insane?"
Paul had smiled. “We knew it was the greatest test of all, because you made it so difficult to penetrate it to the Truth. Yet you cunningly wove into your stories the clue to their being a test. All these animals are deformed people."
John shook his head in protest.
"No, no,” Paul had said. “Let me finish. Let me show you we have found the whole Truth. We know that you have always existed. The proof of that is that the only way we can come into existence is by being born of parents like us. We in turn become parents of children like us. There is no other way possible. Therefore the First Parent must always have existed from the beginning of time. But when was the beginning of time? There we have penetrated the secret too! Time, the universe itself, began a little over seventy years ago! You, Grandfather John, are the Absolute, the First, and you created the universe for us, your descendants, to live in and to control. The very atoms obey the rules you laid down for them!"
"Just a minute,” John had said firmly. “Some day you or your descendants will meet up with other people, and with other forms of life, like dogs, and trees. What then?"
"We have seen the great lesson in that too,” Paul had said, his face shining with an inner light of vision. “As your descendants it is our responsibility to keep your Creation pure. Any imperfection that develops must be corrected. The great message you have shown us is that we are not your First Creation. Somewhere your First Creation exists. But it failed to pass the test, and for that reason we came into being. It failed, and is imperfect, with deformed people of the type you have described. Our destiny, when we have grown strong, is to cleanse the universe of all such deformity."
There had been more of that. John had tried to show it wasn't so, but he had realized how hopeless it was. It was impossible for anyone who has not seen other forms of life to imagine them really existing.
And suddenly it had come to John with blinding insight that if it were impossible while he was still alive to influence them, how much more certain the trend would develop when he was gone!
People simply did not believe something outside their experience.
And with that insight had come an insight into the future. When contact was eventually made with the main branch of humanity, or with any form of life, his descendants would consider it their Divine Mission to destroy it. If, meanwhile, they had become strong enough, it would mean a devastating holy war with no possible compromise. If contact came within a century or so, it would mean only that his descendants would go down to destruction themselves.
But the basic insight John had gained was that the whole mess could have been easily predicted. It was just one of many similarly predictable things that could happen in space. Given, an aquarium condition...
So, what should never have happened now had to be destroyed. It had to be, John decided grimly. There were no two ways about it.
But good Lord! Why couldn't mankind have foreseen the possibility of this arising? It was inevitable that over the centuries there would be shipwrecks on out of the way worlds under conditions where the survivors would be able to start a colony that would continue after they died. If the danger had been known ahead of time they would have known better than to have children.
His frown was a deviation. Ada Blake was quick to notice it, and to realize that today was to be different. In what way it would be different she didn't know, nor did it matter. To grant Greatgrandpa John's slightest whim or wish was her greatest desire in life.
Aside from the joy it would bring her, it would mean that her name would go down in history.
She was too wise to let on that she had noticed the frown. Though her heart pounded furiously, not a flicker of changed expression showed on her face.
"Um,” John said.
"Yes?” Ada said mildly.
"Take this synthetic pabulum away and bring me some clothes."
"Yes, Great grandpa John,” Ada said serenely.
She returned what was left of the breakfast to the cart and pushed it ahead of her out of the room. In the corridor she doubled her pace, arriving at the desk breathless and flushed.
"He wants his clothes!” she gasped. “I think Great grandpa John is going out. I could feel it. Oh!” She clasped her hands together. “To think it would happen to me!"
"Well, get some clothes for him!” the head nurse said, unable to completely conceal her envy. “Don't keep him waiting! Hurry up!"
Ada was all thumbs and unable to concentrate. It took the combined efforts of the head nurse and two other nurses to get the clothes secured in Ada's hands and steer her in the right direction.
Great grandpa John permitted her to dress him. He would rather have dressed himself, but he knew he would have to conserve every ounce of his strength. It was not going to be easy to destroy them all. But there was a way—or there had been a way.
Panic touched his mind. Maybe there was no longer a way. But there had to be a way. There had to. If that way was gone, then he would just have to find another.
Ada dressed him, looking on his withered frame with the sense of privilege uppermost in her mind. Great grandpa's body, she felt quite convinced, could have remained youthful forever if he had wished it. Its aging was another of his great lessons to his children, just as were his daily rituals which might have been considered senile forgetfulness in anyone else. Great grandpa John knew, she was sure, that everything he did would go down in history, and its lessons would be pondered by the best scholars of each generation, forever.
When he was completely dressed she got to her knees and bowed, covering her secret worship by pretended concern over the bowknots of his shoelaces. She was flushed when she stood up, too conscious of her audience of untold future generations, who would watch the tapes of this historic moment. She had not knelt at Great grandpa John's feet for effect, but because she worshipped him.
When she straightened, she stopped breathing for a moment in awe. It had been impossible for her to realize how compelling a figure he was. His blue dress uniform concealed the leanness of his body. He stood a foot taller than the tallest of other men, his shoulders were wide—wide. His white hair was covered by the cap, and the visor of the cap concealed his forehead so that only his face, his deeply sunken, fiery eyes, his sharply bridged nose, his square chin and firm mouth, could be seen.
"Well?” he said, his lips quirking in amusement.
She tried to speak, and couldn't. The strength of his spirit was beyond her understanding. She could only sense it and tremble.
"Come with me,” he said, going past her to the door. “I may need you to lean on, at times.” And I want you with me at the last, he thought, because I am afraid.
And so, side by side, she in her spotless white nurse's uniform, and he, taller than she by fourteen inches and in his blue uniform of Space Command, they walked the length of the corridor, not deigning to notice the head nurse who huddled fearfully behind her desk, and pushed through the double doors to emerge onto the street.
There, John looked up with silent satisfaction at the flat ceiling of yard square panels of glass set in a steel latticework, fifty feet above, and the dozens of widely distributed large balloons resting against their under surface, ready to be caught up in any draft of escaping air caused by a broken panel and seal the opening until repairs could be made.
Outside, just beyond that flat ceiling above, lay the vacuum of space.
A lot had happened, John Davenport reflected grimly, since that day, almost seventy years ago, when the ship he commanded crashed. It was a shame it was going to have to be destroyed—but it should never have been brought into existence.
The worst part of it was that there was no way to let the government back on Earth know. But if there were, he would not have to do what he knew he must.
Beyond the ceiling of glass, some sixty million miles away, floated a brilliant blue-white sun, much smaller than Sol. But which sun, out of all the millions? The hyperdrive relays had jammed and God knows how may parsecs or thousands of parsecs the ship had gone before repairs could be made. Nine men had given their lives, willingly, each stepping into the fatal area surrounding those relays the instant the one before them dropped, until, after ninety minutes, the last one cut the relays and the ship slipped back into space. Ninety minutes at a theoretically infinite velocity. But that had been ninety minutes ship time, and whether the ship had entered space again a hundred or a million or ninety billion parsecs from the Earth, no one knew. The pattern of the stars had had no point of positive identification to the ship's instruments.
Ill luck had been present from the start on that “routine” trip’ from the Sol System to Polaris, and it had stayed to the end. Attempting a. simple landing on this eight hundred mile diameter ball of rock for the purpose of setting up instruments capable of probing farther than the ship's instruments, something had again gone wrong, and the ship had been damaged beyond repair.
Stuck here permanently, unless they were eventually rescued, they had built a standard pressurized colony along the lines first used on Mars, of a heavy glass ceiling whose weight was exactly balanced by the air pressure underneath.
Like the castaways on desert islands of pre space travel literature, they had made the most of the materials at hand. A plentiful supply of oxygen lay in the rocks at their feet, as well as the raw material for an inexhaustible supply of glass and steel.
The starship's lifeboats were excellent craft for searching nearby space and the entire surface of their desert asteroid, and a rich supply of carbon salts had been located and mined for the raw materials of synthetic foods.
When at last they knew that man could live indefinitely on this ball of stone, they had been happy. If not they, then their children, or their children's children, or their descendants in the nth generation would be rescued.
In their naiveté they had been happy. Like the early peoples of Earth they had lived together, man and woman, and begot child, and child had begot child.
More ceiling and more walls and more atmosphere had expanded the living room until now, after seventy years, there were three square miles of surface where man could live normally.
Fools, they had been. Naive fools, to have brought all this into existence. It had to be stopped. It had to be destroyed.
"Beautiful, isn't it, Great grandpa John,” Ada said, misinterpreting the reason for his silent survey of his surroundings.
John Davenport nodded, and, for a moment felt a little confused. Was he right? He knew he was right. But what if his reasoning was a product—not of logic—but of senility?
The thought disturbed him.
How many were there now? How many would he have to murder?
"What's the population now?” he asked.
"Four hundred and thirty-one,” Ada said proudly. “Our birth rate is close to fifty a year and our death rate only three a year, at present."
"Three in the past year?” John Davenport said. “What killed them?"
If only something showed promise of wiping them all out! That would absolve him.
"One was murdered,” Ada said grimly. “The second was his murderer, who was hanged. The third one was my grandmother, Shirl."
"Shirl?” John said, pain cramping his heart. “Why wasn't I told?"
Ada looked up at him serenely, not answering. After a moment he turned away. He felt a vague sense of relief, and it came to him why. He would not be murdering Shirl, nor any of the others who had already died. And these others, even though they were his own descendants, were strangers to him.
"Do you want to see the Elders?” Ada asked. They had been just standing there now for almost ten minutes.
"No!” John said curtly. “No. I don't want to see anybody just yet. I just want to-” He looked vaguely around, trying to organize his thoughts into a plan. “I just want to walk around. That's it. Kind of look things over."
He began walking slowly. He would have to go slow, not get too tired—sort of feel his way into things, not go too directly to the power plant.
If he played it right, casual like, they would think it just a sentimental whim when he asked to be left alone in the reactor control room.
If he played it right. Casual like.
He walked slowly, and paused now and then to pat the heads of children in a secret regretful farewell to them, ignoring the grownups who hovered in the background. And he didn't doubt that if he should fail, a special medal would be run off for the children whose heads he patted to wear all their life to set them off as a class above all those whose heads he had not patted.
Fifty babies in the past year? Let's see, John Davenport mused. There were the four girls, and they had chosen him and Winstead and Blake and White, with the understanding that any of the girls who decided she didn't want the one she chose permanently could pick another of the fifty some odd men. But they stuck, and altogether there had been twenty-three children that lived and grew up, ten of them girls.
That had been the first generation. And Winstead had worked out some system of pairing off the girls with boys so that there would be a minimum of inbreeding in each generation indefinitely, and it had been made into law—not that it would matter much for a couple of generations, but those problems had to be solved and settled by those who knew about such things while they were still alive.
The ten couples of the first generation had begotten—a good word—seventy-two children. An even number of boys and girls, and they had paired off into thirty-six couples. And Ada, the nurse, was one of their offspring, and no doubt plenty of her generation was producing now. Four hundred and thirty-one was about right, with maybe seventy-five couples in the third generation producing about one child a week. That's what Winstead had figured it would be by now.
John Davenport mentally kicked himself for not keeping up on things, forgetting that he kept up on things daily with avid interest—and forgot them as quickly as he listened to them.
He came back to an awareness of his surroundings.
The streets were laid out nicely. Most of the houses were new ... and there were a lot more of them than he would have thought.
Although they had individuality and an attempt at architectural originality, they were all basically designed for The Emergency—loss of atmosphere from a major rupture of the dome. Entrances were potential airlocks. A large meteor could crash through the ceiling of the colony and let all the air escape, and probably no one would die except those directly struck by the meteor.
And there had been recent damage from a meteor. Ada tried to distract his attention away from it, but he saw the half dozen wrecked houses and the start of reconstruction. Looking overhead he found the place where the three-foot square glass panels glinted with newness and the steel framework was newly painted.
The whole repair job was being expertly handled.
"Was anyone hurt, Ada?” John asked.
"Fortunately, no, Great grandpa John,” Ada said.
He worried for a moment about whether she was fibbing, then remembered that it didn't matter.
A lump rose in his throat. What a terrible tyrant the future is! he thought bitterly. The future is molded more by what is not, than by what is...
He walked slowly, frowning at the pavement ahead of him.
Not a blade of grass. Not a flower. Not even a useless weed. Any one of the crew of the, Polaris Explorer, as a mere whim, could have carried a million years of plant evolution on board in his coat pocket. A half dozen seeds of each of a thousand plant species.
Or even a few weed seeds trapped in the trouser cuff of some member of the crew. Winstead had looked. Even one seed, or one sliver of wood that could come to life and grow.
Or a fly. Or, a louse. Or a family of mice hidden in the cargo.
Or even a spider. No one had had such a whim.
Why should anyone have had such a foolish whim?
And because no one did, John Davenport was forced to destroy all these descendants of his.
Suddenly a new thought struck him, with such devastating impact that he stumbled, and Ada had to support him. He moaned audibly, not from any physical pain but from the thought.
"Are you sure you're all right?” Ada asked.
"Of course I'm all right,” he said, forcing himself to smile calmly. “It's just that—it occurred to me that perhaps this is the last time I will walk through the colony."
"You plan to leave us soon?” Ada asked sadly.
"Perhaps,” John Davenport said. Then he saw in this trend of thought the opportunity he had been searching for. He straightened up and squared his shoulders. “For that reason, I would like to pay a last visit to the power plant."
"As you wish,” Ada said. “Do you plan to leave us there, Great grandpa John?” she asked humbly.
"Perhaps,” John Davenport said.
But now a doubt had settled in his mind. Would what he planned to do be any good even if he succeeded? There would be other ships, to other stars, and inevitably another would crash somewhere, and the survivors build a pressurized colony.
Somewhere, sometime, there would be another Great grandpa John and he might not think things through. And if he did, there would be another, and another, until somewhere, sometime, a Great grandpa John would die without having destroyed the colony of his descendants.
So what was the use?
The future was inevitable. It flowed from the past like an engulfing flood, and if he plugged the hole here, on this speck of dust in the Cosmos, it would only pile up and burst through somewhere else.
But, if he could stop the flood here, at least he could die knowing that he had succeeded....
The power plant had not changed one iota. At least, not on the outside. It was exactly the same as when it had first been built, seventy years ago.
There was no need for it to change. The nuclear power plant of the ship had been moved out piecemeal and put together again here. Barring accidents, it could produce almost unlimited power forever, if a crew with the know-how to keep it replenished and functioning properly were trained in each generation. Or it could be transformed into a planet buster by manual manipulation of the automatic controls.
Word had gone ahead of them, but that was to be expected. John Davenport had been aware of the many people that hovered in the background, watching his every step. Probably everyone who could get away from his job was somewhere near, but keeping a respectful distance.
As John approached the power plant entrance four men came out. One of them gave him quite a start, because he looked exactly like Jerry Blake, seventy years ago. For a brief moment, seeing the man there, it seemed to John that time actually had turned back.
Then the illusion was gone. The man who looked like Jerry stepped forward and introduced himself as Mel Davenport, chief engineer.
"Your youngest grandson, sir,” Mel Davenport explained.
"How old are you, Mel?” John asked.
"Thirty-five, sir,” Mel said. “Would you like to inspect the plant, sir?"
"I think I would, Mel,” John said casually.
"We have tried to do everything as you would want us to do it, sir,” Mel said as he led the way inside. “For one thing, during the past ten years we've accumulated a stockpile of the alloy blocks and gotten enough of them started on their nuclear cycle to get a duplicate power plant started. We're setting it up a hundred miles from here. In ten years it will have built up to maximum potential and we will be able to build a second colony."
Mel Davenport was talkative, and obviously proud of the accomplishments of the colony. John only half listened as his youngest grandson talked on and on about the various projects.
The food factories had been expanded again and again, and standby food factories had been built. Exploration of mineral and salt deposits to a depth of five miles had been completed all over the planet. Chemical stockpiling was a hundred years ahead of population growth already.
Mel was quite anxious to prove to him that when he left them he could rest assured that the colony would expand on schedule without a hitch. In two centuries population and industrial development would reach the stage where starships could be manufactured.
John Davenport listened to this bright picture with grim absentmindedness while he walked here and there, refreshing his memory on the layout of the power plant.
Around him, pressing in on him, was the vibrant aura of living, eternal, atomic power, so simplified in principles that a crew of uneducated savages could be taught to keep it going.
But there were no uneducated savages, these descendants of his. They were highly intelligent men, dedicated to their work, and convinced that the know-how given to them was on the order of divine revelation.
Their respect for him was a respect for Deity, rather than for an ancestor. To themselves they were high priests rather than engineers.
And nothing he could say could change that.
The alternative to his being God was a nightmare of insecurity they could not possibly accept. He had watched it grow, helpless to prevent it. They had built up a framework of rationalization that had a perfect defense against all logical attack.
Being God, he could not grow old and feeble, but he could choose to appear to grow old and feeble as a lesson to them to honor their old ones as they loved Him. Being God, he could not forget, from one minute to the next, but he could pretend to, as a lesson to them to be eternally alive to the eternal newness of each moment.
Yes, his deification in their philosophy had been inevitable from the start, and he had not bothered to set them straight because in the long run it would be a good thing. It would give them security, dedication to the welfare of the community.
Nor would it ever have become a bad thing—if there had been so much as cockroaches in the store of crackers aboard the Polaris Explorer.
But there had been nothing. Winstead had searched. They had all searched. God how they had searched! Just one seed that could sprout, or one insect that could be made to reproduce. Any form of life at all that could be made to survive and be a fellow life form, a companion to man, in this far off place.
"You've seen it all now, sir."
John Davenport returned to reality with a feeling of alarm. He looked desperately at the control panels.
"Nothing has been changed here?” he asked sharply.
"Of course not, sir!” Mel said, shocked at the thought.
Of course not. John breathed easier. His eyes went to the damper rod control panel. Behind that panel lay the foolproof computer bank, the brains of the power plant. Foolproof—but there was a way to fool it and that way still existed. And it would turn the pile into a five hundred megaton bomb.
"Do you have any wish, sir?” Mel asked.
"Yes,” John Davenport said. “I want to be alone for a few moments. Please wait outside. All of you."
They moved toward the exit. John Davenport stood erect, broad shouldered, every inch the Captain, in his blue uniform, in the center of the power plant floor.
At last he was alone.
It would take only a moment to reverse the connections from zero and maximum load.
John Davenport took a step toward the control panel, then hesitated. Was he right? Was the thought that had come to him last night the product of logic—or senility?
He lifted it into consciousness again and examined it dispassionately.
The human mind is utterly incapable of conceiving of anything totally outside its experience. In an environment where there is only one life form—man himself—and no other, man must inevitably become an Absolute to himself, and even the idea of a life form other than his own must become impossible to conceive.
Oh, they had tried to tell their children about trees and flowers and dogs and birds, but it had been obvious the children's conception of other life forms had been much like anyone's conception of hyperspace—an extrapolation from the known, the experienced. How could a generation pass on to succeeding generations something which it could not grasp itself? Even now, to Ada and the others of the third generation, a conception of a dog, or a blade of grass, was impossible. What then of the nth generation, millions or billions strong?
Logic would tell them the human form is an Absolute of nature. By the same token the technology and the knowledge they had inherited would be divine revelation, and he, John Davenport, would be their God.
Confronted with the parent civilization, as they would be eventually, their instinct would be to destroy, in a holy war of extermination. They could never accept and embrace something that was an affront to the basic Absolutes of their philosophy.
A planet such as the Earth would be the unimaginable extreme of unclean horror, where the stench of rotting and fermenting vegetation would cause them to faint, and a dog walking down the street would be to them a blasphemy against the purity of the universe itself! And man, living by devouring the dead remains of such abominations, would be more horrible to them than medieval mans conception of the fiends in hell.
That was the realization that had come to him last night, in the quiet of his room.
The nth generation of his descendants would become a destroying behemoth, cleansing the universe in a holy crusade, and totally incapable of compromise. Compromise? It would be easier for a civilized man on Earth to abandon his own Absolutes and wallow in the mire with his hogs and consider them his equal.
Yes, that would happen, unless he, right now, destroyed the potential destroying monster he had let come into existence.
John Davenport took another step toward the control panel. It would be only the work of a moment. He knew exactly what to do. He wouldn't even need any tools. He could lift out the right panel and break the fine wires with his fingers and reconnect them. Then the computer, in seeking for stability of the pile, would have all its directives reversed.
But again he hesitated. He was right. He knew beyond doubt that he was right. But was he? Was it possible he was wrong?
And even if he were right, even if he did this thing, and destroyed his children, what of the next starship that became wrecked on some sterile world too far from home for hope of rescue?
And the next? And the next?
If what he believed must happen would become inevitable if he didn't cross those two fine wires under the panel, was it not just as inevitable if he did?
Somewhere, sometime...
And suddenly he knew he couldn't go through with it.
The same psychological principles that made his logic about what must eventually happen valid made it impossible for him to stop it here and now. He had never killed anything in his life; he could not force himself to kill now. Not, at least, for an abstract idea.
He reached out and touched the panel, but he did not lift it out. Regretfully he let his hand drop away from it.
Turning away from the control panel, he went with faltering, weary step toward the door beyond which his children's children awaited him with an absolute trust such as they could have given only to their God.
Of course he was wrong; he was already beginning to tell himself in the process of rationalization. He was getting senile. Why, he might have done that foolish thing! He wasn't to be trusted any more.
He reached out to the door to open it. For a moment he hesitated, and in his mind's eye rose the conviction of certainty. If he opened the door now, it would then be too late, and it would happen and his chance to stop it would be gone forever.
But even if he stopped it here and now, somewhere, sometime, in some other far off place, it would still happen....
Or maybe it wouldn't.
He pushed open the door, and suddenly all of his years settled down over his shoulders.