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refusal-to-believe. Any new idea, in order to be accepted, must fight for its
place by knocking down all the old, false conceptions that disagree with it.
Consider, for example, the fact that the Orientals of your world knew of
gunpowder before the people of Western Europe, but that it was the Europeans
that proceeded to cause a cultural revolution by applying it to weaponry on a
large scale. The earlier intellectual inertia of the Oriental resisted the
possibilities of the gunpowder concept successfully, but in Europe the concept
was victorious."
"But what's that got to do with us and Quebahr?" asked Ellen, sounding
fascinated rather than argumentative.
"Merely that this inertia can be calculated," answered Peep. "If our young
friend, Jim, had informed Llalal about electricity and its potential as a
power source, the idea would have lived briefly in the minds of Llalal and his
Brotherhood, but died in the face of the conceptual inertia of the Mauregs as
a people, at this era in their history. Only you, young friends, would have
been the losers, since you would not have been rescued."
"That's nice!" said Curt, feelingly, "leave us to die if we fail the test,
when we don't even know we're being tested!"
"But young friend," protested Peep. "That is what life is in this universe of
ours. Living creatures must grow or die. And to grow each must experiment with
the unknown, with a penalty always attached to failure. The experimental
physicist," he turned to look slyly at Jim, "walking a shark in a tank. The
historical researcher," he turned and bent his glance on Curt, "skin-diving
into the past that is the sea-drowned city of Port Royal. The
anthropologically minded sociologist who is part of a team camping night after
night within a few yards of a gorilla family," he turned finally to gaze at
Ellen mischievously, "in the mountains of the Belgian Congo, in order to study
their intra-familial relationships during the day: All these take on the risk
that the price of knowledge may turn out to be some real, if unknown, danger."
He stopped. Jim, Curt, and Ellen all looked at each other in astonishment for
a long moment. Then, they all spoke at once.
"Where's Port Royal?" Jim asked Curt.
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"You studied wild gorillas?" Curt demanded of Ellen.
"How do you walk a shark?" queried Ellen, staring at Jim.
They all fell silent, looking at each other. Then with one accord they turned
to Peep.
"Indeed, young friends," said the Atakit, beaming at them, "you were all most
carefully scrutinized before you were selected to study among the stars. First
and foremost among the requirements you fulfilled was that of possessing
logically inquiring minds. The Federation needed to be sure that you would
each try to puzzle out a pattern to whatever events you were faced with after
leaving your home world. That you would have your curiosity aroused by as
minor an occurrence" he looked shyly along his nose at them "as that of
allowing Ellen to witness the take-off of this ship from Earth while you other
two were hindered from doing so."
The three of them stiffened, and stared at each other again.
"Then there wasn't some special reason for keeping Jim and me locked up that
way?" demanded Curt.
"Only the wish to start you puzzling about your situation and its happenings
from the beginning," said Peep. "Forgive us for this small deception, young
friends. We wanted you to start immediately building a logical explanation for
what was happening to you, whether you were right or not."
"I wasn't," growled Jim. "I thought the spaceship wreck and everything after
that was caused by a bunch of Aliens among the Federation who didn't want to
see us get out to the stars to study, or the human race accepted into the
Federation. I didn't even think the rescue beacon would work that's why I
wanted to educate Llalal and his Mauregs, so that the Federation would finally
have to investigate, and find us."
He looked somewhat guiltily at Curt and Ellen.
"I didn't say anything," he went on, "because well, I didn't think you'd
believe me."
"I did better than that," put in Curt. "I thought it was the Federation as a
whole that was trying to make us look bad. So they could use what we did as an
excuse to crack down on Earth." He rubbed his nose self-consciously. "I didn't
want to worry the rest of you. That's why / didn't say anything."
"I thought the Federation was running a controlled experiment on us,"
confessed Ellen. "Like a maze test with white rats in a psychology lab. Only
life size with us as the rats and Quebahr as the maze. I didn't say anything
because I thought I was the only one who recognized it, from lab work I've
done. I didn't want to get the rest of you all excited when you couldn't do
anything about it."
"You see," said Peep, solemnly. "Each one of you theorized. But none of you
allowed yourself to be blinded by your theories. When Jim came up with the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
