“But we didn’t. We merely imprisoned Auroran smugglers, and were obviously within our rights. They had to go to war over it because only so could they protect their superiority, which in turn protected them against the horrors of guilt. And we lost quickly. Scarcely an Auroran died. The guilt grew deeper and resulted in exactly the peace treaty our psychiatrists had predicted.
“And as for sending men out to die, that is a commonplace in every war-and a necessity. It was necessary to fight a battle, and, naturally, there were casualties.”
“But why?” interrupted Keilin, wildly. “Why? Why? Why does all this gibberish seem to make sense to you? What have we gained? What can we possibly gain out of the present situation?”
“Gained, man? You ask what we’ve gained? Why, we’ve gained the universe. What has held us back so far? You know what Earth has needed these last centuries. You yourself once outlined it forcefully to Cellioni. We need a positronic robot society and an atomic power technology. We need chemical farming and we need population control. Well, what’s prevented that, eh? Only the customs of centuries which said robots were evil since they deprived human beings of jobs, that population control was merely the murder of unborn children, and so on. And worse, there was always the safety valve of emigration either actual or hoped-for.
“But now we cannot emigrate. We’re stuck here. Worse than that, we have been humiliatingly defeated by a handful of men out in the stars, and we’ve had a humiliating treaty of peace forced upon us. What Earthman wouldn’t subconsciously burn for revenge? Self-preservation has frequently knuckled under to that tremendous yearning to ‘get even.’
“And that is the second third of the Pacific Project, the recognition of the revenge motive. As simple as that.
“And how can we know that this is really so? Why, it has been demonstrated in history scores of times. Defeat a nation, but don’t crush it entirely, and in a generation or two or three it will be stronger than it was before. Why? Because in the interval, sacrifices will have been made for revenge that would not have been made for mere conquest.
“Think! Rome beat Carthage rather easily the first time, but was almost defeated the second. Every time Napoleon defeated the European coalition, he laid the groundwork for another just a little bit harder to defeat, until he himself was crushed by the eighth. It took four years to defeat Wilhelm of medieval Germany, and six much more dangerous years to stop his successor, Hitler.
“There you are! Until now, Earth needed to change its way of life only for greater comfort and happiness. A minor item like that could always wait. But now it must change for revenge, and that will not wait. And I want that change for its own sake.
“Only-I am not the man to lead. I am tarred with the failure of yesteryear, and will remain so until, long after I am bone-dust, Earth learns the truth. But you… .you, and others like you, have always fought for the road to modernization. You will be in charge. It may take a hundred years. Grandchildren of men unborn may be the first to see its completion. But at least you will see the start.
“Eh, what do you say?” Keilin was fumbling at the dream. He seemed to see it in a misty distance-a new and reborn Earth. But the change in attitude was too extreme. It could not be done just yet. He shook his head.
He said: “What makes you think the Outer Worlds would allow such a change, supposing what you say to be true? They will be watching, I am sure, and they will detect a growing danger and put a stop to it. Can you deny that?”
Moreno threw his head back and laughed noiselessly. He gasped out: “But we have still a third left of the Pacific Project, a last, subtle and ironic third-
“The Outer Worlders call the men of Earth the subhuman dregs of a great race, but we are the men of Earth. Do you realize what that means? We live on a planet upon which, for a billion years, life-the life that has culminated in Mankind-has been adapting itself. There is not a microscopic part of Man, not a tiny working of his mind, that has not as its reason some tiny facet of the physical make-up of Earth, or of the biological make-up of Earth’s other life-forms, or of the sociological make-up of the society about him.
“No other planet can substitute for Earth, in Man’s present shape.
“The Outer Worlders exist as they do, only because pieces of Earth have been transplanted. Soil has been brought out there; plants; animals; men. They keep themselves surrounded by an artificial Earthborn geology which has within it, for instance, those traces of cobalt, zinc, and copper which human chemistry must have. They surround themselves by Earth-born bacteria and algae which have the ability to make those inorganic traces available in just the right way and in just the right quantity.
“And they maintain that situation by continued imports-luxury imports, they call it-from Earth.
“But on the Outer Worlds, even with Terrestrian soil laid down to bedrock, they cannot keep rain from falling and rivers from flow ing, so that there is an inevitable, if slow, admixture with the native soil; an inevitable contamination of Terrestrian soil bacteria with the native bacteria, and an exposure, in any case, to a different atmosphere and to solar radiations of different types. Terrestrian bacteria disappear or change. And then plant life changes. And then animal life.
“No great change, mind you. Plant life would not become poisonous or nonnutritious in a day, or year, or decade. But already, the men of the Outer Worlds can detect the loss or change of the trace compounds that are responsible for that infinitely elusive thing we call ‘flavor.’ It has gone that far.
“And it will go further. Do you know, for instance, that on Aurora, nearly one half the native bacterial species known have protoplasm based on a fluorocarbon rather than hydrocarbon chemistry? Can you imagine the essential foreignness of such an environment?
“Well, for two decades now, the bacteriologists and physiologists of Earth have studied various forms of Outer World Life-the only portion of the Pacific Project that has been truly secret-and the transplanted Terrestrian life is already beginning to show certain changes on the subcellular level. Even among the humans.
“And here is the irony. The Outer Worlders, by their rigid racism and unbending genetic policies are consistently eliminating from among themselves any children that show signs of adapting themselves to their respective planets in any way that departs from the norm. They are maintaining-they must maintain as a result of their own thought processes-an artificial criterion of ‘healthy’ humanity, which is based on Terrestrian chemistry and not their own.
“But now that Earth has been cut off from them; now that not even a trickle of Terrestrian soil and life will reach them, change will be piled on change. Sicknesses will come, mortality will increase, child abnormalities will become more frequent-”
“And then?” asked Keilin, suddenly caught up.
“And then? Well, they are physical scientists-leaving such inferior sciences as biology to us. And they cannot abandon their sensation of superiority and their arbitrary standard of human perfection. They will never detect the change till it is too late to fight it. Not all mutations are clearly visible, and there will be an increasing revolt against the mores of those stiff Outer World societies. There will be a century of increasing physical and social turmoil which will prevent any interference on their part with us.