“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.