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Future Shock is a book written by the futurist Alvin Toffler in 1970. In the book, Toffler defines the term "future shock" as a certain psychological state of individuals and entire societies. His shortest definition for the term is a personal perception of "too much change in too short a period of time". The book, which became an international bestseller, grew out of an article "The Future as a Way of Life" in Horizon magazine, Summer 1965 issue. The book has sold over 6 million copies and has been widely translated.

Term

Toffler argued that society is undergoing an enormous structural change, a revolution from an industrial society to a "super-industrial society". This change overwhelms people. He believed the accelerated rate of technological and social change left people disconnected and suffering from "shattering stress and disorientation"—future shocked. Toffler stated that the majority of social problems are symptoms of future shock. In his discussion of the components of such shock, he popularized the term "information overload."

Development of society and production

Alvin Toffler distinguished three stages in development of society and production: agrarian, industrial and post-industrial.

The first stage began in the period of the Neolithic Era when people invented agriculture, thereby passing from barbarity to a civilization. The second stage began in England with the Industrial Revolution during which people invented the machine tool and the steam engine. The third stage began in the second half of the 20th century in the West when people invented automatic production, robotics and the computer. The services sector attained great value.

Toffler proposed one criterion for distinguishing between industrial society and post-industrial society: the share of the population occupied in agriculture versus the share of city labor occupied in the services sector. In a post-industrial society, the share of the people occupied in agriculture does not exceed 15%, and the share of city laborers occupied in the services sector exceeds 50%. Thus, the share of the people occupied with brainwork greatly exceeds the share of the people occupied with physical work in post-industrial society.

Fear of the future

Alvin Toffler's main thought consists of the fact that modern man feels shock from rapid changes. For example, Toffler's daughter went to shop in New York City and she couldn't find a shop in its previous location. Thus New York has become a city without a history. The urban population doubles every 11 years. The overall production of goods and services doubles each 50 years in developed countries. Society experiences an increasing number of changes with an increasing rapidity, while people are losing the familiarity that old institutions (religion, family, national identity, profession) once provided. The so-called "brain drain" – the emigration of European scientists to the United States – is both an indicator of the changes in society and also one of their causes.

Rather, I'd just like to note that the past decade or so seems to have been marked by a worldwide upwelling of bigotry and intolerance…

…This stuff is pervasive; you can come up with alarming news of authoritarian excesses in every corner of the globe.

What's going on?

Reading Robert Altermeyer's The Authoritarians gives one or two pointers, but the narrow focus — on authoritarian followers in politics — begs the question of where all this authoritarianism is coming from.

The term Future Shock was coined by Alvin and Heidi Toffler in the 1960s to describe a syndrome brought about by the experience of "too much change in too short a period of time". Per Wikipedia (my copy of Future Shock is buried in a heap of books in the room next door) "Toffler argues that society is undergoing an enormous structural change, a revolution from an industrial society to a 'super-industrial society'. This change will overwhelm people, the accelerated rate of technological and social change leaving them disconnected and suffering from 'shattering stress and disorientation' — future shocked. Toffler stated that the majority of social problems were symptoms of the future shock. In his discussion of the components of such shock, he also popularized the term information overload."

It's about forty years since "Future Shock" was published, and it seems to have withstood the test of time. More to the point, the Tofflers' predictions for how the symptoms would be manifest appear to be roughly on target. They predicted a growth of cults and religious fundamentalism; rejection of modernism: irrational authoritarianism: and widespread insecurity. They didn't nail the other great source of insecurity today, the hollowing-out of state infrastructure and externally imposed asset-stripping in the name of economic orthodoxy that Naomi Klein highlighted in The Shock Doctrine, but to the extent that Friedmanite disaster capitalism can be seen as a predatory corporate response to massive political and economic change, I'm inclined to put disaster capitalism down as being another facet of the same problem. (And it looks as if the UK and USA are finally on the receiving end of disaster capitalism at home, in the post-2008 banking crisis era.)

My working hypothesis to explain the 21st century is that the Tofflers underestimated how pervasive future shock would be. I think somewhere in the range from 15-30% of our fellow hairless primates are currently in the grip of future shock, to some degree. Symptoms include despair, anxiety, depression, disorientation, paranoia, and a desperate search for certainty in lives that are experiencing unpleasant and uninvited change. It's no surprise that anyone who can offer dogmatic absolute answers is popular, or that the paranoid style is again ascendant in American politics, or that religious certainty is more attractive to many than the nuanced complexities of scientific debate. Climate change is an exceptionally potent trigger for future shock insofar as it promises an unpleasant and unpredictable dose of upcoming instability in the years ahead; denial is an emotionally satisfying response to the threat, if not a sustainable one in the longer term.

Deep craziness: we're in it, and there's probably not going to be any reduction in the prevalence of authoritarian escapism until we collectively become accustomed to the pace of change. Which will, at a minimum, not happen until the older generations have died of old age — and maybe not even then.

— 2010

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I'd just like to update what I wrote in 2010 and say it's not 15-30% who are showing the signs of future shock: today it's more like 25-50%. I also underestimated the pervasiveness of conspiracy theories. Otherwise, I stand by it"

— 2023

The elderly are all involuntary refugees in an alien culture that is the future version of their own childhood home.

Also, their knees hurt! (This is why so many of them are grumpy.)

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(ed note: please note that this was written 1974, even though it might fool you into thinking it was written in 2019 )

      More than at any other time in history we are living today in an age of furious and bewildering change. Awareness of this fact, with all its disorganizing implications, is thrust upon us daily from all sides. Change permeates every aspect of our lives. In less than a single century we have moved from horse-and-buggy travel to supersonic transports and interplanetary vehicles. Simple bullets and limited battlefields have given way to hydrogen bombs and genocidal warfare. Our insular and agrarian society is rapidly vanishing, swept away by a burgeoning technology that spans oceans and continents. Our political institutions are in turmoil, our social values are shifting radically, and our ethical standards are under continuing attack. The environment of our planet is changing so rapidly that our very existence is threatened Serious men are seriously questioning our ability as a race to survive at all for very long; others question whether we deserve to survive, or even want to, considering the fearsome nature of the future world we may have to endure. Still others, more optimistic (or more stubborn), search diligently for ways to surmount the problems of change which seem increasingly insurmountable with every passing year.

     We know that much of this relentlessly accelerating change is rooted in the vast scientific and technological revolution that began three centuries ago and is still expanding today in exponential progression. We also know that different peoples have suffered differing impacts. In the underdeveloped nations today, change is suddenly uprooting whole societies and hurling millions of people overnight into an alien world they cannot begin to comprehend, much less adapt to. In such areas it has become the function of governments, for better or for worse, to force adaptation upon whole populations, and if the results have often been grisly, the need has been desperate. In our Western world the impact has been less catastrophic. For decades and centuries the winds of change have been accelerating slowly enough that orderly adaptation has been possible—up to a point. But now even here our capacity to adapt is being outpaced. We no longer have time for a slow, evolutionary assimilation of change into our daily lives. Multitudes of people are scrambling ever more frantically to find some kind of foot-hold, some place to stand, as they try to deal with a changing world which they can neither control nor comprehend. The popular term “future shock” is singularly appropriate: we are staggering beneath a rain of blows, both physical and emotional, as the juggernaut of technology grinds forward ever faster.

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     There are two ways that man can respond to the change that is thrust upon him: he can resist it, or he can try to adapt to it. Throughout history there have always been some who have found change to be challenging and exhilarating. These people, stimulated by the challenge and regarding change as beneficial, or at the very least inevitable, have searched for ways to adapt to it—that is, to alter their lives in such a way as to accommodate or even utilize the changes that have occurred. The vast majority of people, however, have always found change to be frightening, bewildering, or demoralizing. These people, typifying the forces of reaction or conservatism within the society, have sought to ignore, prevent, or control the forces of change in order to maintain a status quo. In times when change was occurring in a slow and orderly or evolutionary fashion, these opposing forces of adaptation and resistance were more or less evenly balanced, and adaptation was comparatively easy. People had time to assimilate the changes, time to adjust themselves, time to work the implications of change into their lives, and then gently alter the way they were living to conform to the demands of change. Often the same individuals met change with both adaptation and resistance: they would adapt to change a step at a time, resisting further change until earlier change had been fully assimilated and then moving a small step further to assimilate the next change.

     We can see this type of successful adaptation to change exemplified in the manner in which the automobile, with its internal combustion engine, edged out the horse and carriage as a primary means of transportation from place to place—an evolutionary process that took place with comparatively little dislocation over a period of decades in the advanced industrial societies, and which is still proceeding today in less developed areas. But as the pace of change has accelerated with bewildering swiftness in recent decades, such orderly adaptation has become progressively more difficult. More and more people regard change as threatening and catastrophic. Without sufficient time to assimilate change in an orderly fashion, even the more adaptive individuals have drawn back into a shell of conservatism, consciously or unconsciously fighting change tooth and nail, seeking desperately to maintain the status quo, however precarious it might be, and responding to the changing world with a vast conservative inertia.

     Today we can see manifestations of this inertia on all sides of us. We see it, for example, in the continuing growth of huge and sprawling urban centers, spreading out unchecked into the suburban areas, while the city centers are increasingly beset with poverty, crime, and decay. We know, of course, that the cities have been vital to man’s development throughout most of his history, but the city of today is unlike anything ever before witnessed. There is ample reason to suspect that the sprawling metropolis containing tens of millions of people is no longer a serviceable or even a viable social entity, but rather that such cities today are in fact anti-survival and largely unnecessary considering the current state of our technology. Yet with enormous conservative inertia our society not only struggles to maintain existing megalopoli but allows them to enlarge further and seeks even to create new ones. In a related area, the forces of environmental destruction march on virtually unchecked by the token measures we have raised so far to block them, and any truly radical or imaginative approach to stemming or reversing these forces is met with a massive resistance. At the same time our society adheres doggedly to antediluvian values, complacently tolerating corrupt political institutions and ineffective or hypocritical ethical standards which cry out for reevaluation and true reform if the society that is founded on these principles is to survive.

     There was a time when conservative inertia and resistance to change were successful in maintaining a status quo; such change as there was came slowly, was bargained with, and was assimilated a bit at a time. But unfortunately the forces of change in our society today can no longer be negotiated. Change is occurring in an ever-accelerating cycle. There is no longer time to bargain, no quid pro quo possible. Change is going to continue no matter how man reacts to it, and it is going to change lives ever more swiftly and massively, whether men want their lives changed or not. It is no longer even appropriate for us to ask whether change can be prevented, minimized, or controlled; the appropriate question is how change can be dealt with in such a way that individuals and society can survive and prosper in the midst of it. Thus it is hardly surprising that in this past half century of accelerating change a singular popular literature has emerged which deals specifically with change and its impact on human lives.

     This popular literature, which we now know as science fiction, is by no means virgin to the twentieth century. Scholars can demonstrate that a literature of romantic fantasy has occupied its own special niche over the centuries. With its curious and rather special outlook on man’s relationship to nature and the world, it has always stirred the imagination and evoked a sense of wonder in the face of phenomena that were not clearly understood. But it was only in the first quarter of the twentieth century that science fiction began to distinguish itself by its recognition of science and technology as key factors molding our society. It was at the same time that science fiction became acutely concerned with rational speculation about the impact of science and technology on mankind, as opposed to the supernatural or mystical dream worlds previously explored in romantic fantasy. And just as modern science fiction has evolved side by side with the twentieth century’s scientific and technological revolution, it has begun to serve as an increasingly important and singularly effective device for adaptation to changes brought about by that revolution. Science fiction today is an excellent means for pinpointing and identifying the potential hazards that may face us in the future because of accelerating change; in addition, it is also an excellent means for testing or exploring possible future solutions. And it is in this area that science fiction has a surprising potential for preparing its readers to adapt to the swiftly accelerating speed of change, to survive the future shock that this change is bringing about and to modify the untoward effects of change.

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     But how can a popular literature which is often regarded as “crazy” or “fantastic” by those least acquainted with it actually equip its readers to adapt to social, cultural, or technological change? First and foremost, science fiction prepares the minds of its readers with certain concepts or attitudes toward change that are not always widely shared by others. For example, the science fiction reader is powerfully acclimatized to the underlying idea that change is going to come about, come what may. There is no nonsense in his head about resisting, thwarting, or evading change. The science fiction stories he reads dwell upon future societies that have changed from the present. In these stories change is regarded as inevitable; indeed, science fiction frequently predicates rapid, radical, or abrupt change as probable in the pattern of the future. From his experience with the simple process of extrapolation—taking current trends and patterns and tracing them to their possible logical future implications—the science fiction reader knows that the changes proceeding about him today, however sweeping they may be, are as nothing compared to the changes that may be expected in the near and distant future.

     Second, the science fiction reader is encouraged by his reading not to fear or dread change, but rather to accept it as a fresh and exciting challenge. After all, science fiction seems to say, the winds of change—however violent they may seem—are of man's making in the first place, and it should be within man’s power to temper them. This is not to say that the science fiction reader necessarily likes the idea of change, or welcomes it, or even approves of it. He may well react quite negatively. He may elect to move heaven and earth in an effort to modify its impact, but total rejection is unlikely to enter his head. Rather, his thinking will be directed to identifying what might be wrong with a specific direction of change, which kinds of change to resist and which to applaud, what deleterious influences might come about as a result of change, and how those undesirable effects might be prevented from happening. Indeed, there are a number of prominent science fiction writers, and multitudes of their readers, who quite actively detest the process of technological change and the direction in which technology seems to be drawing mankind. But even the most adamantly pessimistic of these “anti-science” writers nevertheless recognize the inevitability of change and seek in their writings to modify its impact rather than to attempt to turn the clock back. And even at that, these writers and their readers are the exception rather than the rule. Most science fiction writers and readers approach the idea of change not with the negative mental set of “what can we do to halt it or minimize it?” but rather with the more optimistic mental set of “how can we use it, adapt to it, make our lives with it, around it, or in spite of it? How can we deal with it most effectively?"

     Third, science fiction readers in general are equipped by their reading to accept scientific and technological discovery and advancement as a major and potentially beneficial instrument forcing change. Rather than ask, “Why do we need this advancement?” they are asking, “Why haven't we had this advancement sooner? Why aren’t we applying it more widely? Why didn’t we recognize its potential twenty years ago, and why aren't we using these changes to better advantage?" There are very few “back to nature and the simple life" thinkers among science fiction readers, very few hand-wringers, very few indeed who are concentrating on past faults, failings, and frailties of mankind. Thus, for better or for worse, science fiction readers are probably more realistically oriented to the inevitable forces of change than most other people. At the same time, science fiction readers are prepared by their reading to cope with the natural ambivalence that scientific and technological change generates in people’s minds. These readers clearly recognize that all scientific and technological progress is not necessarily good, and that for every benefit of science there are likely to be hazards or disadvantages. Thus they are able to direct their thinking toward neutralizing or counteracting these hazards or disadvantages while at the same time nurturing and developing the benefits. And if worst comes to worst, science fiction readers are prepared to accept the worst and deal with it. They are long familiar with the ironic concept of Finagle’s First Law as scientists and engineers apply it to any scientific experiment in the laboratory: If something can go wrong, it will. But the science fiction reader is also aware that this perverse principle applies just as universally to life situations as it does to scientific or engineering experiments in the laboratory.

     In short, science fiction prepares its readers for successful adaptation to change first by accepting the fact of change, whether desirable or not, as inevitable; second, by seeking to adjust to the change wherever possible; and third by modifying the change when possible or necessary in order to reduce its negative impact on our lives. On the other hand, much adaptive failure arises, first, from refusing to accept change as an inescapable factor; second, fighting against all change, the good as well as the bad; and seeking to resist or negate changes in attempting to return to or to restore past circumstances that are more familiar and comfortable. The non-adaptive individual is frightened by the unfamiliar and seeks unsuccessfully to resist it. The science fiction reader is dealing constantly with the unfamiliar and is equally constantly, and successfully, seeking familiar patterns or trends in it.

     Thus we can say that science fiction engenders a positive adaptive attitude in the minds of its readers. What is more, it furthers adaptation toward change by developing in its readers the elasticity of mind—the sheer imaginative grasp—to enable them to grapple with change constructively. The typical science fiction reader is capable of conceiving many possible futures, each different from the other, and is comfortable dealing with change one step at a time in approaching these possible futures. Critical to constructive adaptive thinking is the sort of elasticity of mind typified by the concept of fairy chess—a modification of the classic game in which an already complex game operating within a rigid framework of rules is made even more mind-stretching by the simple expedient of arbitrarily modifying certain of the rules at the beginning of each game. Thus in fairy chess the players might agree that for the purposes of the game they are about to play the knight will always have the option of moving either two spaces forward and one to the side or three spaces forward and one to the side, thus significantly altering and extending the ordinary power of the chessboard knight. All other rules of the game remain unchanged from the classical pattern. In another game the players might agree that the pawns can move only on the diagonal and capture only straight ahead, directly the opposite of the classical rule. Each such minor modification presents the players with an unfamiliar context that still bears familiar patterns or trends. It also forces the players to stretch their minds beyond the limits of the normal chess game and to cope effectively with the unfamiliar. On a somewhat similar level, the introduction of wild cards into a poker game is a clear extension of the fairy chess concept, and players in such a game are forced with each declaration of a wild card to adjust their thinking with regard to the odds and the values of cards and hands. The adaptive player grapples with such unfamiliarity, learns to calculate the shifting odds, and wins; the non-adaptive player cannot cope with the change, gets his toenails trimmed, and returns to the more familiar classical pattern of the game as quickly as the deal comes his way.

     Science fiction readers are constantly playing fairy chess with their reading. The rules are ever-changing. The notion that “nothing is certain” or that “nothing is quite what it seems” becomes familiar and acceptable; the stretching of the mind is challenging and exhilarating, not frightening or demoralizing. Indeed, it is this very mind-stretching quality of science fiction that draws the great majority of i.ts readers to this literature.

     Consider for a moment how the rules for adaptation that we have been discussing might apply specifically to a broad and emotionally loaded area of change facing us as individuals in the future: the part that computerization is destined to play in the area of health care. To a non-adaptive the notion of introducing a machine, however complex, into the human equation of health care is anathema-a repugnant and threatening concept. It does not matter to the non-adaptive that the pattern for this change is already set, and that computerization of many areas of medical care is inevitable if universal, expert, and inexpensive health care services of high quality are to be made widely available. In spite of all this the non-adaptive fights doggedly to resist the change. He seeks to retain or to restore the ancient and comfortable concept of human ministration and laying-on-of-hands by the personal, concerned physician, even when it can be demonstrated that today's physician equipped with today’s medical knowledge cannot possibly do as good a job using only the classical techniques of medical art and science as he could do by availing himself of modern computerized services. The adaptive individual, on the other hand, sees clearly that computerization offers certain very major advantages and opens the door to immensely more competent, comprehensive, and scientifically thorough health-care services, together with certain built-in losses and disadvantages as well. He recognizes clearly that the human physician working in close partnership with the computer can practice a far superior quality of medicine than the physician working alone, but that certain human touches in the doctor-patient relationship, a certain element of human concern on the part of the physician for his individual patient will very probably be lost. The adaptive then says, “How can we avail ourselves of all the advantages while taking the rough edges off the disadvantages?"

     We can find many examples of science fiction-inspired adaptation to change both in the past and in the present. For example, very few science fiction readers indeed were startled at the launching of the first Sputnik in October of 1957. They may have been frustrated and disappointed that the first such earth-orbiting satellite should have been launched under the auspices of Soviet technology and not our own, but to these readers the accomplishment itself, in all its implications, had been taken for granted as an inevitable eventuality for decades. Science fiction readers, indeed, had gone from the first German buzz bombs of World War II to the orbiting-earth satellite in a single leap. These readers assumed and accepted this eventuality as a matter of time and nothing more; by the time it had occurred they knew and understood the physics and technology behind it; they were fully acquainted with the logistic requirements of such a shot; they had already explored—and largely discounted—the military implications of such an accomplishment (a widespread but superficial and shortsighted concern) and instead were quite accurately recognizing the Sputnik as a first solid step in man’s eventual exploration of the solar system beyond the earth. What is more, throughout the subsequent fifteen years that ultimately led to the first moon landing, science fiction readers were continuously far in advance of others in their thinking and acceptance of the implications of the space program. By the time the first exploring party finally did set foot on the moon, science fiction readers had long since been working out the logistics of permanent moon colonies, debating specific techniques for interplanetary exploration elsewhere in the solar system, and were chafing at the apparent physical limitations which seemed to make travel to other star systems something less than practical as a short-term goal.

     By the same token, few science fiction readers were seriously startled at the emergence of the uranium fission bomb on the scene in 1945, or at the subsequent staggering technological developments that made fission and fusion weapons such an unparalleled influence on the course of human affairs in the twentieth century. At the time the first fission bomb was released, science fiction readers were already fully aware of the unthinkable quantities of energy trapped in the atomic nucleus. Indeed, in their speculative explorations they had already moved on to consider not only the enormously horrifying military aspects of these power sources, but also the enormously beneficial aspects as well. They had been prepared by their reading to assimilate the concept of nuclear weaponry, on the one hand, and to adapt to the idea of nuclear power as an immensely important energy source of the future on the other hand.

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(ed note: A decade before the events in the novel, the alien Maseni land on Terra and become our best friends. Sadly, a large percentage of the human population has an acute attack of Future Shock. Neophobes, the entire lot of them.)

     “You have this compulsion to talk with zanies,” Brutus said. “We never encounter a batch of Pure Earthers that you pass by; you’ve always got to stop and have a few words with them.”
     “They fascinate me,” Jessie said.
     “Sometimes, I think you could be one of them, with a little nudge,” the hell hound said, contemptuously.
     Jessie ignored the hound’s sneering remark. He said, “The Pure Earthers are borderline Shockies; if they’d been just a hair more upset by the Maseni landing and all that’s come since, they’d be in one of the homes. I’ll never have the chance to see any real Shockies, but I can get an idea what they must be like from studying the Pure Earthers.”
     “Why this interest in Shockies?” Brutus asked.
     “You know why. My parents are Shockies.”
     “Oh, yeah,” Brutus said. “I forgot.” But he hadn’t forgotten at all. He was just looking for something more to sneer about. “They went starkers when the Maseni touched down, a couple of wide-eyed blubbers.”
     Jessie watched the approaching Pure Earthers. “That’s right.”

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     The first Maseni interstellar ships had landed a decade ago, in the second week of October, 1990. Within a year, the population of Earth—regardless of nationality, race, ethnic group, or education—had been roughly divided into three types of reactions.

     First, there were those who were profoundly shocked by these developments, but who were able to cope and reorder the nature of their lives and the limits of their perceptions of the universe. These were about forty-five percent of the population.

     Another forty-five percent were simply unable to adjust. These were the Shockies. They were jolted by the realization that mankind was not the most intelligent species in existence, a fact scientists had predicted for years but which the Shockies had always rejected as “holcum” or “bunkum” or “crap,” or “heresy” or “craziness”. They were further jolted to discover— thanks to the Maseni—that the supernatural world actually existed, that the denizens of nightmare were real (vampires, werewolves, etc.). And they were crushed to discover that (insert deity of choice) was not quite the being they had always thought. Not only were their patriotic and racial convictions smashed, but so was their spiritual belief…

     Shockies behaved in one of three ways:

1. Uncontrolled rage that led to murder, bombing, rape and rampages of undirected violence.
2. As they had always acted before, refusing to acknowledge that the Maseni existed or that their world had changed at all, no matter how much that changed world impinged on their fantasy.
3. Or they simply became catatonic, staring off into another world, unable to speak, unable to feed themselves or control their own bodily functions.

     Cultural shock, severe, horrible.

     Space-program scientists had long theorized the extent of such a sickness an alien race should ever be found, but none of them had realized how far-reaching the illness would be.

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     “Are you going to bleed for them forever?” Brutus asked. “Haven't you ever heard of ‘survival of the fittest’? Did the Cro-Magnon man weep for the Neanderthal?”
     “These were my parents,” Blake said. “My mother and father. If they could have just accepted change, a little bit—”
     “Then they’d have been Pure Earthers,” Brutus said. “Would you have been any happier with that?”
     “I guess not.”

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     The Pure Earthers, at first, had no name and operated under no central organization; that development had required five years in the making. But they were all alike, and they could function coherently as a group; the Pure Earth League was an inevitable product of the Maseni landing. Those citizens who had not gone starkers but who were also unable to cope, about ten percent of the world population, agitated for an end of Human-Maseni relations and a return to the simpler life. They were, of course, doomed to extinction. Their own children, more accustomed to seeing Maseni and supernaturals in the streets, were falling away from the older folks; succeeding generations would give fewer and fewer bodies to the Cause.

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     Millennium City was a 200-store shopping mall, most of it under a single roof, with indoor pedwalks, indoor and outdoor parks, fountains, convention facilities, hotels, more fountains, amusement centers, free theaters and museums, robot guides to help you find your way, a three hundred million credit wonder that had been completed only a year before. It was staffed exclusively by robots and was efficiently run, enormously profitable.

     Only ten years earlier, it could never have been built —and not only because Maseni technology was required to construct it. Ten years ago, the city of Los Angeles simply would not have had the room, in the heart of its west side, to contain such a lavish, three-hundred-acre structure. Then, there had been too many people, too much crowding.

     Now, a decade after the Maseni landing on Earth, the city was only half as populated as it had been. Forty-five percent of the city’s people had gone starkers and ended up in homes for Shockies. Many of these, in the following ten years, either took their own lives or died from too long in a catatonic trance. For the most part, the Shockies were those who were already hopelessly at odds with their times; they were, in many cases, those who ignored the warnings of ecologists and continued to have large families, polluting the Earth with excess flesh. Removed from the mating cycle, they no longer contributed to the population boom.

     Those who adapted to the Maseni and the other changes, tended to have no families, or small ones. As the Shockies died, the population dropped, and land became available. With the welfare rolls almost wiped out, and with vital services crying for good workers, everyone again had a job and everyone was more affluent than any time in the nation’s history. There was not only room to build Millennium City, but also credits to spend there.

     Old office buildings were torn down, as were rows and rows of shabby houses where no one lived any more. They razed factories that had once produced useless gadgets and flashy gewgaws, for none of these things were now in demand; society had suddenly become aware of its own power and of the true value of possessions. Millennium City not only provided services and products, but a place to feel at ease, a center for commerce which was, at the same time, a business establishment and a community meeting place.

(ed note: I agree with this quote taken out of context, but I violently disagree with the rest of the author's writings since he was a racist bastard)

      A half-million years of experience in outwitting beasts on mountains and plains, in heat and cold, in light and darkness, gave your ancestors the equipment that we still desperately need we are to slay the dragon that roams the earth today, marry the princess of outer space, and live happily ever after in the deer filled glades of a world where everyone is young and beautiful forever.

     One final doubt mars this vision of paradise. The hunters who killed the mammoths and outwitted the beasts were young men, in their prime. Few lived to be fifty. Those who reached that ancient age spent their days by the campfire while their sons and grandsons carried in the meat. Their business was to teach young men the wisdom of ancient ways… They did not need flexible minds.

     Their descendants do. The graybeards who sit around the council fires of nations today need more than ancient wisdom. They must be able to shed the thought patterns of their youth as quickly as an Ona drops his robe when he kneels to shoot…

     Cannot these old men bring themselves to realize … that the passport to a new life is theirs for the asking, but only if they will discard the traditional caution of statesmen … and develop minds as bold and flexible as that of a hunter tracking a bear?

     Can they not realize that the alternative to cultural change is not a perpetuation of the status quo, but the failure of a cosmic experiment, the end of man’s great adventures?

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(ed note: the movie is a pseudo-documentary based on the eponymous book, about how the Oakland Athletics baseball management used the new science of Sabermetrics to spot valuable players that the other ball teams couldn't see. Much like spotting interesting holes using a new framework. The conventional system of subjective talent scouts and obsolete metrics made the valuable players invisible. Using sabermetrics the Oakland team could spot and hire these players at bargain basement prices. Low prices because none of the other ball teams were bidding on them.

Naturally the Oakland team faced tremendous push-back from the established talent scouts, who were suddenly feeling like buggy-whip manufacturers. As it turned out, the talent scouts were right be afraid for their jobs.

Billy Beane is the manager of the Oakland Athletics. His problem is trying to hire winning players with a shoe-string budget. He discovers Sabermetrics expert Peter Brand, and hires him as the secret weapon to solve the problem.)

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(ed note: Billy Beane meets Peter Brand. In private Billy asks Peter about baseball analysis. This leads to Billy hiring Peter)

Peter Brand: There is an epidemic failure within the game to understand what is really happening. And this leads people who run Major League Baseball teams to misjudge their players and mismanage their teams. I apologize.
Billy Beane: Go on.
Peter Brand: Okay. People who run ball clubs, they think in terms of buying players. Your goal shouldn't be to buy players, your goal should be to buy wins. And in order to buy wins, you need to buy runs. You're trying to replace Johnny Damon. The Boston Red Sox see Johnny Damon and they see a star who's worth seven and half million dollars a year. When I see Johnny Damon, what I see is... is... an imperfect understanding of where runs come from. The guy's got a great glove. He's a decent leadoff hitter. He can steal bases. But is he worth the seven and half million dollars a year that the Boston Red Sox are paying him? No. No. Baseball thinking is medieval. They are asking all the wrong questions. And if I say it to anybody, I'm—I'm ostracized. I'm—I'm—I'm a leper. So that's why I'm—I'm cagey about this with you. That's why I... I respect you, Mr. Beane, and if you want full disclosure, I think it's a good thing that you got Damon off your payroll. I think it opens up all kinds of interesting possibilities.

---

Peter Brand: Billy, this is Chad Bradford. He's a relief pitcher. He is one of the most undervalued players in baseball. His defect is that he throws funny. Nobody in the big leagues cares about him, because he looks funny. (meaning that the subjective analysis of the talent scouts makes them ignore Bradford because he "looks funny." But objective sabermetrics reveals Bradford is incredibly effective) This guy could be not just the best pitcher in our bullpen, but one of the most effective relief pitchers in all of baseball. This guy should cost $3 million a year. We can get him for $237,000. (because none of the other ball teams are bidding on Bradford, because without sabermetrics he is invisible to them. Oakland's shoe-string budget can afford Bradford)

---

Peter Brand: It's about getting things down to one number. Using the stats the way we read them, we'll find value in players that no one else can see. People are overlooked for a variety of biased reasons and perceived flaws. Age, appearance, personality. Bill James (inventor of sabermetrics) and mathematics cut straight through that. Billy, of the 20,000 notable players for us to consider, I believe that there is a championship team of twenty-five people that we can afford, because everyone else in baseball undervalues them. Like an island of misfit toys.

---

(ed note: John Henry, owner of the Boston Red Sox, tries to hire Billy Beane. He explains to Billy why the use of sabermetrics is the wave of the future, and why Billy faced so much push-back from the talent scouts and the baseball establishment. )

John Henry: For forty-one million, you built a playoff team. You lost Damon, Giambi, Isringhausen, Pena and you won more games without them than you did with them. You won the exact same number of games that the Yankees won, but the Yankees spent one point four million per win and you paid two hundred and sixty thousand. I know you've taken it in the teeth out there, but the first guy through the wall. It always gets bloody, always. It's the threat of not just the way of doing business, but in their minds it's threatening the game. But really what it's threatening is their livelihoods, it's threatening their jobs, it's threatening the way that they do things. And every time that happens, whether it's the government or a way of doing business or whatever it is, the people are holding the reins, have their hands on the switch. They go bat sh*t crazy. I mean, anybody who's not building a team right and rebuilding it using your model, they're dinosaurs. They'll be sitting on their ass on the sofa in October, watching the Boston Red Sox win the World Series.

(ed note: During the fall of the Galactic Empire the Vegan Scout Starfire was sent on a bogus mission into unexplored space, basically to die in the wilderness. The ship gradually falls apart due to lack of spares and proper engineers. Finally it crashes on an unknown planet, the ship a total wreck. But Captain Vibor snaps and calmly orders the crew to fix the unfixable ship.)

     “Let’s have it,” he said and sat down on a bedroll. He was aware that the tension which had held them all for a second or two was relaxing. And he knew that the rangers would follow his lead—they would wait for his decision.
     “(Captain) Vibor is no longer with us—he’s—he’s cracked.” Smitt fumbled for words. And Kartr read in him a rising fear and desolation.
     “Is it because of his loss of sight? If that is so, the condition may be only temporary. When he becomes resigned to that—”
     “No. He has been heading for a breakdown for a long time. The responsibility of command under present conditions—that fight with the Greenies—he was good friends with Tork, remember? The ship falling to pieces bit by bit and no chance for repairs— It’s added up to drive him under. Now he’s just refusing to accept a present he doesn’t dare believe in. He’s retired into a world of his own where things go right instead of wrong. And he wants us in there with him.”
     …But Kartr could at this moment understand the odd incidents of the past months, certain inconsistencies in Vibor’s orders—one or two remarks he had overheard.
     “You think that there is no chance of his recovering?”
     “No. The crash pushed him over the edge. The orders he’s given during the past hour or so—I tell you—he’s finished!”

(ed note: This is the fate of those suffering from acute Future Shock)

The first person to introduce the concept of Future Shock was Alvin Toffler in his 1970 book, Future Shock. The main argument is that society is undergoing an enormous structural change, a revolution from an industrial society to a “super-industrial society”. This change will overwhelm people, the accelerated rate of technological and social change will leave them disconnected, suffering from “shattering stress and disorientation” – future shocked. Toffler stated that the majority of social problems were symptoms of future shock.

A few years earlier, Gordon Moore in his now famous paper introduced the idea that would eventually be called Moore’s Law, that states that the speed and density of microprocessor design will follow an exponential curve. This was at a time when computers had barely had any impact on society, nearly 20 years before PC’s made hardly a dent on the economic landscape. 30 years later we saw the explosion of the Internet into the world. Now 40 years later, microprocessors speed is doubling almost every year, and its effects are extraordinary. Not a day goes buy now when some scientific or technological advance isn’t hitting the front pages. As Ray Kurzweil suggest with his Law of Accelerating Returns, microprocessor are such an integrated part of our lives of economic progress, that now society too is caught up in this accelerating change, suggesting that we could see as much change in the next 25 years, as we saw in the last 10,000 years combined!

As one of the leading thinkers on the singularity, Eliezer Yudkowsky is someone accustomed to thinking about extremes of future technological change and advancement. After having many wide ranging discussions with futurists of all stripes, he noticed that certain technological implications can be too “far out” or shocking to some groups more than others. So he came up with what he calls Future Shock Levels or the level that different people find themselves in terms of their concept of the future, and what they are willing to consider, or which is too futuristic or even shocking for them.

---

Shock Level 0

Degree of Change: Flat.

Technologies: Same as today, maybe more TV channels, bigger cars or TV’s.

The legendary average person is comfortable with modern technology – not so much the frontiers of modern technology, but the technology used in everyday life. Most people, TV anchors, journalists, politicians.

For people at this level, the future is seen as pretty much the same as it is today. If you could chart their concept of the future on a graph, you would see change reaching a plateau today and leveling off from here on out. Almost every economic and political paper about the future I’ve read falls into this category. When they discuss wide ranging implications of their policy decisions, there is hardly any mention of technological change at all, and only in the most mundane ways with concepts of Level 1 being described as something to be afraid of, with dangerous out-of-control implications. The current climate of fear over cloning and stem-cell therapy falls into this level.

---

Shock Level 1

Degree of Change: Logarithmic, then hitting a relative plateau in a decade or two.

Technologies: Virtual reality, living to a hundred, e-commerce, hydrogen economy, ubiquitous computing, stem-cell cloning, minor genetic improvements.

At this level you will find the majority of futurists and future oriented publications. Modern technological frontiers as depicted in WIRED magazine and books like Future Shock and Bill Gates, The Road Ahead. Included in this group are most scientists, novelty-seekers, early-adopters, programmers and technophiles.

Placed on a chart, future progress will continue upwards in a logarithmic fashion, with each year bringing the same amount of change as last year. Eventually this incremental change will lead to people living to a hundred, and optimistically in a society with clean energy, general economic prosperity, and conservative space exploration scenarios.

In my experience most of the people described above think about the future in relatively conservative terms. If you ever read a future oriented article by one of them they often say things like, “This probably won’t happen in my lifetime, but perhaps my children or grandchildren will live to see it”, If you ever read a quote like that you know you’re reading someone at SL1. Almost every report that comes out of NASA is hopelessly stuck at SL1.

---

Shock Level 2

Degree of Change: Logarithmic to Exponential

Technologies: major genetic engineering, medical immortality, interstellar travel, and new “alien” cultures.

At this level you’ll find your typical SF Fan. Literary SF and cutting edge magazines like Mondo 2000, Omni or Future magazine of days past were filled with Level 2 ideas. Ironically, I don’t know of a single popular SF movie or TV show that exists comfortably at this level. Not even Star Trek qualifies for SL2, as it barely considers life spans past 100, with immortality remaining the exclusive domain of “super-advanced aliens”.

Up and until the 1980’s there wasn’t much discussion of future change past level 2, except in the most limited sense. This is probably because the concept of radical accelerating change was still beyond the radar of almost every forward thinking person at the time. Enabling Level 3 technologies like molecular nanotechnology were not even considered then. The only exceptions I know of are Robert Anton Wilson and Timothy Leary, who were completely at home with post-human evolution (SL3).

---

Shock Level 3

Degree of Change: Exponential

Technologies: Immortality, nanotechnology, human-equivalent AI, intelligence increase, mind uploading, total body revision, intergalactic exploration, megascale engineering.

Clearly identifiable people didn’t exist at this level until the 1980’s when groups like the Extropians and transhumanists emerged. Writers like Robert Anton Wilson, and Timothy Leary with his SMI2LE concept were the first people to my knowledge who discussed this level in any depth. However, it wasn’t until Eric Drexler published his book Engines of Creation that finally set the stage for concrete, detailed technological speculation of SL3 possibilities.

---

Shock Level 4

Degree of Change: Exponential to Hyperbolic (Accelerating Acceleration)

Technologies: Singularity, Matrioska “Jupiter” Brains, Powers, complete mental revision, ultraintelligence, posthumanity, Alpha-Point computing, Apotheosis, the total evaporation of “life as we know it.”

The only people I know who are comfortable discussing change at this level are Singularitarians, and some cutting edge psychedelic pioneers like Terence McKenna and John Lilly. Olaf Stapledon in his book Star Maker waxed poetic about SL3 megascale engineering and SL4 ultra-intelligences, and John Lilly discussed multiple encounters with a SL4 intelligences, which he gave names like “ECCO” and “Solid State Entities”. The first writer to bring this into concrete technological terms was Vernor Vinge in his 1993 paper . These ideas were soon picked up by Extropians and Transhumanists, but as far as I know it wasn’t until the Singularitarians that this level was embraced concretely and enthusiastically.

---

As Eliezer Yudkowsky says, If there’s a Shock Level Five, I’m not sure I want to know about it!

Eliezer goes on to say,

“If somebody is still worried about virtual reality (low end of SL1), you can safely try explaining medical immortality (low-end SL2), but not nanotechnology (SL3) or uploading (high SL3). They might believe you, but they will be frightened – shocked.

That’s not to say you can’t do it. In fact, you can take advantage of the future shock to carry the idea. You just have to be careful.

By a similar token, a Singularitarian can shock a science-fiction fan, but not an Extropian – the Extropian will be interested, perhaps enthusiastic, but not shocked. (Of course, if the person was already enthusiastic about Transhumanism, they might be wildly enthusiastic about the Singularity.) An Extropian can shock your average Wired reader, but should be careful about trying this with the “person on the street” – they may be frightened. And so on. In general, one shock level gets you enthusiasm, two gets you a strong reaction – wild enthusiasm or disbelief, three gets you frightened – not necessarily hostile, but frightened, and four can get you burned at the stake.”

• 

(ed note: the Makenzie family have established a virtual monopoly on hydrogen fuel for interplanetary spacecraft. Not because they patented the idea, more because no other company can afford the outrageous initial investment in infrastructure. The Makenzies are rudely surprised when they find the grim spectre of technological disruption coming to destroy their business model.

The problem is a conventional spacecraft uses ten thousand tons of hydrogen on a single flight, while the new Asymptotic Drive needs only 160 tons. Which means for every 1,000 grams of hydrogen the Makenzies used to sell, they will now sell only 16 grams. For every dollar they used to get, now they will only earn less than two cents.)

      “There is one other point,” said Malcolm (Makenzie) thoughtfully, “and it may be the most important of all. We may have only ten years in which to change the whole basis of our economy. If you can find an answer to this problem on your trip—even a hint of an answer!—you’ll be a hero when you come home. No one will criticize any of your other activities, public or private.”
     (Duncan Makenzie said) “That’s a tall order. I’m not a magician.”
     “Then perhaps you’d better start taking lessons. If the Asymptotic Drive isn’t pure magic, I don’t know what it is.”

---

     After three hundred years of spaceships that were mostly fuel tanks, Sirius was not quite believable. She seemed to have far too many windows, and there were entrance hatches in most improbable places, some of them still gaping open as cargo was loaded. At least she was taking on some hydrogen, thought Duncan sourly; it would be adding insult to economic injury if she made the round trip on a single fueling. She was capable of doing this, it was rumored, though at the cost of doubling her transit time.

---

(ed note: Duncan Makenzie is on a new Asymptotic Drive ship making a journey from Titan to Terra. He convinces Engineer Warren to show him the Drive)

     Yet the guilt was there, and he knew why. He was taking advantage of a friendship for secret purposes of his own, by suggesting that his interest in the Asymptotic Drive was no more than would be expected from anyone with a scientific or engineering background. But perhaps Warren was not as naïve as he seemed; he could hardly be unaware that the Drive posed a threat to the entire economy of Duncan’s society. He might even be trying to help, in a tactful way.

     “You may be disappointed,” said Warren as they passed through the bulkhead floor separating levels Three and Two. “There’s not much to see. But what there is is enough to give some people nightmares—which is why we discourage visitors.”
     Not the most important reason, thought Duncan. The Drive was not exactly a secret; there was an immense literature on the subject, from the most esoteric mathematical papers down to popularizations so elementary that they amounted to little more than: “You pull on your bootstraps, and away you go.” But it would be fair to say that Earth’s Space Transportation Authority was curiously evasive when it came down to the practical details, and only its own personnel were allowed on the minor planet where the Drive was assembled. The few photos of Asteroid 4587 were blurred telescopic shots showing two cylindrical structures, more than a thousand kilometers long, stretching out into space on either side of the tiny world, which was an almost invisible speck between them. It was known that these were the accelerators that smashed matter together at such velocities that it fused to form the node or singularity at the heart of the Drive; and this was all that anyone did know, outside the STA.

     Duncan was now floating, a few meters behind his guide, along a corridor lined with pipes and cable ducts—all the anonymous plumbing any vehicle of sea, air, or space for the last three hundred years. Only the remarkable number of handholds, and the profusion of thick padding, revealed that this was the interior of a ship designed to be independent of gravity.
     “D’you see that pipe?” said the engineer. “The little red one?”
     “Yes—what about it?” Duncan would certainly never have given it a second glance; it was only about as thick as a lead pencil.
     “That’s the main hydrogen feed, believe it or not. All of a hundred grams a second. Say eight tons a day, under full thrust.” (for a 20 day trip that comes to 160 tons total. Conventional ship uses 10,000 tons)
     Duncan wondered what the old-time rocket engineers would have thought of this tiny fuel line. He tried to visualize the monstrous pipes and pumps of the Saturns that had first taken men to the Moon; what was their rate of fuel consumption? He was certain that they burned more in every second than Sirius consumed in a day. That was a good measure of how far technology had progressed, in three centuries. And in another three…?
     “Mind your head—those are the deflection coils. We don’t trust room-temperature superconductors. These are still good old cryogenics.”
     “Deflection coils? What for?”
     “Ever stopped to think what would happen if that jet accidentally touched part of the ship? These coils keep it centered, and also give all the vector control we need.”

     They were now hovering beside a massive—yet still surprisingly small—cylinder that might have been the barrel of a twentieth-century naval gun. So this was the reaction chamber of the Drive. It was hard not to feel a sense of almost superstitious awe at the knowledge of what lay within a few centimeters of him. Duncan could easily have encircled the metal tube with his arms; how strange to think of putting your arms around a singularity, and thus, if some of the theories were correct, embracing an entire universe….
     Near the middle of the five-meter-long tube a small section of the casing had been removed, like the door of some miniature bank vault, and replaced by a crystal window. Through this obviously temporary opening a microscope, mounted on a swinging arm so that it could be moved away after use, was aimed into the interior of the drive unit.
     The engineer clipped himself into position by the buckles conveniently fixed to the casing, stared through the eyepiece, and made some delicate micrometer adjustments.
     “Take a look,” he said, when he was finally satisfied. Duncan floated to the eyepiece and fastened himself rather clumsily in place. He did not know what he had expected to see, and he remembered that the eye had to be educated before it could pass intelligible impressions to the brain. Anything utterly unfamiliar could be, quite literally, invisible, so he was not too disappointed at his first view.

     What he saw was, indeed, perfectly ordinary—merely a grid of fine hairlines, crossing at right angles to form a reticule of the kind commonly used for optical measurements. Though he searched the brightly lit field of view, he could find nothing else; he might have been exploring a piece of blank graph paper.
     “Look at the crossover at the exact center,” said his guide, “and turn the knob on the left—very slowly. Half a rev will do—either direction.”
     Duncan obeyed, yet for a few seconds he could still see nothing. Then he realized that a tiny bulge was creeping along the hairline as he tracked the microscope. It was as if he was looking at the reticule through a sheet of glass with one minute bubble or imperfection in it.
     “Do you see it?”
     “Yes—just. Like a pinhead-sized lens. Without the grid, you’d never notice it.”
     “Pinhead-sized! That’s an exaggeration, if ever I heard one. The node’s smaller than an atomic nucleus. You’re not actually seeing it, of course—only the distortion it produces.”
     “And yet there are thousands of tons of matter in there.”
     “Well, one or two thousand,” answered the engineer, rather evasively. “It’s made a dozen trips and is getting near saturation, so we’ll soon have to install a new one. Of course it would go on absorbing hydrogen as long as we fed it, but we can’t drag too much unnecessary mass around, or we’ll pay for it in performance. Like the old seagoing ships—they used to get covered with barnacles, and slowed down if they weren’t scraped clean every so often.”

(ed note: Miniature black hole. In reality the little monster would be radiating like a continuous supernova due to Hawking radiation. Blasted thing would radiate 89 quintillion watts and have a lifespan of 673 seconds. Clarke is forgiven because Hawking radiation was discovered about the same time this novel was published)

     “What do they do with old nodes when they’re too massive to use? Is it true that they’re dropped into the sun?”
     “What good would that do? A node would sail right through the sun and out the other side. Frankly, I don’t know what they do with the old ones. Perhaps they lump them all together into a big granddaddy node, smaller than a neutron but weighing a few million tons.”
     There were a dozen other questions that Duncan was longing to ask. How were these tiny yet immensely massive objects handled? Now that Sirius was in free fall, the node would remain floating where it was—but what kept it from shooting out of the drive tube as soon as acceleration started? He assumed that some combination of powerful electric and magnetic fields held it in place, and transmitted its thrust to the ship.

     “What would happen,” Duncan asked, “if I tried to touch it?”
     “You know, absolutely everyone asks that question.”
     “I’m not surprised. What’s the answer?”
     “Well, you’d have to open the vacuum seal, and then all hell would break loose as the air rushed in.”
     “Then I don’t do it that way. I wear a spacesuit, and I crawl up the drive tunnel and reach out a finger…”
     “How clever of you to hit exactly the right spot! But if you did, when your finger tip got within—oh—something like a millimeter, I’d guess—the gravitational tidal forces would start to tear away at it. As soon as the first few atoms fell into the field, they’d give up all their mass-energy—and you’d think that a small hydrogen bomb had gone off in your face. The explosion would probably blow you out of the tube at a fair fraction of the speed of light.”

• 

The facts were simple and implacable. Sweeney was an Adapted Man — adapted, in this instance, to the bitter cold, the light gravity, and the thin stink of atmosphere which prevailed on Ganymede. The blood that ran in his veins, and the sol substrate of his every cell, was nine-tenths liquid ammonia; his bones were Ice IV; his respiration was a complex hydrogen-to-methane cycle based not upon catalysis by an iron-bearing pigment, but upon the locking and unlocking of a double sulfur bond; and he could survive for weeks, if he had to, upon a diet of rock dust.

He had always been this way. What had made him so had happened to him literally before he had been conceived: the application, to the germ cells which had later united to form him, of an elaborate constellation of techniques — selective mitotic poisoning, pinpoint X-irradiation, tectogenetic micro-surgery, competitive metabolic inhibition, and perhaps fifty more whose names he had never even heard — which collectively had been christened “pantropy.” The word, freely re-translated, meant “changing everything” and it fitted.

Even the ultimate germ cells were the emergents of a hundred previous generations, bred one from another before they had passed the zygote stage like one-celled animals, each one biassed a little farther toward the cyanide and ice and everything nice that little boys like Sweeney were made of.

---

Item: the Authorities. Long before space travel, big cities in the United States had fallen so far behind any possibility of controlling their own traffic problems as to make purely political solutions chimerical. No city administration could spend the amount of money needed for a radical cure, without being ousted in the next elections by the enraged drivers and pedestrians who most needed the help.

Increasingly, the traffic problems were turned over, with gratitude and many privileges, to semi-public Port, Bridge and Highway Authorities: huge capital-investment ventures modelled upon the Port of New York Authority, which had shown its ability to build and/or run such huge operations as the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels, the George Washington Bridge, Teterboro, LaGuardia, Idlewild and Newark airports, and many lesser facilities. By 1960 it was possible to travel from the tip of Florida to the border of Maine entirely over Authority-owned territory, if one could pay the appropriate tolls (and didn’t mind being shot at in the Poconos by embattled land-owners who were still resisting the gigantic Incadel project).

Item: the Tolls. The Authorities were creations of the states, usually acting in pairs, and as such enjoyed legal protections not available to other private firms engaged in interstate commerce. Among these protections, in the typical enabling act, was a provision that “the two said states will not … diminish or impair the power of the Authority to establish, levy and collect tolls and other charges …” The federal government helped; although the Federal Bridge Act of 1946 required that the collection of tolls must cease with the payment of amortization, Congress almost never invoked the Act against any Authority. Consequently, the tolls never dropped; by 1953 the Port of New York Authority was reporting a profit of over twenty million dollars a year, and annual collections were increasing at the rate of ten per cent a year.

Some of the take went into the development of new facilitiesm, most of them so placed as to increase the take, rather than solve the traffic problem. Again the Port of New York Authority led the way; it built, against all sense, a third tube for the Lincoln Tunnel, thus pouring eight and a half million more cars per year into Manhattan’s mid-town area, where the city was already strangling for want of any adequate ducts to take away the then-current traffic.

Item: the Port cops. The Authorities had been authorized from the beginning to police their own premises. As the Authorities got bigger, so did the private police forces.

By the time space travel arrived, the Authorities owned it.

They had taken pains to see that it fell to them; they had learned from their airport operations — which, almost alone among their projects, always showed a loss — that nothing less than total control is good enough. And characteristically, they never took any interest in any form of space-travel which did not involve enormous expenditures; otherwise they could take no profits from sub-contracting, no profits from fast amortization of loans, no profits from the laws allowing them fast tax writeoffs for new construction, no profits from the indefinitely protracted collection of tolls and fees after the initial cost and the upkeep had been recovered.

At the world’s first commercial spaceport, Port Earth, it cost ship owners $5000 each and every time their ships touched the ground. Landing fees had been outlawed in private atmosphere flying for years, but the Greater Earth Port Authority operated under its own set of precedents; it made landing fees for spacecraft routine. And it maintained the first Port police force which was bigger than the armed forces of the nation which had given it its franchise; after a while, the distinction was wiped out, and the Port cops were the armed forces of the United States. It was not difficult to do, since the Greater Earth Port authority was actually a holding company embracing every other Authority in the country, including Port Earth.

And when people, soon after spaceflight, began to ask each other, “How shall we colonize the planets?,” the Greater Earth Port Authority had its answer ready.

Item: Terraforming.

Terraforming — remaking the planets into near-images of the Earth, so that Earth-normal people could live on them.

Port Earth was prepared to start small. Port Earth wanted to move Mars out of its orbit to a point somewhat closer to the sun, and make the minor adjustments needed in the orbits of the other planets; to transport to Mars about enough water to empty the Indian Ocean — only a pittance to Earth, after all, and not 10 per cent of what would be needed later to terraform Venus; to carry to the little planet top-soil about equal in area to the state of Iowa, in order to get started at growing plants which would slowly change the atmosphere of Mars; and so on. The whole thing, Port Earth pointed out reasonably, was perfectly feasible from the point of view of the available supplies and energy resources, and it would cost less than thirty-three billion dollars. The Greater Earth Port Authority was prepared to recover that sum at no cost in taxes in less thap a century, through such items as $50 rocket-mail stamps, $10,000 Mars landing fees, $1,000 one-way strap-down tickets, 100-per-desert-acre land titles, and so on.

Of course the fees would continue after the cost was re-covered — for maintenance.

Alternative? Nothing but domes. The Greater Earth Port Authority hated domes. They cost too little to begin with, and the volume of traffic to and from them would always be miniscule.

Experience on the Moon had made that painfully clear. And the public hated domes, too; it had already shown a mass reluctance to live under them.

As for the governments, other than that of the United States, that the Authority still tolerated, none of them had any love for domes, or for the kind of limited colonization that the domes stood for. They needed to get rid of their populating masses by the bucket-full, not by the eye-dropper-full.

If the Authority knew that emigration increases the home population rather than cuts it, the Authority carefully reframed from saying so to the governments involved; they could rediscover Franklin’s Law for themselves. Domes were out; terraforming was in.

• 

Then came pantropy.

If this third alternative to the problem of colonizing the planets had come as a surprise to the Authority, and to Port Earth, they had nobody to blame for it but themselves.

There had been plenty of harbingers. The notion of modifying the human stock genetically to live on the planets as they were found, rather than changing the planets to accommodate the people, had been old with Olaf Stapledon; it had been touched upon by many later writers; it went back, in essence, as far as Proteus, and as deep into the human mind as the werewolf, the vampire, the fairy changeling, the transmigrated soul.

But suddenly it was possible; and, not very long afterwards, it was a fact.

The Authority hated it. Pantropy involved a high initial investment to produce the first colonists, but it was a method which with refinement would become cheaper and cheaper.

Once the colonists were planted, it required no investment at all; the colonists were comfortable on their adopted world, and could produce new colonists without outside help. Pantropy, furthermore, was at its most expensive less than half as costly as the setting-up of the smallest and least difficult dome.

Compared to the cost of terraforming even so favorable a planet as Mars, it cost nothing at all, from the Authority’s point of view.

And there was no way to collect tolls against even the initial expense. It was too cheap to bother with.

(ed note: example of propaganda from The Authority. They had to kill pantropy dead; or it's bye-bye graft, kick-backs, and lucrative fees.)

WILL YOUR CHILD BE A MONSTER?

If a number of influential scientists have their way, some child or grandchild of yours may eke out his life in the frozen wastes of Pluto, where even the sun is only a spark in the sky — and will be unable to return to Earth until after he dies, if then!

Yes, even now there are plans afoot to change innocent unborn children into alien creatures who would die terribly the moment that they set foot upon the green planet of their ancestors. Impatient with the slow but steady pace of man’s conquest of Mars, prominent ivory-tower thinkers are working out ways to produce all kinds of travesties upon the human form — travesties which will be able to survive, somehow, in the bitterest and most untamed of planetary infernos.

The process which may produce these pitiful freaks at enormous expense is called “pantropy.” It is already in imperfect and dangerous existence. Chief among its prophets is white-haired, dreamy-eyed Dr. Jacob Rullman, who…

• 

By the standards of all earlier ages, it was Utopia. Ignorance, disease, poverty and fear had virtually ceased to exist. The memory of war was fading into the past as a nightmare vanishes with the dawn; soon it would lie outside the experience of all living men.

With the energies of mankind directed into constructive channels, the face of the world had been remade. It was, almost literally, a new world. The cities that had been good enough for earlier generations had been rebuilt-or deserted and left as museum specimens when they had ceased to serve any useful purpose. Many cities had already been abandoned in this manner, for the whole pattern of industry and commerce had changed completely. Production had become largely automatic; the robot factories poured forth consumer goods in such unending streams that all the ordinary necessities of life were virtually free. Men worked for the sake of the luxuries they desired; or they did not work at all.

It was One World. The old names of the old countries were still used, but they were no more than convenient postal divisions. There was no one on earth who could not speak English, who could not read, who was not within range of a television set, who could not visit the other side of the planet within twenty-four hours..

Crime had practically vanished. It had become both unnecessary and impossible. When no one lacks anything, there is no point in stealing. Moreover, all potential criminals knew that there could be no escape from the surveillance of the Overlords. In the early days of their rule, they had intervened so effectively on behalf of law and order that the lesson had never been forgotten.

Crimes of passion, though not quite extinct, were almost unheard of. Now that so many of its psychological problems had been removed, humanity was far saner and less irrational. And what earlier ages would have called vice was now no more than eccentricity—or, at the worst, bad manners.

One of the most noticeable changes had been a slowing-down of the mad tempo that had so characterized the twentieth century. Life was more leisurely than it had been for generations. It therefore had less zest for the few, but more tranquillity for the many. Western man had relearned—what the rest of the world had never forgotten—that there was nothing sinful in leisure as long as it did not degenerate into mere sloth.

Whatever problems the future might bring, time did not yet hang heavy on humanity's hands. Education was now much more thorough and much more protracted. Few people left college before twenty—and that was merely the first stage, since they normally returned again at twenty-five for at least three more years, after travel and experience had broadened their minds. Even then, they would probably take refresher courses at intervals for the remainder of their lives in the subjects that particularly interested them.

This extension of human apprenticeship so far past the beginning of physical maturity had given rise to many social changes. Some of these had been necessary for generations, but earlier periods had refused to face the challenge—or had pretended that it did not exist. In particular, the pattern of sexual mores—insofar as there had ever been a single pattern—had altered radically. It had been virtually shattered by two inventions, which were, ironically enough, of purely human origin and owed nothing to the Overlords.

The first was a completely reliable oral contraceptive; the second was an equally infallible method—as certain as fingerprinting, and based on a very detailed analysis of the blood—of identifying the father of any child. The effect of these two inventions upon human society could only be described as devastating, and they had swept away the last remnants of the Puritan aberration.

(ed note: the above was written in 1953. A reasonably reliable oral contraceptive became available in 1960, and highly accurate DNA paternity tests became available in the 1980s. Sadly for Clarke's future history, as of 2016 in the US the Puritans are still with us.)

Another great change was the extreme mobility of the new society. Thanks to the perfection of air transport, everyone was free to go anywhere at a moment's notice. There was more room in the skies than there had ever been on the roads, and the, twenty-first century had repeated, on a larger scale, the great American achievement of putting a nation on wheels.

It had given wings to the world.

Though not literally. The ordinary private flyer or aircar had no wings at all, or indeed any visible control surfaces.

Even the clumsy rotor blades of the old helicopters had been banished. Yet man had not discovered anti-gravity; only the Overlords possessed that ultimate secret. His aircars were propelled by forces which the Wright brothers would have understood. Jet reaction, used both directly and in the more subtle form of boundary layer control, drove his flyers forward and held them in the air. As no laws or edicts of the Overlords could have done, the ubiquitous little aircars had washed away the last barriers between the different tribes of mankind.

• 

(ed note: this is from a satirical fantasy novel, but still demonstrates how technology changes society. The same concept can be adapted to science fiction.

The race of dwarfs do lots of mining. This means dealing with the dangerously explosive gas called firedamp. A profession arose to deal with firedamp, called "knockermen". And knockermen became leaders. Until...)

     'Thank you for that, corporal. Tell me . . . those robes some of the dwarfs were wearing. I know they wear them on the surface so they're not polluted by the nasty sunlight, but why wear them down there?'
     'It's traditional, sir. Er, they were worn by the . . . well, it's what you'd call the knockermen, sir.'
     'What did they do?'
     'Well, you know about firedamp? It's a gas you get in mines sometimes. It explodes.'
     Vimes saw the images in his mind as Cheery explained . . .

     The miners would clear the area, if they were lucky. And the knockerman would go in wearing layer after layer of chain-mail and leather, carrying his sack of wicker globes stuffed with rags and oil. And his long pole. And his slingshot.
     Down in the mines, all alone, he'd hear the knockers. Agi Hammerthief and all the other things that made noises, deep under the earth.
     There could be no light, because light would mean sudden, roaring death. The knockerman would feel his way through the utter dark, far below the surface.
     There was a type of cricket that lived in the mines. It chirruped loudly in the presence of firedamp. The knockerman would have one in a box, tied to his hat.
     When it sang, a knockerman who was either very confident or extremely suicidal would step back, light the torch on the end of his pole and thrust it ahead of him. The more careful knockerman would step back rather more, and slingshot a ball of burning rags into the unseen death. Either way, he'd trust in his thick leather clothes to protect him from the worst of the blast.
     It was an honorable trade but, at least to start with, it didn't run in families. They didn't have families. Who'd marry a knockerman? They were dead dwarfs walking. But sometimes a young dwarf would ask to become one; his family would be proud, wave him goodbye, and then speak of him as if he was dead, because that made it easier.
     Sometimes, though, knockermen came back. And the ones that survived went on to survive again, because surviving is a matter of practice. And sometimes they would talk a little of what they heard, all alone in the deep mines ... the tap-tapping of dead dwarfs trying to get back into the world, the distant laughter of Agi Hammerthief, the heartbeat of the turtle that carried the world.
     Knockermen became kings.

     Vimes, listening with his mouth open, wondered why the hell it was that dwarfs believed that they had no religion and no priests. Being a dwarf was a religion. People went into the dark for the good of the clan, and heard things, and were changed, and came back to tell...

     And then, fifty years ago, a dwarf tinkering in Ankh-Morpork had found that if you put a simple fine mesh over your lantern flame it'd burn blue in the presence of the gas but wouldn't explode. It was a discovery of immense value to the good of dwarfkind and, as so often happens with such discoveries, almost immediately led to a war.
     'And afterwards there were two kinds of dwarf,' said Cheery sadly. 'There's the Copperheads, who all use the lamp and the patent gas exploder, and the Schmaltzbergers, who stick to the old ways. Of course we're all dwarfs,' she said, 'but relations are rather . . . strained.'
     'I bet they are.'
     'Oh, no, all dwarfs recognize the need for the Low King, it's just that . . .'
     ' . . they don't quite see why knockermen are still so powerful?'
     'It's all very sad,' said Cheery.

• 

#1. Eli Whitney Accidentally Causes The Civil War

The American South, the 1790s. The plantation slavery model was in trouble. The old crops of rice, tobacco, and indigo weren't profitable any more. Neither was cotton, due to the labor-intensive process of jerking the seeds out. It took days of combing bush to remove all the sticky seed and get everyone to stop laughing at all the euphemisms.

Cue Eli Whitney and his cotton gin. A relatively quick and easy spur-of-the-moment invention, the gin was capable of whipping out 55 pounds of cotton in a single day. In comparison, teasing out the seeds by hand might get you a whole pound for a day's work. Hooray! The plantations were saved!

Yeah, about that ...

Before the cotton gin came around, slavery had been on the way out. Slaves were expensive to maintain, and poor production was making it exceedingly pointless to keep them. Thanks to the gin, cotton became super profitable, and the cotton economy exploded. There was one catch: While the gin super effectively processed cotton by separating it from its seeds, it did precisely jack s**t to pick it. So by making processing profitable and much more efficient, it massively raised the need for pickers. That is, slaves.

So the number of slaves in the South quintupled between 1800 and 1850, and by 1860, the region was an agricultural powerhouse, its wealth based on King Cotton and slave labor. As for Eli Whitney, he was a scholar and an inventor who never owned slaves himself, so the whole "slavery explosion" part of the equation possibly hadn't even occurred to him. And even if that didn't come as a shock to him, what happened afterwards most certainly did.

When abolitionists up North began to suggest that maybe the South shouldn't be making bank on the bloody backs of human beings, *it threatened the livelihoods of every rich man down there*. Said rich men weren't taking that from a bunch of Yankees, so next came talk of secession, and you know what happened next. 600,000 Americans died in the Civil War, all tracing back to Eli's humble cotton engine. Which, by the way, he never made much money from, because his device was easily copied and patent law sucked.

Luckily for him, Eli had gained a solid reputation as an innovator, and was eventually consoled with a massive government order. Of guns.

(ed note: Quentyn Quinn is a racconan, a member of the Space Rangers. They are trouble-shooters on the boarder of the empire. Mostly they deal with smart crooks and civilizations undergoing technological disruption.)

(As the episode opens, Quentyn narrowly escapes assassination as a bomb hidden in a microwave oven explodes in his home. The would-be assassin, an orange sophont with yellow eyes from the planet Kallifrax, is quickly apprehended because their knowledge of hiding their tracks on the internet is amateurish. The sophont wants to kill Quentyn because they blame the Ranger for the collapse of the Kallifraxian civilization.

The sophont starts explaining, in the form of a flashback)

• 

• 

(ed note: A nasty Congressional committee orders an uppity ranch owner to testify. He does so, and on national TV describes how to easily construct in your home workshop a laser sidearm powerful enough to slice and dice an army tank using only materials commonly found in one's garage. The consequence is that such a weapon would allow libertarian minded people to hold off entire army battalions, and there are quite a few garage workshops in the US. As it turns out, this was precisely the reason that the ranch owner testified on national TV, since he was libertarian enough to want to render the US government impotent. He made sure by mailing a few hundred copies of the blueprints to various places. This is weaponized technological disruption.

Just keep in mind the drawbacks of libertarianism)

(ed note: William T. Custer goes to Washington to testify before the committee of the whole)

      “During last winter’s slack season,” Custer said, “two of my men and I worked on a project we’ve had in the works for three years—to develop a sustained-emission laser device.”
     Custer opened his briefcase, slid out a fat aluminum tube mounted on a pistol grip with a conventional appearing trigger.
     “This is quite harmless,” he said. “I didn’t bring the power pack.”
     “That is… this is your weapon?” Tiborough asked.
     “Calling this a weapon is misleading,” Custer said. “The term limits and oversimplifies. This is also a brush-cutter, a substitute for a logger’s saw and axe, a diamond cutter, a milling machine…and a weapon. It is also a turning point in history.”
     “Come now, isn’t that a bit pretentious?” Tiborough asked.
     “We tend to think of history as something old and slow,” Custer said. “But history is, as a matter of fact, extremely rapid and immediate. A President is assassinated, a bomb explodes over a city, a dam break, a revolutionary device is announced.”
     “Lasers have been known for quite a few years,” Tiborough said. He looked at the papers the colonel had given him. “The principle dates from 1956 or thereabouts.”
     “I don't wish it to appear that I’m taking credit for inventing this device,” Custer said. “Nor am I claiming sole credit for developing the sustained-emission laser. I was merely one of a team. But I do hold the device here in my hand, gentlemen.”

     “Exhibit, Mr. Custer,” Plowers reminded him. “How is this an exhibit?”
     “May I explain first how it works?” Custer asked. “That will make the rest of my statement much easier.”
     Tiborough looked at Plowers, back to Custer. “If you will tie this all together, Mr. Custer,” Tiborough said. “I want to…the bearing of this device on our—we are hearing a particular bill in this room.”

     “Certainly, Senator,” Custer said. He looked at his device. “A ninety-volt radio battery drives this particular model. We have some that require less voltage, some that use more. We aimed for a construction with simple parts. Our crystals are common quartz. We shattered them by bringing them to a boil in water and then plunging them into ice water…repeatedly. We chose twenty pieces of very close to the same size—about one gram, slightly more than fifteen grains each."
     Custer unscrewed the back of the tube, slid out a round length of plastic trailing lengths of red, green, brown, blue and yellow wire.
     Wallace noted how the cameras of the TV men centered on the object in Custer’s hands. Even the senators were leaning forward, staring.
     We’re gadget crazy people, Wallace thought.
     “The crystals were dipped in thinned household cement and then into iron filings,” Custer said. “We made a little jig out of a fly-tying device and opened a passage in the filings at opposite ends of the crystals. We then made some common celluloid—nitrocellulose, acetic acid, gelatin and alcohol—all very common products, and formed it into a length of garden hose just long enough to take the crystals end to end. The crystals were inserted in the hose, the celluloid poured over them and the whole thing was seated in a magnetic waveguide, while the celluloid was cooling. This centered and aligned the crystals. The waveguide was constructed from wire salvaged from an old TV set and built following the directions in the Radio Amateur's Handbook.”
     Custer reinserted the length of plastic into the tube, adjusted the wires. There was an unearthly silence in the room with only the cameras whirring. It was as though everyone were holding his breath.
     “A laser requires a resonant cavity, but that’s complicated,” Custer said. “Instead, we wound two layers of fine copper wire around our tube, immersed it in the celluloid solution to coat it and then filed one end flat. This end took a piece of mirror cut to fit. We then pressed a number eight embroidery needle at right angles into the mirror end of the tube until it touched the side of the number one crystal.”
     Custer cleared his throat.
     Two of the senators leaned back. Plowers coughed. Tiborough glanced at the banks of TV cameras and there was a questioning look in his eyes.
     “We then determined the master frequency of our crystal series,” Custer said. “We used a test signal and oscilloscope, but any radio amateur could do it without the oscilloscope. We constructed an oscillator of that master frequency, attached it at the needle and a bare spot scraped in the opposite end of the waveguide.”

     “And this…ah… worked?” Tiborough asked.
     “No.” Custer shook his head. “When we fed power through a voltage multiplier into the system we produced an estimated four hundred joules emission and melted half the tube. So we started all over again.”
     “You are going to tie this in?” Tiborough asked. He frowned at the papers in his hands, glanced toward the door where the colonel had gone.
     “I am, sir, believe me,” Custer said.
     “Very Well, then,” Tiborough said.

     “So we started all over,” Custer said. “But for the second celluloid dip we added bismuth—a saturate solution, actually. It stayed gummy and we had to paint over it with a sealing coat of the straight celluloid. We then coupled this bismuth layer through a pulse circuit so that it was bathed in a counter wave—180 degrees out of phase with the master frequency. We had, in effect, immersed the unit in a thermoelectric cooler that exactly countered the heat production. A thin beam issued from the unmirrored end when we powered it. We have yet to find something that thin beam cannot cut.”
     “Diamonds?” Tiborough asked.
     “Powered by less than two hundred volts, this device could cut our planet in half like a ripe tomato,” Custer said. “One man could destroy an aerial armada with it, knock down ICBMs before they touched atmosphere, sink a fleet, pulverize a city. I’m afraid, sir, that I haven’t mentally catalogued all the violent implications of this device. The mind tends to boggle at the enormous power focused in…"

---

     “Shut down those TV cameras!”
     It was Tiborough shouting, leaping to his feet and making a sweeping gesture to include the banks of cameras, The abrupt violence of his voice and gesture fell on the room like an explosion. “Guards!” he called. “You there at the door. Cordon off that door and don’t let anyone out who heard this fool!” He whirled back to face Custer. “You irresponsible idiot!”
     “I'm afraid, Senator,” Custer said, “that you’re locking the barn door many weeks too late.”
     For a long minute of silence Tiborough glared at Custer, Then: “You did this deliberately, eh?”
     “Senator, if I'd waited any longer, there might have been no hope for us at all.”
     Tiborough sat back into his chair, still keeping his attention fastened on Custer. Plowers and Johnstone on his right had their heads close together whispering fiercely. The other senators were dividing their attention between Custer and Tiborough, their eyes wide and with no attempt to conceal their astonishment.
     Wallace, growing conscious of the implications in what Custer had said, tried to wet his lips with his tongue. This stupid cowpoke has sold us all down the river!
     Tiborough signaled an aide, spoke briefly with him, beckoned the colonel from the door. There was a buzzing of excited conversation in the room. Several of the press and TV crew were huddled near the windows on Custer’s left, arguing. One of their number—a florid-faced man with gray hair and horn-rimmed glasses, started across the room toward Tiborough, was stopped by a committee aide. They began a low-voiced argument with violent gestures.
     A loud curse sounded from the door. Poxman, the syndicated columnist, was trying to push past the guards there.
     Poxman!” Tiborough called. The columnist turned. “My orders are that no one leaves,” Tiborough said. “You are not an exception.” He turned back to face Custer. The room had fallen into a semblance of quiet, although here still were pockets of muttering and there was the sound of running feet and a hurrying about in the hall outside.
     “Two channels went out of here live,” Tiborough said. "Nothing much we can do about them, although we will trace down as many of their viewers as we can. Every bit of film in this room and every sound tape will be confiscated, however.” His voice rose as protests sounded from the press section. “Our national security is at stake. The President has been notified. Such measures as are necessary will be taken.”
     The colonel came hurrying into the room, crossed to Tiborough, quietly said something.
     “You should’ve warned me!” Tiborough snapped. “I had no idea that…”
     The colonel interrupted with a whispered comment.
     “These papers… your damned report is not clear!” Tiborough said.

     He looked around at Custer. “I see you’re smiling, Mr. Custer. I don’t think you’ll find much to smile about before long.”
     “Senator, this is not a happy smile,” Custer said. “But I told myself several days ago you’d fail to see the implications of this thing.” He tapped the pistol-shaped device he had rested on the table. “I told myself you’d fall back into the old, useless pattern.”
     “Is that what you told yourself, really?” Tiborough said.
     Wallace, hearing the venom in the senator’s voice, moved his chair a few inches farther away from Custer.
     Tiborough looked at the laser projector. “Is that thing really disarmed?”
     “Yes, sir.”
     “If I order one of my men to take it from you, you will not resist?”
     “Which of your men will you trust with it, Senator?” Custer asked.
     In the long silence that followed, someone in the press section emitted a nervous guffaw.

     “Virtually every man on my ranch has one of these things,” Custer said. “We fell trees with them, cut firewood, make fence posts. Every letter written to me as a result of my patent application has been answered candidly. More than a thousand sets of schematics and instructions on how to build this device have been sent out to varied places in the world.”
     “You vicious traitor!” Tiborough rasped.
     “You’re certainly entitled to your opinion, Senator,” Custer said. “But I warn you I’ve had time for considerably more concentrated and considerably more painful thought than you’ve applied to this problem In my estimation, I had no choice. Every week I waited to make this thing public, every day, every minute, merely raised the odds that humanity would be destroyed by—”
     “You said this thing applied to the hearings on the grazing act,” Plowers protested, and there was a plaintive note of complaint in his voice.
     “Senator, I told you the truth,” Custer said. “There’s no real reason to change the act, now. We intend to go on operating under it—with the agreement of our neighbors and others concerned. People are still going to need food.”

     Tiborough glared at him. “You’re saying we can’t force you to…” He broke off at a disturbance in the doorway. A rope barrier had been stretched there and a line of Marines stood with their backs to it, facing the hall. A mob of people was trying to press through. Press cards were being waved.
     “Colonel, I told you to clear the hall!” Tiborough barked.
     The colonel ran to the barrier. “Use your bayonets if you have to!” he shouted.
     The disturbance subsided at the sound of his voice. More uniformed men could be seen moving in along the barrier. Presently, the noise receded.

     Tiborough turned back to Custer. “You make Benedict Arnold look like the greatest friend the United States ever had,” he said.
     “Cursing me isn’t going to help you,” Custer said. “You are going to have to live with this thing; so you’d better try understanding it.”
     “That appears to be simple,” Tiborough said. “All I have to do is send twenty-five cents to the Patent office for the schematics and then write you a letter."
     “The world already was headed toward suicide,” Custer said. “Only fools failed to realize—”
     “So you decided to give us a little push,” Tiborough said.

     “H. G. Wells warned us,” Custer said. “That’s how far back it goes, but nobody listened. ‘Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe,’ Wells said. But those were just words. Many scientists have remarked the growth curve on the amount of raw energy becoming available to humans—and the diminishing curve on the number of persons required to use that energy. For a long time now, more and more violent power was being made available to fewer and fewer people. It was only a matter of time until total destruction was put into the hands of single individuals.”

     “And you didn’t think you could take your government into your confidence.”
     “The government already was committed to a political course diametrically opposite the one this device requires,” Custer said. “Virtually every man in the government has a vested interest in not reversing that course."
     “So you set yourself above the government?”
     “I’m probably wasting my time,” Custer said, “but I'll try to explain it. Virtually every government in the world is dedicated to manipulating something called the ‘mass man.’ That’s how governments have stayed in power. But there is no such man. When you elevate the non-existent ‘mass man’ you degrade the individual. And obviously it was only a matter of time until all of us were at the mercy of the individual holding power.”
     “You talk like a commie!”
     “They'll say I’m a goddamn’ capitalist pawn,” Custer said. “Let me ask you, Senator, to visualize a poor radio technician in a South American country. Brazil, for example. He lives a hand-to-mouth existence, ground down by an overbearing, unimaginative, essentially uncouth ruling oligarchy. What is he going to do when this device comes into his hands?”
     “Murder, robbery and anarchy.”
     “You could be right,” Custer said. “But we might reach an understanding out of ultimate necessity—that each of us must cooperate in maintaining the dignity of all.”

     Tiborough stared at him, began to speak musingly: “We’ll have to control the essential materials for constructing this thing…and there may be trouble for a while, but …”
     “You’re a vicious fool.”
     In the cold silence that followed, Custer said: “It was too late to try that ten years ago. I’m telling you this thing can be patch-worked out of a wide variety of materials that are already scattered over the earth. It can be made in basements and mud huts, in palaces and shacks. The key item is the crystals, but other crystals will work, too. That's obvious. A patient man can grow crystals…and this world is full of patient men.”

     “I’m going to place you under arrest,” Tiborough said. “You have outraged every rule—”
     “You’re living in a dream world,” Custer said. “I refuse to threaten you, but I’ll defend myself from any attempt to oppress or degrade me. If I cannot defend myself, my friends will defend me. No man who understands what this device means will permit his dignity to be taken from him.”
     Custer allowed a moment for his words to sink in, then: “And don’t twist those words to imply a threat. Refusal to threaten a fellow human is an absolute requirement in the day that has just dawned on us.”
     “You haven’t changed a thing!” Tiborough raged. “If one man is powerful with that thing, a hundred are….”
     “All previous insults aside,” Custer said, “I think you are a highly intelligent man, Senator. I ask you to think long and hard about this device. Use of power is no longer the deciding factor because one man is as powerful as a million. Restraint—self-restraint is now the key to survival. Each of us is at the mercy of his neighbor’s good will. Each of us, Senator—the man in the palace and the man in the shack. We’d better do all we can to increase that good will—not attempting to buy it, but simply recognizing that individual dignity is the one inalienable right of …”

     “Don’t you preach at me, you commie traitor!” Tiberough rasped. “You’re a living example of …”
     “Senator!”
     It was one of the TV cameramen in the left rear of the room.
     “Let’s stop insulting Mr. Custer and hear him out,” the cameraman said.
     “Get that man’s name,” Tiborough told an aide. “If he…”
     ‘I'm an expert electronic technician, Senator,” the man said. “You can’t threaten me now.”
     Custer smiled, turned to face Tiborough.
     “The revolution begins,” Custer said. He waved a hand as the senator started to whirl away. “Sit down, Senator.”

     Wallace, watching the senator obey, saw how the balance of control had changed in this room.
     “Ideas are in the wind,” Custer said. “There comes a time for a thing to develop. It comes into being. The spinning jenny came into being because that was its time. It was based on countless ideas that had preceded it.”
     "And this is the age of the laser?” Tiborough asked.
     “It was bound to come,” Custer said. “But the number of people in the world who’re filled with hate and frustration and violence has been growing with terrible speed. You add to that the enormous danger that this might fall into the hands of just one group or nation or…” Custer shrugged.
     “This is too much power to be confined to one man or group with the hope they’ll administer wisely. I didn’t dare delay. Thats why I spread this thing now and announced it as broadly as I could.”
     Tiborough leaned back in his chair, his hands in his lap. His face was pale and beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead.
     "We won’t make it.”
     "I hope you're wrong, Senator,” Custer said. “But the only thing I know for sure is that we'd have had less chance of making it tomorrow than we have today.”

• 

• 

(ed note: In the future, a nasty tyrant named Tyler used nuclear weapons to seize control of Terra and establish a global dictatorship called the "Square Deal" Directorate. Among other things he sent Interstellar Task Force One to a trans-Neptunian planet to mine and process thousands of tons of plutonium. Can't have too many atom bombs. Twenty years later the job is finished and the small fleet returns to Terra. Our heroes, Barstow and Cameron, have been accused by the Secret Police of conspiracy to commit mutiny, and are returning in chains.

However when the fleet nears Terra, it is silent. Admiral Hudd sends a scout ship to Fortress America on Luna, which finds it abandoned. But all the missiles with atomic warheads used to control Terra are still in their silos. Another scout is sent to investigate Terra, under command of an obnoxious runt bully named Lord, who is in the natural state of mankind {nasty, brutish and short}. Our Heroes are in the mission due to their technical expertise, but are closely guarded by the secret police due to their political unreliability. They land at the capital city of Americania only to find it abandoned as well. What is disturbing is the items left behind, such as sacks containing millions of dollars of currency.

As you read this keep in mind the drawbacks of libertarianism)

      “Civilians, huh ?” Sitting pygmy-like between his two husky guards, Lord turned condescendingly to Cameron. “But Mr. Hudd insisted you must come, so let’s have your expert opinion.”
     He stressed the adjective too strongly, but Cameron answered quietly: “I rather expect we’ll find the ultimate result of what the old economists used to call the division of labor.”
     At the time, I failed to see the real significance of the interchange that followed, though it proved the key to much that happened later. I was merely annoyed at Cameron, and somewhat alarmed, because his talk plainly angered Lord.
     “Explain!” Lord rapped, imperiously.
     “If you like — though I'm afraid the historical principle runs counter to Squaredeal ideology.” Cameron was a little too grave. “Because I don’t believe the Directorate was created by Tyler’s unique statesmanship (i.e., nuclear blackmail), or even by the emergent dictatorship of the little man. It was. I think, just one of the end-products of the division of labor.”
     Lord blinked his heavy-lidded eyes, apparently uncertain whether this was double-talk or high treason. I kicked Cameron's foot, in a vain effort to suggest the wisdom of discretion.
     “Explain yourself,” Lord commanded sharply.
     “Nothing to it,” Cameron said easily. “The division of labor was hailed as something, wonderful—before its unpleasant final consequences came to light. One man made arrows, another hunted, and they both had more to eat. That was very fine, back in the Stone Age.”
     Cameron stretched out his legs, cheerful and relaxed.
     “But it went a little farther, in the modern world. Division of labor divided mankind, and set special interests against the common good. It made specialists in mining coal, in scientific research, and even in political power, Mr. Lord. The specialists formed pressure groups, and fought to advance their own class interests—with weapons incidentally created by that same division of labor.
     “When specialists fight, the winners are apt to he the experts in war,” he continued brightly. “Thus government becomes a function of military technology, which of course derives from the basic industrial technology. The prevailing form of government, therefore—dictatorship or democracy—depends on the current status of the division of labor. That interesting relation of technology and politics was pointed out by the old philosopher, Silas McKinley.”
     Lord’s sleepy eyes glittered suspiciously. “He’s forbidden ! Where do you keep such pernicious literature ?”
     Cameron grinned, quizzically. “Once I had permission to do some research in Mr. Hudd’s very excellent library.”
     “And you’re apt to suffer for the dangerous ideas you acquired there,” Lord commented acidly. “Now what’s this nonsense, about technology and government?”

     “Political power reflects military power,” Cameron cheerfully explained. “When war is fought with cheap, simple weapons, easy for the amateur to use, then the military importance of the ordinary, citizen is reflected in his political freedom. Democracy in America was established by the flintlock, and maintained by Colt’s revolver.
     “But democracy is always threatened by any increase in specialization, especially military specialization. When weapons are expensive and complicated, requiring a class of military experts, then the ordinary man can’t defend his rights—and he therefore has no rights.
     "Democracy was murdered, on a desert in New Mexico, in 1945. Already, for a hundred years, the increasing division of labor had been forcing it into a slow decline. The same specialization that created the bomber and the tank had already reduced the free citizen to a pathetic little man, at the mercy of the corporation manager, the union leader, and the bureaucrat.
     “The atom bomb was the finish, to freedom. Because it was the final limit, to specialization. The most complicated and costly weapon, ever, its production and use required a fantastically complex division of labor. Politics had to follow the trend of technology, and totalitarian control destroyed the individual.”
     Sitting half upright in the long reclining chair, Cameron gave the little Squaredealer his wry, sardonic grin.
     “Tyler thought he had conquered the world,” he concluded. “But really it was just division of labor that created the new technology of atomic war, and so destroyed the whole world’s freedom. It was just the trend of specialization that made the Directorate and flung Tyler to the top of it — no more responsible than a pebble flung up by a wave.”
     Pressed deep in the cushions, Lord sat peering back with confused suspicion in his yellow, heavy-lidded eyes. Fortunately for Cameron, he was now concerned with dangers more immediate than ideological heresy. His nasal voice rasped angrily:
     “Well? What happened—according to your theory?”
     Cameron answered his sharpness with an easy grin.
     “Quite likely, the division of labor broke down at last.”
     “Watch your manner, mister." Lord didn’t like his cool grin. “What could break it down?”
     “Rebellion, perhaps.” Cameron was properly respectful. “Fort America had a permanent garrison of nine thousand specialists in death. They were prepared to devastate any part of the Earth—or all of it. Perhaps they were just too thorough.”
     Uneasily, the little Squaredealer licked his thin lips.
     “Then why should, the fort itself be silent?”
     “Disease, perhaps—some biological agent out of control.” In Cameron’s blue eyes, I caught a faint glint of malicious amusement. “Or famine—maybe they left the Earth unable to feed them. Or cataclysm.”
     Lord fought the acceleration pressure, to sit bolt upright. His bleak narrow face was filmed with sweat of effort—and of fear.
     “Cataclysm?” He peered into Cameron’s lean, sardonic face. Explain!”
     “Twenty years at space has shown us the insensate hostility of the universe.” Now low and solemn, Cameron’s voice deepened my own unease. “Man lives at the mercy of blind chance, surviving only through a peculiar combination of improbable factors. Just suppose we find the Earth stripped of oxygen.” He grinned at Lord, satanically. “As efficiently as the planets of the Dark Star were robbed of uranium?”

---

(ed note: At the abandoned spaceport, one of the ships yields a log-book with a cryptic reference. It says the ship made a routine landing, then was abandoned due to something called "the equalizer." The crew left behind the ship's cargo, which was worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

The scouts leave the city on foot, and soon discover a married couple living in a snug house in the country. The couple are using earth-movers, smelting equipment, and other machinery which uses huge amounts of electricity. Of course Lord and his thugs shoot them dead. He orders our heroes to examine the machines.

Our heroes are mightily puzzled because while the machines use huge amounts of electricity, there does not seem to be any power source. No power cables, no batteries, no broadcast power receptors, and certainly no nuclear reactors. But if you touch the wires you will get a nasty electrical shock.

Then Cameron notices each machine has a peculiar bit of wiring, a piece of plastic surrounded by a double coil of odd, unhelical turns.)

     Cameron came up out of the ravine, carrying something in his hand. It was a piece of thick copper wire, shaped into a double coil of oddly-shaped loops at odd-seeming angles, and held in shape with a transparent plastic rod.
     “This is it,” he said.
     The hushed elation of his low voice told more than his words. I stared at him—for something, I thought, had somehow transformed him. His emaciated body had grown proudly straight. His hollowed face was smiling, with a stern joy which almost frightened me.
     “Well?” Lord retreated a little, as if afraid of the look in Cameron’s blue eyes. His sleek black head made a quick nod, to bring his two gunmen back from the ends of the unfinished dam. “Quick—what is it?”
     Cameron held up that bit of wire on the plastic rod, with both his hands. His face had a look of solern awe—as if the thing in his hands had been, somehow, an utterly priceless treasure.
     “Speak up,” Lord rapped nervously. “What is it?”
     Cameron looked up at Lord again, with no awe at all. His blue eyes showed a sudden glint of ironic amusement. But still he held that bit of wire, as if it were a precious thing.
     “It’s what we’ve all been looking for.” Cameron’s voice held the eager ring of triumph. “It’s the reason men abandoned Fort America, and deserted the cities. It is what happened to the Directorate, and to Tyler.”
     Cameron’s eyes turned sardonic.
     “It’s also what is going to happen to the Task Force,” he added softly. “And to Mr. Julian Hudd. And even to you, Mr. Lord.”
     Lord’s sleepy yellow eyes slitted dangerously.
“I’ll tolerate no further insubordination,” be snapped savagely. “Just tell me what you’ve got.”
     Cameron ignored his sullenly boiling fury.
     “Chad, you remember that little gadget we called an induction furnace? Well, we were on the right track—if I hadn’t been afraid of blowing up the (spaceship) Great Director. And this is the thing we were looking for.”
     Generously, he gave me far too much credit. I had known, of course, that the device was something more than a furnace—for it made atomic changes in the metal samples we fused in it; and, instead of using power, it generated a dangerous surplus. That much I had known, and held my tongue about it.
     From me, Cameron turned impulsively to Doyle.
     “Listen for just ten minutes, captain, and you’ll be free of Lord and his sort.”
     Confusedly, Doyle shook his head.
     “Careful, Cameron.” I knew he was no friend of Lord’s, but loyalty was part of his being. His voice was shocked. “Watch yourself—that sounds like treason, you know.”
     Cameron gave him a brief, sardonic grin.
     “If there is such a thing, any longer.” His low voice turned grave again. “Though I imagine that this little device has repealed a lot of the old laws.”
     Little Lord was quivering with white-lipped fury. His hand hovered close to his gun. Yet caution or curiosity must have tempered his wrath, for he gestured sharply to halt his black-clad gunmen.
     “Explain this strange behavior, Cameron,” he snapped, “or I’ll have to shoot you down.”
     And Cameron turned back to him, with a gentle gravity.
     “No, I don’t think you’ll do that, Mr. Lord,” he said, very softly. “Because you’re an anachronism, now, along with the dinosaur and the atom bomb. Because technological advancement has passed you by.”

• 

(ed note: Cameron walks away into the forest. Lord foams at the mouth and screams at his thugs to shoot Cameron in the legs and drag him into the brig. Cameron waves the little gizmo and a massive lightning bolt turns a giant tree near Lord into an explosion in a matchstick factory. When they pick themselves up Cameron has vanished into the forest. They all look dumbfounded as burning splinters rain out of the sky.

Lord reports to Admiral Hudd, who proceeds to ream Lord a second rectum. Hudd orders Lord to contact the inhabitants, and discover the location of their government. Then Hudd will turn it into radioactive glass with a nuclear bombardment. Hudd intends to reestablish the Directorate at all costs. Hudd lands the flagship at the location in order to take charge.

A helicopter arrives containing three inhabitants, and Cameron. They recover the bodies of the couple that Lord and his thugs had slain, and tell the scouts that they want to arrest Lord and his thugs on the charge of murder. Hudd lower the ship's ramp to come down to parlay. One of the inhabitants covers him with a hand weapon. Barstow is shocked to see that the weapon is not a pistol. It is a miniature guided missile launcher, that is it's a anti-ship weapon. He isn't covering Admiral Hudd, he's covering the flagship.

Admiral Hudd wants to know where the inhabitant's government is, and says they have to surrender or Fort America will plaster the place with atom bombs. He is astonished to learn that there is no government. And is told to fork over Lord and his thugs or face the consequences. The inhabitants do not seem to be concerned about a mere nuclear bombardment. Cameron asks the inhabitants for half an hour to try and explain the facts of life to Admiral Hudd, and grudgingly gets it. )

     Hudd sat down on a hummock of grass, breathing hard with the effort of moving his clumsy bulk. His massive shoulders bunched with bold defiance. Only the quick movements of his eyes betrayed the intense and desperate working of his mind—they were the eyes of a fighting animal, fearful, yet audacious, and altogether ruthless.
     “Now!” he gasped. “This equalizer ?”
     Cameron squatted on his heels, facing Hudd.
     “I heard the story last night. The beginning of the equalizer takes us back nearly twenty years.” Cameron’s tired, dark-smudged eyes came for a moment to me. "To your own father, Chad.”
     His haggard and yet animated face turned back to Hudd. “I think you remember Dane Barstow ?”
     "The traitor?” rumbled Hudd. "He died, I believe, in the labor camps.”
     "But he didn’t,” Cameron said. "Because Tyler learned that he was on the trail of something remarkable, and had him taken out of the camps, out to a solitary cell at Fort America. The SBI went to work on him there, with extreme interrogation (i.e., torture).”
     "Finally,” he went on, “Barstow talked. He told the SBI what he had done, and admitted all he had hoped to do. He even agreed to complete his interrupted work. Though he was half-blind and crippled from the extreme treatment, and sometimes out of his head, they took pretty drastic precautions. They kept him locked in that steel cell on the Moon. Two guards were always with him. He was allowed paper and pencil, but no other equipment. If he wanted calculations made, or any experiments tried, that was done for him by Atomic Service engineers.”
     Cameron briefly smiled, as if he shared my pride.
     “Yes, Chad, your old man was all right. Working under such difficult conditions, shattered as he was, he charted a new science and created a new technology. And then—when we (on their 20 year mission) had been out at space about two years with the Task Force—he overturned the Directorate.”

     Hudd started ponderously, at Cameron's last words, and gasped heavily for his breath, and wheezed incredulously:
     "How could he do that?”
     “Not so hard, with the equalizer.” Cameron grinned at Hudd's blinking, startled stare. “Barstow smashed the Directorate, from his cell on the Moon. He didn’t need any weapons, or any equipment. All he had to do was tell his jailers what he had discovered.”
     Hudd made a hollow, croaking sound. "How’s that?”
     “The news of the equalizer spread, from one man to another,” Cameron said. “Those same engineers, who had been assigned to get the invention from him, set up a little illicit transmitter and beamed the details back to Earth with equalizer power, on every frequency they could get through the ionosphere.
     “That finished the Directorate.”

     Hudd picked up a red pebble and began nervously tapping the sod with it. “That’s too much!” His loud voice was harshly unbelieving. “No mere fact of science could defeat the Atomic Service, or wreck the Squaredeal Machine.”
     “Barstow’s equalizer did,” Cameron assured him gravely. “Perhaps because the old technology of the Atomic Age had already reached the breaking point of over-complexity and super-centralization. When Barstow created this new technology, there was a natural swing to the opposite extreme—to simplicity, individualism, and complete personal freedom.”

     “So?” Hudd thumped on 'the sod with his pebble, scowling at Cameron. “Just how does it work, this equalizer?”
     Cameron glanced doubtfully at Frank Enlow.
     “Tell him.” the gaunt man said. “Barstow wanted every man to know, and generally it has a good effect.” He glanced at a watch on his brown wrist. “But hurry—your time is running out.”
     And Cameron launched into his explanation. His fatigue seemed forgotten, and some inner excitement made his haggard face almost vivacious.

     “The old atomic power pile, you know, was an enormously clumsy and wasteful and dangerous way of doing an extremely simple thing. Pure energy exists in the atom, and that is what we want. But the pile used intractable and inadequate processes, to change kinetic and electrical and binding energy into heat, and then required expensive and inefficient machinery to turn a little of that heat back into electricity.
     “Even with all its elaborate complexity, the pile could tap only a little of the binding energy, which holds electrons and protons and neutrons together into atoms. The mass energy of the particles themselves, composing nearly all the actual energy of the atom, it couldn’t even reach.
     “Barstow’s dream—like my own—was merely a simple way of doing a simple thing. Material energy exists, as Einstein first demonstrated. Barstow dreamed of a simple way to let it flow. The equalizer is his dream, realized.”
     I couldn’t help the breathless interruption:
     “That piece of wire ?”
     “Just a solenoid.” Cameron nodded. “But wound in a certain way, not helically, so that its field slightly alters the co-ordinates of space, and slightly changes the interaction of mass and energy. The atomic particles of the solenoid are equalized, as your father termed the process, and the converted energy appears as direct current in the wire.
     “The fact is simple—even though the tensors of a new geometry are required to describe the solenoid field. That apparent complexity is more in the awkward description, however, than in the vital fact. The actual specifications of the equalizer can be memorized in five minutes.”
     Cameron’s intent, elated eyes looked aside at me.
     “The safety feature is what threw us, Chad, with our induction furnace experiments,” he told me. “Our gadget annihilated matter — degenerating iron atoms into sodium — and produced electric current. The increased output intensified the conversion field, and the intensified field increased the output. An excellent arrangement, if you want a matter bomb—but highly unsafe for a power plant.
     “Your father solved that problem, Chad—very simply, too. Just a secondary solenoid, in series with the primary, which develops an opposing voltage as the equalizing field expands. It gives you a safe, guaranteed maximum voltage—the value determined by the way it’s wound.”

     Hudd’s deep-sunken eyes blinked skeptically.
     “You mean, you can generate electricity ?” he rasped. “With just a coil of wire?”
     “And a few stray ions to excite it,” Cameron told him. “A pound of copper solenoid would drive the cruiser, yonder, out to the Dark Star. Or iron, or silver—the metal doesn't matter; it’s only the precise shape and alignment and spacing of the turns of wire.”
     Hudd shook his head, in massive unbelief.
     “Perpetual motion!” he scoffed.
     “Almost.” Cameron grinned. “Equalized mass is converted into energy, according to the Einstein equation. The solenoid wastes away—but slowly. One pound of solenoid will generate ten billion kilowatt hours of electricity.”
     “If it’s all that simple,” Hudd objected shrewdly, “somebody would have stumbled on it, by accident.”
     “Very likely, men did,” Cameron agreed. “Not many—the shape of the coils is not one you would want, for anything else; and the turns must be very exactly formed and aligned, or else the regenerative effect is damped out. The few who did it must have been instantly electrocuted—because they didn’t also stumble on Barstow’s safety-winding.”

---

• 

     “You have ten minutes to give up the killers, Mr. Hudd,” drawled Frank Enlow. “Or you’ll see a better demonstration.”
     Hudd snorted: a blast of defiance.
     “I’ll wait for it,” he gasped. “You can’t bluff me.”

     A shadow came over Cameron’s haggard face. His tired eyes closed for a moment, and I saw the blue stains under them. He sat back on his heels, his emaciated body sagging as if from a punishing blow.
     “It’s no bluff, Mr. Hudd.” He paused as if to gather himself for a weary and yet vehement protest. “You just don’t grasp what the equalizer means. It ended the Atomic Age. The Directorate was part of that lost era. You can’t hope to restore it, now, any more than you could revive a fossil tyrannosaur. You can only cause needless bloodshed and death.”

     Hudd’s mouth hardened, with an unconvinced hostility.
     “Tyler spilled plenty of blood, building the first Directorate,” he commented coldly. “Perhaps I’ll have to pay the same price again, but I expect to win. Maybe Tyler's men mutinied, when they heard about this wonderful equalizer. But mine have better discipline—and they won’t hear about it.”
     “It wasn't mutiny, Mr. Hudd,” Cameron insisted. “There was no fighting. The Directorate wasn’t overthrown—it simply ceased to exist. When the equalizer happened, there was no more reason for Fort America than there is for arrow makers. The officers recognized that, as well as the men. The garrison just packed up and came home.”
     “Home to what?” Hudd challenged, scowling shaggily. “The people here were already deserting the cities, leaving nearly everything they owned. There must have been something else—perhaps some frightful biotoxin, loose—to cause such panic.”
     “You still don’t get it.” Cameron shook his head, with a tired impatience. “The equalizer freed the city dwellers, just as it did the garrison. Because most people didn’t live in cities by choice. They were huddled into them by the old division of labor-specialized cogs in a social machine grown ruinously complex.
     “But the equalizer abolished the division of labor—at least in military technology. Every man with a piece of wire became a complete military specialist, competent to defend himself. With the new control of atomic and molecular processes, he could also provide for nearly all his own ordinary wants. Complexity was replaced with stark simplicity.
     “Take the couple who lived here.” He nodded regretfully at the empty house behind us. “They built their own home, made their own food and clothing. They were setting up this dam, when they were murdered, to save their own land from erosion. They weren’t slaves of any single skill, or prisoners of any class; and they had no reason to hate or fear their neighbors—until we came along.”

     Hudd blinked, still doubtful.
     “But why were the cities so utterly abandoned?” he questioned. “And all that money left behind, as Lord reports?”
     Cameron glanced up at the great frowning ship, uneasily.
     “The cities were a product of the old technology, and they died with it,” he argued doggedly. “The day of the equalizer, workers walked out and services stopped. There was no food, no power, no water, no sewage disposal. City life was impossible, without division of labor.
     “As for money, paper dollars were only shares in the extinct Atomic Age. Metal was still useful—but the equalizer must have made it easier to refine new metal than to wreck the cities.
     “Don’t you have worse criminals?” Hudd demanded. “Those who do use the equalizer?”
     Enlow shook his head.
     “The users of the equalizer have very little economic reason for crime,” he said. “And people armed with it aren’t very likely victims. It’s just because crime has become so rare, that the Hawkinses weren’t alert.”

---

     Hudd pulled absently at his thick lower lip.
     “If you’ve got no government,” his harsh rasp came, “then I think you’ve got a madhouse—and all the madmen armed with insane weapons.”
     Enlow shook his dark head, with a lean dignity.
     “You’re living under a false philosophy, Mr. Hudd,” he said softly. “You believe that men are evil, that they have to be driven. Fortunately, that philosophy is mistaken—because men with equalizers can’t be driven.”

(ed note: Lord thinks that Hudd is about to hand him over to be tried for murder. Lord panics. He shoots his thugs, kicks them out the hatch, and tries to escape in the scoutship. One of the thugs is only wounded, but both are incinerated by the rocket exhaust. The scoutship starts to vanish in the distance. Enlow sighs, and shoots his miniature guided missile launcher. Lord and the entire scoutship are vaporized by the miniature missile.

Hudd freaks out and runs back to the flagship, vowing to carpet bomb the place with atomic bombs. Only to discover that the crew won't let him in. It seems that Cameron had helped the inhabitants get into radio contact with the task force crew and explained how to make equalizers. All the crews of all the ships in the task force have joined the inhabitants. )

(ed note: Seetee is antimatter (from the work Contraterrene or C.T.) In the story it can be found in antimatter meteor drifts in the asteroid belt. The Brand Transmitter is a species of power broadcast. Naturally the powers that be are angry at this threat to their monopoly on fission power because no empire has ever survived an energy-related phase shift with its full power intact.)

      A dull, hopeless anger took hold of Jenkins. He hated the stubborn stupidity of old Bruce O’Banion, and raged against the anonymous leaders of the, Free Space Party. He detested the complacent aristocracy of the Interplanet directors, despised the sordid greed of the Mandate bureaucrats, and bitterly scorned the cynical schemes of his uncle.
     All humanity, it seemed to him, impelled by its confusion of ignorant fears and blind desires, was somehow involved in a monstrous conspiracy against the bright dream of the Fifth Freedom. The engineering problems of the Brand transmitter were solved long ago, but the human difficulties loomed gigantic, complex beyond solution. The great barrier to human progress stood revealed as the nature of man himself.
     Urgently, he tugged at O’Banion’s arm.
     “Listen!” he whispered. “Your revolt has failed—but the Brand transmitter hasn’t. It can still bring peace and freedom to the people of the rocks—and all the planets.”

---

     “Physical power is the basis of political power,” he went on grimly. “The Mandate is able to oppress you because the governments of its member planets bave joined to establish a monopoly of the fissionable elements and fission energy. Your rebellion has failed to break that monopoly of power. But there is another way to do it, with a new power-source—the seetee drift!”
     They still listened, their lean, battle-soiled faces bleakly mistrustful.
     “Free power!” he whispered huskily. “Just look at the actual meaning of that. The Brand transmitter, that we’re trying to build on Freedonia, can supply free seetee energy to all men everywhere. That will mean economic freedom, and economic freedom will create political freedom. Our Freedonia plant can set you free of the Mandate and also from the rule of your own Party leaders.”

---

(ed note: The protagonist is dying from Seetee Shock: radiation sickness caused by being too close to a matter-antimatter explosion)

     But he towed them into place. He aligned them, with painful care. Groggily, swaying at the task, he tightened the connections and brazed them with condulloy metal. He inspected the assembly, tested all the circuits, and straightened triumphantly in the chafing confinement of his armor.
     The Brand transmitter was finished!

---

     Awkward now in the powered suit, he missed the high control platform. He plunged on past it, fumbling feebly at the control studs, toward the untouchable metal of the upper hemisphere and the red signs that warned: SEETEE—KEEP OFF!
     The steel rails of the terrene barrier caught him. His trembling fingers found the studs again, and he alighted at last on the platform. Abruptly ill, he vomited again. Darkness came down upon him, and he thought he was blind.
     He lay a long time, merely clinging to the platform rail, until he found that he could see again. Nearly too weak to move the stiff armor, he drew himself erect. He waited for his head to clear, and make meaning come back to the gauges and controls before him. He pressed buttons and pulled switches.
     The generator ran.
     A green indicator light told him that the Levin-Dahlberg field was functioning. The fuel-milling machines ran silently in that airless space, grinding terrene and seetee rock to dust. Separator coils refined the fuel, and paragravity injectors metered it into the reaction field.
     Matter was annihilated there, but Jenkins saw no frightful fire. He heard no ultimate crash. He was not destroyed. For the reaction field contained that raving energy, and converted it into a silent tide of power flowing in the condulloy coils.
     Meter needles crept over, as that river of tamed energy flooded higher. They steadied, as full output of the generator built up the power field extending beyond the far sun to the limits of the solar system. They dropped back suddenly, as the full potential was established and automatic relays shut off the flow of fuel.
     Swaying over the board, Jenkins pressed one final button. Fever was burning his body. Unquenchable thirst consumed him. He felt the drip of unstaunchable blood from his nose. Illness crushed him down, until only the cruel stiffness of the armor supported him. Yet he clung to consciousness, and tried to listen.

     “People of all the planets—”

     Those triumphant words came faintly from the speaker in his helmet, spoken in the deep voice of old Jim Drake. A red photophone light was flickering on the board, and his mind could see the powerful automatic photophone and ultra-wave beam transmitters above, sweeping every rock and planet in the ecliptic with that recorded announcement, as Freedonia turned.

     “The Fifth Freedom has arrived!” Drake’s canned voice proclaimed—for he had planned and toiled against this crucial hour. “Free power is flowing out from our contraterrene plant, and all you who hear can tap the power field with simple tri-polar receptors.
     “Receptor voltage is set by the dimensions of the elements, current output limited only by circuit resistance. Specifications are—”

     Jenkins vomited again, into the rubber bag beneath his chin. Sweat was clammy on his body, and the vast, untouchable machines beyond the barriers blurred and dimmed. But he tried to listen, and he heard Drake’s recorded voice again.

     “… benefit all men. But there are men too blind to see the good. There are a few selfish men and women, anxious to preserve their cruel old monopoly of power, who will attempt to stop the Brand transmitter. We beg all common men, everywhere, not to let that happen.”

     A pause, and then the tape repeated:

     “People of all the planets—

---

     “Open this.” Smiling mysteriously, she gave him a little package. “Ann wanted me to bring flowers, but Rick said you’d like this better. Even if it’s just a toy.”
     Eagerly, he opened the box. He found a small light bulb and another tiny gadget made of insulating plastic, sheet copper, and a few turns of wire. Peering at it, he caught his breath.
     “A Brand receptor !” he whispered. “Does it work?”
     “Try it.”
     Anxiously, he twisted the bulb into the gadget. It lit—and its tiny glow was enough to show him the illimitable might of the Brand power field, pervading all the planets of man. It was a searchlight, probing feebly into the misty splendor of a new human era.

• 

The Dragonborn: Surely there's more you can tell me.
Master Arngeir: There is indeed much that we know that you do not. That does not mean that you are ready to understand it.
—The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Commonly uttered phrase by powerful — often Sufficiently Advanced — beings when lesser lifeforms (like our heroes) ask for assistance or technical support. Oftentimes, the heroes get a hold of the information or gear for themselves, and the point is proven or refuted. (If the hero keeps insisting for an answer, they may get an Armor-Piercing Response, which may prove that they're indeed not ready.)

In other situations, this can be a line uttered by either The Mentor or the Big Bad. In the former case, he is telling our young hero not to be brash and preparation is very important (though the hero will rarely listen). In the latter case, it is used as a rather hammy taunt.

(ed note: see TV Trope page for list of examples)

Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.

• 

The room was quiet in the dimness of early evening. Dr. James Graham, key scientist of a very important project, sat in his favorite chair, thinking. It was so still that he could hear the turning of pages in the next room as his son leafed through a picture book.

Often Graham did his best work, his most creative thinking, under these circumstances, sitting alone in an unlighted room in his own apartment after the day’s regular work. But tonight his mind would not work constructively. Mostly he thought about his mentally arrested son–his only son–in the next room. The thoughts were loving thoughts, not the bitter anguish he had felt years ago when he had first learned of the boy’s condition. The boy was happy; wasn’t that the main thing?

---

He opened the door. A stranger stood there; he said, “Dr. Graham? My name is Niemand; I’d like to talk to you. May I come in a moment?”

The small man interlocked his fingers; he leaned forward. He said, “Dr. Graham, you are the man whose scientific work is more likely than that of any other man to end the human race’s chance for survival.”

A crackpot, Graham thought. Too late now he realized that he should have asked the man’s business before admitting him. It would be an embarrassing interview–he disliked being rude, yet only rudeness was effective.

“Dr. Graham, the weapon on which you are working–”

---

Niemand’s eyes met Graham’s and he said, “I like him,” with obvious sincerity. He added, “I hope that what you’re going to read to him will always be true.”

Graham didn’t understand. Niemand said, “Chicken Little, I mean. It’s a fine story–but may Chicken Little always be wrong about the sky falling down.”

Graham suddenly had liked Niemand when Niemand had shown liking for the boy. Now he remembered that he must close the interview quickly. He rose, in dismissal.

He said, “I fear you’re wasting your time and mine, Mr. Niemand. I know all the arguments, everything you can say I’ve heard a thousand times. Possibly there is truth in what you believe, but it does not concern me. I’m a scientist, and only a scientist. Yes, it is public knowledge that I am working on a weapon, a rather ultimate one. But, for me personally, that is only a by-product of the fact that I am advancing science. I have thought it through, and I have found that that is my only concern.”

“But, Dr. Graham, is humanity ready for an ultimate weapon?”

Graham frowned. “I have told you my point of view, Mr. Niemand.”

---

Niemand said, “I took the liberty of bringing a small gift to your son, doctor. I gave it to him while you were getting the drinks for us. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

“Of course. Thank you. Good night.”

Graham closed the door; he walked through the living room into Harry’s room. He said, “All right, Harry. Now I’ll read to–”

There was sudden sweat on his forehead, but he forced his face and his voice to be calm as he stepped to the side of the bed. “May I see that, Harry?” When he had it safely, his hands shook as he examined it.

He thought, only a madman would give a loaded revolver to an idiot.

• 

      Ashe himself and a younger partner, Ross Murdock, had been part of the final action which had solved the mystery, having traced that source of knowledge not to an earlier and forgotten human civilization but to wrecked spaceships from an eon-old galactic empire—an empire which had flourished when glacial ice covered most of Europe and northern America and humans were cave-dwelling primitives.

---

     Voyage tape fed into the controls of the ship had taken the men, and, when rewound, it had almost miraculously returned them to Earth with a cargo of similar tapes found on a world which might have been the capital for a government comprised of whole solar systems. Tapes—each one was the key to another planet.
     And that ancient galactic knowledge was treasure such as humans had never dreamed of possessing, though many rightly feared that such discoveries could be weapons in hostile hands. Tapes chosen at random had been shared with other nations at a great drawing. But each nation secretly remained convinced that, in spite of the untold riches it might hold as a result of chance, its rivals had done better. Right at this moment, Ashe knew there were Western agents trying to do at the Russian project just what Camdon (the Russian spy) had done there (stolen the coordinates of the Western-own planet Topaz). However, that did not help in solving their present dilemma about Operation Cochise (Western operation to colonize Topaz), now perhaps the most important part of their plan.
     "We test and we test," said the fat man. "Always we test. We move like turtles when it would be better to race like greyhounds. There is such a thing as overcaution, as I have said from the first. One would think"—his accusing glance included Ashe and Kelgarries—"that there had never been any improvising in this project, that all had always been done by the book. I say that this is the time we must take the big gamble, or else we may find we have been outbid for space entirely. Let those others discover even one alien installation they can master and—" his thumb shifted from his lip, grinding down on the desk top as if it were crushing some venturesome but entirely unimportant insect—"and we are finished before we really begin."

---

(ed note: The Russians claim-jump Topaz and set up their own colony. It includes colonists who are descended from the Tartars, and who are enslaved by a brain control gizmo. They also set up an orbital defense network to destroy the Western colony ship when it arrives.

The Western colony ship shows up, is attacked, but manages to survive for a crash landing. The Russians think the ship was destroyed. The only survivors are the Western colonists, all descended from Apache native americans, and who are still recovering from the Redax treatment. Redax leaves them thinking and reacting just like their distant ancestors. Back on Terra there is also colony teams composed of Eskimos and Pacific Islanders, waiting for appropriate planets to be discovered.

As it turns out, there is indeed a forerunner installation on the planet inside some hidden towers. It is just jam packed with lethal high tech weapons that the human race is not mature enough to use. Luckily the Russians are unaware of the installation.

The Apache team meet up with Tartars who have escaped Russian brain control and they make a common cause against the evil Russian overlords. This will be a challenge since they only have bow & arrows, spears and knives. The Russians have helicopter and machine guns.)

     "Listen," Jil-Lee, his side padded with bandages, stepped closer—"and tell me, younger brother, what is it that you seek in these towers?"
     "On another world there were secrets of the old ones to be found in such ancient buildings. Here that might also be true."
     "Yet, Nolan, I do not believe that it is for more voyage tapes that our younger brother now searches, nor would those do us any good—as our ship will not rise again from here. What is it that you do seek?"
     "Knowledge—weapons, maybe. Can we stand against these machines of the Russians? Yet many of the devices they now use are taken from the star ships they have looted through time. To every weapon there is a defense."
     Nolan blinked and for the first time a hint of interest touched the mask of his face. "To the bow, the rifle," he said softly, "to the rifle, the machine gun, to the cannon, the bomb. The defense can be far worse than the first weapon. So you think that in these towers there may be things which shall be to the Russian's machines as the bomb is to the cannon of the Horse Soldiers?"
     Travis had an inspiration. "Did not our people lay aside the bow for the rifle when we went up against the Bluecoats?"
     "We do not so go up against these Russians!" protested Lupe.
     "Not now. But what if they come across the mountains, perhaps driving the Tatars before them to do their fighting—?"
     "And you believe that if you find weapons in these towers, you will know how to use them?" Jil-Lee asked. "What will give you that knowledge, younger brother?"
     "I do not claim such knowledge," Travis countered. "But this much I do have: Once I studied to be an archaeologist and I have seen other storehouses of these star people. Who else among us can say as much as that?"
     "That is the truth," Jil-Lee acknowledged. "Also there is good sense in this seeking out of the tower things. Let the Russians find such first—if they exist at all—and then we may truly be caught in a box canyon with only death at our heels."

---

(ed note: Travis Fox finds the forerunner towers, and watches an alien briefing recording)

     But this much he did know—these towers had been built by the bald spacemen (the forerunners), and they were highly important to that vanished stellar civilization. The information in this room, as disjointed as it had been for him, led to a treasure trove on Topaz greater than he had dreamed.
     Travis swayed on the bench. To know so much and yet so little! If Ashe were only here, or some other of the project technicians! A treasure such as Pandora's box had been, peril for one who opened it and did not understand.
     And there was another thing he knew: The Russians must not find this. Such a discovery on their part would not only mean the end of his own people on Topaz, but the end of Earth as well. This place might hold new and alien knowledge that could destroy whole nations at a time!
     If he could—much as his archaeologist's training would argue against it—he would blot out this whole valley above and below ground. But while the Russians might possess a means of such destruction, the Apaches did not. No, he and his people must prevent its discovery by the enemy by doing what he had seen as necessary from the first—wiping out the Russian leaders! And that must be done before they chanced upon the tower!

---

• 

     Travis slogged on. He was so tired now that only the drug from the ration bars he mouthed at intervals kept him going at a dogged pace, hardly more than a swift walk. And always his mind was haunted by fragments of pictures, pictures he had seen in the reader. The big bomb had been the nightmare of his own world for so long, and what was that against the forces the bald star rovers had been able to command?
     "Towers—" He struggled to keep his wits through the pain and billowing weakness beginning to creep through him. "Russians mustn't get to the towers! Worse than the bomb … end us all!"
     He had a hazy glimpse of Nolan and Jil-Lee closing in about him. The desire to cough tore at him, but they had to know, to believe …
     "Russians get to the towers—everything finished. Not only here … maybe back home too …"

---

     "I have been thinking of this treasure house in the towers. Suppose we could find new weapons there… ."
     Travis hesitated. He still shrank from the thought of opening the secret places behind those glowing walls, to loose a new peril.
     "If we took weapons from there and lost the fight …" He advanced his first objection and was glad to see the expression of comprehension on Jil-Lee's face.
     "It would be putting the weapons straight into Russian hands," the other agreed.
     "We may have to chance it before we're through," Manulito warned. "Suppose we do get some of their technicians into this trap. We may need a bigger nutcracker than we've ever seen."
     With a return of that queasy feeling he had known in the tower, Travis knew Manulito was speaking sense. They might have to open Pandora's box before the end of this campaign.

---

(ed note: A small group of Apaches, lead by Fox, go to the towers for the bare minimum of alien weapons. They only take three disintegration pistols.)

     The Apaches looked into a set of compartments, each holding an object with a barrel, a hand grip, a general resemblance to the sidearms of their own world and time, but sufficiently different to point up the essential strangeness. With infinite care Travis worked one out of the vise-support which held it. The weapon was light in weight, lighter than any automatic he had ever held. Its barrel was long, a good eighteen inches—the grip alien in shape so that it didn't fit comfortably into his hand, the trigger nonexistent, but in its place a button on the lower part of the barrel which could be covered by an outstretched finger.
     Travis sighted the long barrel of the weapon at a small bush backed by a boulder, and he pressed the firing button. There was no way of knowing whether the weapon was loaded except to try it.
     The result of his action was quick—quick and terrifying. There was no sound, no sign of any projectile … laser beam … or whatever might have issued in answer to his finger movement. But the bush—the bush was no more!
     A black smear made a ragged outline of the extinguished branches and leaves on the rock which had stood behind. The earth might still enclose roots under a thin coating of ash, but the bush was gone!
     "The breath of Naye'nezyani—powerful beyond belief!" Buck broke the horrified silence first. "In truth evil is here!"
     Jil-Lee raised his gun—if gun it could be called—aimed at the rock with the bush silhouette plain to see and fired.
     This time they were able to witness disintegration in progress, the crumble of the stone as if its substance was no more than sand lapped by river water. A pile of blackened rubble remained—nothing more.
     "To use this on a living thing?" Buck protested, horror basing the doubt in his voice.
     "We do not use it against living things," Travis promised, "but against the ship of the Russians—to cut that to pieces. This will open the shell of the turtle and let us at its meat."
     Jil-Lee nodded. "Those are true words. But now I agree with your fears of this place, Travis. This is a devil thing and must not be allowed to fall into the hands of those who—"
     "Will use it more freely than we plan to?" Buck wanted to know. "We reserve to ourselves that right because we hold our motives higher? To think that way is also a crooked trail. We will use this means because we must, but afterward …"
     Afterward that warehouse must be closed, the tapes giving the entrance clue destroyed. One part of Travis fought that decision, right though he knew it to be. The towers were the menace he had believed. And what was more discouraging than the risk they now ran, was the belief that the treasure was a poison which could not be destroyed but which might spread from Topaz to Earth.
     Suppose the Western Alliance had discovered that storehouse and explored its riches, would they have been any less eager to exploit them? As Buck had pointed out, one's own ideals could well supply reasons for violence. In the past Earth had been racked by wars of religion, one fanatically held opinion opposed to another. There was no righteousness in such struggles, only fatal ends. The Russians had no right to this new knowledge—but neither did they. It must be locked against the meddling of fools and zealots.
     "Taboo—" Buck spoke that word with an emphasis they could appreciate. Knowledge must be set behind the invisible barriers of taboo, and that could work.
     "These three—no more—we found no other weapons!" Jil-Lee added a warning suggestion.
     "No others," Buck agreed and Travis echoed, adding:
     "We found tombs of the space people, and these were left with them. Because of our great need we borrowed them, but they must be returned to the dead or trouble will follow. And they may only be used against the fortress of the Russians by us, who first found them and have taken unto ourselves the wrath of disturbed spirits."
     "Well thought! That is an answer to give the People. The towers are the tombs of dead ones. When we return these they shall be taboo. We are agreed?" Buck asked.
     "We are agreed!"
     Buck tried his weapon on a sapling, saw it vanish into nothingness. None of the Apaches wanted to carry the strange guns against their bodies; the power made them objects of fear, rather than arms to delight a warrior. And when they returned to their temporary camp, they laid all three on a blanket and covered them up. But they could not cover up the memories of what had happened to bush, rock, and tree.
     "If such are their small weapons," Buck observed that evening, "then what kind of things did they have to balance our heavy armament? Perhaps they were able to burn up worlds!"

---

• 

     Menlik (the Tartar shaman) pulled at his upper lip. "That is also truth. But now they have no eyes in the sky, and with so many of their men away, they will not patrol too far from camp. I tell you, andas, with these weapons of yours a man could rule a world!"
     Travis looked at him bleakly. "Which is why they are taboo!"
     "Taboo?" Menlik repeated. "In what manner are these forbidden? Do you not carry them openly, use them as you wish? Are they not weapons of your own people?"
     Travis shook his head. "These are the weapons of dead men—if we can name them men at all. These we took from a tomb of the star race who held Topaz when our world was only a hunting ground of wild men wearing the skins of beasts and slaying mammoths with stone spears. They are from a tomb and are cursed, a curse we took upon ourselves with their use."
     There was a strange light deep in the shaman's eyes. Travis did not know who or what Menlik had been before the Red conditioner had returned him to the role of Horde shaman. He might have been a technician or scientist—and deep within him some remnants of that training could now be dismissing everything Travis said as fantastic superstition.
     Yet in another way the Apache spoke the exact truth. There was a curse on these weapons, on every bit of knowledge gathered in that warehouse of the towers. As Menlik had already noted, that curse was power, the power to control Topaz, and then perhaps to reach back across the stars to Earth.
     When the shaman spoke again his words were a half whisper. "It will take a powerful curse to keep these out of the hands of men."
     "With the Russians gone or powerless," Buck asked, "what need will anyone have for them?"
     "And if another ship comes from the skies—to begin all over again?"
     "To that we shall have an answer, also, if and when we must find it," Travis replied. That could well be true … other weapons in the warehouse powerful enough to pluck a spaceship out of the sky, but they did not have to worry about that now.
     "Arms from a tomb. Yes, this is truly dead men's magic. I shall say so to my people. When do we move out?"

---

(ed note: The Apaches and the free Tartars attack the Russian base. The brain-controlled Tartars are diverted, the three Apaches with disintegrators start carving the Russian starship into confetti. They then enter the ship to destroy all the critical equipment.)

     Darkness! Travis snapped on the torch for an instant, saw about him the relays of a com system, and gave it a full spraying as he pivoted, destroying the eyes and ears of the ship—unless the burnout he had effected below had already done that. A flash of automatic fire from his left, a searing burn along his arm an inch or so below the shoulder—
     Travis' action was purely reflex. He swung the burner (disintegrator pistol) around, even as his mind gave a frantic No! To defend himself with automatic, knife, arrow—yes; but not this way. He huddled against the wall.
     An instant earlier there had been a man there, a living, breathing man—one of his own species, if not of his own beliefs. Then because his own muscles had unconsciously obeyed warrior training, there was this. So easy—to deal death without really meaning to. The weapon in his hands was truly the devil gift they were right to fear. Such weapons were not to be put into the hands of men—any men—no matter how well intentioned.

---

     "First," the Apache spoke his own thoughts—"we must return these."
     The three alien weapons were lashed into a square of Mongol fabric, hidden from sight, although they could not be so easily shut out of mind. Only a few of the others, Apache or Mongol, had seen them; and they must be returned before their power was generally known.
     "I wonder if in days to come," Buck mused, "they will not say that we pulled lightning out of the sky, as did the Thunder Slayer, to aid us. But this is right. We must return them and make that valley and what it holds taboo."
     "And what if another ship comes—one of yours?" Menlik asked shrewdly.
     Travis stared beyond the Tatar shaman to the men about the fire. His nightmare dragged into the open … What if a ship did come in, one with Ashe, Murdock, men he knew and liked, friends on board? What then of his guardianship of the towers and their knowledge? Could he be as sure of what to do then? He rubbed his hand across his forehead and said slowly:
     "We shall take steps when—or if—that happens—"
     But could they, would they? He began to hope fiercely that it would not happen, at least in his lifetime, and then felt the cold bleakness of the exile they must will themselves into.
     "Whether we like it or not," (was he talking to the others or trying to argue down his own rebellion?) "we cannot let what lies under the towers be known … found … used … unless by men who are wiser and more controlled than we are in our time."
     Menlik drew his shaman's wand, twiddled it between his fingers, and beneath his drooping lids watched the three Apaches with a new kind of measurement.
     "Then I say to you this: Such a guardianship must be a double charge, shared by my people as well. For if they suspect that you alone control these powers and their secret, there will be envy, hatred, fear, a division between us from the first—war … raids … This is a large land and neither of our groups numbers many. Shall we split apart fatally from this day when there is room for all? If these ancient things are evil, then let us both guard them with a common taboo."
     He was right, of course. And they would have to face the truth squarely. To both Apache and Mongol any off-world ship, no matter from which side, would be a menace. Here was where they would remain and set roots. The sooner they began thinking of themselves as people with a common bond, the better it would be. And Menlik's suggestion provided a tie.
     "You speak well," Buck was saying. "This shall be a thing we share. We are three who know. Do you be three also, but choose well, Menlik!"
     "Be assured that I will!" the Tatar returned.
     Perhaps clan and Horde would combine or perhaps they would drift apart—time would tell. But there would be the bond of the guardianship, the determination that what slept in the towers would not be roused—in their lifetime or many lifetimes!
     Travis smiled a bit crookedly. A new religion of sorts, a priesthood with sacred and forbidden knowledge … in time a whole new life and civilization stemming from this night. The bleak cold of his early thought cut less deep. There was a different kind of adventure here.

• 

• 

      "There was a chance once," said Webster, almost as if he were speaking to himself. "A chance for new viewpoints, for something that might have wiped out the muddle of four thousand years of human thought. A man muffed that chance."
     Grant stirred uncomfortably, then sat rigid, afraid Webster might have seen him move.
     "That man," said Webster, "was my grandfather."
     Grant knew he must say something, that he could not continue to sit there, unspeaking.
     "Juwain may have been wrong," he said. "He might not have found a new philosophy."
     "That is a thought," declared Webster, "we have used to console ourselves. And yet, it is unlikely. Juwain was a great Martian philosopher, perhaps the greatest Mars had ever known. If he could have lived, there is no doubt in my mind he would have developed that new philosophy.
     But he didn't live. He didn't live because my grandfather couldn't go to Mars."

---

(ed note: The world government in Geneva found evidence that a race of hyper-intelligent mutants had developed in the Ozarks. They send agent Grant to contact them, and ask if they can complete Juwain's unfinished philosophy. Grant encounters Joe the mutant.)

     Joe's voice broke his thoughts.
     "You're an enumerator, aren't you? Why don't you ask me the questions? Now that you've found me you can't go off and not get it down on paper. My age especially. I'm one hundred sixty-three and I'm scarcely adolescent. Another thousand years at least."
     He hugged his knobby knees against his chest and rocked slowly back and forth. "Another thousand years and if I take good care of myself—"

     "But that isn't all of it," Grant told him, trying to keep his voice calm. "There is something more. Something that you must do for us."
     "For us?"
     "For society," said Grant. "For the human race."
     "Why?"
     Grant stared. "You mean that you don't care."

     Joe shook his head and in the gesture there was no bravado, no defiance of convention. It was just blunt statement of the fact.
     "Money!" suggested Grant.
     Joe waved his hands at the hills about them, at the spreading river valley. "I have this," he said. "I have no need of money."
     "Fame, perhaps?"
     Joe did not spit, but his face looked like he had.
     "The gratitude of the human race?"
     "It doesn't last," said Joe and the old mockery was in his words, the vast amusement just behind his lips.
     "Look, Joe," said Grant and, hard as he tried to keep it out, there was pleading in his voice, "this thing I have for you to do is important … important to generations yet to come, important to the human race, a milestone in our destiny—"
     "And why should I," asked Joe, "do something for someone who isn't even born yet? Why should I look beyond the years of my own life? When I die, I die, and all the shouting and the glory, all the banners and the bugles will be nothing to me. I will not know whether I lived a great life or a very poor one."
     "The race," said Grant.
     Joe laughed, a shout of laughter. "Race preservation, race advancement. That's what you're getting at. Why should you be concerned with that? Or I?"
     The laughter lines smoothed out around his mouth and he shook a finger in mock admonishment. "Race preservation is a myth … a myth that you all have lived by—a sordid thing that has arisen out of your social structure. The race ends every day. When a man dies the race ends for him—so far as he's concerned there is no longer any race."
     "You just don't care," said Grant.
     "That," declared Joe, "is what I've been telling you."

     He squinted at the pack upon the ground and a nicker of a smile wove about his lips. "Perhaps," he suggested, "if it interested me—" Grant opened up the pack, brought out the portfolio.
     Almost reluctantly he pulled out the thin sheaf of papers, glanced at the title: "Unfinished Philosophical Proposition and Related Notes of Juwain". He handed it across, sat watching as Joe read swiftly and even as he watched he felt the sickening wrench of terrible failure closing on his brain.

     Back in the Webster house he had thought of a mind that knew no groove of logic, a mind unhampered by four thousand years of moldy human thought. That, he had told himself, might do the trick.
     And here if was. But it still was not enough. There was something lacking—something he had never thought of, something the men in Geneva had never thought of, either.
     Something, a part of the human make-up that everyone, up to this moment, had taken for granted.
     Social pressure was the thing that had held the human race together through all millennia—held the human race together as a unit just as hunger pressure had held the ants enslaved to a social pattern.
     The need of one human being for the approval of his fellow humans, the need for a certain cult of fellowship—a psychological, almost physiological need for approval of one's thought and action. A force that kept men from going off at unsocial tangents, a force that made for social security and human solidarity, for the working together of the human family.
     Men died for that approval, sacrificed for that approval, lived lives they loathed for that approval. For without it a man was on his own, an outcast, an animal that had been driven from the pack.
     It had led to terrible things, of course—to mob psychology, to racial persecution, to mass atrocities in the name of patriotism or religion. But likewise it had been the sizing that held the race together, the thing that from the very start had made human society possible.
     And Joe didn't have it. Joe didn't give a damn. He didn't care what anyone thought of him. He didn't care whether anyone approved or not.
     Grant felt the sun hot upon his back, heard the whisper of the wind that walked in the trees above him. And in some thicket a bird struck up a song.
     Was this the trend of mutancy? This sloughing off of the basic instinct that made man a member of the race?
     Had this man in front of him, reading the legacy of Juwain, found within himself, through his mutancy, a life so full that he could dispense with the necessity for the approval of his fellows? Had he, finally, after all these years, reached that stage of civilization where a man stood independent, disdaining all the artificiality of society?

     Joe looked up.
     "Very interesting," he said. "Why didn't he go ahead and finish it?"
     "He died," said Grant.
     Joe clucked his tongue inside his cheek. "He was wrong in one place." He nipped the pages, jabbed with a finger.
     "Right here. That's where the error cropped up. That's what bogged him down."
     Grant' stammered. "But … but there shouldn't be any error. He died, that's all. He died before he finished it."
     Joe folded the manuscript neatly, tucked it in his pocket.
     "Just as well," he said. "He probably would have botched it."
     "Then you can finish it? You can—" There was. Grant knew, no use of going on. He read the answer in Joe's eyes.

     "You really think," said Joe and his words were terse and measured, "that I'd turn this over to you squalling humans?"

     Grant shrugged in defeat. "I suppose not. I suppose I should have known. A man like you—"
     "I," said Joe, "can use this thing myself."

(ed note: Of all races in the universe, the Atheleni have safely passed the second armageddon but not the first. They invented but only used one the Telepathic Madness, but have yet to face the challenge of inventing nuclear weapons)

Aretenon glanced at the furnishings of his chamber, recalling with an effort the fact that in his own youth almost everything he saw would have appeared impossible or even meaningless to him. Not even the simplest of tools had existed then, at least in the knowledge of his people. Now there were ships and bridges and houses—and these were only the beginning.

‘I am well satisfied,’ he said. ‘We have, as we planned, diverted the whole stream of our culture, turning it away from the dangers that lay ahead. The powers that made the Madness possible will soon be forgotten: only a handful of us still know of them, and we will take our secrets with us. Perhaps when our descendants rediscover them they will be wise enough to use them properly. But we have uncovered so many new wonders that it may be a thousand generations before we turn again to look into our own minds and to tamper with the forces locked within them.’

• 

(ed note: In the future there is a interstellar-wide organized crime syndicate who the police called "the enemy." Protagonist Maynard has some undetermined ability that could be of use to the police to fight the enemy. The police give him a battery of tests to try and find out what his ability is.)

      "One more question, do your dreams, generally, make sense?"
     "About half and half."
     "Fifty per cent, a high average." One of them rose. "Mr. Maynard, we are fumbling in the dark but your dreams are the only lead we have to this unspecified deviation. We therefore, propose putting you to sleep for a short period. We shall give a small hypnotic pill and, under its influence, you will tell us your dream as you dream it."
     "How can you be sure I shall dream?"
     "Dreams take place at certain levels of sleep well known to science. The drug ensures that your sleep state will be maintained in that level."
     One of them came forward. "Now if you will just swallow this please — take a sip of water, fine. Now, if we adjust your chair so — just relax, Mr. Maynard, nothing to worry about, nothing at all — "

     He drifted into sleep and into the dream in an almost leisurely way. He knew as soon as it began that it was a dream and yet at the same time it was so vivid, it seemed like waking elsewhere.
     The first things he saw were the stars in a night sky and the stars were myriad and brilliant. He had never seen stars like that before and yet, in some odd way, they were familiar. Somewhere there was the slap and sigh of water and a creaking noise — rigging! He was on a ship! A high-bridged wooden sailing ship with the sloping sails of the ancient Arab dhow.

     Later when trying to recall the dream, he tried to pinpoint the time when he lost his identity but was never able to do so. One minute he was Maynard, asleep and knowing he was dreaming, and the next Matt Kern, and Matt Kern had never heard of Maynard.
     He walked to the rail nervously and looked down at the water. Still brightly phosphorescent, no sign of King-spinner which so often tore ships apart. In which case, of course, they would make Terrentis at dawn with everything in their favour. Well, almost everything, the sun would be in the eyes of the land gunners and Portis Royal fleet.
     He fingered his knife nervously. The Royal fleet, seventy six men-of-war and thirty heavily armed Speedsails. This lot plus all the shore batteries which surrounded Terrentis harbour they were going to take on with one ship. He shivered. He didn't mind a fight, a fight in which he stood a chance but this was suicide. Unless — he looked uneasily forward — unless the gun worked.

---

     KERN edged forward, looking uneasily at the long, slender barrel with its sort of funnel end. It didn't even look like a gun and those brass coloured things were certainly not cannon balls or chain-shot. In truth he suspected that the gun was some kind of sorcery. It was rumoured that the Monarch had made a pact with the devils who dwelt in the dark mountains. Devils whose dancing lights could be seen from the high towers of the keep on a dark night.
     He realized abruptly that it was growing light, it would of course be some time yet but — It did not seem like some time, it seemed to come all too quickly with the great yellow sun rising rapidly above the sloping green land of Terrentis.

     To the left of the harbour a thin column of black smoke began to climb skywards to be joined almost immediately by another on the right. Signal fires! Already the intruder had been sighted, the bright scarlet sails determining its identity. Enemy vessel approaching under full sail! Even as he thought, the booming of warning gongs rolled faintly to them across the water. The garrison, the town and the entire fleet were now alert and waiting. So much for the advantage of surprise.

     They sailed on steadily and, in the harbour, sails began to climb the masts of the Royal fleet. He could imagine winches turning and anchors rising from the green water. More important, at the moment, however, were the coastal and harbour defences. Black powder being poured into squat cannon, naked men ramming down ball and chain shot with long poles.

     "Heave to!"
     Kern stiffened. Heave to? Had he heard aright? Yet the sails were coming down and sea-anchors were being tossed over the side. They needed another four hundred lengths at least before they could begin to fight. Worse, three Royal men-of-war were breasting the harbour side by side, vessels which out-ranged and out-gunned their own by a good twelve lengths.

     It was then that the sky seemed to split. Kern was hardened to the noise of cannon but not a sound such as this. It was like someone striking an enormous gong with an iron hammer too quickly to follow.
     Open-mouthed he saw the leading man-of-war literally fall apart in a geyser of red flame and black smoke. The mainmast, complete with sail, rose high in the air and fell with a splash into the green sea. Before he could take it in, fire and smoke ripped the entire side out of the second vessel which immediately keeled over and began to sink. He saw nothing happen to the third vessel but, when he looked for it, it was a mastless wreck, down by the stern and blazing furiously.

     Maynard woke slowly and was surprised to see that the three experts had increased to ten.
     They began to fire questions at him before he had fully reoriented himself.
     "How big was this vessel? Describe, if you can, the appearance of the stars."
     Even as he answered, he could hear others talking quickly: "Cisterine, undoubtedly, it explains the additional stocks of Cuderium, no wonder shares fell by twelve points. Our friends have been mining it wholesale."
     "How did they get past the patrols?"
     "Your guess is as good as mine. What riles me, however, is the fact that they had to play God to pass the time."
     Another, rather ageing voice, said: "Oh, indeed, no, not merely to pass the time, take a look at this — "
     One of his original questioners came over. "Well, Maynard, undoubtedly, you have blown the roof off something as you can see. In the meantime, a few words in private, this way, please."

---

     He paused and glanced at his watch. "Time we had something to eat, after which some relaxation, we have to watch popular dimensional (TV show in the three-dimensional television). I have one in my quarters, the programme should prove most interesting."
     "Friday Night Spectacular." Reed flicked on the switch with his index finger. "This is a blood and thunder gigantic with all the stops pulled out and has a high popularity rating among the masses. It varies between the ancient western, tongue-in-the-cheek cops and robbers and space opera."
     There were the usual commercials and then the spectacular. It was space opera, great ships descending on a primitive planet. He watched with growing boredom for twenty minutes then jerked upright. He knew that harbour! Terrentis! The Royal fleet riding at anchor in the harbour and, far out, a tiny speck with bright red sails.
     "I think you've seen enough." Reed cut the picture. "Come along to the operations room, for once the Enemy is going to take quite a clobbering."

---

     He paused and indicated a chair. "Do sit down, make yourself comfortable." He sat down facing them. "As you know from history, four hundred years ago, there was a war of independence among our stellar colonies. During that war, four recently colonized planets were completely cut off. Vessels carrying vital equipment failed to arrive and, in the hundred-year combat which followed, the colonists on these worlds lost their technology. Superstition replaced knowledge. They slipped to a period roughly approximating sixteenth-century earth which was pretty good considering that they had only memory, records, and the clothes they stood up in with which to build. Every time someone died, knowledge died with them, you get the picture.

     "It was felt, when the first cautious surveys were made, that it would be in the interests of these cultures generally, if they climbed to a period roughly approaching the twentieth century before being united with the Empire. The experts felt that too early a contact might have dangerous repercussions on these cultures. Further, with the growing strength of the Enemy they would undoubtedly be exploited, turned into side-shows and perhaps perish as individual and vital off-shoots of mankind's climb to the stars.
     "Warning monitors were therefore placed in orbit round these planets and regular patrols instituted. It was known, needless to say, that Cisterine, the planet in question, was rich in Cuderium and here precautions were doubled.
     "The Enemy, however, has some ingenious scientists on its payroll and they managed to by-pass the monitors and evade the patrols without triggering the alarms. Judging by figures to hand, they had mined and ferried out a couple of billions worth of Cuderium before they were discovered.

     "While this was going on, the executives in charge became bored. They therefore decided to amuse themselves, playing God.
     "The peoples of the planet's two continents, if not friends, had never been overt enemies, so the executives drummed up a little war to make their stay more interesting. It was then that some bright spark had the idea of making a profit out of it. Why not hook up some cameras? Make a good spectacular and profit out of indulgence appealed to them greatly.
     "The spectacular (a popular TV show), as you did not see all of it, is worth mentioning. It depicted an heroic spaceman marooned on a primitive planet. He falls among a noble race whose lands and seaboards are being constantly ravished and plundered by the brutal Royal fleets of the adjacent continent. Out of love of the people and, incidentally, unlikely local materials, he builds a quick-firing gun and sallies forth in their only available ship to do battle for them. Needless to say, the battle scenes were impressive and the backgrounds so skilfully disguised that, but for your 'dream' we should never have put two and two together."

One of the many Things Mr. Welch Is No Longer Allowed To Do in an role-playing-game is: give feuding tech-level 1 tribes some tech-level 12 weapons and post the results on Pay-Per-View.

(ed note: see above)

• 

"As the right of each sentient species to live in accordance with its normal cultural evolution is considered sacred, no Starfleet personnel may interfere with the healthy development of alien life and culture. Such interference includes the introduction of superior knowledge, strength, or technology to a world whose society is incapable of handling such advantages wisely."

Starfleet General Order 1 (also known as the Prime Directive), Star Trek

Even without ever having met a real culture from outer space, mankind has experienced firsthand the sort of disaster that can come from First Contact between a technologically-advanced society and a technologically-primitive and/or culturally-different one. Case in point: much of the European age of exploration and colonization included a great deal of war, exploitation, cultural assimilation (both forced and not) and even genocide across Asia, Africa, Australia and the Americas, including cultures that, according to modern research, may have been more advanced than we once believed.

It is for this reason and others that Science Fiction writers came up with the concept of the Alien Non-Interference Clause: in the future, it is believed, people will have learned from the mistakes of the past and take steps from preventing the same mistakes from recurring as humans explore space.

Of course, such rules are ultimately an Obstructive Code of Conduct that creates as many problems as it solves. Crash landing on an inhabited world when this rule is in force brings obvious difficulties. Trying to study an alien culture without being discovered is a popular scenario. And where do you draw the line? At exactly what point is a species officially "mature" enough to let them in on the secrets of the universe? Does non-interference mean you're morally obliged to let a species suffer or die because it is their "natural development"? And what will happen when the "protectees" do develop advanced technology and discover that alien races have been watching them for generations… and consider themselves pretty darn righteous for their policy of non-assistance? And what should be done if the "protectees" are looking for extraterrestrial intelligence? There's also the little matter of how one defines a culture's "normal evolution" or "healthy development"; in addition to the aforementioned "letting them all die" aspect, if a society seems happy but social development has "stagnated", does that justify stepping in to nudge them in the right direction, or should you assume that they might possibly be able to do so in their own time?

A common twist on the trope is to have such a law in effect, and then come across an alien race that is eager to gain tech and knowledge from the humans. What happens then? Can you get away with telling the aliens You Are Not Ready? Where does the rule stop being about "preserving alien cultures" and start being about "keeping the humans (or The Federation) as the dominant power"? One ironic inversion is to have a second, more advanced set of aliens show up and refuse to help because they have this exact same clause, essentially turning the tables and putting the protagonist on the receiving end of this "benign neglect".

This also appears as the reason that aliens aware of our existence, or even visiting our planet in secret have not announced their presence to us. Usually, the condition to join interstellar society is the independent development of starships or Faster-Than-Light Travel, or at least to starting to colonise other planets in the Solar System.

Compare Helping Would Be Killstealing. Contrast Technology Uplift, when the aliens don't have this clause. See also Low Culture, High Tech, which is what the violation of this rule can sometimes lead to. Protagonists who tend to say Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right! usually treat this as a Frequently-Broken Unbreakable Vow.

(ed note: see TV Trope page for list of examples)

Their (the "Symbiotics") little island universe, their outlying cluster of stars, had come wholly under their control. It contained many natural planetary systems. Several of these included worlds which, when the early Arachnoid explorers visited them telepathically, were found to be inhabited by native races of pre-utopian rank. These were left to work out their own destiny, save that in certain crises of their history the Symbiotics secretly brought to bear on them from afar a telepathic influence that might help them to meet their difficulties with increased vigor. Thus when one of these worlds reached the crisis in which Homo sapiens now stands, it passed with seemingly natural ease straight on to the phase of world-unity and the building of Utopia. Great care was taken by the Symbiotic race to keep its existence hidden from the primitives, lest they should lose their independence of mind. Thus, even while the Symbiotics were voyaging among these worlds in rocket vessels and using the mineral resources of neighboring uninhabited planets, the intelligent worlds of pre-utopian rank were left unvisited. Not till these worlds had themselves entered the full Utopian phase and were exploring their neighbor planets were they allowed to discover the truth. By then they were ready to receive it with exultation, rather than disheartenment and fear. Thenceforth, by physical and telepathic intercourse the young-utopia would be speedily brought up to the spiritual rank of the Symbiotics themselves, and would cooperate on an equal footing in a symbiosis of worlds.

Some of these pre-utopian worlds, not malignant but incapable of further advance, were left in peace, and preserved, as we preserve wild animals in national parks, for scientific interest. Aeon after aeon, these beings, tethered by their own futility, struggled in vain to cope with the crisis which modern Europe knows so well. In cycle after cycle civilization would emerge from barbarism, mechanization would bring the peoples into uneasy contact, national wars and class wars would breed the longing for a better world-order, but breed it in vain. Disaster after disaster would undermine the fabric of civilization. Gradually barbarism would return. Aeon after aeon, the process would repeat itself under the calm telepathic observation of the Symbiotics, whose existence was never suspected by the primitive creatures under their gaze. So might we ourselves look down into some rock-pool where lowly creatures repeat with naive zest dramas learned by their ancestors aeons ago.

The Symbiotics could well afford to leave these museum pieces intact, for they had at their disposal scores of planetary systems. Moreover, armed with their highly developed physical sciences and with sub-atomic power, they were able to construct, out in space, artificial planets for permanent habitation. These great hollow globes of artificial super-metals, and artificial transparent adamant, ranged in size from the earliest and smallest structures, which were no bigger than a very small asteroid, to spheres considerably larger than the Earth. They were without external atmosphere, since their mass was generally too slight to prevent the escape of gases. A blanket of repelling force protected them from meteors and cosmic rays.

• 

(ed note: Our heroes are from a Terran colony that backslid to about 17th century level technology after the fall of the first galactic empire, and are currently on a covert mission to a colony that backslid to medieval level technology. The representatives of the Empire who only backslid to 2600 CE level technology sternly tell our heroes about the Prime Directive. Trader MacKinnie is one of our heroes. Captain Greenaugh is from the Empire.)

      The contrast between the two officers could not have been greater. One was young, tall, of slight build, his hair an indescribable brown something like damp straw. The other was much older, with lines of care etched around his expressionless eyes, his hair gray where there was hair at all. He was heavy and short, but he had in common with the younger man a look of hardness and dedication; yet, again in contrast to his junior brother in service, there was none of the air of expectancy and anticipation the boy displayed.
     "Trader MacKinnie." The older man said it factually. "I am Captain Greenaugh of His Imperial Majesty's Navy. I command the garrison here and Tombaugh up there in orbit. This is Midshipman Landry, who will be my observer on this stupid voyage of yours."
     MacKinnie stood and bowed slightly to Captain Greenaugh, even less to Landry, making no move to extend his hand when the others did not.
     "Won't you sit down, Captain?" Soliman asked softly. "Some wine, perhaps? Grua?"
     "No. Mr. Landry and I are on duty." The midshipman's face was impassive; or had there been a hint of a smile? It was hard to tell.
     "Then please be seated," Soliman insisted. "I prefer to stand." He turned his attention to MacKinnie. "As you are to be the local in charge of this expedition, sir, it is my duty to caution you that any infringement of Imperial regulations on the part of any member of this expedition will result in trial and punishment of both the crew member and you personally. Is that understood?"

     "Yes, Captain," MacKinnie said. He elaborately inspected the large ring on his left hand, then looked up. "I understand perfectly. Tell me why you are so unhappy with me, if you would, please."
     "I am not unhappy with you, sir. It is understandable that you would wish to travel in space. I am unhappy with Mr. Soliman for browbeating me into letting you do it."
     "Browbeating, Captain?" Soliman said in an amused tone. "Why, I merely indicated—"
     "You merely indicated the relevant passages in the Imperial regulations and reminded me of your influence. I don't give a damn about your influence, but I can't ignore the regulations. However, I warn you, MacKinnie, if Mr. Soliman can be sticky about regulations, so can I. You'll get a copy of the pertinent sections before you go, but I decided to see you personally to try to talk you out of this venture."

     "If you please, Captain," Dougal asked, "why are you so opposed to our simple trading expedition? I thought it was Imperial policy to encourage trade among the worlds of the Empire. Your ambassador promises that Prince Samual's World will profit highly through joining the Empire."
     "Sir—" The captain paused and snapped his fingers.
     "Citizen Dougal, sir," the midshipman answered. "In the service of King David."
     "Citizen Dougal, I have all too few officers on this station. I am responsible for the protection of this world from all interference with its development and assimilation into the Empire. There's a nest of outies (rebels) not twenty parsecs away; your King David is in one hell of a hurry to unify this planet against stiff opposition; the survey team keeps borrowing my people; and thanks to this expedition I have to send a junior officer off for the Saints alone know how long. There'll be reports to file, inspections to conduct. And for what? So Mr. Soliman here can add another mega-crown to his bank account, and you people can bring some kind of gimcrack new luxuries to absorb what little capital there is on Prince Samual's World. I don't like it and I don't have to like it."
     "Sorry you feel that way, Captain," MacKinnie said. Inwardly he knew all too well the plight of a military man caught up in the details of government. He would have felt sympathy for Greenaugh, but the memory of Lechfeld was too strong. The Imperials were the enemy. "But you have admitted that you understand our motives for wanting to go. I hope we can get our work accomplished without causing you any trouble."

     "You're damn right you will," Greenaugh snapped. "But before you make your final decision, let me acquaint you with the regulations. Item: you will be supplied with a basic naval study of the planetary languages found in the chief city of Makassar. You will at no time teach any native your own language or Imperial speech. All negotiations will be conducted in one of the planetary languages. Is that understood?"
     MacKinnie nodded, suddenly realizing why all the Imperials he had met spoke a variant of the language of Haven. If you used a man's own language, you weren't likely to tell him anything he didn't know about. He wouldn't even have the words for most advanced concepts.
     "Item: as Imperial subjects," Greenaugh continued, "you would ordinarily be entitled to protection from barbarians and arbitrary imprisonment. In your case we can't extend it. The garrison on Makassar is too small and there's no ship. If you get in trouble, you're on your own."
     The captain took a small notebook-sized object from his pocket, touched a stud on the side of it and glanced at its face before returning it to his scarlet tunic. MacKinnie recognized it as one of the tiny Imperial computers, supposedly equivalent to hundreds of the best mechanical calculators in use in Haven's banks; equivalent and more. The Imperials used them for everything, as notebooks and pocket clocks, for communications and diaries. (to science fiction readers in 1981 this was hot stuff. Nowadays we call them run-of-the-mill smartphones.)

     "Another thing, MacKinnie. Any technical innovation traced to you directly or indirectly can result in a charge of interference. If it results in any severe disruption of the development of that planet, you can get life imprisonment. Assessment of the effects of innovations and your responsibilities for them are up to the Emperor's Lord Judges."
     "Why are the regulations so severe, Captain?" Dougal asked. "It is our understanding that the Empire intends only peace and friendship for its member worlds."
     "Damn right. And sudden technical changes destroy both. I've seen worlds where some smart guy used a little technology and a lot of guts to set himself up as a planetary king. Half the population out of work, the other half in a turmoil. Took the better part of a fleet and a division of Marines to keep order on the place. Mister, it's not going to happen in my sector."

     "The regulations are severe for a purpose," Renaldi added. "There is no telling what the effects of even the most innocent technical revelations can be. Even something as inherently benign as medicines can change the whole pattern of life. There is a famous case, from the early days of the New Empire. The Church went in and with the best of motives taught practical medicine to primitives. The missionaries were particularly concerned with saving children from infant diseases. They intended to give them some new agricultural and industrial techniques, but the people were not ready for them. They rejected the agriculture and industry, but they adopted the medicine. Within fifty standard years, there was famine all over that world. The results were horrible."
     Greenaugh nodded. "Still were when I was young Landry's age. I served a hitch on an escort vessel convoying a provisions fleet. Silliest thing you ever saw. You ever think of how futile it is to try to ship food to a whole world that's starving? If you took every ship in the Navy and merchant service and put them on it, even if the food was free and waiting in the same star system, it wouldn't do any good. But the Emperor's sister got interested in the place and they had to have a try at 'helping.' Did no good at all. Population's thinned out a bit now on Placentia, but the planet'll never be the same."

     "So you see," Soliman said softly, "it is important not to interfere. No matter what the reason. You can always say that things would have been worse if you did not interfere, but you can't know." He sipped his wine. "Besides, people will have adjusted to the evils they are accustomed to. Your attempts to help may introduce evils they don't know, which are always worse to bear and will probably retard their natural development."
     "Thank you," MacKinnie said. "We will be very careful. What else must I know?"
     "Still determined," Greenaugh said. "Thought you would be. Well, if I can't persuade you to give it up, I can't. Bring your crew here tomorrow for inspection. Midshipman Landry will tell you the rest of the details." He strode to the door, then paused and turned back. "Just remember, MacKinnie you were warned. The hell with it." He went briskly out, followed by his midshipman.

• 

---

     "(our hero) Colonel MacKinnie? I am Dudley Boyd, First Secretary. His Excellency will see you now."
     Boyd cleared his throat. "Your Excellency, may I present Colonel Nathan MacKinnie. Colonel, High Commissioner Sir Alexei Ackoff."
     "Would anyone care for a drink? This will be quite informal."
     "Informal but official," Boyd warned. "Colonel (MacKinnie), you and Freelady Graham have been charged with interfering with the orderly development of a primitive world, to wit, Makassar."
     "But we didn't interfere," Mary protested.
     Ackoff waved impatiently. "Don't be nonsensical. There's always interference when an advanced people move among primitives."
     "I see," MacKinnie said. "You were embarrassed by our ship, and you've chosen us to pay for it."
     "Pronouns," Dudley Boyd said.
     "I beg your pardon?"
     "Wrong pronouns," Boyd said. "You said 'you,' meaning us, and that's not true. You've been arrested by Navy orders, not ours."
     "Makassar is under Navy jurisdiction," Ackoff explained. "There is no civil government there. Captain Greenaugh is within his rights, and he could try you by court martial. You would then have the right to appeal to civil authority, which is to say, to me. We're trying to save time by dealing directly with you."

     "But what did we do?" Mary asked.
     "Captain Greenaugh is still building his case," Ackoff said. "But as it happens, I can put one precise specification to his charge. Horse collars."
     "Horse collars?" MacKinnie frowned. "I hadn't thought the Empire concerned itself with trivia."
     Ackoff laughed. "Trivia? Colonel, the horse collar effectively ended slavery on Earth in pre-atomic times. I see you don't understand.
     "Consider that if you harness a horse by fastening a strap around its neck, the poor beast can't pull very hard because when it pulls it strangles itself. Improperly hitched horses can do about five times as much work as a man. But a horse eats five times as much as a man. Given the choice between a horse and a slave there isn't much in it.
     "But. Add the rigid horse collar so the load goes on to the shoulders, and the horse can do ten times as much work as a man—and it still eats only five times as much. Horses are then clearly preferable to humans for heavy work. Prior to the invention of horse collars there were as many slaves as free people on Earth. Afterwards, slavery became fairly rare and only imposed on people thought inferior. And I see I am indulging my tendency to lecture.

     "My point is simple. I know from the reports—from your own admissions—that you introduced rigid horse collars. Probably a lot of other seemingly minor innovations will have a profound impact. Privately, I expect you did them far more good than harm, but if we want to charge you, we have all the evidence we need."
     "And you can't say you weren't warned," Boyd said. "Captain Greenaugh is adamant on that point. He warned you himself."
     "But—" Graham protested.
     Nathan shook his head. "They've obviously got more to say. Let's hear them out."

(ed note: Ackoff offers a deal that will make Captain Greenaugh think he got revenge but will be satisfactory to our heroes and to Ackoff. )

     

In the later Roman Empire, slaves actually outnumbered citizens. This interesting situation caused the Romans a number of problems throughout their history. In 73 BC, a Thracian slave named Spartacus led a slave revolt in what came to be known as the Third Servile War. Spartacus’s revolt scared the Romans as nothing else had done in hundreds of years. After they put down the insurrection, they crucified those slaves they captured, lining the Appian Way with their bodies for miles. (Contrary to the 1960 movie starring Kirk Douglas, Spartacus died in the final battle and was not crucified.)

After such a close call, you would think that Rome would give up the dangerous practice of enslaving their neighbors. They not only didn’t give it up; they increased the number of slaves in the empire! It wasn’t that they didn’t understand the danger. Rather, they couldn’t afford to end slavery. The Roman economy depended on slave labor, all because they somehow failed to discover one of the great inventions of all time — the horse collar.

“THE HORSE COLLAR!” you groan. “Surely you can’t be serious. What do horse collars have to do with slavery?”

They have everything to do with it. The Romans harnessed their horses by wrapping a leather strap around their necks. When the horses attempted to pull a heavy load, the strap cut off their supply of air, and the horses eased up enough to breathe. The result of using neck straps was to severely limit a horse’s pulling power. Human physiology allowed slaves to be harnessed such that they took the load through their shoulders and could use their full power without affecting their breathing. The result was that in Roman times, a slave could win a tug- of-war with a horse! Since human slaves were able to pull heavier loads, could be fed table scraps or garbage (horses eat grain), and are generally more intelligent than equines, they became the prime means for doing work in the Roman Empire. And like any other prized possession, the Romans worked to increase their numbers, despite the ever-present danger of a revolt.

There are numerous other examples of basic inventions the Romans did not have the foresight to invent, including the steel plowshare or stirrups for their saddles. A little known fact is that the Middle Ages were substantially more advanced from a technological standpoint than was the Roman Empire. What medieval man lacked, however, was the large-scale organizational ability of the Romans. No king, duke, or earl had control of a sufficient number of subjects to build anything approaching a Roman road, even if he had the knowledge of how to build a better one. Which brings us to the reason why Rome was able to conquer the known world and keep it in subjugation for more than a thousand years.

• 

(ed note: The interstellar flying cities are sort of like migrant laborers of space. They find human colony worlds and perform services in exchange for valuable minerals and such. Services include things like large scale mining and establishing industrial infrastructure.

The cities have to answer to the Earth Cops if they violate Earth laws, such as changing a colony's social system. Such changes might take a hundred years, but since both the Earth Cops and the cities use immortality drugs, the city perpetrators will still be alive and the cops have long memories.)

      Chris suspected that most of the citizens found the newscasts almost as dim-witted and uninformative as he did. What little meaningful information he was able to garner, he got from Sgt. Anderson, and that was not very much, for the perimeter sergeant was hardly ever home now; he was too busy consolidating the beachhead on Heaven. Nevertheless, Chris picked up a few fragments, mostly from conversations between the sergeant and Carla:

     “What they want us to do is to help them industrialize the planet. It sounds easy, but the kicker is that their social setup is feudal—the sixty-six thousand people they call the Elect are actually only free landholders or franklins, and below them there’s a huge number of serfs — nobody’s ever bothered to count them. The Archangels want it to stay that way even after they’ve got their heavy industries established.”
     “It sounds impossible,” Carla said.
     “It is impossible, as they’ll find out when we’ve finished the job. But that’s exactly the trouble. We’re not allowed to change planets’ social systems, but we can’t complete this contract without starting a revolution—a long, slow one, sure, but a revolution all the same. And when the cops come here afterward and find that out, we’ll have a Violation to answer for.”

     Carla laughed musically. “The cops! My dear, is that still a three-letter word for you? What else are you? How many more centuries is it going to take you to get used to it?”
     “You know what I mean,” Anderson said, frowning. “So all right, I’m a cop. But I’m not an Earth cop. I’m a city cop, and that makes all the difference. Well, we’ll see. What’s for lunch? I’ve got to go in half an hour.”

• 

(ed note: Ronald Bronston has been accepted in the bureau of interplanetary security of the United Planets. He is being briefed by his new boss, Ross Metaxa.)

      “To get back to Section G. We’re Interplanetary Security. In short, Department Cloak and Dagger. Now, shut up till I give you some background. You’re probably full of a lot of nonsense you picked up in school.”
     “It seems that most of the times man gets a really big idea, he goes off half cocked. Just one example. Remember when the ancient Hellenes exploded into the Mediterranean? A score of different City-States began sending out colonies, which in turn sprouted colonies of their own. Take Syracuse, on Sicily. Hardly was she established than, bingo, she sent off colonists to Southern Italy, and they in turn to Southern France, Corsica, the Balearics. Greeks were exploding all over the place, largely without adequate plans, without rhyme or reason. Take Alexander. Roamed off all the way to India, founding cities and colonies of Greeks all along the way.”
     The older man shifted in his chair. “You wonder what I’m getting at, eh? Well, much the same thing is happening in man’s explosion into space, now that he has the ability to leave the solar system behind. Dashing off half cocked, in all directions, he’s flowing out over this section of the galaxy without plan, without rhyme or reason. I take that last back, he has reasons all right—some of the screwist. Religious reasons, racial reasons, idealistic reasons, political reasons, altruistic reasons and mercenary reasons.
     “Inadequate ships, manned by small numbers of inadequate people, setting out to find their own planets, to establish themselves on one of the numberless uninhabited worlds that offer themselves to colonization and exploitation.”

     Ronny cleared his throat. “Well, isn’t that a good thing, sir?”
     Ross Metaxa looked at him and grunted. “What difference does it make if it’s good or not? It’s happening. We’re spreading our race out over tens of hundreds of new worlds in the most haphazard fashion. As a result, we of United Planets now have a chaotic mishmash on our hands. How we manage to keep as many planets in the organization as we do, sometimes baffles me. I suppose most of them are afraid to drop out, conscious of the protection UP gives against each other.”
     He picked up a report. “Here’s Monet, originally colonized by a bunch of painters, writers, musicians and such. They had dreams of starting a new race”—Metaxa snorted—“with everybody artists. They were all so impractical that they even managed to crash their ship on landing. For three hundred years they were uncontacted. What did they have in the way of government by that time? A military theocracy, something like the Aztecs of Pre-Conquest Mexico. A matriarchy, at that. And what’s their religion based on? That of ancient Phoenicia including plenty of human sacrifice to good old Moloch. What can United Planets do about it, now that they’ve become a member? Work away very delicately, trying to get them to at least eliminate the child sacrifice phase of their culture. Will they do it? Hell no, not if they can help it. The Head Priestess and her clique are afraid that if they don’t have the threat of sacrifice to hold over the people, they’ll be overthrown.”

     Ronny was surprised. “I’d never heard of a member planet like that. Monet?”
     Metaxa sighed. “No, of course not. You’ve got a lot to learn, Ronny, my lad. First of all, what’re Articles One and Two of the United Planets Charter.”
     That was easy. Ronny recited. “Article One: The United Planets organization shall take no steps to interfere with the internal political, socio-economic, or religious institutions of its members planet. Article Two: No member planet of United Planets shall interfere with the internalpolitical, socio-economic or religious institutions of any other member planet." He looked at the department head. “But what’s that got to do with the fact that I was unfamiliar with even the existence of Monet?”
     “Suppose one of the advanced planets, or even Earth itself,” Metaxa growled, “openly discussed in magazines, on newscasts, or wherever, the religious system of Monet. A howl would go up among the liberals, the progressives, the do-gooders. And the howl would be heard on the other advanced planets. EventuaUy, the citizen in the street on Monet would hear about it and be affected. And before you knew it, a howl would go up from Monet’s government. Why? Because the other planets would be interfering with her internal affairs, simply by discussing them.”
     “So what you mean is,” Ronny said, “part of our job is to keep information about Monet’s government and religion from being discussed at all on other member planets.”
     “That’s right,” Metaxa nodded. “And that’s just one of our dirty little jobs. One of many. Section G, believe me, gets them all. Which brings us to your first assignment.”

     “I’m sending you out after a legend, Ronny. You’re fresh, possibly you’ll get some ideas older men in the game haven’t thought of.”
     “A legend?”
     “I’m sending you to look for Tommy Paine. Some members of the department don’t think he exists. I do.”
     “Tommy Paine?”
     “A pseudonym that somebody hung on him way back before even my memory in this Section. Did you ever hear of Thomas Paine in American history?”
     “He wrote a pamphlet during the Revolutionary War, didn’t he?”
     “ ‘Common Sense,’ ” Metaxa nodded. “But he was more than that. He was born in England but went to America as a young man and his writings probably did as much as anything to put over the revolt against the British. But that wasn’t enough. When that revolution was successful he went back to England and tried to start one there. The government almost caught him, but he escaped and got to France where he participated in the French Revolution.”
     “He seemed to get around,” Ronny Bronston said.
     “And so does this namesake of his. We’ve been trying to catch up with him for some twenty years. How long before that he was active, we have no way of knowing. It was some time before we became aware of the fact that half the revolts, rebellions, revolutions and such that occur in the United Planets have his dirty finger stirring around in them.”
     “But you said some department members don’t believe in his existence.” Metaxa grunted. “They’re working on the theory that no one man could do all that Tommy Paine has laid to him. Possibly it’s true that he sometimes gets the blame for accomplishments not his. Or, for that matter, possibly he’s more than one person. I don’t know.”
     “Don’t read into the United Planets organization more than there is. It’s a fragile institution with practically no independent powers to wield. Every member planet is jealous of its prerogitives, which is understandable. It’s no mistake that Articles One and Two are the basic foundation of the Charter. No member planet wants to be interfered with by any other or by United Planets as an organization. They want to be left alone.”

(ed note: Ronald is sent to be briefed by his immediate supervisor, Sid Jakes)

• 

     “Sure, sure,” Jakes said. “This deal of mine was on one of the Aldebaran planets. A bunch of nature boys had settled there.”
     “Nature boys?”
     “Um-m-m. Back to nature. The trouble with the human race is that it’s got too far away from nature. So a whole flock of them landed on this planet. They call it Mother, of all things. They landed and set up a primitive society. Absolute stone age. No metals. Lived by the chase and by picking berries, wild fruit, that sort of thing. Not even any agriculture. Wore skins. Bows and arrows were the nearest thing they allowed themselves in the way of mechanical devices.”
     “Good grief,” Ronny said.
     “It was a laugh,” Jakes told him. “I was assigned there as Section G representative with the UP organization. Picture it. We had to wear skins for clothes. We had to confine ourselves to two or three long houses. Something like the American Iroquois lived in before Columbus. Their society on Mother was based on primitive communism. The clan, the phratry, the tribe. Their religion was mostly a matter of knocking into everybody’s head that any progress was taboo. Oh, it was great.”
     “Well, were they happy?”
     “What’s happiness? I suppose they were as happy as anybody ever averages. Frankly, I didn’t mind the assignment. Lots of fishing, lots of hunting.”

     Ronny said, “Well, where does Tommy Paine come in?”
     “He snuck up on us. Started way back in the boondocks away from any of the larger primitive settlements. Went around putting himself over as a holy man. Cured people of various things from gangrene to eye diseases. Given antibiotics and such, you can imagine how successful he was.”
     “Well, what harm did he do?”
     “I didn’t say he did any harm. But in that manner he made himself awfully popular. Then he’d pull some trick like showing them how to smelt iron, and distribute some corn and wheat seed around and plant the idea of agriculture. The local witch doctors would try to give him a hard time, but the people figured he was a holy man.”
     “Well, what happened finally?” Ronny wasn’t following too well.
     “Communications being what they were, before he’d been discovered by the central organization—they had a kind of Council of Tribes which met once a year—he’d planted so many ideas that they couldn’t be stopped. The young people’d never go back to flint knives, once introduced to iron. We went looking for friend Tommy Paine, but he got wind of it and took off. We even found where he’d hidden his little space cruiser. Oh, it was Paine, all right, all right.”
     “But what harm did he do? I don’t understand,” Ronny scowled.
     “He threw the whole shebang on its ear. Last I heard, the planet had broken up into three main camps. They were whaling away at each other like the Assyrians and Egyptians. Iron weapons, chariots, domesticated horses. Agriculture was sweeping the planet. Population was exploding. Men were making slaves out of each other, to put them to work. Oh, it was a mess from the viewpoint of the original nature boys.”

     “Look,” Ronny said in disgust one day after a particularly unbelievable siege with two agents recently returned from a trouble spot in a planetary system that involved three aggressive worlds which revolved about the same sun. “Look, it’s impossible for one man to accomplish all this. He’s blamed for half the coups d'etats, revolts and upheavals that have taken place for the past quarter century. It’s obvious nonsense. Why, a revolutionist usually spends the greater part of his life toppling a government. Then, once it’s toppled, he spends the rest of his life trying to set up a new government—and he’s usually unsuccessful.”

• 

     One of the others was shaking his head negatively. “You don’t understand this Tommy Paine’s system, Bronston.”
     “You sure don’t,” the other agent, a Nigerian, grinned widely, “I’ve been on planets where he’d operated.”
     Ronny leaned forward. The three of them were having a beer in a part of the city once called Baltimore. “You have?” he said. “Tell me about it, eh? The more background I get on this guy, the better.”
     “Sure. And this’ll give you an idea of how he operates, how he can get so much trouble done. Well, I was on this planet Goshen, understand? It had kind of a strange history. A bunch of colonists went out there, oh, four or five centuries ago. Pretty healthy expedition, as such outfits go. Bright young people, lots of equipment, lots of know-how and books. Well, through sheer bad luck everything went wrong from the beginning. Everything. Before they got set up at all they had an explosion that killed off all their communications technicians. They lost contact with the outside. O.K. Within a couple of centuries they’d gotten into a state of chatel slavery. Pretty well organized, but static. Kind of an Athenian Democracy on top, a hierarchy, but nineteen people out of twenty were slaves, and I mean real slaves, like animals. They were at this stage when a scout ship from the UP Space Forces discovered them and, of course, they joined up.”
     “Where does Tommy Paine come in?” Ronny said. He signaled to a waiter for more beer.
     “He comes in a few years later. I was the Section G agent on Goshen, understand? No planet was keener about Articles One and Two of the UP Charter. The hierarchy understood well enough that if their people ever came to know about more advanced socio-economic systems it’d be the end of Goshen’s Golden Age. So they allowed practically no intercourse. No contact whatsoever between UP personnel and anyone outside the upper class, understand? All right. That’s where Tommy Paine came in. It couldn’t have taken him more than a couple of months at most.”
     Ronny Bronston was fascinated. “What’d he do?”
     “He introduced the steam engine, and then left.”
     Ronny was looking at him blankly. “Steam engine?”
     “That and the fly shuttle and the spinning jenny,” the Nigerian said. “That Goshen hierarchy never knew what hit them.”
     Ronny was still blank. The waiter came up with the steins of beer, and Ronny took one and drained half of it without taking his eyes from the storyteller.
     The other agent took it up. “Don’t you see? Their system was based on chattel slavery, hand labor. Given machinery and it collapses. Chattel slavery isn’t practical in a mechanized society. Too expensive a labor force, for one thing. Besides, you need an educated man and one with some initiative—qualities that few slaves possess—to run an industrial society.”
     Ronny finished his beer. “Smart cooky, isn’t he?”
     “He’s smart all right. But I’ve got a still better example of his fouling up a whole planetary socio-economic system in a matter of weeks. A friend of mine was working on a planet with a highly developed feudalism. Barons, lord, dukes, counts and no-accounts, all stashed safely away in castles and fortresses up on the top of hills. The serfs down below did all the work in the fields, provided servants, artisans and foot soldiers for the continual fighting that the aristocracy carried on. Very similar to Europe back in the Dark Ages.”
     “So?” Ronny said. “I’d think that’d be a deal that would take centuries to change.”
     The Section G agent laughed. “Tommy Paine stayed just long enough to introduce gunpowder. That was the end of those impregnable castles up on the hills .”

• 

A Service starship is a good place to study; you have lots of free time at your disposal. especially if you are neither part of a survey team nor a member of the crew. But who wants to study all the time? I had never been off my home world before; since I'm from a Service family. even entering the Academy hadn't meant a trip for me. And I was dying to see something! I knew that I would not be permitted to accompany any regular team for a long time. So when the Andrecian situation came up and Father was appointed Senior Agent to handle it, I begged him to take me with him.

     “It's out of the question, Elana," he said gravely. “We are not going on a sightseeing trip. You know that. "
     “Evrek's going! "
     “Evrek has completed Third Phase; he has taken the Oath. He's ready for a field assignment. and while I wouldn't have chosen a thing like this for his first one, it's his job."
     “Please, Father?" I persisted. “I won't be in the way, I promise!"
     “I'm sorry. But it would be dangerous, not only for you but for the mission."
     I didn't reply aloud; though language is a useful tool, sometimes you get further telepathically.
     I'm not afraid…and I'll learn from it!
     You're too young, you're not yet sworn!

All my life I've wanted a career in the Anthropological Service; I've lived and breathed it ever since I was old enough to know what a Youngling world is. But even for someone with my background, the Academy is not easy to get into. The stories you hear about the entrance tests being such an awful ordeal are true. They're carefully designed to be, because you're not meant to pass unless you want to pretty desperately. It's not just a matter of being smart—though you do have to be, of course—or of having high aptitude for the control of psychic powers like psychokinesis and the Shield as well as ordinary telepathy. It's more a question of having the right personality. The Service is not about to turn anybody loose on a Youngling world who's not fitted for the responsibility. So there are all sorts of psychological tests and some other things they throw in to weed out anyone who hasn't sufficient—well, fortitude. Being an agent isn't always fun, and you are supposed to take the first steps toward finding that out before you get in too deep.

So they do everything they can to discourage you—but it's a very good arrangement, because the Service is not just a job. After all, once you take the Oath you are in for life; it's irrevocable. and you renounce your allegiance to your native world. There are a number of reasons why it was set up this way, but the main one is that they just don't want you if you don't feel that strongly about it. The power to influence Youngling civilizations is not a thing to be taken lightly.

But if you are truly serious about it, if you are willing to make the sacrifices the Oath demands. all the worlds of the universe are open to you! If you are not in the Service you will never see anything but Federation planets, for the worlds of Younglings peoples who are not yet mature enough to qualify for Federation membership—are strictly off limits to everyone but trained field agents. The reasons are very complex, but what it boils down to is that if Youngling peoples were to find out that they aren't the most advanced humans in the universe, their civilizations just wouldn't develop properly. They wouldn't ever realize their own potential. The Federation doesn't want to dominate other peoples, only to study them—so we don't reveal ourselves.

The really big thing about the Service, though, the thing that makes you want to give your life to it, is the opportunity to do something worthwhile…more than worthwhile, actually significant. Because, while our main objective is to study the Younglings, there are occasions on which we do take action. There are times when we may, literally, save a world—save its people, I mean, from slavery or from extinction. Not that we meddle in any planet's internal affairs; that is absolutely forbidden, for the Federation knows that however benevolent this might seem in some cases, it would be ultimately harmful. But we do try to save Youngling peoples from each other, when we can.

For some Youngling civilizations, the most advanced ones, have starships. It takes a lot less maturity to build a starship than to understand what to do with one when you get it. With their starships, they begin to expand to planets besides their own, which is both natural and right. The trouble is, they don't stick to uninhabited planets; occasionally they grab one that belongs to somebody else: either they invade it, or they unwittingly destroy its culture through peaceful contact. We stop that if it's feasible, but we do it in a very quiet manner. Oh, it would be easy to use force! It would be easy to lay down ultimatums and that kind of thing, because we of the Federation have all sorts of powers that nobody else has; but we'd do more harm than good that way.

So we don't send in a fully armed starship and an army of men. We send two or three field agents, unarmed, just as if it were an ordinary data—gathering expedition.

It's a frustrating problem. It's heartbreaking, even, when you really think about it. We have so much power, yet we can accomplish so little! Our primary mission is to observe and to learn. The sad fact is that Youngling peoples are often wiped out, either through colonization of their planet or through some other disaster that we haven't any idea of how to prevent and we may not even know about it until it's too late. Once in a while, though, it happens that we are in the right place at the right time to come to the rescue.

Meanwhile, I turned back to the text that I had been studying:

It is by now a well-known fact that the human peoples of the universe have similar histories—not that the specific details are similar, but the same patterns emerge on every home world. Each must pass through three stages: first childhood, when all is full of wonder, when the people of a world admit that much is unknown to them, calling it "supernatural," yet believing; then adolescence, when they discard superstition and revere science, feeling that they have charted its realms and have only to conquer them —never dreaming that certain "supernatural" wonders should not be set aside, but understood. And at last maturity, when the discovery ls made that what was termed “supernatural” has been perfectly natural all along, and is in reality a part of the very science that sought to reject it…

But I don't want to read about all that, I thought, I want to see it! What sort of people are down there on Andrecia? What sort of emergency is it that's taken us off course and is serious enough for a team to be sent in—for them to risk contact, maybe, or even their lives?

Contact is a thing that's seldom permitted, except under very compelling circumstances. Younglings are not allowed to know that the Federation even exists. That's the most unbreakable rule we have, because a Youngling culture could be irreparably damaged by that awareness. You have to be willing to die rather than make an illegal disclosure; in fact one of the provisions of the Oath binds you to do just that. So contact, when it's necessary, requires a cover of some sort. And any mission involving this can be very risky indeed.

I canceled out the text and instructed the computer to give me all the facts it had on Andrecia. It didn't have many. There was a survey not too many years ago, but as the Andrecian culture is a very rudimentary one, there was not much technology for the team to study. But they were a very vulnerable people Andrecia was a good planet, a rich one. Too rich! It didn't take much imagination to guess the nature of the current trouble.

I knew, with my mind if not yet with my emotions, that the danger could be real. You might think that no Youngling could be much of a match for a Federation citizen, but any field agent knows better. The thing is, you can't always use your advantage. It's not only that the use of non— native physical weapons is prohibited—some of the psychic powers are too revealing, too. There's a rather well-known case where an agent made a small slip, and then had to let herself be put to death for witchcraft rather than go on to an actual disclosure.

• 

The provisions of the GAIL noninterference policy place strict limits on the methods used by the Study Project. The Remusans must not become aware that they are being studied by advanced races from other planets. In itself, this knowledge would profoundly alter their natural development. Consequently, the Project Staff takes extreme precautions to preclude discovery. Though the station travels in a low orbit, a special light-absorbing field surrounds it, preventing it from being seen from the surface, even with optical telescopes. Except in very special circumstances, approved in advance by GAIL, the Project Staff must avoid direct contact with the Remusans. Studies of their culture must be carried out by extensive use of sophisticated sensing devices and the occasional photographing of written documents.

The Project would not have had much value if we hadn’t studied the physiology of the Remusans. Although Remusans regularly engage in the deliberate slaughter of their own kind, GAIL forbids this practice by its members. Yet taking live Remusans for study and returning them to the surface would have revealed GAlL’s existence. We solved this problem by developing techniques for hypnotizing our specimens so they are subsequently unaware that they have been taken and examined. Generally they can recall only the few brief moments before their capture and the fact that they had “lost” several hours, or sometimes days of time.

We make it a practice to take individuals while they walk alone, usually at night, so none of their fellows witness their kidnapping. To date, some 150 Remusans from different parts of the planet have been examined in this way. The practice has been strictly controlled. Two people are never taken from the same village or tribe. In most cases, the specimen’s fellows don’t believe the story of his capture, discounting it as possession by devils, religious visions, or outright fabrication. We have now obtained a complete physiological data base, so the number of specimens studied in the future will be limited to ten per century.

Staff members at the station cooperate very closely. Each day we hold meetings to discuss the day’s planned operations. The station houses two antigrav shuttles designed for transport between the station and the surface of Remus. Except for maintenance days, these vehicles fly missions around the clock. Most missions are routine and involve planting sensor arrays and repairing defective units. The sensors have been designed as self-contained units and will self-destruct if disturbed from their original placement or if their power drops to a critically low level. Retrieving these devices would be expensive and possibly hazardous, particularly if the device should be discovered by the natives. Special cloaking fields shield the shuttle craft and cause them to reflect their backgrounds. When viewed from the ground, the shuttlecraft assumes the color of the sky overhead. When viewed against a backdrop of trees, the shuttlecraft appears to be green or grey or whatever color the trees might be that season. I love the excitement of surface missions and generally go on one each week that I’m in space. Missions may be as simple as filming a battle from the spacecraft hovering just over a nearby forest, or they may involve entering a monarch’s walled fortress under cover of darkness to copy records and documents reserved for royal eyes. I find the suspense of nearly being discovered exhilarating. I enjoy being close to discovery but sufficiently in control of a situation that I can escape undetected at the last second.

I had my closest call while escaping from the castle of the Whar (monarch) of Zarobar. I had just taken a furtive picture of the Treaty of Zweig, a pact that would end war among ten tribes covering a third of a continent. I slipped out the door of her private closet moments before the Whar returned and headed for a nearby balcony, intending to launch myself into the air with my antigrav pack. ]ust before I engaged the drive, I noticed a young female guard staring at me. Her mouth was starting to open, and I knew that in the next second she would call for help. Calmly, with the experience gained by more than seventy missions, I took the neural neutralizer from my belt and fired it at her.

The neural neutralizer causes a temporary loss of consciousness without corresponding loss of motor functions. The target feels as if she has gone into a trance very like a lapse of memory in the thirty seconds she remained dazed, I made my escape through the air to the waiting shuttlecraft. Each time a field Worker uses the neutralizer, he or she must file a written report. The neutralizer is used only in moments of direct contact with Remusans. Too many contacts would be indicative that observers are getting careless and that security procedures need to be tightened. This was the only time I’ve had to use my neutralizer, the lowest record for any field sociologist with three years of service. I haven’t been able to assess the effect of this incident on the culture, but I suspect the guard felt she had seen a spirit rather than an alien being. Belief in such spirits forms part of the religion of Zarobar’s natives.

• 

A STAR CALLED CYRENE (1966)

(ed note: The exploration ship Stardust is exploring Cyrene. The life forms look like half-meter cubes who can teleport and talk telepathically. They all have perfectly square bodies in various colors. The brutish gray cubes who are invading are crude and have irregular shapes. A battle is coming, and the perfect cubes ask the Stardust crew for help.)

     “I’ve felt since yesterday that we’ve dropped in on a crisis on this planet. Ridiculous, isn’t it? A soundless, motionless crisis. Our boys here are not quite sure what to do about it. I think, since we’ve been identified as intelligent and disciplined, that we represent hope. I think we’re being asked for help.”
     “And how in the ever-loving—” Pegleg paused, glanced at the cube, and then fixed me with a cold eye. “Suppose we could do something, though what, at this moment, I wouldn’t have an idea. But I do know the basic regulation under which the Stardust operates, and so do you. No interference! We discover, we observe, we record and collate data, we make recommendations, but we keep hands off. We don’t take sides. We don’t sit in judgment. We don’t play God!”

     For the first time, I felt a slight pulse from the cube. There was dismay in it, and, I am sure, a plea for further hearing. That, it should have realized, was unnecessary. Nothing could have kept us from finding out everything we could about this unusual situation. But Pegleg’s warning was apropos. We could defend ourselves, but we were forbidden to interfere in the affairs of any aware species.
     I turned back to the cube. I explained that advice—that most plentiful commodity in the Galaxy—was our limit. But if it wanted the benefit of our vast and varied experience, it was available for the asking.
     “Boy, you’re comy," Pegleg said, and I guess I was.

     The cube was gratified, though. Apparently it hadn’t expected or even wanted anything more. And at this point it quit serving as solitary ambassador to us, the Earth visitors. It asked for, and got, assistance.
     “One more thing!” Pegleg’s narrow face was interested and intent, and I’d have sworn he had forgotten all about the no-interference rule. At any rate, he was taking sides as much as I was. “What can you do in your own defense? You must have been able to handle them once, since your ancestors confined them to the Island in the first place."
     The answer was not clear. It was evident that the cubes themselves didn’t know. But they seemed to feel that theirs was a far more refined energy output and control, that weight unit for weight unit they could beat down the grays into permanent disintegration. The size factor made it tricky.
     “Then don‘t go down on the beaches at all,” Pegleg advised. “Keep to the dunes and the slopes back of them. Let the wheels sweep the beaches. And when the grays materialize on the slopes, attack them with organized groups of fours, one from each of the four sides. They’ll probably be scattered enough to make that possible, and four of you can take one of them, can’t you?”
     The wave of comprehending wonderment that washed over us was something I can’t describe. It was like the delighted look on a child’s face when he first is shown how two and two make four.

     Maybe we shouldn’t have done it. Perhaps it was wrong. For there is no doubt that with our simple battle plan we interfered with the logical progress and ultimate end of the life of a planet, a decimating process that already had reduced the myriad ancestral species to four life forms. Had we not involved the wheels, it is likely that the gray imperfects would have overrun the mainland and swallowed up or completely contaminated the rainbow race. With their lack of awareness of the deadliness of the wheels, they may in their turn have been harried out of existence. Then the wheels would have become extinct, for they couldn’t exist on the lettuce alone.
     But that’s second-guessing. That’s looking back. Technically, or at least physically, we didn’t interfere. Advice was our limit. And when we had given it and the satisfaction and relief had welled up around us, suddenly we were alone on the crest of the little slope. A feeling of thanks lingered in the air.

---

THE INVADERS (1973)

THE LOG OF THE STARDUST

Earth Calendar A.D. 2123. Log entry 41. Roscoe Kissinger, bcologist. Also Dr. Linda Kissinger, Microbiologist and Dr. Pegleg Williams, Geologist.

Twenty-sixth day, post landing.

     Well, we did it.

     It was a judgment thing and maybe we bent the letters of the ISC ruling that says: No interference with the lives or the activities of an aware species. For they are aware. No doubt about that. More than aware. Highly intelligent, with a social structure undoubtedly satisfying and effective.
     They have an ecologically balanced economy that Earth might take note of. And they had—note had—an economic problem. And that’s where we bent the letter. We solved it for them.
     Technically we have an out, I suppose. Without any interference, three crew members would have had to move lively to save the skin of at least one of them. Being that one, I’d have to say that it would have been tricky. But Lindy is good with that laser.
     We didn‘t have to kill the thing. Our hand lasers could have— and did—cause it to cast off appendages. Like its normal species-mates, it probably would have regenerated them in time. But that would have called for more food. And that, I think, was the problem.
     The thing was a mutant, a mutant crab-being. How old it was is an interesting speculation, but we have no data at all. Undoubtedly it grew in proportion to the amount of food they brought it, and every molt upped its requirements for nourishment. And finally its need was greater than the environment could produce. That was why it ran amok.
     I think we saved a race from serious damage or destruction—a civilization, of sorts. I agree that that’s no part of our function. The Galaxy must be full of disintegrating ecosystems. And it could be that maybe we just postponed destruction, because the intense hard radiation in the sun’s rays must cause many a mutation. They may recognize these and do something about them. If so, the giant got away from them.
     It may be judged interference, but I’ll never regret the demise of the mutant. If the International Space Council rules that we've exceeded our mandate, we’ll just have to take our lumps. What do they know? A varmint as tall as a hill, with a diameter as great as the length of a football field, sopping up the biomass of a whole ecosystem and giving nothing but its wastes in retum—uh-uh! If the aware life of this part of the planet were to survive, he had to go. He couldn’t have persisted much longer anyhow.

• 

      ‘No,’ Falcon answered, after switching to the highest power of the telescope. ‘But here’s something odd. Do you see this pattern? Check back on the earlier images. l’m sure it wasn’t there before.
     A broad, mottled band had appeared along the side of the medusa. It formed a startlingly regular checkerboard, each square of which was itself speckled in a complex subpattern of short horizontal lines. They were spaced at equal distances in a geometrically perfect array of rows and columns.
     ‘You’re right,’ said Dr Brenner, with something very much like awe in voice. ‘That’s just appeared. And I’m afraid to tell you what I think it is.’
     ‘Well, I have no reputation to lose, at least as a biologist. Shall I give my guess?’
     ‘Go ahead.’
     ‘That’s a large meter-band radio array. The sort of thing they used back at the beginning of the twentieth century.
     ‘I was afraid you’d say that. Now we know why it gave such a massive echo.’
     ‘But why has it just appeared?’
     ‘Probably an aftereffect of the discharge.
     ‘I’ve just had another thought,’ said Falcon, rather slowly. ‘Do you ppose it’s listening to us?’
     ‘On this frequency? I doubt it. Those are meter, no, decameter antennas judging by their size. Hmm... that an idea!’
     Dr Brenner fell silent, obviously contemplating some new line of thought. pesently he continued: ‘I bet they’re tuned to the radio outbursts! That’s something nature never got around to doing on Earth.... We have animals with sonar and even electric senses, but nothing ever developed a radio sense. Why bother where there was so much light? But it’s different here. Jupiter is drenched with radio energy. It’s worth hue using it, maybe even tapping it. That thing could be a floating power plant!’

     A new voice cut into the conversation.
     ‘Mission Commander here. This is all very interesting, but there’s a much more important matter to settle. Is it intelligent? If so, we’ve got to consider the First Contact directives.’
     ‘Until I came here,’ said Dr Brenner, somewhat ruefully, ‘I would have sworn that anything that could make a shortwave antenna system must be intelligent. Now, I’m not sure. This could have evolved naturally. I suppose its no more fantastic than the human eye.
     ‘Then we have to play safe and assume intelligence. For the present, therefore, this expedition comes under all the clauses of the Prime directive.

     There was a long silence while everyone on the radio circuit absorbed the implications of this. For the first time in the history of space flight, the rules that had been established through more than a century of argument, might have to be applied. Man had, it was hoped, profited from his mistakes on Earth. Not only moral considerations, but also his own self-interest demanded that he should not repeat them among the planets. It could be disastrous to treat a superior intelligence as the American settlers had treated the Indians, or as almost everyone had treated the Africans.
     The first rule was: keep your distance. Make no attempt to approach, or even to communicate, until ‘they’ have had plenty of time to study you. Exactly what was meant by ‘plenty of time’, no one had ever been able to decide. It was left to the discretion of the man on the spot.
     A responsibility of which he had never dreamed had descended upon Howard Falcon. In the few hours that remained to him on Jupiter, he might become the first ambassador of the human race.
     And that was an irony so delicious that he almost wished the surgeons had restored to him the power of laughter.

(ed note: because Howard Falcon is a cyborg, and has been having doubts lately if he was still a member of the human race)

---

     Suddenly, with startling power, he heard the sound that had come booming out of the Jovian night, the throbbing beat that grew more and more rapid, then stopped in mid-crescendo. The whole capsule vibrated with it like a pea in a kettledrum.
     Falcon realised two things almost simultaneously during the sudden, aching silence. This time the sound was not coming from thousands of miles away, over a radio circuit. It was in the very atmosphere around him.
     The second thought was even more disturbing. He had quite forgotten, it was inexcusable, but there had been other apparently more important things on his mind, that most of the sky above him was completely blanked out by Kon-Tikj’s gasbag. Being lightly silvered to conserve its heat, the great balloon was an effective shield both to radar and to vision.
     He had known this, of course, it had been a minor defect of the design, tolerated because it did not appear important. It seemed very important to Howard Falcon now as he saw that fence of gigantic tentacles, thicker than the trunks of any tree, descending all around the capsule.

     He heard Brenner yelling: ‘Remember the Prime directive! Don’t alarm it!’ Before he could make an appropriate answer that overwhelming drumbeat started again and drowned all other sounds.
     The sign of a really skilled test pilot is how he reacts not to foreseeable emergencies, but to ones that nobody could have anticipated. Falcon did not hesitate for more than a second to analyse the situation. In a lightning-swift movement, he pulled the rip cord.
     That word was an archaic survival from the days of the first hydrogen balloons, on Kon-Tiki, the rip cord did not tear open the gasbag, but merely operated a set of louvres around the upper curve of the envelope. At once the hot gas started to rush out, Kon-Tiki, deprived of her lift, began to fall swiftly in this gravity field two and a half times as strong as Earth’s.

     Falcon had a momentary glimpse of great tentacles whipping upward and away. He had just time to note that they were studded with large bladders or sacs, presumably to give them buoyancy, and that they ended in a multitude of thin feelers like the roots of a plant. He half expected a bolt of lightning but nothing happened.
     His precipitous rate of descent was slackening as the atmosphere thickened and the deflated envelope acted as a parachute. When Kon-Tiki had dropped about two miles, he felt that it was safe to close the louvres again. By the time he had restored buoyancy and was in equilibrium once more, he had lost another mile of altitude and was getting dangerously near his safety limit.
     He peered anxiously through the overhead windows, though he did not expect to see anything except the obscuring bulk of the balloon. But he had sideslipped during his descent, and part of the medusa was just visible a couple of miles above him. It was much closer than he expected and it was still coming down, faster than he would have believed possible.

     Mission Control was calling anxiously. He shouted: ‘I’m OK, but it’s still coming after me. I can’t go any deeper.’
     That was not quite true. He could go a lot deeper, about one hundred and eighty miles. But it would be a one-way trip, and most of the journey Would be of little interest to him.
     Then, to his great relief, he saw that the medusa was levelling off, not quite a mile above him. Perhaps it had decided to approach this strange intruder with caution, or perhaps it, too, found this deeper layer Uncomfortably hot. The temperature was over fifty degrees centigrade, and Falcon wondered how much longer his life-support system could handle matters.

     Dr Brenner was back on the circuit, still worrying about the Prime directive.
     ‘Remember, it may only be inquisitive!’ he cried, without much conviction. ‘Try not to frighten it!’
     Falcon was getting rather tired of this advice and recalled a TV discussion he had once seen between a space lawyer and an astronaut. After the full implications of the Prime directive had been carefully spelled out, the incredulous spacer had exclaimed: ‘Then if there was no alternative, I must sit still and let myself be eaten?’ The lawyer had not even cracked a smile when he answered: ‘That’s an excellent summing up.’
     It had seemed funny at the time, it was not at all amusing now.

• 

Why, even the department head at Cram-brief had envied her this chance. And it was only because she was Offlas Keil's niece that she had it. The expedition to Clio would be a family affair—Project Director Keil, his son Sandar, and Roane. She tried to breathe evenly and slowly, to keep her eyes shut, forget where she was now, and think only of the goal before her.

Maybe once in a hundred, no, closer to a thousand times, did something like this happen. And she was so lucky to be a part of it. Only right now, even her brain felt tired. All that cramming! She— Well, it was like being an osbper sponge set in a pool and given the command to absorb. Only she could not swell the way those did; she had to pack it all behind bone and flesh which was not able to expand. By rights her head ought to be so heavy with all that the briefing computers had hammered into it that she could not hold it upright.

Clio was one of the sealed planets. Yet because of the circumstances Uncle Offlas had definite orders to land there, to stay as long as it would take them to locate the treasure. Treasure! The very word gave one a shiver-though this treasure was nothing that anyone but a member of the Service would want.

Real treasure—precious, beautiful things—would not interest Offlas Keil at all. He might glance over it to classify it by historical period, but to him such would be toys. However, knowledge of the Forerunners—that was something else. And this treasure had been pinpointed by a hint there, a clue here, stretching over years of sifting, to a single general area on Clio.

Because Clio was a sealed world, the final stages of their search must be conducted in complete secrecy, as quickly as possible, using Service devices. And the Project demanded as small a task force as was necessary. Which had sent Roane to Cram-brief to learn as much of Clio as she might need to know.

She wondered what it would be like to live on a closed planet (not for the period of days they would set down there but for a lifetime). Of course, the whole theory which had established the closed planets was wrong; such manipulation of human beings broke the Four Laws. Clio had been settled two, maybe three hundred years ago when the Psychocrats dominated the Confederation, before the Overturn of 1404. It was the third such experimental planet rediscovered, though there were rumors that there had been more, no one knew how many. The blasting of the Forqual Center during the revolt of the Overturn had destroyed most records.

All those worlds had been chosen as sites for projects which were the particular interest of one of the Hierarchy of the Psychocrats. The original colonists, braincleared, given false implanted memories, were settled in communities which to their briefed minds seemed natural to their new worlds. They were then left to work out new types of civilization, or a lack of civilization—to be watched secretly at intervals.

When such inhabited test planets were now rediscovered, they were declared closed. For none of the authorities could be sure what the impact of the truth might do to their peoples. Less advanced they were, as well as mutated on at least one planet. But on Clio the inhabitants were entirely human, though they were living in an archaic way, much as Roane's ancestors had lived several hundred years before space flight

What the Psychocrat who had established Clio had been aiming for was now not certain. But the Service thought he had set up something akin to the old Europa plan known on Terra. The large eastern continent had been divided into an irregular pattern of small kingdoms. The two western continents had been otherwise "seeded" with "natives" at a far more primitive level of culture—wandering tribes of hunters. And then they had all been left to their own devices.

On the eastern continent a series of wars for territorial expansion had ended with the establishment of two large nations, fronting each other uneasily across a border of small buffer states which still possessed their freedom, mainly because the two great powers were as yet unready to strike at each other. Intrigues, minor skirmishes, the rise and fall of dynasties were all a part of life on Clio. It was, to an onlooker from the stars, a giant game, though one in which lives were lost by a badly managed stroke of play.

In the west the tribesmen, too, fought each other; but since they remained on a more primitive level, the cost in blood had not yet been so great. However, Roane need not consider them. It was on the eastern land mass that her party would make their secret landing, in one of those small buffer states between the great powers.

I should probably throw in a qualifier — I’ve always enjoyed Star Trek but am hardly a rabid fan, getting most of my science fiction not from film or TV but novels and short stories. So this is a bit of a jeu d’esprit, one that acknowledges that the show has indeed spun out provocative and often controversial scenarios.

The Prime Directive embodies a flawed but useful ethical principle that should remain in place, though not without extensive revision. To understand why we need to re-think some aspects of the Prime Directive, let’s consider the context in which it operates. Because it grew out of ‘Star Trek,’ we have to posit a universe much like that one to illuminate the regulation’s strictures. Let’s assume, then, that humans become a spacefaring civilization on not just an interplanetary but an interstellar scale. That means that through whatever means, we have acquired ways of getting to the stars in short time frames, and that an organization has emerged within which this exploration continues, an analogue to the Federation behind the directive.

Why would the Prime Directive emerge in the first place? Here it is important to remember that in the ‘Star Trek’ universe, the directive is actually a regulation that applies only to Starfleet. Indeed, the series shows us that if a citizen of the Federation has decided on his or her own volition to interfere with another civilization, Starfleet is powerless to prevent such actions. The regulation doubtless was called for because the outermost wave of human expansion would be the exploring arm embodied in Star Fleet itself. What happens after a given region of space is first charted and explored is up to individual action, but the people most likely to be involved in first contact with an alien culture are those operating under Federation regulations.

All of this seems like logical extrapolation, and it is a tribute to the ‘Star Trek’ universe that despite the number of television episodes in various configurations and movies using many of the same characters, the storyline has been kept relatively consistent. If we ever do develop a way of sending human crews to other worlds, we will ponder the question of how we interact with any intelligent species we find there. And it’s likely we’ll consider a principle something like “the right of each sentient species to live in accordance with its normal cultural evolution,” a phrase pulled from the text of the Prime Directive. What we are looking at is the development of ‘metalaw,’ a term devised by attorney Andrew Haley in 1956 to specify a system of laws that apply not just to human beings but to all relationships between intelligent species.

Evolving Metalaw and Human Culture

Why not simply resolve to treat alien cultures using the principles of the Golden Rule — treat aliens as we would wish to be treated by them? Haley went on to point out the problem with this approach in a paper called “Space Law and Metalaw – A Synoptic View,” recognizing that aliens are different from ourselves in ways we may not begin to understand. Treating them as we would like to be treated might cause them injury or even destroy them. Haley revised the Golden Rule this way: “Do unto others as they would have you do unto them.” Robert Freitas, who has written thoughtfully on the subject of metalaw, notes that this ‘Great Rule’ has its own problems: “…in practice the Great Rule would be as difficult to apply as the concepts of noninterference and physical security. If we are to ascertain the desires of the other party, we must interact with them to a certain degree – and this may cause sociocultural damage. We still are left with the problem of developing nonconflicting, serviceable metalegal rules.”

We are in the earliest stages of developing ‘metalaw’ today, but a widening sphere of human activity among the stars will eventually force us to move the concept forward. Aerospace engineer Giancarlo Genta (Politecnico di Torino) has examined these questions in his book Lonely Minds in the Universe (Copernicus, 2007), studying the entire question of whether an alien being in today’s world could be considered a ‘person.’ An interesting legal issue would arise if we suddenly found ourselves face to face with a being from another world. We may believe in extending equal rights to all humans no matter their origin, but an extraterrestrial who walked out of a spaceship after landing on Earth would not necessarily be recognized by law as a ‘person.’ Would this creature be considered an animal? If so, would an alien animal have rights under existing law?

The Prime Directive can be assumed to have grown out of discussions exactly like these, and it hinges on the extension of the idea of personhood to alien intelligences. In his paper “Metalaw and Interstellar Relations” (cited above) Robert Freitas sees two routes to personhood:

• The use of a clear morality; i.e., the ability of the beings in question to make moral or ethical judgments, even if those judgments do not necessarily coincide with our own
• The presence of self-awareness, of being separate from one’s surroundings.

The presence of either morality or self-awareness is seen as the key to personhood. Here we seem to be splitting hairs in legalistic fashion, but the issue is important because human law revolves around the concept of the person. Metalaw, in other words, leads us invariably to the thinking that leads to the Prime Directive, which we can now quote in more extended form:

As the right of each sentient species to live in accordance with its normal cultural evolution is considered sacred, no Star Fleet personnel may interfere with the normal and healthy development of alien life and culture. Such interference includes introducing superior knowledge, strength, or technology to a world whose society is incapable of handling such advantages wisely. Star Fleet personnel may not violate this Prime Directive, even to save their lives and/or their ship, unless they are acting to right an earlier violation or an accidental contamination of said culture. This directive takes precedence over any and all other considerations, and carries with it the highest moral obligation.

A Silence Between Civilizations?

We now find ourselves in a quandary, for the Prime Directive must be interpreted, just as any body of law or regulation must be understood and acted upon by those affected by it. If we read the text closely, we have no choice but to conclude that the only contact possible between two alien civilizations would happen when the two civilizations are at precisely the same point of development, or as Giancarlo Genta phrases it, the same cultural level. A right is assumed in the Prime Directive for each species to proceed through a ‘normal’ cultural evolution, one which cannot be interfered with by introducing superior knowledge or technologies.

A civilization less advanced than our own in terms of technology, then, would be one we could not contact directly. A civilization more advanced than our own would, if acting under the principles of a similar Prime Directive, be unable to contact us. If the Prime Directive were a universal principle, no species would be able to contact another unless it encountered one so similar to itself that the contact would be considered harmless. Given the wide variation in stellar ages around us in the Milky Way, it seems spectacularly unlikely that we would find a species this similar to ourselves, and all studies of alien cultures would have to be conducted with maximum secrecy to avoid contaminating the alien civilization in question.

This seems an unwise outcome on various levels, but there’s more. What do we mean by the ‘same cultural level?’ Culture is what we recognize around us in the form of the familiar accouterments of society and the technologies we use to provide and service them. But the very idea of an alien culture presupposes a development unlike our own. We could not assume that a culture that seemed similar to our own at the level it was at in the time of ancient Greece would necessarily undergo a similar period of imperial expansion on its planet, a gradual awakening to other cultures across its oceans, a period when learning was lost and an eventual renaissance. Nor could we assume that the beings who live within this culture operate with the same set of principles that we do, or that they would develop technologies comparable to our own.

Note the other flaw in the Prime Directive statement above. We are told that interference consists of introducing superior knowledge, strength, or technology to a world ‘whose society is incapable of handling such advantages wisely.’ The statement implies that if a society is deemed capable of handling these advantages with wisdom, the strictures of the Prime Directive to not apply. But who is to make the decision as to the wisdom of an alien civilization, and how accurate can such an assessment be given the short periods involved in a first contact scenario? And what does the Prime Directive mean by not interfering with the ‘normal and healthy development’ of another culture? To understand what is normal and healthy for an alien civilization may be an impossible accomplishment, and certainly not one we could achieve without extensive study. No, the Prime Directive binds us too severely and limits any contact.

More Supple Rules of Contact

Where to go from here? We need a revised Prime Directive based on an evolving metalaw, one that recognizes that each encounter with an extraterrestrial civilization is going to be different from any other. Genta cites the eleven rules of metalaw compiled by the Austrian lawyer `Ernst Fasan, drawing on the earlier work of Andrew Haley. These are drawn from Fasan’s book Relations with Alien Intelligences: The Scientific Basis of Metalaw (1970), and contain the seeds of a future Prime Directive that should prove more flexible:

1. No partner of metalaw may demand an impossibility.

2. No rules of metalaw must be complied with when compliance would result in the practical suicide of the obliged race.

3. All intelligent races of the Universe have in principle equal rights and values.

4. Every partner of metalaw has the right to self-determination.

5. Any act that causes harm to another race must be avoided.

6. Every race is entitled to its own living space.

7. Every race has the right to defend itself against any harmful act performed by another race.

8. The principle of preserving one race has priority over the development of another race.

9. In case of damage, the damager must restore the integrity of the damaged party.

10. Metalegal agreements and treaties must be kept.

11. To help the other race by one’s own activity is not a legal but a basic ethical principle.

Here we have a set of guiding principles that do not exclude contact between civilizations of different levels of development and complexity. Instead, Fasan’s ideas form a framework that a future commander of an interstellar mission could consult to make decisions about the level of contact appropriate for that situation. Fasan cannot answer all our questions — in particular, we have the conundrum that the ethical concepts embedded here may be profoundly anthropocentric, and we certainly have no idea whether other intelligent races would agree or abide by such ideas. But the scant work that has thus far been done on metalaw points us to the need for an enhanced, more carefully thought-out Prime Directive, one that does not entangle an exploring party far from home with legalities that could compromise a beneficial first contact.

Here it is time to quote Genta directly:

Such rules are without doubt a good starting point on which to build the laws and ethics or relationships between species, but they have been elaborated by one of the sides only — and it could not be otherwise, since it is not even certain that the other sides exist. Moreover, if it is true that the other species with which we could come in contact are much more ancient than ourselves, it is likely that they already faced this problem and established rules for relationships among species.

The reality is that as we expand to nearby stars and beyond, we will learn from our early contacts with other civilizations — if indeed they exist — and shape our metalaw flexibly from each of these encounters. Metalaw cannot be other than an evolving set of principles, incapable of setting down as a Prime Directive that does not grow with our knowledge over time. The Prime Directive offers us a wonderful way to consider the issues. But we need to be aware that it is a template only, and that what we find among the stars will help us shape its future direction. We must also be thinking about these matters long before we actually get to the stars. As Robert Freitas reminds us, “When intelligent extraterrestrial life is discovered, mankind must be prepared, for in all of human history there will be but one first contact.”

References

Fasan, E, Relations with Alien Intelligences: The Scientific Basis of Metalaw, Berlin Verlag, Berlin, 1970. See also his paper “Discovery of ETI: Terrestrial and Extraterrestrial Legal Implications,” Acta Astronautica 21 (2) (1990), pp. 131-135.

Freitas, R, “Metalaw and Interstellar Relations,” Mercury 6 (March-April, 1977), pp. 15-17 (available online)

Genta, G. Lonely Minds in the Universe. New York: Copernicus, 2007.

Haley, A “Space law and Metalaw – A Synoptic View,” Harvard Law Record 23 (November 8, 1956).

• 

(ed note: this is talking about SETI)

Even if star travel is impossible; "mere" communications could do a lot of damage. After all, this is the basis on which all censors act. A really malevolent (interstellar) society could destroy another one quite effectively by a few items of well-chosen information (sent by radio). ("Now, kiddies, after you’ve prepared your uranium hexafluoride…")

---

Fred Hoyle has expressed the view that there may be a kind of Galactic communications network, linking thousands or millions of worlds. Within a very few centuries, we may be clever enough to plug ourselves into the circuit; it may take us a little longer to understand what the other subscribers are saying.

The possibilities opened up even by one-way communication (passive eavesdropping) are almost unlimited. The signals would certainly contain visual material—not necessarily real-time TV—which it would be rather easy to reconstruct. And then, across the light-years, we would be able to look at other worlds and other races…

The things we could learn might change our own society beyond recognition. It would be as if the America of Lincoln’s time could tune into the TV programs of today; though there would be much that could not be understood, there would also be clues that could leapfrog whole technologies into the future. (Ironically enough, the commercials would contain some of the most valuable information!) Nineteenth-century views would see that heavier-than-air machines were possible, and simple observation would reveal the principles of their design. The still unimagined uses of electricity would be demonstrated (the telephone, the electric light…), and this would be enough to set scientists on the right track. For knowing that a thing can be done is more than half the battle.

As signals from the stars could be received only by nations possessing very large radio telescopes, there would be the opportunity—and the temptation—to keep them secret. Knowledge is the most precious of all commodities, and it is a strange thought that the balance of power may one day be shifted by a few micromicrowatts collected from the depths of space. Yet it should no longer surprise us; for who dreamed, fifty years ago, that the faint flicker of dying atoms in a physics lab would change the course of history?

Glimpses of supercivilizations could have either stimulating or stultifying effects on our society. If the technological gulf was not too great to be bridged, and the programs we intercepted contained hints and clues that we could understand, we would probably rise to the challenge. But if we found ourselves in the position of Neanderthalers confronted by New York City, the psychological shock could be so great that we might give up the struggle. This appears to have happened on our own world from time to time, when primitive races have come into contact with more advanced ones. We will have a good chance of studying this phenomenon in a very few years, when communications satellites start beaming our TV programs into such places as the Amazon jungle. This is the last century during which widely disparate cultures will exist on Earth; would-be students of astrosociology should make the most of their opportunity before it vanishes forever. And no one will be surprised to hear that Margaret Mead is intensely interested in space flight…

• 

(ed note: Our heroes are from a Terran colony Prince Samual's World that backslid to about 17th century level technology after the fall of the first galactic empire. The representatives of the reborn Empire, who only backslid to 2600 CE level technology, discover Prince Samual's World. Which will be incorporated into the Empire according to The Rules.)

      The reason was not hard to find, for in one corner of the crowded bar three officers of the Imperial Navy held court, buying drinks for anyone on Prince Samual's World who would sit with them and laugh at their jokes.
     Across from Jefferson a young native, browned by field work, too young to be in the Blue Bottle pub if he were not sitting with the Emperor's overlords, beamed at his new friend and shouted approval of the song. "Great, Lieu—uh, Jeff, great. Tell us more about what it's like out there. Tell us about other worlds. Are we the most backward place you've ever seen?"
     Lieutenant Jefferson belched loudly, murmured an automatic apology, and focused dizzily on his admirers. "Oh hell, no, Simom, not by a full broadside. Samual's got guns, and factories, and—and long-distance communications, and hydroelectric power; man, you've got nothing to be ashamed of. You've got no world government, and those wars you're always in stomp you down or for sure you'd be Class Two status in the Empire instead of a colony (but you did indeed get stomped down by the wars, so Prince Samual's world is doomed to be an enslaved colony instead of a Class Two). When I think how bad you got torn up in the Secession Wars, it's amazing you got this far in a few centuries . . . standard centuries, that is. You're doing fine here. Simom, we've been to places where they don't even have hydrocarbon power, no electricity, no pellet guns, nothing but horses and men running around in iron pants the way you see—well, the way we see in Imperial history books, books about the time when Earth was all there was to it. Friend, you almost have space travel. Another hundred years, another fifty years even, you'd have found us instead of the other way around. Too bad you didn't," he added, his voice changing. "Been better for you if you had. Class Two status for sure, maybe Class One, if you'd had real space flight before we got here. Not your fault; the survey ship just happened by looking for a gas giant to scoop some fuel from and decided to look you over. A real pity."
     As the headwaiter brought more drinks, Simom asked, "What was it like, that place (planet Makassar) where they wore iron pants? Is it far from here? Have you colonized it? Can we go there?"
     "Ho, one at a time," Jefferson shouted. "Far? Not more than twelve light-years, one jump from here, I think. Let's see, yeah, there's nothing between the two suns and theirs is a big one; hell, it's that thing you people call the Eye of the Needle; you could see it right now if you went outside. And no, no colonies there, not enough to make it worthwhile yet. And we're spread so thin. Keep a little observation post there to watch for outies (interstellar rebels), a first lieutenant and a couple of middies, few Marines. Not even a ship in orbit. Detection gear, observation satellite, that's about all. Nothing important there, except, of course, their Temple."
     Jefferson had allowed his voice to drop for a moment, a note of weariness creeping in as he thought of the immense task of the Imperial Navy trying to reclaim the pieces of an Empire lost and shattered in the Secession Wars, the capital itself only reaching for the stars decades ago. His Majesty hoped to knit together the fragments before another war could send mankind staggering back to primitive conditions. There had been no winners of the last war, and the next would be worse. There must not be a next one, he said to himself. Never again. Then he brightened as the raucous humor and obvious friendship of the natives washed over him. Best enjoy it now, he thought. They wouldn't be so friendly to the Navy after the colonists arrived—but that was years away, and the night was young.
     "The funny part, Simom, is that the Temple is worth more to them than the whole bloody planet, if they only knew it! They were right to make it a holy place and preserve it, but if they only knew! Why, there's a whole Old-Empire subsection library in that rabbit warren they've built up around what used to be the Viceroy's Palace! The Service librarians almost went out of their minds, some of the history books and things they found there. Even a few science books, operating manuals for old Imperial Fleet stuff; you name it, it's there, or bits and pieces of it are.
     "They don't even know what it all is! Wouldn't do them any good if they did, no technology to understand it anyway. And my sweet Savior, how they guard that stuff! Thought we'd never get any of it copied for the archives. If we'd taken just one of those cubes out—yeah, cubes, the library was geared to a computer. Not much like your books. Took a lot of work to get that fixed, I'll tell you. And those priests watched every second we were there. Never did make copies of most of the stuff; we'll get it some day. Be a great job for some historian. We had to sneak in, convince their bishops we were from the stars— they still haven't told the people in the city about us. And the chaplain had to get in on the act, convince them we were religiously orthodox, gave them some song and dance about how we, too, believed that God spoke from their archives. The chaplain said it was all right, the first thing they copied was a Bible, so he didn't lie about it. Couldn't harm a thing copying the stuff or they'd have boiled up so thick it'd take a battleship to kill them all. Can't do that, they're good people. We'll need everyone in this sector one day.

---

(Mercenary Colonel MacKinnie finds himself out of a job, after the Imperials stop his calvary attack with an air-to-surface missile fired from a surface-to-orbit spacecraft. He finds himself kidnapped by Dougal, chief of the secret police. Dougal has a plan to aid Prince Samual's World, and is trying to enlist MacKinnie's help.)     "Tell me what you know of the plans the Imperial Navy has for Prince Samual, Colonel MacKinnie."
     "Precious little. They appeared less than a year ago, and almost immediately settled in Haven. At first they didn't interfere with the planetary governments, but then they made an alliance with your King David—"
     "Your king also, Colonel," Dougal interrupted.
     "With King David. They helped you conquer the other city-states around Haven, and finally did for you what no Haven army had ever been able to do. They gave you Orleans. I don't know who's next, but I presume this goes on until Haven takes all of North Continent. After that . . . who knows, the Southies, I suppose."
     "And then what will they do, Colonel?"
     "Your newspapers keep telling us they'll help us, give us all kinds of scientific marvels, but I've yet to see any of them. You Havenites have kept them all."
     "We haven't, because there have been none. Every assistance the Imperials have given us has been direct, with their Marines operating the weapons and none of my people even allowed to see their new technology. Go on, what after that?"
     "Once you have conquered the whole blasted planet, I guess they take you into their Empire, with David Second as planetary king."
     "And you find that unpleasant?" Dougal smiled.
     "What do you want me to say, Citizen Dougal? You've told me you head the secret police. You want me to say treason out of my own mouth?"
     Malcolm Dougal poured more chickeest, carefully, not spilling a drop, and took a long sip before replying. "Appreciate your situation, Colonel. If I meant you harm, it would happen to you. I need no evidence, and there would be no trial. No one knows you're here but my most trusted men, and if you never leave this room, why, who will know it? I'm interested in what you think, Iron Man MacKinnie, and it's damned important to Haven and the whole planet. Now stop being coy and answer my questions."
     "Yes, I find that unpleasant. I can think of more unpleasant things, such as domination of the planet by one of the Southie despots, but after what you've done to Orleans, damned right I find it unpleasant."
     "Thank you." Dougal was speaking in his normal tone, an apologetic note to his voice, but the resemblance to a rabbit was gone. Now he merely looked like a businessman. "Would you find absolute domination by an Imperial Viceroy even less pleasant?"
     "Of course."
     "And why?" Dougal waved in an imperious manner. "I know why. For the same reason that you drink chickeest, bitter as it is. Because he is an outlander, a foreigner, not of Samual at all, and we belong here. This is our world and our home, and I tell you, Colonel MacKinnie, that we will never be slaves to that Empire. Not while I live and not while my sons live."
     "So you hope to escape that by using the Imperial Marines and Navy to conquer the planet?"
     "No. I had hoped to do so, but it won't work. Colonel, once their colonists and viceroy land here, King David will have no more influence over this planet than your sergeant. I thought you knew little of them. Few know anything at all."
     Dougal dismissed Solon with a wave and pointed to the papers. "This is the only Imperial artifact we have been able to obtain. It appears to be some kind of work of fiction, about the adventures of a naval officer on a newly settled planet. But it also gives us much information about the structure of the Imperial government, just as one of Cadace's best-sellers would tell them a lot about the government of Haven even though there's not a line in it intended to do so. Do you understand?" MacKinnie nodded.
     "Then," the policeman continued, "understand this. The Empire has several kinds of planetary governments within it. There is Earth itself, which is the honorary capital, but is mostly uninhabitable because of the aftermath of the Secession Wars. For their own reasons they keep some institutions including their naval and military academies there, but the real capital is called Sparta, and is in another planetary system entirely. After the capitals there are what they call Member Kingdoms, which are planetary governments strong enough to give the Imperial Navy a good fight if the Empire tried to interfere with their internal affairs.
     "Then there are Class One and Class Two worlds. We can't tell the difference between them, but they have less authority over their own affairs than the Member Kingdoms. They do have representation on the capital in one house of a multi-house advisory council, and some of their people are officers in the Imperial services. The two classes refer to some differences in technology which we do not understand, but the relevant factors are the technology levels when admission to the Empire takes place. They both seem to have something called atomic power which fascinates the physicists at the University, and their own spaceships."
     MacKinnie nodded, recalling some remarks made by the drunken lieutenant in the Blue Bottle. He mentioned this to Dougal, who nodded.
     "Good," Dougal said. "You are here because you overheard him. You see, Colonel, after the Class One and Class Two worlds, there's nothing left but colonies. And that's what we'll be."
     "What's the status of colonies?" MacKinnie asked.
     "They have none. Imperial citizens are imported as an aristocracy to impart civilization. A viceroy governs in the Emperor's name, and the Navy keeps a garrison to see that no trouble develops. The colonists end in complete control of everything, and the locals do as they're told or else."
     "How can they govern a whole planet against everybody's will? What good does it do them to burn half the world to ashes like Lechfeld?" MacKinnie drank the last of his now cooled chickeest, then answered his own question. "But of course they don't have to fight their own battles, do they? There's always a local government ready to toady to the Imperials. Someone to do their dirty work for them." He looked significantly at Dougal.
     Malcolm Dougal pretended not to notice. "Yes. There is always one. If not King David, then one of the Southie despots. But it won't happen, MacKinnie. I've found a way to win this fight and get Class Two status for Samual. I've found a way, a chance, but I can't do it alone. I need your help." Dougal leaned across the desk looking intently at Nathan MacKinnie.
     "What are you going to do?"
     "But you must have heard him. You were there when he babbled about the Old Empire library on a planet at the Eye of the Needle."
     MacKinnie thought for a moment, then said, "Yes, but I don't see how that can help us."
     "You haven't thought about this for months, as I have. We found that book not long after they landed, Colonel. It took only a few weeks to understand most of the language. It's not all that different from ours, at least the written forms, which is why the Imperials get around Haven so easily."
     The policeman lit a 'robac cigar, leaned back in his chair, and glared at the ceiling. "Ever since I could read that thing, I've thought of little else but ways to escape this trap. There's no way to avoid being part of the Empire, but by the Saints we can make them take us in as human beings, not slaves!"
     "If you had the book so early, you must have understood what they wanted before Haven made the alliance with them."
     "Of course. It was on my advice that His Majesty entered the alliance. Unless we consolidate Prince Samual's World under a planetary government, we have no chance at all of escaping colonization. And unless it's under King David, I won't have any influence over the planetary government, and you will pardon me if I think I may be better at this kind of intrigue than some of the, shall we say, more honorable men of the other city-states?"
     "All right," MacKinnie said. "So you're a master of intrigue. I still don't see what we can do."
     Dougal laughed. "You've drunk too much whiskey, Iron Man MacKinnie. Tonight and other nights. You're not above a bit of duplicity yourself. You used several very clever dodges on us. Your record, Colonel—I have it here—your record says you are more than just a simple combat soldier. But it's pleasing to be able to instruct you."
     Dougal poured more chickeest. "That library is the key to it all. If we had the knowledge that must be there—our people at the University, and the industrial barons of Orleans and Haven, and the miners of Clanranald—what couldn't they do? We could build a spaceship. A starship, perhaps. And by their own rules the Imperials would have to admit us as a classified world, not a colony. We'd still have to knuckle under to them, but we'd be subjects, not slaves."
     MacKinnie took a deep breath. "That's quite a plan."
     "It's the only possible plan."
     MacKinnie shook his head. "I don't see how you can keep them from finding out, but you're better at that than me. But you can't get at the library without a ship, and we can't build a ship without the library. Even if we had one, we couldn't operate it. There's been nobody on this planet who ever saw the inside of a starship for hundreds of years. Until the Imperials came, most of the population thought that history before the Secession Wars was just a lot of legends. How in hell do you propose that we get to the Eye of the Needle?"
     "That's the simplest part of the plan, Colonel. The Imperials have already offered to take us there." He smiled at Nathan's startled look. "They're not all Navy and Military, you know. Some Imperial citizens are Traders. There's one batch of them right now negotiating with King David over the rights to grua. They think our brandy will be worth a fortune on their capital.
     "They want platinum and iridium, too; those metals seem to be very useful to them and in short supply. But there isn't much they can give us in return, because the Navy won't let them sell us what we really want—technology. The Navy rule is, you can't trade anything more technologically advanced than what your customer already has without special permission from the Imperial Council. We offered to buy those little devices they all carry around like notebooks. 'Pocket computers,' the Navy men call them. They seem to be machines. They can't sell those."
     "What can they sell?"
     "Not much, it appears. But they have offered the king transportation to a world less advanced than ours, someplace where we can try our luck at selling. They suggested a planet at the star we call the Eye of the Needle as the closest, and we are already discussing an expedition to go there and try to organize trade . . . ."
     "The Navy will permit this?" MacKinnie asked.
     "Under conditions. Stringent conditions, I might add. We can't take anything more advanced than the natives already have. The Navy inspects our trade mission and goods before we go to the planet. But they will let us go. It appears that the Imperial Traders Association has a good-sized block of votes in the Imperial Council. I don't pretend to understand capital politics, but the ITA seems very influential. They can force the Navy to let us trade with that planet, Makassar, it's called."
     "Won't they be watching to see that we don't get near the library?" MacKinnie asked. The whiskey fog was gone from his mind now, but more than that, he felt useful again, as if there were something he might do which could not be taken away by a whim of fate. He listened to Dougal with keen interest, not noticing that Sergeant Stark was stirring on the couch to his right.
     "They have never mentioned the library," Dougal said. "Until that young lieutenant babbled about it in the Blue Bottle, I never knew it existed. I think the library's an anomaly in their records, not listed as an advanced artifact because it's so old and the people on Makassar don't know how to use it. That's only a guess. I do know they've been willing to let us go there."

The government of Yiktor was at the feudal stage.…Thus the existing balance of power was a delicate thing. This meant for us Traders brain lock, weapon lock, nuisances though they were and much as we disliked them.

Far back in Free Trading, for their own protection against the power of the Patrol and the wrath of Control (the galactic empire), the Traders themselves had realized the necessity of these two safeguards on primitive planets. Certain technical information was not an item to be traded, no matter how high the inducement. Arms from off-world, or the knowledge of their manufacture, were set behind a barrier of No Sale. When we planeted on such a world, all weapons other than belt stunners were put into a lock stass which would not be released until the ship rose from that earth. We also passed a brain lock inhibiting any such information being won from us. This might seem to make us unarmed prey for any ambitious lord who might wish to wring us hard for such facts. But the law of the fair gave us complete immunity from danger—as long as we stayed within the limits set by the priests on the first day.

• 

(ed note: In Andre Norton's novel FORERUNNER, there is an amusing example of the Prime Directive rebounding in a sort of "turnabout is fair play" "right-back-atcha" manner.

The protagonist is a young woman named Simsa living on a medieval level planet, in the ancient city of Kuxortal. She is humanoid, but of an unknown species, and the elderly lady who raised her died of old age before telling revealing her origin.

The planet is irregularly visited by Terran starships who trade for some local items, but mostly use the place for money laundering and transshipping illegal cargoes hidden from the eyes of the the Patrol. There is a Prime-Directive technology-embargo against selling high-tech Terran equipment to the natives, since They Are Not Ready.

The punch line comes when Simsa and her fellow protagonist discover in the desert of death a zillion year old Forerunner site with lots of Forerunner spacecraft and ultra-high-tech Forerunner technology. Which is a bad thing since it is being looted by Terran criminals ("Jacks", short for hijack), especially the Forerunner ultra-high-tech weapons. These will be sold to the highest bidder.

The reason people know this is bad is because they have found former Forerunner planets where such weapons had been used. These are commonly called "Burnt-Off planets" due to their resemblance to a planet-sized charcoal briquette.

In other words, the high-tech Terrans Are Not Ready for Forerunner weapons, so the Terrans need to be subject to a Prime-Directive technology-embargo on Forerunner tech.)

(ed note: Simsa and Thorn the Terran arrive at the edge of the desert of death in a little sail boat. Simsa is rather upset when she discovers that Thorn had cut up the sail in order to make some contraption. This means they are marooned, the boat is now worthless.)

      The mad off-worlder! While she had been lazing away the day he had done this!
     Not only had he stripped away most of the decking on the main portion of the boat, but he had taken the sail, slit it into strips. To make what? The thing which rested on the shingle was a monstrous mixture of hide-cloth from the sail, pieces of wood ripped and then retied into what looked like a small boat—except that it was flat of bottom. To it, while she had been unconscious, he had also transferred and lashed into place the rest of their food hampers, and now he was coming for the water jars.
     Did the alien propose to drag that thing of his? Or would he harness the both of them to it and work her as well until they both yielded to heat and exhaustion?
     If that was his plan, he would discover that she was not going to beg off—she would keep with him stride by stride as long as she could—or he would drive them both to the impossible. So when she came to stand beside him she looked for the drag ropes. There was only one—a single strand which she believed could not take the weight of the thing he had built.

     He asked no help of her, but faced the drag carrier front on. His hand touched his belt for a moment. Then, to her amazement, the impossible happened before her eyes. There was a trembling of the carrier. It arose from the gravel and hung in the air—actually in the air—at least the height of her own knee. Picking up the lead rope, Thorn set off along the narrow beach and the thing floated after him as if it were some huge wingless zorsal, as obedient to his will as her own birds were to hers.

     For a long moment, she simply watched what she still could not believe. Then she took off in a hurry, lest he vanish from sight. What new wonders he might bring into their service she could not guess, but now she would willingly accept all the strange tales which were told of the starmen and what they could do. Even though they never, as far as she knew, had demonstrated any such powers on this world before.
     Her anger lost in her need to know how such a thing might be, Simsa slipped and slid, forgetting her drained strength until she came even with Thorn who walked steadily ahead, leading his floating platform.
     “What do you do?” she got out between gasps of breath as she caught up. “What makes it hang so in the air?”

     She heard him actually give a chuckle and then the look he turned on her was alive with sly humor.
     “If you told those at the port what you now see, they would send me back to my home world, sentenced to stay out of space forever,” (because of the Prime Directive) he told her, though he seemed only amused at being able to explain what must be a crime among his kind. “I have merely applied to this problem something common on other planets—ones more advanced than yours. And that is a deadly crime according to the laws by which we abide. There is a small mechanism I planted at the right spot back there—” he pointed with his thumb over his shoulder but did not turn his head, “which nullifies gravity to a small extent—”

     “Nullifies gravity,” she repeated, trying to give the strange words the same sound as he had. “I do not know—some people believe in ghosts and demons, but Ferwar said they are mainly what those who believe in them make for themselves by their own fears—that you can believe in any bad dream or thing if you turn your full mind to it. But this is no ghost nor demon.”
     “No. It is this.” They were into the cut of the valley now. The sea wind behind them made the passage more bearable now than she could ever have believed it could be when she had seen it by day. Now as he halted for a moment, it was still not too dark for her to make out what he pointed to as he repeated, “It is this.”
     “This” was what appeared as a black box no bigger than could be covered by his hand were he to set that palm down over it. The thing rested directly in the middle of his drag carrier and now she could see that the cargo on board had been carefully stacked in such a way that the load must weigh evenly along the full length, leaving open only that one spot in the exact center vacant, the place in which sat the box.
     “You toss a stone into the air and it falls,” he said, “it is the attraction of the earth which pulls it down. But if that attraction could be broken sufficiently—then your stone would float. On my world, we wear belts with such attachments which give us individual flying power when they are mated with another force. We can move also much heavier things than this with little trouble. Unfortunately, I could not smuggle through the field guards as large a nullifier as I wanted. This is limited; you see how close to the ground the weight holds it.
     “There is this also—the power is limited. However, it is solar powered and here the sun can renew it, at least for the space in which I think we shall have need of it.”

     Simsa could understand his words easily enough, but the concept they presented was so far from anything she had known that his speech was akin to a wild travel tale, such as the river traders might use to scare off the gullible from their own private ports of trade, as was well known they were apt to do. She thought of such a thing being attached to a belt so that one could share the sky with such as the zorsal and the uses one could put such skill to.
     “The Thieves Guild,” she spoke aloud her own train of thought. “What they would not give for such as that! No,” a shiver which was not from the cooling of the wind shook her, “no, they would kill for that!

---

• 

     He pushed himself up on the ledge to look out and down. Simsa could not see past the width of his shoulders and he said nothing, did not move. At last she could stand the suspense no longer.
     “What is it?” She reached out to catch at the arm which wore the cuff, pull at the sleeve so tightly molded against the flesh.
     “The end of a world, perhaps.” His words meant very little, but he moved aside so that she could look down in turn.
     Almost she cried out, but not quite. Then his hand slid across her lips as an additional seal upon secrecy.

     Here there was no forest of green—instead a strip so wide its outer edges were almost lost to sight. In places it was blackened, scarred. While on it—
     At first she thought they looked down upon a starship landing field with a fleet in port—a fleet of more ships than had ever come to Kuxortal in a season—in two seasons. Then she saw that most of these ships did not stand erect as if they had landed, as was customary, fins down, noses sky pointed. Two had fallen on their sides, plainly great damaged. Beyond them was a third which was of an entirely different shape altogether than that of the small traders she knew, a round globe from under which protruded a congealed mass of metal: a second ship upon which it had crashed. None of them were—
     But, yes, there was one still standing, stark, sky saluting, some distance away. Its sides were smooth and clean where there were the marks of fire, wounds cutting across the others. It looked as if it would be ready to take off at any moment.

     But if this was a graveyard for starships which could no longer fly, it was not deserted. Simsa saw what could only be men, men who wore suits like the dead guardians, but who moved, if clumsily. Several sat on carts which went apparently on their own power from one of the wrecked ships to another. Others walked, so slowly in those heavy body coverings, to pile things they had brought out of the wrecks, sorting them.
     Thorn’s arm shot out. He was holding the strip (Geiger counter) which he had told her meant the level of death (ionizing radiation) which lay in such places. She could see that red line, which had been near the middle of the strip when he had first shown it to her, was now a finger-width farther up.
     “A deadly place.”
     His voice was low, as if he were awed or shocked by the scene they watched.
     “But they—”
     “Are suited (with anti-radiation suits),” he pointed out. “Still, so much danger; what could be worth such exposure?”

     “Your weapons of fire? (laser rifle)”
     “Not just to trade to any little lordlings here,” he returned. “Nor could your Lord Arfellen (though I have some idea he knows something of this) dare to come near what is being gathered. This is what is left of a war command.”
     “Your (nuclear) war—did some of your people flee after all their cities were destroyed?” (i.e., are these Terran ships that fled the nuclear war?)
     He was shaking his head. “These are not ships I know, and they are so old—maybe even Forerunner!”

     His eyes were wide. “Forerunner arms! Yes! There would be fools on half a hundred worlds who would pay high for such knowledge, even if they could not touch the weapons themselves. You see these can be taken apart, studied, their ways of making taped. Then those who made this find—a find that would be blasted into nothingness if it were public knowledge—would have something to sell such as has never been sold before! This is a treasure of evil past any reckoning. We have found burned-off planets, but never before a fleet—or even one ship—which fought such wars! Arms to be studied and copied, the ships themselves. These looters can find buyers in plenty and it will mean ruin and death around the galaxy!”

(ed note: so the Terrans need to be subject to a new Prime Directive, because they Are Not Ready for Forerunner tech)

• 

There are few guidelines that members of Starfleet hold as dear as the Prime Directive. (Though I’m Not Just A Doctor: On-the-Job Flexibility and You may come in second, and Contraceptive Techniques for When Warp Ten Makes You a Lizard gets an honorable mention.)

The Directive is the closest thing that Star Trek has to a central dogma. Disavowing the exploitation that has so often riddled human history, the Federation decides to keep its hands off of any societies that have not yet attained interstellar travel. In the words of the original Enterprise crew, this involves “No identification of self or mission… No interference with the social development of said planet… No References to space, other worlds, or advanced civilizations.”

This was expanded greatly during the breadth of the Trek franchise, malleable in the hands of different writers. The central idea of mucking about in a less-advanced planet’s affairs being bad stayed the same, creating plots both interesting and contrived. On TOS, though, it was usually an excuse to raid the network wardrobe department.

The fear behind the Prime Directive was one oft used in science fiction in the latter half of the Twentieth Century: if a less technologically developed species got their hands on highly developed technology, then they would promptly use it to destroy themselves in some way. So Star Trek argues that it is far better for the race to develop technologically on its own, so that they can attain the technology that can be used to destroy themselves without cheating. Which is better, somehow.

Given the historical context of the Cold War, it’s understandable why the Prime Directive came about. When TOS was in production, the major world powers on both sides extended their policy by subversively manipulating countries and regions deemed strategic. And, in many cases, this interference led to damage in terms of political extremism, economic stagnation, and countless human lives through state sponsored violence and war.

Wouldn’t it be nice, thought ol’ Gene, to have everyone just mind their own stinkin’ business for once?

On the whole, that’s an admirable notion. Let everyone tend to themselves, and together we can make a better world (or galaxy or whatever) that is defined by our own terms. It’s good that Roddenberry wanted to make room for that sort of view in his unique vision of the future, and it serves as a timely commentary on issues we still face today.

Too bad that, the way it’s portrayed, the Prime Directive is even worse than interfering in the first place, and it’s even a little space elitist.

I know, I know. That’s a pretty hefty critique to lay at the feet of a revered TV franchise, but I wouldn’t say it if I couldn’t back it up. And I don’t just mean the whole “we’ll wait for you to make the technology that can kill you” stuff. The real problem has to do with a theory in political science known as ‘developmental theory.’

This theory tries to explain the changes of states over time, and can be characterized as “path dependent.” Path dependency maintains that development in any sort of system is the result of a series of choices that accumulates returns over time. A country’s development from the past is therefore dependent on its, er, path. This theory is heavily informed by the notion of a telos, which means “destination” in Greek (not to be confused with the second home of the Cybermen, different franchise). Thus, a teleological frame of thinking is one that involves a linear progression with an ultimate goal at its end.

Combine the two ideas, and you have something like this: at the beginning of development, you have the “State of Nature” where anarchy reigns and individuals will attempt to control or share basic resources. From here societies will develop around deciding where those resources go, with growing levels of sophistication as time continues. At some point along this line, the society changes so much from its previous form that it experiences what social theorist Max Weber called a “disenchantment” with its past self.

This theory works out fine, until we come to the part that often comes under fire: some hold that the beginning of “true” modernity for all states (the telos) is linked directly to certain events in European history, such as the Enlightenment or the Romantic Movement. This view is often criticized for treating Europe as an isolated entity, without taking into account the effect that Europe and the rest of the world had on each other at the time. Recent analyses suggest that the relative early rise of Europe was due to cultural organization in the West versus that found in the rest of the world, with Europe not as deterministically ‘special’ as was once thought.

The parallel between developmental theory and the Prime Directive make themselves quite clear. In both cases, there is a select group of states which say that others that have not yet attained certain characteristics (read: the same as their own) are not as modern or sophisticated. And until those “lower” cultures take on the characteristics of the “sophisticates,” they will be forever confined to a pre-modern existence. The Prime Directive, however, maintains that it is necessary for the different societies to achieve their telos on their own, and any external influence will forever taint their progress to that noble goal.

That is the real hypocrisy (and space elitism) of the Prime Directive. While they apparently want societies to flourish without any external variables, almost like the observers of an experiment, the Federation fails to recognize (or admit to recognize) that there exists within the universe certain limitations that could potentially restrict a huge percentage of the universal population.

Here’s what I mean by that: A corollary to the Fermi Paradox suggests that it’s possible for intelligent life to exist in the universe, but certain factors would limit them from access to our sort of technological development. A hypothetical species could have their means of interstellar travel and communication on a mass scale severely depreciated, with the rest of the universe totally unaware of them.

That said, it would still be possible for them to achieve a socio-political disenchantment similar to any other Federation member, or even for their scientific knowledge to excel in relation to their restrictions. However, they would never be eligible for membership in the Federation due to systemic factors that are entirely out of their control.

The Federation seems to think this is the way things should be, and why wouldn’t they when it works so well in their favor? Doing this allows them to retain a greater share of the universe’s prosperity, only doling it out to those that mimic their own successes exactly.

Through this developmental self-selection, the Federation’s membership becomes homogenized and enforces a technological hegemony on the universe that ironically keeps many underprivileged groups from reaching their potential within the universe’s socio-political ecosystem. This hegemony becomes so important that some societies are allowed to fall by the wayside through total extinction events in order to protect it.

Now, you can argue all you like that this isn’t the true intent of the Prime Directive, but you sure can’t say that this isn’t the effect. Differences between the member races are usually arbitrary and one-note, doing nothing to counter the Federation’s human-lead policies. Rarely are there signs of discord, with the organization acting in concert throughout its affairs. New members never really seem to stir the pot when they come along, and this self-selection is more than likely the culprit.

This raises the question, what good does the Prime Directive actually do for anyone involved? We’ve already established that it’s harmful to the development of the universe at large, and that it makes out the Federation to be a culturally stagnant hypocrite. Where’s the good, other than the pat on the back the Federation gives itself because they’re one of the “good guys?”

There is none. It is a logical back alley designed only as a political statement against imperialist or interventionist histories. As a piece of art and storytelling meant to make comment on the Cold War and conflicts like it, I suppose that’s fine, even if it doesn’t very well reflect how societies have historically interacted with each other in the past.

I think this is why I prefer the sort of science fiction like Stargate: SG-1 or the relatively new Falling Skies, which portrays interactions between alien races at varying technological levels with a great amount of nuance. The races in these stories exchange all sorts of things, even weaponry. Sometimes the interactions are good, sometimes they’re bad, sometimes just indifferent.

There are no absolutes, as there are none in real life. Exploring where the consequences of those actions go, and the “disenchantment” that they bring about, is much more compelling than holding onto a blind fear of the past’s mistakes.

• 

Thus, hardening of the arteries is the process by which a television show gradually limits itself by setting up conditions which will affect all episodes that will come after. Producers are always a little bit wary about expanding on their formats because of the danger of this happening—the happening—they might inadvertently set something up that could backfire and severely limit them in the future.

A few examples from STAR TREK:

The Prime Directive—also known as General Order Number One. This, according to the STAR TREK Writers’ Guide, third revision, is “a wise, but often troublesome rule which prohibits starship interference with the normal development of alien life and societies.” It was first postulated in an episode entitled, “The Apple” in which Kirk and crew must violate the directive and destroy an Eden. The justification was that this Eden was an artificial condition which was already interfering with the normal development of this particular culture. It rapidly became clear that the Prime Directive was to be more honored in the breach than otherwise.

In fact, the only times we ever heard about the Prime Directive was just before Kirk broke it. There never was a story told where he obeyed the rule.

The Prime Directive was broken in “A Private Little War," “Patterns of Force," “A Piece of the Action,” “Bread and Circuses,” and quite a few other episodes. This is why it was such a troublesome rule—it was troublesome to the writers who had to work their stories around it. In all of these episodes, Kirk eventually had to interfere with the so-called normal development of the alien society. Sometimes he was putting it back on its proper course after someone else had tampered with it, "Bread and Circuses,” “Patterns of Force,” for example.

The STAR TREK Writers’ Guide summarizes the rule like this: “It can be disregarded when absolutely vital to the interests of the entire Earth Federation, but the Captain who does violate it had better be ready to present a sound defense of his actions."

Which means, translated into English: The Prime Directive is a great idea, but it's also a bloody nuisance. Let's forget about the whole thing.

The Prime Directive gets in the way of telling “Mary Worth” stories. It keeps the Enterprise from being a cosmic meddler. And that's too much of a limitation on the format. It keeps Kirk from being a moralist because he can no longer say, “This is right and this is wrong" to the people of Eminiar VII and Vendikar in “A Taste of Armageddon.” In fact, he can't even blow up the computer that controls their simulated war if he subscribes to General Order Number One.

Nor can he destroy the Landru computer on Beta III in “Return of the Archons." Nor is he allowed to upset the status quo on Triskelion in “The Gamesters of Triskelion.”

The Prime Directive is a very idealistic rule—but it keeps getting in the way of the story. Therefore, it has to be disregarded. Regularly.

In the third season, it was totally ignored. Forgotten. They had problems enough without it.

• 

Spock: I do not dispute that in the wrong hands...
McCoy: "In the wrong hands"? Would you mind telling whose are the right hands, my logical friend?
— Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility, but Power Corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Some powers — and responsibilities — are too great for anyone to be trusted with.

A character may realize this on his own — perhaps the Big Bad has just been defeated, and his Ancient Artifact is now in The Hero's control. After contemplating all the good he could do, The Hero may realize that he can't take away people's free will. He may experience a "We're Not So Different" moment, and gain some sympathy for his enemy.

Alternatively, the party may begin fighting over who should control this power, demonstrating their inability to be trusted with it. Eventually, a wiser member will point out that the only possible solution is for no one to have it.

In any case, the choice will usually be clear. The source of power must be discarded, destroyed, or sealed back in its tin. This may be a final resolution, a return to the status quo, or even the beginning of a quest to get rid of the power. If the proper choice isn't made, this may mark the Start of Darkness.

See No MacGuffin, No Winner when the power is lost as a karmic punishment, rather than a willing decision in fear of the consequences. Also compare It Belongs in a Museum. Does not refer to powers that only women have, or only The Chosen One or many should have.

See also: The World Is Not Ready, Status Quo Is God, Reluctant Mad Scientist, and Technological Pacifist. If the power simply isn't used, for no specific reason, that's Holding Back the Phlebotinum. If the protagonists aim for this trope but don't succeed, see Dangerous Device Disposal Debacle.

(ed note: see TV Trope page for list of examples)

(ed note: the protagonists are trying to recover a billon-year old alien space suit encased in a time-stopping "stasis field." Among the things inside the suit is a device that will amplify a telepath's power to a point where they could hypnotically enslave everybody on Terra.)

(ed note: Luke the ARM from Terra and Smoky from the Belt are arguing)

      “I never thought the ARMS was a grand idea,” said Luke. “I think they’re necessary. Absolutely necessary. I joined because I thought I could be useful.”
     “Luke, if flatlanders (Earthmen) need thought police to keep them alive, they shouldn’t stay alive. You’re trying to hold back evolution.”
     “We are not thought police! What we police is technology. If someone builds something that has a good chance of wiping out civilization, then and only then do we suppress it. You’d be surprised how often it happens.”
     Smoky’s voice was ripe with scorn. “Would I? Why not suppress the fusion tube while you’re at it? No, don’t interrupt me, Luke, this is important. They don’t use fusion only in ships. Half Earth’s drinking water comes from seawater distilleries, and they all use fusion heat. Most of Earth’s electricity is fusion, and all of the Belt’s. There’s fusion flame in crematoriums and garbage disposal plants. Look at all the uranium you have to import, just to squirt into fusion tubes as primer! And there are hundreds of thousands of fusion ships, every last one of which — “
     ” — turns into a hydrogen bomb at the flip of a switch.”
     “Too right. So why doesn’t the ARMS suppress fusion?”
     “First, because the ARMS was formed too late. Fusion was already here. Second, because we need fusion. The fusion tube is human civilization, the way the electrical generator used to be. Thirdly, because we won’t interfere with anything that helps space travel. But I’m glad — “
     “You’re begging the…”
     “MY TURN, Smoky. I’m glad you brought up fusion, because that’s the whole point. The purpose of the ARMS is to keep the balance wheel on civilization. Knock that balance wheel off kilter, and the first thing that would happen would be war. It always is. This time it’d be the last. Can you imagine a full-scale war, with that many hydrogen bombs just waiting to be used? Flip of a switch, I think you said.”
     “You said. Do you have to stamp on human ingenuity to keep the balance wheel straight? That’s a blistering condemnation of Earth, if true.”
     “Smoky, if it weren’t top secret I could show you a suppressed projector that can damp a fusion shield from ten miles away. Chick Watson got to be my boss by spotting an invention that would have forced us to make murder legal. There was — “
     “Don’t tell me about evidence you can’t produce.”
     “All right, dammit, what about this (alien telepathic) amplifier we’re all chasing? Suppose some bright boy came up with an amplifier for telepathic hypnosis? Would you suppress it?”
     “You produce it and I’ll answer.”

---

     “So we all made it,” said Luke, beaming around at the company. “I was afraid the Last War would start on Pluto.”
     “Me too,” said Lew. His voice was barely slurred. “We were afraid you wouldn’t take the hint when we couldn’t answer your calls. You might have decided that was some stupid piece of indirection.” He blinked and tightened his lips, dismissing the memory. “So what’ll we do with the spare suit?” (which contains the alien telepathic hypnosis amplifier)
     Now he had everybody’s attention. This was a meeting hall, and the suit was the main order of business.
     “We can’t let Earth have it,” said Smoky. “They could open it. We don’t have their time stopper.” (the spare suit is encased in a time-stopping "statis field", and cannot be opened without a second field. Earth has stasis technology, the Belt does not.) Without looking at Luke, he added, “Some inventions do have to be suppressed.”
     “You could get it with a little research,” said Garner.
     “Dump it on Jupiter,” Masney advised. “Strap it to the Heinlein’s hull and let Woody and me fly it. (Masney is from Earth, Woody is from the Belt) If we both come back alive you know it got dumped on schedule. Right?”
     “Right,” said Lew. Garner nodded. Others in the lounge tasted the idea and found it good, despite the loss of knowledge which must be buried with the suit. Larry Greenberg, who had other objections, kept them to himself.

2010–2100 CoDominium Intelligence Services engage in serious effort to suppress all research into technologies with military applications. They are aided by zero-growth organizations. Most scientific research ceases.

…There was another reason, too. CoDominium Intelligence licensed all scientific research and tried to suppress anything that could have military value. The U.S.-Soviet alliance was on top and wasn't about to let any new discoveries upset the balance. They couldn't stop everything, but they didn't have to, so long as the Grand Senate controlled everyone's R&D budget and could tinker with the patent laws.

…If we had not suppressed scientific research. But that was done in the name of the peace. Prevent development of new weapons. Keep control of technology in the hands of the government, prevent technology from dictating policy to all of us; it had seemed so reasonable, and besides, the policy was very old now. There were few trained scientists, because no one wanted to live under the restrictions of the Bureau of Technology.

     …Mark nodded, but Halpern only sneered. "You don't know anything at all," Halpern said. "Oppression? Shooting rioters? Sure that's part of what the CD does, but it's not the worst part. Symptom, not cause. The case is their g*dd*mn so-called intelligence service. Suppression of scientific research. Censorship of technical journals. They've even stopped the pretense of basic research. When was the last time a licensed physicist had a decent idea?"
     Mark shrugged. He knew nothing about physics.
     Halpern grinned. There was no warmth in the expression. His voice had a bitter edge. "Keeping the peace, they say. Only discourage new weapons, new military technology. B*llsh*t, they've stopped everything for fear somebody somewhere will come up with—"

…BuReloc had been shipping the worst troublemakers off Earth for two generations now … except for the Grand Senators, Owensford thought mordantly. Earth could not afford more trouble. The CoDominium had kept the peace since before his grandfather's birth, the United States and Soviet Union acting in concert to police a restive planet. The cost had been heavy; an end to technological progress, as the CoDo Intelligence services suppressed research with military implications … which turned out to be all research.

…CoDominium Intelligence was tasked with suppressing scientific research; their most effective method had been a generations-long effort to corrupt every data base and research program on Earth. Few of the colony worlds had the time or resources needed to undo the damage. Besides, there were few trained scientists left anywhere after four generations. Nobody wanted to live under the lidless eye of BuInt all their lives, with involuntary transportation to someplace like Fulson's World as the punishment for stepping over the line. Mostly what were left were technicians, cookbook engineers who might make a minor change in a recipe if they were very daring.

• 

(ed note: In Andre Norton's novel THE TIME TRADERS, the United States and the Soviet Union discover time travel. Somehow the Soviets start finding bits of incredibly high tech equipment and the U.S. wants to know the source so America can gets some. As it turns out it is from about 2.58 million years ago during the last ice age. Apparently there was an alien galactic empire back then, a few of their starships crashed on Terra for some reason, and the Soviets were looting them.

Ashe and Ross are U.S. time agents sent back in time, and manage to discover this. And along the way they accidentally tip off the galactic empire that some Terrans are looting the alien's ships.

The aliens are not amused. They show up in the ice age and obliterate the Soviet time-travel base. Then the aliens travel gradually up time and systematically destroy all the Soviet time bases in each historical era, ending with the one in the "present." Then they leave.

In Andre Norton's GALACTIC DERELICT; Ashe, Ross, Travis,and Renfry are part of a tentative U.S. time-travel operation to snag yet another crashed alien starship about twelve thousand years ago. Because the U.S. just can't get enough of that sweet sweet alien high tech. They are trying to be real careful, because the last thing they want is for the alien galactic empire to discover what they are doing.

They try a short-cut and build a time machine over the ship, so they can transfer it intact to the "present." Unfortunately this triggers the alien ship's autopilot, and it takes off under control of an autopilot course tape. Our heroes are stuck inside the starship until it reaches its destination. At least the fact they are twelve hundred years after the last contact with the alien galactic empire means the empire is probably long dead.

As the weeks go by they study the starship and sit around brainstorming.)

      "I read a book once," Ross said suddenly with the slightly embarrassed air of one admitting to a minor social error, "that had a story in it about some Dutch sea captain who swore he'd get around the horn in one of those old-time sailing ships. He called up the Devil to help him and he never got home—just went on sailing through the centuries."
     "The Flying Dutchman," Ashe identified.
     "Well, we haven't called up any Devil," Renfry remarked.

     "Haven't we?" Travis had spoken his thoughts, without realizing until they all stared at him that he was done so aloud.
     "Your Devil being?" Ashe prompted.
     "We were trying to get knowledge out of this ship—and it wasn't our kind of knowledge," he floundered a little, attempting to put into words what he now believed.
     "Scavengers getting their just desserts?" Ashe summed up. "If you follow that line of reasoning, yes, you have a point. The forbidden fruit of knowledge. That was an idea planted so long ago in mankind's conscience that it lingers today as guilt."

     "Planted," Ross repeated the word thoughtfully, "planted…"
     "Planted!" Travis echoed, his mind making one of those odd jumps in sudden understanding of which he had only recently become conscious. "By whom?"
     Then glancing around at the alien ship which was both their transport and their prison, he added softly, "By these people?"
     "They didn't want us to know about them." Ross's words came in a rush. "Remember what they did to that Russian time base—traced it all the way forward and destroyed it in every era. Suppose they did have contacts with primitive man on our world—planted ideas—or gave them such a terrifying lesson at one time or other that the memory of it was buried in all their descendants?"

     "There are other tales beside your Flying Dutchman, Ross," Ashe squirmed a little in his seat. None of the chairs in the ship quite fitted the human frame or provided comfort. "Prometheus and the fire—the man who dared to steal the knowledge of the gods for the use of mankind and suffered eternally thereafter for his audacity, though his fellow benefited. Yes, there are clues to back such a theory, faint ones." His eagerness grew as he spoke. "Maybe—just maybe—we'll find out!"