built for the purpose of transporting as many people as possible from point A to point B. The ships were giant tin cans, with humans packed into them like sardines. The colonies started with virtually nothing in the way of resources. No continual contact with Earth was possible—it’s easy and cheap to build big ships that lift once and land once, but it’s next to impossible to finance ships like Daedalus which can go in and out of gravity holes more or less at will. The colonies we’re recontacting now have been out of touch with Earth for at least a century; some of them were never contacted at all, but just left to get on with things. The colony worlds had been passed as habitable, the colonists were given the barest elements of a civilization, and that was it. They had to start in on their new worlds with very little else but bare hands. Now, three or four or seven generations later, we go back to them. What’s the most important thing we can take them? What’s the thing that they need most?
“We can no more send them equipment now than we could when they first went out. We can’t take them anything material at all. So we take them the means to find answers to their problems. Individual colonies have individual problems, but we know damn well that they all have one general class of problems to face, and that’s the class of problems of co-adaptation.
“A colony is one life-system invading another. It’s the seed of Earth trying to implant itself in alien soil. Sure, the worlds have been surveyed, the life-systems inspected, and the whole venture certified practical by men who are trained to guess and guess right. But it’s not as simple as that. When a life-system in balance is invaded by another there are bound to be ecological repercussions, both short-term and long-term. The colonists have no way of analyzing the ecological effects of their invasion, let alone any capacity to mount a long-range scientific program to deal with them. Most problems can be dealt with at a superficial level—treatment of the symptoms, as you might say—but over a period of time there are bound to be permanent antagonisms developed between the two life-systems. The invasion will cause permanent changes in both systems, as they react to one another and—in the long term—adapt to one another.
“The Daedalus was designed to recontact colonies. It was built with the assumption that such colonies would, by now, be established to a certain degree. They would be technologically primitive even with a large reservoir of knowledge and information to draw upon. And they would be engaged in a constant battle with the alien life-system: a battle which had, itself, become a way of life. The purpose of the Daedalus is to help such colonies win such battles. It’s a flying laboratory, fitted out for the specific tasks of genetic analysis and genetic engineering. Its job is to help resolve the antagonisms which inevitably develop between the life-systems. At a crude level, the means which the alien life-system evolves to attack the invading life-system have to be neutralized, and that’s what the recontact mission is for. According to the vulgar metaphor, it’s a matter of catching alien rats. Fair enough—the rats have to be caught.”
“I see,” said the boy flatly.
“It’s necessary,” said the man, trying very hard to make his point. “Without such help, colonies may die. You complain about the waste of effort putting them there. But wouldn’t the real waste be leaving them to die? Even if it was wrong to send the colony ships out—and I can’t agree even with that—surely it can’t be wrong to do what we have to in order to give them a reasonable chance of success. We’re committed now. We have to be.”
The boy stared steadfastly forward, watching the river as it flowed into the narrow crack that was the faraway horizon of the concrete walls. Though parallel, the walls did not appear to meet at infinity. There was a thin sliver of sky, out beyond the city’s boundary.
“You don’t have to convince me,” said the boy. “It’s nothing to do with me. You’ve never pretended to be any different. You’re an ecologist...all your life you’ve been involved in experiments with alien plants brought to Earth in the old days...that and trying to figure out how to help Earth’s life-system survive the rape that the human race has subjected it to these last few hundred years. This Daedalus thing is made for you. It’s the perfect opportunity for you to use your ability and your training. You don’t need to justify yourself to me.”
“But you hate me for it,” said the man, the words slipping from momentarily unguarded lips.
“No,” said the boy. “Why should I?”
The man could find nothing to say for a few moments. When he began again it was a return to safer ground.
“The first run proved the thinking right,” he said, in a low, patient voice. “Of the five worlds contacted, four had the kind of problem the Daedalus personnel could attack in the lab. The rats were caught—and you can’t underestimate the significance of that. Those colonies were helped.”
“And what about the fifth?”
The man looked away, his gaze flickering across the water to the far bank, and on up the concrete face to the heights where the grimy windows gleamed with reflected light. He continued to scan the arrays of glass panes, as though trying to imagine the myriad private lives concealed behind them.
“The fifth colony had already failed,” the boy accused.
“The ship was too late,” said the man. “The political climate didn’t improve fast enough for them. Mother Earth spent too long searching her pockets for the loose change.”
“Thousands of people,” said the boy. “They shipped out with promises of a garden of Eden. Out of the cesspit into the grave. A children’s crusade. In pursuit of a crazy dream. Was it really worth it?”
“They could have succeeded.”
“Could they?”
“If help had come sooner.”
“And what about the people here?” asked the boy. “Billions of people. Facing the third great plague. Facing starvation. Facing foul water and poisoned air. Who’d have helped them if all the money was spent on flying laboratories to help the colonies? Your ship may save thousands of lives. You and your mission may work wonders out there in space. But how many lives could the same money save right here? Even in this country—this city—where, by the grace of God, things are supposed to be going just great...what was yesterday’s death toll, incidentally?”
The man would only shake his head.
Again, the argument died. Again, the anger and the anguish blew away with the dust. They both let it go. Neither wanted to spend the minutes that were ticking away in accusations, in recriminations, in ideological squabbling. They both knew that there could be no possible gain. But they seemed to find little that they held in common save for the mutual antagonism.
It was all more in sorrow than in anger. But they could find no way out of the trap.
“You have your dreams all mixed up with your idea of reality,” said the boy.
“Don’t we all?” the man replied.
“It seems to me,” said the boy, “that you have something of a problem in co-adaptation right there.”
There was no laughter.
“The mission will solve it,” declared the man.
“And suppose it doesn’t?”
The man shrugged the question away. It seemed nonsensical. But his son repeated it.
“Visiting the colonies isn’t going to change my mind,” said
