land — the edge of the wilderness between the stars. But that's exactly where the comets are born, in a great, invisible shell surrounding the Solar System. There's enough material out there for a trillion of those strange objects, orbiting in a cosmic freezer."
"What's going on, in those huge clouds of hydrogen and helium and all the other elements? There's not much energy — but there may be enough. And where's the matter and energy — and Time — sooner
or later there's organization."
"Call them Star Beasts. Would they be alive? No — that word doesn't apply. Let's just say —
‘Organized systems.’ They'd be hundreds or thousands of kilometers across, and they might live — I
mean, maintain their individual identity — for millions of years."
"That's a thought. The comets that we observe — are they the corpses of Star Beasts, sent sunward for cremation? Or executed criminals? I'm being ridiculously anthropomorphic — but what else can I
be?"
"And are they intelligent? What does that word mean? Are ants intelligent — are the cells of the
human body intelligent? Do all the Star Beasts surrounding the Solar System make a single entity — and does It know about us? Or does It care?"
"Perhaps the Sun keeps them at bay, as in ancient times the campfire kept off the wolves and saber-toothed tigers. But we are already a long way from the Sun, and sooner or later we will meet them. The more we learn, the better."
"And there's one question I'm almost afraid to think about. Are they gods? OR ARE THEY EATERS OF
GODS?
41
Independence Day
Extract from the Congressional Record for 2276 July 4. Address by the Honorable Duncan
Makenzie, Special Assistant to the Chief Administrator, Republic of Titan.
Mr. Speaker, Members of Congress, Distinguished Guests — let me first express my deep gratitude to
the Centennial Committee, whose generosity made possible my visit to Earth and to these United States. I bring greetings to all of you from Titan, largest of Saturn's many moons — and the most distant world yet occupied by mankind.
Five hundred years ago this land was also a frontier — not only geographically but politically. Your
ancestors, less than twenty generations in the past, created the first democratic constitution that really worked — and that still works today, on worlds that they could not have imagined in their wildest dreams.
During these celebrations, many have spoken of the legacy that the founders of the Republic left us on that day, half a thousand years ago. But there have been four Centennials since then; I would like to look briefly at each of them, to see what lessons they have for us.
At the first, in 1876, the United States was still recovering from a disastrous Civil War. Yet it was
also laying the foundation of the technological revolution that would soon transform the Earth. Perhaps it is no coincidence that in the very year of the first Centennial, this country brought forth the invention which really began the conquest of space.
For in 1876 Alexander Graham Bell made the first practical telephone. We take electronic
communications so utterly for granted that we cannot imagine a society without them; we would be deaf
and dumb if these extensions of our senses were suddenly removed. So let us remember that just four
hundred years ago, the telephone began the abolition of space — at least upon this planet.
A century later, in 1976, that process had almost finished — and the conquest of interplanetary space
was about to begin. By that time, the first men had already reached the Moon, using techniques which
today seem unbelievably primitive. Although all historians now agree that the Apollo Project marked the United States's supreme achievement, and its greatest moment of triumph, it was inspired by political
motives that seem ludicrous — indeed, incomprehensible — to our modern minds. And it is no reflection
on those first engineers and astronauts that their brilliant pioneering effort was a technological dead end, and that serious space travel did not begin for several decades, with much more advanced vehicles and
propulsion systems.
A century later, in 2076, all the tools needed to open up the planets were ready to hand. Long-
duration life-support systems had been perfected; after the initial disasters, the fusion drive had been tamed. But humanity was exhausted by the effort of global rebuilding following the Time of Troubles,
and in the aftermath of the Population Crash there was little enthusiasm for the colonization of new
worlds.
Despite these problems, mankind set its feet irrevocably on the road to the stars. During the twenty-
first century, the Lunar Base became self-supporting, the Mars Colony was established, and we had
secured a bridgehead on Mercury. Venus and the Gas Giants defied us — as indeed they still do — but
we had visited all the larger moons and asteroids of the Solar System.
By 2176, just a hundred years ago, a substantial fraction of the human race was no longer Earthborn.