With the boats safely in their launching positions and secured against the treacherous Martian windstorms by wire guys, John Wiegand applied to them his most rigid inspection technique. A few minor parts were found defective and these he replaced from stock. Ten days before the date of departure, he reported to Holt that both boats were in complete readiness to ascend to the orbit, where Tom Knight awaited the crews and their Martian guests, and where the wingless boat hulls would circle forevermore as manmade satellites of Mars.
It was the last evening Holt was to pass in the pressurized passages of the Red Planet.
He esteemed it a great honor to be the guest of Ansanto, the Sage of Laroni, where the Dean of Martian scientists dwelt in company with many artists, writers and philosophers of the planet. The little town exhibited distinct differences from the larger cities such as Ahla and Suguli, for the liberal attitudes of its inhabitants reflected themselves in vagaries of taste and decoration beyond the scope of more conventional Martians. Laroni lay beneath the verdant moss of Lacus Lunse.
Ansanto was by no means limited to the scientific aspect of his proud position in the Academy, and it was as much over the cultural phases of the evening that Holt rejoiced as over the more familiar scientific and technical ones. Ansanto's vast historical and philosophical studies had given him a perspective extending over truly cosmic ages of Martian development.
When they sat down together after a simple but satisfying meal, Ansanto urged Holt to talk about the recent war on Earth, for he himself had never experienced such a cataclysm and greatly desired to complete the impressions he had derived from Martian history by a first-hand, vivid report.
Holt launched into a description of the titanic struggle between the Western and the Eastern powers and told how a unified goyernment had eventually resulted, but that the cruelties of the conflict had brought terrestrial mankind so close to the abyss of universal cultural suicide that the damage could hardly be repaired in less than several centuries. He spoke of the desperation of those horrible years and of the misfortunes with which technology had flooded mankind instead of with her highly touted blessings. Nor did he neglect the increasingly frequent and insistent warnings of the many Earthling thinkers who proclaimed that technology bore an eternal curse and that naught but a return to a simple bucolic existence of self-determination could preserve humanity from utter self-destruction.
Ansanto listened silently for a long time until Holt finished.
"There can," said he, "be no turning back for any civilization which has once pinned its faith to the advance of technology. Any such turning back would conjure up such a terrible economic and social crises as to reduce the civilization itself to wrack and ruin.
"Nor is there any inner justification or lightness whatsoever in turning back. Man is responsible for the dangers and unbalance of technology, not technology itself.
"During one of your lectures, so greatly appreciated by our students of history, you recounted how all the ancient cultures of Earth were based on slavery. You expressed amazement that the great thinkers of those ages found nothing objectionable therein. I, for one, am no whit amazed, for our own earlier cultures were likewise based upon slavery. Every culture is an organism, analogous to a plant unable to flower towards the light if the roots, the source of strength, do not dig into the soil.
"Subjugation of the forces of nature by technology is the only means offered us by God whereby we may strip off the curse of slavery. By this means only can we create a social system where each and every man may unfurl his capabilities to the breeze of freedom rather than permit a chosen few to blossom and bloom while supported by the weary shoulders of the multitude.
Here on our venerable and weary planet we have moved far ahead of your youthful Earth towards the manumission of our slaves by technology. The difficulties you are presently encountering have a familiar ring in the ears of Martian historians, for we too have suffered them. But you may be assured that you also will master those difficulties, not, of course, without paying a certain price for the freedom thus achieved. This price in part will consist in the leveling of consumer goods which is followed by a general leveling of tastes, modes, and even of human attitudes. These inevitable concomitants of the technical age affect sensitive souls as does cruel tyranny. It is the luxuriant glory of jungle flowers being transmuted into an orderly garden where each plant is assigned its place in accordance with its size, its color and its form. No longer is it privileged to grow according to its own sweet will. To me, the manumission of humanity is well worth the price."
'Tell me, my friend," Holt said after a pause, "what you believe to be the main obstructions to making technology operate for the benefit of mankind rather than to its destruction?"
Ansanto smiled. "I will try to formulate it for you. Technology is by nature dynamic, while political order, created by man for orderly social living, is fundamentally static.
Continually renewed conflict arises between the static social order, unable as it is to grow with dynamically progressing demands, and the technical advances which create the latter.
A new invention is capable of changing the basis of many lives to a far greater extent than any novel social or political concept. The explosions which have plagued your planet during the last few decades cannot, in the last analysis, have been caused merely by clashes between opposing political ideologies. The fact is that limited and sovereign states cannot live next to one another on the same planet, once technology has attained a certain definite advancement. You may be very sure that technology was the real architect of your present government of Earth and that your politicians were only subordinate artisans.
As technical developments progress, political conflict becomes increasingly destructive. This is not simply accounted for by the increased effectiveness of the weapons employed; no less important is the inevitable increase of governmental authority and bureaucracy, which supervenes to direct the complicated social order brought by more mechanization in living. The personal responsibility of political leaders becomes infinite with such advances in mechanization."
"On a smaller scale," chuckled Holt, "I can drive a buggy along a country road with a few drinks too many under my belt, and nobody gets hurt. But if I drive a high-powered car on a highway in the same condition, those drinks may be fatal, not only to me, but to others."
"I've never seen a motor car," answered Ansanto, "but we still have humor on Mars, even without cars; and your amusing analogy goes to the root of the matter. Ethical progress must keep up with technical progress. But ethics wither and die without selfcontrol and without humility and religion."
"Do you believe," Holt asked, "that increasing scientific insight undermines religions belief? Back on Earth, I know so many who seem convinced that they know and no longer need believe. Here too, I have encountered not a few of the same turn of mind."
Ansanto smiled tolerantly. "When I was a young student," he remarked, "I thought myself very wise indeed. Natural science was my passion, and to some extent it still is.
The universe seemed to me to be a relatively simple, if rather large mechanism, whose laws of operation I thought I understood quite well. As our technicians applied identical laws to their own purposes with ever-increasing success, I became more and more convinced that it was idle to seek a transcendental director of fate behind the transparent cosmic machinery. To me, there could be no God, except as identified with the laws of nature.
"As time went on and I matured, I began to realize the blank areas in our picture of the universe. What I had previously seen as a wide expanse of beautifully clear perceptions began to be choked in the underbrush of vague attempts at explaining the unexplainable. Slogans and catchwords covered the thickets which the spirit could not penetrate. The simplest things no longer could withstand critical scrutiny. Consider the concept of infinity, which is no more comprehensible than its opposite, finiteness. What is behind either or both these concepts? Or consider the mutual relationship between matter and energy. We know and can use the formulae, and their potency serves us in our atomic power plants. The inner secret of their mechanisms will, however, remain a sealed book for all eternity. What of the miracle of heredity? By what mysteries does a greatgrandchild carry some touching trait of his forebear? Are we not deluding ourselves if we pretend to explain such mysteries on a scientific basis?