At the headquarters of the Planetary Exploration & Settlement Board, Perceveral was admitted at once to William Haskell’s private office. The Assistant Placement Director was a large, blunt-featured, white-haired man who radiated a geniality which Perceveral found suspicious.
“Sit down, sit down, Mr. Perceveral,” Haskell said. “Cigarette? Care for a drink? Awfully glad you could make it.”
“Are you sure you have the right man?” Perceveral asked.
Haskell glanced through a dossier on his desk. “Let’s see. Anton Perceveral; age thirty-four; parents, Gregory James Perceveral and Anita Swaans Perceveral, Laketown, New Jersey. Is that right?”
“Yes,” Perceveral said. “And you have a job for me?”
“We have indeed.”
“Paying twenty thousand a year and benefits?”
“Perfectly correct.”
“Could you tell me what the job is?”
“That’s what we’re here for,” Haskell said cheerfully. “The job I have in mind for you, Mr. Perceveral, is listed in our catalogue as Extraterrestrial Explorer.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Extraterrestrial or alien-planet explorer,” Haskell said. “The explorers, you know, are the men who make the first contacts on alien planets, the primary settlers who gather our essential data. I think of them as the Drakes and Magellans of this century. It is, I think you’ll agree, an excellent opportunity.”
Perceveral stood up, his face a dull red. “If you’re finished with the joke, I’ll leave.”
“Eh?”
“Me an extraterrestrial explorer?” Perceveral said with a bitter laugh. “Don’t try to kid me. I read the papers. I know what the explorers are like.”
“What are they like?”
“They’re Earth’s finest,” Perceveral said. “The very best brains in the very best bodies. Men with trigger-quick reactions, able to tackle any problem, cope with any situation, adjust to any environment. Isn’t that true?”
“Well,” Haskell said, “it was true back in the early days of planetary exploration. And we have allowed that stereotype to remain in the public eye, to instill confidence. But that type of explorer is now obsolete. There are plenty of other jobs for men such as you describe. But not planetary exploration.”
“Couldn’t your supermen make the grade?” Perceveral asked with a faint sneer.
“Of course they could,” Haskell said. “No paradox is involved here. The record of our early explorers is unsurpassed. Those men managed to survive on every planet where human survival was even remotely possible, against overwhelming odds, by sheer grit and tenacity. The planets called for their every resource and they rose to meet the challenge. They stand as an eternal monument to the toughness and adaptability of Homo sapiens.”
“Then why did you stop using them?”
“Because our problems on Earth changed,” Haskell told him. “In the early days, the exploration of space was an adventure, a scientific achievement, a defense measure, a symbol. But that passed. Earth’s overpopulation trend continued—explosively. Millions spilled into relatively empty lands like Brazil, New Guinea and Australia. But the population explosion quickly filled them. In major cities, the population panic point was reached and produced the Weekend Riots. And the population, bolstered by geriatrics and a further sharp decrease in infant mortality, continued to grow.”
Haskell rubbed his forehead. “It was a mess. But the ethics of population increase aren’t my business. All we at the Board knew was, we had to have new land fast. We needed planets which—unlike Mars and Venus—would be rapidly self-supporting. Places to which we could siphon millions, while the scientists and politicians on Earth tried to straighten things out. We had to open these planets to colonization as rapidly as possible. And that meant speeding up the initial exploratory process.”
“I know all that,” Perceveral said. “But I still don’t see why you stopped using the optimum explorer type.”
“Isn’t it obvious? We were looking for places where ordinary people could settle and survive. Our optimum explorer type was not ordinary. Quite the contrary, he almost approximated a new species. And he was no judge of ordinary survival conditions. For example, there are bleak, dreary, rain-swept little planets that the average colonist finds depressing to the point of insanity; but our optimum explorer is too sound to be disturbed by climatic monotony. Germs which devastate thousands give him, at most, a bad time for a while. Dangers which can push a colony to the brink of disaster, our optimum explorer simply evades. He can’t assess these things in everyday terms. They simply don’t touch him.”
“I’m beginning to see,” Perceveral said.
“Now the best way,” Haskell said, “would have been to attack these planets in stages. First an explorer, then a basic research team, then a trial colony composed largely of psychologists and sociologists, then a research group to interpret the findings of the other groups, and so forth. But there’s never enough time or money for all that. We need those colonies right now, not in fifty years.”
Mr. Haskell paused and looked hard at Perceveral. “So, you see, we must have immediate knowledge as to whether a group of ordinary people could live and thrive on any new planet. That’s why we changed our qualifications for explorers.”
Perceveral nodded. “Ordinary explorers for ordinary people. There’s just one thing, however.”
“Yes?”
“I don’t know how well you know my background…”
“Quite well,” Haskell assured him.
“Then you might have noticed that I have certain tendencies toward—well, a certain accident-proneness. To tell you the honest truth, I have a hard time surviving right here on Earth.”
“I know,” Mr. Haskell said pleasantly.
“Then how would I make out on an alien planet? And why would you want me?”
Mr. Haskell looked slightly ill at ease. “Well, you stated our position wrongly when you said ‘ordinary explorers for ordinary people.’ It isn’t that simple. A colony is composed of thousands, often millions of people, who vary considerably in their survival potentialities. Humanity and the law state that all of them must have a fighting chance. The people themselves must be reassured before they’ll leave Earth. We must convince them—and the law—and ourselves—that even the weakest will have a chance for survival.”
“Go on,” Perceveral said.
“Therefore,” Haskell said quickly, “some years ago we stopped using the optimum-survival explorer, and began using the minimum-survival explorer.”
Perceveral sat for a while digesting this information. “So you want me because any place I can live in, anyone can live in.”
“That more or less sums up our thinking on the problem,” Haskell said, smiling genially.
“But what would my chances be?”
“Some of our minimum-survival explorers have done very well.”
“And others?”
“There are hazards, of course,” Haskell admitted. “And aside from the potential dangers of the planet itself, there are other risks involved in the very nature of the experiment. I can’t even tell you what they are, since that would destroy our only control element on the minimum-survival test. I simply tell you that they are present.”
“Not a very good outlook,” Perceveral said.
“Perhaps not. But think of the rewards if you won through! You would, in effect, be the founding father of a colony! Your value as an expert would be immeasurable. You would have a permanent place in the life of the community. And equally important, you might be able to dispel certain insidious self-doubts concerning your place in the scheme of things.”