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With an effort, however, with close attention and unremitting care, we can maintain our ecology, were it not for the matter of trade and travel.
Each Settlement produces something that other Settlements would like to have, in the matter of food, of art, of ingenious devices. What’s more, we must trade with Earth as well, and many Settlers want to visit Earth and see some of the things we don’t have in the Settlements. Earthpeople can’t realize how exciting it is for us to see a vast blue horizon, or to look out upon a true ocean, or to see an ice-capped mountain.
Therefore, there is a constant coming and going among the Settlements and Earth. But each Settlement has its own ecological balance; and, of course, Earth has, even these days, an ecology that is enormously and impossibly rich by Settlement standards.
We have our insects that are acclimated and under control, but what if strange insects are casually and unintentionally introduced from another Settlement or from Earth?
A strange insect, a strange worm, even a strange rodent might totally upset our ecology, inflict damage on our native plants and animals. On numerous occasions, in fact, a Settlement has had to take extraordinary measures to eliminate an unwanted life-form. For months every effort had to be taken to track down every last insect of some species that, in its own Settlement, is harmless, or that, on Earth, can keep its depredations local.
Even worse, what if pathogenic parasites-bacteria, viruses, protozoa-are introduced? What if they produce diseases against which another Settlement and, of course, Earth itself, have developed a certain immunity, but one against which the Settlement that suffers the invasion is helpless. For a while, the entire effort of the Settlement must go into the preparation or importation of sera designed to confer immunity, or to fight the disease once it is established. Deaths, of course, occur invariably.
Naturally, there is always an outcry when this happens and a demand for more controls. As a result, no one from another Settlement, and no one returning to his own Settlement from a trip elsewhere, can be allowed to enter without a complete search of his baggage, a complete analysis of his bodily fluids, and a certain period of quarantine to see if some undetected disease is developing.
What’s more, rightly or wrongly, the inhabitants of the Settlements persist in viewing Earthpeople themselves as particularly dangerous. It is on Earth where the most undesirable life-forms and parasites are to be found; it is Earthpeople who are most likely to be infested, and there are parties on all the Settlements who support the notion-sometimes quite vehemently-of breaking all contacts between the Settlements and Earth.
That is the danger of which I want to warn Earthpeople. Distrust-and even hatred-of Earthpeople is constantly growing among the Settlers.
As long as Earth is only a few tens or hundreds of thousands of miles away, it is useless to talk of breaking off all contact. The lure and attraction of Earth is too great. Therefore, there is now talk-it is only a whisper, so far, but it will grow louder, I assure you-of leaving the Solar system altogether.
Each Settlement can be outfitted with a propulsive mechanism, making use of microfusion motors. Solar energy will suffice us while we are still among the planets and we will pick up small comets as a source of hydrogen fuel, in the process of leaving all the planets behind, when the Sun becomes too distant to be of use to us.
Each Settlement will say good-bye to Earth, then, and launch itself as an independent world into the unimaginable wastes between the stars. And who knows, someday a million years hence a Settlement may find an Earth-like world, empty and waiting, that it can populate.
But that is what I must warn Earth of. The Settlements will someday leave, and if you build others, they will eventually leave, too, and you will be left alone. And yet, in a way, your descendants will be expanding into, and populating, the entire Galaxy. You may find that a consoling thought as you watch them disappear.
Battle-Hymn
There didn't seem much room for hope. Sibelius Hopkins put it into the simplest words. “We’ve got to have Martian consent, and we won’t get it, that’s all.”
The gloom among the others was thick enough to impede breathing. “We should never have granted the colonists autonomy,” said Ralph Colodny.
“Agreed,” said Hopkins. “Now who wants to volunteer to go back in time twenty-eight years and change history. Mars has the sovereign right to decide how its territory is to be used, and there’s nothing to be done about it.”
“We might choose another site, “ said Ben Devers, who was the youngest of the group and hadn’t yet worked himself to the proper pitch of cynicism.
“No other site,” said Hopkins flatly. “If you don’t know that experiments with hyperspace are dangerous, go back to school. You can’t do them on Earth, and even the Moon is far too built up. The space settlements are too small by three orders of magnitude and it’s not possible to reach anything beyond Mars for at least twenty years. But Mars is perfect. It’s still practically empty. It has a low surface gravity and a thin atmosphere. It’s cold. Everything’s perfect for hyperspatial flight-except the colonists.”
“You can never tell,” said young Devers. “People are fu
“How do we play it right,” said Hopkins. “The opposition has blanketed Mars with an old hillbilly tune that has the words:
“No, no, a thousand times, no! You ca
He gri
“What tune?”
“A large percentage of the Martian colonists are of French extraction. We might play on their ethnic consciousness.”
“What ethnic consciousness? Everyone speaks English now.”
“That doesn’t stop ethnic consciousness,” said Devers. “If you play the old national anthem of France, they’ll all drip nostalgia. It’s a battle-hymn, you know, and battle-hymns always stir the blood, especially now that there aren’t any wars.”
Hopkins said, “But the words don’t mean anything any more. Do you remember them?”
“Yes,” said Devers. “Some-
He sang them in a clear tenor voice.
Hopkins said, “Not one Martian in a thousand will know what that means.”
Devers said, “Who cares? Play it anyway. Even if they don’t understand the words they will know it’s the old battle hymn of France and that will stir them up. Besides, the tune is a wi
“Maybe you have something there,” said Hopkins. “ And if we accompany it with some strong slogan in different changes, ‘Humanity to the stars!,’ ‘Reach out for a star,’ ‘Faster than light is the slowest we can go.’ And always with that tune.”
Colodny said, “You know, ‘la jour de gloire’ means ‘the day of glory,’ I think. We can use that phrase, ‘the glory day when we reach the stars.’ If we say ‘glory day’ often enough, maybe the Martians will vote, ‘Yes.”‘
“It sounds too good to be true,” said Hopkins, gloomily, “but I really don’t see that there’s any other choice we have right now. We can try it and see if it does any good.”
That was the begi
There was no question that the stirring rhythm of the battle-hymn was having its effect. It roared back at the simple negation sing-song and Hopkins had to admit that from zero chance, the “yes” vote was becoming a possibility; from sure defeat, it was begi
Hopkins said, “The trouble is, though, we have nothing direct. Their song, silly though it is, has the advantage of saying, “No-No!-No! Ours is just a tune which is catchy and is filling the minds of many, but with what? La jour de gloire?”
Devers smiled and said, “Why not wait for the election? “ After all, it was his idea.
They did.
What happened on election day? Did the negative vote win or the positive? And, in either case, why?
The best reason counts. You can win if you have the vote come out negative or positive.
On the evening of election day, Hopkins found himself almost unable to talk. The vote had been ru
The colonists of Mars were voting to allow their planet to be used for the work that would eventually send human beings to the stars.
Hopkins said, finally, “What happened? What did we do right? “
“It was the tune,” said Devers, smiling his satisfaction. “I had it figured right, but I didn’t want to explain my notion because I didn’t want it to get out to the other side somehow. Not that I don’t trust everyone here, but I didn’t want the tune neutralized in some clever way.”
“What was there about the tune that made so much difference?” demanded Hopkins.
“Well, it did have a subliminal message. Maybe the colonists no longer knew enough French to get the meaning of the words, but they had to know the name of the battle-hymn. That name rang through their minds each time they heard the tune; each time they hummed it.”
“So what?”
“So this,” said Devers, gri