DHAR Ry sat alone in hisroom, meditating. Fromoutside the door he caughta thought wave equivalent to aknock, and, glancing at the door,he willed it to slide open.
It opened. “Enter, my friend,” hesaid. He could have projected theidea telepathically; but with onlytwo persons present, speech wasmore polite.
Ejon Khee entered. “You areup late tonight, my leader,” he said.
“Yes, Khee. Within an hour theEarth rocket is due to land, and Iwish to see it. Yes, I know, it will[p149] land a thousand miles away, if theircalculations are correct. Beyondthe horizon. But if it lands eventwice that far the flash of theatomic explosion should be visible.And I have waited long for firstcontact. For even though no Earthmanwill be on that rocket, it willstill be first contact—for them. Ofcourse our telepath teams havebeen reading their thoughts formany centuries, but—this will bethe first physical contact betweenMars and Earth.”
Khee made himself comfortableon one of the low chairs. “True,”he said. “I have not followed recentreports too closely, though. Whyare they using an atomic warhead?I know they suppose our planet isuninhabited, but still—”
“They will watch the flashthrough their lunar telescopes andget a—what do they call it?—aspectroscopic analysis. That willtell them more than they know now(or think they know; much of it iserroneous) about the atmosphereof our planet and the compositionof its surface. It is—call it a sightingshot, Khee. They’ll be here inperson within a few oppositions.And then—”
Mars was holding out, waitingfor Earth to come. What was leftof Mars, that is; this one small cityof about nine hundred beings. Thecivilization of Mars was older thanthat of Earth, but it was a dyingone. This was what remained of it:one city, nine hundred people.They were waiting for Earth tomake contact, for a selfish reasonand for an unselfish one.
MARTIAN civilization had developedin a quite differentdirection from that of Earth. It haddeveloped no important knowledgeof the physical sciences, no technology.But it had developed socialsciences to the point wherethere had not been a single crime,let alone a war, on Mars for fiftythousand years. And it had developedfully the parapsychologicalsciences of the mind, which Earthwas just beginning to discover.
Mars could teach Earth much.How to avoid crime and war to beginwith. Beyond those simplethings lay telepathy, telekinesis,empathy….
And Earth would, Mars hoped,teach them something even morevaluable to Mars: how, by scienceand technology—which it was toolate for Mars to develop now, evenif they had the type of minds whichwould enable them to developthese things—to restore and rehabilitatea dying planet, so thatan otherwise dying race might liveand multiply again.
Each plane