There was time now—plenty of time on
this strange, dark planet—for those erudite
exiles from frozen Earth to ponder the
value of man's accumulated knowledge.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories January 1952.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was the hour before dawn. In the middle of the night the big shiphad landed on the new planet, the satellite of the sun Proxima. Nowthey sat in the dark waiting, and they talked.
"I wish we hadn't killed them," Rossiter said softly. His profile wasfaintly visible against the diffused light of the stars. "It's a badsign, a bad start for a new life."
"They attacked us," Bernard answered quickly.
"Two spears, against forty blasters and stun guns?" Rossiter laughed."An attack! We should have met them with stunners at low charge. ButMcNess ordered us to blast. The woman and the baby stick in my craw."
"All our nerves were on edge," Bernard answered thoughtfully. "I know Iwas afraid when we first stepped out of the ship. There was somethingterrifying about air, and space, and the sky. But you're right, ofcourse. We shouldn't have been ordered to blast." The two men weresitting a little apart, but there was a murmur of many low voicesaround them as the others from the Elpis waited and talked.
"I wonder why they attacked us?" Bernard went on. "Primitives usuallyrun. We must have been an unbelievable sight to them, spiraling downout of the sky."
"I don't know," Rossiter replied wearily. "And we can't ask them.They're dead, all five of them. That wind's cold." He was shivering.
"You could go back inside the ship," Bernard said half-humorously.
"I'm sick of the Elpis. We all are. Eight years of it—it's too much.We'll get used to the wind, I suppose. There's going to be lots ofwind, with so much water and only this one land mass on our new world.It's not like Earth."
Bernard made an involuntary movement. Then he relaxed. "I suppose thetaboo is lifted now that we've landed," he said heavily. "We can talkabout Earth again, and wonder, and speculate. I wonder what they'redoing now on Earth."
"Starving. Freezing. Burrowing into the ground for coal and warmth.They must be living a good many hundred feet down now, those that areleft. And the seas are frozen. There's an ice sheet from pole to pole.
"We astronomers paid you back finely, didn't we, Bernard, for allthe appropriations you got us in committee meeting. You were alwaysgenerous with us and the physicists. But when the catastrophe happened,the mystery, the debacle, we couldn't help. We didn't know the answer.We didn't know."
"I remember—" Bernard answered, choking a little, "—I remember theday before it happened. There was a report on my desk about some tribeof Indians high in the Andes. The report said that the parents had beenpersuaded to send their children to the school in the foothills, thateven among the adults illiteracy and ignorance were being eliminated.It was the last of the ignorant tribes.
"I looked up at the sign over my desk and read the motto, 'Thereis nothing unknowable. There are only things not yet known,' and Ithought, 'Yes, we're getting near our goal. We've conquered ignoranceand superstition and illiteracy. And as time goes on we'll know moreand more things. The area of the unknown will constantly diminish.Knowledge is like an expanding circle of light that eats into thedarkness.' Then the darkness came. And you didn't know."
"We know what happened well enough," Rossiter corrected. He soundedolder than his fifty-two years. "I was at the observ