"WE HAVE AUTHORITY, SIR, UNDER THE OFFICAL SECRETS ACT." politicians to pollute my new moon!" "Steady there, steady," snarled the general, holding the photograph of the crater in the air as though it were a hand grenade. The Prime Minister laughed. "So don't you think, Kermidge," he said quietly, "that there is a pleasant irony in this turn of events? Don't misunderstand me; the Americans are, as they always will be, our allies. That goes without saying. But in a way, we do have a friendly little score to settle, don't you think?" "In the world of science there is always an element of quite innocuous rivalry," Henry said as pleasantly as he could. "I wasn't referring to the World of Science, Kermidge. I was referring to history. We are taxing our ingenuity to the limit to keep over sixty million people fully employed and well-fed on this tiny island. Naturally our rules are stringent, our taxation inhuman, and naturally we appear to other nations as somewhat avaricious in our methods and as almost ludicrously inflexible in our regulations. Can this give us pleasure? We, who gave the world so much." "We took a lot, too," said Henry. "I must ask you to listen to me without interruption," replied the Prime Minister with a trace of irritation. He had to put up with this sort of thing from the opposition all year round. There was no reason, he felt, why he should put up with contradictions in his own dining room and in his own cigar smoke." The Americans are most generous people, but they can afford to be. A man with one hundred pounds in the bank is making the same financial sacrifice by giving a penny to a beggar as is a man with one million pounds giving four pounds, three shillings, and four pence to a beggar." These statistics were so glib that they obviously formed a staple part of the minister's argument. "The widow's mite," said Henry. The Prime Minister gave him a withering look which dissolved rapidly into a winning smile. Politics taught a man self control better than any other profession. "Call it what you will, the facts are clear. We need space. We need it to expand, not only to survive, but also to preserve our national character, our even temper, our serenity." "Even Hitler had better reasons than that," Henry heard himself saying. The Prime Minister was unruffled. "Would we ever attack our neighbors to achieve this thing? Never. But." and he leaned forward searchingly- "once there is space, who knows? We've never shied at adventure. And think of it, rolling across on the moon, or on other planets. Untold mineral wealth. Kermidge, we are in the shoes of Columbus, with the added proof of the unknown continent's existence. Look out the window. You will see it. And we have the ship to get us there." "You want to paint the moon red," murmured Henry. "You want a moon worthy of Kipling on which the sun never sets." "Rather well put," said the general, now that the conversation had taken an understandable turn. "Exactly! And why not?" cried the Prime Minister. "Nothing in history is ever final. History is like a sea, constantly changing, a patchwork of phrases, a mosaic of impermanent achievements. We were an occupied people once. The Saxons, Danes, and the Romans had their will on us. Then we rose, with determination, and conquered the greatest empire the world has ever known. Times changed, and with them the conception of empire. Whether we like it or not, we now live in an Era of Liberality, in which every tiny spot republic has its own voice in the United Nations. We, in our great wisdom and experience, must sit silently while Guatemala lays claim to Honduras. This kind of thing 16 taxes our endurance and dignity to the utmost, but need it last? Must we accept the defeat of Burgoyne as final? We say we lose every battle but the last. Has the last battle been fought?" He dropped his voice from a rhetorical level to the intimacy of sincerety. "Please understand me. I would not advocate war, especially not with the United States. That would be unthinkable and stupid. In any event, we would lose it. However, I, for one, do not accept Burgoyne's defeat as final." "Burgoyne was a damned fool," added the general gratuitously. "Let us reach the moon first. This would not only give us the space we need, it would also give us the enormous moral ascendancy necessary to resume leadership of the free world. There can be no doubt whatever that Russia is working rapidly towards the results you have so brilliantly attained. She is, as it were, breathing down our neck. To share our information with the Americans would only waste valuable time at this juncture, and by the time we had put our mutual scheme into operation, the Americans would take all the credit. They are too flushed with their own technological efficiency to admit that anyone can achieve anything without stealing their plans. Kermidge, we have made our gesture. We have sent them Sir Giles Parish. Let them do the rest themselves." There was a pause. Henry began speaking low, slowly, trying hard to control his voice. "I hold no brief for American scientists, or for Russian scientists, or for British scientists, for that matter. I have friends and enemies in all camps, since to the true man of science there are no frontiers, only advances; there are no nations, only humanity. This may sound subversive to you, but it is true, and I will explain, as temperately as I can, why it is true, what has made it true. You, sir, talked of Columbus. In his day, men for all their culture, fine painting, architecture, humanism, the rest, were still relatively savage. Life was cheap. Death was the penalty for a slight misdemeanor, slavery the penalty for an accident of birth. And why? Because there was space to conquer, horizons full of promise, conquest was the order of the day. The avid fingers of Britain and France and Spain stretched out into the incomprehensible unknown. Then, abruptly, all was found, all was unravelled. Germany and Italy attempted to put the clock back, and behaved as everyone once behaved, and were deemed criminal for no other reason than that they were out of date and that their internal persecutions were carried against men of culture, and white men at that, instead of against their colonial subjects. They were condemned by mankind, and rightly so, because they were hungry for glory at a time when other nations were licking their chops, sated by a meal which lasted for centuries. And why did we all become civilized? Because, sir, there was nothing left to conquer, nothing left to seize without the threat of a general war; there was no space left." Henry mopped his brow, and continued. "Now what has happened? We have become conscious of space again. Cheated out of horizons here on earth, we have looked upward, and found new horizons there. What will that do to us? It will put us back to pre-Columbian days. It will be the signal for military conquest, for religious wars. There will be crusades for a Catholic moon, a Protestant moon, a Muslim moon, a Jewish moon. If there are inhabitants up there, we will persecute them mercilessly until we learn of their value. You can't feel any affection for a creature you have never seen before, especially if it seems ugly to our standards. The United Nations will lose control, because its enemy is the smell of space in the nostrils of the military. Life will become cheap again, and so will glory. We will put the clock back to the days of darkness, and our growing pains in the stratosphere will be at least as painful as we suffered here on earth; I WANT NO PART OF IT!" The Prime Minister looked at him with genuine affection and offered him another cigar, which he accepted automatically, with a shaking hand. "You are looking at the world through the eyes of a historian, but the world is not run by historians. It is a luxury we cannot afford. We can't study events from such a comfortable distance, nor can we allow (continued) 17