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CHAPTER FOUR

If the findings of the first Daedalus mission were lumped in with our findings so far, then the Attica colony could be identified as “normal.” The others we had visited were, in one way or another, “aberrant”—affected by unique factors. The pattern of slow and steady decline—or, at least, failure to progress—which we found here was a repeat of something Kilner had found no less than four times. Forewarned of the probability, we had been charged with the task of finding out why. We knew that it wouldn’t be a simple answer.

Before we had set sail, Nathan had warned me not to underestimate the importance of Attica in our series of scheduled stops. If we were to present a good case for the resumption of the space program, then we would have to take into account all six of the worlds at which we were supposed to call. Some of the situations we’d found looked very bad, some looked passably good. But each of the first four, he reminded me, was a unique case. Each of them might be set aside as atypical if the argument got very tight. But not Attica. Attica was typical. There were a lot of colonies like this one. If the debate were to come anywhere near deadlock—if the vote ran close—then our performance on Attica might well be the deciding factor. Here, our findings could be generalized.

Our joint brief was to discover whether the failure of such colonies as this one was accountable to biological or sociological reasons. And whichever it was, we were supposed to come up with some plan of action which might avert future difficulties of the same kind.

It was easy enough to obtain a historical map of the failure. The first few good years had brought in a good supply of food—enough to support more than half the colony in work that was not primarily productive—like building houses and locating resources: coal, iron, copper, oil, salt, etc., etc. All these things were accessible, and the colonists even knew where to look, thanks to the survey reports. But resources can’t be exploited with bare hands. To secure each supply the others were necessary. To get at the coal you have to have the iron, and to work the iron ore you have to have the coal. You have to work your way into the feedback loop, a little at a time. To begin with, everything is difficult—even making soap and brick and glass and cloth. It all has to be done the hard way. It continues to be difficult for many years, but with every small triumph it gets a little easier, and then easier, and then easier still...and then progress lifts off along an exponential curve.

In theory.

It had happened that way on Floria. It was happening on Wildeblood. But in both cases the process had received some kind of boost—unforeseen and with hidden snags. So far we had not found a single case where the takeoff had happened without some kind of extra assistance.

The basic needs of a colony are simple: machines and power. Iron and fuel. With these, you can make everything else you need. But to begin with you have just one kind of machine—body machines, human and animal. Muscle power is the only significant energy reserve you can exploit, with what aid you can co-opt from wind, water and burning wood. The extent to which muscle power can be devoted to the difficult business of making the first machines and finding the first supplies of fuel is controlled by a simple equation: the amount of manpower required to produce enough food to maintain each man. If every man has to work full-time just to supply his own needs there can never be progress. If one man’s efforts can supply the food needed by a thousand, it doesn’t take long to reach takeoff.

In the beginning, the colony’s food-making was efficient. Efficient enough. But after ten years it began to decline, and it continued to decline, as the local life-system reacted against the invasion. At a time when more and more manpower should have been liberated year by year in the cause of progress, year by year more and more manpower had to be returned to the farms and the fields, to clear and plant new land because the land already cleared was failing in its yield, to fight a long, long battle on the land already under cultivation. Insecticides became more important than iron; the selection of crops to find strains which could cope with the responses of the local life-system became more important than coal. The fight for survival from one year to the next, in all it entailed, became the sole aim. The fight for progress was stillborn.

Those were the ecological reasons for failure.

But ecological crises are reflected in social priorities. In the beginning, the colony had an efficient governing body, capable of coordinating the efforts of the whole colony. They could ask for men to work for the benefit of the whole and be answered. But as circumstances changed, that became more and more difficult. As it became more difficult for men to support themselves it became more difficult to ask them to work for the whole rather than for themselves. As the fight for survival became more basic the holistic qualities of the colony were steadily eroded. Priorities retreated, as men stopped working for the whole in favor of working directly for themselves or for the local groups where mutual cooperation in working the same land was necessary. As there were fewer men to spare the category of administrators had to shrink. The government itself had to fragment, especially as the colony had to expand in all directions to continually bring new land under cultivation. The colony dispersed and broke up, with each group becoming insular, trading with others but united only in the medium of exchange which they used.

Put simply, the government lost control. They could no longer plan the long-term development of the colony. They could no longer command such spare manpower as there was, because it owed its first loyalty to the local community. The civil service, such as it had ever been, shrank in numbers and became all but impotent. Taxes were collected, and there was always money to hire men for particular projects, but there were few men to be hired. The administrators of the colony had to be very selective indeed in deciding what should be done and when—what kind of “collective endeavors” the colony as a whole (a ghost of a whole) could embark upon.

That was why there had been only four attempts in more than a hundred years to build ocean-going ships. That was why the New Hope was a wooden ship entirely dependent upon the wind. The colony on Lambda had the knowledge and—theoretically—the technology to build a ship of steel, powered by steam, but it would have been too expensive to do so. Too expensive since materials were in extremely short supply because of the extremely short supply of manpower. Wood was cheap, and so was the wind. The crew wasn’t...and neither had been the men who labored to build the ship.

Now, because of its disintegration, it would take a long, long time to bring the colony together again. With the Daedalus and its laboratory at their disposal, the government of the colony could turn the tide of the agricultural problems. We could fight the pests, remodel the crops, bring the land back to life. But we couldn’t remake the way of thinking that had come into the colony. We couldn’t restore the sense of collective identity. We couldn’t break down the insularity which had developed in the scattered elements of the colony, or the resentment they had developed with regard to taxation and the “parasitic” civil service which existed on those taxes. When the corner was turned, and things began to get better, it seemed likely that each local community would go its own way, that there would be mistrust and hostility and conflict between them. Progress would take care of itself—manpower not released to the central government would be released into entrepreneurial activities. All that would be lost would be what the colony had started out with: unity and purpose.

And that would be bad—or, to take the cynical view, it would appear to the UN to be bad. Because the whole point of sending colonies out from Earth was to get away from mistrust, hostility and conflict. There was a very considerable body of opinion on Earth which said that man had no right to pollute the galaxy until he had solved his problems on Earth. If we brought back evidence that the colonies were inescapably reproducing all those features which on Earth were considered evils, then a very large brick would be knocked out of the edifice of argument by which we might seek to resume the colony project.

I was already certain in my own mind that the ecological problems here could be solved. I was prepared to predict that another Daedalus in a hundred years’ time would find the colony a lot better off in terms of its technological development and its agricultural performance. I had felt guilty about leaving so much of the work to Conrad and Linda, but I wouldn’t have done so if I hadn’t been absolutely sure that there were no major difficulties.

But Nathan Parrick wasn’t in the least convinced that the social situation was—or could be made—satisfactory. Satisfactory, that is, to the UN.

“It’s important that this trip should succeed,” he had said, on the night before the New Hope set sail. “Important to the colony, but maybe even more important to us. It will allow us to show in our reports—and to argue when the time comes—that the colony is still capable of acting as a whole, that even in the face of adversity it is trying to widen its horizons. Crossing oceans in wooden ships is the kind of gesture that people appreciate—symbolic of triumph over circumstance. This trip has a heroic dimension that the government—and we—will be able to exploit. If it succeeds. The failure of the earlier trips will add extra mystique to its triumph.”

He always talked like that. The symptoms of a perverted sense of values. But I knew enough to realize that what he said was probably true enough, however perverted. To him, almost everything we encountered was advertising copy. Pro or anti. The voyage of the New Hope was not only no exception, it was an example par excellence. It was romantic, nostalgic, impressive.

“What would you like us to find at the other end?” I had asked, dryly.

“The aliens, of course,” he said. “A new continent is fair to middling. Echoes of Columbus...it has its mythical resonances. But the aliens add something else. They represent the face of the unknown. If anything can jerk this colony out of its introverted priorities it’s contact with aliens. There’s nothing else that will restore to them any real sense of collective identity or solidarity.”

“Perhaps you’d like me to arrange a war?” I asked. “An alien invasion of Lambda. There’s nothing like a common enemy to unite people, so the cliché says. A good war fires national enthusiasm like nothing else.”

“It’s a stupid cliché,” observed Nathan. “The so-called national spirit that emerges at the time of war is itself nothing more than a propaganda device. It isn’t real. It’s an illusion conjured up by the government in the hope of forcing national spirit upon the people. The last thing we need is war. War with the aliens is exactly what the let’s-not-export-our-sins-to-the-galaxy brigade need to sink the colony project forever. And at a more mundane level, if the aliens did invade Lambda—assuming, that is, that the aliens have any political entity capable of managing a war—they’d almost certainly conquer it with no trouble.”

“There is that,” I agreed, sarcastically.

“What we need,” said Nathan, “and what the colony needs, of course, is some kind of symbol of peaceful cooperation. Hands across the sea. A meeting of minds. That sort of thing.”

“You want me to bring back a peace treaty and make political speeches? Maybe a pipe of peace? Gifts of elephants and exotic silks?”

“If you could manage it,” he said, with equanimity, “yes.”

With such ideas in mind—even as kitschy metaphors—we had sailed with optimism in our hearts. That was the way the voyage had been set up—a gran geste, a publicity stunt.

Now, a couple of days from shore, I didn’t feel nearly so good. In fact, I didn’t feel good at all. Neither did Nathan. I reported in every morning by radio, and explained the situation. There was never much news beyond the fact that things were getting steadily and irrevocably worse. Nathan had run out of encouraging suggestions weeks before. If he’d been that way inclined he’d be praying for miracles by now.

I told him what we’d decided about cutting our trip short.

“It means no hands across the sea,” I told him. “No peace treaties. If we even see the aliens it’ll be a quick hello/goodbye.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “Salvage what you can. Better a hint of success than a total failure. Come back with what you can, but at all costs come back.”

“They made a good story out of Mutiny on the Bounty,” I commented.

“Sure,” he said. “But Mutiny on the Santa Maria would be a pretty sick story compared with Columbus Discovers America. Be careful.”

“If only,” I said, as I signed off, “my being careful was all that was required.”