Return From the Stars

by Stanisław Lem

  After an hour, I was not so sure of myself. Starck employed arguments difficult to refute. He based them on the meager data brought back by the two expeditions that had preceded ours; we had called them the “pinpricks,” for they were probes over a distance of only several light years. Starck drew up statistical tables of the probability distribution or “habitation density” of the entire galaxy. The probability of encountering intelligent beings, he concluded, was one in twenty. In other words, for every twenty expeditions — within a radius of a thousand light years — one expedition had a chance of discovering an inhabited planet. This conclusion, however, odd as it may sound, was considered by Starck to be quite encouraging; he demolished the idea of establishing cosmic contacts in a later part of his exposition.

  I bridled, reading what an author, unknown to me, had written about expeditions like ours — that is, initiated before the discovery of the Mitke effect and the phenomenon of parastatics — because he regarded them as absurd. But I learned from him, in black and white, that, in principle at least, it was possible to construct a ship that could reach an acceleration on the order of 1,000, perhaps even 2,000 g’s. The crew of such a craft would feel no acceleration or braking; on board, the gravitation would be constant, equal to a fraction of Earth’s. Thus, Starck admitted that flights to the ends of the galaxy, and even to other galaxies — the transgalactodromia of which Olaf had dreamed — were possible, and possible in the span of a single lifetime. At a speed a tiny fraction of a percent less than the speed of light, a crew would age by several or a couple of dozen months in the time it took to reach the depths of the metagalaxy and return to Earth. But in that time not hundreds but millions of years would have elapsed on Earth. The civilization found by those who returned would not be able to assimilate them. It would be easier for a Neanderthal to adapt to life in our time. That was not all. The fate of a group of people was not the issue here. They were the envoys of humanity. Humanity posed — through them — a question, to which they were to bring back an answer. If the answer concerned problems connected with the level of development of the civilization, then humanity would surely obtain it before their return. Because from the posing of the question to the arrival of the answer, millions of years would have passed. The answer, moreover, would be out of date, defunct, for they would be bringing news of the state of the other civilization at the time when they had reached that far shore of the stellar sea. During their journey back, however, that other world would not be standing still, it would move forward a million, two million, three million years. The questions and answers, then, would miss one another, would suffer hundred-century delays, which would nullify them and make any exchange of experiences, values, and ideas impossible. Futile. The astronauts were thus purveyors of dead information, and their work an act of utter and irreversible separation from human history; space expeditions were an unprecedented and expensive — the most expensive possible — desertion of the realm of historical change. And for such a fantasy, a never profitable, always futile madness, Earth was to labor with the utmost effort and give up her best people?

  The book ended with a chapter on the possibilities of exploration with the aid of robots. Robots, too, would transmit dead information, but this approach would at least avoid human sacrifices.

  And there was a three-page appendix, an attempt to answer the question of the possible existence of travel faster than light, and even of the so-called instantaneous cosmic conjunction, that is, the crossing of space with little or no passage of time, thanks to still-undiscovered properties of matter and space, through a sort of “hyperjump"; this theory, or, rather, speculation, not based on any facts to speak of, had a name — teletaxis. Starck believed that he had an argument to cancel this last remaining hope. If such a thing existed, he maintained, undoubtedly it would have been discovered by one of the more highly developed civilizations of our or another galaxy. In which case, the representatives of that civilization would have been able, in an incredibly short time, to visit in succession every planetary system and sun, including our own. But Earth had not experienced any such visit so far, which was proof that this lightning-fast method of penetrating the cosmos could be imagined but never turned into reality.

  I went back to the house stunned, with the almost childish feeling that I had been personally injured. Starck, a man whom I had never met, had dealt me a blow as no one else ever had. My clumsy summary does not convey the ruthless logic of his reasoning. I do not know how I got to my room, how I changed my clothes — at one point I felt like having a cigarette and realized that I was smoking one already, sitting hunched on my bed as if I were waiting for something. True: lunch. Lunch for three. The fact was, I was afraid of people. I had not admitted this to myself, but that was why I had agreed so hurriedly to share the villa with strangers; perhaps anticipation of their arrival was even the reason for my unnatural haste, as if I had been working to get ready for their presence, to initiate myself, through the books, into the mysteries of the new life. I would not have considered this in the morning of that day, but after Starck’s book my nervousness suddenly fell away from me. From the reading apparatus I removed the seedlike bluish crystal, and in awe placed it on the table. This was what had sent me reeling. For the first time since my return I thought of Thurber and Gimma. I would have to see them. Maybe the book was right, but we represented a different truth. No one had the whole truth. That was not possible. I was roused from my trance by the musical signal. I straightened my sweater and went downstairs, in control of myself, already calmer. The sun streamed through the vines of the veranda; the hall, as always in the afternoon, was filled with a diffuse greenish glow. On the table in the dining room lay three settings. As I entered, the door opposite opened and they appeared. They were tall by present standards. We met in the middle of the room, like diplomats. I gave my name, we shook hands and sat at the table.

  A numbness possessed me, like that of a boxer who has picked himself up off the floor after a technical knockout. From my depression, as from a theater box, I looked at the young couple. The girl was probably not even twenty. I was to conclude, later, that she did not lend herself to description; she certainly would not resemble a photograph of herself — and even on the second day I had no idea what kind of nose she had, straight or upturned. The way she held out her hand for a plate delighted me like something precious, a surprise that did not happen every day; she smiled rarely and with composure, as if slightly distrustful of herself, as if she felt she was insufficiently self-possessed, too merry by nature or maybe too willful, and she judiciously tried to remedy this, but her strictness toward herself was constantly being undermined, she knew of it, and it even amused her.

  She drew my gaze, and I had to fight this. Every moment I was staring at her, at her hair, which challenged the wind; I bowed my head over my plate, I glanced furtively, reaching for a dish, so that twice I nearly knocked over a vase of flowers; in other words, I made a perfect ass of myself. But it was as if they did not see me at all. Their eyes were only for each other, and invisible threads of comprehension linked them. During the entire time I am sure we exchanged no more than twenty words, about how the weather was good, the place was nice, perfect for a vacation.

  Marger was no more than a head shorter than I but was as slender as a boy, although he must have been thirty. He wore dark clothing, was blond, and had a long face and a high forehead. At first he seemed exceptionally handsome, but that was only when he kept his face immobile. He hardly said a word to his wife; when he did, usually with a smile, the conversation consisted of allusions and hints, completely cryptic to an outsider, and he became almost ugly. Not ugly, exactly. It was as if his facial proportions deteriorated; the mouth bent a little to the left and lost its expression, and even his smile became neutral, although he had beautiful white teeth. And when he was animated, the eyes were too blue, the jaw too pronounced, and altogether he was like an impersonal model of masculine charm, out of a fashion magazine.


  In other words, from the first I felt an aversion to him.

  The girl — I could not think of her as his wife, no matter how I tried — did not have pretty eyes or lips, or unusual hair; she had nothing unusual. She was in her entirety unusual. With one like her, carrying a tent on her back, I could cross the Rockies twice, I thought. Why mountains, exactly? I didn’t know. She brought to mind nights spent in pine forests, the labor of scaling a cliff, the seashore, where there is nothing but the sand and the waves. Was this only because she wore no lipstick? I felt her smile, felt it across the table, even when she was not smiling at all. Then, in a sudden rush of boldness, I decided to look at her neck — as if committing a theft. This was near the end of the meal. Marger turned to me unexpectedly; I believe I blushed.

  He had been speaking for some time before I caught the sense of what he was saying: that the house had only one gleeder, that he, unfortunately, had to take it, because he was going to the city. Therefore, if I, too, intended to go and did not want to wait until evening, perhaps I would accompany him? He could, of course, send me another gleeder from the city, or…

  I interrupted him. I started to say that I had no intention of going anywhere, but I checked myself, as if I had remembered something, then heard my own voice saying that indeed I had planned to travel to the city and if he didn’t mind…

  “Well, then, that is perfect,” he said. We got up from the table. “What time would be most convenient for you?”

  We stood on ceremony awhile, then I got him to admit that he was in something of a hurry, and I said that I could go at any time. We agreed to leave in half an hour.

  I went back upstairs, confounded by this turn of events. He meant nothing to me. And there was absolutely nothing that called me to the city. What, then, was the point of this escapade? I had the impression, besides, that his politeness toward me was a bit exaggerated. Anyway, if I had really been in a hurry to get to the city, the robots certainly would have seen to it. I would not have had to go on foot. Did he want something from me? But what? He didn’t know me from Adam. I was puzzling over this, again for no good reason, when the agreed-upon time arrived and I went downstairs.

  His wife was nowhere to be seen, nor did she appear at the window to say good-bye to him once more. Inside the spacious machine we were silent at first, watching curves appear as the road snaked among the hills. Slowly a conversation was struck up. I learned that Marger was an engineer.

  “Today I have to inspect the city selex-station,” he said. “You, too, I understand, are a cyberneticist?”

  “From the Stone Age,” I replied. “Excuse me… but how did you know that?”

  “The travel office told me. I was naturally curious about who our neighbor would be.”

  “Aha.”

  We said nothing for a while; the increasing density of colored plastic outgrowths indicated our approach to the suburbs.

  “If you don’t mind… I wanted to ask you if you, the crew, had any problems with your automata,” he said suddenly; it was not so much from the question itself as from his tone that I realized my answer was important to him. Was this what he was after? But what exactly did he want?

  “You mean malfunctions? We had hundreds. But that was only natural; our models, in comparison with yours, were so primitive…”

  “No, not malfunctions,” he hastened to reply. “Rather, performance fluctuation in such variable conditions… Today, unfortunately, we do not have the opportunity to test automata in so thorough a way.”

  It boiled down to a purely technical question. He was interested merely in certain function parameters of electronic brains, how these behaved in the context of powerful magnetic fields, in nebulae, in funnels of gravitational perturbation, and he thought that this information might belong to expedition records temporarily withheld from publication. I told him what I knew, and for data more specialized I advised him to contact Thurber, who had been the assistant to the scientific director of the voyage.

  “And might I give your name… ?”

  “Of course.”

  He thanked me warmly. I was a little disappointed. So that was all? But the conversation had established a professional bond between us, and I asked him, in turn, about his work. What was this selex-station that he had to inspect?

  “Ah, nothing very interesting. A scrap dump… What I would really like to do is devote myself to theoretical work; this is in the nature of practical experience, and not terribly useful experience, at that.”

  “Practical experience? Work in a scrap dump? How can that be? After all, you are a cyberneticist…”

  “It is cybernetic scrap,” he explained with a wry smile. And added, somewhat contemptuously, “For we are very thrifty, you see. The idea is that nothing should go to waste. At my institute I could show you one or two interesting things, but here — well…”

  He shrugged; the gleeder pulled off the main road, passed through a high metal gate, and entered the large yard of a factory; I saw rows of conveyors, gantries, something like a modernized furnace.

  “Now you can have this machine,” said Marger. From an opening in the wall near which we had stopped, a robot leaned out and said something to him. Marger got out, I saw him gesticulating, then he turned to me, annoyed.

  “Wonderful,” he said. “Gloor is sick. That’s my colleague — I’m not permitted to work on my own — now what am I supposed to do?”

  “What is the problem?” I asked, and also got out.

  “The inspection has to be carried out by two people, at least two,” he explained. Suddenly his face lit up. “Mr. Bregg! You are a cyberneticist! If only you would agree!”

  “Ha,” I said, smiling, “a cyberneticist. Add: ancient. I know nothing.”

  “But it’s only a formality!” he interrupted me. “I’ll take care of the technical side, of course. All we need is a signature, nothing more!”

  “Really?” I said slowly. I could understand his hurry to get back to his wife, but I didn’t like pretending to be what I wasn’t; I am not cut out to be a figurehead; I told him this, though perhaps in gentler language. He raised his arms, as if to defend himself.

  “Please, don’t misunderstand me! But you must be in a hurry, aren’t you? You had business in the city. In that case, I… somehow… forgive me for…”

  “My business can wait,” I replied. “Go ahead, please. If I am able, I will help you.”

  We went into a white building that stood to one side; Marger led me down a strangely empty corridor; several motionless robots stood in alcoves. In a small, simply furnished office he I took a sheaf of papers from a wall cabinet, spread them on the table, and began to explain the nature of his — or, rather, our — job. He was not much of a lecturer, and I soon had doubts about his chances for a scientific career: he kept assuming I had knowledge of things that were completely unknown to me. I had to interrupt him repeatedly to ask embarrassingly elementary questions, but he, understandably not wanting to offend me, received all these proofs of my ignorance as if they were virtues.

  In the end I learned that for the past fifty years or so there had existed a total separation between work and life. All production was automated and took place under the supervision of robots, which were overseen by other robots; there was no longer any place in this realm for people. Society led its own life, and the robots and automata theirs; except that, to prevent unforeseen aberrations in the established order of this mechanical army of labor, periodic inspections were necessary, and they were carried out by specialists. Marger was one of these.

  “There can be no doubt,” he explained, “that we will find everything normal; then we take a look at particular links in the processes, then leave our signatures, and that is all.”

  “But I do not even know what is produced here.” I indicated the buildings through the window.

  “Nothing whatever!” he exclaimed. “That is the whole point. Nothing. This is simply a dump for scrap, as I told you.”

  I didn’
t particularly care for this role unexpectedly imposed on me, but I could not keep objecting.

  “All right. What exactly am I supposed to do?”

  “What I do: we make a tour of the complexes…”

  We left the papers in the office and went out on the inspection. First was a huge sorting plant, where automatic scoops took hold of piles of sheet metal, twisted, broken trunks, crushed them, and threw them into compactors. The blocks ejected from these traveled by belts to the main conveyor. At the entrance Marger put on a small mask with a filter and handed one to me; we could not speak to each other on account of the din. The air was filled with a rust-colored dust that burst in red clouds out of the compactors. We continued through the next hall, also filled with noise, and took a moving walkway to a floor where rows of presses consumed the scrap, which, now more finely broken down and quite featureless, was poured from hoppers. On an overhead gallery leading to a building opposite, Marger checked readings on control meters; then we went to the factory yard, where our way was blocked by a robot that said that Engineer Gloor wanted Marger on the phone.

  “Excuse me, I’ll be back in a minute!” called Marger, and ran up a winding stairway to a glass annex not far away. I stood alone on the pavement, which was hot from the sun. I looked around. The buildings at the far end of the lot we had already seen; they held the compactors and presses. What with the distance and the soundproofing, not a murmur reached me from there. Off by itself, behind the annex into which Marger had vanished, was a low and unusually long building, a kind of tin barracks; I headed for it to find some shade, but the heat from the metal walls was unbearable. I was about to leave when I heard a peculiar sound coming from inside the barracks, difficult to identify, not at all like the noise of machines at work. Thirty paces farther and I reached a steel door. In front of it stood a robot. At the sight of me, the robot opened the door and stepped aside. The curious sounds became stronger. I looked inside; it was not as dark as I had thought at first. Because of the murderous heat from the sheet metal I could hardly breathe, and would have backed out immediately had it not been for the voices. For they were human voices — distorted, merging in a hoarse chorus, bluped, babbling, as though in the gloom a pile of defective telephones were talking. I took two uncertain steps, something crunched beneath my feet, and clearly, from the floor, it spoke: