by Isaac Asimov
My brother thought a while. He said, 'You think I ought to cut it down?'
'Way down,' I said, 'if you expect to reach the public.'
'How about a hundred years?' he said.
'How about six days?' I said.
He said, horrified, 'You can't squeeze Creation into six days.'
I said, 'This is all the papyrus I have. What do you think?'
'Oh, well,' he said, and began to dictate again, 'In the beginning - does it have to be six days, Aaron?'
I said, firmly, 'Six days, Moses.'
Introduction to IDEAS DIE HARD
In the 1950s, the magazine at the leading edge of the field was Galaxy Science Fiction, which was edited by Horace L. Gold. It was giving Astounding Science Fiction a good run for its money. Gold was, however, an acerbic individual, and his rejections were cruel, I finally reached the point where I felt I could not face them and I stopped writing for him. In March 1957, however, he asked me to try him, and promised to reject me, if he had to, with reasonable politeness. I thought I would try, therefore, since, except for his rejections, I liked Horace. 'Ideas Die Hard' was the result, and he didn't reject it at all. It was published in the October 1957 Galaxy.
A quarter century has passed. Why has the story not appeared in any of my collections? It isn't a bad story, in my opinion. However, it's out of date. I'm usually careful to write my stories so that it is very difficult for them to get in the way of developing science, but this time I muffed it. In 1957, everyone was talking about going to the Moon, but no one had as yet even put a satellite into orbit. So I felt safe in writing a story about going to the Moon. I assumed that events would not overtake me very quickly - but they did. In a very few years, not only were satellites orbiting the Earth, but a lunar probe had got round the other side of the Moon and photographed it. It seems to me, now, though, that I can live with being out of date. I can use it as an educational experience. Here is an example of what seemed like a clever idea to me in 1957 and you can see for yourself how science can race ahead of even a cultivated imagination.
10
Ideas Die Hard
They strapped them in against the acceleration of takeoff, surrounded their cleverly designed seats with fluid, and fortified their bodies with drugs.
Then, when the time came that the straps might be unhooked, they were left with little more space than before.
The single light garment each wore gave an illusion of freedom, but only an illusion. They might move their arms freely, but their legs just to a limited extent. Only one at a time could be completely straightened, not both at once.
They could shift position into a half-recline to the right or left, but they could not leave their seats. The seats were all there were. They could eat, sleep, take care of all their bodily needs in a barely adequate way while sitting there, and they had to sit there.
What it amounted to was that for a week (slightly more, actually) they were condemned to a tomb. At the moment, it didn't matter that the tomb was surrounded by all of space.
Acceleration was over and done with. They had begun the silent, even swoop through the space that separated Earth and Moon and there was a great horror upon them.
Bruce G. Davis, Jr, said hollowly, 'What do we talk about?'
Marvin Oldbury said, 'I don't know.' There was silence again.
They were not friends. Until recently they had never even met. But they were imprisoned together. Each had volunteered. Each had met the requirements. They were single, intelligent, and in good health.
10
Ideas Die Hard
Moreover, each had undergone extensive psychotherapy for months beforehand.
And the great advice of the psych-boys had been - talk! 'Talk continuously, if necessary,' they had said. 'Don't let yourself start feeling alone.'
Oldbury said, 'How do they know?' He was the taller and larger of the two, strong and square-faced. There was a tuft of hair just over the bridge of his nose that made a period between two dark eyebrows.
Davis was sandy-haired and freckled, with a pugnacious grin and the beginnings of shadows' beneath his eyes. It might be those shadows that seemed to fill his eyes with foreboding.
He said, 'How do who know?'
'The psychs. They say talk. How do they know it will do any good?'
'What do they care?' asked Davis sharply. 'It's an experiment. If it doesn't work, they'll tell the next pair: "Don't say a word.'"
Oldbury stretched out his arms and the fingers touched the great semisphere of information devices that surrounded them. He could move the controls, handle the air-conditioning equipment, tweak the plastic tubes out of which they could suck the bland nutrient mixture, nudge the waste-disposal unit, and brush the dials that controlled the viewscope.
All was bathed in the mild glow of the lights which were fed by electricity from the solar batteries exposed on the hull of the ship to sunlight that never failed.
Thank heaven, he thought, for the spin that had been given the vessel. It produced a centrifugal force that pressed him down in his seat with the feel of weight. Without that touch of gravity to make it seem like Earth, it could not have been borne.
Still, they might have made space within the ship, space that they could spare from the needs of equipment and use for the tight in-packing of two men.
He put the thought into words and said, They might have allowed for more room.'
'Why?' asked Davis.
'So we could stand up.'
Davis grunted. It was really all the answer that could be made.
Oldbury said, 'Why did you volunteer?'
'You should have asked me that before we left. I knew then. I was going to be one of the first men around the Moon and back. I was going to be a big hero at twenty-five. Columbus and I, you know.' He turned his head from side to side restlessly, then sucked a moment or two at the water, tube. He said, 'But just the same, I've wanted to back out for two months. Each night I went to bed sweating, swearing I would resign in the morning.'
'But you didn't.'
'No, I didn't. Because I couldn't. Because I was too yellow to admit I was yellow. Even when they were strapping me into this seat, I was all set to shout: "No! Get someone else!" I couldn't, not even then.'
Oldbury smiled without lightness. 'I wasn't even going to tell them. I wrote a note saying I couldn't make it. I was going to mail it and disappear into the desert. Know where the note is now?'
'Where?'
'In my shirt pocket. Right here.'
Davis said, 'Doesn't matter. When we come back, we'll be heroes - big, famous, trembling heroes.'
Lars Nilsson was a pale man with sad eyes and with prominent knuckles on his thin fingers. He had been civilian-in-charge of Project Deep Space for three years. He had enjoyed the job, all of it, even the tension and the failures - until now. Until the moment when two men had finally been strapped into place within the machine. He said, 'I feel like a vivisectionist, somehow.' Dr Godfrey Mayer, who headed the psychology 'group, looked pained. 'Men have to be risked as well as ships.
We've done what we could in the way of preparation and of safeguarding them as far as is humanly possible. After all, these men are volunteers.'
Nilsson said colourlessly, 'I know that.' The fact did not really comfort him.
Staring at the controls, Oldbury wondered when, if ever, any of the dials would turn danger-red, when a warning ring would sound.
They had been assured that, in all likelihood, this would not happen, but each had been thoroughly trained in the exact manner of adjustment, manually, of each control.
And with reason. Automation had advanced to the point where the ship was a self-regulating organism, as self-regulating, almost, as a living thing. Yet three times, unmanned ships, almost as complicated as this one they were entombed in, had been sent out to follow a course boomeranging about the Moon, and three times, the ships had not returned.
Furthermore, each time the information devices relayi
ng data back to Earth had failed before even the Moon's orbit had been reached on the forward journey.
Public opinion was impatient and the men working on Project Deep Space voted not to wait on the success of an unmanned vehicle before risking human beings. It was decided that a manned vehicle was needed so that manual correction could be introduced to compensate for the small, cumulative failure of the imperfect automation.
A crew of two men - they feared for the sanity of one man alone.
Oldbury said, 'Davis! Hey, Davis!'
Davis stirred out of a withdrawn silence. 'What?'
'Let's see what Earth looks like.'
'Why?' Davis wanted to know.
'Why not? We're out here. Let's enjoy the view, at least.'
He leaned back. The viewscope was an example of automation. The impingement of short-wave radiation blanked it out. The Sun could not be viewed under any circumstances. Other than that, the viewscope oriented itself towards the brightest source of illumination in space, compensating, as it did so, for any proper motion of the ship, as the engineers had explained offhandedly. Little photoelectric cells located at four sides of the ship whirled restlessly, scanning the sky. And if the brightest light source was not wanted, there was always the manual control.
Davis closed contact and the 'scope was alive with light. He put out the room's artificial lights and the view in the 'scope grew brighter against the contrast of darkness.
It wasn't a globe, of course, with continents on it. What they saw was a hazy mixture of white and blue-green filling the screen.
The dial that measured distance from Earth, by determining the value of the gravitational constant, put them just under thirty thousand miles away.
Davis said, 'I'll get the edge.' He reached out to adjust the sights and the view lurched.
A curve of black swept in across the 'scope. There were no stars in it.
Oldbury said, 'It's the night shadow.'
The view moved jerkily back. Blackness advanced from the other side and was curved more sharply and in the opposite sense. This time, the darkness showed the hard points of stars.
Oldbury swallowed. 'I wish I were back there,' he said solemnly.
Davis said, 'At least we can see the Earth is round.'
'Isn't that a discovery?'
Davis seemed immediately stung at the manner in which Oldbury tossed off his remark. He said, 'Yes, it is a discovery, if you put it that way. Only a small percentage of the Earth's population has ever been convinced the Earth was round.' He put on ship's lights, scowling, and doused the 'scope.
'Not since 1500,' said Oldbury.
'If you consider the New Guinea tribes, there were flat-world believers even in 1950. And there were religious sects in America as late as the 1930s who believed the Earth was flat. They offered prizes for anyone who could prove it was round. Ideas die hard!'
'Crackpots,' Oldbury grunted.
Davis grew warmer. He said, 'Can you prove it's round? I mean except for the fact that you see it is right now?'
'You're being ridiculous.'
'Am I? Or were you just taking your fourth-grade teacher's word as gospel? What proofs were you given? That the Earth's shadow on the Moon during a lunar eclipse is round and that only a sphere can cast a round shadow? That's plain nonsense! A circular disc can cast a round shadow. So can an egg or any shape, however irregular, with one circular intersection. Would you point out that men have travelled around the Earth? They might just be circling the central point of a flat Earth at a fixed distance. It would have the same effect. Do ships appear top-first on the horizon? Optical illusion, for all you know. There are queerer ones.'
'Foucault's pendulum,' said Oldbury briefly. He was taken aback at the other man's intensity.
Davis said, 'You mean a pendulum staying in one plane and that plane revolving as Earth moves under it at a rate depending on the latitude of the place where the experiment is being performed. Sure! If a pendulum keeps to one plane. If the theories involved are correct. How does that satisfy the man in the street, who's no physicist, unless he's just willing to take the word of the physicists on faith? I tell you what! There was no satisfactory proof that the Earth was round till rockets flew high enough to take pictures of enough of the planet to show the curvature.'
'Nuts,' said Oldbury. 'The geography of Argentina would be all distorted if the Earth were flat with the North Pole as the centre. Any other centre would distort the geography of some other portion. The skin of the Earth just would not have the shape it has if it weren't pretty nearly spherical. You can't refute that.'
Davis fell silent for a moment, then said sulkily, 'What the devil are we arguing for, anyway? The hell with it.'
Seeing Earth and talking about it, even just about its roundness, had driven Oldbury into a sharp nostalgia. He began to talk of home in a low voice. He talked about his youth in Trenton, New Jersey, and brought up anecdotes about his family that were so trivial that he had not thought of them in years, laughing at things that were scarcely funny and feeling the sting of childish pain he had thought healed over years before.
At one point, Oldbury slipped off into shallow sleep, then woke with a start and was plunged in confusion at finding himself in a cold, blue-tinged light. Instinctively he made to rise to his feet and sank back with a groan as his elbow struck metal hard.
The 'scope was aglow again. The blue-tinged light that had startled him at the moment of waking was reflected from Earth.
The curve of Earth's rim was noticeably sharper now.
They were fifty thousand miles away.
Davis had turned at the other's sudden futile movement and said pugnaciously, 'Earth's roundness is no test. After all, Man could crawl over its surface and see its shape by its geography, as you said. But there are other places where we act as though we know and with less justification.'
Oldbury rubbed his twingeing elbow and said, 'All right, all right.'
Davis was not to be placated. 'There's Earth. Look at it. How old is it?'
Oldbury said cautiously, 'A few billion years, I suppose.'
'You suppose! What right have you to suppose? Why not a few thousand years? Your great-grandfather probably believed Earth was six thousand years old, dating from Genesis one. I know mine did. What makes you so sure they're wrong?'
There's a good deal of geological evidence involved.'
'The time it takes for the ocean to grow as salt as it is? The time it takes to lay down a thickness of sedimentary rock? The time it takes to form a quantity of lead in uranium ore?'
Oldbury leaned back in his seat and was watching the Earth with a kind of detachment. He scarcely heard Davis. A little more and they would see all of it in the 'scope. Already, with the planetary curve against space visible at one end of the 'scope, the night-shadow was about to encroach on the other.
The night-shadow did not change its position, of course. The Earth revolved, but to the men aboard ship it remained fat with light.
'Well?' demanded Davis.
'What?' said Oldbury, startled.
'What about your damned geological evidence?'
'Oh. Well, there's uranium decay.'
'I mentioned it. You're a fool. Do you know that?'
Oldbury counted ten to himself before replying, 'I don't think so.'
'Then listen. Suppose the Earth had come into existence some six thousand years ago just as the Bible describes it. Why couldn't it have been created then with a certain amount of lead already existing in the uranium? If the uranium could be created, why not the lead with it? Why not create the ocean as salt as it is and the sedimentary rocks as thick as they are? Why not create the fossils exactly as they exist?'
'In other words, why not create the Earth complete with internal evidence proving that it is several billion years old?'
'That's right,' said Davis, 'why not?'
'Let me ask the opposite question. Why?'
'I don't care why. I'm just trying to show you that all
the so-called proofs of Earth's age don't necessarily disprove Earth's creation six thousand years ago.'
Oldbury said, 'I suppose you consider it all to be intended as a kind of game - a scientific puzzle to test mankind's ingenuity, or exercise his mind - a mental jungle gym on his intellectual crib.'
'You think you're being funny, Oldbury, but actually what's so damned impossible about it? It might be just that. You can't prove it isn't.'
'I'm not trying to prove anything.'
'No, you're satisfied to take things as they're handed to you. That's why I said you were a fool. If we could go back in time and see for ourselves, then that would be another matter. If we could go back in time before 4004 B.C. and see predynastic Egypt, or earlier still and bag a sabre-toothed--'
'Or a tyrannosaur.'
'Or a tyrannosaur, yes. Until we can do that, we can only speculate and there's nothing to say where speculation is correct and where it isn't. All science is based on faith in the original premises and in faith on the validity of deduction and induction.'
'There's no crime in that.'
'There is crime!' said Davis vehemently. 'You come to believe, and once you come to believe, you shut the doors of your mind. You've got your idea and you won't replace it with another. Galileo found out how hard ideas can die.'
'Columbus, too,' Oldbury put in drowsily. Staring at the blue-tinged Earth with the slow whirling changes of the cloud formations had an almost hypnotic effect.
Davis seized on his comment with an obvious glee. 'Columbus! I suppose you think he maintained the Earth was round when everyone else thought it was flat.'
'More or less.'
'That's the result of listening to your fourth-grade teacher, who listened to her fourth-grade teacher, and so on. Any intelligent and educated man in Columbus's time would have been willing to concede that the Earth was round. The point at issue was the size of the Earth.'
'Is that a fact?'
'Absolutely. Columbus followed the maps of an Italian geographer which had the Earth about fifteen thousand miles in circumference, with the eastern edge of Asia about three or four thousand miles from Europe. The geographers at the court of King John of Portugal insisted that this was wrong, that the Earth was about twenty-five thousand miles in circumference, that the eastern edge of Asia was about twelve thousand miles west of the western edge of Europe, and that King John had better keep on trying for the route around Africa. The Portuguese geographers were, of course, a hundred per cent .right and Columbus was a hundred per cent wrong. The Portuguese did reach India and Columbus never did.'