2001_ A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke [67]
A vocal minority refused to agree. Even if it took centuries to travel from star to star, they contended, this might be no obstacle to sufficiently determined explorers. The technique of hibernation, used on Discovery herself, was one possible answer. Another was the self-contained artificial world, embarking on voyages that might last for many generations.
In any event, why should one assume that all intelligent species were as short-lived as Man? There might be creatures in the universe to whom a thousand-year voyage would present nothing worse than slight boredom…
These arguments, theoretical though they were, concerned a matter of the utmost practical importance; they involved the concept of “reaction time.” If TMA-1 had indeed sent a signal to the stars — perhaps with the help of some further device near Saturn — then it would not reach its destination for years. Even if the response was immediate, therefore, humanity would have a breathing space which could certainly be measured in decades — more probably in centuries. To many people, this was a reassuring thought.
But not to all. A few scientists — most of them beachcombers on the wilder shores of theoretical physics — asked the disturbing question: “Are we certain that the speed of light is an unbreakable barrier?” It was true that the Special Theory of Relativity had proved to be remarkably durable, and would soon be approaching its first centenary; but it had begun to show a few cracks. And even if Einstein could not be defied, he might be evaded.
Those who sponsored this view talked hopefully about shortcuts through higher dimensions, lines that were straighter than straight, and hyperspacial connectivity. They were fond of using an expressive phrase coined by a Princeton mathematician of the last century: “Wormholes in space.” Critics who suggested that these ideas were too fantastic to be taken seriously were reminded of Niels Bohr’s “Your theory is crazy — but not crazy enough to be true.”
If there was disputation among the physicists, it was nothing compared with that among the biologists, when they discussed the hoary old problem: “What would intelligent extraterrestrials look like?” They divided themselves into two opposing camps — one arguing that such creatures must be humanoid, the other equally convinced that “they” would look nothing like men.
Settling for the first answer were those who believed that the design of two legs, two arms, and main sense organs at the highest point, was so basic and so sensible that it was hard to think of a better one. Of course, there would be minor differences like six fingers instead of five, oddly colored skin or hair, and peculiar facial arrangements; but most intelligent extraterrestrials — usually abbreviated to E.T.’s — would be so similar to Man that they might not be glanced at twice in poor lighting, or from a distance.
This anthropomorphic thinking was ridiculed by another group of biologists, true products of the Space Age who felt themselves free from the prejudices of the past. They pointed out that the human body was the result of millions of evolutionary choices, made by chance over eons of time. At any one of these countless moments of decision, the genetic dice might have fallen differently, perhaps with better results. For the human body was a bizarre piece of improvisation, full of organs that had been diverted from one function to another, not always very successfully — and even containing discarded items, like the appendix, that were now worse than useless.