“Behind every man now alive stand
thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.
Since the dawn of time, roughly a hundred billion human beings have walked the
planet Earth.
Now this is an interesting
number, for by a curious coincidence there are approximately a hundred billion
stars in our local universe, the Milky Way. So for every man who has ever
lived, in this Universe there shines a star.
But every one of those stars is a
sun, often far more brilliant and glorious than the small, nearby star we call
the Sun. And many--perhaps most--of those alien suns have planets circling
them. So almost certainly there is enough land in the sky to give every member
of the human species, back to the first ape-man, his own private, world-sized
heaven--or hell.
How many of those potential
heavens and hells are now inhabited, and by what manner of creatures, we have
no way of guessing; the very nearest is a million times farther away than Mars
or Venus, those still remote goals of the next generation. But the barriers of
distance are crumbling; one day we shall meet our equals, or our masters, among
the stars.
Men have been slow to face this
prospect; some still hope that it may never become reality. Increasing numbers,
however are asking; 'Why have such meetings not occurred already, since we
ourselves are about to venture into space?'
Why not, indeed? Here is one
possible answer to that very reasonable question. But please remember: this is
only a work of fiction.
The truth, as always, will be far
stranger.”
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