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All his professional career he had looked upon the universe as an arena for the titanic impersonal forces of gravitation, magnetism, radiation; he had never believed that life played an important role in the scheme of things, and he regarded its appearance on Earth, Mars, and Jupiter as an accidental aberration.
“Bernal and others thought this could be done with mobile worldlets a few kilometers across, carrying thousands of passengers on journeys that would last for generations. Naturally, the system would have to be rigidly closed, recycling all food, air, and other expendables. But, of course, that’s just how the Earth operates—on a slightly larger scale. “Some
“No closed ecology can be one-hundred-per-cent efficient; there is always waste, loss—some degradation of the environment and build-up of pollutants. It may take billions of years to poison and wear out a planet, but it will happen in the end. The oceans will dry up; the atmosphere will leak away.
Absence of noise is not a natural condition; all human senses require some input. If they are deprived of it, the mind manufactures its own substitutes.
They had used the solar system as a refueling stop, a booster station—call it what you will; and had then spurned it completely, on their way to more important business. They would probably never even know that the human race existed. Such monumental indifference was worse than any deliberate insult.
The Ramans do everything in threes.
