Charles Sheffield

Science wasn’t a show-business talent, conducted in large halls and decided by audience applause.

His sin was something that scientists had done for thousands of years. Scientists didn’t usually change data, not unless they were outright charlatans. But when facts didn’t agree with theory, there was an awful temptation to find reasons for rejecting the offending data and and hanging on to the theory. Ptolemy had done it. Newton had done it. Darwin had done it. Einstein had done so explicitly.

The universe is all extremes. Monstrous gravity fields, or next-to-nothing ones; extreme cold, or heat so intense that solids and liquids cannot exist; multimillion atmosphere pressures, or near-vacuum.

Ice or fire. Niflheim or Muspelheim: the ancient alternatives, imagined by humans long before the Expansion.

It’s planets that are the oddities; the strange neutral zone between suns and space, the thin interface where moderate temperatures and pressures and gravity fields can exist. And if planets are anomalies, then planets able to support life are rarer yet—a zero-measure subset in that set of strangeness.

And within that alien totality, where do humans fit?

Birdie cringed. If there was one thing worse than being a coward, it was being mistaken for a hero.

Human history extends for approximately ten thousand years before the Expansion, with written records available for roughly half that time. Unfortunately, the human tendency for self-delusion, self-aggrandizement, and baseless faith in human superiority over all other intelligent life-forms renders much of the written record unreliable. Serious research workers are advised to seek alternative primary data sources concerning humans. —From the Universal Species Catalog (Subclass: Sapients)

Not it. He. Bey was sure he would have determined that for himself after a few more seconds. There were a hundred clues as to the innate sex of a form, and most of them had nothing to do with appearance or dress.

That’s what logic says. But I say, phooey, who wants logic? Not you, and not me. We want results.

To a political mind, everything is politics.

When you got right down to it, every important decision in life was made with inadequate information.

“We’re just too nosy, Commander,” he went on. “Most humans have their patience level set a little too low, and their curiosity a bit too high.”

What does one do when a madman suggests an appealing course of action? One worries—but probably goes along with it.

A long time ago humans talked of terraforming Mars and Venus, but we never did it. Just too busy blowing ourselves up, I guess, ever to get round to it.