Page 12 - Unlikely Stories 3

Recall Mission

“How?”
“With an explicit threat, known to biologists as aposematism,
interspecific warning signals. Among the radio waves from Proxima b
is a repeated text that proclaims the planet’s policy toward outsiders:
any aggression will be dealt with unconditionally and utterly. They
claim to have the power to track the origin of an attacker and destroy
it—by what means, they do not say. Nor can we determine if their
technology is advanced enough to have already discovered that we
are just such a hostile power. And the message could be a bluff, of
course.”
The general’s face tightened.
“Thank you, Dr. Corncracker. We can go on about hypothetical
cases all day. We have a new generation of experts, and the failings of
the previous one are easy to see in hindsight. Let me focus on what is
cogent. We can’t fight a war against an enemy of unknown
capabilities. The probability is that whatever weapon they do in fact
possess cannot reach us at a speed an order of magnitude greater
than that of our vehicle. Otherwise, we would already be toast. The
same logic applies to why we were not destroyed within the first few
decades of our indiscriminate broadcasting: either they really are
peaceful non-combatants or they have done what we have: sprung an
ambush that hasn’t arrived here yet.”
“Peaceful?” asked Dreyfuss, raising his eyebrows.
“What he means,” said Corncracker. “is that they have enough
confidence in their own power effectively to confront the rest of the
universe with a posture of invincibility. That is unrealistic, of course,
returning us to the possibility of a hollow threat. But here’s the thing:
we can solve the problem only one way: by stopping our ship before
it arrives in Proxima Centauri and by making our own credible show
of overwhelming force.”
“That’s a tall order. And you feel that I am part of the solution?
You must know that I have been a pacifist all of my life.”
Senator Barkenbeit raised his palms in placation. “Professor: would
you have worked on the Manhattan Project, knowing that the Nazis
probably had their own high-priority program to develop a nuclear
weapon?”
Dreyfuss stared at the politician, as if the man had suddenly
become an intelligent being.
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