Definitely Maybe by Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky

starts sprinkling us with bombs from whining spacecraft. Then we’ll believe, then we’ll be united, and even then not right away. We’ll probably wallop each other with a few salvos first.”
    “That’s it exactly!” Weingarten agreed in an unpleasant voice and laughed curtly.
    No one said anything.
    “And my boss is a woman, anyway,” Zakhar said. “Very nice, very sweet, but how can I tell her about all this? About me, I mean?”
    They all sat there silently sipping tea. Then Glukhov spoke softly.
    “What wonderful tea! You really are a specialist, Dmitri. I haven’t had tea like this in ages. Yes … of course, all this is difficult and unclear. On the other hand, look at the sky, what a beautiful moon. Tea, a smoke—what else does man need? A good detective series on television? I don’t know. Now, you, Dmitri, you’re doing something with stars, with interstellar gases. Really, what business is it of yours? Just think about it. Something doesn’t want you to pry. Well, the answer is simple: Just don’t. Drink tea, watch television. The heavens aren’t for spying on—they’re for admiring.”
    And then Zakhar’s boy announced out loud:
    “You’re a sneak!”
    Malianov thought that he meant Glukhov. But no. The boy, squinting like an adult, was looking at Vecherovsky and threatening him with a chocolate-covered finger.
    “Sh, sh,” Zakhar whispered helplessly. Vecherovskysuddenly took his hands from his face and resumed his original position—lounging in the chair with his legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. There was a grin on his face.
    “So,” he said, “I am happy to prove that Comrade Weingarten’s hypothesis leads us to a dead end that is obvious to the naked eye. It’s easy to see that the hypothesis about the legendary Union of the Nine will lead us to the same dead end, as will the mysterious intelligence hiding in the depths of the seas or any other rational force. It would be very good if you all stopped and thought for a minute to convince yourselves of the correctness of what I say.”
    Malianov stirred his tea and thought: The bastard! Did he have us going! Why? What’s the play-acting for? Weingarten was staring straight ahead, his eyes bulging slowly, his fat, sweaty cheeks twitching threateningly. Glukhov was staring at everyone in turn, and Zakhar waited patiently—the drama of the minute’s pause completely escaping him.
    Then Vecherovsky spoke again.
    “Note. In order to explain fantastic events we tried to use concepts that, however fantastic, still belonged in the realm of contemporary understanding. That yielded nothing. Absolutely nothing. Val proved that to us quite convincingly. Therefore, obviously, there is no point in applying concepts from outside the realm of contemporary understanding. Say, for instance, God or … or something else. Conclusion?”
    Weingarten wiped his face nervously with his shirt and attacked his tea feverishly. Malianov asked in an injured tone:
    “You mean, you were just making fools of us on purpose?”
    “What else could I do?” Vecherovsky replied, raising his damn red eyebrows to the ceiling. “Prove to you that going to the authorities was useless? That it was meaningless to put the question the way you were? The Union of the Nine or Fu Manchu—what’s the difference? What is there to argue about?Whatever answer you got, there could be no practical course of action based on it. When your house burns down or is destroyed by a hurricane or is carried away by flood—you don’t think about what precisely happened to the house, you think about how you’re going to live, where you’re going to live, and what to do next.”
    “You’re trying to say …” began Malianov.
    “I’m saying that nothing
interesting
happened to you. There is nothing to be interested in here, nothing to study, nothing to analyze. All your seeking of causes is nothing more than wasteful idle curiosity. You shouldn’t be thinking