Journey Between Worlds by Sylvia Engdahl Page A

laughed. “You must have a funny idea of what our cities are like. Sure, I looked forward to going Outside, just as you probably looked forward to a vacation at the beach. But I had plenty of chances around home to get into mischief, and I took full advantage of them. Kids on Mars act just the same as they do anyplace else.”
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    One of the things more permissible in the social climate of the Susie than under ordinary circumstances was serious discussion, and the significance of space exploration was an inexhaustible topic. The talk seemed to get around to it whenever a group gathered. It was all rather over my head, but Alex thoroughly enjoyed it. And he took it as seriously as some people do bridge scores; at times he got really angry. Of course Alex was something of a fanatic on the subject, as most Colonials are.
    I remember one evening in particular, when we were sitting around after dinner, finishing our coffee. Dad happened to be with us, as well as an older man, a Professor Goldberg who was on his way to spend a sabbatical at the University of Mars. We were discussing a letter to the editor that had appeared in the Interplanetary Observer, one of the current magazines beamed out to us from Earth, which Dad had happened to read and was summarizing for the professor. Down at the other end of the dining room a bunch of the homesteaders were singing; someone had found a guitar among Susie ’s recreational supplies, and we could hardly hear ourselves talk.
    â€œAnyway,” Dad shouted, “this fellow wound up with the old ‘we had better solve all the problems on this world before we take a chance on messing up any others’ line.”
    â€œThat makes me furious!” Alex yelled back. “Of all the mistaken theories about space that I ran into on Earth, that’s the most shortsighted.”
    â€œWhy?” I ventured. “It sounds logical enough to me.”
    All three of them jumped on me as if I’d just come out in favor of slavery. “Mel, honey, you just haven’t gone into it,” Dad began, but Alex said rather sharply, “With your interest in history I should think you could see the fallacy easily enough.”
    â€œIn the first place,” Professor Goldberg said, “we can’t ever solve all the problems on Earth. We’re human. We can make progress—we have made progress: Peace is better assured than it was a hundred years ago; the standard of living has risen all over the world; racial equality is a reality now, and freedom for the individual is more widespread than it was in the twentieth century—”
    â€œIt was the conquest of space that helped to bring about peace,” Alex interrupted. “Energy went into that which would otherwise have gone into war.”
    Like in the poem, I thought. Nightmare, endless wars . . . then we turned spaceward.
    â€œMore than that, though,” the professor went on, “for the human race to stay cooped up on one world would lead only to a terrible sort of stagnation. It would create problems, not solve them.”
    â€œStagnation or something worse,” said Alex darkly, “with the population situation the way it is. Without a frontier for expansion, neither today’s living standard nor freedom could last—and there’d eventually be violence.”
    â€œI really don’t think that we need to worry too much about that anymore, though,” said the professor. “The Colonies are well established now.”
    â€œYes, but there’s this new debate over the appropriation coming up,” Alex said. “Someday we’ll be self-sufficient, but now—”
    â€œI forget, you Colonials are a bit sensitive on that subject,” the professor replied. “Still, I don’t think the ultimate fate of colonization is in much danger. Think how much opposition there was initially, yet that didn’t stop people. It won’t stop the