Manifold: Space [antikvár]

Prologue My name is Reid Malenfant. You know me. And you know I'm an incorrigible space cadet. You know I've campaigned for, among other things, private mining expeditions to the asteroids. In fact, in the past I've tried to get you to pay for such things. I've bored you with that often enough already, right? So tonight I want to be a little more personal. Tonight I want to talk about why I gave over my life to a single, consuming project. It started with a simple question: Where is everybody? As a kid I used to lie at night out on the lawn, soaking up dew and looking at the stars, trying to feel the Earth turning under me. It felt wonderful to be alive—hell, to be ten years old, anyhow. But I knew that the Earth was just a ball of rock, on the fringe of a nondescript galaxy. As I lay there staring at the stars—^the thousands I could pick out with my naked eyes, the billions that make up the great wash of our Galaxy, the uncounted trillions in the galaxies beyond—I just couldn't believe, even then, that there was nobody out there looking back at me down here. Was it really possible that this was the only place where life had taken hold—^that only here were there minds and eyes capable of looking out and wondering? But if not, where are theyl Why isn't there evidence of extraterrestrial civilization all around us? Consider this. Life on Earth got started just about as soon as it could—as soon as the rocks cooled and the oceans gathered. Of course it took a good long time to evolve us. Nevertheless we 1