The Outward Urge by John Wyndham Read Free Book Online Page A

the base by the bare teeth of the mountains.
    For more than a minute Troon gazed at its cold, misted blue light before he spoke. Then:
    ‘The idiot’s delight,’ he said.
    The doctor nodded slowly.
    ‘Without doubt,’ she agreed. ‘And there - there we have it, don’t we?’
    She turned away from the window and went back to the chair.
    ‘I know,’ she said, ‘or perhaps I should say, I like to think I know, what this place means to you. You fought to establish it; and then you had to fight to maintain it. It has been your job in life; the purpose of your existence; the second foothold on the outward journey. Your father died for it; you have lived for it. You have mothered, more than fathered, an ideal: and you have to learn, as mothers learn, that there has to be a weaning.
    ‘Now, up there, there is war. It has been going on for ten days - at God knows what cost: the worst war in history - perhaps even the last. Great cities are holes in the ground; whole countries are black ashes; seas have boiled up in vapour, and fallen as lethal rain. But still new pillars of smoke spring up, new lakes of fire spread out, and more millions of people die.
    ‘ “The idiot’s delight”, you say. But to what extent are you saying that because you hate it for what it is; and to what extent are you saying it from fear that your work will be ruined - that there may come some turn of events that will drive us off the moon?’
    Troon walked slowly back, and seated himself on a corner of the desk.
    ‘All reasons for hating war are good,’ he said, ‘but some are better than others. If you hate it and want to abolish it simply because it kills people - well, there are a number of popular inventions, the car and the aeroplane, for instance, that you might do well to abolish for the same reason. It is cruel and evil to kill people - but their deaths in war are a symptom, not a cause. I hate war partly because it is stupid - which it has been for a long time - but still more because it has recently become too stupid, and too wasteful, and too dangerous.’
    ‘I agree. And then, too, of course, much of what it wastes could otherwise be used to further Project Space.’
    ‘Certainly, and why not? Here we are at last, close to the threshold of the universe, with the greatest adventure of the human race just ahead of us, and still this witless, parochial bickering goes on - getting nearer to race suicide every time it flares up.’
    ‘And yet,’ she pointed out, ‘if it were not for the requirements of strategy we should not be here now.’
    He shook his head.
    ‘Strategy is the ostensible reason perhaps, but it is not the only reason. We are here because the quintessential quality of our age is that of dreams coming true. Just think of it. For centuries we have dreamt of flying; recently we made that come true: we have always hankered for speed; now we have speeds greater than we can stand: we wanted to speak to far parts of the Earth; we can: we wanted to explore the sea bottom; we have: and so on, and so on: and, too, we wanted the power to smash our enemies utterly; we have it. If we had truly wanted peace, we should have had that as well. But true peace has never been one of the genuine dreams - we have got little further than preaching against war in order to appease our consciences. The truly wishful dreams, the many-minded dreams are now irresistible - they become facts.
    ‘We may reach them deviously, and almost always they have an undesired obverse; we learnt to fly, and carried bombs; we speed, and destroy thousands of our fellow men; we broadcast, and we can lie to the whole world. We can smash our enemies, but if we do we shall smash ourselves. And some of the dreams have pretty queer midwives, but they get born all the same.’
    Ellen nodded slowly.
    ‘And reaching for the moon was one of what you call the truly wishful dreams?’
    ‘Of course. For the moon, first; and then, one day, for the stars. This is a