“It might just barely be possible,” mused Vahino. “The Riemannian geometry on which the interstellar drive itself is based would permit…”
“No, no! Earth tried that sort of thing and found it didn’t work. Only a crank — and, isolated, the scientists of Skontar are becoming a race of cranks — would think so.
“We humans were just fortunate, that’s all. Even we had a long history before a culture arose with the mentality appropriate to a scientific civilization. Before that, technological progress was almost at a standstill. Afterward, we reached the stars. Other races can do it, but first they’ll have to adopt the proper civilization, the proper mentality — and without our guidance, Skontar or any other planet isn’t likely to evolve that mentality for many centuries to come.
“Which reminds me…” Lombard fumbled in a pocket. “I have a journal here, from one of the Skontaran philosophical societies. A certain amount of communication still does take place, you know; there’s no official embargo on either side. It’s just that Sol has given Skang up as a bad job. Anyway” — he fished out a magazine…”there’s one of their philosophers, Dyrin, who’s doing some new work on general semantics which seems to be arousing quite a furor. You read Skontaran, don’t you?”
“Yes,” said Vahino. “I was in military intelligence during the war. Let me see…” He leafed through the journal to the article and began translating aloud:
“The writer’s previous papers show that the principle of nonelementalism is not itself altogether a universal, but must be subject to certain psychomathe-matical reservations arising from consideration of the broganar — that’s a word I don’t understand — field, which couples to electronic wave-nuclei and…”
“What is that jabberwocky?” exploded Lombard.
“I don’t know,” said Vahino helplessly. “The Skontaran mind is as alien to me as to you.”
“Gibberish,” said Lombard. “With the good old Skontaran to-hell-with-you dogmatism thrown in.” He threw the magazine on the little bronze brazier, and fire licked at its thin pages. “Utter nonsense, as anyone with any knowledge of general semantics, or even an atom of common sense, can see.” He smiled crookedly, a little sorrowfully, and shook his head. “A race of cranks!”
“I wish you could spare me a few hours tomorrow,” said Skorrogan.