“A stowaway, did you say, Mr. Supervisor?” asked Golde. “May we ask who he was — and how he got aboard?”
“His name is Jan Rodricks: he is an engineering student from the University of Cape Town. Further details you can no doubt discover for yourselves through your own very efficient channels.”
Karellen smiled. The Supervisor’s smile was a curious affair. Most of the effect really resided in the eyes: the inflexible, lipless mouth scarcely moved at all. Was this, Golde wondered, another of the many human customs that Karellen had copied with such skill? For the total effect was, undoubtedly, that of a smile, and the mind readily accepted it as such.
“As for how he left,” continued the Supervisor, “that is of secondary importance. I can assure you, or any other potential astronauts, that there is no possibility of repeating the exploit.”
“What will happen to this young man?” persisted Golde.
“Will he be sent back to Earth?”
“That is outside my jurisdiction, but I expect he will come back on the next ship. He would find conditions too — alien — for comfort where he has gone. And this leads me to the main purpose of our meeting today.” Karellen paused, and the silence grew even deeper.
“There has been some complaint, among the younger and more romantic elements of your population, because outer space has been closed to you. We had a purpose in doing this: we do not impose bans for the pleasure of it. But have you ever stopped to consider — if you will excuse a slightly unflattering analogy — what a man from your Stone Age would have felt, if he suddenly found himself in a modern city?”
“Surely,” protested the Herald Tribune, “there is a fundamental difference. We are accustomed to Science. On your world there are doubtless many things which we might not understand — but they wouldn’t seem magic to us.”
“Are you quite sure of that?” said Karellen, so softly that it was hard to hear his words. “Only a hundred years lies between the age of electricity and the age of steam, but what would a Victorian engineer have made of a television set or an electronic computer. And how long would he have lived if he started to investigate their workings? The gulf between two technologies can easily become so great that it is — lethal.”