Joe said uncomfortably: "It won't. Not that somebody won't try." Then he stopped. After a moment he said awkwardly: "Look! It's necessary that we humans get to the stars, or ultimately we'll crowd the Earth until we won't be able to stay human. We'd have to have wars and plagues and such things to keep our numbers down. It—it seems to me, and I—think it's been said before, that it looks like there's something, somewhere, that's afraid of us humans. It doesn't want us to reach the stars. It didn't want us to fly. Before that it didn't want us to learn how to cure disease, or have steam, or—anything that makes men different from the beasts."
Haney turned his head. He listened intently.
"Maybe it sounds—superstitious," said Joe uneasily, "but there's always been somebody trying to smash everything the rest of us wanted. As if—as if something alien and hateful went around whispering hypnotically into men's ears while they slept, commanding them irresistibly to do things to smash all their own hopes."
The Chief grunted. "Huh! D'you think that's new stuff, Joe?"
"N-no," admitted Joe. "But it's true. Something fights us. You can make wild guesses. Maybe—things on far planets that know that if ever we reach there.... There's something that hates men and it tries to make us destroy ourselves."
"Sure," said Haney mildly. "I learned about that in Sunday School, Joe."
"Maybe I mean that," said Joe helplessly. "But anyhow there's something we fight—and there's Something that fights with us. So I think we're going to get the Moonship down all right."
Mike said sharply: "You mean you think this is all worked out in advance. That we'd be here, we'd get here——"
The Chief said impatiently, "It's figured out so we can do it if we got the innards. We got the chance. We can duck it. But if we duck it, it's bad, and somebody else has to have the chance later. I know what Joe's saying. Us men, we got to get to the stars. There's millions of 'em, and we need the planets they've got swimming around 'em."
Haney said, "Some of them have planets. That's known. Yeah."