There were always yarns about "Little Men" and whatnot, of course. Yet no contemporary intelligent races were found across space. There were just queer skeletons and dried up corpses millions of years old. Rusting on Mars, or floating free and broken among the Asteroids, were the remains of inventions, and other cultural evidences. Space ships had wandered as far as Pluto during those past ages, too; and various relics were left on this sphere or that. Scientific study of these things meant more speed for our technical progress in medicine, atomics, metallurgy, almost anything you could mention.
Three cheers for us, and wasn't progress wonderful? But I guess plenty of folks felt dumb and slow and confused.
I, Charles Harver, was born in Chicago, March 9th, 2014. But in my earliest, murky memories, Earth was only a place known from television, picture books, and the nostalgic remarks of my parents. We had a house and a flower and vegetable garden under a transparent airdome of dark blue plastic. The sun would shine among the stars for what I heard was fourteen days; then, for another two weeks the solar lamps would burn in the dome top.
The region where we lived was called the spaceward lunar hemisphere. Earth never shone there, but life was good. There were other kids, and school, and the usual dreams about being a bold space wanderer, speeding out to find unimagined marvels.
Dad was a technician in the research labs, just a few miles from our house by tube train. I could see the walls of the buildings in the bleak volcanic distance.
Dad used to pretend he was wrestling with me. "Charlie," he'd say, "a kid better grow up tough and flexible these days. Not mean but rugged—ready for anything. Don't ever go soft on me, Charlie, with all the temptations of modern comforts. You know one thing the labs are looking for, already? Yeah, a way to reach the planets of the stars! Maybe a means—and an engine powerful enough—really will be invented to force a shortened, interdimensional path across the light-years if the structure of space itself doesn't burst under test! Keep your head down, kid! The work is much too dangerous to be conducted on the densely populated Earth. There could be an awful blow."
Dad was a big, dark man. Talking like that, he looked thrilled and scared.
Dad used to bring Dr. Shane Lanvin out to our house to enjoy Mother's cooking, which, even considering the aid of a fine automatic kitchen, was something special. Dr. Lanvin was a wispy little man with a ragged blond mustache. He was much older than Dad; though Mom used to say that even if he was a famous scientist, he was part child in his interests; that he liked even toys.
"I always did enjoy things in miniature, Lillian," he'd admit.