Planetary opposition

“ Humanity's inability to fit its activities into that pattern in changing planetary systems, fundamentally. Many such changes are accompanied by life-threatening hazards. This new reality, from which there is no escape, must be recognized – and managed. ”

“ I commented mildly, "is another centralized force in space, in spite of what you say. It's widespread, it's profit-making, and it gets the job done. Nobody has to try to beg for voluntary appropriations from penurious planetary governments." ”

“ Large scale research and experiment should go a long way toward developing the skills required by competent and successful planetary leadership. Political experiments like the United States of North America or the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics or the League of Nations or the United Nations, the planet-wide search for petroleum or the joint scientific efforts that went into the splitting of the atom, have given us opportunities to develop the science and art of planet-wide leadership. ”

“ Consequently, wisdom, foresight, and the acceptance of change as a major factor in all social relationships seem to justify our assumption that sooner or later man's survival on the planet will depend on a degree of worldist thinking, association and institutionalism that will guarantee the preservation of order and decency at the planetary level. ”

“ Unless something speedily occurred to check the onrush of the dark star, it was prophesied that the laws governing the planetary system would run to a new balance, and that in the ensuing chaos the whole group would spread apart and fall toward the gulfs beyond the great surrounding void. ”

“ First and foremost, it must be planet-wide. Given planetary unification by communication, transportation, travel, migration, trade and commerce, and cultural interchange, one world has become a factual reality. World oneness is laced by contradictions, confrontations, conflicts ”

“ Politically the task of setting up a competent world government has not been seriously taken in hand. The same may be said for the organization of a planned, organized, supervised planetary economy. So far as we know, such world economic institutions and practices cannot exist in the chaos of one hundred forty sovereign states, each exercising authority over its economy, each with its own program for growth and expansion, and putting its claims for wealth and power above peace, order, justice, and mercy for the entire human family. ”

“ It is wonderful to contemplate how the planetary forces balance each other so perfectly that universal equilibrium is maintained despite the disturbances of the 1500 millions which inhabit the earth alone, not to speak of other spheres. ”

“ This warning, surely, we are heeding; yet even with the loss of that old false security, we do not face the future with fear. Whatever beings of power the universe holds, we realize now that we too are beings of power. We have fought for our planet against the space visitors and have held it. As a race we have come of age. ”

“ Nor is the stillness of the stars invaded when some long unearthly howl, like the wail of a lost soul, breaks the slumber of the mesa forest, marking the prowling presence of a stray coyote. Gone as it came, it dies in the distance on the air that gave it birth; and the gloom of the pines swallows up one’s vain peering after something palpable, their tops alone decipherable in dark silhouette against the sky. From amid surroundings that for their height and their intenancy fringe the absolute silence of space the observer must set forth who purposes to cross it to another planetary world. ”

“ Ten thousand years of space travel in suspended animation. You saw me that way once, Temple, and wondered. You thought I was dead, but that is another story.
"Anyway, let my people invade your planet, ten thousand years hence. If Earth takes the right direction, if democracy and free thought and individual enterprise win over totalitarian standardization as I think they will, your people will be more than a match for the decadent parasites who may or may not have sufficient initiative to cross space the slow way and attempt invasion in ten thousand years." ”

“ This was what Spencer Chambers was trying to do with the Solar System ... what he would do if someone did not stop him.
Russ bit viciously on his pipe-stem.
The Earth, the Solar System, never could revert to that ancient way of government. The proud people spawned on the Earth, swarming outward to the other planets, must never have to bow their heads as minions to an overlord. ”

“ Ben Wilson finally read the message.
"To the people of Earth, greetings!
"On behalf of the free people of Mars, I have the honor to announce that this planet hereby declares itself a sovereign and independent world. We shall continue to regard Earth as our mother, and to consider the health and welfare of her people in no way second to our own in matters which affect both planets. We trust that Earth will share this feeling of mutual friendship. We trust that all strains of hostility will be ended. ”

“ Liberty and the right to rule, the right to go risk one's neck ... to climb a mountain or cross a desert or explore a swamp, the right to aim one's sights at distant stars, to fling a taunting challenge into the teeth of space, to probe with clumsy fingers and force nature to lay bare her secrets ... that was what mankind wanted. That was what those men out on Mars [114] and Venus and in the Jovian worlds were fighting for. Not against Spencer Chambers or Ludwig Stutsman or Interplanetary Power, but for the thing that drove man on and made of him a flame that others might follow. ”

“ The only thing you'll get out of it is a chance to fight for a better chance for others some day—and a promise that there'll be more, until you get old enough to sit at a desk on Earth and fight against every bickering nation there to keep the planets clean. There's a rocket waiting to transship you to the Moon on the way to Mercury right now. ”

“ To understand the events which led to The War, it is best that we briefly review the history of space travel by Earthians. In the year 2002, the six remaining nations of the Earth formed the Federation to abolish war and to enable the people of your planet to put forth a united effort to discover the secret of interplanetary travel. This endeavour, in itself, was considered by our leaders to be most creditable. But the entire pattern of your development, observed for many centuries, instilled seeds of doubt in our minds. ”

“ I refer to your planet rather than to your nation. Practically all your scientific progress has come as a result of war. Nations that lose a war on your planet study and invent and discover like demons possessed for tools with which to win the next one. Do you deny that at this moment your planet is little more than an armed camp? ”

“ Go back to your own planet and leave us alone!"
"I can't," he said quietly. "We are here to prevent an invasion of our planet. Our agents are placed in key spots in your government to learn of future plans for invasion. We learn about your satellites and your rockets and your space stations." His face saddened. "You see, Sara, we do not want our way of life disturbed. Your people would bring war and hate and disease. And machinery. Machinery is all powerful in your concepts here on Earth. In our civilization the individual is everything. ”

“ If God's works had done so, what tumult and ruin there would have been in the immensity of space! Instead of the order that now prevails, man would have been sometimes frozen to death, and at other times burned up; one or two seasons of irregularity, even in climate, would depopulate the earth. But what if the planets, irrespective of the power by which they are controlled, were to rush wildly through space, and, with their mighty impetus dash against each other? "What fearful consequences would ensue." There would be "system on system wrecked, and world on world." ”

“ We have laid waste your planet, but it is simply a just retribution for what you did with ours. We are prepared to complete the destruction, leaving not a living being in this world of yours, or to grant you peace, at your choice. Our condition of peace is simply this: All resistance must cease absolutely. ”

“ The stupid democracies that had called themselves a World Union had colonized the planets and ruled them without plan. And when Mars, Venus, and the Jovian Worlds had revolted and set up a Planet Council, all that Earth could do was to come crawling to it, begging polite permission to join what they should have owned! ”

“ Citizens of Earth, here is your future: You are welcomed as equals in a union with Venus. For a time, until you have learned how to govern yourselves peacefully, your planet will be directed by Venusian administrators. But even now—immediately—you shall be accorded the same rights and privileges that the citizens of Venus enjoy.
And you shall have peace! Perhaps you should be thankful for the last terrible war which your leaders brought upon you, for as a result of it, you shall no longer know the meaning of war.
Of course, citizens have duties as well as rights. ”

“ We want self-government, we want to own our land and our homes, we want the right to rule our own lives."
"That's guaranteed in the Constitution," said Meta.
"Earth's Constitution. Mars isn't Earth. The Mars Corporation controls both spaceports. It owns all business and industry on Mars. It's milking the planet dry of resources and profits, and it's set up a company government that makes the people of Mars no better than slaves."
He smiled a bitter smile.
"Earth's government protects the freedom of Earth's people," he said, "but the people of Earth don't know what's happening on Mars. ”

“ Such wonders has the industrial revolution wrought in a few swift decades, and so great has been the shrinkage of the planet, that the industrial nations have long since felt the imperative demand for foreign markets. The favoured portions of the earth are occupied. From their seats in the temperate zones the militant commercial nations proceed to the exploitation of the tropics, and for the possession of these they rush to war hot-footed. Like wolves at the end of a gorge, they wrangle over the fragments. There are no more planets, no more fragments, and they are yet hungry. ”

“ We have no interest in the fate of your planet except that we desire to help the form best adapted to bring about the day we all await with anxiety when all of the planets will be united in bonds of love and justice. We believe that the form which developed on the Earth is better adapted to this than the form which developed on Jupiter and we will give you weapons which will enable you to free yourselves and to protect your planet against future invasions. ”

“ The whole of the human world, throughout its length and breadth, has felt the gravitational pull of a giant planet of greed, with concentric rings of innumerable satellites, causing in our society a marked deviation from the moral orbit. ”

“ How wonderful that each of those stars, those planets, might be peopled by beings puzzling over the disputed facts of the Creation, as we were; who might also be worrying over a future existence and the redemption of a sinful people; who might be endeavouring to solve labour problems and trade disputes and discussing whether free trade or preferential tariffs were best for a nation's welfare! Was there somebody up in one of those other planets on a pony's back, as we were, robbing one's-self of much-needed rest to reach a mountain top to see the sun rise? ”

“ There must be hundreds of possible patterns—all of them destructive in the presence of greed and laziness and lust for power. For example, a planet—maybe this one—gets space travel. It sets up colonies on several worlds. It's expanding and dynamic. Then it finds an Oracle and takes it back to its own world. With all questions answered for it, the civilization stops being dynamic and starts to stagnate. ”

“ Should the governors of Mars, whose responsibilities lie at least as much in the economic improvement of their own world as in inter-world harmony, permit their planet to receive goods which retard that economic development so that it becomes a race to maintain current unsatisfactory standards, merely because certain computers on Earth are fed false facts to permit continuation of some illogical form of government or social system—or should the governors of Mars permit their planet to suffer because of computer illogic in the name of a highly doubtful status quo on the parent planet? ”

“ It is the next stage in the evolution of this planet—in the words of one great thinker, “the planetization of mankind”.
Whether peace is to be reached only after unimaginable horrors precipitated by humanity’s stubborn clinging to old patterns of behaviour, or is to be embraced now by an act of consultative will, is the choice before all who inhabit the earth. At this critical juncture when the intractable problems confronting nations have been fused into one common concern for the whole world, failure to stem the tide of conflict and disorder would be unconscionably irresponsible. ”

“ For one thing, we are controlled by Universal Law; and another, we could not, as yet, give to earth the powers that will one day be hers. Her people and especially those who are in power have not yet reached a stage where they are capable of coping with the powers, of using them to the advantage of their people rather than to the advantage of selfish interest. And to bring you an example of what I am speaking. Already the powers that control planet earth are using powers wrongly. Already, your military powers are using sacred gifts of certain individuals to gain information. ”