Lost in the Cosmos

species replenished or begun to replenish? Or has it?
    A BBOT AND J ONES look at each other.
    J ONES: There’s another problem.
    T HE C APTAIN: What?
    J ONES: Sterility.
    T HE C APTAIN: From the Cesium? How could that be? Your parents were not sterile. The lizards and buzzards are not sterile.
    J ONES: We don’t really know. Maybe a cumulative effect of Cesium in the food chain. Maybe the ultraviolet, maybe a delayed effect of the chemical warfare. Anyhow, it has been slowly progressive until now—
    T HE C APTAIN: Nowwhat?
    A BBOT: Now we estimate an incidence of 98 percent sterility in humans. There has not been a recorded birth in Utah, Colorado, or California in more than a year.
    T HE C APTAIN (looking at Jones): And you?
    J ONES: Viable sperm count: zero.
    T HE C APTAIN (looking at monks, thinks better of it, looks at Jones): You married?
    J ONES (looking at Tiffany, another blond Californian): No.
    M ONK A MOS (solemn and a bit platitudinous, like Amos in Amos 'n’ Andy): It’s tragic to see people want children and not be able to have them. What a joy to see these children!
    T HE C APTAIN: How about the sexual drive? Is that affected, too, in some people?
    M ONK A NDY: In very few white folks and no niggers at all.
    T HE C APTAIN: Let me get this straight. What you’re saying is that you’re probably the last generation on earth.
    J ONES: If not this, then the next is the last, surely.
    A BBOT (brightening) :Until you came along.
    T HE C APTAIN (after a long pause) :Do you have a plan?
    A BBOT AND J ONES: We have two plans. Two irreconcilable plans. Each involves you. I’m afraid you’re going to have to decide.
    T HE C APTAIN: Let’s hear them.
    Dr. Aristarchus Jones’s Proposal
    Here are the facts:
    The human species is finished on earth. Due to the delayed and cumulative effect of Ce 137 radiation or the reduction of ozone in the atmosphere by nitrous oxides and the resulting ultraviolet flare, male sterility is approaching 100 percent, and female is not far behind. In a word, we are either the last generation on earth or the next to last. You, Captain, and your crew are obviously fertile, but it is problematical how long you will remain so—a year? a month? And do you imagine that when your children mature sexually, they will be fertile?
    My proposal: that we colonize Europa, one of the Galilean satellites of Jupiter. You, Captain, made a fly-by eighteen years ago and know better than I that it is probably habitable: planet-size, covered by water ice, evidence of newly emerging land—the famous greening seen nowhere else but here on earth—no vulcanism, no impact craters, what appears to be a river system and, most important of all, an atmosphere of 10 percent oxygen.
    Your starship has sufficient reactor fuel for launch and to attain sufficient ramjet speeds to activate the hydrogen scoop. Hence, a journey of weeks.
    Here in the good monks’ cellar I have found a supply of seeds, algae, plants, small mammals, and even insects. I have books, music, Shakespeare on cassettes.
    As a matter of fact, we have no choice except to stay here and die. I will go along—you will need me as a technical adviser. Moreover, Tiffany and I already have a relationship. Who knows, I may not be totally sterile—no one ever is 100 percent. After all, it only takes one spermatozoon.
    With a bit of luck, we can colonize Europa in much the same way as Europe colonized the New World, except that —and here is the exciting part!—there is no reason why we cannot develop a society such as the one my namesake lived in in ancient Ionia, a society based on reason and science, and do so without repeating the mistakes of the past, for example, the Dark Ages, two thousand years of Plato and Judaism and Christianity—a sexually free and peace-loving society where the sciences and arts can flourish freed from the superstitions and repressions of religion—no offense to the good monks, who are in fact invited to come along. I think it appropriate, with your permission, to change the name of Europa to New Ionia. At long last, we are going to put behind us forever the interminable quarrels of the people of the Book—first the Jews, then the Christians, then Islam. There will be no Middle East on Ionia, no Christian vs. Jew, no Christian vs. Moslem, Shi-ite vs. Sunnite, Moslem vs. Jew, Protestant vs. Catholic.
    There is no reason why we cannot start a new society on another planet just as we started a new society in the New