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We are presenting the hypothesis of the calamity in its simplest, which does not mean its most probable, version. For example, an unmanned spaceship with containers might have been sent forth without any fixed addressee in mind; it might have been outfitted with sensors that would recognize the planet to be “gifted” by virtue of predetermined parameters (such as its average temperature; its atmospheric composition, particularly the presence of free oxygen and water; an orbit favorable to ecological development; etc.). Such an automatically piloted vehicle could have approached various stars on a scouting mission. However, because it is physically impossible to manufacture technological products to survive undamaged over a journey of indeterminate length (which may take millions of earth-years), such a vehicle must have been provided with a device that would automatically destroy the contents when their “shelf life” had ended. Such a vehicle could have entered our solar system as the “shelf life” of the articles was nearing the expiry date. After all, it could also have been that the self- destruction did not occur only because the ship’s surveillance system discovered earth and dispersed the containers with their “partially spoiled” contents. The degree of damage to individual surveillance, steering, and control systems is uncertain; only the statistical probability of damage can be determined — i.e., the one thing absolutely certain is that the probability of defects occurring in the programs and their execution system increases with the passage of time. I should emphasize this point: the more complicated a device, the more inevitable are breakdowns over the course of time; this is a universal law that is independent of where in the cosmos the technology was produced or how. Therefore, the enterprise of learning about the aliens — what the Strugatskys call “xenology” — must take the statistical-probability aspect of intercivilizational contact into account as something crucial for interpreting such visits.
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The degree to which the authors followed the fairy tale’s structural pattern in their epilogue can, for example, be seen in the passage in which “black twisted stalactites that looked like fat candles” (4:141) are mentioned. These are all that is left of the people the Golden Ball has killed — that is, all that is left of Redrick’s and Arthur’s predecessors in the quest for the accursed treasure. In fairy tales such remains — the bones of daredevils who ran out of luck — usually lie at the entrance of the dragon’s cave, at the foot of the glass mountain, etc.
