was then that he became man after he first realized the mighty power of joint labour and rational experience.
But even after this thousands of years were still to pass in wars and suffering, hunger and oppression and ignorance; but always too there dwelt hope and faith in a better future.
That hope and faith were not betrayed. The radiant future men had looked forward to had come, and humanity, united in a classless society and free of fear and oppression, &ad reached heights of scientific and artistic achievement without equal in all previous history. What had seemed the most difficult of all — the conquest of space — was accomplished. And finally, as the culmination of this long and laborious ascent up the ladder of progress, the latest fruit of man’s accumulated knowledge and labour — the invention of the Tellur, this long-range space ship now exploring remote areas of the Universe. Now this supiems product of the development of matter on Earth and in the Solar System was about to contact what represented the crowning accomplishment of another, and probably no less tortuous and difficult, path of development that started thousands of millions of years ago in another corner of the Universe.
These were the thoughts that in one form or another occupied the minds of all the members of the Tellur crew. Even young Taina was awed by the tremendous significance of the moment. Would they, a handful of people representing all the thousands of millions inhabiting the Earth, prove worthy of their exploits in labour, their physical perfection, their intelligence and steadfastness? How was one to prepare oneself for the meeting? There was no better way than to review the great yet bitter battle humanity had waged for freedom of body and spirit.
At the moment, however, most exciting was the thought of the coming meeting with living creatures from another world. What would they be like? Monsters, or models of perfection, judged by Earth standards?
Afra Devi, the biologist, was the first to speak.
Flushed with excitement, she looked even more beautiful than usual. As she spoke her glance rested from time to time on the painting over the door — a coloured panorama in three-dimensional paint of a mountain scene in Equatorial Africa. The startling contrast between the sombre, forest-clad slopes and the shining splendour of the peak seemed to illustrate her thoughts.
Afra recalled the time long ago when it was still widely believed that thinking beings could exist in practically any form, that the structure of their organisms could vary greatly. That was when the survivals of religious prejudices induced even serious scientists to assume that a brain could develop in any body — just as men once believed gods could assume any physical form. Actually, however, the anatomy and physiology of man, the only creature with a brain capable of rational thinking on Earth, were not the result of some accidental caprice of Nature. On the contrary, they represented a maximum degree of adaptation to environment and corresponded to man’s highly developed reasoning powers and nervous activity.
Our concepts of beauty in human beings and beauty in general evolved in the course of thousands of years as a result of unconscious acceptance of structural expediency and forms best adapted for one action or another. That is why we see beauty in powerful machines, in ocean waves, in trees and in horses, although none of these have anything in common with beauty as we see it in human beings. Even at the animal stage, man, thanks to the development of his brain, ceased to be compelled to adapt himself to only one mode of life as is the case with most animals.
Human legs are not adapted for constant running even on firm ground, yet they enable man to travel far and fast and to climb trees and rocks. As for the human hand, it is the most universal organ, capable of doing millions of things; indeed it was the hand that transformed the primitive beast into a human being…
In other words, man beginning with the earliest stages of his development evolved as a universal organism adapted to a great variety of conditions. With subsequent socialization of his existence, man’s organism became increasingly adapted to his multiform activities. As distinct from all other animals, the beauty of human beings consists, besides physical perfection, in their universality enhanced by the activity of the mind and nobility of spirit.
“Any thinking being from some other world that has been able to reach the Cosmos must be just as perfect and universal as the humans of our Earth, and hence just as beautiful,” Afra went on. “There can be no thinking monsters, no mushroom-men, no octopus-men! I cannot say what we shall meet in reality — some similarity of form or other aspect of beauty, but that it will be beauty, I have no doubt.”
“I like your theory,” Tey Eron said. “But…”
“I know what you mean,” Afra cut in. “Even slight departures from the norm can produce monstrosities, and here departures are highly probable. A human face without a nose, eyelids or lips is repulsive because the disfigurement is a departure from the normal. The face of a horse or dog also differs greatly from the human face, but we do not consider it ugly. On the contrary, it can be beautiful. The reason for this is that its beauty springs from natural expediency, whereas in the disfigured human face natural harmony has been upset.”
“You suggest that even if they may look quite different from us, we may not think them ugly?” Tey persisted. “But supposing they resemble us but have horns and elephant-like trunks?”
“A thinking being does not need horns and hence will not have them. The nose may be somewhat elongated to form a trunk, although a trunk too is unnecessary for a being with hands, and a human being must have hands. If there is a trunk, it will be a mere exception to the rule. But everything that comes into being as a result of historical development, of natural selection becomes the rule, however numerous the exceptions. Therein lies the beauty of expediency. No, I do not expect to find monsters with horns and tails in the space ship we shall meet. Only the lower forms of life differ greatly from one another; the higher the form the closer it is bound to be to us Earth- dwellers.”
“You win,” Tey Eron said, looking around at the others with obvious pride in Afra’s logic.
Kari Ram held another view, however, and he propounded it in his somewhat diffident manner. He believed that the strange beings, even if they were quite human in appearance and beautiful besides, might prove to be utterly remote from us as regards intelligence and outlook on life. In which case they might turn out to be cruel and terrible enemies.
Moot Ang came to the defence of the biologist.
“I happened to think of this quite recently,” he said. “And I realized that at the highest stage of development all thinking beings must reach a state of perfect mutual understanding. The mind of the intelligent being reflects the laws governing the development of the entire Universe. In this sense man is a microcosm. Thinking follows the laws of the Universe which are the same everywhere. Thought, no matter where it is found, will inevitably be based on mathematical and dialectical logic. There cannot be any other entirely different thought process, just as man cannot exist outside of society and Nature…”
A murmur of approval rose from his listeners.
“How wonderful it is when the ideas of many people coincide!” said Afra Devi. “That is proof of their correctness and evidence of a sense of comradeship …especially if each approaches a problem from the standpoint of his own particular branch of learning.”
“You mean biology and the social sciences?” asked Yas Tin who had taken no part in the conversation so far.
“Yes. The brightest page in the entire history of man on Earth was the steady growth of mutual understanding that accompanied the development of culture and knowledge. The higher the level of culture, the easier it was for the different peoples and races in the classless society to understand one another, and the clearer became the common goals of human existence, the need to unite first countries and then the whole planet. At the present level of development attained by humanity on Earth and no doubt by those we are about to meet…” Afra broke off.
“Yes, indeed,” agreed Moot Ang. “Two different planets meeting in outer space will be able to understand each other better than two savage nations on a single planet!”
“But what about the theory that war is inevitable even in the Cosmos?” asked Kari Ram. “Our ancestors who already were at a rather high level of culture were convinced of it.”
“Where is that book you promised to show us?” Tey Eron remembered. “The one about the two space ships which tried to destroy each other at their first meeting?”
The commander went to his room. This time nothing interfered and he returned shortly carrying the small eight-rayed star of a microfilm roll which he placed in the reading machine. The astronauts gathered around to hear the tale of fantasy told by an ancient American author.
“The First Contact,” as it was called, was a dramatic story of the meeting between a space ship from Earth
