...will be far stranger

Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by
which the dead outnumber the living. Since the dawn of time, roughly a hundred
billion human beings have walked the planet Earth.

Now this is an interesting number, for by a curious coincidence there are
approximately a hundred billion stars in our local universe, the Milky Way. So
for every man who has ever lived, in this Universe there shines a star.
But every one of those stars is a sun, often far more brilliant and glorious
than the small, nearby star we call the Sun. And many - perhaps most - of those
alien suns have planets circling them. So almost certainly there is enough land
in the sky to give every member of the human species, back to the first ape-man,
his own private, world-sized heaven - or hell.

How many of those potential heavens and hells are now inhabited, and by what
manner of creatures, we have no way of guessing; the very nearest is a million
times farther away than Mars or Venus, those still remote goals of the next
generation. But the barriers of distance are crumbling; one day we shall meet
our equals, or our masters, among the stars.

Men have been slow to face this prospect; some still hope that it may never
become reality. Increasing numbers, however, are asking: "Why have such meetings
not occurred already, since we ourselves are about to venture into space?"
Why not, indeed? Here is one possible answer to that very reasonable
question. But please remember, this is only a work of fiction.


The truth, as always, will be far stranger.