The Fly

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Man is probably not (says science fiction) the only sizable pebble on the macrocosmic beach: other “intelligent” entities may well be pursuing their purposes regardless of us, and indeed indifferent to us. A physically small manifestation of this hypothesis is brilliantly postulated here. Do such things exist? Can they exist? One thing is certain: they ought to exist. We belong to a species much too ready to regard itself as the highest, finest flower of Creation. To throw a little cold water on that conceit, as for example by describing what “he” saw (and what happened to him when he tried to interfere), is to help make us just that fraction less complacent, that fraction more sensible.

Shortly after noon the man unslung his Geiger counter and placed it carefully upon a flat rock by a thick, inviting patch of grass. He listened to the faint, erratic background ticking for a moment, then snapped off the current. No point in running the battery down just to hear stray cosmic rays and residual radio-activity. So far he’d found nothing potent, not a single trace of workable ore.

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