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to Pluto, to the edge of the solar system and beyond, and nowhere had they found trace of intelligent life. Lichens, bacteria, primitive low-phylum crawlers, yes, but nothing more. Disappointment was the fate of those archaeologists who had hatched fantasies of reconstructing the cultural sequences of Mars from artifacts found in the desert. There were no artifacts. And when the star-probes had begun to go forth, making their decades-long reconnaissances of the nearest solar systems, they had returned with—nothing. Within a sphere a dozen light-years in diameter, there evidently had never existed any life-form more complex than the Centaurine proteoids, to which only an amoeba need feel inferior.
    Krug had been a young man when the first star-probes returned. It had displeased him to see his fellow Earthmen constructing philosophies around the failures to find intelligent life in the nearby solar systems. What were they saying, these apostles of the New Geocentricism?
    —We are the chosen ones!
    —We are the only children of God!
    —On this world and no other did the Lord fashion His people!
    —To us falls the universe, as our divine heritage!
    Krug saw the seeds of paranoia in that kind of thinking.
    He had never thought much about God. But it seemed to him that men were asking too much of the universe when they insisted that only on this one small planet of one small sun had the miracle of intelligence been permitted to emerge. Billions upon billions of suns existed, world without end. How could intelligence not have evolved again and again and again across the infinite sea of galaxies?
    And it struck him as megalomania to elevate the tentative findings of a sketchy search through a dozen light-years into an absolute statement of dogma. Was man really alone? How could you know? Krug was basically a rational man. He maintained perspective on all things. He felt that mankind’s continued sanity depended on an awakening from this dream of uniqueness, for the dream was sure to end, and if the awakening came later rather than sooner the impact might be shattering.
    “When will the tower be ready?” Vargas asked.
    “Year after next. Next year, if we have luck, maybe. You saw this morning: unlimited budget.” Krug frowned. He felt suddenly uneasy. “Give me the truth. Even you, you spend all your life listening to the stars, you think Krug’s a little crazy?”
    “Absolutely not!”
    “Sure you do. They all do. My boy Manuel, he thinks I ought to be locked up, but he’s afraid to say it. Spaulding, out there, him too. Everybody, maybe even Thor Watchman, and he’s building the damned thing. They want to know what’s in it for me. Why do I throw billions of dollars into a tower of glass. You too, Vargas!”
    The twisted face grew even more taut. “I have nothing but sympathy for this project. You injure me with these suspicions. Don’t you think making contact with an extrasolar civilization is as important to me as it is to you?”
    “ Ought to be important to you. Your field; your study. Me? Businessman. Maker of androids. Owner of land. Capitalist, exploiter, maybe a little bit of chemist, know something about genetics, yes, but no astronomer, no scientist. It’s a little crazy, eh, Vargas, for me to care about a thing like this? Squandering of assets. Non-productive investment. What kind of dividends do I get from NGC 7293, huh? You tell me. You tell me.”
    Nervously Vargas said, “Perhaps we ought to go downstairs. The excitement—”
    Klug slapped his chest. “I’m just turned sixty. I got a hundred years to live, more, maybe. Maybe two hundred, who knows? Don’t worry about me. But you can admit it. You know it’s crazy for an ignorance like me to get so interested in something like this.” Krug shook his head vehemently. “I know it’s crazy myself. I have to explain me to me all the time. I just tell you, this is something has to be done, and I do it, this tower. This hello to the stars. I