“Me an extraterrestrial explorer?” Perceveral said with a bitter laugh. “Don’t try to kid me. I read the papers. I know what the explorers are like.”

“What are they like?”

“They’re Earth’s finest,” Perceveral said. “The very best brains in the very best bodies. Men with trigger-quick reactions, able to tackle any problem, cope with any situation, adjust to any environment. Isn’t that true?”

“Well,” Haskell said, “it was true back in the early days of planetary exploration. And we have allowed that stereotype to remain in the public eye, to instill confidence. But that type of explorer is now obsolete. There are plenty of other jobs for men such as you describe. But not planetary exploration.”

“Couldn’t your supermen make the grade?” Perceveral asked with a faint sneer.

“Of course they could,” Haskell said. “No paradox is involved here. The record of our early explorers is unsurpassed. Those men managed to survive on every planet where human survival was even remotely possible, against overwhelming odds, by sheer grit and tenacity. The planets called for their every resource and they rose to meet the challenge. They stand as an eternal monument to the toughness and adaptability of Homo sapiens.”

“Then why did you stop using them?”

“Because our problems on Earth changed,” Haskell told him. “In the early days, the exploration of space was an adventure, a scientific achievement, a defense measure, a symbol. But that passed. Earth’s overpopulation trend continued—explosively. Millions spilled into relatively empty lands like Brazil, New Guinea and Australia. But the population explosion quickly filled them. In major cities, the population panic point was reached and produced the Weekend Riots. And the population, bolstered by geriatrics and a further sharp decrease in infant mortality, continued to grow.”

Haskell rubbed his forehead. “It was a mess. But the ethics of population increase aren’t my business. All we at the Board knew was, we had to have new land fast. We needed planets which—unlike Mars and Venus—would be rapidly self-supporting. Places to which we could siphon millions, while the scientists and politicians on Earth tried to straighten things out. We had to open these planets to colonization as rapidly as possible. And that meant speeding up the initial exploratory process.”