Beyond the Event Horizon - Episode Three by Sartison Albert

Author:Sartison, Albert [Sartison, Albert]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Albert Sartison
Published: 2015-02-01T16:00:00+00:00

9

“Every civilisation, including ours, has the right to self-defence. A preventive strike might be part of this, consequently it is legitimate in certain cases.”

“In what sort of cases?”

“A first strike is legitimate when it is a warning before an inevitable attack.”

“In practice, your interpretation of a potential threat might be erroneous.

“Let us take the specific example of your civilisation and ours. Does your doctrine permit a first strike at our civilisation, even though we are at a lower level of technological development, and therefore cannot represent a serious threat to you?”

“You cannot represent a threat to our civilisation as a whole, but you could well be a threat to our ships within the range of your weapons. Therefore a preventive strike in this situation is possible, though highly unlikely. Such an act of self-defence would have limited effect.”

“So you reserve the right to take limited strike action against us?”

“During the first contact, you struck at our ship, in direct breach of our agreement. Whether it was a technical failure or a deliberate attack is not as important as the fact itself. We reserve the right to appropriate reaction in the future, to prevent any repetition of such incidents subjecting our ships to danger.”

Steve did not like this discussion, but the questions being sent to him from Shelby forced him to keep returning to this unpleasant theme. This was most probably at the insistence of MacQueen, who was observing the discussion from afar.

“I believe I am not mistaken in my assessment if I say that neither your civilisation nor ours has any interest in conflict. What can we do, in your opinion, to avoid dangerous incidents in the future?”

“You can withdraw your armed forces.”

“You said yourselves that every civilisation has the right to self-defence. For this reason, in this situation we are obliged to treat your ships with caution.

“Now I would like to return to questions of a scientific nature. As an astrophysicist, I am especially concerned about the timing of your appearance in the Solar System. Why now in particular?”

“When one civilisation enters into contact with another, this question always concerns the contacted party. It makes sense from its own subjective point of view, but it is senseless objectively.”

“So the timing of contact was a matter of chance, and you were not waiting for the right moment?”

“Earth belongs to a star system on the periphery of the galaxy, so naturally this does not make it one of the first candidates for contact. It was just that its time had come.”

“Concerning your proposal of creating a device around our star to trap its radiant energy. Why do you need the energy of our Sun in particular, rather than that of other stars? There are a vast number of them in the galaxy. You would not have had to ask anyone’s permission to use their energy resources, nor share it with anyone.”

“We are interested in a joint cooperation with your civilisation. That is the main reason we are having this discussion.”

“So the energy of our Sun as such is only of secondary interest to you?”

“Not exactly.

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