"Yes. And you allowed yourself to be carried a little beyond the
present moment, into the future, without realizing it? Is that it?"
"Something like that," he replied, wide awake to the trap Hauserman
had set, and fearful that it might be a blind, to disguise the real
trap. "History follows certain patterns. I'm not a Toynbean, by any
manner of means, but any historian can see that certain forces
generally tend to produce similar effects. For instance, space travel
is now a fact; our government has at present a military base on Luna.
Within our lifetimes--certainly within the lifetimes of my
students--there will be explorations and attempts at colonization on
Mars and Venus. You believe that, Doctor?"
"Oh, unreservedly. I'm not supposed to talk about it, but I did some
work on the Philadelphia Project, myself. I'd say that every major
problem of interplanetary flight had been solved before the first
robot rocket was landed on Luna."
"Yes. And when Mars and Venus are colonized, there will be the same
historic situations, at least in general shape, as arose when the
European powers were colonizing the New World, or, for that matter,
when the Greek city-states were throwing out colonies across the
Aegean.
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