Michael could have called him through inscape and simply forwarded the message, but that wasn't polite. He went and rapped on the scientist's door instead.

We have spent trillions on the search for our equals in the galaxy, Herat had written. What we have found has caused us to change our tactics, our goals and ultimately our ideals. The search as it is now proceeding is on its last legs. We must accept that and understand why.

Herat opened the door. "Yes?"

"The cruiser has signaled us. They want us aboard for a debriefing tonight."

"Ah. I see. Forward me the message, will you?" Dr. Herat turned back inside, leaving the door open. He had been packing, Michael saw.

Michael concentrated for a second and saw Herat purse his lips as the message arrived.

Over the past four decades we strove to find other starfaring intelligent species with whom we could communicate. Our goal was the creation of a galaxy-wide, multispecies civilization, because we knew other species were out there and we had the evidence of past galactic-wide civilizations to inspire us.

"You knew the cruiser had come for us?" Michael asked. Usually it was he who arranged transportation and who knew the starship routes and schedules. Michael knew nothing of the military, but Dr. Herat had his connections.

Herat shrugged. "Nobody else on this planet is worth the effort. Although… I knew Crisler slightly, he used to be a scientist, back in the innocent old days. Now he's a rear admiral? Still doesn't explain why they sent him in particular. I wouldn't think I'd merit more than your average captain."

Michael hadn't thought of that. "Maybe they were the closest ship?"

"That could be. Help me with this stuff, would you? You always could pack better than me."

Our well-funded and highly public search for our equals has turned up none. We have found some intelligent alien species, even a few that travel between the stars. We have not found a single race that shares our ideals, or even comprehends them.

"You know, I can't in all honesty say I'm sorry it's ending like this," said Dr. Herat later as they piled their few belongings in a transit capsule at the bottom of the freight elevator. A few of the staff were fluttering around, upset at the suddenness of their departure. Herat was generally well liked.

"How can you say that?" asked Meline. She stood with her arms crossed, scowling at the doctor.

"It's better go out with a bang than a whimper," said Herat. "We've been reduced to studying lumps of gray rock on tidal flats— have you thought about where it goes from here?"

They had made their inscape public, as was polite, and now Michael saw Dr. Herat summon a clock, which hung in the air above them like some ancient ghost, translucent and dire. "Ten minutes until the tide goes out," said Herat. "I'm going to miss the sound of it."

Michael summoned a video image of topside events. The water above was choppy and low; scintillations of sunlight could be seen through it. He made the image public and placed it near the clock.

The dream of Panspermia goes back to Teilhard de Chardin and his vision of ever-increasing sentience in the universe. We were brought up on this faith without even realizing it. The many assumptions behind it only became apparent when we began searching for a real counterpart to the vision. Then we learned the truth.

Finally the waters parted, revealing late-afternoon sunlight and a few clouds. They said their good-byes and entered the egg-shaped transit capsule. The door slammed and Michael and Dr. Herat sat looking at one another in pensive silence.

The truth is that we are intelligent animals, but animals just the same, subject to the inescapable laws of our evolution. Our first theories about alien intelligence were providential: we believed with Teilhard de Chardin that consciousness is a basic characteristic of complex thinking entities. When we developed the FTL drive, we burst into the galaxy in search of beings more «evolved» than ourselves, in the belief that a universal Reason would unite us with other species at the same level.

What we found instead was that even though a species might remain starfaring for millions of years, consciousness does not seem to be required for toolmaking. In fact, consciousness appears to be a phase. No species we have studied has retained what we would call self-awareness for its entire history. Certainly none has evolved into some state above consciousness.

The Panspermia Institute was formed out of the disappointment of this discovery. We sought to uncover the conditions that give rise to sentience; if we could not find aliens like ourselves, perhaps we could guide candidate species into our mode of experience.

With the faintest shudder, the platform began to rise. The darkness of the station fell below and sunlight stabbed through the capsule's window. Michael and Dr. Herat leaned over as one to look at the shoreline of Kadesh one last time. It was beautiful under the sunlight; you wanted to run into the water every time you saw it. Michael could make out the faint checkerboard pattern of the Kadists under the water. They were just as mysterious now as when he and the professor had arrived.

A shadow flitted overhead, then the capsule rang as something took hold of it. They were lifted gently and silently skyward by Kadesh's only skyhook, which normally reeled itself back to avoid the churning water when it passed over this spot. In seconds they had climbed above the lowest clouds.

Studies on hundreds of worlds have turned up no pattern to the development of sentient life. The idea that Nature somehow instructs or guides species into sentience in a repeatable way also appears to be wrong. There is no discernible policy for the Institute to be gleaned from the evidence of past civilizations. We can neither predict the rise of sentience in a species, nor predict its ultimate course, not even in our own.

We are left with a selectionist theory of sentience: consciousness and space-faring toolmaking ability, arise by chance from countless combinations of traits that in the vast majority of cases fail to produce results. Our studies have turned up thousands of species that "might have been" like ourselves. One, for instance, has all our traits, except that it lacks a tolerance for remaining stationary for long. Its people roam across the plains of their world, incapable of creating tools larger than they can carry.

Countless other species are similarly close, but also miss the mark, some for want of a single trait. Records from extinct starfaring races show that some of our forerunners tried to genetically engineer such candidate species, to no avail: Even a single genetic alteration cascades unpredictable changes throughout culture, language and thought. Only brutal trial-and-error produces results. That, we do not have the moral courage to attempt.

So we are alone. The existing starfaring species of the galaxy are not able to be our companions. We cannot find nor create a companion species. Indeed, the only way we could create a pangalactic civilization would be to exterminate or enslave all potential competition, as the Chicxulub did.

MICHAEL HAD LEFT behind many worlds in his travels with Dr. Herat, but as they rose above Kadesh he was reminded of his very first leave-taking, the day he left Kimpurusha and his family. That time, he had sat and stared out the porthole as white cloud swallowed the city of Manifest and then even the stark mountains that rose above it; he had watched as the horizon became a curve and the whole vast glacial plain of the northern hemisphere came into view. He remembered being astonished at the beautiful and subtle colors that played along the planet's terminator. His life was about to change forever, yet he felt confident and not alone, because he had embarked on this journey as a religious pilgrimage. He was taking Kimpurusha with him; how could he be lonely?