Gehringer was confronted by a world that believed a widespread liberal education impossible. The notion of world peace was a joke. He argued that until we made the effort, we could not hope that people would put the guns down. That maybe it was impossible, but that we wouldn’t know unless we tried. In his celebrated Berlin address in 2247, he argued that the general notion that the problems are not curable was poisoning us. If that was true, he said, all the advances of the previous century would prove short-lived. Extended life spans were futile; interstellar vehicles, once thought to be impossible, would be of no value even if they were developed. Communication technologies, artificial gravity, and modern energy production would not save us. Ironically, he pointed out, the conquest of disease in virtually all its forms, and the reversal of the aging process, which was then just on the horizon, had become part of the crisis.

There is no question, Gehringer said, that undeveloped areas desperately needed food shipments. And clean water. The stark reality was that they also needed open minds. Let us, on this happy anniversary, be aware that we also needed Ahmad Gehringer.

3.

O pilot! ’tis a fearful night,

There’s danger on the deep.

—T. H. Bayly, “The Pilot,” 1844

The Calliope transmission was all over the media. Hutch sat in her Woodbridge, Virginia, home watching it play again and again. The accompanying rhythm was perfect, capturing precisely the mood of a waterfall high in a mountain chain. The entire clip ran for just forty-seven seconds. It didn’t feel like something she’d have expected from aliens. The music was precisely what she would have selected. The signal had bounced in from somewhere, and she had no doubt we’d figure it out, given a little time.