Adventures in the Far Future & Tales of Outer Space — page 209: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

wouldn't even know if we were moving. | wish whoever is running this show would come on out and let us get a look at them.” “Well, I’ll tell you,” Goodrich said. “I don’t think anybody IS running it. | think it’s all automatic. | think maybe Bertha was put here just for us to find. “Suppose that somewhere in the universe, there’s a race that has space travel, maybe even faster than light. They get around and explore hundreds of suns, thousands of planets, and now and then they find one with intelligent life. Now there’s a chance that any planet with intelligent life may develop space travel also, and naturally our galactic Spacemen want to know about it if they do. At the same time, there’s an awful lot of planets in the universe, they can’t establish a regular watch over all of them. “So here’s Bertha. They leave her sitting here, maybe a year ago, maybe five hundred years ago, maybe fifty thousand years ago. As long as nothing happens, Bertha just Stays here, year in and year out, swinging around and around the Earth every two hours and twenty minutes, all loaded and ready to go, the door open, waiting. “Down on the Earth, men chip flints, and then they build carts, and then they build ships, and then they build aircraft, and Bertha still sits here. Finally then, they build a rocket capable of escape velocity. They bust their guts to get up into a free-fall orbit, and there’s Bertha, waiting, with the door open. Any race curious enough to develop wheels and wings, that’s all the bait they need, just an open door in the right place. “You get it? The right food, the right water, the right air, the right temperature, it’s all just too pat. A super mousetrap ” McKay nodded. “It could be. On the other hand, it might not be, we don’t know, all we can do ts guess. Now CORniclooo SS CO