{{Pause=2}} CHAPTER 12 {{PAUSE=1}}Spread The Word {{Pause=2}} We had walked a more or less long distance. I found my emotions fluctuating in me. Time for me stopped one instant in which my consciousness was full of all that. After that it seemed to me that my own self had stopped there and I felt horror and terror upon analyzing all, outside of being certain of that which Lya predicted. I knew that she had never told me an untruth, I fervently desired now that all was only a nightmare. Then my temples began to palpitate. I thought that man himself represented a threat to his own civilization, Lya touched me with her hand and almost immediately my pulse returned to normal... however my mind seemed submerged in a vortex of ideas, a circumstance which later seemed similar to uniting one chaos within another. We returned to the city in complete silence. Almost upon arriving at Mexico City on the open highway I abruptly said: "Wouldn't it have been better if you had not told me this? Why me? Why not be another who has less knowledge about energy and the atom in a manner that he would not understand so well what you have said? Would it not be better to die than to know all this?" "Professor... " She said with infinite delicacy, "you are not the only one who knows. Many more persons of your world have listened than you imagine, no, Professor, it was not that we selected you that first time for a morbid intention of making you suffer. It occurred to us that you seemed tranquil and at peace with yourself, but above all the indubitable key was your personality as a tenured Professor. We knew that for ethical reasons if nothing else you would not share this knowledge with your students, but in the end, after having liberated yourself of your skepticism, you would be able to do something, depending on whether you wanted to do it or not. Nobody was going to obligate you. Professor, you know that your world is most valuable, not only for you yourselves, but for our intergalactic community as well. It is no gift to have been made a party to all of this. It is an imperious necessity to rescue the terrestrial human being as such, to extract him from this turbulent world in which he lives and remove him from the latent dangers like those mentioned." "I... I can do nothing." I stammered. "Perhaps, Professor... Do not underestimate yourself, You are human, but you have the same opportunity to do something as the most modest of the inhabitants of your Earth, or as the most brilliant if scientists it has." "No, Lya... I will never speak of this. They would think I am an alarmist or crazy. You know the planet better than I, and know that they would classify me as demented. You, yes, they would believe you." "Don't you want to attempt it yourself and speak to your world in your own words? We have tried not only with the terrestrials of your time, but with persons of years ago who have already passed-on and we continue trying. Perhaps not today, but tomorrow someone will believe it... Sometime we will succeed in moving the conscience of the scientists of your world." "And if nobody believes me?" "They will not believe you. They will laugh at you. They will accuse you of being a charlatan. But what do you believe is preferable? Be silent, or speak though they treat you as demented?" "In my position, Lya, I would prefer to be silent." I said without the least conviction, but thinking about my children and my wife. "Professor", she said warmly, "your humane characteristics have matured to such a grade that a moment will come in which, knowing the knowledge and overcoming your pride, you will weaken and speak as though it would be an imperious necessity - you will feel it thus." "Wait", I said, 'They are not small, the dangers to those who see themselves so exposed or the Earth, because they would feel in a conflagration such as this that we would be completely alone in the Universe, exposed to dangers that could not even be imagined by man." "You are not alone, because there is life on other planets." "No, Lya, I don't want to say that. Let me explain to you. It would be like I believed that the Earth had no friendship with another similar planet... that occasionally could offer help." "The same atmosphere created around your planet could bring such isolation, not only internally but externally as well." "Yes, it is as if we had a fort replete with arms, hated the neighboring nations, and boasted all the time, thinking that someone would classify us as cowards if we did not do so." "Yes... that occurs... " She said pensively. {{PAUSE=2}}