“…We are only obeying orders.”
“Whose?”
There was another pause.
“Come,” said Weston at last,
“there is really no use in continuing this cross-examination.
You keep on asking me questions I can’t answer;
in some cases because I don’t know the answers,
in other because you wouldn’t understand them.
It will make things very much pleasanter during the voyage
if you can only resign your mind to your fate and stop bothering yourself and us.
It would be easier if your philosophy of life
were not so insufferably narrow or individualistic.
I had thought no one could fail to be inspired
by the role you are being asked to play:
that even a worm, if it could understand, would rise to the sacrifice.
I mean, of course, the sacrifice of time and liberty, and some little risk.
Don’t misunderstand me.”
“Well,” said Ransom, “You hold all the cards, and I must make the best of it.
I consider your philosophy of life raving lunacy.
I suppose all that stuff about infinity and eternity means
that you think you are justified in doing anything
– absolutely anything –
here and now,
on the off chance
that some creatures or other descended from man as we know him
may crawl about a few centuries longer in some part of the universe.”
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You can view the cover of Avon Books’ 1956 edition of Out of the Silent Planet (Avon # T-27), here.