The Dialogue

The dialogue that ripens day by day into history ran its endless way last week. In Washington, statesmen spoke of law and human rights and national survival. In the South, plain citizens, newly articulate and determined, argued for human rights at 5 and 10-c- store lunch counters. The exchange of minds funneled through ballot boxes and sound trucks in New Hampshire, and men of political ambition raised voices at farms and factory gates in Wisconsin, while the question of one man's survival clanged through the cell bars of California's San Quentin prison and reawakened the Bible-old debate over the right of one man to take the life of another.

The voices were fresh, but the dialogues themselves were as old as men. All, that is, except one. It came from a 94.8-lb. paddle-wheeled ball that last week rose from the surface of the earth and vaulted through space. The destiny of Pioneer V lay in the unknown void--as far as 186 million miles away--in a 527 million-mile sun-circling orbit between the earth and Venus (see SCIENCE). And of all the machinery thrown into the heavens since the space age began only 29 months ago, Pioneer V alone has a voice that will thunder through history. On earth, scientists press buttons that ask questions, and Pioneer V will deliver the answers, from perhaps 50 million miles away.

"How're you doing?" the scientists will ask. "What's the extent of high-energy radiation, the density of cosmic dust, the temperature, the quality of magnetic fields? What's the weather like?" And the answers, delivered by radio into machines on the rotating earth will push the dialogue onward, enabling man one day to launch himself into space.

The new planet lacks only a questioning device of its own--one that can ask of the earth: "How're you doing?" Scanning the fruits of their daily dialogue, earthlings can send the word back: "It is not all easy, but still trying."

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