the earth. from space. in all its glory, the most perfect, self-regulating organism you could imagine. we went out there; we turned around; we looked back; we saw it. you'd think we'd behold and learn something. we didn't. the date appears in one corner of the screen. 1961.
it was 1961 when we first went into space. there were four billion people in the world. the population appears in the other.
and at a rate that was scarcely comprehensible, we began to poison and populate our planet. date spins, the population as well. the big, sparkling blue marble that is earth begins to lose its luster and slowly turns gray. by the year 2000, the population is six billion.
we increased by 80 million people a year. pumped out our toxins beyond measure. destroyed our resources killed forests, trees, plants, animals. anything that couldn't be trademarked and sold at a profit we annihilated without a thought. we killed half of what was on the planet. we didn't care. right about the millennium, we got another warning.  dissolve to:
we killed all the frogs. every frog on the face of the planet. we'd killed species before, sure, even a genus or two. but this time we wiped out an entire phylum. as the frogs breathe through their skin and react to toxins in the environment faster, this should have been a warning, canary in the coal mine kind of thing. the last frog dies.
nah, we didn't pay any attention to that either. the only people who were really upset were the french. and no one really likes the french. we - dissolve back to:
by 2050 there were 12 billion people. it took us 100 years to go from the industrial revolution to putting a man in space. it took us only another 100 to poison and overpopulate the planet so seriously that if we didn't go out and find somewhere else to live, we realized we were gonna die out as a species ourselves in the next two generations.
what've we got?
best guess. where do you think we are? santen shrugs. as much as you can shrug in a spacesuit.
stay in range. a thousand yards. and your radio's line of sight.
you've got seven and a half hours of air. try not to breathe too deep.
you'll get used to it. when you get home, it feels weird you can't walk on the ceiling.
didn't lose a plant.
psalm 107, verse 23 they that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters, these see the works of the lord, and his wonders in the deep.' so i figured how much wonder for those in space? beat.
basically.
things are as they are. lord. look at it, we're on mars. pretty damn amazing.
good. you gotta keep moving.  chantilas doesn't get up.
my spleen's ruptured. there's significant internal bleeding. i'm not going any further. and trying to carry me will slow you down just enough that we can all die. robby's stunned, frantic.
no. you won't. santen takes charge. it's his mission now.
chain of command once we hit the surface starts with me. and i'm ordering you to go, lieutenant. now. i've only got about forty minutes. there's really not much pain. put me around the corner where i've got a view. they lift him to the other side of the rock. gallagher stays with chantilas a moment. stricken, speechless. inside gallagher's helmet, we can see as the tears roll down. then -
it's okay. i'm not sorry i came. gallagher takes one last look over his shoulder. we are already pulling back, back, back. tiny figures in the landscape once again. one left behind.
lotsa room. they lean back against the "floor" for a moment and stare out at a billion and a half stars.
know the stars at all?
he sounds like quite a guy.
going to mars?
it looks like we got trouble. that's why they sent us. a beat. they go back to staring at the heavens. then -
i just realized science couldn't answer any of the really interesting questions. there are values that are fundamental to an adequate apprehension of the world in which we live that can't be expressed by equations or experiments. in that, you see the hand of god. acknowledgment of basic values. love, kindness, joy. science doesn't have much use for these. look, ugly theories are wrong. we know it by insight. science doesn't want to accept that. we live in a moral world and have moral knowledge that tells us that love and truth are better than hatred and lies. but it's modern to think this is little more than genetic imprinting or a tacit communal cultural agreement. that's not a world i cared to live in anymore. robby stares back into the void. this is not the kind of conversation he's used to, but -
what good is beauty?
i think i woulda liked your grandfather. robby turns to him.
maybe i'll pick up a rock and it'll say so on the bottom 'made by god.'
if so, it's because we're supposed to find something out. let's say we didn't. and we finished poisoning off the earth and everyone was dead in a hundred years. then what was the point of any of it? music, art, beauty, love? all gone. the greeks, the romans, the enlightenment, the constitution, people dying for freedom, ideas? none of that meant anything? i'd rather go out and make a mistake than live in a world that bleak.
fooled ya, didn't we. it's okay. no one told the others either. there's a quiet moment. robby just came up to stare at the stars. wasn't expecting all this. then -
there's a reason the planets go around the stars in exactly the same way electrons go around the nucleus of the atom. it's not an accident. there's a design at the bottom of all this. god's watching over you.
call.
that's it. you're the best poker player in a hundred million miles.
do you cheat?