 Why was space exploration so important?
They were something more—and something less—they were, in short, humanity's hopes for survival! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961. The Starship Pandora creaked and groaned as her landing pads settled unevenly in the mucky surface of the ugly world outside. She seemed to be restless to end her fool's errand here, two hundred light years from the waiting hordes on Earth. Captain Gwayne cursed and rolled over, reaching for his boots. He was a big, rawboned man, barely forty; but ten years of responsibility had pressed down his shoulders and put age-feigning hollows under his reddened eyes. The starlanes between Earth and her potential colonies were rough on the men who traveled them now. The blobs were a peculiarity of this planet about which nobody knew anything. They looked like overgrown fireballs, but seemed to have an almost sentient curiosity about anything moving on the ground. Earth couldn't turn out enough starmen in the schools, so promising kids were being shipped out for training as cadets on their twelfth birthday. The two he'd drawn, Kaufman and Pinelli, seemed to be totally devoid of any sense of caution. The blobs hadn't seemed dangerous, and the local animals were apparently all herbivorous and harmless. But something had happened to the exploration party fifteen years back, and to the more recent ship under Hennessy that was sent to check up. The Sol-type sun must be rising, since there was a dim light. Even the deep gorge where they'd found Hennessy's carefully buried ship was completely hidden by the fog. There were three of the blobs dancing about over the grazing animals now, as they often seemed to do. If he had time to study them.... Earth had ordered him to detour here, after leaving his load of deep-sleep stored colonists on Official World 71, to check on any sign of Hennessy. Now the three were streaking at fantastic speed to a spot near the ship, to hover excitedly above something that moved there. Something began to heave upwards. One seemed to be almost eight feet tall, leading the others directly toward the spacesuited cadets. There was a momentary halt, and then the leader lifted one arm, as if motioning the others forward. One, at the front, was stuttering into life, and Gwayne dashed for it as the exit port slid back. At a gesture, the jeep rolled down the ramp, grinding its gears into second as it picked up speed.
 they were running out of time on Earth
 it was trendy to live on a different planet  there was a lot of interest in life on other planets  they were running out of time on Earth  people were trying to leave the wars on Earth