Self-doubt is part of being human...but the main thing is to get on with the business of survival. - Stephen Baxter

Maybe it’s time we humans abandoned our species-specific chauvinism—our petty outrage that the Universe has unfolded in a way that doesn’t suit us.

Madeleine’s heart sank. Nemoto would be hard to deal with rationally. People with missions always were.

Try to remember this lesson. It might keep you alive a little longer. The most precious thing to a human being is a mind-set: more precious than one’s own life, even. Human history has taught us that lesson time and again, with its endless parade of wars—human sacrifices en masse—thousands of deaths over the most trivial of differences of religious interpretation.