It does not destroy matter, which is reassuring. Rewriting one law of physics is worse than trying to eat one peanut. - Larry Niven

We encounter few Citizens or humans in this region. We were surprised to receive your hail. Did you have difficulty finding us?

“For letting us examine their silly records they want to charge us a flat million marks!”
“Pay it.”
“It’s robbery.”
“A Belter says that? Why don’t you have records on Mars?”
“We were never interested. What for?”
“What about abstract knowledge?”
“Another word for useless.”
“Then what makes you want useless knowledge enough to pay a million marks for it?”
Slowly Nick matched his grin. “It’s still robbery. How in Finagle’s name did Earth know they’d need to know about Mars?”
“That’s the secret of abstract knowledge. You get in the habit of finding out everything you can about everything. Most of it gets used sooner or later.”

“I didn’t know you were such a fighter,” Eviane said.
“Yeah, well, neither did I.”
She smiled shyly.
“Does that make a big difference?” he asked hesitantly.
“Always,” she said. She stared at that bank of fog as if it concealed answers to every important question. “Oh, girls say that they want strong sensitive men. When we can’t find both, we settle for strong.”
Some part of him resented that. “Evolution in action?”
She nodded. “Sure. Deep down inside, we all know that something like this could happen. That the civilization we’d spent so much time and money building up could all come toppling down. And if it did, what would get us through is strength.”
“Not just physical strength, though.”