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185 launch great drives to convince the aliens (and incidentally their straying flocks) of the absolute necessity of adopting their "one and only true" faith? Would they band together for a religious war on the aliens? While masses of chanting, sway- ing co-religionists jamming the centers of major cities might fit the needs of some church leaders who see their authority slipping away, the impact on religious tolerance could be devastating. Regardless, the aliens' attitudes toward Earth religions would almost certainly be a very upsetting experience for hun- dreds of millions of people around the world who had been taught from childhood that theirs is the only true faith of the universe. If these obviously advanced beings function well without a recognizable deity, the need for religion as we know it would be diluted if not eliminated. The response of the major churches will tell the story, and experience does not suggest basis for optimism. In the broad and increasingly important areas of science and technology, the realization that others are decades, centuries, or perhaps millennia ahead of us could be a blow to the collec- tive ego from which we would never recover. So many of the world's best thinkers are involved in the systematic search for new and better ways of doing things that to destroy their mo- tivation to do original work could be devastating. The field most directly affected by the recognition that others had solved the major and minor problems of manned space flight would be the space programs of the United States, the former USSR, and the lesser nations in the space business. Pouring billions into sophisticated efforts to colonize the Moon and to explore Mars would suddenly appear as pointless as trying to build better dirt roads for Roman chariots. Cape Canaveral and the Russian space base at Tyuratam would quickly become museums instead of jumping-off places for Man's most exciting adventures. And what of the thousands of highly educated and experi- enced specialists who had devoted their professional lives to the space programs? They would lose not only their jobs but IMPLICATIONS