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313 solar systems, in order to prevent the “imperialists” from seizing them. They cited the rapid conquest of central Africa by European powers as an example of such behavior (African territories were, of course, already inhabited). Tipler and Barrow seemed not to recognize that a contest between “colonizers” and “imperialists” would be a contest between empires. Nor did they admit that the arrival of a probe from another civilization might be seen as threatening. They even claimed that the colonization by extraterrestrials of all the planets in our solar system other than the Earth would not be imperialism, because those planets are just “dead rock and gas.” Yet, they admitted that alien colonization of uninhabited planets would prevent the native intelligent species from eventually colonizing those worlds.'* Imagine what our reaction would be if we saw extraterrestrials colonizing Mars. Human sympathies, moral convictions, political absolutes, philosophical certainties—none... will suborn or suppress the territorial imperative, that biological morality which will still contain the behavior of beings when Homo sapiens is an evolutionary memory. —Anthropologist and writer Robert Ardrey, 1966'° By revealing our existence, we advertise Earth as a habitable planet. —Project Cyclops, 1972" Many of those foreseeing risks in contact have assumed a territorial motive for extraterrestrial aggression. H.G. Wells had his Martians invade the Earth because they needed our planet to assure their long-term sur- vival. Many other science fiction treatments of contact, including “The X Files,” also have assumed that extraterrestrials want the Earth for their own species. Sir Bernard Lovell, Director of the Jodrell Bank radio observatory in England, issued a warning in an address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science. “We must regard life in outer space as a real and potential danger,” he said. “Alien civilizations may be combing the galaxy looking for new resources or a new place to settle.”'” Although interstellar communication would imply no threat, Von Hoerner thought that interstellar travel would kindle an obsession to annex living space and will lead to the explosive consequences of colonization. Territory Is the Issue Territory Is the Issue