Roberts replied, "Don't even mention it -- same as last month. Anybody got any cards?" None had a deck.
"You'd think a nation that can send rockets to the moon... why don't they hire some NASA engineers to run this railroad?" said Klein. The question had been asked before; no one answered.
Hobart was looking out the window. "The power outage seems pretty widespread. It's really dark out there. I can't remember when I've seen so many stars."
"Damned environmentalists," muttered Benson, glancing out the window, "blocking the construction of nuclear power plants." The other three didn't comment; they'd heard it before.
Hobart still looked through the glass. "You know, as my eyes get dark-adapted, I can see even more stars, zillions of them. I didn't realize..."
"They've been there all along. You just couldn't see them, because of the glow in the sky from all the city lights."
"With all those stars out there, there must be some with planets, and some of those planets might have intelligent life. Don't you think so?"
Benson folded the paper, useless in the gloom, and said, "The odds probably aren't much better than one in a million that any given planet will have life on it." Hobart looked disappointed. "But if it helps, Hobart, there are billions of stars out there, so, statistically, intelligent life is a near certainty."
"Oh, yeah?" said Roberts. "Howcum they haven't contacted us?"
"Good question," replied Benson. "The government spends millions on the SETI program -- the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. They listen on all the likely radio frequencies. Nothing yet."
"Typical incompetence," said Klein.
"Stupid waste of money," said Roberts. "Why should they talk to us? Do we talk to them?"
"We've been beaming TV soap operas into space for decades," said Hobart, hopefully.
"But if there's life out there, it could be a thousand light years away. Even if they heard us -- slim chance -- and even if they bothered to reply -- another slim chance -- it would still be another couple thousand years before we could hear them," countered Klein.
"There's UFO's," said Hobart optimistically.
"You say!" hissed Roberts. "I don't believe in 'em."
"Most unlikely," commented Benson. "Physical travel between the stars... most unlikely. With the expansion of the universe, every star racing away from every other star ... it's not like sending sailing ships to the New World."
"Even if we grant," said Klein, "that there might be intelligent life out there, we'll probably never know it. SETI is a waste of money."
"Who cares?": Roberts.
"I care," said Hobart. "Think of what we could learn." Hobart contemplated the stars a while longer, while the others sat quietly, a picture of boredom. "You know, I read a story once, about somebody or other's cat. The idea is that when an event happens that can't be observed, all possible outcomes exist. If you don't know whether the cat is alive or dead, it's both. So there could be alternate universes, alternate worlds. Here, we fly in jets; there, they still have tri-motors. Here democracy won; there, fascism rules. There could be a thousand alternate worlds."
"That's absurd," said Benson. "It's a theoretician's pipe dream. Unobserved events happen all the time, at an atomic level. Every second, they'd generate more alternate universes than there are atoms in our own universe. In the blink of an eye, there'd be billions of stalled commuter trains with bored passengers idly speculating on whether intelligent life exists out there among the stars. I can't take it seriously."
"I can see lights!" said Hobart excitedly, "They're restoring power." Seconds later, the lights came on in the car, and the train accelerated. Benson went back to reading the paper. Roberts and Klein tried to sleep. Hobart was thoughtful. Could there be intelligent life out there, among the stars? Other civilizations? Lost in thought, she idly twitched her tail and scratched the scales of her snout.