13 JUNE 1987, Page 43

Solitude

Picture it. Across sputtering wavelengths other suns with satellites bobbing like dumplings glimmer, whirr, flash and finally blow like reading-lamp bulbs on verandahs in the back of beyond.

Another stance. Suns harvested to galaxies like combed-out dandruff on shoulders must heap up quotas of planets identical to the ground I peer from, statistics clutched to my bosom.

But what if the Earth's biotic indelibility was gimcrackly particular!

If you just budged Jupiter (forget the sun) or even piddling Pluto or the syllogizers' `Planet X', Being would topple.

We are deep in unlikelihood.

Imagine us blithely sounding the universe with our eerie probes and shuttles and not one single soul to know.

It's worse than the death of God.

Peter Howe