in the same way it was thus tempting to say that it was possiblealthough not theoretically possiblethat the humans back on earth , before their transmission on the matter could have even reached me , devised the technology to send something so fast that it could have passed me by now ; i entertained such thoughts only out of an abundance of free time , however , and i could surely look at the walls of my ship and know that never before had an object with a human fingerprint on it gone so far .