Bryce Walton

“ A few dark figures scurried like nervous animals among the ruins.
"A few Utopes still live," commented the hunchback. "They can never leave the city of their fathers, the place where their gods once gave them hope."
As they walked in among the cooking fires, the tattered scrawny things that had been human, stared, cried out in confused fear, and streaked into their holes.
But Deker headed straight for the encystment vault. And as much as he had hated that world of the past, some part of it was far better than this futile aberrated world poisoned by radiation and by human defeat. ”

“ A man who fears to sleep in the dark is not really afraid of the dark. But of what is hiding in it.
Shadows moved above his closed lids. Glass tinkled with ice cubes. Under his sweating forearm, his eyes throbbed and his body felt as though the skin had been scraped all over until it was raw.
Kane propped himself on an elbow, and looked to one side at Phil. Phil grinned sympathetically. Laura was in the same cushioned chair, but she seemed to be sitting beside Kane on the bed. Lucille was avoiding looking at Kane. ”

“ She heard a whimpering sound and realized that it was Kelsey. She held him tightly in her arms. He was shivering.
The Tevee screen seemed like a page on which vital print had died, something strangely alive but without sound or meaning, like an exposed brain without thought, like the deadness of an open eye in a corpse.
"All lights will be extinguished for two hours," the voice said. "Everyone will go immediately to their air-raid shelters!"
"Two hours," Kelsey whispered.
"I'm here," she said. "We're together, darling. There's nothing—"
He didn't seem to hear her. ”

“ Two women and several men were in the big arched room with him. None of them were any more pleasant on the inside than Durach. Jelahn's dive on the North Canal seemed like the memory of an anteroom to paradise compared with the feeling in this room of Durach's.
It was filthy and obscene, and it made me mad; it made me shaking mad to think that a chance thing like these freaks had been sent into the Fourth Stage world of Mohln where they didn't belong, to contaminate it, and bring hate and destruction and death to a world that had put a few men at least on the edge of marvelous super life. ”

“ So Cadmus slew the dragon and sowed its teeth, and from these sprang armed men!"
Johlan smiled gently. "But the dragon was never really slain, Cadmus. I was the dragon."
Cadmus heard the door open. He heard her voice, sharp and clear. It was beautiful, he thought, like music. Though music could never be so deadly.
"But dragons always die, Johlan."
The Venusian gasped as he turned. He started to die as he faced her. The death ray glowed on his green-scaled chest for a while, then faded as the Venusian stumbled across the room, the neutron gun hanging limply and forgotten in his webbed hand. ”

“ His glittering eyes turned and met hers. Her silver mutant's hair glowed beneath the merciless glare of the flood lights. Her full, yet agile body wriggled in its brief trappings in nervous preparation for the cat's rapid return from the end of the arena. But when she spoke to Moljar her lips curled with obvious distaste.
"You fight well, for a half-breed," she said.
His teeth shone white in what might have been either a laugh or a snarl. "Go to your Martian outlaw. Gasdon's pure of blood. If he'll have you—mutant!"
She laughed sharply like shimmering glass. "I'm Mahra. I stand alone." ”

“ Venard stood back against the cold wall, raised the memory-crystal. He thought fleetingly that the figure in the sphere was so life-like that to destroy it was like murder. But Venard didn't care about murdering now. Not even murdering Vale's memory. Even memories were born to die.
"Earthmen!" he yelled suddenly, his voice cracking sharply against dulled minds like a whip-lash. Glazed eyes shifted. Bowed backs moved apathetically. A few bony hands pawed the air. "We'll die like men!" yelled Venard. He flourished the memory-crystal. ”

“ The Martian's thoughts were dimmer now, and Barstac drifted, and little fingers of crepuscular light fingered out toward him, alluring, disarming, and he drifted back, down the slide-board of time where pain and ugliness were no longer.
Far away, the Martian's voice, talking to Marian perhaps, Barstac didn't know.
Humans are sick. The sickest ones eventually come here. More and more will come. Someday perhaps we can help all of you find your way backward or forward to happiness, and out of the old seas of pain. ”

“ We all look alike out here in these big rocket pressure suits, Russell thought. No one for God only knew how many of millions of light years away could see or care. Still—we might have a chance to live, even now, Russell thought—if it weren't for old crazy Dunbar.
They might have a chance if Alvar and Johnson weren't so damn lacking in self-confidence as to put all their trust in that crazed old rum-dum. Russell had known now for some time that they were going in the wrong direction. No reason for knowing. Just a hunch. And Russell was sure his hunch was right. ”