Jr. John W. Campbell

“ And then, when the fleet retired, on all Earth, the only life was under that dark shroud!
"We are alone, Trest," said Roal, "alone, now, in all the system, save for these, the children of men, the machines. Pity that men would not spread to other planets," he said softly.
"Why should they? Earth was the planet for which they were best fitted."
"We are alive—but is it worth it? Man is gone now, never to return. Life, too, for that matter," answered Trest.
"Perhaps it was ordained; perhaps that was the right way. Man has always been a parasite; always he had to live on the works of others. ”

“ It is too delicate a thing to stand any power that upsets the reactions so violently. All things are killed instantly.
As the light haze of the ionized air below them glowed out in a huge cone, the water of the lake heaved and seemed to move in its depths, but there was no great movement of the waters; they lost only a fraction of their weight. But every living thing in that lake died instantly.
Arcot turned the ship, and the shining hull glided softly over to one side of the lake where a little sandy beach invited them. There seemed no indication of intelligent life about. ”

“ The wall was built, and now Arcot had all the giant power of the ship holding it there. Any attempt to move it or destroy it, and all the energy of the Universe would rush to its defense!
The atmosphere of the planet reached the wall. Instantly, as the pressure of that enormous mass of air touched it, the wall fought, and burst into a blaze of energy. It was fighting now, and the meter that measured sun-powers ran steadily, swiftly up the scale. But the men were not watching the meter; they were watching the awesome sight of Man stopping a world in its course! Turning a world from its path! ”

“ Now the plane climbed steadily in a long bank; up, up, up she went, and gradually the terrific roar of the engine died to a low throbbing hum as the low pressure of the air silenced the noise.
Below them the giant city contracted as the great ship [Pg. 25] rode higher. The tiny private helicops were darting about below them like streams of nigh invisible individuals, creeping black lines among the buildings of the city. The towering buildings shone in the noon sun in riotous hues as the colored tile facing reflected the brilliant sunlight with glowing warmth of color. ”

“ Now the sand of the desert began to roll into some strange wave that began just beneath the ship, then sped away—further—till it died in the far distance, by means of an invisible beam. A wall of sand thirty feet high had been built in an instant, and it extended as far as the eye could reach! Now the ship settled, and slowly, light as a feather for all its three thousand tons of metal, it glided into the hangar. ”

“ Now in its center there glowed a great mass of lambent red flame, the dying sun. To Hal Jus, astronomer, the room was flooded with the light of the noon-day sun. The dull red glow that gave even his pale face a ruddy glow was to him pure white. But then Hal Jus could see heat, and to him blue light was a scientific term for a thing beyond human vision.
Ten billion years had wrought strange changes in the human race. For ten thousand thousand millenniums they had lived on the planets of the solar system, but now the mighty sun was dying. ”

“ But Merth Skahl, think—have we disobeyed Jarth's will? It is, we know, his will that only the best and the strongest shall rule—but are the best always the strongest? An imbecile adult could destroy the life of a genius-grade child. The strongest wins, but not the best. Such would not be the will of Jarth. If we be the stronger, and the best, then it is right and just that these strange creatures should be destroyed that we may have a stable world of stable light and heat. ”

“ Only the chirpings of those strange birds as they seek rest in darkness, the soft gurgling of the little stream below, and the rustle of countless leaves, break the silence with a satisfying existence, while the loneliness of that great star, your sun, is lost in its tintings of soft color, the fleeciness of the clouds, and the seeming companionship of green hills.
"The beauty of boundless space is awe-inspiring in its magnitude. ”

“ Out in space, a star is a hard, brilliant, dimensionless point of light. But a nebula glows with a faint mistiness; they are so far away that they never have any bright glow, such as stars have, but they are so vast, their dimensions so great, that even across millions of light years of space they appear as tiny glowing discs with faint, indistinct edges. As the men looked out of the clear lux metal windows, they saw the tiny blur of light on the soft black curtain of space. ”

“ But back on the old planets, mighty works were being undertaken. They were building two thousand ships, the biggest ships that had ever been built. Millions of tons they weighed, and each ship was one vast power plant. Down through the heart of it ran a mighty cylinder of glistening metal. A tiny control room, invisible among the titanic machines, governed all its vast energies. It was a gargantuan projector of the nullifying field, a mighty ship that could hurl its energies into space to form a field of the force that could reach out across a million and a half miles. ”

“ The scientists quickly built a great space-flyer, a gigantic machine of over ten miles diameter, a huge sphere. And in that they established laboratories, workshops, machines, and living quarters. They took with them the finest men and women of their race, and sailed out into space, taking an orbit about the sun of Sirius. They were comfortable there in an equitable temperature, their ship lighted by the sun on one side, and dark on the other, steadily revolving on its axis like a miniature world. The foods of the people were chemically prepared, for the brain-machines had taught them how. ”

“ The first intimation of attack that the Nigrans had was the sudden splitting and destruction of the leading ship. Then, before they could realize what was happening, thirty-five other destructive molecular motion beams were tearing through space to meet them! The little ten-man cruiser and its flight of speedsters was in action! Twenty-one great ships crumpled and burst noiselessly in the void, their gases belching out into space in a great shining halo of light as the sun's light struck it. ”