David Mason

“ If you could only stop this bickering among yourselves, with a planet as green and pleasant as this you could attain a harmony and pleasure of life equal to any of the truly civilized worlds of the galaxy. ”

“ But there are also worlds which are dead and shrunken cinders where there had been green planets and thriving races of people who could not give up war. For your sake I hope that you will be able to change your path, but I think that you do not have the ability, and that at last you will reach the end of the path you are on, and destroy each other and perhaps your world also. Each nova that you see in the sky marks the suicide of a race. Our knowledge of these matters is certain: there is never a nova caused simply by accident ”

“ McCann closed his notepad, bored, and gazed at the sky, prepared to suffer through the rest of the speech. His paper could get the words of the speech from the TV. McCann had no comment to add; he had heard such ideas before. To the east in the sky was the distant glare of the landing lights of an oncoming aircraft.... No. Not a plane, a star. A star almost fantastically brilliant, brighter than the others, brighter than Mars.
"Mr. V'gu!" a young reporter said excitedly. "Isn't that a nova, there?" He pointed and everyone looked.
V'gu turned, his hand on the gangway rail. ”