Donald A. Wollheim

“ I, Ajax Calkins, lay my heart and a planet at your feet."
But women are fickle creatures and cannot understand the ways of the great. She laughed and said: "Don't be silly, my husband is waiting for me at our own spaceship."
And then when we found that my ship had, while I had been away, sunk into the swamp completely and that we would have to walk the twenty or so miles to Nadia's craft, she laughed even louder. Women do not appreciate destiny. ”

“ Yet it was not grass but a curious green hard clay that seemed to make up the soil. Far to the distance low hills rose. The oddest feature of the soil was the fact that it was interminably interlaced with deep sharp cracks like a clay that had been baked improperly and cracks all over.
It seemed to me that there was a strange discoloration far off in the base of the hills from which white and grey plumes of vapor arose as if marking the factories of some hillside city. A city it could well prove to be and if that were so, then I had found a capital and subjects! ”

“ Was it not mine by right of priority? And how, indeed, do you think kingdoms and empires are won?
I am not a modest man. I have always said that I am a man of great destiny. Why should I bow to traditions? ”

“ It was a flea, a gigantic flea!
"Isn't he cute?" murmured Nadia. "He's agreed to help us escape."
"He's what? Do you mean to say he's...." I started.
"Intelligent?" she finished. "Yes, the buggers have a rather high intelligence. Not as good as our kangaroo friends but nonetheless clever. The fleas are a sort of semi-barbarian group inhabiting a section about a thousand miles away. This fellow, whom I call Bosco, was captured and doesn't like the idea of making a banquet for some kangaroo holiday." ”

“ The stick would hurtle wildly forward into the air many dozens of feet then come down to hit the earth with a shock, contract, and then recoil violently again and up with a sickening jolt into the air again. ”