Frank Belknap Long

“ Sheldon muttered, but made no protest.
The room opened on a narrow corridor suffused with cold light. It seemed vaguely familiar. Suddenly Sheldon realized that he was close to the three large rooms which Gale had occupied six months previously.
Six months or a century? Could a man lose track of time in the gulfs between the stars? Could time sweep past, in some strange fashion leaving him utterly untouched?
"Hurry," the girl whispered. "Keep close to me. They won't harm you if we move like twin shadows in some secret dream!" ”

“ Sheldon said. "He struck me down when I demanded that he take me to Gale."
Slowly the girl paled. "That was the most dangerous thing you could have said. Just before he died Gale had to adopt stern measures. The shaggy ones—we have always called them that—were getting out of control. To them he is a terrifying, half-mythical symbol of wrath.
"You must believe me," she pleaded, as though aware of his thoughts. "They have developed a peculiar tribal organization of their own. They're like the savage tribes of Earth I've seen in the micro-films. Wouldn't you regard them as dangerous?" ”

“ Gale's face grew suddenly grave again. "I wanted to tell you, Roger. Believe me, I did. But the others wouldn't have it. It's no light matter to deprive a man of his world by exposing him to a time lag of well over a century."
Sheldon cried out.
"We decided not to tell you the six months you'd be gone would be a hundred and ten years here. Thought you might not be able to endure the thought of not aging at all while we aged normally in normal space. So we didn't tell you just how accurately we'd measured the lag by checking your initial velocity against the limiting velocity of light. ”

“ Then he was holding her tightly and smoothing her hair as he returned her caresses in full measure, a man fiercely, crazily, primitively in love with a girl whose name he did not even know.
When he released her her eyes were shining.
"It happened quickly, didn't it?" she said. "The micro-films show scenes of courtship ridiculously drawn out. As though a man needed time to wonder about a woman and a woman still more time to wonder about a man."
"It happened quickly because you were walking straight to your death," Sheldon said, his eyes wide with doubt. ”

“ Since Gale died there have been fewer and fewer of us. Mother was like me, and the man to whom she was wed. But they are not alive now. I am the last."
She turned abruptly and pointed to the immobile, staring little figures on the bench,
"These are my aunt's children."
Sheldon felt a coldness start up his spine.
"Children!" he cried, in horror.
"They are human mutants," the girl said, simply. "Zombie mutants, the micro-films call them. They can obey when spoken to, but they cannot speak or act of their own free will. But the pituitary mutants are far more primitive, really. Giganticism. ”

“ Fortunately a good many of these men are in key administrative positions on Earth. But unless my decision is accepted without question, unless all men of wisdom and good will join in a united effort humanity will cease to be humanity as we know it.
"There must be—a quarantine. The Station must be sealed off, isolated. No one from Earth must ever venture within its orbit." ”

“ Sheldon drew a quick breath. "Or primitive types with thick, coarse features. The mechanism of evolutionary retrogression lies dormant in all of us. A disease like acromegaly will touch it off, causing man to regress to the brute. An alteration in human genes before birth might very well result in a more deep-seated primitiveness. Acromegaliacs only regress physically."
A faint smile hovered for an instant on the girl's pale lips.
"You're talking like a micro-film lecturer," she said. "You have the scientific temperament, that's plain." ”

“ Safe hands they are, kindly hands, but hands courageous enough to do what must be done. Goodbye, lad, and good luck!"
The screen went blank.
"Gale come back talk to man from sky!" a harsh voice shouted. "Him we slay!"
Sheldon swung about, all the blood draining from his face. A dozen shaggy brutes, their wooden axes gleaming in the cold light, were advancing stealthily upon him. In horror he saw that the one closest to him had seized Anne and was pinning her arms to her side.
"Roger, save yourself!" the struggling girl screamed. "They'll kill you!" ”

“ Up a narrow stairway they raced, and along another corridor, and then out beneath the stars.
From the shadows the ship loomed, immense, shadowy, a shape that seemed all gleaming angles and spiraling curves. ”

“ Seventy million miles from the Earth the Station moved through the interplanetary night, a mile-long floating laboratory. This laboratory was equipped with every safety device known to modern science for the control of energies powerful enough to disrupt every vestige of matter within a half million miles of its orbit.
In 2022 a dozen men could have destroyed the Earth. Instead, on that little self-contained macrocosm, containing accommodations for fewer than a hundred men, women and children, the first interstellar ship had been constructed and powered with undreamed of energies. ”

“ While atomic research had remained in the uranium fission stage, the vast laboratory facilities of Earth had not endangered humanity. Even the first atomic bombs had not placed an intolerable strain on man's capacity to survive the hazards of working together toward a shared goal. ”

“ I cannot bring myself to do what perhaps should be done—destroy a source of infection which no power known to science can cleanse. The radiations are too continuous and pervasive. The Station is drenched with them, and the disintegration of matter which is still taking place here will continue for generations. ”

“ It could only be allowed in an orbit far enough removed from Earth to jeopardize only the Station itself and the lives of a few men. Carefully integrated psychometric tests had shown that not more than a dozen men could coordinate their efforts under the constant threat of annihilation without developing personality quirks as dangerous as trigger neutrons would have been in the days of the New Mexico experiment. ”

“ Now a future bright with promise has turned into a future charged with a danger so great that only a courageous humanity, a humanity willing to turn its back forever on the kind of experiments we've been conducting here can hope to survive. ”

“ Alter the microscopic carriers of human inheritance, stunting the body's growth or reversing the course of human evolution."
"Yes, yes," the girl said. "That is exactly what happened. I have what mother called the equivalent of a modern scientific education. That's why I understand so much, and so little. There are gaps. Gale destroyed many of the films. There were things he did not want even my mother's mother to know."
"We were releasing energies up and down the scale of matter," Sheldon said, slowly. ”

“ Atavistic giganticism. It's all very clearly explained in the micro-films. Pituitary giants they are, with the physical characteristics of primitives. Dawn men."
Sheldon rubbed his burning brow.
"If I had returned a hundred years in the future what you say would not have seemed incredible," he muttered, dazedly. "The radiations produced by atomic fission on an almost undreamed of scale might alter human genes, yes. ”

“ I do not believe the mutants will endanger Earth, at least not during my lifetime. There are not too many of them, and it would be unnecessarily cruel to hospitalize them on Earth. It is best, I think, that we order our affairs here so that the mutants may be spared. ”

“ Sheldon's spine seemed to turn to ice. Probably he had never thought faster in his life. Or moved faster. With a sudden, desperate lunge he grabbed the projector, raised it and swung it fiercely toward the skull of the nearest brute. ”

“ But the tremendous series of explosions which had rocked the Earth on June sixteenth, in 1969, had convinced even men of good will that a controlled, disciplined release of the mighty forces locked up within the atom could no longer take place on Earth. ”

“ This place is where they belong. We understand them because we are linked to them by ties of kinship.
"But you are not, Roger. If, when you return, you feel that the Station should be destroyed—well, lad, there are weapons in the weapon room you will know how to use.
"Lad, I leave the future of the Station in your hands. ”