Irving E. Cox

“ Greg walked down the ramp. He hadn't been home for seven years, but he was still surprised that no flight inspector met him with the officious clipboard of check-out sheets. The landing fields in the colonies were far more efficiently supervised.
Greg saw a light in the field control building and walked toward it. The field, sprawling for miles across the California desert, was empty, a mocking moment to the magnificent dream the new generation had rejected. Behind him Greg saw the long rows of landing slots, towering metal shafts raised against the night sky. ”

“ When he knew that, how could he fight it? How could he turn back the clock and restore the earth to man?
He walked slowly to the end of the patio where he could see the deserted field across the highway. In the slot they were still scooping the Redearth of Mars out of the hull of his ship. He smiled grimly. A decade ago the Redearth had been priceless; that one import alone had made the conquest of space commercially possible. Redearth had built Port City and the colonies; Redearth had created the import companies, once so tremendously profitable.
A light burned for a moment above Greg's ship. ”

“ In the beginning men had speculated about life forms on other worlds. Before Greg's pioneering flight to Mars the Sunday supplements had been filled with a vast number of lurid speculations. Yet the spacemen had found nothing but virgin worlds which became the colonies of man. The truth was—Greg understood it now—they had looked for intelligent life in familiar forms. But there had been something out there, something as undetectable as a virus epidemic—and as deadly. ”

“ Greg thought, in an ecstacy of triumph. He had kept that much of his thinking safe. The kids were making one last effort to save themselves—he was sure of that—but it wouldn't work. They had the alien skill to pry into a human mind, but they were helpless against man's machines. Inexorably the computer would drive the ship to the satellite; nothing could stop it.
"Think rationally," the boy pleaded, "not with your emotions. You have only four minutes left, Captain Greg. If the Redearth was a virus invasion as you believe it was, why were only the children affected? ”

“ The boy wrung his hands. "You have only two minutes left. Forget your emotions; put aside your self-pity. It's a luxury you can't afford any longer. Use the brains God gave you, Captain Greg. You can't land on the satellite. You must—"
Greg swung again and again he missed the boy, but he lost his balance and plunged into the pilot computer, smashing the machine. ”

“ Potentially, all the older generation threaten us the same way. Your kind of emotional reasoning, in one form or another, will sooner or later infect them all. We encouraged the migration to the colonies in order to prevent a conflict. By administering the Redearth to every adult who left the earth, we thought we might make a few of them realize their mental capacity. Apparently the catalyst works only with an infant, and not always then. In a sense, Captain Greg, your frontier has made us two species—ours, mankind ”

“ We're outcasts." With a sudden rationality, he added, "We're ashamed. When we're together we feel bound to face the truth. It's impossible for man to admit he's a second-rater. So we hide out in deserted villages like this one—and pretend all this nightmare never happened." Then Vayle slipped back into his delusion again. "However, all that will be different as soon as my research is finished. Why, do you know, Captain—"
"I'm leaving this morning," Greg broke in. "Would you like to go with me?"
Vayle shook his head. "I'm too old to make a new start on your frontier, Captain." ”

“ What's happened?"
"Most of the adults have emigrated to the colonies. There are only a few derelicts left—like Adrian Vayle and myself."
Nearly sober, Greg remembered the discovery he had stumbled on in the bar, and the logic still held up. "They've taken over the earth and thrown men out."
"The children? You talk as if—"
"Tell me everything about it, from the beginning."
"The kids are different; that's all there is to it. They read minds. They move themselves anywhere they please simply by thinking about it. God knows what else they'll learn to whip up after they get the hang of it." ”

“ We've simply crossed your frontier in a different way. We have a theory how it happened, but no proof. The Martian Redearth worked as a sort of mental catalyst when it was used for newly born infants. It awoke the full thought potential of our cerebral cortex. That's all. We have no ability that men haven't always been capable of; if you believe that, you can do it yourself."
Belief!—mystical nonsense. Did the kid really think Greg would buy that? Greg glanced at Adrian Vayle. ”

“ Mars has excellent repair facilities, we understand."
"At sky-high prices, sure."
"The earth isn't building flight equipment any more. What's the point? The kids don't want it." The attendant shrugged his shoulders. "You aren't the first one, Captain Greg, who's come home for nothing; and you won't be the last. Check with me tomorrow. I'll see what I can work out."
"If I can't dispose of my cargo—"
"We waive all field charges in cases of destitution. You can dump the Redearth and the kids will stake you to a cargo of iron ore; it's going at triple premium on Venus, we're told." ”

“ Sometimes I can almost believe in it, too."
"Men aren't licked yet."
She laughed. "You noble souls who drop in on us out of space talk so bravely; that's your brand of madness, Captain. Thank your stars you don't have to get to know the kids as well as we do."
She took him to a room on the first floor of the hotel. The air, when he opened the door, was stale. The full moon behind the Venetian blinds made an unpleasant symbolic shadow pattern of prison bars on the carpet. Greg ripped open the zipper of his flight jacket ”

“ Now you will provide another object lesson. What I have told you is true; every man has our ability. In sixty seconds your ship will reach the old satellite; the airlock will open automatically—only there will be no air in the wheel. ”

“ Soft-minded and soft-muscled idiots.
The field attendant hadn't even recognized Greg's name.
Suddenly the past was alive again, like an angry nightmare. The speeches and the headlines, the bands and the screaming mobs, the politicians, the scientists, the generals. Handclasps and newsreel pictures. "Just one more, sir, for the TV cameras." ... "A Citation by a joint session of the Congress of the United States, to Captain Victor Greg, U. S. Rocket Forces...." GREG MAKES MARS.... L. A. WELCOMES GREG.... FIRST SPACEMAN IN N. Y. PARADE... ”

“ He knew he was drunk, but alcohol had never interfered with his reasoning. Back in the bar he had made a tremendous discovery; he mustn't let it slip his mind. The children were alien invaders: that was it. ”