R. R. Winterbotham

“ Behind lay a world, unlike the earth, which the spheres called home. It was a gaseous, flaming world where matter and energy mingled as one substance. It was mottled with spots of cold gases which warred with the whispering spheres. It was the sun.
The sun was power, yet a ceaseless struggle between energy and matter. But neither energy nor matter was in control. Should matter control, the sun would cool. If energy triumphed, the sun would explode. It was war, like the wars of the earth, where one philosophy was based on power, and the other seeking justice. ”

“ Masters said, solemnly.
"Yes, but life isn't everything. Any man, no matter how yellow or mean he is, has some ideal he's willing to die for—or at least he's willing to risk dying to attain. Look at Norden. He's hard, cold-blooded and he doesn't think twice about putting a bomb in a plant to wipe out scores of lives. He dared me to kill him, rather than help us. His code as a spy is his primary objective. Look at Pember. He must have been frightened by the spheres, but we had to force him to leave his post. ”

“ The factory saw-toothed the horizon with its hideous profile as the moon rose in the east. The red glow of the furnaces bathed the tall buildings, the gigantic scaffolds, the cord-like elevated pipelines and the columnar smokestacks in the crimson of anger. Even the moon seemed to fade as the long-fingered smokestacks reached toward it belching their pollution. The air, which should have been clean, was filled with the reek of unfamiliar odors.
From the machine shop, where giant cannon were forged into smooth, sleek instruments of death, came noise: unchecked, unmuffled, blasphemous din. ”

“ We've shown him that his duty now is with us—he realizes that the spheres are the immediate enemy of his country and he'll do his best fighting them. And you and I have ideals—we know each other too well to list them."
"I getcha so far, but what about Orkins?"
"The man's not afraid of death, but afraid of the unknown. Men like him commit suicide rather than face reality. He wants security. He's afraid of uncertainty. He lives in an unreal, imaginary world and when uncertainty, which is reality, intrudes, he is completely lost." ”

“ Masters unlocked the handcuffs of the two men in the car. He disposed of his short-wave set in a ditch, for it, too, had batteries which might attract the spheres.
"Get out of the car, Orkins," he ordered.
"Watch him, Masters," Taylor warned. "If he starts yelling, choke him."
"But not too hard," Masters added. "If we're going to be rabbits, human values will change. Men who run into holes will live to eat turnips, those who bare their teeth won't. Orkins might be the forefather of a new race—a helluva race. Come on, Orkins. Get out. ”

“ The weak has no right to survive. Justice is an unnatural condition. Progress means nothing, except on the road to glory. Your race, sharing our philosophy, can build another great energy reflector to send us back. We can aid our people in triumphing over these inferior beings who claim rights in a world of might."
"We can built what you wish," Norden promised.
It was a promise like other promises Norden had made, Taylor thought. Norden once had promised to help Taylor fight the spheres. ”

“ We know the secondary objective of the spheres. It's the same as man's or any other living creature. The spheres are alive and their objective is to keep on living, but that isn't their primary motif. The primary objective is the difference between a good man and a bad one. Whatever is more important to a man than life itself is his primary objective. ”

“ Look, Masters. If the spheres are mixtures of energies, like we are mixtures of chemicals, death means extinction, just as biological death means the extinction of the chemical action in our lives. Theologians say we don't die—that there's a change and we go on existing in a spiritual life. Now let's take a peep at what science tells us about energy: Newton says energy is never extinguished. When it ceases in one form, it changes to another. What happens when you run electricity through a resistance coil? ”

“ Radio energy, Masters! Something absolutely harmless to man. These living, energy spheres will change to radio energy when they meet resistance. Frustration is resistance. Frustration is an emotion. An overwhelming emotion for the spheres! The sphere is frustrated—meets resistance—it disappears. ”

“ Had the right combination for the spheres come about as the result of the war and the releasing of untold amounts of energy?
But even if life had begun on earth by accident, all other types had taken ages to develop. These spheres, thinking creatures, could not have evolved overnight.
These seemingly invincible creatures could not have come from this world. Biological development comes through struggle and survival. An invincible creature does not have to worry about its existence—in fact, struggle was necessary to develop an invincible being. These spheres must be from another world. ”

“ A sphere was forming on the surface of the metal.
"The rise of living energy!" Norden said. "Our own kind of life may have begun ages ago in much the same way. A spore from some far off world may have drifted here through space, found conditions just right, and taken root. Thus the spore of the sun—the whispering spheres—found a set of conditions fitted for growth. That metal pot is filled with seeds of the spheres. One by one they will hatch and grow into a force that will bring extinction to all men, except those of my race. ”

“ One by one the lights of the city went out as workers went back to bed, to toss restlessly. Without noise there could be no sleep.
The tongues of flame still whispered.
A car moved rapidly through the streets of the city. At the wheel was a man dressed in a captain's uniform. The machine whirled onto the highway that led toward the factory. A barricade, lighted by torch-lanterns, barred his path. A sentry with a bayoneted gun stood to one side, signaling a halt.
The car slowed.
"Captain Ted Taylor, ordnance department!" the captain said, extending his pass toward the sentry. ”

“ It wouldn't do man any good to stage a conquest of earthworms and swordfish, since neither could pay taxes. The spheres are as different from man as man from an angle-worm. Are we a menace to the spheres? Apparently the only time we really menace them is when we crawl into a hole like a rabbit—maybe there's something in that that will help us, but I don't think that's why they kill us. Are we a nuisance? If so, why? Are we a food? There is energy in sunlight and chemicals in the human body. A creature of energy would feed on something like sunlight, not chemicals. ”

“ Primary objectives make men do what they do—but understanding Orkins doesn't solve our problem."
"No. What are the spheres? Are they alive? If so, they must want something. What do they want?"
"A conquest of the human race?" Taylor pondered. "Maybe. But it isn't likely. They can't gain much by conquering us. ”

“ There's not a living person left in the whole place."
"Not a—hold on there, Cap! Do you know how many were working?"
"They're all dead," Taylor said. Briefly he outlined what he had seen in the plant.
"Norden, the blankety-blank!" Masters swore. "Shooting's too good for him."
"This isn't connected with the war—at least not directly. It's something else, Masters. What, I don't know yet, but I'm beginning to think that it's something the human race has never met before. Those spheres have killed a couple of hundred workers with bolts of energy—"
"I'm no scientist, captain." ”

“ It was a soldier going into battle against hopeless odds. And it was more. The army of human civilisation at that moment consisted of one buck private, pitting everything he had against something that even science could not analyze. ”

“ Norden said.
"The spheres are not for the earth. Our battles are not theirs. By betraying your world to these creatures, you are betraying the whole human race."
"This is not so!" Norden said, thickly. "I know how to handle them. Orkins told me. He said he imitated their whistle and they spared him, while they killed the others in the plant. He didn't realize the value of his discovery. He was too much of a coward."
Norden beckoned his prisoners to him and disarmed them. He pointed to the door of the casting room.
"Look!"
In the center of the room was a metal pot used for small castings. ”

“ Man's a mixture of chemicals, but that doesn't explain him. The spheres are a mixture of energies—we can observe that much, but it still doesn't explain them. Where are they from? Why did they come here? ”

“ Taylor thought he heard a choked-off scream. Orkins. He gritted his teeth grimly.
There was only one link of hope in Taylor's chain of thought. There must always be a check to every form of life. Terrestrial plagues of insects were followed suddenly by flocks of birds. In western states an increase in the number of jackrabbits always is a forerunner of an increase in the number of coyotes. But the jackrabbits carried parasites fatal to the coyotes. If man was a rabbit, then perhaps he harbored the check to these creatures of flame.
What check would limit the whispering spheres? ”

“ Where had the spheres come from? They surely were not of this world. On the basis of biological evolution they could not be the children of any life known to science. Had they evolved suddenly, by accident? Some scientists thought all life had grown by accident ”

“ Orkins opened his mouth to scream, but Norden clapped his hand over the man's lips, choking him off.
"Quiet!" Taylor ordered hoarsely. He addressed the sentry: "See that thing? It means death to you, to all of us if it finds us. The sergeant of the guard, probably all of the other sentries are dead. Every workman in the plant is dead. Somehow we were missed. The searchlight power went off before they found this post, I suppose. Now then, all of you follow Masters back to the car. ”