Wallace Umphrey

“ Later that night Steve picked up Janey. They went for a ride in the moonlight, but the whole thing wasn't too satisfactory. It was becoming increasingly difficult for Steve to keep the fear pushed out of his mind.
Janey began to cry.
"Cut it out!" Steve said. "Once you start that—you're lost. We've got to laugh in the teeth of danger. Man's always lived by faith. We've got to put our faith in Papa." ”

“ What is important is this: man became top dog only because he happened to have hands with fingers on them. And man learned to adapt. That's probably the greatest single lesson man learned, although the result hasn't always been pretty. Man learned to kill off the weaker species, and after that he killed off the weaker races of men."
"You're cynical today," Papa said.
"Maybe this is one of my bitter days," Steve said. "No, it's not that. I'm just saying what everybody knows—but what we often hate to put into words because it doesn't sound nice. Take the new food pills. ”

“ A cultist with a large following in California brayed that mankind was reaping the fruit of its own evil. Some people tried to look into their own hearts and others tried to look into the future, and as a result death by suicide mounted in a dizzy spiral. ”

“ Steve snapped his fingers. "It's simple. We breathe in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. Plant life takes the carbon out of the CO2 in the air and replaces it with oxygen. Now, with all plant life dead, we're using up the oxygen and it's not being replaced." ”

“ He stared out of the window, but he kept his mind firmly on Janey, partly so he wouldn't think of anything else. They passed the Park where Steve had first witnessed the disaster without fully realizing the final meaning. The grass was gone now and the bare trunks of the trees thrust upward, already beginning to rot away. It was difficult to realize that never again would he see a growing thing.
He turned away, trying to throw the thought from his mind. The faces around him were wooden; and he knew he wasn't alone in his desire to be free of despair. Man. Man trying desperately to adapt. ”

“ The weak die and the strong live."
Steve was getting warmed up. "Take the early reptiles. They couldn't keep up with geophysical change and they died off. All you have to do is follow historic evolution. Maybe man was an accident in the evolutionary process, but that's unimportant. ”

“ World leaders pleaded for sanity. Scientists sought feverishly for an answer, and finally agreed that what had happened was due to a ray which was coming from somewhere out in interplanetary space. And the enormity of the peril was fully realized when farmers reported their crops were failing. All known stockpiles of food could support mankind for only a limited time. ”