Inferior planet

“ But, again, while we are ignorant of this, perhaps the most sublime truth in all science, we were always arguing as if the system had an imperfection, as if the disturbing forces of the different planets and the sun, acting on one another, constantly changed the orbits of each planet, and must, in a course of ages, work the destruction of the whole planetary arrangement which we had contemplated with so great admiration and with awe. ”

“ I am very old, oh man of the waste countries; long and long ago I came to this planet with others of my world, from the green planet Yag, which circles for ever in the outer fringe of this universe. We swept through space on mighty wings that drove us through the cosmos quicker than light, because we had warred with the kings of Yag and were defeated and outcast. ”

“ Hardly had man solved his basic problems on the planet of his origin than he began to fumble into space. Barely a century had elapsed in the exploration of the Solar System than he began to grope for the stars.
And suddenly, with an all but religious zeal, mankind conceived its fantasy dream of populating the galaxy. Never in the history of the race had fervor reached such a peak and held so long. The question of why was seemingly ignored. Millions of Earth-type planets beckoned and with a lemming-like desperation humanity erupted into them. ”

“ No life there. Not even the stars to make one think of home. Only the dust and wind, a dark veil of death screaming eternally over hot dry land.
And Jupiter, with its seas of ice; and hot Mercury, a cracked, withered mummy of a planet, baked as hard and dry as an ancient walnut in a furnace.
Next, the airless, rocky asteroids, and frozen Saturn with its swirling ammonia snows. And last, the white, silent worlds, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.
World after world, all dead, with no sign of life, no reminder of life, and no promise of life.
Thus the loneliness had grown. It was not a child of Earth. ”

“ There seemed to me to be something grimly ludicrous about the vast majority of men, who fuss around for a few years on an insignificant planet in an out-of-the-way corner of space, as if they had been placed here for eternity, and were individually of tremendous significance to the universe at large. ”

“ What chance had man, or the works of man against such? What mattered a tiny planet when those rays could hurl one mighty sun into another, to blaze up in an awful conflagration that would light up space for a million light years around with a mighty glare of light! ”

“ We could start on this globe all that is best on our own. Think what boundless possibilities may be before the human race on this planet, which on account of its vast size will be in its prime when our insignificant earth is cold and dead and no longer capable of supporting life! Think also of the indescribable blessing to the congested communities of Europe and America, to find an unlimited outlet here! Mars is already past its prime, and Venus scarcely habitable, but in Jupiter we have a new promised land, compared with which our earth is a pygmy, or but little more than microscopic. ”

“ To myself, who had passed much of my life on the four outer giants, on Jupiter and Saturn and Uranus and Neptune, the little planet ahead seemed insignificant, almost, with its single tiny moon. And yet from it, I knew, had come that unceasing stream of human life, that dauntless flood of pioneers, which had spread over all the solar system in the last hundred thousand years. They had gone out to planet after planet, had conquered the strange atmospheres and bacteria and gravitations, until now the races of man held sway over all the sun's eight wheeling worlds. ”

“ We imagine, forsooth, that all this is for us, and that the stars influence our destinies! But the labours of ages have convinced us of our error, and we find ourselves on an insignificant planet, almost imperceptible in the immensity of space. ”

“ Supposing that everything that happens on the one planet, the planet that we call Delusion, reacts on the other planet; that is to say, the world as we choose to see it, the world-in-law? No, no, Ambrose! ”

“ Each may have its system of planets, such as earth, and each planet again its attendant satellites. With that splendid magnanimity characteristic of our race, man would rather pitch the hundred million suns into chaos than for a moment entertain the idea that he is a humbug and of no use whatever. ”

“ But as their numbers had increased, as they had come to need every world, every planet for their existence, they had grasped their suns with titanic, unguessable forces, had swung them from their accustomed chaos into order, into great circles, placing inside those circles all their countless worlds—worlds of which thousands could then exist upon the light and heat of a mere score of suns by having those suns grouped in a ring about them. ”

“ But now all those perils and worlds we had passed, Mars and the deadly asteroidal belt, great Jupiter and Saturn and the doom that had almost been ours there, all these things faded from our minds as we found ourselves with our thoughts concentrated wholly upon the far planet that from the first had been our goal, that planet which we must reach if Earth was to be saved. ”

“ And therefore is the glorious planet Sol In noble eminence enthron'd and spher'd Amidst the other, whose med'cinable eye Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil, And posts, like the commandment of a king, Sans check, to good and bad. But when the planets In evil mixture to disorder wander, What plagues and what portents, what mutiny, What raging of the sea, shaking of earth, Commotion in the winds! ”

“ You have just dined, and, however scrupulously the slaughter-house is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity, — expensive races, — race living at the expense of race. The planet is liable to shocks from comets, perturbations from planets, rendings from earthquake and volcano, alterations of climate, precessions of equinoxes. ”

“ You still express surprise, that the Entoans, physically, are formed as are we, and the peoples of our Planet. My dear madame, believe me, when I reiterate, that humans, no matter of what Planet, are essentially the same. Disabuse your mind, now, and for all time, of the idea, that necessarily, different Planets must produce entirely different expressions of life. ”

“ Astronomers tell us there are probably dead worlds whose spectrums tell us that they are of the same material as our own planet and presumably once the abode of sentient beings, for it is unthinkable that of all the worlds which occupy space which has no confines, the small planet which we inhabit alone supports sentient life. ”

“ Compared with the gentle, civilized, unbelieving Entoans, we are uncivilized, believing savages. I no longer wonder that to the Spirit Worlds our Planet is known as the Sorrowful Star.
De L'Ester—Patience, patience, Gentola̤. Although the contrast between Ento's and Earth's social conditions is very marked, evolution means progress, and slowly, but surely, the peoples of our planet are emerging into higher conceptions of truth. Inevitably, a period will arrive when the surface of Earth will have become as level as is the surface of Ento. ”

“ But the one thing that caused consternation throughout the entire solar system was a sickening shift. Spacecraft and planet gave a tiny, queasy slip, sort of like a heavy man who has just trod upon a grape. Things move according to their mass and according to their distance from the black shaft of energy. On planets, it was just enough to cause fear; the most infinitesimal waver in the constant course of the planets awakens racial fear. In spacecraft, the shift was more violent, but here people were prepared for a bit of wobble. ”

“ And while that science grew swiftly greater, other changes took place, changes in our universe itself. Ten million years passed before the first of those changes became important. But slowly, steadily our atmosphere was drifting into space. Through ages this gradually became apparent. Our worlds were losing their air and their water. One planet, less favored than another, fought for its life, and space itself was ablaze with the struggles of wars for survival. ”

“ When the folks on one of the out planets get a little disgruntled with what they've got, we're sent. They've built up a mighty splendid picture of Earth and Earth people."
"I know it. So we come along and do everything we can to make Earth look like the worst sink hole in the universe. By the time we leave, the two ideas—their own glorified impression of Earth and our warped play-acting—kind of merge. They realize they have a pretty good thing on their own home planet." ”

“ Revolving upon its own axis, and describing an ample circuit through the boundless fields of space, is a planet of the solar system bearing upon its surface a population of nearly a thousand millions subject to sin, disease and death. This orb of the starry heavens shines with a glory similar to that of its kindred spheres. ”

“ If our Humanity were extinguished, the other worlds of the Heavens, Venus, Mars, etc., would none the less continue to gravitate in the Heavens along with our defunct planet, and the close of human life (for which everything seems to us to have been created) would not even be perceived by those other worlds, that nevertheless are our neighbors. ”

“ From thence result, in the movements of the two planets, those perturbations whose complete development necessitates a period of upwards of nine hundred years.... This will be, then, another periodic inequality.
But, independently of the centres, which we suppose to be in themselves variable, may there not exist, in the space traversed by our planet, some cause of perturbation? Is our system so isolated in the universe that it neither receives nor loses aught of that which constitutes its force and matter? Is there no solidarity between its different worlds? ”

“ So that's the source of life, strength, what-have-you, of the aliens! They must have gotten pretty frantic out in the space wastes, looking for a planet that could afford them a life form that was tap-able. ”

“ Without it, not only development, but decay would come to a standstill, when once all that was friable land crumbled to pieces under the alternate roasting and refrigerating to which the planet's surface would be exposed as it revolved upon its axis toward and away from the sun. Disintegration once effected, the planet would roll, a mummy world, through space. ”

“ Smile, then, damn you....
"We want nothing, Earthman, but to prevent from happening on your planet the thing that happened on this. If they succeed in destroying you as they have us, then this System will always be under their heel, and we shall never be rid of them. Understand, their numbers were too few ever to conquer a planet with a civilization as large and as highly organized as that of Earth, by physical means.
"Knowing that, we—they call us gypsies, nomads, desert-scum today—we were not too alarmed when they landed here two centuries ago. ”

“ There was one thing this poor, dizzied, scattered planet needed. With its quarrelling and its peevish industries, its sick poets and its tired religions, the one thing this planet needed was a Blow; it needed a man that could hammer it together. ”

“ There was only one possible answer. A race might destroy a planet if it was useless. Earthmen had discovered useless planets, planets with poisonous atmospheres. Was Earth's atmosphere poisonous to the Agronians? ”

“ Of all the evidence of narrow mindedness and folly, I know of no greater than the stupid belief that this little planet is singled out to be the seat of life, and that all other heavenly bodies are fiery masses or lumps of ice. Most certainly, some planets are not inhabited, but others are, and among these there must exist life under all conditions and phases of development. ”

“ They lay months away from the nearest Earth star by jump drive, and no one knew what they were good for, although it was felt that they would probably be good for something if it could only be discovered—much like the continent of Antarctica in ancient history.
"How can a planet with so many neighbors be so lonely?" ”

“ He supposed that the mind of the inhabitants of the other planets was about the same as ours and that their organism was analogous to our own; for what would be the object of the Sun illuminating those other planets if their inhabitants had no eyes? One might indeed think that different species of reasonable beings might exist, but not on the same planet, for they would be in mutual conflict, would struggle for supremacy, and do each other every kind of harm. ”

“ How could any single man take a barbarian planet, lightly inhabited by half-mad hunters and alcoholic farmers, and turn it into a smooth-running social machine built around the artificial structure of the Twenties? ”

“ If there were no interstellar ships at all in the area, it was likely that the planet below was an isolated planet. There were plenty of them in the galaxy; when the infraspace drive had combined with Terrestrial overcrowding to produce the great migration, many of the pioneers had simply found themselves a planet, settled themselves into a community, dismantled their ship, and forgotten about the rest of mankind. ”

“ Or, perchance, coming generations will not abide the dissolution of the globe, but, availing themselves of future inventions in aerial locomotion, and the navigation of space, the entire race may migrate from the earth, to settle some vacant and more western planet, it may be still healthy, perchance unearthy, not composed of dirt and stones, whose primary strata only are strewn, and where no weeds are sown. ”

“ Consummation of tidal effect marks the last stage in the planetary career. So soon as identity of rotation and revolution is effected, the planet is placed in a changeless, or largely changeless, state, which, so far as we can conceive, means as a world its death. ”

“ Do you think we could ever extradite him from such a planet? And even if by some incredible stroke of fortune one of our agents happened to land on the right planet, in which city would he begin his search. Or suppose our quarry lands only on uninhabited planets? We can't very well alert the whole galaxy in the search for just one man. ”