FROM OUTER SPACE
By ROBERT ZACKS
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Startling Stories, May 1952.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The grizzled old space veteran leaned back in his chair and stared upthrough the transparent dome. In the black sky myriad white specksgleamed without twinkling, their light unbent by atmosphere or dust.The steady pulse of the airmakers kept rhythm with the heartbeats ofthe young men seated in a semi-circle, listening with glistening eyesto these ancient tales of an Earth they'd never seen—the home of theirspecies.
They stared hungrily at the old man's face. There was a silvery spot onthe chin where Venusian fungus had nearly gotten into his bloodstreamand had had to be burned away. Over one eye an eyebrow was gone,replaced by scar tissue grown on a planet at the other end of thegalaxy where the light of enormous fireflies wasn't cold, as on ancientearth, but searing with heat.
"Imagine," they marveled, "such weak flame in fireflies."
"Not weak," corrected the old man. "Just different. Those insects onEarth didn't have to fight off intense cold. They had a much thickeratmosphere and were close to the sun. And they didn't feed on alcohol."
The young men's eyes glittered. They were an odd group. Small—most ofthem, none over five feet five inches—and pale, unlike the old manwho was bulky around the shoulders and had skin virtually leathered byvarious radiations and temperatures and winds.
Each day this group waited hungrily for the old man to come and talk tothem. The stories he told were the breath of life to them. And of allthe tales of adventures in the far ends of the universe, the one thatwas most repeatedly called for was the story of what had happened toEarth.
"Tell us about Earth," said one of them, now, in a low voice.
"About how great we were?" said the old man. "About what love was like?About homes and children and how a man went to work in the morning attasks of his own choosing? Or...."
"No. About what happened. You know. At the finish."
The old man looked up again. His eyes were dreamy.
"Earth," he said, softly. "Earth. I've been through the galaxies theselast forty years and I've seen planets by the thousand. And there neverwas one like Earth."
"Tell us," they said, each in urgent, differing words, but all with thesame tortured look. "Tell us about what went wrong."
"I've told you that a hundred times," he said.
But they wanted it again. Like a man who relives an incident to examineeach moment with incredulity, as if in hope that it will fade and nothave happened, as if in unconscious attempt to move sideways from thatpoint into another time stream probability where a different course ofaction will be true.
"All right," said the old man.
The first they had heard of the strangers from outer space was whenthe new ultra short-wave frequencies were used. Professor Kennicot ofPalmira University was the first to find how to generate and controlthem. He tried to transform the wavelengths upward to a range eitherauditory or visual but for some reason power was lost in the process.
Apparently he gave them a sufficient jolt with extra voltage, however,because they were picked up by the strangers in outer space as asignal. The heaviside layer did not stop these wavelengths.
Professor Kennicot was startled one day when he heard, or thought heheard, a soundless voice in his mind. It