As unheralded as ghosts, but as significant as a
new dawn of history, there came to Earth from distant
Ganymede's glowing crescent—three micro-androids,
minuscule beings, carrying the moot treasure of immortality.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Somebody invented the first locomotive. Then came the nuclear bomb. Iguess that people were somewhat scared of newness both times.
Mostly, it has been worse ever since.
World War III was also before my day. But then fear, the protectiveemotion, played a reasonable part. So no cities were actuallyvaporized. But our side came out the victors with bombers sohigh-flying that they were already atom-propelled rocket ships ofspace. We had artificial satellites circling the Earth, and a fortresson the Moon.
I missed the first exploration of the solar system, too. There was hotMercury, carbon dioxide-smothered Venus; Mars and its ruins and quietcolors; and what was left of Planet X, whose people destroyed theMartians in war, though their planet itself got blown all to bits inthe same struggle, its fragments now being known as the asteroids.
The moons of Jupiter and Saturn were also invaded by men, as were thefrozen-methane-and-ammonia blizzards of Uranus and Neptune, and thefrigid mountain peaks of Pluto, farthest world of all.
There were always yarns about "Little Men" and whatnot, of course.Yet no contemporary intelligent races were found across space. Therewere just queer skeletons and dried up corpses millions of years old.Rusting on Mars, or floating free and broken among the Asteroids,were the remains of inventions, and other cultural evidences. Spaceships had wandered as far as Pluto during those past ages, too; andvarious relics were left on this sphere or that. Scientific study ofthese things meant more speed for our technical progress in medicine,atomics, metallurgy, almost anything you could mention.
Three cheers for us, and wasn't progress wonderful? But I guess plentyof folks felt dumb and slow and confused.
I, Charles Harver, was born in Chicago, March 9th, 2014. But in myearliest, murky memories, Earth was only a place known from television,picture books, and the nostalgic remarks of my parents. We had a houseand a flower and vegetable garden under a transparent airdome of darkblue plastic. The sun would shine among the stars for what I heard wasfourteen days; then, for another two weeks the solar lamps would burnin the dome top.
The region where we lived was called the spaceward lunar hemisphere.Earth never shone there, but life was good. There were other kids,and school, and the usual dreams about being a bold space wanderer,speeding out to find unimagined marvels.
Dad was a technician in the research labs, just a few miles from ourhouse by tube train. I could see the walls of the buildings in thebleak volcanic distance.
Dad used to pretend he was wrestling with me. "Charlie," he'd say,"a kid better grow up tough and flexible these days. Not mean butrugged—ready for anything. Don't ever go soft on me, Charlie, with allthe temptations of modern comforts. You know one thing the labs arelooking for, already? Yeah, a way to reach the planets of the stars!Maybe a means—and an engine powerful enough—really will be inventedto force a shortened, interdimensional path across the light-yearsif the structure of space itself doesn't burst under test! Keep yourhead down, kid! The work is much too dangerous to be conducted on thedensely populated Earth. There coul