“I hope you’re not off exploring somewhere, Helen and Gary,” it said from the speaker. “They’ve had a celebration here today. The Adastra’s landed. I landed it. I’m the only man left alive. We came down in the center of a city of these devils, in the middle of buildings fit to form the headquarters of hell. The high panjandrum has a sort of palace right next to the open space where I am now.
“And today they celebrated. It’s strange how much animal matter there was on the Adastra. They even found horsehair stiffening in the coats of our uniforms. Woolen blankets. Shoes. Even some of the soaps had an animal origin, and they ‘refined’ it. They can recover any scrap of animal matter as cleverly as our chemists can recover gold and radium. Queer, eh?”
The speaker was silent a moment.
“I’m sane now,” the voice said steadily. “I think I was mad for a while. But what I saw today cleared my brain. I saw millions of these devils dipping their arms into great tanks, great troughs, in which solutions of all the animal tissues from the Adastra were dissolved. The high panjandrum kept plenty for himself! I saw the things they carried into his palace, through lines of guards. Some of those things had been my friends. I saw a city crazy with beastly joy, the devils swaying back and forth in ecstasy as they absorbed the loot from Earth. I heard the high panjandrum hoot a sort of imperial address from the throne. And I’ve learned to understand quite a lot of those hootings.
“He was telling them that Earth is packed with animals. Men. Beasts. Birds, Fish in the oceans. And he told them that the greatest space fleet in history will soon be grown, which will use the propulsion methods of men, our rockets, Gary, and the first fleet will carry uncountable swarms of them to occupy Earth. They’ll send back treasure, too, so that every one of his subjects will have such ecstasy, frequently, as they had today. And the devils, swaying crazily back and forth, gave out that squealing noise of theirs. Millions of them at once.”
Jack groaned softly. Helen covered her eyes as if to shut out the sight her imagination pictured.
“Now, here’s the situation from your standpoint,” said Alstair steadily, millions of miles away and the only human being upon a planet of bloodlusting plant men. “They’re coming here now, their scientists, to have me show them the inside workings of the rockets. Some others will come over to question you two tomorrow. But I’m going to show these devils our rockets. I’m sure—perfectly sure—that every space ship of the race is back on this planet.
“They came to share the celebration when every, one of them got as a free gift from the grand panjandrum as much animal tissue as he could hope to acquire in a lifetime of toil. Flesh is a good bit more precious than gold, here. It rates, on a comparative scale, somewhere between platinum and radium. So they all came home. Every one of them! And there’s a space ship on the way here from Earth. It’ll arrive in four years more. Remember that!”
An impatient, distant hooting came from the speaker.
“They’re here,” said Alstair steadily. “I’m going to show them the rockets. Maybe you’ll see the fun. It depends on the time of day where you are. But remember, there’s a sister ship to the Adastra on the way! And Gary, that order I gave you last thing was the act of a madman, but I’m glad I did it. Good-by, you two!”
Small hooting sounds, growing fainter, came from the speaker. Far, far away, amid the city of fiends, Alstair was going with the plant men to show them the rockets’ inner workings. They wished to understand every aspect of the big ship’s propulsion, so that they could build—or grow—ships as large and carry multitudes of their swarming myriads to a solar system where animals were to be found.
“Let’s go outside,” said Jack harshly. “He said he’d do it, since he couldn’t get a bit of a machine made that could be depended on to do it. But I believed he’d go mad. It didn’t seem possible to live to their planet. We’ll go outside and look at the sky.”
Helen stumbled. They stood upon the green grass, looking up at the firmament above them. They waited, staring. And Jack’s mind pictured the great rocket chambers of the Adastra. He seemed to see the strange procession enter it; a horde of the ghastly plant men and then Alstair, his face like marble and his hands as steady.
He’d open up the breech of one of the rockets. He’d explain the disintegration field, which collapses the electrons of hydrogen so that it rises in atomic weight to helium, and the helium to lithium, while the oxygen of the water is split literally into neutronium and pure force. Alstair would answer hooted questions. The supersonic generators he would explain as controls of force and direction. He would not speak of the fact that, only the material of the rocket tubes, when filled with exactly the frequency those generators produced, could withstand the effect of the disintegration field.
He would not explain that a tube started without those generators in action would catch from the fuel and disintegrate, and that any other substance save one, under any other condition save that one rate of vibration, would catch also and, that tubes, ship, and planet alike would vanish in a lambent purple flame.
No; Alstair would not explain that. He would show the Centaurians how to start the Caldwell field.
The man and the girl looked at the sky. And suddenly there was a fierce purple light. It dwarfed the reddish tinge of the ringed sun overhead. For one second, for two, for three, the purple light persisted. There was no sound. There was a momentary blast of intolerable heat. Then all was as before.
The ringed sun shone brightly. Clouds like those of Earth floated serenely in a sky but a little less blue than that of home. The small animals from the Adastra munched contentedly at the leafy stuff underfoot. The pigeons soared joyously, exercising their wings in full freedom.
“He did it,” said Jack. “And every space ship was home. There aren’t any more plant men. There’s nothing left of their planet, their civilization, or their plans to harm our Earth.”
Even out in space, there was nothing where the planet of the Centaurians had been. Not even steam or cooling gases. It was gone as if it had never existed. And the man and woman of Earth stood upon a planet which could be a paradise for human beings, and another ship was coming presently, with more of their kin.
“He did it!” repeated Jack quietly. “Rest his soul! And we—we can think of living, now, instead of death.”
The grimness of his face relaxed slowly. He looked down at Helen. Gently, he put his arm about her shoulders. She pressed close, gladly, thrusting away all thoughts. of what had been. Presently she asked softly: “What, was that last order Alstair gate you?”
“I never looked,” said Jack.
He fumbled in his pocket. Pocketworn and frayed, the order slip came out. He read it and showed it to Helen. By statutes passed before the Adastra left Earth, laws and law enforcement on the artificial planet were intrusted to the huge ship’s commander. It had been specially-provided that a legal marriage on the Adastra would be constituted by an official order of marriage signed by the commander. And the slip handed to Jack by Alstair, as Jack went to what he’d thought would be an agonizing death, was such an order. It was, in effect, a marriage certificate.
They smiled at each other, those two.
“It—wouldn’t have mattered,” said Helen uncertainly. “I love you. But I’m glad!”
One of the freed pigeons found a straw upon the ground. He tugged at it. His mate inspected it solemnly. They made pigeon noises to each other. They flew away with the straw. After due discussion, they had decided that it was an eminently suitable straw with which to begin the building of a nest.