At last, at the entrance to a valley, Mickey and Minnie stopped. Nothing I could do would induce them to go on. Moreover they tried to hold me back, clutching at my legs with their forepaws. The valley looked a likely place for game and I shook them off impatiently. They watched me as I went, making little whining noises of protest, but they did not attempt to follow.
For the first quarter mile I saw nothing unusual. Then I had a nasty shock. Farther on an enormous head reared above the trees, looking directly at me. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before but thoughts of giant reptiles jumped to my mind.
Tyrannosaurus must have had a head not unlike that. I was puzzled as well as scared. Venus could not be still in the age of the giant reptiles. I could not have lived here all this time without seeing something of them before.
The head did not move – there was no sound. As my first flood of panic abated it was clear that the animal had not seen me. The valley seemed utterly silent, for I had grown so used to the sounds of rain that my ears scarcely registered them. At two hundred yards I came within sight of the great head again and decided to risk a shot.
I aimed at the right eye and fired.
Nothing happened – the echoes thundered from side to side; nothing else moved. It was uncanny, unnerving. I snatched up my glasses. Yes, I had scored a bull's-eye, but ... Queer. I decided that I didn't like the valley a bit, but I made myself go on.
There was a curious odour in the air, not unpleasant yet a little sickly. Close to the monster I stopped. He had not budged an inch. Suddenly, behind him, I caught a glimpse of another reptile – smaller, more lizard-like but with teeth and claws that made me sweat.
I dropped on one knee and raised the rifle. I began to feel an odd swimming sensation inside my head. The world seemed to be tilting about me. My rifle barrel wavered. I could not see clearly. I felt myself begin to fall. I seemed to be falling a long, long way...
When I awoke it was to see the bars of a cage.
Dagul stopped reading. He knew the rest. “How long ago, do you think?” he asked.
Coin shrugged his shoulders.
“Heaven knows. A very long time, that's all we can be sure of. The continual clouds – and did you notice that he claims to have tamed two of our primitive ancestors? Millions of years.”
“And he warns us against Earth.” Dagul smiled. “It will be a shock for the poor creature. The last of his race – though not, to judge by his own account, a very worthy race. When are you going to tell him?”
“He's bound to find out soon, so I thought I'd do it this evening. I've got permission to take him up to the observatory.”
“Would you mind if I came too?”
“Of course not.”
Gratz was stumbling among unfamiliar syllables as the three climbed the hill to the Observatory of Takon, doing his best to drive home his warnings of the perfidy of Earth and the ways of great companies. He was relieved when both the Takonians assured him that no negotiations were likely to take place.
“Why have we come here?” he asked when they were in the building and the assistant, in obedience to Goin's orders, was adjusting the large telescope.
“We want to show you your planet,” said Dagul.
There was some preliminary difficulty due to differences between the Takonian and the human eye but before long he was studying a huge shining disc. A moment later he turned back to the others with a slight smile.
“There's some mistake. This is our moon.”
“No. It is Earth,” Goin assured him.
Gratz looked back at the scarred pitted surface of the planet. For a long time he gazed in silence. It was like the moon and yet – despite the craters, despite the desolation, there was a familiar suggestion of the linked Americas, stretching from pole to pole — a bulge which might have been the West African coast. Gratz gazed in silence for a great while. At last he turned away.
“How Long?” he asked.
“Some millions of years.”
“I don't understand. It was only the other day—”
Goin started to explain but Gratz heard none of it. Like a man dreaming he walked out of the building. He was seeing again the Earth as she had been – a place of beauty, beautiful in spite of all that man had made her suffer. And now she was dead, a celestial cinder.
Close by the edge of the cliff which held the observatory high above Takon he paused. He looked out across an alien city in an alien world towards a white point that glittered in the heavens. The Earth which had borne him was dead. Long and silently he gazed.
Then, deliberately, with a step that did not falter, he walked over the cliff's edge.