Nelson and Ramos sped on toward Mars in their tiny plastic-bubble spacecraft. They were on the alert it didn't pay to take anything for granted in the Big Vacuum The way between the worlds was mostly empty space except for the outlaws of the void who drifted, patiently and vengefully waiting for a victim, then struck! Nelsen and Ramos tensed blips on the radar screen! Maybe meteors.
At 4 a. m., a ray of light had been observed on the disc of the planet Mars in or near the "terminator"; that is to say, the zone of twilight separating day from night. The news was doubly interesting to me, because a singular dream of "Sunrise in the Moon" had quickened my imagination as to the wonders of the universe beyond our little globe, and because of a never-to-be-forgotten experience of mine with an aged astronomer several years ago.
Not long after the colonists landed on the uninhabited planet, every human-made artifact -- ship, communicators, tools -- disappeared! Even their clothes!
"Kor was... is. God. Knowledge." He had tried to convey this to the small creatures who had invaded his world, but they did not heed. Their ill-equipped brains were trying futilely to comprehend the ancient race memory of his people. Now they would attempt further to discover the forbidden directives of Kor. Horng remembered, somewhere far back in the fossil layers of his thoughts, a warning. They must be stopped! If he had to, he would stamp out these creatures who were called "humans."
The last enemy was the toughest of all--and conquering him was in itself almost as dangerous as not conquering. For a strange pattern of beliefs can make assassination an honorable profession!
It's seldom that the fate of a shipful of men literally hangs by a thread--but it's also seldom that a device, every part of which has been thoroughly tested, won't work....
Child, it was, of the now ancient H-bomb. New. Untested. Would its terrible power sweep the stark Saturnian moon of Titan from space. or miraculously create a flourishing paradise-colony?