3
crags against the inland skyline.
Theron sighed. His thin ringers groped blindly over the rocky surface on which he lay.
"You are space-born, Ardath," he said painfully. "You cannot quite realize that only on a planet can a man find a home. But I am afraid. ..."
His voice died away. Then it rose again, strengthened. "I am dying but there is something I must tell you first. Listen, Ardath . . . You never knew your mother planet, Kyria. It is light-years away from this world. Or it was. Centuries ago, we discovered that Kyria was doomed. A wandering planetoid came so close that it would inevitably collide with us and destroy our civilization utterly. "Kyria was a lovely world, Ardath."
"I know," Ardath breathed. "I have seen the films in our records."
"You have seen our great cities, and the green forests and fields--" An agonizing cough rocked the dying commander. He went on hastily. "We fled. A selected group of us made this space ship and left Kyria in search of a new home. But of hundreds of planets that we found, none was suitable. None would sustain human life. This, the third planet of this yellow Sun, is our last hope. Our fuel is almost gone. It is your duty, Ardath, to see that the civilization of Kyria does not perish."
"But this is a dead world," the younger man protested.
"It is a young world," Theron corrected.
He paused, and his hand lifted, pointing. Ardath stared at the slow, sullen tide that rippled drearily toward them. The gloomy wash of water receded. And there on the rocky slope lay something that made him nod understandingly.
It was not large. A greasy, shining blob of slime, featureless and repulsive, it was unmistakably alive, undeniably sentient!
The shimmering globule of protoplasm was drawn back with the next wave. When Ardath's eyes met Theron's, the dying man smiled triumphantly.
"Life! There's sun here, Ardath, beyond the clouds--a Sun that sends forth energy, cosmic rays, the rays of evolution. Immeasurable
The Creature from Beyond Infinity, page 2
by Henry Kuttner