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was sterile? No. I won't believe it."
"Not in that simple and clean-cut a way," Dark-ington conceded. "Probably the war did end with a
nominal victor: but he was more depopulated and devastated than anyone had dared expect. Too
impoverished to reconstruct, or even to maintain what little physical plant survived. A downward spiral
into the Dark Ages."
"M-m-m, I dunno," Kuroki argued. "There were a lot of machines around. Automation, especially. Like
those self-reproducing, sun-powered, mineral-collecting sea rafts. And a lot of other self-maintaining
gadgets. I don't see why industry couldn't be revived on such a base."
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"Radioactivity would have been everywhere," Darkington pointed out. "Its long-range effect on
ecology... Oh, yes, the process may have taken centuries, as first one species changed or died, and then
another dependent on it, and then more. But how could the human survivors recreate technology when
biology was disintegrating around them?" He shook himself and stiffened his back, ashamed of his self
pity of a minute ago, looking horror flatly in the face. "That's my guess. I could be wrong, but it seems to
fit the facts. We'll never know for certain, I suppose."
Earth rolled into sight. The planetary disc was still edged with blueness darkening toward black. Clouds
still trailed fleecy above shining oceans; they gleamed upon the darkness near the terminator as they
caught the first light before sunrise. Earth was forever fair.
But the continental shapes were new, speckled with hard points of reflection upon black and ocher
where once they had been softly green and brown. There were no polar caps; sea level temperatures
ranged from eighty to two hundred degrees Fahrenheit. No free oxygen remained: the atmosphere was
nitrogen, its oxides, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, and steam.
Spectroscopes had found no trace of chlorophyll or any other complex organic compound. The ground
cover, dimly glimpsed through clouds, was metallic.
This was no longer Earth. There was no good reason why the Traveler should send a boat and three
highly unexpendable humans down to look at its lifelessness. But no one had suggested leaving the Solar
System without such a final visit. Darkington remembered being taken to see his grandmother when she
was dead. He was twelve years old and had loved her. It was not her in the box, that strange
unmeaningful mask, but where then was she?
"Well, whatever happened seems to be three billion years in the past," Kuroki said, a little too loudly.
"Forget it. We got troubles of our own."
Frederika's eyes had not left the planet. "We can't ever forget, Sam," she said. "We'll always wonder
and hope-they, the children at least-hope that it didn't happen to them too cruelly." Darkington started in
surprise as she went on murmuring, very low, oblivious of the men:
"to tell you of the ending of the day. And you will see her tallness with surprise, and looking into gentle,
shadowed eyes protest: it's not that late; you have to stay awake a minute more, just one, to play with
yonder ball. But nonetheless you rise so they won't hear her say, 'A baby cries, but you are big. Put all
your toys away.'
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"She lets you have a shabby bear in bed, though frankly doubting that you two can go through
dream-shared living rooms or wingless flight.
She tucks the blankets close beneath your head and smooths your hair and kisses you, .and so goes out,
turns off the light 'Good night. Sleep tight.'"
Kuroki glanced around at her. The plaid shirt wrinkled across his wide shoulders. "Pomes yet," he said.
"Who wrote that?"
"Hugh," said Frederika. "Didn't you know he published poetry? Quite a bit. I admired his work long
before I met him."
Darktngton flushed. Her interest was flattering, but he regarded Then Death Will Come as a juvenile
effort.
However, his embarrassment pulled him out of sadness. (On the surface. Down beneath, it would
always be there, in every one of them. He hoped they would not pass too much of it on to their children.
Let us not weep eternally for Zion.) Leaning forward, he looked at the planet with an interest that
mounted as the approach curve took them around the globe. He hoped for a few answers to a hell of a
lot of questions.
For one thing, why, in three billion years, had life not re-evolved? Radioactivity must have disappeared
in a few centuries at most. The conditions of primordial Earth would have returned. Or would they? What
had been lacking this time around?
He woke from his brown study with a jerk as Kuroki said, "Well, I reckon we can steepen our
trajectory a bit." A surprising interval had passed. The pilot touched controls and the mild acceleration
increased. The terrestrial disc, already enormous, swelled with terrifying velocity, as if tumbling down
upon them.
Then, subtly, it was no longer to one side or above, but was beneath; and it was no longer a thing among
the stars but the convex floor of bowl-shaped creation. The jets blasted more strongly. Kuroki's jaws
clenched till knots of muscle stood forth. His hands danced like a pianist's.
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He was less the master of the boat, Darkington knew, than its helper. So many tons, coming down
through atmospheric turbulence at such a velocity, groping with radar for a safe landing spot, could not
be handled by organic brain and nerves. The boat's central director-essentially a computer whose input
came from the instruments and whose efferent impulses went directly to the controls-performed the basic
operations. Its task was fantastically complex: very nearly as difficult as the job of guiding the muscles
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