Page:Amazing Stories Volume 15 Number 12.djvu/74

74 streaming. And sounds were floating in. The shouts of men—Tork's comrades here—calling out in greeting. And other voices; the voices of the natives here our descendents—yours and mine.

As Tork and Greggson shoved us out through the oval doorway and down the incline, Blake and I stood numbed, gasping at the weird sight.

HE sun was low in the west—a huge dull-red round ball. It looked startlingly close, and sullen; lifeless. The cloudless sky was a sodden bronze. The landscape had almost nothing in it of any familiar configuration, save that the sea was at the east—a glassy, oily-looking surface, with the red-bronze sunlight on it.

Undulations of almost naked, rocky hills, with stunted trees; and to the west a great eroded canyon with a babbling ribbon of dark water, far down.

Instant impressions. Then my gaze swept to the babbling throng that pressed close toward us on the rocky slope. Humans? Our ancestors. Men and women Women carrying children in their arms Adults hardly taller than my waist. Ghastly little things. Naked lumps of flesh—grey-brown skin, covered with scraggling, mangy-looking black hair-growth. The heads were round, over-large. Bulging forehead; big brain-pan, with large brain, most of it long since atrophied.

These weird humans stood milling on the slope—a thousand of them perhaps. Mankind reverting to savagery? Already they were beyond that; merging into animals. Yet not quite that either. For somehow on them was stamped the traditions of their heritage of transient glory, lost now so that they were helpless.

Blake stood gripping me.

"Those—the people here? Is that all that's left of mankind?" [sic]

It was, undoubtedly. Perhaps in the struggle, the animals, birds, insects all had died. Certainly we saw none of them. The little babble of human voices rolled at us—brief fragments of sounds, animalistic. Like a chattering, milling throng of apes they stood with frightened curiosity, staring. Lumps of women, wide-hipped with flowing tangled hair half enveloping them, held up their little lumps of children to see us better—children with round, wondering faces of staring dark eyes. All staring with apathetic gazes, dulled by the blight of the centuries.

"Get back there!" Tork was roaring. "Out of the way—you—get back!"

As though scattering a group of domestic animals, he lunged at them, waving his arms; and before him, with frightened squeals, they ran. I could see, off by the Hudson-canyon, little mounds of stones piled into the shape of dwellings. The scurrying figures ran into them; and into holes in a nearby broken cliff. A patch of stunted woods was nearby; trees on which food might be growing. And there was a distant field. A little agriculture left. Blighted; pathetic

HE red-shirted swaggering Greggson shoved at Blake and me.

'Come on, you two. Your house—" He laughed racuously. "Your last day—you might as well get what comfort you can."

I suddenly resisted him.

"I'm going with Tork—Tork and Doris—"

Men were bringing the girls out from the time-ship now. Amazingly hetero-