Page:Avon Fantasy Reader 11 (1949).pdf/74

 to have them—were destroyed, and all the—trees?—yes, trees and other growing things were destroyed, too. I think the color of the growing things was green and the sky was blue. But the wars changed all that. Poison gases of all kinds were dumped into the atmosphere and all over the ground. Bombs of all kinds blew the earth into bits and opened big holes in the earth, letting out more gases. Until at last the surface of the earth was just a big cloud of poison gas and fog like you see now."

"But—the Enemy?"

"I was coming to that, John. This is only a theory—a guess on my part, because no one can be sure whether it's right or not. But I think all this made something happen on earth. It brought into being forces which weren't there before. And those forces reacted on each other and produced new forces and those in turn set other things going, until a new form of life appeared. A form particularly adapted for just such conditions as these. To this new form of life, all this is natural and clean and beautiful as the earth we once knew—the one none of us has ever seen, John—was to us.

"I remember a picture in one of the history books. It showed a strange looking thing called—let me think for a moment—called a dinosaur. There aren't any more of them—weren't any even in the old days when men had earth to themselves. Well, men are being wiped out just like the dinosaurs were. I mean, just as surely.

"This new form of life, John, is the coming race. It's so superior to us we just can't conceive of it. We can't see it or hear it or smell it or touch it. Or feel it. We just have an idea that it's there. And we know when it kills One of us. But it hasn't come yet. I mean, it's just in its primitive, animal stage now. Some day it'll be big, big as we were in our day."

He sat silently for a moment.

"I wonder if it'll wipe itself out with wars the way we did."

Stilson felt an emptiness inside him. "Sellers, what shall we tell them when we get back?"

"We'll tell them that the Enemy won't make peace. That we've got to keep fighting. Maybe—if I get back—if anyone gets back—it would be a good idea to put something in the water supply so that they all go to sleep painlessly and clean.

"Humanity's done for, John. There's no real sense in fighting or trying to go on. There's nothing here on this earth," and his hand swept over the night before them, "worth our living."

"I don't know," he said slowly. "Perhaps it's worth the trouble, at least, of moving our people to the domed city. At least death won't come in the dark and in poisoned atmosphere. And maybe—there, they can find a way—"

His words trailed off because he knew he had no faith in them. What could they do when the far superior dome dwellers had failed utterly?

He snapped on the flashlamp and went on from sleeper to sleeper, shining it in their faces, checking, wondering with a chill in his heart if Martha would awaken when it was time to go on. The night spread out about him, deep, pitiless. He could sense a deeper blackness within its ebon depths, moving, shifting, moving. . . 110