loaded, and with only a glimpse over his shoulder at the two spacemen silhouetted in the church doorway, he stepped through.

It was like stepping through fire--a fire that clawed and tore at the heart of him--but it lasted only a moment. The hallway in which he found himself was of silver, tiny overlapping bits of silver plating that rippled and cast off flashes of light. He walked slowly ahead to the other doorway he saw before him. Framed in the door, he looked above him, through a glass roof, up into a strange star-studded night sky.

"Where is this world?" Curt Wing wondered. Have I crossed a thousand, a million or a trillion light years to come here? He looked down from the night sky and the vastness of the transparent roof reached as far his eyes could see. It was only a whisper in his mind at first--then it grew stronger until it was as if his ears were hearing it. "You're a man," the thought said. Curt Wing's dark eyes cast about for
the source of it. "You're a man," the emotionless thought repeated. "That is why we could not beat you. We are a dying race, trapped on a dying world. You are young and have your destiny still before you."

"We found your world--the world of man, Earth, but we didn't know it until now. We made a mistake--a mistake which is destroying us but will in your far distant future destroy you."

Wing's mind called out. "Who are you? Where are you?" "We were never beaten until now. We knew that to survive this dying system we must fight across eternity to find another sun and another system. We started from mud and slime like you, and some day you too must come to this--the end of your destiny."

"We licked our problem. You, because you, too, are men, can lick yours."

Curt Wing turned his back on Man's future, walked down the silver hallway, through the hexagonal door to his own world. He stepped out in the quiet hush of the church. He saw the two spacers still staring in as he walked out of the darkness of the church into the brightness of day. One of the spacers called out: "Commander, the light's fading!" The shouted words echoed in his ears as he strode down the steps.

"The light's fading...." Like hell it was! Somehow those future men would find a way. Wasn't it man's way to thumb his nose at impossibilities and forge ahead? Space Commander Curt Wing's shoulders straightened. He lengthened his stride. He did not look back.Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be
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