hate the idea of there being another intelligent life form in the galaxy. They hate us! Hate us!”
He broke off for a moment, as though overwhelmed, and then took it up again, his voice still rising. “Something is happening… I’m being drawn toward it… Some sort of magnetic tractor force is pulling me in.”
His last words were shouted. “Earth! EARTH!… DEFEND! DEFEND!…
And those were the last words Tracy Cogswell ever spoke.
Within twenty-four hours, Earth was shifting into high gear, and within forty-eight the rioting mobs were burning the Pleasure Centers.
AFTERWARD
« ^ The next few weeks were hectic. Half the world was taking intensified courses in subjects involving space. The International Congress of Guilds was organizing a crash program to revive the space projects of yesteryear. The Steins and Jo Edmonds split up, with Jo returning to England and Betty going out to the American west coast to apply for a position at one of the new spaceports. It wasn’t as yet completed and wouldn’t be for approximately a month, so she returned east to stay with her father.
On their first night together they sat and watched the news of the tri-di. Almost all of it was devoted to the new crash program to get man back into space. Betty said lowly, “I wonder whatever happened to Tracy.”
Her father looked at her in surprise. “You mean you don’t understand?”
“Understand what?”
“Betty, don’t you see? There was nothing out there. Perhaps, one day, man will find other intelligent life in the stars, but this wasn’t it. This was Tracy’s plan to unite the race, to put it back on the road to progress and expansion. The expansion into space is beginning with a fury. Perhaps, for a time, a century or so, it will largely be with defense in mind. But then, after we have progressed far, far beyond the point we are at now, the truth will undoubtedly come home to us and though we will continue our march toward our destiny, the stars, it will no longer be with military matters in mind. I suspect that Tracy Cogswell has taken care of that.”
“Taken care of it? But where is Tracy?”
Her father shook his head sadly. “Dead by now, I assume. Surely his supplies have failed by now. I suspect that he is in orbit about Jupiter, that he has become in his ship, one of Jupiter’s satellites. One day, an Earth military space cruiser, or a group of them, will probably cautiously reconnoiter the area. They will find his dead ship and that will be the tipoff. He will probably have left a note of explanation, or a tape, to explain the whole farce. Then we will realize what a hero he was. That he made a false scare report to spur on the race and in so doing made a martyr of himself.” longdash#«»—«»—«»—
