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.”“Why not?” asked Jet.“If we take you back you will build other space ships and make further trips to the Moon and beyond.”“Of course,” said Mitch.He could not suppress the note of fanaticism in his voice.“That’s the reason why we started out on this trip in the first place.Man has a new frontier to conquer, the frontier of space.And nothing will stop him.”“Not even if every space ship that left Earth failed to return?”“Oh, so that’s your little game, is it?” said Lemmy.“You’re going to lie up there on the Moon, waiting for ships to come out from Earth so that you can knock ‘em from there into the middle of next week.”“How else can we prevent Man conquering space?”“Why should you wish to?” asked Jet.“You’ve conquered it yourself, haven’t you?”“We had to leave our planet--we had no choice.”“I don’t see that that makes any difference,” argued Mitch.“There’s no universal law to say that beings from one part of the Universe should travel it at will while those of another should not.”“Our reasons are sound enough,” said the Voice.“Perhaps, if you care to watch the televiewer globe, I can convince you.”We all turned towards the pedestal where it stood near the curving wall.Jet got up from his seat and walked round the table towards the glowing sphere, as did the rest of us.“These,” said the Voice, “are the forest creatures.”The picture was clear enough.It showed a group of men, if you could call them that; for they were men from a long-forgotten age, men at their wildest and most primitive.“Pre-historic men--our an--ancestors!” I gasped.There were about ten of them, including women and children.So far as I could tell, they were neanderthaloids.Their skins were of a dark hue, whether naturally or from the want of a wash I couldn’t say.Their hair was auburn, their noses flat and their eyebrows beetling.From their wide mouths, which frequently opened in a snarl, long canine teeth protruded.Their feet were broad and large and, as they walked, their arms swung like a chimpanzee’s.Their bodies, as well as their heads, were covered with hair, thick and matted on the chest and thighs.The men had long ragged beards and some of the women held children to their breasts.They all carried some kind of weapon, either a long, sharpened stick, a branch of a tree shaped as a club, or merely heavy stones which they picked up from the ground and used as missiles.They were all stark naked and walked with a stoop.“When we first arrived here,” the Voice continued, “thousands of years ago, there were only a few of these animals.But they have steadily multiplied and emerged as creatures with intelligence.They live in small communities and have learned to make fire.They have an insatiable desire to destroy us and all that belongs to us.”“Then why don’t you do the same to them?” asked Jet.“We can do many things, but we cannot harm any living creature.”“Well, that’s a comfort,” Lemmy said to me quietly.“But won’t you even kill for food?” asked Jet.“There is no need to kill to live.”“But life is like that,” argued Jet.“One animal kills another so that it may survive and that, in its turn, is killed by another.And so on.”“So we found when we first arrived on Earth; it was something new to us.But these creatures that you see have a far higher intelligence than any other animal and yet behave little differently.There is an incredible selfishness in their nature.They fight savagely for food and mates--even kill each other.They would kill you as soon as look at you.”“But they won’t come looking for us down here, will they?” asked Lemmy.“No.They seldom leave the forest.”“Then we’ve got nothing to be scared of, so long as we stay here.”“But you can’t.”“Why not?” asked Jet.“I’ve already told you.The last of us are about to leave, and we cannot protect you when we are gone.Already the forest creatures had begun to get curious about you.That is why we brought you here--where you can remain in safety until we can remove you to Venus to spend the remainder of your days in peace and comfort.”“That’s what you say,” put in Lemmy, “but how do we know what you might get up to when you get us there?”“You don’t have to come.You can remain here if you wish.”“With those gorillas, you mean?” said Lemmy.“And you say you’ve no wish to harm us.”“It would not be us that harmed you; it would be the forest creatures, your own ancestors.”“Ah! That’s the point, isn’t it?” said Jet.“You think that because we’re descended from those--those cave men, we’re still like them.That’s the true reason you won’t attempt to get us back to our own time.”“Can you blame us? We have seen the forces that drive them, their uncontrollable desire to destroy anything they do not understand.Can you imagine what such creatures would do if let loose on a peaceful planet where violence was unknown?”“Yes, I can,” said Mitch, “but twentieth-century man is not like that.We are quite different, you can see that for yourself.”“Physically, yes, but it takes a long time for such things to be driven out of a being’s nature--a long, long time, longer than your kind has inhabited this planet.”“But in comparison with the age of the Earth,” I said, “Man has hardly existed any time at all [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]