Initial commit

author: nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org> 2025-01-17 05:19:49 -0800
committer: nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org> 2025-01-17 05:19:49 -0800
commit: df21cb3762be0597d21657238ddc4e2590576843 (patch)
tree: 4832c79de2d7ee7e9c9d8bdfd65bba862ede8307
4 files changed, 1833 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/72180-0.txt b/72180-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3aec7f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/72180-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,862 @@
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REQUIEM ***
+
+
+
+
+
+                                REQUIEM
+
+                          By EDMOND HAMILTON
+
+                        Illustrated by SUMMERS
+
+          _All during its lifetime Earth had been deluged ...
+            overwhelmed ... submerged in an endless torrent
+              of words. Was even its death to be stripped
+            of dignity by the cackling of the mass media?_
+
+           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
+                      Amazing Stories April 1962
+         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
+         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
+
+
+Kellon thought sourly that he wasn't commanding a star-ship, he was
+running a travelling circus. He had aboard telaudio men with tons of
+equipment, pontifical commentators who knew the answer to anything,
+beautiful females who were experts on the woman's angle, pompous
+bureaucrats after publicity, and entertainment stars who had come along
+for the same reason.
+
+He had had a good ship and crew, one of the best in the Survey. _Had_
+had. They weren't any more. They had been taken off their proper job of
+pushing astrographical knowledge ever further into the remote regions
+of the galaxy, and had been sent off with this cargo of costly people
+on a totally unnecessary mission.
+
+He said bitterly to himself, "Damn all sentimentalists."
+
+He said aloud, "Does its position check with your calculated orbit, Mr.
+Riney?"
+
+Riney, the Second, a young and serious man who had been fussing with
+instruments in the astrogation room, came out and said,
+
+"Yes. Right on the nose. Shall we go in and land now?"
+
+Kellon didn't answer for a moment, standing there in the front of the
+bridge, a middle-aged man, stocky, square-shouldered, and with his
+tanned, plain face showing none of the resentment he felt. He hated to
+give the order but he had to.
+
+"All right, take her in."
+
+He looked gloomily through the filter-windows as they went in. In this
+fringe-spiral of the galaxy, stars were relatively infrequent, and
+there were only ragged drifts of them across the darkness. Full ahead
+shone a small, compact sun like a diamond. It was a white dwarf and had
+been so for two thousand years, giving forth so little warmth that the
+planets which circled it had been frozen and ice-locked all that time.
+They still were, all except the innermost world.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Kellon stared at that planet, a tawny blob. The ice that had sheathed
+it ever since its primary collapsed into a white dwarf, had now melted.
+Months before, a dark wandering body had passed very close to this
+lifeless system. Its passing had perturbed the planetary orbits and the
+inner planets had started to spiral slowly in toward their sun, and the
+ice had begun to go.
+
+Viresson, one of the junior officers, came into the bridge looking
+harassed. He said to Kellon,
+
+"They want to see you down below, sir. Especially Mr. Borrodale. He
+says it's urgent."
+
+Kellon thought wearily, "Well, I might as well go down and face the
+pack of them. Here's where they really begin."
+
+He nodded to Viresson, and went down below to the main cabin. The
+sight of it revolted him. Instead of his own men in it, relaxing or
+chinning, it held a small and noisy mob of over-dressed, overloud
+men and women, all of whom seemed to be talking at once and uttering
+brittle, nervous laughter.
+
+"Captain Kellon, I want to ask you--"
+
+"Captain, if you _please_--"
+
+He patiently nodded and smiled and plowed through them to Borrodale. He
+had been given particular instructions to cooperate with Borrodale, the
+most famous telaudio commentator in the Federation.
+
+Borrodale was a slightly plump man with a round pink face and
+incongruously large and solemn black eyes. When he spoke, one
+recognized at once that deep, incredibly rich and meaningful voice.
+
+"My first broadcast is set for thirty minutes from now, Captain. I
+shall want a view as we go in. If my men could take a mobile up to the
+bridge--"
+
+Kellon nodded. "Of course. Mr. Viresson is up there and will assist
+them in any way."
+
+"Thank you, Captain. Would you like to see the broadcast?"
+
+"I would, yes, but--"
+
+He was interrupted by Lorri Lee, whose glitteringly handsome face
+and figure and sophisticated drawl made her the idol of all female
+telaudio reporters.
+
+"_My_ broadcast is to be right after landing--remember? I'd like to do
+it alone, with just the emptiness of that world as background. Can you
+keep the others from spoiling the effect? Please?"
+
+"We'll do what we can," Kellon mumbled. And as the rest of the pack
+converged on him he added hastily, "I'll talk to you later. Mr.
+Borrodale's broadcast--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He got through them, following after Borrodale toward the cabin that
+had been set up as a telaudio-transmitter room. It had, Kellon thought
+bitterly, once served an honest purpose, holding the racks of soil and
+water and other samples from far worlds. But that had been when they
+were doing an honest Survey job, not chaperoning chattering fools on
+this sentimental pilgrimage.
+
+The broadcasting set-up was beyond Kellon. He didn't want to hear
+this but it was better than the mob in the main cabin. He watched as
+Borrodale made a signal. The monitor-screen came alive.
+
+It showed a dun-colored globe spinning in space, growing visibly larger
+as they swept toward it. Now straggling seas were identifiable upon it.
+Moments passed and Borrodale did not speak, just letting that picture
+go out. Then his deep voice spoke over the picture, with dramatic
+simplicity.
+
+"You are looking at the Earth," he said.
+
+Silence again, and the spinning brownish ball was bigger now, with
+white clouds ragged upon it. And then Borrodale spoke again.
+
+"You who watch from many worlds in the galaxy--this is the homeland of
+our race. Speak its name to yourselves. The Earth."
+
+Kellon felt a deepening distaste. This was all true, but still it was
+phony. What was Earth now to him, or to Borrodale, or his billions of
+listeners? But it was a story, a sentimental occasion, so they had to
+pump it up into something big.
+
+"Some thirty-five hundred years ago," Borrodale was saying, "our
+ancestors lived on this world alone. That was when they first went into
+space. To these other planets first--but very soon, to other stars. And
+so our Federation began, our community of human civilization on many
+stars and worlds."
+
+Now, in the monitor, the view of Earth's dun globe had been replaced by
+the face of Borrodale in close-up. He paused dramatically.
+
+"Then, over two thousand years ago, it was discovered that the sun of
+Earth was about to collapse into a white dwarf. So those people who
+still remained on Earth left it forever and when the solar change came,
+it and the other planets became mantled in eternal ice. And now, within
+months, the final end of the old planet of our origin is at hand. It
+is slowly spiralling toward the sun and soon it will plunge into it as
+Mercury and Venus have already done. And when that occurs, the world of
+man's origin will be gone forever."
+
+Again the pause, for just the right length of time, and then Borrodale
+continued in a voice expertly pitched in a lower key.
+
+"We on this ship--we humble reporters and servants of the vast telaudio
+audience on all the worlds--have come here so that in these next weeks
+we can give you this last look at our ancestral world. We think--we
+hope--that you'll find interest in recalling a past that is almost
+legend."
+
+And Kellon thought, "The bastard has no more interest in this old
+planet than I have, but he surely is smooth."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As soon as the broadcast ended, Kellon found himself besieged once
+more by the clamoring crowd in the main cabin. He held up his hand in
+protest.
+
+"Please, now--now we have a landing to make first. Will you come with
+me, Doctor Darnow?"
+
+Darnow was from Historical Bureau, and was the titular head of the
+whole expedition, although no one paid him much attention. He was a
+sparrowy, elderly man who babbled excitedly as he went with Kellon to
+the bridge.
+
+He at least, was sincere in his interest, Kellon thought. For that
+matter, so were all the dozen-odd scientists who were aboard. But they
+were far out-numbered by the fat cats and big brass out for publicity,
+the professional enthusers and sentimentalist. A real hell of a job the
+Survey had given him!
+
+In the bridge, he glanced through the window at the dun-colored planet
+and its satellite. Then he asked Darnow, "You said something about a
+particular place where you wanted to land?"
+
+The historiographer bobbed his head, and began unfolding a big,
+old-fashioned chart.
+
+"See this continent here? Along its eastern coast were a lot of the
+biggest cities, like New York."
+
+Kellon remembered that name, he'd learned it in school history, a long
+time ago.
+
+Darnow's finger stabbed the chart. "If you could land there, right on
+the island--"
+
+Kellon studied the relief features, then shook his head. "Too low.
+There'll be great tides as time goes on and we can't take chances. That
+higher ground back inland a bit should be all right, though."
+
+Darnow looked disappointed. "Well, I suppose you're right."
+
+Kellon told Riney to set up the landing-pattern. Then he asked Darnow
+skeptically,
+
+"You surely don't expect to find much in those old cities now--not
+after they've had all that ice on them for two thousand years?"
+
+"They'll be badly damaged, of course," Darnow admitted. "But there
+should be a vast number of relics. I could study here for years--"
+
+"We haven't got years, we've got only a few months before this planet
+gets too close to the Sun," said Kellon. And he added mentally, "Thank
+God."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The ship went into its landing-pattern. Atmosphere whined outside its
+hull and then thick gray clouds boiled and raced around it. It went
+down through the cloud layer and moved above a dull brown landscape
+that had flecks of white in its deeper valleys. Far ahead there was the
+glint of a gray ocean. But the ship came down toward a rolling brown
+plain and settled there, and then there was the expected thunderclap of
+silence that always followed the shutting off of all machinery.
+
+Kellon looked at Riney, who turned in a moment from the test-panel
+with a slight surprise on his face. "Pressure, oxygen, humidity,
+everything--all optimum." And then he said, "But of course. This place
+_was_ optimum."
+
+Kellon nodded. He said, "Doctor Darnow and I will have a look out
+first. Viresson, you keep our passengers in."
+
+When he and Darnow went to the lower airlock he heard a buzzing clamor
+from the main cabin and he judged that Viresson was having his hands
+full. The people in there were not used to being said no to, and he
+could imagine their resentment.
+
+Cold, damp air struck a chill in Kellon when they stepped down out
+of the airlock. They stood on muddy, gravelly ground that squashed
+a little under their boots as they trudged away from the ship. They
+stopped and looked around, shivering.
+
+Under the low gray cloudy sky there stretched a sad, sunless brown
+landscape. Nothing broke the drab color of raw soil, except the
+shards of ice still lingering in low places. A heavy desultory wind
+stirred the raw air, and then was still. There was not a sound except
+the clinkclinking of the ship's skin cooling and contracting, behind
+them. Kellon thought that no amount of sentimentality could make this
+anything but a dreary world.
+
+But Darnow's eyes were shining. "We'll have to make every minute of the
+time count," he muttered. "Every minute."
+
+Within two hours, the heavy broadcast equipment was being trundled
+away from the ship on two motor-tracs that headed eastward. On one
+of the tracs rode Lorri Lee, resplendent in lilac-colored costume of
+synthesilk.
+
+Kellon, worried about the possibility of quicksands, went along for
+that first broadcast from the cliffs that looked down on the ruins of
+New York. He wished he hadn't, when it got under way.
+
+For Lorri Lee, her blonde head bright even in the dull light, turned
+loose all her practised charming gestures for the broadcast cameras, as
+she gestured with pretty excitement down toward the ruins.
+
+"It's so _unbelievable_!" she cried to a thousand worlds. "To be here
+on Earth, to see the old places again--it _does_ something to you!"
+
+It did something to Kellon. It made him feel sick at his stomach. He
+turned and went back to the ship, feeling at that moment that if Lorri
+Lee went into a quicksand on the way back, it would be no great loss.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But that first day was only the beginning. The big ship quickly became
+the center of multifarious and continuous broadcasts. It had been
+especially equipped to beam strongly to the nearest station in the
+Federation network, and its transmitters were seldom quiet.
+
+Kellon found that Darnow, who was supposed to coordinate all this
+programming, was completely useless. The little historian was living
+in a seventh heaven on this old planet which had been uncovered to
+view for the first time in millennia, and he was away most of the time
+on field trips of his own. It fell to his assistant, an earnest and
+worried and harassed young man, to try to reconcile the clashing claims
+and demands of the highly temperamental broadcasting stars.
+
+Kellon felt an increasing boredom at having to stand around while all
+this tosh went out over the ether. These people were having a field-day
+but he didn't think much of them and of their broadcasts. Roy Quayle,
+the young male fashion designer, put on a semi-humorous, semi-nostalgic
+display of the old Earth fashions, with the prettier girls wearing
+some of the ridiculous old costumes he had had duplicated. Barden, the
+famous teleplay producer, ran off ancient films of the old Earth dramas
+that had everyone in stitches. Jay Maxson, a rising politician in
+Federation Congress, discussed with Borrodale the governmental systems
+of the old days, in a way calculated to give his own Wide-Galaxy Party
+none the worst of it. The Arcturus Players, that brilliant group of
+young stage-folk, did readings of old Earth dramas and poems.
+
+It was, Kellon thought disgustedly, just playing. Grown people, famous
+people, seizing the opportunity given by the accidental end of a
+forgotten planet to posture in the spotlight like smart-aleck children.
+There was real work to do in the galaxy, the work of the Survey, the
+endless and wearying but always-fascinating job of charting the wild
+systems and worlds. And instead of doing that job, he was condemned to
+spend weeks and months here with these phonies.
+
+The scientists and historians he respected. They did few broadcasts
+and they did not fake their interest. It was one of them, Haller, the
+biologist, who excitedly showed Kellon a handful of damp soil a week
+after their arrival.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Look at _that_!" he said proudly.
+
+Kellon stared. "What?"
+
+"Those seeds--they're common weed-grass seeds. Look at them."
+
+Kellon looked, and now he saw that from each of the tiny seeds
+projected a new-looking hairlike tendril.
+
+"They're sprouting?" he said unbelievingly.
+
+Haller nodded happily. "I was hoping for it. You see, it was almost
+spring in the northern hemisphere, according to the records, when Sol
+collapsed suddenly into a white dwarf. Within hours the temperature
+plunged and the hydrosphere and atmosphere began to freeze."
+
+"But surely that would kill all plant-life?"
+
+"No," said Haller. "The larger plants, trees, perennial shrubs, and so
+on, yes. But the seeds of the smaller annuals just froze into suspended
+animation. Now the warmth that melted them is causing germination."
+
+"Then we'll have grass--small plants?"
+
+"Very soon, the way the warmth is increasing."
+
+It was, indeed, getting a little warmer all the time as these first
+weeks went by. The clouds lifted one day and there was brilliant, thin
+white sunshine from the little diamond sun. And there came a morning
+when they found the rolling landscape flushed with a pale tint of green.
+
+Grass grew. Weeds grew, vines grew, all of them seeming to rush their
+growth as though they knew that this, their last season, would not be
+long. Soon the raw brown mud of the hills and valleys had been replaced
+by a green carpet, and everywhere taller growths were shooting up, and
+flowers beginning to appear. Hepaticas, bluebells, dandelions, violets,
+bloomed once more.
+
+Kellon took a long walk, now that he did not have to plow through mud.
+The chattering people around the ship, the constant tug and pull of
+clashing temperaments, the brittle, febrile voices, got him down. He
+felt better to get away by himself.
+
+The grass and the flowers had come back but otherwise this was still
+an empty world. Yet there was a certain peace of mind in tramping up
+and down the long green rolling slopes. The sun was bright and cheerful
+now, and white clouds dotted the sky, and the warm wind whispered as he
+sat upon a ridge and looked away westward where nobody was, or would
+ever be again.
+
+"Damned dull," he thought. "But at least it's better than back with the
+gabblers."
+
+He sat for a long time in the slanting sunshine, feeling his bristling
+nerves relax. The grass stirred about him, rippling in long waves, and
+the taller flowers nodded.
+
+No other movement, no other life. A pity, he thought, that there were
+no birds for this last spring of the old planet--not even a butterfly.
+Well, it made no difference, all this wouldn't last long.
+
+As Kellon tramped back through the deepening dusk, he suddenly became
+aware of a shining bubble in the darkening sky. He stopped and stared
+up at it and then remembered. Of course, it was the old planet's
+moon--during the cloudy nights he had forgotten all about it. He went
+on, with its vague light about him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When he stepped back into the lighted main cabin of the ship, he was
+abruptly jarred out of his relaxed mood. A first-class squabble was
+going on, and everybody was either contributing to it or commenting
+on it. Lorri Lee, looking like a pretty child complaining of a hurt,
+was maintaining that she should have broadcast time next day for her
+special woman's-interest feature, and somebody else disputed her claim,
+and young Vallely, Darnow's assistant, looked harried and upset. Kellon
+got by them without being noticed, locked the door of his cabin and
+poured himself a long drink, and damned Survey all over again for this
+assignment.
+
+He took good care to get out of the ship early in the morning, before
+the storm of temperament blew up again. He left Viresson in charge of
+the ship, there being nothing for any of them to do now anyway, and
+legged it away over the green slopes before anyone could call him back.
+
+They had five more weeks of this, Kellon thought. Then, thank God,
+Earth would be getting so near the Sun that they must take the ship
+back into its proper element of space. Until that wished-for day
+arrived, he would stay out of sight as much as possible.
+
+He walked miles each day. He stayed carefully away from the east and
+the ruins of old New York, where the others so often were. But he went
+north and west and south, over the grassy, flowering slopes of the
+empty world. At least it was peaceful, even though there was nothing at
+all to see.
+
+But after a while, Kellon found that there were things to see if you
+looked for them. There was the way the sky changed, never seeming
+to look the same twice. Sometimes it was deep blue and white clouds
+sailed it like mighty ships. And then it would suddenly turn gray and
+miserable, and rain would drizzle on him, to be ended when a lance of
+sunlight shot through the clouds and slashed them to flying ribbons.
+And there was a time when, upon a ridge, he watched vast thunder-heads
+boil up and darken in the west and black storm marched across the land
+like an army with banners of lightning and drums of thunder.
+
+The winds and the sunshine, the sweetness of the air and the look of
+the moonlight and the feel of the yielding grass under his feet, all
+seemed oddly right. Kellon had walked on many worlds under the glare of
+many-colored suns, and some of them he had liked much better than this
+one and some of them he had not liked at all, but never had he found a
+world that seemed so exactly attuned to his body as this outworn, empty
+planet.
+
+He wondered vaguely what it had been like when there were trees and
+birds, and animals of many kinds, and roads and cities. He borrowed
+film-books from the reference library Darnow and the others had
+brought, and looked at them in his cabin of nights. He did not really
+care very much but at least it kept him out of the broils and quarrels,
+and it had a certain interest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thereafter in his wandering strolls, Kellon tried to see the place as
+it would have been in the long ago. There would have been robins and
+bluebirds, and yellow-and-black bumblebees nosing the flowers, and tall
+trees with names that were equally strange to him, elms and willows and
+sycamores. And small furred animals, and humming clouds of insects, and
+fish and frogs in the pools and streams, a whole vast complex symphony
+of life, long gone, long forgotten.
+
+But were all the men and women and children who had lived here less
+forgotten? Borrodale and the others talked much on their broadcasts
+about the people of old Earth, but that was just a faceless name, a
+term that meant nothing. Not one of those millions, surely, had ever
+thought of himself as part of a numberless multitude. Each one had been
+to himself, and to those close to him or her, an individual, unique and
+never to be exactly repeated, and what did the glib talkers know of all
+those individuals, what could anyone know?
+
+Kellon found traces of them here and there, bits of flotsam that even
+the crush of the ice had spared. A twisted piece of steel, a girder or
+rail that someone had labored to make. A quarry with the tool-marks
+still on the rocks, where surely men had once sweated in the sun. The
+broken shards of concrete that stretched away in a ragged line to make
+a road upon which men and women had once travelled, hurrying upon
+missions of love or ambition, greed or fear.
+
+He found more than that, a startling find that he made by purest
+chance. He followed a brook that ran down a very narrow valley, and at
+one point he leaped across it and as he landed he looked up and saw
+that there was a house.
+
+Kellon thought at first that it was miraculously preserved whole and
+unbroken, and surely that could not be. But when he went closer he saw
+that this was only illusion and that destruction had been at work upon
+it too. Still, it remained, incredibly, a recognizable house.
+
+It was a rambling stone cottage with low walls and a slate roof, set
+close against the steep green wall of the valley. One gable-end was
+smashed in, and part of that end wall. Studying the way it was embayed
+in the wall, Kellon decided that a chance natural arch of ice must have
+preserved it from the grinding pressure that had shattered almost all
+other structures.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The windows and doors were only gaping openings. He went inside and
+looked around the cold shadows of what had once been a room. There were
+some wrecked pieces of rotting furniture, and dried mud banked along
+one wall contained unrecognizable bits of rusted junk, but there was
+not much else. It was chill and oppressive in there, and he went out
+and sat on the little terrace in the sunshine.
+
+He looked at the house. It could have been built no later than the
+Twentieth Century, he thought. A good many different people must have
+lived in it during the hundreds of years before the evacuation of Earth.
+
+Kellon thought that it was strange that the airphoto surveys that
+Darnow's men had made in quest of relics had not discovered the place.
+But then it was not so strange, the stone walls were so grayly
+inconspicuous and it was set so deeply into the sheltering bay of the
+valley wall.
+
+His eye fell on eroded lettering on the cement side of the terrace, and
+he went and brushed the soil off that place. The words were time-eaten
+and faint but he could read them.
+
+"Ross and Jennie--Their House."
+
+Kellon smiled. Well, at least he knew now who once had lived here, who
+probably had built the place. He could imagine two young people happily
+scratching the words in the wet cement, exuberant with achievement. And
+who had Ross and Jennie been, and where were they now?
+
+He walked around the place. To his surprise, there was a ragged
+flower-garden at one side. A half-dozen kinds of brilliant little
+flowers, unlike the wild ones of the slopes, grew in patchy disorder
+here. Seeds of an old garden had been ready to germinate when the long
+winter of Earth came down, and had slept in suspended animation until
+the ice melted and the warm blooming time came at last. He did not know
+what kinds of flowers these were, but there was a brave jauntiness
+about them that he liked.
+
+Starting back across the green land in the soft twilight, Kellon
+thought that he should tell Darnow about the place. But if he did, the
+gabbling pack in the ship would certainly stampede toward it. He could
+imagine the solemn and cute and precious broadcasts that Borrodale and
+the Lee woman and rest of them would stage from the old house.
+
+"No," he thought. "The devil with them."
+
+He didn't care anything himself about the old house, it was just that
+it was a refuge of quiet he had found and he didn't want to draw to it
+the noisy horde he was trying to escape.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Kellon was glad in the following days that he had not told. The house
+gave him a place to go to, to poke around and investigate, a focus for
+his interest in this waiting time. He spent hours there, and never told
+anyone at all.
+
+Haller, the biologist, lent him a book on the flowers of Earth, and he
+brought it with him and used it to identify those in the ragged garden.
+Verbenas, pinks, morning glories, and the bold red and yellow ones
+called nasturtiums. Many of these, he read, did not do well on other
+worlds and had never been successfully transplanted. If that was so,
+this would be their last blooming anywhere at all.
+
+He rooted around the interior of the house, trying to figure out how
+people had lived in it. It was strange, not at all like a modern
+metalloy house. Even the interior walls were thick beyond belief, and
+the windows seemed small and pokey. The biggest room was obviously
+where they had lived most, and its window-openings looked out on the
+little garden and the green valley and brook beyond.
+
+Kellon wondered what they had been like, the Ross and Jennie who had
+once sat here together and looked out these windows. What things had
+been important to them? What had hurt them, what had made them laugh?
+He himself had never married, the far-ranging captains of the Survey
+seldom did. But he wondered about this marriage of long ago, and what
+had come of it. Had they had children, did their blood still run on the
+far worlds? But even if it did, what was that now to those two of long
+ago?
+
+There had been a poem about flowers at the end of the old book on
+flowers Haller had lent him, and he remembered some of it.
+
+    "_All are at one now, roses and lovers,
+    Not known of the winds and the fields and the sea,
+    Not a breath of the time that has been hovers
+    In the air now soft with a summer to be._"
+
+Well, yes, Kellon thought, they were all at one now, the Rosses and
+the Jennies and the things they had done and the things they had
+thought, all at one now in the dust of this old planet whose fiery
+final summer would be soon, very soon. Physically, everything that
+had been done, everyone who had lived on Earth, was still here in its
+atoms, excepting the tiny fraction of its matter that had sped to other
+worlds.
+
+He thought of the names that were so famous still through all the
+galactic worlds, names of men and women and places. Shakespeare, Plato,
+Beethoven, Blake, the old splendor of Babylon and the bones of Angkor
+and the humble houses of his own ancestors, all here, all still here.
+
+Kellon mentally shook himself. He didn't have enough to do, that was
+his trouble, to be brooding here on such shadowy things. He had seen
+all there was to this queer little old place, and there was no use in
+coming back to it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But he came back. It was not, he told himself, as though he had any
+sentimental antiquarian interests in this old place. He had heard
+enough of that kind of gush from all the glittering phonies in the
+ship. He was a Survey man and all he wanted was to get back to his job,
+but while he was stuck here it was better to be roaming the green land
+or poking about this old relic than to have to listen to the endless
+babbling and quarrelling of those others.
+
+They were quarrelling more and more, because they were tired of it
+here. It had seemed to them a fine thing to posture upon a galactic
+stage by helping to cover the end of Earth, but time dragged by and
+their flush of synthetic enthusiasm wore thin. They could not leave,
+the expedition must broadcast the final climax of the planet's end, but
+that was still weeks away. Darnow and his scholars and scientists, busy
+coming and going to many old sites, could have stayed here forever but
+the others were frankly bored.
+
+But Kellon found in the old house enough interest to keep the waiting
+from being too oppressive. He had read a good bit now about the way
+things had been here in the old days, and he sat long hours on the
+little terrace in the afternoon sunshine, trying to imagine what it had
+been like when the man and woman named Ross and Jennie had lived here.
+
+So strange, so circumscribed, that old life seemed now! Most people had
+had ground-cars in those days, he had read, and had gone back and forth
+in them to the cities where they worked. Did both the man and woman go,
+or just the man? Did the woman stay in the house, perhaps with their
+children if they had any, and in the afternoons did she do things in
+the little flower-garden where a few bright, ragged survivors still
+bloomed? Did they ever dream that some future day when they were long
+gone, their house would lie empty and silent with no visitor except a
+stranger from far-off stars? He remembered a line in one of the old
+plays the Arcturus Players had read. Come like shadows, so depart.
+
+No, Kellon thought. Ross and Jennie were shadows now but they had not
+been then. To them, and to all the other people he could visualize
+going and coming busily about the Earth in those days, it was he,
+the future, the man yet to come, who was the shadow. Alone here,
+sitting and trying to imagine the long ago, Kellon had an eery feeling
+sometimes that his vivid imaginings of people and crowded cities and
+movement and laughter were the reality and that he himself was only a
+watching wraith.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Summer days came swiftly, hot and hotter. Now the white sun was larger
+in the heavens and pouring down such light and heat as Earth had
+not received for millennia. And all the green life across it seemed
+to respond with an exultant surge of final growth, an act of joyous
+affirmation that Kellon found infinitely touching. Now even the nights
+were warm, and the winds blew thrilling soft, and on the distant
+beaches the ocean leaped up in a laughter of spray and thunder, running
+in great solar tides.
+
+With a shock as though awakened from dreaming, Kellon suddenly realized
+that only a few days were left. The spiral was closing in fast now and
+very quickly the heat would mount beyond all tolerance.
+
+He would, he told himself, be very glad to leave. There would be the
+wait in space until it was all over, and then he could go back to his
+own work, his own life, and stop fussing over shadows because there was
+nothing else to do.
+
+Yes. He would be glad.
+
+Then when only a few days were left, Kellon walked out again to the old
+house and was musing over it when a voice spoke behind him.
+
+"Perfect," said Borrodale's voice. "A perfect relic."
+
+Kellon turned, feeling somehow startled and dismayed. Borrodale's eyes
+were alight with interest as he surveyed the house, and then he turned
+to Kellon.
+
+"I was walking when I saw you, Captain, and thought I'd catch up to
+you. Is this where you've been going so often?"
+
+Kellon, a little guiltily, evaded. "I've been here a few times."
+
+"But why in the world didn't you _tell_ us about this?" exclaimed
+Borrodale. "Why, we can do a terrific final broadcast from here. A
+typical ancient home of Earth. Roy can put some of the Players in the
+old costumes, and we'll show them living here the way people did--"
+
+Unexpectedly to himself, a violent reaction came up in Kellon. He said
+roughly,
+
+"No."
+
+Borrodale arched his eyebrows. "No? But why not?"
+
+Why not, indeed? What difference could it possibly make to him if they
+swarmed all over the old house, laughing at its ancientness and its
+inadequacies, posing grinning for the cameras in front of it, prancing
+about in old-fashioned costumes and making a show of it. What could
+that mean to him, who cared nothing about this forgotten planet or
+anything on it?
+
+And yet something in him revolted at what they would do here, and he
+said,
+
+"We might have to take off very suddenly, now. Having you all out here
+away from the ship could involve a dangerous delay."
+
+"You said yourself we wouldn't take off for a few days yet!" exclaimed
+Borrodale. And he added firmly, "I don't know why you should want to
+obstruct us, Captain. But I can go over your head to higher authority."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He went away, and Kellon thought unhappily, He'll message back to
+Survey headquarters and I'll get my ears burned off, and why the devil
+did I do it anyway? I must be getting real planet-happy.
+
+He went and sat down on the terrace, and watched until the sunset
+deepened into dusk. The moon came up white and brilliant, but the air
+was not quiet tonight. A hot, dry wind had begun to blow, and the stir
+of the tall grass made the slopes and plains seem vaguely alive. It was
+as though a queer pulse had come into the air and the ground, as the
+sun called its child homeward and Earth strained to answer. The house
+dreamed in the silver light, and the flowers in the garden rustled.
+
+Borrodale came back, a dark pudgy figure in the moonlight. He said
+triumphantly,
+
+"I got through to your headquarters. They've ordered your full
+cooperation. We'll want to make our first broadcast here tomorrow."
+
+Kellon stood up. "No."
+
+"You can't ignore an order--"
+
+"We won't be here tomorrow," said Kellon. "It is my responsibility to
+get the ship off Earth in ample time for safety. We take off in the
+morning."
+
+Borrodale was silent for a moment, and when he spoke his voice had a
+puzzled quality.
+
+"You're advancing things just to block our broadcast, of course. I just
+can't understand your attitude."
+
+Well, Kellon thought, he couldn't quite understand it himself, so how
+could he explain it? He remained silent, and Borrodale looked at him
+and then at the old house.
+
+"Yet maybe I do understand," Borrodale said thoughtfully, after a
+moment. "You've come here often, by yourself. A man can get too
+friendly with ghosts--"
+
+Kellon said roughly, "Don't talk nonsense. We'd better get back to the
+ship, there's plenty to do before take off."
+
+Borrodale did not speak as they went back out of the moonlit valley. He
+looked back once, but Kellon did not look back.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They took the ship off twelve hours later, in a morning made dull and
+ominous by racing clouds. Kellon felt a sharp relief when they cleared
+atmosphere and were out in the depthless, starry blackness. He knew
+where he was, in space. It was the place where a spaceman belonged.
+He'd get a stiff reprimand for this later, but he was not sorry.
+
+They put the ship into a calculated orbit, and waited. Days, many of
+them, must pass before the end came to Earth. It seemed quite near the
+white sun now, and its Moon had slid away from it on a new distorted
+orbit, but even so it would be a while before they could broadcast to a
+watching galaxy the end of its ancestral world.
+
+Kellon stayed much of that time in his cabin. The gush that was going
+out over the broadcasts now, as the grand finale approached, made him
+sick. He wished the whole thing was over. It was, he told himself,
+getting to be a bore--
+
+An hour and twenty minutes to E-time, and he supposed he must go up
+to the bridge and watch it. The mobile camera had been set up there
+and Borrodale and as many others of them as could crowd in were there.
+Borrodale had been given the last hour's broadcast, and it seemed that
+the others resented this.
+
+"Why must you have the whole last hour?" Lorri Lee was saying bitterly
+to Borrodale. "It's not fair."
+
+Quayle nodded angrily. "There'll be the biggest audience in history,
+and we should all have a chance to speak."
+
+Borrodale answered them, and the voices rose and bickered, and Kellon
+saw the broadcast technicians looking worried. Beyond them through the
+filter-window he could see the dark dot of the planet closing on the
+white star. The sun called, and it seemed that with quickened eagerness
+Earth moved on the last steps of its long road. And the clamoring,
+bickering voices in his ears suddenly brought rage to Kellon.
+
+"Listen," he said to the broadcast men. "Shut off all sound
+transmission. You can keep the picture on, but no sound."
+
+That shocked them all into silence. The Lee woman finally protested,
+"Captain Kellon, you can't!"
+
+"I'm in full command when in space, and I can, and do," he said.
+
+"But the broadcast, the commentary--"
+
+Kellon said wearily, "Oh, for Christ's sake all of you shut up, and let
+the planet die in peace."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He turned his back on them. He did not hear their resentful voices,
+did not even hear when they fell silent and watched through the dark
+filter-windows as he was watching, as the camera and the galaxy was
+watching.
+
+And what was there to see but a dark dot almost engulfed in the shining
+veils of the sun? He thought that already the stones of the old house
+must be beginning to vaporize. And now the veils of light and fire
+almost concealed the little planet, as the star gathered in its own.
+
+All the atoms of old Earth, Kellon thought, in this moment bursting
+free to mingle with the solar being, all that had been Ross and
+Jennie, all that had been Shakespeare and Schubert, gay flowers and
+running streams, oceans and rocks and the wind of the air, received
+into the brightness that had given them life.
+
+They watched in silence, but there was nothing more to see, nothing at
+all. Silently the camera was turned off.
+
+Kellon gave an order, and presently the ship was pulling out of orbit,
+starting on the long voyage back. By that time the others had gone,
+all but Borrodale. He said to Borrodale, without turning,
+
+"Now go ahead and send your complaint to headquarters."
+
+Borrodale shook his head. "Silence can be the best requiem of all.
+There'll be no complaint. I'm glad now, Captain."
+
+"Glad?"
+
+"Yes," said Borrodale. "I'm glad that Earth had one true mourner, at
+the last."
+
+
+                                THE END
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REQUIEM ***
+\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/72180-h/72180-h.htm b/72180-h/72180-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..55b8daa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/72180-h/72180-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,971 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html>
+<html lang="en">
+<head>
+    <meta charset="UTF-8">
+    <title>
+      Requiem | Project Gutenberg
+    </title>
+    <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover">
+    <style>
+
+body {
+    margin-left: 10%;
+    margin-right: 10%;
+}
+
+    h1,h2 {
+    text-align: center; /* all headings centered */
+    clear: both;
+}
+
+p {
+    margin-top: .51em;
+    text-align: justify;
+    margin-bottom: .49em;
+}
+
+hr {
+    width: 33%;
+    margin-top: 2em;
+    margin-bottom: 2em;
+    margin-left: 33.5%;
+    margin-right: 33.5%;
+    clear: both;
+}
+
+hr.tb   {width: 45%; margin-left: 27.5%; margin-right: 27.5%;}
+hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;}
+@media print { hr.chap {display: none; visibility: hidden;} }
+hr.full {width: 95%; margin-left: 2.5%; margin-right: 2.5%;}
+
+div.chapter {page-break-before: always;}
+h2.nobreak  {page-break-before: avoid;}
+
+x-ebookmaker-drop {display: none;}
+
+.blockquot {
+    margin-left: 5%;
+    margin-right: 10%;
+}
+
+.center   {text-align: center;}
+
+.right    {text-align: right;}
+
+/* Images */
+.figcenter {
+    margin: auto;
+    text-align: center;
+    page-break-inside: avoid;
+    max-width: 100%;
+}
+
+div.titlepage {
+  text-align: center;
+  page-break-before: always;
+  page-break-after: always;
+}
+
+div.titlepage p {
+  text-align: center;
+  text-indent: 0em;
+  font-weight: bold;
+  line-height: 1.5;
+  margin-top: 3em;
+}
+
+/* Poetry */
+.poetry-container {display: flex; justify-content: center;}
+.poetry-container {text-align: center;}
+.poetry           {text-align: left; margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%;}
+.poetry .stanza   {margin: 1em auto;}
+.poetry .verse    {text-indent: -3em; padding-left: 3em;}
+.poetry .indent0 {text-indent: -3em;}
+
+.ph1 { text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; }
+.ph1 { font-size: x-large; margin: .83em auto; }
+
+.ph2 { text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; }
+.ph2 { font-size: medium; margin: .83em auto; }
+
+/* Illustration classes */
+.illowp47 {width: 47%;}
+.x-ebookmaker .illowp47 {width: 100%;}
+
+    </style>
+</head>
+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REQUIEM ***</div>
+
+<div class="titlepage">
+
+<h1>REQUIEM</h1>
+
+<p class="ph1">By EDMOND HAMILTON</p>
+
+<p>Illustrated by SUMMERS</p>
+
+<p><i>All during its lifetime Earth had been deluged ...<br>
+overwhelmed ... submerged in an endless torrent<br>
+of words. Was even its death to be stripped<br>
+of dignity by the cackling of the mass media?</i></p>
+
+<p>[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from<br>
+Amazing Stories April 1962<br>
+Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that<br>
+the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap">
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp47" id="illus" style="max-width: 19.8125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus.jpg" alt="">
+</figure>
+
+<hr class="chap">
+
+<p>Kellon thought sourly that he wasn't commanding a star-ship, he was
+running a travelling circus. He had aboard telaudio men with tons of
+equipment, pontifical commentators who knew the answer to anything,
+beautiful females who were experts on the woman's angle, pompous
+bureaucrats after publicity, and entertainment stars who had come along
+for the same reason.</p>
+
+<p>He had had a good ship and crew, one of the best in the Survey. <i>Had</i>
+had. They weren't any more. They had been taken off their proper job of
+pushing astrographical knowledge ever further into the remote regions
+of the galaxy, and had been sent off with this cargo of costly people
+on a totally unnecessary mission.</p>
+
+<p>He said bitterly to himself, "Damn all sentimentalists."</p>
+
+<p>He said aloud, "Does its position check with your calculated orbit, Mr.
+Riney?"</p>
+
+<p>Riney, the Second, a young and serious man who had been fussing with
+instruments in the astrogation room, came out and said,</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Right on the nose. Shall we go in and land now?"</p>
+
+<p>Kellon didn't answer for a moment, standing there in the front of the
+bridge, a middle-aged man, stocky, square-shouldered, and with his
+tanned, plain face showing none of the resentment he felt. He hated to
+give the order but he had to.</p>
+
+<p>"All right, take her in."</p>
+
+<p>He looked gloomily through the filter-windows as they went in. In this
+fringe-spiral of the galaxy, stars were relatively infrequent, and
+there were only ragged drifts of them across the darkness. Full ahead
+shone a small, compact sun like a diamond. It was a white dwarf and had
+been so for two thousand years, giving forth so little warmth that the
+planets which circled it had been frozen and ice-locked all that time.
+They still were, all except the innermost world.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Kellon stared at that planet, a tawny blob. The ice that had sheathed
+it ever since its primary collapsed into a white dwarf, had now melted.
+Months before, a dark wandering body had passed very close to this
+lifeless system. Its passing had perturbed the planetary orbits and the
+inner planets had started to spiral slowly in toward their sun, and the
+ice had begun to go.</p>
+
+<p>Viresson, one of the junior officers, came into the bridge looking
+harassed. He said to Kellon,</p>
+
+<p>"They want to see you down below, sir. Especially Mr. Borrodale. He
+says it's urgent."</p>
+
+<p>Kellon thought wearily, "Well, I might as well go down and face the
+pack of them. Here's where they really begin."</p>
+
+<p>He nodded to Viresson, and went down below to the main cabin. The
+sight of it revolted him. Instead of his own men in it, relaxing or
+chinning, it held a small and noisy mob of over-dressed, overloud
+men and women, all of whom seemed to be talking at once and uttering
+brittle, nervous laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"Captain Kellon, I want to ask you—"</p>
+
+<p>"Captain, if you <i>please</i>—"</p>
+
+<p>He patiently nodded and smiled and plowed through them to Borrodale. He
+had been given particular instructions to cooperate with Borrodale, the
+most famous telaudio commentator in the Federation.</p>
+
+<p>Borrodale was a slightly plump man with a round pink face and
+incongruously large and solemn black eyes. When he spoke, one
+recognized at once that deep, incredibly rich and meaningful voice.</p>
+
+<p>"My first broadcast is set for thirty minutes from now, Captain. I
+shall want a view as we go in. If my men could take a mobile up to the
+bridge—"</p>
+
+<p>Kellon nodded. "Of course. Mr. Viresson is up there and will assist
+them in any way."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Captain. Would you like to see the broadcast?"</p>
+
+<p>"I would, yes, but—"</p>
+
+<p>He was interrupted by Lorri Lee, whose glitteringly handsome face
+and figure and sophisticated drawl made her the idol of all female
+telaudio reporters.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>My</i> broadcast is to be right after landing—remember? I'd like to do
+it alone, with just the emptiness of that world as background. Can you
+keep the others from spoiling the effect? Please?"</p>
+
+<p>"We'll do what we can," Kellon mumbled. And as the rest of the pack
+converged on him he added hastily, "I'll talk to you later. Mr.
+Borrodale's broadcast—"</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>He got through them, following after Borrodale toward the cabin that
+had been set up as a telaudio-transmitter room. It had, Kellon thought
+bitterly, once served an honest purpose, holding the racks of soil and
+water and other samples from far worlds. But that had been when they
+were doing an honest Survey job, not chaperoning chattering fools on
+this sentimental pilgrimage.</p>
+
+<p>The broadcasting set-up was beyond Kellon. He didn't want to hear
+this but it was better than the mob in the main cabin. He watched as
+Borrodale made a signal. The monitor-screen came alive.</p>
+
+<p>It showed a dun-colored globe spinning in space, growing visibly larger
+as they swept toward it. Now straggling seas were identifiable upon it.
+Moments passed and Borrodale did not speak, just letting that picture
+go out. Then his deep voice spoke over the picture, with dramatic
+simplicity.</p>
+
+<p>"You are looking at the Earth," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Silence again, and the spinning brownish ball was bigger now, with
+white clouds ragged upon it. And then Borrodale spoke again.</p>
+
+<p>"You who watch from many worlds in the galaxy—this is the homeland of
+our race. Speak its name to yourselves. The Earth."</p>
+
+<p>Kellon felt a deepening distaste. This was all true, but still it was
+phony. What was Earth now to him, or to Borrodale, or his billions of
+listeners? But it was a story, a sentimental occasion, so they had to
+pump it up into something big.</p>
+
+<p>"Some thirty-five hundred years ago," Borrodale was saying, "our
+ancestors lived on this world alone. That was when they first went into
+space. To these other planets first—but very soon, to other stars. And
+so our Federation began, our community of human civilization on many
+stars and worlds."</p>
+
+<p>Now, in the monitor, the view of Earth's dun globe had been replaced by
+the face of Borrodale in close-up. He paused dramatically.</p>
+
+<p>"Then, over two thousand years ago, it was discovered that the sun of
+Earth was about to collapse into a white dwarf. So those people who
+still remained on Earth left it forever and when the solar change came,
+it and the other planets became mantled in eternal ice. And now, within
+months, the final end of the old planet of our origin is at hand. It
+is slowly spiralling toward the sun and soon it will plunge into it as
+Mercury and Venus have already done. And when that occurs, the world of
+man's origin will be gone forever."</p>
+
+<p>Again the pause, for just the right length of time, and then Borrodale
+continued in a voice expertly pitched in a lower key.</p>
+
+<p>"We on this ship—we humble reporters and servants of the vast telaudio
+audience on all the worlds—have come here so that in these next weeks
+we can give you this last look at our ancestral world. We think—we
+hope—that you'll find interest in recalling a past that is almost
+legend."</p>
+
+<p>And Kellon thought, "The bastard has no more interest in this old
+planet than I have, but he surely is smooth."</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>As soon as the broadcast ended, Kellon found himself besieged once
+more by the clamoring crowd in the main cabin. He held up his hand in
+protest.</p>
+
+<p>"Please, now—now we have a landing to make first. Will you come with
+me, Doctor Darnow?"</p>
+
+<p>Darnow was from Historical Bureau, and was the titular head of the
+whole expedition, although no one paid him much attention. He was a
+sparrowy, elderly man who babbled excitedly as he went with Kellon to
+the bridge.</p>
+
+<p>He at least, was sincere in his interest, Kellon thought. For that
+matter, so were all the dozen-odd scientists who were aboard. But they
+were far out-numbered by the fat cats and big brass out for publicity,
+the professional enthusers and sentimentalist. A real hell of a job the
+Survey had given him!</p>
+
+<p>In the bridge, he glanced through the window at the dun-colored planet
+and its satellite. Then he asked Darnow, "You said something about a
+particular place where you wanted to land?"</p>
+
+<p>The historiographer bobbed his head, and began unfolding a big,
+old-fashioned chart.</p>
+
+<p>"See this continent here? Along its eastern coast were a lot of the
+biggest cities, like New York."</p>
+
+<p>Kellon remembered that name, he'd learned it in school history, a long
+time ago.</p>
+
+<p>Darnow's finger stabbed the chart. "If you could land there, right on
+the island—"</p>
+
+<p>Kellon studied the relief features, then shook his head. "Too low.
+There'll be great tides as time goes on and we can't take chances. That
+higher ground back inland a bit should be all right, though."</p>
+
+<p>Darnow looked disappointed. "Well, I suppose you're right."</p>
+
+<p>Kellon told Riney to set up the landing-pattern. Then he asked Darnow
+skeptically,</p>
+
+<p>"You surely don't expect to find much in those old cities now—not
+after they've had all that ice on them for two thousand years?"</p>
+
+<p>"They'll be badly damaged, of course," Darnow admitted. "But there
+should be a vast number of relics. I could study here for years—"</p>
+
+<p>"We haven't got years, we've got only a few months before this planet
+gets too close to the Sun," said Kellon. And he added mentally, "Thank
+God."</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The ship went into its landing-pattern. Atmosphere whined outside its
+hull and then thick gray clouds boiled and raced around it. It went
+down through the cloud layer and moved above a dull brown landscape
+that had flecks of white in its deeper valleys. Far ahead there was the
+glint of a gray ocean. But the ship came down toward a rolling brown
+plain and settled there, and then there was the expected thunderclap of
+silence that always followed the shutting off of all machinery.</p>
+
+<p>Kellon looked at Riney, who turned in a moment from the test-panel
+with a slight surprise on his face. "Pressure, oxygen, humidity,
+everything—all optimum." And then he said, "But of course. This place
+<i>was</i> optimum."</p>
+
+<p>Kellon nodded. He said, "Doctor Darnow and I will have a look out
+first. Viresson, you keep our passengers in."</p>
+
+<p>When he and Darnow went to the lower airlock he heard a buzzing clamor
+from the main cabin and he judged that Viresson was having his hands
+full. The people in there were not used to being said no to, and he
+could imagine their resentment.</p>
+
+<p>Cold, damp air struck a chill in Kellon when they stepped down out
+of the airlock. They stood on muddy, gravelly ground that squashed
+a little under their boots as they trudged away from the ship. They
+stopped and looked around, shivering.</p>
+
+<p>Under the low gray cloudy sky there stretched a sad, sunless brown
+landscape. Nothing broke the drab color of raw soil, except the
+shards of ice still lingering in low places. A heavy desultory wind
+stirred the raw air, and then was still. There was not a sound except
+the clinkclinking of the ship's skin cooling and contracting, behind
+them. Kellon thought that no amount of sentimentality could make this
+anything but a dreary world.</p>
+
+<p>But Darnow's eyes were shining. "We'll have to make every minute of the
+time count," he muttered. "Every minute."</p>
+
+<p>Within two hours, the heavy broadcast equipment was being trundled
+away from the ship on two motor-tracs that headed eastward. On one
+of the tracs rode Lorri Lee, resplendent in lilac-colored costume of
+synthesilk.</p>
+
+<p>Kellon, worried about the possibility of quicksands, went along for
+that first broadcast from the cliffs that looked down on the ruins of
+New York. He wished he hadn't, when it got under way.</p>
+
+<p>For Lorri Lee, her blonde head bright even in the dull light, turned
+loose all her practised charming gestures for the broadcast cameras, as
+she gestured with pretty excitement down toward the ruins.</p>
+
+<p>"It's so <i>unbelievable</i>!" she cried to a thousand worlds. "To be here
+on Earth, to see the old places again—it <i>does</i> something to you!"</p>
+
+<p>It did something to Kellon. It made him feel sick at his stomach. He
+turned and went back to the ship, feeling at that moment that if Lorri
+Lee went into a quicksand on the way back, it would be no great loss.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>But that first day was only the beginning. The big ship quickly became
+the center of multifarious and continuous broadcasts. It had been
+especially equipped to beam strongly to the nearest station in the
+Federation network, and its transmitters were seldom quiet.</p>
+
+<p>Kellon found that Darnow, who was supposed to coordinate all this
+programming, was completely useless. The little historian was living
+in a seventh heaven on this old planet which had been uncovered to
+view for the first time in millennia, and he was away most of the time
+on field trips of his own. It fell to his assistant, an earnest and
+worried and harassed young man, to try to reconcile the clashing claims
+and demands of the highly temperamental broadcasting stars.</p>
+
+<p>Kellon felt an increasing boredom at having to stand around while all
+this tosh went out over the ether. These people were having a field-day
+but he didn't think much of them and of their broadcasts. Roy Quayle,
+the young male fashion designer, put on a semi-humorous, semi-nostalgic
+display of the old Earth fashions, with the prettier girls wearing
+some of the ridiculous old costumes he had had duplicated. Barden, the
+famous teleplay producer, ran off ancient films of the old Earth dramas
+that had everyone in stitches. Jay Maxson, a rising politician in
+Federation Congress, discussed with Borrodale the governmental systems
+of the old days, in a way calculated to give his own Wide-Galaxy Party
+none the worst of it. The Arcturus Players, that brilliant group of
+young stage-folk, did readings of old Earth dramas and poems.</p>
+
+<p>It was, Kellon thought disgustedly, just playing. Grown people, famous
+people, seizing the opportunity given by the accidental end of a
+forgotten planet to posture in the spotlight like smart-aleck children.
+There was real work to do in the galaxy, the work of the Survey, the
+endless and wearying but always-fascinating job of charting the wild
+systems and worlds. And instead of doing that job, he was condemned to
+spend weeks and months here with these phonies.</p>
+
+<p>The scientists and historians he respected. They did few broadcasts
+and they did not fake their interest. It was one of them, Haller, the
+biologist, who excitedly showed Kellon a handful of damp soil a week
+after their arrival.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>"Look at <i>that</i>!" he said proudly.</p>
+
+<p>Kellon stared. "What?"</p>
+
+<p>"Those seeds—they're common weed-grass seeds. Look at them."</p>
+
+<p>Kellon looked, and now he saw that from each of the tiny seeds
+projected a new-looking hairlike tendril.</p>
+
+<p>"They're sprouting?" he said unbelievingly.</p>
+
+<p>Haller nodded happily. "I was hoping for it. You see, it was almost
+spring in the northern hemisphere, according to the records, when Sol
+collapsed suddenly into a white dwarf. Within hours the temperature
+plunged and the hydrosphere and atmosphere began to freeze."</p>
+
+<p>"But surely that would kill all plant-life?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Haller. "The larger plants, trees, perennial shrubs, and so
+on, yes. But the seeds of the smaller annuals just froze into suspended
+animation. Now the warmth that melted them is causing germination."</p>
+
+<p>"Then we'll have grass—small plants?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very soon, the way the warmth is increasing."</p>
+
+<p>It was, indeed, getting a little warmer all the time as these first
+weeks went by. The clouds lifted one day and there was brilliant, thin
+white sunshine from the little diamond sun. And there came a morning
+when they found the rolling landscape flushed with a pale tint of green.</p>
+
+<p>Grass grew. Weeds grew, vines grew, all of them seeming to rush their
+growth as though they knew that this, their last season, would not be
+long. Soon the raw brown mud of the hills and valleys had been replaced
+by a green carpet, and everywhere taller growths were shooting up, and
+flowers beginning to appear. Hepaticas, bluebells, dandelions, violets,
+bloomed once more.</p>
+
+<p>Kellon took a long walk, now that he did not have to plow through mud.
+The chattering people around the ship, the constant tug and pull of
+clashing temperaments, the brittle, febrile voices, got him down. He
+felt better to get away by himself.</p>
+
+<p>The grass and the flowers had come back but otherwise this was still
+an empty world. Yet there was a certain peace of mind in tramping up
+and down the long green rolling slopes. The sun was bright and cheerful
+now, and white clouds dotted the sky, and the warm wind whispered as he
+sat upon a ridge and looked away westward where nobody was, or would
+ever be again.</p>
+
+<p>"Damned dull," he thought. "But at least it's better than back with the
+gabblers."</p>
+
+<p>He sat for a long time in the slanting sunshine, feeling his bristling
+nerves relax. The grass stirred about him, rippling in long waves, and
+the taller flowers nodded.</p>
+
+<p>No other movement, no other life. A pity, he thought, that there were
+no birds for this last spring of the old planet—not even a butterfly.
+Well, it made no difference, all this wouldn't last long.</p>
+
+<p>As Kellon tramped back through the deepening dusk, he suddenly became
+aware of a shining bubble in the darkening sky. He stopped and stared
+up at it and then remembered. Of course, it was the old planet's
+moon—during the cloudy nights he had forgotten all about it. He went
+on, with its vague light about him.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>When he stepped back into the lighted main cabin of the ship, he was
+abruptly jarred out of his relaxed mood. A first-class squabble was
+going on, and everybody was either contributing to it or commenting
+on it. Lorri Lee, looking like a pretty child complaining of a hurt,
+was maintaining that she should have broadcast time next day for her
+special woman's-interest feature, and somebody else disputed her claim,
+and young Vallely, Darnow's assistant, looked harried and upset. Kellon
+got by them without being noticed, locked the door of his cabin and
+poured himself a long drink, and damned Survey all over again for this
+assignment.</p>
+
+<p>He took good care to get out of the ship early in the morning, before
+the storm of temperament blew up again. He left Viresson in charge of
+the ship, there being nothing for any of them to do now anyway, and
+legged it away over the green slopes before anyone could call him back.</p>
+
+<p>They had five more weeks of this, Kellon thought. Then, thank God,
+Earth would be getting so near the Sun that they must take the ship
+back into its proper element of space. Until that wished-for day
+arrived, he would stay out of sight as much as possible.</p>
+
+<p>He walked miles each day. He stayed carefully away from the east and
+the ruins of old New York, where the others so often were. But he went
+north and west and south, over the grassy, flowering slopes of the
+empty world. At least it was peaceful, even though there was nothing at
+all to see.</p>
+
+<p>But after a while, Kellon found that there were things to see if you
+looked for them. There was the way the sky changed, never seeming
+to look the same twice. Sometimes it was deep blue and white clouds
+sailed it like mighty ships. And then it would suddenly turn gray and
+miserable, and rain would drizzle on him, to be ended when a lance of
+sunlight shot through the clouds and slashed them to flying ribbons.
+And there was a time when, upon a ridge, he watched vast thunder-heads
+boil up and darken in the west and black storm marched across the land
+like an army with banners of lightning and drums of thunder.</p>
+
+<p>The winds and the sunshine, the sweetness of the air and the look of
+the moonlight and the feel of the yielding grass under his feet, all
+seemed oddly right. Kellon had walked on many worlds under the glare of
+many-colored suns, and some of them he had liked much better than this
+one and some of them he had not liked at all, but never had he found a
+world that seemed so exactly attuned to his body as this outworn, empty
+planet.</p>
+
+<p>He wondered vaguely what it had been like when there were trees and
+birds, and animals of many kinds, and roads and cities. He borrowed
+film-books from the reference library Darnow and the others had
+brought, and looked at them in his cabin of nights. He did not really
+care very much but at least it kept him out of the broils and quarrels,
+and it had a certain interest.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Thereafter in his wandering strolls, Kellon tried to see the place as
+it would have been in the long ago. There would have been robins and
+bluebirds, and yellow-and-black bumblebees nosing the flowers, and tall
+trees with names that were equally strange to him, elms and willows and
+sycamores. And small furred animals, and humming clouds of insects, and
+fish and frogs in the pools and streams, a whole vast complex symphony
+of life, long gone, long forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>But were all the men and women and children who had lived here less
+forgotten? Borrodale and the others talked much on their broadcasts
+about the people of old Earth, but that was just a faceless name, a
+term that meant nothing. Not one of those millions, surely, had ever
+thought of himself as part of a numberless multitude. Each one had been
+to himself, and to those close to him or her, an individual, unique and
+never to be exactly repeated, and what did the glib talkers know of all
+those individuals, what could anyone know?</p>
+
+<p>Kellon found traces of them here and there, bits of flotsam that even
+the crush of the ice had spared. A twisted piece of steel, a girder or
+rail that someone had labored to make. A quarry with the tool-marks
+still on the rocks, where surely men had once sweated in the sun. The
+broken shards of concrete that stretched away in a ragged line to make
+a road upon which men and women had once travelled, hurrying upon
+missions of love or ambition, greed or fear.</p>
+
+<p>He found more than that, a startling find that he made by purest
+chance. He followed a brook that ran down a very narrow valley, and at
+one point he leaped across it and as he landed he looked up and saw
+that there was a house.</p>
+
+<p>Kellon thought at first that it was miraculously preserved whole and
+unbroken, and surely that could not be. But when he went closer he saw
+that this was only illusion and that destruction had been at work upon
+it too. Still, it remained, incredibly, a recognizable house.</p>
+
+<p>It was a rambling stone cottage with low walls and a slate roof, set
+close against the steep green wall of the valley. One gable-end was
+smashed in, and part of that end wall. Studying the way it was embayed
+in the wall, Kellon decided that a chance natural arch of ice must have
+preserved it from the grinding pressure that had shattered almost all
+other structures.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The windows and doors were only gaping openings. He went inside and
+looked around the cold shadows of what had once been a room. There were
+some wrecked pieces of rotting furniture, and dried mud banked along
+one wall contained unrecognizable bits of rusted junk, but there was
+not much else. It was chill and oppressive in there, and he went out
+and sat on the little terrace in the sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at the house. It could have been built no later than the
+Twentieth Century, he thought. A good many different people must have
+lived in it during the hundreds of years before the evacuation of Earth.</p>
+
+<p>Kellon thought that it was strange that the airphoto surveys that
+Darnow's men had made in quest of relics had not discovered the place.
+But then it was not so strange, the stone walls were so grayly
+inconspicuous and it was set so deeply into the sheltering bay of the
+valley wall.</p>
+
+<p>His eye fell on eroded lettering on the cement side of the terrace, and
+he went and brushed the soil off that place. The words were time-eaten
+and faint but he could read them.</p>
+
+<p>"Ross and Jennie—Their House."</p>
+
+<p>Kellon smiled. Well, at least he knew now who once had lived here, who
+probably had built the place. He could imagine two young people happily
+scratching the words in the wet cement, exuberant with achievement. And
+who had Ross and Jennie been, and where were they now?</p>
+
+<p>He walked around the place. To his surprise, there was a ragged
+flower-garden at one side. A half-dozen kinds of brilliant little
+flowers, unlike the wild ones of the slopes, grew in patchy disorder
+here. Seeds of an old garden had been ready to germinate when the long
+winter of Earth came down, and had slept in suspended animation until
+the ice melted and the warm blooming time came at last. He did not know
+what kinds of flowers these were, but there was a brave jauntiness
+about them that he liked.</p>
+
+<p>Starting back across the green land in the soft twilight, Kellon
+thought that he should tell Darnow about the place. But if he did, the
+gabbling pack in the ship would certainly stampede toward it. He could
+imagine the solemn and cute and precious broadcasts that Borrodale and
+the Lee woman and rest of them would stage from the old house.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he thought. "The devil with them."</p>
+
+<p>He didn't care anything himself about the old house, it was just that
+it was a refuge of quiet he had found and he didn't want to draw to it
+the noisy horde he was trying to escape.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Kellon was glad in the following days that he had not told. The house
+gave him a place to go to, to poke around and investigate, a focus for
+his interest in this waiting time. He spent hours there, and never told
+anyone at all.</p>
+
+<p>Haller, the biologist, lent him a book on the flowers of Earth, and he
+brought it with him and used it to identify those in the ragged garden.
+Verbenas, pinks, morning glories, and the bold red and yellow ones
+called nasturtiums. Many of these, he read, did not do well on other
+worlds and had never been successfully transplanted. If that was so,
+this would be their last blooming anywhere at all.</p>
+
+<p>He rooted around the interior of the house, trying to figure out how
+people had lived in it. It was strange, not at all like a modern
+metalloy house. Even the interior walls were thick beyond belief, and
+the windows seemed small and pokey. The biggest room was obviously
+where they had lived most, and its window-openings looked out on the
+little garden and the green valley and brook beyond.</p>
+
+<p>Kellon wondered what they had been like, the Ross and Jennie who had
+once sat here together and looked out these windows. What things had
+been important to them? What had hurt them, what had made them laugh?
+He himself had never married, the far-ranging captains of the Survey
+seldom did. But he wondered about this marriage of long ago, and what
+had come of it. Had they had children, did their blood still run on the
+far worlds? But even if it did, what was that now to those two of long
+ago?</p>
+
+<p>There had been a poem about flowers at the end of the old book on
+flowers Haller had lent him, and he remembered some of it.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">"<i>All are at one now, roses and lovers,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Not known of the winds and the fields and the sea,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Not a breath of the time that has been hovers</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>In the air now soft with a summer to be.</i>"</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Well, yes, Kellon thought, they were all at one now, the Rosses and
+the Jennies and the things they had done and the things they had
+thought, all at one now in the dust of this old planet whose fiery
+final summer would be soon, very soon. Physically, everything that
+had been done, everyone who had lived on Earth, was still here in its
+atoms, excepting the tiny fraction of its matter that had sped to other
+worlds.</p>
+
+<p>He thought of the names that were so famous still through all the
+galactic worlds, names of men and women and places. Shakespeare, Plato,
+Beethoven, Blake, the old splendor of Babylon and the bones of Angkor
+and the humble houses of his own ancestors, all here, all still here.</p>
+
+<p>Kellon mentally shook himself. He didn't have enough to do, that was
+his trouble, to be brooding here on such shadowy things. He had seen
+all there was to this queer little old place, and there was no use in
+coming back to it.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>But he came back. It was not, he told himself, as though he had any
+sentimental antiquarian interests in this old place. He had heard
+enough of that kind of gush from all the glittering phonies in the
+ship. He was a Survey man and all he wanted was to get back to his job,
+but while he was stuck here it was better to be roaming the green land
+or poking about this old relic than to have to listen to the endless
+babbling and quarrelling of those others.</p>
+
+<p>They were quarrelling more and more, because they were tired of it
+here. It had seemed to them a fine thing to posture upon a galactic
+stage by helping to cover the end of Earth, but time dragged by and
+their flush of synthetic enthusiasm wore thin. They could not leave,
+the expedition must broadcast the final climax of the planet's end, but
+that was still weeks away. Darnow and his scholars and scientists, busy
+coming and going to many old sites, could have stayed here forever but
+the others were frankly bored.</p>
+
+<p>But Kellon found in the old house enough interest to keep the waiting
+from being too oppressive. He had read a good bit now about the way
+things had been here in the old days, and he sat long hours on the
+little terrace in the afternoon sunshine, trying to imagine what it had
+been like when the man and woman named Ross and Jennie had lived here.</p>
+
+<p>So strange, so circumscribed, that old life seemed now! Most people had
+had ground-cars in those days, he had read, and had gone back and forth
+in them to the cities where they worked. Did both the man and woman go,
+or just the man? Did the woman stay in the house, perhaps with their
+children if they had any, and in the afternoons did she do things in
+the little flower-garden where a few bright, ragged survivors still
+bloomed? Did they ever dream that some future day when they were long
+gone, their house would lie empty and silent with no visitor except a
+stranger from far-off stars? He remembered a line in one of the old
+plays the Arcturus Players had read. Come like shadows, so depart.</p>
+
+<p>No, Kellon thought. Ross and Jennie were shadows now but they had not
+been then. To them, and to all the other people he could visualize
+going and coming busily about the Earth in those days, it was he,
+the future, the man yet to come, who was the shadow. Alone here,
+sitting and trying to imagine the long ago, Kellon had an eery feeling
+sometimes that his vivid imaginings of people and crowded cities and
+movement and laughter were the reality and that he himself was only a
+watching wraith.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Summer days came swiftly, hot and hotter. Now the white sun was larger
+in the heavens and pouring down such light and heat as Earth had
+not received for millennia. And all the green life across it seemed
+to respond with an exultant surge of final growth, an act of joyous
+affirmation that Kellon found infinitely touching. Now even the nights
+were warm, and the winds blew thrilling soft, and on the distant
+beaches the ocean leaped up in a laughter of spray and thunder, running
+in great solar tides.</p>
+
+<p>With a shock as though awakened from dreaming, Kellon suddenly realized
+that only a few days were left. The spiral was closing in fast now and
+very quickly the heat would mount beyond all tolerance.</p>
+
+<p>He would, he told himself, be very glad to leave. There would be the
+wait in space until it was all over, and then he could go back to his
+own work, his own life, and stop fussing over shadows because there was
+nothing else to do.</p>
+
+<p>Yes. He would be glad.</p>
+
+<p>Then when only a few days were left, Kellon walked out again to the old
+house and was musing over it when a voice spoke behind him.</p>
+
+<p>"Perfect," said Borrodale's voice. "A perfect relic."</p>
+
+<p>Kellon turned, feeling somehow startled and dismayed. Borrodale's eyes
+were alight with interest as he surveyed the house, and then he turned
+to Kellon.</p>
+
+<p>"I was walking when I saw you, Captain, and thought I'd catch up to
+you. Is this where you've been going so often?"</p>
+
+<p>Kellon, a little guiltily, evaded. "I've been here a few times."</p>
+
+<p>"But why in the world didn't you <i>tell</i> us about this?" exclaimed
+Borrodale. "Why, we can do a terrific final broadcast from here. A
+typical ancient home of Earth. Roy can put some of the Players in the
+old costumes, and we'll show them living here the way people did—"</p>
+
+<p>Unexpectedly to himself, a violent reaction came up in Kellon. He said
+roughly,</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>Borrodale arched his eyebrows. "No? But why not?"</p>
+
+<p>Why not, indeed? What difference could it possibly make to him if they
+swarmed all over the old house, laughing at its ancientness and its
+inadequacies, posing grinning for the cameras in front of it, prancing
+about in old-fashioned costumes and making a show of it. What could
+that mean to him, who cared nothing about this forgotten planet or
+anything on it?</p>
+
+<p>And yet something in him revolted at what they would do here, and he
+said,</p>
+
+<p>"We might have to take off very suddenly, now. Having you all out here
+away from the ship could involve a dangerous delay."</p>
+
+<p>"You said yourself we wouldn't take off for a few days yet!" exclaimed
+Borrodale. And he added firmly, "I don't know why you should want to
+obstruct us, Captain. But I can go over your head to higher authority."</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>He went away, and Kellon thought unhappily, He'll message back to
+Survey headquarters and I'll get my ears burned off, and why the devil
+did I do it anyway? I must be getting real planet-happy.</p>
+
+<p>He went and sat down on the terrace, and watched until the sunset
+deepened into dusk. The moon came up white and brilliant, but the air
+was not quiet tonight. A hot, dry wind had begun to blow, and the stir
+of the tall grass made the slopes and plains seem vaguely alive. It was
+as though a queer pulse had come into the air and the ground, as the
+sun called its child homeward and Earth strained to answer. The house
+dreamed in the silver light, and the flowers in the garden rustled.</p>
+
+<p>Borrodale came back, a dark pudgy figure in the moonlight. He said
+triumphantly,</p>
+
+<p>"I got through to your headquarters. They've ordered your full
+cooperation. We'll want to make our first broadcast here tomorrow."</p>
+
+<p>Kellon stood up. "No."</p>
+
+<p>"You can't ignore an order—"</p>
+
+<p>"We won't be here tomorrow," said Kellon. "It is my responsibility to
+get the ship off Earth in ample time for safety. We take off in the
+morning."</p>
+
+<p>Borrodale was silent for a moment, and when he spoke his voice had a
+puzzled quality.</p>
+
+<p>"You're advancing things just to block our broadcast, of course. I just
+can't understand your attitude."</p>
+
+<p>Well, Kellon thought, he couldn't quite understand it himself, so how
+could he explain it? He remained silent, and Borrodale looked at him
+and then at the old house.</p>
+
+<p>"Yet maybe I do understand," Borrodale said thoughtfully, after a
+moment. "You've come here often, by yourself. A man can get too
+friendly with ghosts—"</p>
+
+<p>Kellon said roughly, "Don't talk nonsense. We'd better get back to the
+ship, there's plenty to do before take off."</p>
+
+<p>Borrodale did not speak as they went back out of the moonlit valley. He
+looked back once, but Kellon did not look back.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>They took the ship off twelve hours later, in a morning made dull and
+ominous by racing clouds. Kellon felt a sharp relief when they cleared
+atmosphere and were out in the depthless, starry blackness. He knew
+where he was, in space. It was the place where a spaceman belonged.
+He'd get a stiff reprimand for this later, but he was not sorry.</p>
+
+<p>They put the ship into a calculated orbit, and waited. Days, many of
+them, must pass before the end came to Earth. It seemed quite near the
+white sun now, and its Moon had slid away from it on a new distorted
+orbit, but even so it would be a while before they could broadcast to a
+watching galaxy the end of its ancestral world.</p>
+
+<p>Kellon stayed much of that time in his cabin. The gush that was going
+out over the broadcasts now, as the grand finale approached, made him
+sick. He wished the whole thing was over. It was, he told himself,
+getting to be a bore—</p>
+
+<p>An hour and twenty minutes to E-time, and he supposed he must go up
+to the bridge and watch it. The mobile camera had been set up there
+and Borrodale and as many others of them as could crowd in were there.
+Borrodale had been given the last hour's broadcast, and it seemed that
+the others resented this.</p>
+
+<p>"Why must you have the whole last hour?" Lorri Lee was saying bitterly
+to Borrodale. "It's not fair."</p>
+
+<p>Quayle nodded angrily. "There'll be the biggest audience in history,
+and we should all have a chance to speak."</p>
+
+<p>Borrodale answered them, and the voices rose and bickered, and Kellon
+saw the broadcast technicians looking worried. Beyond them through the
+filter-window he could see the dark dot of the planet closing on the
+white star. The sun called, and it seemed that with quickened eagerness
+Earth moved on the last steps of its long road. And the clamoring,
+bickering voices in his ears suddenly brought rage to Kellon.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen," he said to the broadcast men. "Shut off all sound
+transmission. You can keep the picture on, but no sound."</p>
+
+<p>That shocked them all into silence. The Lee woman finally protested,
+"Captain Kellon, you can't!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm in full command when in space, and I can, and do," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"But the broadcast, the commentary—"</p>
+
+<p>Kellon said wearily, "Oh, for Christ's sake all of you shut up, and let
+the planet die in peace."</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>He turned his back on them. He did not hear their resentful voices,
+did not even hear when they fell silent and watched through the dark
+filter-windows as he was watching, as the camera and the galaxy was
+watching.</p>
+
+<p>And what was there to see but a dark dot almost engulfed in the shining
+veils of the sun? He thought that already the stones of the old house
+must be beginning to vaporize. And now the veils of light and fire
+almost concealed the little planet, as the star gathered in its own.</p>
+
+<p>All the atoms of old Earth, Kellon thought, in this moment bursting
+free to mingle with the solar being, all that had been Ross and
+Jennie, all that had been Shakespeare and Schubert, gay flowers and
+running streams, oceans and rocks and the wind of the air, received
+into the brightness that had given them life.</p>
+
+<p>They watched in silence, but there was nothing more to see, nothing at
+all. Silently the camera was turned off.</p>
+
+<p>Kellon gave an order, and presently the ship was pulling out of orbit,
+starting on the long voyage back. By that time the others had gone,
+all but Borrodale. He said to Borrodale, without turning,</p>
+
+<p>"Now go ahead and send your complaint to headquarters."</p>
+
+<p>Borrodale shook his head. "Silence can be the best requiem of all.
+There'll be no complaint. I'm glad now, Captain."</p>
+
+<p>"Glad?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Borrodale. "I'm glad that Earth had one true mourner, at
+the last."</p>
+
+
+<p class="ph2">THE END</p>
+
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REQUIEM ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
diff --git a/72180-h/images/cover.jpg b/72180-h/images/cover.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..98e24d3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/72180-h/images/cover.jpg
diff --git a/72180-h/images/illus.jpg b/72180-h/images/illus.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0bf1af8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/72180-h/images/illus.jpg
author	nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org>	2025-01-17 05:19:49 -0800
committer	nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org>	2025-01-17 05:19:49 -0800
commit	df21cb3762be0597d21657238ddc4e2590576843 (patch)
tree	4832c79de2d7ee7e9c9d8bdfd65bba862ede8307