A. E. Van Vogt - Empire of the Atom

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EMPIRE OF THE ATOM
A. E. Van Vogt
A note on the edition: The text of the story here is that of the original magazine editions first
published in Astounding Science Fiction, not the later versions which A. E. van Vogt reworked
for various novelizations.
"A Son is Born" was first published in Astounding Science Fiction in May, 1946.
"Child of the Gods" was first published in Astounding Science Fiction in August, 1946.
"Hand of the Gods" was first published in Astounding Science Fiction in December, 1946.
"Home of the Gods" was first published in Astounding Science Fiction in April, 1947.
"The Barbarian" was first published in Astounding Science Fiction in December, 1947.
PREFACE
The Golden Age of SF is universally dated from the July 1939, issue of Astounding because that's when
"Black Destroyer," A. E. van Vogt's first SF story, appeared. Isaac Asimov's first story also appeared in
the same month but nobody—as Asimov himself admits—noticed it.
People noticed "Black Destroyer," though, and they continued to notice the many other stories that van
Vogt wrote over the following decade. With the encouragement and occasionally the direction of John
W. Campbell, Heinlein, deCamp, Hubbard, Asimov, and van Vogt together created the Golden Age of
SF.
Each of those great writers was unique. What as much as anything set van Vogt off from other SF writers
(of his day and later) was the ability to suggest vastness beyond comprehension. He worked with not
only in space and time, but with the mind.
Van Vogt knew that to describe the indescribable would have been to make it ludicrous, and that at best
description turns the inconceivable into the pedestrian. More than any other SF writer, van Vogt
succeeded in creating a sense of wonder in his readers by hinting at the shadowed immensities beyond
the walls of human perception. What we've tried to do in our selections for Transgalactic is show some
of van Vogt's skill and range; but we too can only hint at the wonders of the unglimpsed whole.
Eric Flint and Dave Drake 2005
CLANE OF LINN
Part I: Empire of the Atom
A Son is Born
Junior scientists stood at the bell ropes all day, ready to sound forth the tidings of an important birth. By
night time, they were exchanging coarse jests at to the possible reason for the delay. They took care,
however, not to be overheard by seniors or initiates.
The expected child had actually been born a few hours after dawn. He was a weak and sickly fellow,
and he showed certain characteristics that brought immediate dismay to the Leader household. His
mother, Lady Tania, when she wakened, listened for a while to his piteous crying, then commented
acidly:
"Who frightened the little wretch? He seems already afraid of life."
Scientist Joquin, in charge of the delivery, considered her words an ill-omen. He had not intended to let
her see the monstrosity until the following day, but now it seemed to him that he must act swiftly to avert
calamity. He hurriedly sent a dozen slave women to wheel in the carriage, ordering them to group around
it in close formation to ward of any malignant radiation that might be in the bedroom.
Lady Tania was lying, her slim body propped up in bed, when the astonishing procession started to
squeeze through the door. She watched it with a frown of amazement and then the beginning of alarm.
She had patiently borne her husband three other children, and so she knew that what she was seeing was
not part of any normal observance. She was not a soft spoken creature, and even the presence of a
Scientist in the room did not restrain her. She said violently:
"What is going on here, Joquin?"
Joquin fluttered his head at her in distress. Did she not realize that every ill-tempered word spoken at this
period only doomed the handicapped child to further disasters? He noted, startled, that she was parting
her lips to speak again—and, with a silent prayer to the atom gods, he took his life in his hands.
Three swift strides he made towards the bed, and clapped his palm over her mouth. As he had expected,
the woman was too astounded by the action to utter a sound. By the time she recovered, and began to
struggle weakly, the carriage was being tilted. And over his arm, she had her first glimpse of the baby.
The gathering storm faded from her blue eyes. After a moment, Joquin gently removed his hand from her
mouth, and slowly retreated beyond the carriage. He stood there, quailing with the thought of what he
had done, but gradually as no verbal lightning struck at him from the bed, his sense of righteousness
reasserted. He began to glow inwardly and ever afterwards claimed that what he had done saved the
situation as far as it could be saved. In the warmth of that self-congratulatory feeling, he almost forgot the
child.
He was recalled by the Lady Tania saying in a dangerously quiet tone:
"How did it happen?"
Joquin nearly made the mistake of shrugging. He caught himself in time, but before he could say anything,
the woman said, more sharply:
"Of course, I know it'd due to the atom gods. But when do you think it happened?"
* * *
Joquin was cautious. The scientists of the temples had had much experience with atomic mutation,
enough to know that the controlling gods were erratic and not easily pinned down by dates.
Nevertheless, mutation did not occur after an embryo baby was past the fish stage, and therefore a time
limit could be estimated. Not after January, 470 A.B., and not before— He paused, recalling the
approximate birth date of the Lady Tania's third child. He completed his figuring aloud— "Not before
467 A.B."
The woman was looking at the child now, more intently. What she saw made her swallow visibly. Joquin,
watching her, thought he knew what she was thinking. She had made the mistake a few days before her
confinement of boasting in a small company that four children would give her an advantage over her
sister, Chrosone, who only had two children, and over her stepbrother, Lord Tews, whose acid-tongued
wife had borne him three children. Now, the advantage would be theirs, for, obviously, she could have
no more normal children, and they could overtake or surpass her at their leisure.
There would also be many witty exchanges at her expense. The potentialities for personal embarrassment
were actually almost endless.
All that, Joquin read in her face, as she stared with hardening eyes at the child. He said hurriedly:
"This is the worst stage, Lady. Frequently, the result after a few months or years is
reasonably—satisfactory."
He had almost said "human." He was aware of her gaze swinging towards him. He waited uneasily, but all
she said finally was:
"Has the Lord Leader, the child's grandfather, been in?"
Joquin inclined his head. "The Lord Leader saw the baby a few minutes after it was born. His only
comment was to the effect that I should ascertain from you, if possible, when you were affected."
She did not reply immediately, but her eyes narrowed even more. Her thin face grew hard, then harsh.
She looked up at the scientist at last.
"I suppose you know," she said, "that only negligence at one of the temples could be responsible."
Joquin had already thought of that, but now he looked at her uneasily. Nothing had ever been done about
previous "children of the gods," but it had been growing on him that the Linns at least regarded this as a
special case. He said slowly:
"The atom gods are inscrutable."
The woman seemed not to hear. Her cold voice went on:
"The child will have to be destroyed, I suppose. But you may be sure that, within a month, there will be a
compensatory stretching of scientific necks such as the world has not seen in a generation."
She was not a pleasant person when roused, the Lady Tania Linn, daughter-in-law of the Lord Leader.
* * *
It proved easy to trace the source of the mutation. The previous summer, Tania, tiring of a holiday on one
of the family's west coast estates, returned to the capitol before she was expected. Her husband, General
of the Realm, Creg Linn, was having extensive alterations made to the Hill Palace. No invitation was
forthcoming from her sister at the other end of the city, or from her stepmother-in-law, the wife of the
Lord Leader. Tania, perforce, moved into an apartment in the Town Palace.
This assortment of buildings, though still maintained by the state, had not been used as a residence for
several years. The city had grown immense since it was built, and long since the commercial houses had
crowded around it. Due to a lack of foresight, by an earlier generation, title had not been taken to the
lands surrounding the palace, and it had always been deemed unwise to seize them by force.
There was one particularly annoying aspect of the failure to realize the profitable potentialities of the area.
This was the scientists' temple that towered in the shelter of one wing of the palace. It had caused the
Lady Tania no end of heartache the previous summer. On taking up residence, she discovered that the
only habitable apartment was on the temple side, and that the three most gorgeous windows faced
directly onto the blank lead walls of the temple.
The scientist who had built the temple was a member of the Raheinl group, hostile to the Linns. It had
titillated the whole city when the site was made known. The fact that three acres of ground were available
made the affront obvious.
It still rankled.
The agents of the Lord Leader discovered at the first investigation that one small area of the lead wall of
the temple was radioactive. They were unable to determine the reason for the activity, because the wall at
that point was of the required thickness. But the fact was what they reported to their master. Before
midnight of the second day after the child was born, the decision was in the making.
Shortly before twelve, Scientist Joquin was called in, and told the trend of events. Once more he took his
life in his hands.
"Leader," he said, addressing the great man direct, "this is a grave error into which your natural irritation
is directing you. The scientists are a group, who, having full control of atomic energy dispensation, have
developed an independent attitude of mind, which will not take kindly to punishments for accidental
crimes. My advice is, leave the boy alive, and consult with the Scientists' Council. I will advise them to
remove the temple of their own volition, and I feel sure they will agree."
Having spoken, Joquin glanced at the faces before him. And realized that he had made a mistake in his
initial assumption. There were two men and three women in the room. The men were the grave, lean
Lord Leader and the plumpish Lord Tews, who was the Lady Leader's eldest son by her first marriage.
Lord Tews was acting General of the Realm in the absence of Lord Creg, Tania's husband, who was
away fighting the Venusians on Venus.
The women present were the Lady Leader Linn, wife of the Lord Leader, and stepmother-in-law to the
two other women, Chrosone, Tania's sister and Lady Tania, still in bed. The Lady Tania and her sister
were not on speaking terms, for a reason that need not be gone into here.
Joquin assumed that these five had called him for consultation, as they had on past occasions. Now,
looking at them, realization came that their interest in him was psychological rather than logical. They
listened intently to his words, but what he said apparently merely confirmed their previously held opinion.
Lord Tews looked at his mother, a faint smile on his plumpish face. She half lowered her eyelids. The
two sisters remained frozen faced, staring at Joquin. The Lord Leader ended the tension by nodding a
dismissal to the scientist.
Joquin went out, quivering. The wild idea came, to send a warning to the endangered temple scientists.
But he quickly abandoned that as hopeless. No message from him would be allowed out of the palace.
He retired finally, but he was unable to sleep. In the morning, the fearful rescript that he had visualized all
through the night was posted on the military board, for all to read. Joquin blinked at it palely. It was
simple and without qualification.
It commanded that every scientist of the Raheinl temple was to be hanged before dusk. The property
was ordered seized, and the buildings razed to the ground. The three acres of temple land were to be
converted into a park.
It did not say that the park was to be added to the Town Palace of the Linns, though this later turned out
to be the fact.
The rescript was signed in the firm hand of the Lord Leader himself.
Reading it, Joquin recognized that a declaration of war had been made against the power of the temple
scientists.
* * *
The Scientist Alden was not a man who had premonitions. And certainly he had none as he walked
slowly along towards the Raheinl temple.
The morning glowed around him. The sun was out. A gentle breeze blew along the avenue of palms
which stalked in stately fashion past his new home. In his mind was the usual cozy kaleidoscope of happy
reminiscences, and a quiet joy that a simple country scientist had in only ten years become the chief
scientist of the Raheinl temple.
There was but one tiny flaw in that memory, and that was the real reason for his swift promotion. More
than eleven years ago, he had remarked to another junior that, since the gods of the atom had yielded
certain secrets of mechanical power to human beings, it might be worthwhile to cajole them by
experimental methods into revealing others. And that, after all, there might be a grain of truth in the vague
legends about cities and planets ablaze with atomic power and light.
Alden shuddered involuntarily at the brief remembrance. It was only gradually that he realized the extent
of his blasphemy. And when the other junior coolly informed him the following day that he had told the
chief scientist—that had seemed like the end of all his hopes.
Surprisingly, it turned out to be the beginning of a new phase in his career. Within a month he was called
for his first private conversation with a visiting scientist, Joquin, who lived in the palace of the Linns.
"It is our policy," Joquin said, "to encourage young men whose thoughts do not move entirely in a groove.
We know that radical ideas are common to young people, and that, as a man grows older, he attains a
balance between his inward self and the requirements of the world.
"In other words," the scientist finished, smiling at the junior, "have your thoughts but keep them to
yourself."
It was shortly after this that Alden was posted to the east coast. From there, a year later, he went to the
capital. As he grew older, and gained power, he discovered that radicalism among the young men was
much rarer than Joquin had implied.
The years of ascendancy brought awareness of the foolishness of what he had said. At the same time, he
felt a certain pride in the words, a feeling that they made him "different" from, and so superior to, the
other scientists.
As chief he discovered that radicalism was the sole yardstick by which his superiors judged a candidate
for promotion. Only those recommendations which included an account of unusual thinking on the part of
the aspirant, however slight the variance from the norm, were ever acted upon. The limitation had one
happy effect. In the beginning, his wife, anxious to be the power behind the power at the temple,
declared herself the sole arbiter as to who would be urged for promotion. The young temple poets visited
her when Alden was not around, and read their songs to her privately.
And then they discovered that her promises meant nothing. Their visits ceased. Alden had peace in his
home, and a wife suddenly become considerably more affectionate.
His reverie ended. There was a crowd ahead, and cries. He saw that people were swarming around the
Raheinl temple. Alden thought blankly, "An accident?"
He hurried forward pushing through the outer fringes of the throng. Anger came at the way individuals
resisted his advance. Didn't they realize that he was a chief scientist? He saw mounted palace guardsmen
urging their horses along the edge of the crowd a few score feet away, and he had his mouth open to call
on them to assist him, when he saw something that stopped his words in his throat.
His attention had been on the temple proper. In his endeavor to move, his gaze flicked over the
surrounding park.
Five of Rosamind's young poets were hanging from a tree limb at the edge of the temple grounds farthest
from the temple. From a stouter tree nearby, six juniors and three scientists were still kicking
spasmodically.
As Alden stood paralyzed, a dreadful screaming came from four initiates whose necks were just being
fitted with rope halters.
The screaming ended, as the wagon on which they were standing was pulled from under them.
* * *
The Lord Leader walked the streets of Linn. The downtown markets were crowded with traders from
the hills and from across the lake, and there was the usual pack of wide-eyed primitives from the other
planets. It was no effort at all to start a conversation.
He talked only to people who showed no sign of recognizing the unshaven man in the uniform of a private
soldier as their ruler. It didn't take long to realize that the thousand persuasive men he had sent out to
argue his side of the hangings were doing yeoman service. No less than three of them approached him
during the course of the afternoon, and made skillful propaganda remarks. And the five farmers, three
merchants and two laborers, to whom he talked, all answered his rough criticism of the Lord Leader with
pro-government catchphrases they could only have heard from his own men.
It was gratifying, he told himself, that the first crisis he had forced was turning out so well.
The Linnan empire was only a generation out of the protracted civil war that had brought the Linn family
to the leadership. His tax collectors were still finding the returns lean. And trade, though it was reviving
swiftly in Linn itself, was making a much slower recovery in other cities, which were not favored by
special exemptions.
Several wars of conquest were under way, three of them on Venus against the Venusian tribes.
Ostensibly, these wars were being fought to punish the tribes for their raids against Earth. But the Lord
Leader knew of at least two more important reasons. First, there was not enough money at home to pay
the soldiers who, his generals reported, were still in a dangerously revolutionary mood. And second, he
hoped to replenish the treasury with loot from conquered cities.
The Lord Leader paused mentally and physically before the open air shop of a dealer in ceramics. The
man had the Linnan cast of feature and was obviously a citizen, or he wouldn't be in business. Only the
opinions of citizens mattered. This one was in the throes of making a sale.
While he waited, the Lord Leader thought of the temples. It seemed clear that the scientists had never
recovered the prestige they had lost during the civil war. With a few exceptions they had supported
Raheinl until the very day that he was captured and killed. (He was chopped into pieces by soldiers
wielding meat axes.) The scientists promptly and collectively offered an oath of allegiance to the new
regime, and he was not firmly enough entrenched in power to refuse.
He never forgot, however, that their virtual monopoly of atomic energy had nearly re-established the
corrupt republic. And that, if they had succeeded, it was he who would have been executed.
The merchant's sale fell through. He walked over grumpily, but at that moment the Lord Leader noticed a
passerby had paused, and was staring at him with half recognition.
The Lord Leader without a word to the merchant turned hastily, and hurried along the street into the
gathering dusk.
The members of the Scientists Council were waiting for him when, satisfied that his position was
inassailable, he returned finally to the palace.
* * *
It was not an easygoing gathering. Only six of the seven members of the council of scientists were
present. The seventh, the poet and historian, Kourain, was ill, so Joquin reported, with fever. Actually, he
had suffered an attack of acute caution on hearing of the hangings that morning, and had hastily set out on
a tour of distant temples.
Of the six, at least three showed by their expressions that they did not expect to emerge alive from the
palace. The remaining three were Mempis, recorder of wars, a bold, white-haired old man of nearly
eighty; Teear, the logician, the wizard of numbers, who, it was said, had received some of his information
about complicated numbers from the gods themselves; and, finally, there was Joquin, the persuader, who,
for years, had acted as liaison between the temples and the government.
The Lord Leader surveyed his audience with a jaundiced eye. The years of success had given him a
sardonic mien, that even sculptors could not eradicate from his statues without threatening the
resemblance between the referent and the reality. He was about fifty years old at this time, and in
remarkably good health. He began with a cold, considered and devastating attack on the Raheinl temple.
He finished that phase of his speech with:
"Tomorrow, I go before the Patronate to justify my action against the temple. I am assuming that they will
accept my explanation."
For the first time, then, he smiled bleakly. No one knew better than he or his audience that the slavish
Patronate dared not even blink in a political sense without his permission.
"I am assuming it," he went on, "because it is my intention simultaneously to present a spontaneous
petition from the temples for a reorganization."
The hitherto silent spectators stirred. The three death-expecting members looked up with a vague hope
on their faces. One of the three, middle-aged Horo, said eagerly:
"Your excellency can count upon us for—"
He stopped because Mempis was glaring at him, his slate-blue eyes raging. He subsided, but gradually
his courage returned. He had made his point. The Lord Leader must know that he was willing.
He experienced the tremendous inner easing of a man who had managed to save his own skin.
Joquin was saying suavely, "As Horo was about to state, we shall be happy to give your words a
respectful hearing."
The Lord Leader smiled grimly. But now he had reached the crucial part of his speech, and he reverted
to legalistic preciseness.
The government—he said—was prepared at last to split the temples into four separate groups as had
been so long desired by the scientists. (This was the first they had heard of the plan, but no one said
anything.) As the scientists had long urged, the Lord Leader went on, it was ridiculous that the four atom
gods, Uranium, Plutonium, Radium and Ecks should be worshiped in the same temples. Accordingly, the
scientists would divide themselves into four separate organizations splitting the available temples evenly
among the four groups.
Each group would give itself to the worship of only one god and his attributes, though naturally they
would continue to perform their practical functions of supplying transmitted god-power to all who sought
to purchase it under the government regulations.
Each would be headed, not by a council of equals as was the temple system at present, but by a leader
for whom an appropriate title must be selected. The four separate temple leaders would be appointed for
life by a joint committee of government and temple delegates.
There was more, but they were details. The council had its ultimatum. And Joquin at least cherished no
illusions. Four temple groups, each ruled by a willful scientist, responsible to no one except perhaps the
Lord Leader, would end forever any hopes the more enlightened scientists entertained.
He rose hastily, lest one of the fearful councilors should speak first. He said gravely:
"The council will be very happy to consider your offer, and feels itself privileged to have in the
government a lord who devotes his obviously valuable time to thoughts about the welfare of the temples.
Nothing could—"
He had not really expected to manage a postponement. And he didn't. He was cut off. The Lord Leader
said with finality:
"Since I am personally making the announcement in the Patronate chamber tomorrow, the Scientists
Council is cordially invited to remain in the palace to discuss details of reorganization. I have assumed this
will require anywhere from a week to a month or even longer, and I have had apartments assigned for
your use."
He clapped his hands. Doors opened. Palace guards came in. The Lord Leader said:
"Show these honored gentlemen to their quarters."
Thus was the council imprisoned.
* * *
Scientist Alden tottered through the crowd before the Raheinl temple on legs that seemed made of
dough. He bumped into people, and staggered like a drunken man, but he was only dimly aware of his
gyrations.
If he had been the only person in the group reacting, he would have been marked instantly, and dragged
off to the gibbet. But the executions caught the throng by surprise. Each new spectator casually
approaching to see what was going on suffered his own variation of tremendous shock. Women fainted.
Several men vomited, and others stood with glazed eyes.
As he approached one trailing end of the crowd, Alden's brain began to trickle back into his head. He
saw an open gate; and he had darted through it, and was floating—that was the new sensation in his
legs—through the underbrush, when it struck him that he was inside the grounds of the Town palace of
Lord and Lady Creg Linn.
That brought the most terrible moment of the morning. Trapped, and of his own doing. He collapsed in
the shelter of an ornamental shrub, and lay in a half faint of fright. Slowly, he grew aware that there was a
long, low outhouse ahead, and that trees would shelter him most of the way. He recognized that he could
not safely hope to return the way he had come, nor dared he remain where he was. He rose shakily to his
feet, and the gods were with him. He found himself shortly crouching in the long, narrow, hay storeroom
adjoining the stables.
It was not a good hiding place. Its width was prohibitively confining, and only by making a tunnel in the
hay near the door farthest from the stables did he manage to conceal himself.
He had barely settled down when one of the stable doors a dozen feet to his right opened. A
four-pronged fork flashed in a leisurely fashion, and withdrew transporting a bundle of hay.
With a casual kick, the stable hand slammed the door shut, and there was the sound of retreating
footsteps. Alden lay, scarcely breathing. He was just beginning to emerge from his funk a few minutes
later, when, bang! another door opened, and another fork gathered its hay, and departed.
That was his morning, and yet, despite the repeated nervous shocks, by noon his mind had almost
resumed normal functioning. He had his first theory as to why he had escaped the round-up that had
caught the others. Only two weeks before he had moved to his new residence on the Avenue of Palms.
The soldiers must have proceeded to his old address, and then had to cross the city to his new home,
with the result that he had left the house by the time they arrived.
Of such tenuous fabrics the patterns of his escape were woven. Alden shivered, and then, slowly, anger
built up inside him, the deadly, gathering anger of a man wrongly persecuted. It was a fury that braced
him for eventualities, and he was able at last to think with a clear-cut logic of what he must do.
Obviously, he could not remain within the grounds of the Town palace. Odd little memories came to his
aid, things he had observed in earlier days without being aware that he did so. He recalled that every few
nights hay ricks turned into the palace gates. Judging by the emptiness around him, a new supply must be
almost due.
He must leave before the afternoon was out.
He began to struggle along the line of hay to the right. There was a gate on that side, and he remembered
have once glimpsed the stables through it while taking a walk.
By sneaking out of the end door and around to the side of the stable, and then through that gate— If
only he could find another set of clothes— Surely, there would be work clothes hanging up in the stables,
preferably in view of the long hair that scientists affected, a woman's overdress—
He found what he wanted in the right end of the stable, which was devoted to milk cows. The animals
and he were quite alone while the arrayed himself in the raiment that the milkmaids pulled over their pretty
dresses when they did their chores.
The Town palace, after its brief flurry the year before as a Linn residence, had reverted swiftly to its role
of agricultural, industrial and clerical center. There were guards within sight of the gate, but they did not
bother to question a rather stocky woman slave, who went out with a decisive manner as if she had been
sent on an errand by a superior.
It was late afternoon when Alden presented himself at the Covis temple. He was admitted immediately by
the astonished junior to whom he revealed his identity.
* * *
On the fourth day, the baby was still alive. The main reason was that Tania could not make up her mind.
"I've had the turmoil of birth," she said savagely, "and no woman in her right senses nullifies that casually.
Besides—"
She stopped there. The truth was that, in spite of innumerable disadvantages, she could imagine certain
uses for a son whom the gods had molded in their peculiar fashion. And in this regard, the urgings of
Joquin were not without their effect. Joquin spent most of the fourth morning on the subject.
"It is a mistake," he said, "to assume that all the children of the gods are idiots. That is an idle tale of the
witless mob, which pursues these poor creatures along the street. They are not given an opportunity for
education, and they are constantly under pressure so great that it is little wonder few of them ever attain
the dignity and sense of mature development."
His arguments took on a more personal flavor. "After all," he said softly, "he is a Linn. At worst, you can
make of him a trustworthy aide, who will not have the same tendency to wander off to live his own life as
will your normal children. By keeping him discreetly in the background, you might acquire that best of all
possible slaves, a devoted son."
Joquin knew when to stop pushing. The moment he noticed from the thoughtful narrowing of the woman's
eyes that his arguments were weighing with her, he decided to leave her to resolve the doubts that still
remained. He withdrew smoothly, and attended the morning court of the Lord Leader—and there once
more urged his suit.
The great man's eyes were watching as Joquin talked. Gradually, his satiric countenance grew puzzled.
The Lord Leader interrupted at last:
"Old man," he said curtly, "what is your purpose in thus defending the right to life of a freak?"
Joquin had several reasons, one of them almost purely personal, and another because he believed that the
continued existence of the baby might, however slightly, be an advantage to the temples. The logic of that
was simple. The baby's birth had precipitated a crisis. Its death would merely affirm that crisis.
Conversely, if it remained alive, the reason for the ferocious reaction of the Linns would be negated to
some small degree.
He had no intention of stating that particular reason, and he did not immediately mention his personal
hope about the baby. He said instead:
"Never before has a child of the gods been deliberately put to death. It was always assumed the gods
had their own obscure purpose in creating monsters in human form. Do we dare test at this time that such
is or is not the situation?"
It was an argument that made the other man stare in astonishment. The wars the Lord Leader had fought
had thrown him into contact with advanced thinkers and skeptics on several planets, and he had come to
摘要：

EMPIREOFTHEATOMA.E.VanVogtAnoteontheedition:ThetextofthestoryhereisthatoftheoriginalmagazineeditionsfirstpublishedinAstoundingScienceFiction,notthelaterversionswhichA.E.vanVogtreworkedforvariousnovelizations."ASonisBorn"wasfirstpublishedinAstoundingScienceFictioninMay,1946."ChildoftheGods"wasfirstpu...

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分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：86 页 大小：223KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-24

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