Invaders from the Infinite quotes

“

Now we are at rest on a tiny pinpoint of dust in a tiny bit of a tiny corner of an isolated universe, and the magnitude and stillness is gone.

Only the chirpings of those strange birds as they seek rest in darkness, the soft gurgling of the little stream below, and the rustle of countless leaves, break the silence with a satisfying existence, while the loneliness of that great star, your sun, is lost …

“

The beauty of boundless space is awe-inspiring in its magnitude. The beauty of Earth is something man can love.

“Man of Earth, you have a home that you may well fight for with all the strength of your arms, all the forces of your brain, and all the energies of Space that you can call forth to aid you. It is a wondrous world.”

“

We distort space and change the velocity characteristics; in other words, we distort the rate of motion through distance characteristics of normal space.

The Thessian ships work on the principle of distorting the rate of progress through time instead of through space.

“Only three times,” Zezdon Afthen told him blandly. “And to forestall your next question—no, our system does not create problems. At least, not those you’re thinking of. I know my wives have never had the jealous quarrels I see in your mind pictures.”

“It isn’t safe thinking things around you,” laughed Wade.

“Just the same, all of this has made me even more interested in the ‘Ancient Masters’ you keep mentioning. Who were they?”

“The war continued to get more and more hateful, till it became evident that neither side would be pacified till the other was totally subjugated. So each laid his plans, and laid them to wipe out the entire world of the other.

“Ortol developed a ray of light that made things not happen,” explained Zezdon Afthen, his confused thoughts clearly indicating his own uncertainty.

“ ‘A ray of light that made things not happen,’ ” repeated Wade curiously. “A ray, which prevented things, which caused processes to stop—The Negrian Death Ray!”

“Power, lack of power. Our cities are going without power, while every electric generator on the planet is pouring its output into the accumulators that work these damnable, hopeless things.

Invincible with power⁠—helpless without.

”

“But similarly, if it is at a given point, it must stay there, and will expend every erg staying there. It is then immovable! It is either irresistible in motion, or immovable in static condition.

It is the irresistible and the immovable!

“What happens if the irresistible meets the immovable? It can only fight with its energy of existence, and the more energetic prevails.”

A little knot of watchers broke, and they fled in terror as the great machine approached, crying out to their friends, casting affrighted glances at the huge, shining monster behind them.

Without a jar the mighty weight of the ship touched the soil of its native planet, touched it fifty millenniums before it was made, five hundred centuries before it left!

Arcot’s brow furrowed. “There is one thing puzzles me—I can’t see how we can come back. Don’t you see, Morey, we have disturbed the lives of those people. We have affected history. This must be written into the history that exists.

“This seems to banish the idea of free thought.

We have changed history, yet history is that which is already done!

“Had I never been born, had—but I was already—I existed fifty-eighty thousand years before I was born!”

“Why land now? Let’s wait until we are nearer the time to which we belong, so we won’t have to watch so carefully and so long,” suggested Wade.

They argued this question for about two hundred years as a matter of fact. After that, it was academic anyway.

“These are all coordinated under the new mental relay control. Some of you will doubt this last, but think of it under this light.

Will, thought, concentration⁠—they are efforts, they require energy. Then they can exert energy!

That is the key to the whole thing.

One hand let go, and the thud of the highly elastic lux metal bar’s return to its original shape echoed through the soundless room. These men of the twenty-second century knew what relux and lux metals were, and knew their enormous strength.

Yet it was putty under these hands. The hands that looked like a woman’s!

The bar was again placed on the table, and the hands disappeared. There was a thud, and the relay had opened.

Spellbound they turned to the farthest corner—and looked down the long, long road that twined off in distance. A lone, luminous figure plodded slowly along it, his half human shamble bringing him rapidly nearer.

Larger and larger he loomed, clearer and clearer became the figure, and his burden.

Broken, twisted steel, or metal of some sort, twisted and blackened.

A mass of crumpled, broken relux and lux surrounded by a haze of gas lying against a slight scratch on the great sides, told the story.

Eight inches of cosmium does not give way.

Yet another ship tried it. But it stopped several feet away from the real wall of the ship. It struck a wall even more unyielding—artificial matter.

“About twelve and a half miles per second,” replied the somewhat mystified Morey.

“Excellent, my dear Watson,” replied Arcot.

“And now does my dear friend know the average molecular velocity of ordinary air?”

Instantly, as the pressure of that enormous mass of air touched it, the wall fought, and burst into a blaze of energy. It was fighting now, and the meter that measured sun-powers ran steadily, swiftly up the scale.

But the men were not watching the meter; they were watching the awesome sight of Man stopping a world in its course! Turning a world from its path!

But the meter climbed suddenly, and the world was suddenly a tremendous blaze of light. The solid rock had struck the giant cup, 110,000 miles in diameter. It was silent, as a world pitted its enormous kinetic energy against the combined forces of a universe.

The place where the ruler had been was suddenly seen as through a dark cloud, then the cloud was gone, and with it the king, only his relux chair, and the bits of lux or relux that had been about his garments remained.

“He was a fool,” said the scientist softly, as he rose, “to plan on removing his scientist. Are there any who object to my succession?”

“No one objects,” said Faslar, the ex-king’s Prime Minister and councilor.