Dwellers In Silence

Adventures in time and space, told in future tense. Dementia! The National Broadcasting Company, in cooperation with St. Anne Smith, publishers with astounding science fiction, bring you Dimension X. Twenty years had passed since the last of the giant migration ships had crashed to the surface of Mars, bearing its pitiful handful of survivors of the Earth Wars.

Twenty years of scratching of the stubborn Martian soil, twenty years of trying to devise new solar engines that would use the strange fuel they found on Mars. Twenty years of longing, of turning eyes toward the green Earth, as it hung on the horizon like a beckoning light.

And thou it was done. And the first new ship, built of shining Martian chromatons, had lifted bravely toward home with three men locked in its metal bellies. Would they return to an Earth made barren by cosmic dust to a blackened radioactive hell?

Or would they find intelligence still alive on the scourged planet? What had 20 years of death and radioactivity done to our beloved Earth? That's it, Captain. You've intersected the course vector. Williams? Yes, sir? Prepare for deceleration.

Oh, efficient, ready, Captain. We'll enter the gravitational field of the Earth in exactly 10 seconds. 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 5, 2, and 4, 1, 6, and 4. What's our momentum evidence? Negative 3.

Fire 1. Negative 4 now. Steady as she goes. How are we? Unporebula now. If we can hold, we should breach the heavy side layer, somewhere north of what used to be mamansk. Let's have a look at her.

Look at her. Bizer, please. Yes, sir. Mother Earth. 20 years. We're going home. We're going home. Home to what, Captain? Home to a burned out radioactive planet that is incapable of supporting human life? Evans and I don't agree with that, William.