by Various
Earth, the Marauder
BEGINNING A THREE-PART NOVEL
_By Arthur J. Burks_
FOREWORD
_Despite the fact that for centuries the Secret of Life had been thepossession of children of men, the Earth was dying. She was dyingbecause the warmth of the sun was fading; because, with the obliterationof the oceans in order to find new land upon which men might live, herseasons had become stormy, unbearably cold and dreary: and the very factof her knowledge of the Secret of Life, in which men numbered their agesby centuries instead of by years, was her undoing._
[Sidenote: Out of her orbit spedthe teeming Earth--amarauding planet bent on starryconquest.]
_For when men did not die, they multiplied beyond all counting, beyondall possibility of securing permanent abiding places. One man, in thedays when the earth was young, and man lived at best to the age of threescore years and ten, could have, given time and opportunity, populated anation. Now, when men lived for centuries, eternally youthful, theirliving descendants ran into incalculable numbers._
_The earth--strange paradox--was dying because it had learned the Secretof Life. Twenty centuries before, the last war of aggression had beenfought, in order that an over-populated nation might find room in whichto live. Now all the earth was one nation, speaking one tongue--andthere were no more lands to conquer._