Otis found that his lips were dry from his unconsciously having let his mouth hang open. He moistened them with the tip of his tongue, and relaxed enough to lean against the wall.
“You mean my getting the ruling to proclaim you a protected species?” he asked. “You have instruments to intercept such signals?”
“I do. We have,” said Jal-Ganyr simply. “It has been decided that you have expanded far enough into space to make necessary we contact a few of the thoughtful among you. It will possibly make easier in the future for our observers.”
Otis wondered how much of that was irony. He felt himself flushing at the memory of the “stuffed specimen” at headquarters, and was peculiarly relieved that he had not gone to see it.
I’ve had the luck, he told himself. I’m the one to discover the first known intelligent beings beyond Sol!
Aloud, he said, “We expected to meet someone like you eventually. But why have you chosen me?”
The question sounded vain, he realized, but it brought unexpected results.
“Your message. You made in a little way the same decision we made in a big way. We deduce that you are one to understand our regret and shame at what happened between our races… long ago.”
“Between—?”
“Yes. For a long time, we thought you were all gone. We are pleased to see you returning to some of your old planets.”
Otis stared blankly. Some instinct must have enabled the Myrb to interpret his bewildered expression. He apologized briefly.
“I possibly forgot to explain the ruins.” Again, Jal-Ganyr’s eyes swiveled slowly about.
“They are not ours,” he said mildly. “They are yours.”
A NOTE ABOUT THE EDITOR
John W. Campbell, Jr. has been perhaps the strongest single influence in the steady progress of modern science fiction from its "space opera" beginnings to its present maturity and ever-increasing acceptance by the general public.
In his thirteen years as editor of Astounding Science Fiction magazine, Campbell has guided, encouraged, and shaped the development of a great number of the foremost writers in the field, including many of those represented in this selection of his personal favorites.
Born in 1910 in Newark, New Jersey, Campbell was educated as a nuclear physicist at M.I.T. and Duke. Finding, during the Depression, "a great lack of employment for physicists," he turned to science fiction. Campbell has written several notable s-f stories, under his own name and as "Don Stuart," (the recent science fiction movie, The Thing, was derived from his story, Who Goes There?) and is the author of The Atomic Story, non-fiction, published in 1947. He now lives in Mountainside, New Jersey, with his wife and four children.
The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology Page 78