FROM OUTER SPACE By ROBERT ZACKS [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Startling Stories, May 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The grizzled old space veteran leaned back in his chair and stared up through the transparent dome. In the black sky myriad white specks gleamed without twinkling, their light unbent by atmosphere or dust. The steady pulse of the airmakers kept rhythm with the heartbeats of the young men seated in a semi-circle, listening with glistening eyes to these ancient tales of an Earth they'd never seen--the home of their species. They stared hungrily at the old man's face. There was a silvery spot on the chin where Venusian fungus had nearly gotten into his bloodstream and had had to be burned away. Over one eye an eyebrow was gone, replaced by scar tissue grown on a planet at the other end of the galaxy where the light of enormous fireflies wasn't cold, as on ancient earth, but searing with heat. "Imagine," they marveled, "such weak flame in fireflies." "Not weak," corrected the old man. "Just different. Those insects on Earth didn't have to fight off intense cold. They had a much thicker atmosphere and were close to the sun. And they didn't feed on alcohol." The young men's eyes glittered. They were an odd group. Small--most of them, none over five feet five inches--and pale, unlike the old man who was bulky around the shoulders and had skin virtually leathered by various radiations and temperatures and winds. Each day this group waited hungrily for the old man to come and talk to them. The stories he told were the breath of life to them. And of all the tales of adventures in the far ends of the universe, the one that was most repeatedly called for was the story of what had happened to Earth. "Tell us about Earth," said one of them, now, in a low voice. "About how great we were?" said the old man. "About what love was like? About homes and children and how a man went to work in the morning at tasks of his own choosing? Or...." "No. About what happened. You know. At the finish." The old man looked up again. His eyes were dreamy. "Earth," he said, softly. "Earth. I've been through the galaxies these last forty years and I've seen planets by the thousand. And there never was one like Earth." "Tell us," they said, each in urgent, differing words, but all with the same tortured look. "Tell us about what went wrong." "I've told you that a hundred times," he said. But they wanted it again. Like a man who relives an incident to examine each moment with incredulity, as if in hope that it will fade and not have happened, as if in unconscious attempt to move sideways from that point into another time stream probability where a different course of action will be true. "All right," said the old man. * * * * *