SPACE BLACKOUT by SAM CARSON [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Comet May 41. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] I've seen a world die, and with it men who chose to remain and face the end because of love. Love of their homes and the soil beneath them and the life they had achieved. It's a story I believe Earthmen could ponder, and benefit from. For we are the youngest of terrestrial civilizations within the space orbit the Martians have shown us. I'm Jerry Kos, master navigator, twenty-seven and entitled to three stripes on my jacket to prove I've completed that many six months voyages with the Cosmic Survey. I'm a specialist, holder of the solo record from Moon to Earth made in 2437, and enjoy spending all my leave in the government preserves, camping in the raw, hiking, fishing, anything I can do by hand, so to speak. Otherwise I'm one of some fifty thousand young officers of the Commonwealth whose job is cut out for him. And I like it. It was Jim Drake, skipper of the Pelios, Cosmic Survey ship, who persuaded me to take my leave on Mars, as a guest of Shadrak. Shadrak is one of our advisers, guardian of the Great Waterway, and a big shot among the hundred thousand odd Martians who rule their planet by robot control. The Martians watched us develop thousands of years, and let us go because they're peaceful, and like our energy, till Gregor, the Tartar dictator came along and messed up the world. Then Shadrak, and a half dozen others roused themselves, crossed the void to Earth and liquidated a wad of would be exponents of force. That put the United States on top with its ideals of democracy, and the Martians reorganized our form of living, gave us advanced tools, knowledge and created a technocracy. The Martians sit back, live well and give us ideas. We do the same for them and everybody's happy. They know how to contact all forms of life in the solar system, from Mercury to Neptune, and now, as you know, Earth is a beehive of industry. Jim Drake's a thoughtful chap, quiet but a whip. Since he was a kid Shadrak has liked him. After a few days of fishing, boating, and general recreation, Shadrak called us in to his domed estate. First he showed us his planetarium, and a dark nebula in beyond Orion, he calls the Noir, speaking with the throat disk because Martians can't manage our tongue otherwise. That dark, he had just explained, was a thousand light years beyond the nearer Orion cluster. "Behind it," he added, "is a solar system, a sun with six planets. The third planet is Spor, of the same albedo as Earth, and identical atmosphere. I know, for my grandfather visited it, and he chose it as a suitable refuge for ten thousand of your Earthmen."