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Updated: June 20, 2025
Beyond the ship now lay Sol, pulsing in its own warmth and warming its children embedded in the cold and distant texture of the universe. The sailors were ghosts come home. Miracastle was alone with her conquerors. General Max Shorter, a few weeks later, began writing a diary. "I have been Destroyed thirty-seven times during forty years' service with the long ships," he wrote.
"Yes, sir. But you see, we've always expected that if we were ever going to encounter intelligent life on a planet, it would be rather widespread. Accordingly and this is the routine procedure, sir, used, as far as I know, by all contact parties we ran through a statistically significant sample of the terrain. There was nothing on Miracastle out of the ordinary.
"The investigation. I thought I had powerful friends in the Corps. Though a man makes enemies." The general lurched awkwardly over the broken surface of Miracastle, drawing the safety line taut. He moved toward the connection rail again. "A general is separated from much of his command. Some of the technical refinements are too involved and, of course, men hide their feelings."
Cigar smoke curled in the still air. Mr. Tucker said, "You must have been aware that it would not have been a great loss to have evacuated Miracastle." The general shuffled in silence. "Yes, sir, I knew the background. It's part of my job to know things like that. You'll find, sir, that I have a strong sense of responsibility. If it's part of my job, I'll know about it."
Acid rivers snapped at the wind and changed to salt deposits and super-heated steam. In the gaseous atmosphere, neutral crystals formed and fell like powdered rain. Miracastle heated and cooled and shivered with the virus of man-made chemical reactions, and the storms screamed and tore at the age-old mountains.
He moved nervously as though physically to dismiss the tactical error of underestimating his opponent. "Since this is your first planet," the general said, "perhaps you'd like to see something of the operation? Basically, we have nine Richardson Domes here on Miracastle. Two are the living quarters the other similar to this. Right now domes Seven and Nine are the more important.
"Perhaps I'm deficient in sensibilities, but I find that the most ... agonizing ... thing of all is not ever to be able to know what these people were like. It's almost as if some part of us had been lopped off, isn't it? What did the people of Miracastle think about? What was their philosophy of life? What was their social organization? What was their ultimate goals?
Before these, the films of lichen evaporated into dust, and the sparse and stunted vegetation with ochre foliage turned sear and was powdered by the fury in the air. Earth equipment, alien to the orange sun, hammered into the heart of Miracastle. Night and day it converted the pulverized substance of the planet in the white-hot core of its atomic furnaces.
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