The Project Gutenberg EBook of Homo Inferior, by Mari Wolf

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Title: Homo Inferior

Author: Mari Wolf

Illustrator: Rudolph Palais

Release Date: March 18, 2010 [EBook #31692]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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HOMO INFERIOR

By Mari Wolf

Illustrated by Rudolph Palais

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from If Worlds of Science
Fiction November 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence
that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

[Sidenote: _The world of the new race was peaceful, comfortable,
lovely--and completely static. Only Eric knew the haunting loneliness
that had carried the old race to the stars, and he couldn't communicate
it, even if he had dared to!_]

_The starship waited. Cylindrical walls enclosed it, and a transparent
plastic dome held it back from the sky and the stars. It waited, while
night changed to day and back again, while the seasons merged one into
another, and the years, and the centuries. It towered as gleaming and as
uncorroded as it had when it was first built, long ago, when men had
bustled about it and in it, their shouting and their laughter and the
sound of their tools ringing against the metallic plates._

_Now few men ever came to it. And those who did come merely looked with
quiet faces for a few minutes, and then went away again._

_The generations kaleidoscoped by. The Starship waited._

* * * * *

Eric met the other children when he was four years old. They were out in
the country, and he'd slipped away from his parents and started wading
along the edge of a tiny stream, kicking at the water spiders.

His feet were soaked, and his knees were streaked with mud where he'd
knelt down to play. His father wouldn't like it later, but right now it
didn't matter. It was fun to be off by himself, splashing along the
stream, feeling the sun hot on his back and the water icy against his
feet.

A water spider scooted past him, heading for the tangled m