"Who are you?" Wing's mind called out. "Where are you?"
"We were never beaten until now. We knew that to survive this dying system we must fight across eternity to find another sun and another system. We started from mud and slime like you, and some day you too must come to this—the end of your destiny.
"You will fight as we have fought. We built a machine to warp space. For centuries our scientists labored to perfect it, just as other technicians created a space scanner to find a world suitable to us."
Curt Wing was trembling as he listened. Somehow, the measured cadence of those cold thoughts was fingering his heart, bringing a chill to it.
"We found your world—the world of man, Earth, but we didn't know it until now.
"We made a mistake—a mistake which is destroying us but will in your far distant future destroy you."
"A mistake?" Wing's mind asked.
"Yes, those scientists of ours who labored so hard and long, built a machine not to warp space, as we all thought, but to warp time.
"You see, Space Commander Curt Wing, we, too, are men. We were fighting our past, you your future on Earth, our common home. In attacking your world, we have destroyed ourselves."
"But why?" Wing's mind started to ask.