"Do you understand now, Mr. Rogers, why I maintained my silence about this place? Why I spoke little of the Essex and her crew? You have noticed, I am sure, that absolutely no vestige of either the crew of the equipment is to be seen. Only a newly green pasture where there was a desert when I escaped. Such is the devastation to which we might be subjected, except for your excellent defense pattern. A devastation so complete as to leave no sign of devastation whatsoever. Have you ever seen anything like it, Mr. Rogers?"
"No."
"This," he said, indicating the eye patch. "This is the only sign that forty-two men perished within five kilometers of this spot. And I have returned now. Now the waiting."
"I don't understand." I said.
"I told you once that I believe all this of Aldebaran IX was fated. I believe also that Aldebaran IX was so composed of uranium to be found and exploited for the complete betterment of mankind. That is the irony. For two hundred years, now, we have spoken of unleashing the atom for the betterment of mankind. But what more has come of it than a highly developed science of the destruction of mankind, and the gradual debasing of the entire universe. Man must warrant his own betterment, Mr. Rogers, and it is therefore that Aldebaran IX was placed well within the reaches of Hell, a very deceptive Hell, but Hell no less. Man was meant to have achieved god-like proportions before he would discover this place. The men of the Essex were not god-like, believe me. Nor are the men of the Algonquin. Nor are you.
"Aldebaran IX is a world not meant for men to walk upon. It is a disguise. There are gardens and deserts, jungles and plains. But there are no oceans. The ocean here is the atmosphere. Should I have told the men of the Algonquin that in this ocean swims a Leviathan that defies the very existence we claim, Mr. Rogers? This is our adversary. This is the killer of the crew of the Essex. This is the sum total of man's stumbling blocks, his barrier to his own betterment. A giant, half the length of the Algonquin, almost its girth, with eyes each as large as a man.
"Kill him, Mr. Rogers, and you have conquered man's evil. You will see him. You will see why this had to be."
I could say nothing. I believed then that he was more than a little mad, but he had instilled a strange fear in me. I wanted to be away from all of this. I wanted no part in this undoing of man's evil.
"I can only say that I feel that a man should be given a choice of participating or not in this madness," I said, the words sounding very dry and brittle.
"No, Mr. Rogers. No. Give man a choice and he will refuse."