THE ETERNAL QUEST
A Novelette by Joseph Gilbert
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Astonishing Stories, October 1942.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"I have come," said the little man, "a new Moses, to lead my people to the Promised Land." He said it slowly, with dramatic restraint. "Fate has led me to a star, and I have returned to show mankind the way to a thing it has not known for over a hundred years—hope!"
He was not quite five feet tall, with a chubby face and a beet-red nose, straw-colored hair, and mild gray eyes. He was nondescript. And it seemed very strange, somehow, that this ridiculous little man could stand there on that platform, with the gleaming majesty of that five-hundred-foot spaceship in the background dwarfing him—and facing that battery of telecasters, talk to two billion people and awaken in them a thing that had been dormant for a century or more.
He said, "We have died spiritually, and the eternal quest of man for contentment has almost ceased—for he knows, in his barren, bitter heart that there is no contentment to find." He paused, and the tremendous crowd that filled the rocket-ground were weirdly silent, waiting. "No longer shall only the Space Patrol know the thrills of adventure and discovery. We, too...."