DUST UNTO DUST
By LYMAN D. HINCKLEY
It was alien but was it dead, this towering, sinister
city of metal that glittered malignantly before the
cautious advance of three awed space-scouters.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1955.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Martin set the lifeboat down carefully, with all the attention one usually exercises in a situation where the totally unexpected has occurred, and he and his two companions sat and stared in awed silence at the city a quarter-mile away.
He saw the dull, black walls of buildings shouldering grimly into the twilight sky, saw the sheared edge where the metal city ended and the barren earth began ... and he remembered observing, even before they landed, the too-strict geometry imposed on the entire construction.
He frowned. The first impression was ... malignant.
Wass, blond and slight, with enough nose for three or four men, unbuckled his safety belt and stood up. "Shall we, gentlemen?" and with a graceful movement of hand and arm he indicated the waiting city.
Martin led Wass, and the gangling, scarecrow-like Rodney, through the stillness overlaying the barren ground. There was only the twilight sky, and harsh and black against it, the convoluted earth. And the city. Malignant. He wondered, again, what beings would choose to build a city—even a city like this one—in such surroundings.