"It is a dead world now," interjected 25X-987.
"Of course," elucidated the mathematician, "those last few million years are much shorter than the ones in which you lived. The earth's orbit is of less diameter and its speed of revolution is greatly increased, due to its proximity to the cooling sun. I should say that your year was some four times as long as the time in which it now takes your old planet to circumnavigate the sun.
"How many days were there in your year?"
"Three hundred and sixty-five."
"The planet has now ceased rotating entirely."
"Seems queer that your rocket satellite should avoid the meteors so long," observed 459C-79, the mathematician.
"Automatic radium repulsion rays," explained the professor.
"The very rays which kept us from approaching your rocket," stated 25X-987, "until we neutralized them."
"You died and were shot out into space long before any life occurred on Zor," soliloquized one of the machine men. "Our people had not yet even been born when yours had probably disappeared entirely from the face of the earth."
"Hearken to 72N-4783," said 25X-987, "he is our philosopher, and he just loves to dwell on the past life of Zor when we were flesh and blood creatures with the threat of death hanging always over our heads. At that time, like the life you knew, we were born, we lived and died, all within a very short time, comparatively."