I could not believe her, for she had no intelligence. She only loved to talk. "Perhaps," I said, "but not today."
"Very soon, then," said she. Her name was Mjly.
I watched her with patronizing amusement. The static electricity showed that she was nervous and upset, but people often get nervous and upset over trivial matters. "Now, how," I reasoned, "could our world come to an end? The other planet has gone on for thousands of years without colliding with us. We circle it, in fact."
"No," Mjly said, "that is not our doom. Actually our world will not cease to exist. Life will end here, that is all."
"Ah," I said. "Our atmosphere is escaping into space." I sucked air, viciously. True, the air was thin. True, the atmosphere was escaping. But there would be breathable amounts for many thousands of centuries yet to come.
"Not the air. The food is all gone. Things we eat have ceased to exist."
I levitated myself and looked out over the throbbing land. A few years ago, this land had been covered with vegetation. I had come to take vegetation so much for granted that I'd ceased to notice it. Now it was gone. There were no round fruits growing from tender grasses, no tubers dangling from the fungus trees, no legume vines sprawling over the rocks. Everywhere lay desert, barren dunes shaking their crests with tidal motion.
I lowered myself to the ground and dug my big fibrosities into the sod. No green leaves grew there beneath the surface. The soil was dead. "This will seriously interfere with our future, Mjly," I said.
"We might eat each other," she replied, "but then there would be no one left."
"No one? There are many others here."