No matter. These questions and more had been anticipated by Dr. Gar. Soon now, at the end of Roy's strafing run, it would be up to History to begin assembling the answers.
He slowed to mach minus and sent out wings. He would have to dip close to see if the entire Ark's complement was on deck. The job had to be done right or Earth was kaput. Nothing personal, Noah, old boy.
There they were, on the starboard side of the top deck, well out from under the pitch of the roof, craning their necks for a look at this miracle in the sky where they had expected to see only a returning dove.
"Behold!" Roy cried out. "I bring you tidings! But not the tidings of the dove. I am your lost raven returned—the raven of death! My tidings are of the new future which your descendants will not know and so will not doom."
The frightened upturned faces were far behind and he was talking to himself.
"Hear me, Noah, for I am come to destroy you, and with you your seeds of self-destruction. These are the tidings I bring from the future that has ceased to exist because you existed—the future that will exist once more when you cease to."
He heeled the spacecraft over and back. No more speeches, he told himself, though he had studied the Book in fascination. He was a killer, not a philosopher.
He would have to make his strafing run low. If he dived on the target his bullets would go into the holds and kill the animals. He roared at the Ark a few feet above the waves.
