The Moon Moth and Other Stories by Jack Vance Page A

Together they would more than outmatch him.
    “Careful,” cried Finn. “I am the last of the Men. You are my women, subject to my orders.”
    They ignored him, muttering to each other, looking at him from the side of their faces.
    “Careful!” cried Finn. “I will throw you both from this peak.”
    “That is what we plan for you,” said Gisa. They advanced with sinister caution.
    “Stop! I am the last man!”
    “We are better off without you.”
    “One moment! Look at the Organisms!”
    The women looked. The Organisms stood in a knot, staring at the sky.
    “Look at the sky!”
    The women looked; the frosted glass was cracking, breaking, curling aside.
    “The blue! The blue sky of old times!”
    A terribly bright light burnt down, seared their eyes. The rays warmed their naked backs.
    “The sun,” they said in awed voices. “The sun has come back to Earth.”
    The shrouded sky was gone; the sun rode proud and bright in a sea of blue. The ground below churned, cracked, heaved, solidified. They felt the obsidian harden under their feet; its color shifted to glossy black. The Earth, the sun, the galaxy, had departed the region of freedom; the other time with its restrictions and logic was once more with them.
    “This is Old Earth,” cried Finn. “We are Men of Old Earth! The land is once again ours!”
    “And what of the Organisms?”
    “If this is the Earth of old, then let the Organisms beware!”
    The Organisms stood on a low rise of ground beside a runnel of water that was rapidly becoming a river flowing out onto the plain.
    Alpha cried, “Here is my intuition! It is exactly as I knew. The freedom is gone; the tightness, the constriction are back!”
    “How will we defeat it?” asked another Organism.
    “Easily,” said a third. “Each must fight a part of the battle. I plan to hurl myself at the sun, and blot it from existence.” And he crouched, threw himself into the air. He fell on his back and broke his neck.
    “The fault,” said Alpha, “is in the air; because the air surrounds all things.”
    Six Organisms ran off in search of air, and stumbling into the river, drowned.
    “In any event,” said Alpha, “I am hungry.” He looked around for suitable food. He seized an insect which stung him. He dropped it. “My hunger remains.”
    He spied Finn and the two women descending from the crag. “I will eat one of the Relicts,” he said. “Come, let us all eat.”
    Three of them started off—as usual in random directions. By chance Alpha came face to face with Finn. He prepared to eat, but Finn picked up a rock. The rock remained a rock: hard, sharp, heavy. Finn swung it down, taking joy in the inertia. Alpha died with a crushed skull. One of the other Organisms attempted to step across a crevasse twenty feet wide and was engulfed; the other sat down, swallowed rocks to assuage his hunger, and presently went into convulsions.
    Finn pointed here and there around the fresh new land. “In that quarter, the new city, like that of the legends. Over here the farms, the cattle.”
    “We have none of these,” protested Gisa.
    “No,” said Finn. “Not now. But once more the sun rises and sets, once more rock has weight and air has none. Once more water falls as rain and flows to the sea.” He stepped forward over the fallen Organism. “Let us make plans.”

Ullward’s Retreat
     
    Bruham Ullward had invited three friends to lunch at his ranch: Ted and Ravelin Seehoe, and their adolescent daughter Iugenae. After an eye-bulging feast, Ullward offered around a tray of the digestive pastilles which had won him his wealth.
    “A wonderful meal,” said Ted Seehoe reverently. “Too much, really. I’ll need one of these. The algae was absolutely marvelous.”
    Ullward made a smiling, easy gesture. “It’s the genuine stuff.”
    Ravelin Seehoe, a fresh-faced, rather positive young woman of eighty or ninety, reached for a pastille. “A shame there’s not more of it. The synthetic we get is