"Inte med en whimper, men med en triumfbräl!"

Letar efter titeln på en gammal sci-fi-bok,

Inte en bok, en kort historia: "Stjärnor, kommer du inte att dölja mig?" genom Ben Bova , först publicerad i Världen i morgon , januari 1966 , tillgänglig på Internetarkiv . Titeln är från låten "Sinner Man" som är citerad i historien; Jag tror att citaten är från 1956 Les Baxter versionen, som finns tillgänglig på YouTube .

ganska säker på att det är en Baen eller Del Rey-avtryck.

Det verkar inte ha dykt upp i en Baen eller Del Rey samling. Finns någon av dessa omslag känd?

I grund och botten har mänskligheten nått stjärnorna och expanderat genom galaxen. Plötsligt uppträder en okänd ras och börjar ett utrotningskrig mot människan.

The Final Battle had been lost. On a million million planets across the galaxy-studded universe, mankind had been blasted into defeat and annihilation. The Others had returned from across the edge of the observable world, just as man had always feared. They had returned and ruthlessly exterminated the race from Earth.

It had taken eons, but time twisted strangely in a civilization of light-speed ships. Holman himself, barely thirty years old subjectively, had seen both the beginning of the ultimate war and its tragic end. He had gone from school into the military. And fighting inside a ship that could span the known universe in a few decades while he slept in cryogenic suspension, he had aged only ten years during the billions of years that the universe had ticked off in its stately, objective time flow.

Slutligen är galaxen ödemark och en man kvar.

Holman's mind pictured the blood-soaked planets he had seen during his brief, ageless lifetime of violence. His thoughts drifted back to his own homeworld, his own family: gone long, long centuries ago. Crumbled into dust by geological time or blasted suddenly by the overpowering Others. Either way, the remorseless flow of time had covered them over completely, obliterated them, in the space of a few of Holman's heartbeats.

All gone now. All the people he knew, all the planets he had seen through the ship's electroptical eyes, all of mankind . . . extinct.

Han är i ett rymdskepp med en AI och blir skadad i striden.

Mannen har inte skadats fysiskt. Hans skepp har skadats:

The ship was hurt, and Holman could feel its pain. He lay fetal-like in the contoured couch, his silvery uniform spider-webbed by dozens of contact and probe wires connecting him to the ship so thoroughly that it was hard to tell where his nervous system ended and the electronic networks of the ship began.

Holman felt the throb of the ship's mighty engines as his own pulse, and the gaping wounds in the generator section, where the enemy beams had struck, were searing his flesh. Breathing was difficult, labored, even though the ship was working hard to repair itself.

Fartygets AI tar över och går ut i det okända, följt av den sista återstående medlemmen av den okända främmande rasen.

SELF-PROTECTION MECHANISMS INCLUDE THE CAPABILITY OF PREVENTING THE HUMAN COMPONENT OF THE SYSTEM FROM IRRATIONAL ACTIONS. A series of clicks and blinks, then: IN LIEU OF SPECIFIC COURSE INSTRUCTIONS, A RANDOM EVASION PATTERN WILL BE RUN.

[. . . .]

Holman slept as the ship raced at near-lightspeed in an erratic, meaningless course, looping across galaxies, darting through eons of time. When the computer's probings of Holman's subconscious told it that everything was safe, it instructed the cryogenics system to reawaken the man.

Eftersom alla hastigheter ligger i enorma multiplar av ljusets hastighet, kan mannen inte komma undan, men utlänningen kan inte komma ikapp.

Relativistiska, inte FTL:

He knows what is following him. Their words echoed in his brain. Are the Others following me? Have they picked up my trail? They must have. They must be right behind me.

He could feel the cold perspiration start to trickle over him.

"But they can't catch me as long as I keep moving," he muttered. "Right?"

CORRECT, said the computer, flashing lights at him. AT A RELATIVISTIC VELOCITY WITHIN LESS THAN ONE PERCENT OF LIGHTSPEED, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR THIS SHIP TO BE OVERTAKEN.

"Nothing can catch me as long as I keep running."

Slutligen öppnas kommunikationen, vid vilken tid frågar mannen "varför?" Utlänningen berättar för honom att mannen hade upptäckt odödlighet, men att det krävde döden hos en medlem av en ras som kallas blommafolket för varje människa som uppnådde odödlighet. Utlänningen säger att Man skulle ha hittat svaret så småningom,

Den uppenbarelsen kommer, inte från fienden Annan, utan från en neutral Observer:

Your knowledge of the truth is imperfect. Mankind could have achieved immortality in time. Most races evolve that way eventually. But you were impatient. You stole immortality.

"Because we did it artificially, with chemicals. That's stealing it?"

Because the chemicals that gave you immortality came from the bodies of the race you called the Flower People. And to take the chemicals, it was necessary to kill individuals of that race.

Holman's eyes widened. "What?"

For every human made immortal, one of the Flower Folk had to die.

Men det folkmordet var så oacceptabelt att utlänningarna kom från en annan dimension, som de aldrig kunde återvända för att stoppa Människan, vilket resulterade i utrotningskriget.

Den efterföljande fienden talar nu:

You can flee to the ends of the universe to no avail.

You have forced us to leave our time-continuum. We can never return to our homeworlds again. We have nothing to do but pursue you. Sooner or later your machinery will fail. You cannot flee us forever.

Slutligen blir ljushastigheterna så stora att de två återstående levande varelserna i universum närmar sig Big Crunch.

The galaxies were clustering in now, falling in together as though sliding down some titanic, invisible slope. The universe had stopped expanding eons ago, Holman now realized. Now it was contracting, pulling together again. It was all ending!

He laughed. Coming to an end. Mankind and the Others, together, coming to the ultimate and complete end of everything.

När mannen börjar dyka i singulariteten, med den främmande heten på hans klackar, säger han att det kanske finns plats i nästa universum för båda raserna att leva i fred och sista linjen är " inte med en whimper, men med en triumfskväll "!

"The end of the world. The end of everything and everybody. We finish in a tie. Mankind has made it right down to the final second. And if there's another universe after this one, maybe there'll be a place in it for us all over again. How's that for laughs?"

The world ended.

Not with a whimper, but a roar of triumph.