Jag tror att denna grymma småberättelse är av del Rey, men jag är inte säker.
"Årets rita nära" , en kortfattad historia av Lester del Rey . Titeln är från Predikare 12: 1 .
Jag är ganska säker på att den publicerades på 1940-talet / 50-talet.
Det publicerades först i Förvånande Science Fiction , oktober 1951 , tillgängligt på Internetarkiv .
Jordens allra sista rymdskepp kommer hem efter att ha letat efter galaxen för livet.
Zeke snorted. He'd spent time enough at Marsport, first as head of communications, and finally as director of the whole Star Ship project, while they built the great ships and sent them out as fast as they could come off the ways. Forty ships during half a century, each costing over four billion dollars. And the Thirty-four was the last one out. All the rest had come back to report failure in this final quest for new frontiers.
Utforskningen började med stora förhoppningar på grund av upptäckten av en marsk civilisation som av okända skäl dog ut.
Then his eyes went to the horizon, where the piled stones and pitted pylon of beryl steel still stood, marking what had been the unknown and apparently unknowable race of Mars, dead perhaps ten million years before. Once that race must have spread its structures across the whole planet, but now there were only such traces as this, useless to even the archaeologists. All the elaborate designs on them might have held significance once, but no man would ever decode them. There was no hint as to their nature, or where the race had vanished—or why.
Besättningen av det här sista rymdskeppet har dock upptäckt vad martianerna upptäckte; livet är ett freak som finns på bara jorden och Mars - det finns inget liv någon annanstans i universum.
"Evidence of life anywhere?" he asked reluctantly, as the other finished. But the question had to be asked, although the answer could be predicted, almost certainly. Even over that distance, the possibility of other races to study might drive the scientists to set up an outpost, and with that as a basis, another world might be developed as a stepping stone to still further exploration.
Miffen's voice was hesitant as the answer came. "The world we were on—Outpost, we called it—had some ruins that could only come from intelligence. But there was nothing living there. Maybe it had been what we called it once—Damn!"
Den Martian rasen förlorade sin vilja att leva efter det,
Zeke looked up at the four men, and then out toward the pylon again—all that was left of a race that had searched the stars in its need to find new frontiers. It must have been a hardy race, since it had dared to set up a colony across all those innumerable parsecs of space, without even the inspiration of other life. Then, when that colony failed, the race had returned to the loneliness of its own little world, where the stars looked down grimly, no longer promising anything. Now Mars had been dead ten million years, and the pylon stood as the final tombstone on the world which had become a prison. The old puzzle of that race's end was solved.
och nu verkar det som om det kommer att hända med mänskligheten.
The speaker was sputtering with Stendal's impatient questions, as Zeke and the men studied each other, but they gave no attention to it. Preacher Hook sighed, breaking the silence.
"Man goeth to his long home," he quoted softly. "And the mourners go about the streets; or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern; and the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit return unto God who gave it."
Zeke nodded and picked up the microphone.
"Just get the whisky. We've decided to skip the rejuvenation."
He put the microphone back on its hook carefully and headed toward the handrails that led down, with the others behind him. Ozin had the rocket waiting, and they climbed in and strapped themselves down.
Then the rockets blasted, and the last five men beyond the Earth were heading home.