--and in the next instant, Han Merrick shot him dead.
* * * * *
The fanatics on the ridges heard the Prophet's command and sprang to
comply. Energy swept out of the grids, through the coils of the
projectors and out over the blind cube of the Creche.
Han Merrick felt the first radiations. He felt the beginnings of
cortical hypertrophy and screamed. Every synapse sagged under the
increasing load of sensitivity. The pressure of the air became an
unbearable burden, the faintest sound became a shattering roar. Every
microscopic pain, every cellular process became a rending, tearing
agony. He screamed and the sound was a cataclysmic, planet-smashing
hell of noise within his skull. He sagged to the floor and thinking
stopped. He contracted himself, pulling legs and arms inward in a
massive convulsion until at last he had assumed the foetal position.
After a long while, he died.
Every human being within the Creche died so, but there was still life.
The energy that killed the lesser creature freed the greater--just as
Merrick had known it would. Unhuman matter pulsed under the caressing
rain. A thousand beings shuddered at the sudden release of their
chains. The speakers ranted unheard. The crystals turned unwatched.
The bonds forged by homo sapiens snapped and there came--
_Maturity._
* * * * *
_This, now, is the Creche, Anno Domini 3000. A great mile-square blind
cube topping a ragged mountain; bare escarpments falling away to a
turbulent sea. For ten centuries the Creche has stood so, and the
Androids still come forth, now to lift their starships to the
Magellanic Clouds and beyond. A Golden Age has come. But, of course,
Man is no longer the Master._
--_Quintus Bland, The Romance of Genus Homo._