
In a glittering hall of the Supreme Council, the young prince Ilon watches a silver sphere pulse with strange light. The sphere projects a distant, primeval world where a solitary girl drifts across a stone floor, her graceful movements captured by his exotic instrument. Fascinated by her raw beauty, Ilon longs to bridge the gulf between his advanced civilization and her forgotten age, even as he hides his obsession from the watchful eyes of his peers.
His father, a seasoned member of the Council, arrives unexpectedly, sensing Ilon’s secret experiment. With sharp questions about “minion spies” and the ethics of probing lower life‑forms, the older Karth forces his son to confront the precarious balance between curiosity and duty. As tensions rise and strange green rays flicker in the air, Ilon must decide whether to pursue his yearning or surrender to the rigid expectations of his lineage.
Language
en
Duration
~18 minutes (17K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Release date
Jan 11, 2021
Rights
Public domain in the USA.
1912–2001
A teenage contributor to the early science-fiction pulps, he brought big cosmic ideas and a working railroader’s practicality to stories of space travel, strange worlds, and futuristic machines. His fiction appeared in magazines like Wonder Stories and helped shape the lively magazine culture of early American sci-fi.
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