The Wandering Earth: Classic Science Fiction Collection

by Liu Cixin

Out of that unknowable darkness the strong, moist scent of gore blasted toward them with a great thunderous roar.

They had conclusively proven that the ability to adapt to harsh environments was more critical to labor in space than intelligence and creativity, and that was something ordinary people were perfectly capable of doing.

Before, killing someone was like breaking a crude pot filled with reddish liquid. Now, he was pleasantly surprised to find that what he broke was actually the finest jade. This greatly enhanced the pleasure of the kill.

“Oh, my blue sphere, blue eye of the universe, my blue angel,” the Forerunner prayed, his eyelids closed firmly. A long time later, he finally forced his eyes open. The planet he saw was black and white. The black was rock, melted and re-hardened; tombstone black. The white was seawater, vaporized and refrozen; corpse shroud white.

Scorching red magma streamed from the mountain tops, forming countless cascading waterfalls of molten rock. These incandescent rapids converged to form a massive crimson river of lava that buried the earth below under its pyroclastic floods. And where there had been ocean waters, now stood only giant mushroom clouds of steam. The belly of these ferociously billowing mountains shone with the red glow of the molten world beneath. Their crests were permeated with the sky's cruel purple. The endless ranges of steam clouds expanded with relentless speed and abandon. Soon they swallowed all of the Earth…

Up to this point the Devourer had not made any changes to its trajectory. It was easy to understand why: The Moon could have easily matched any premature orbital maneuver. Any meaningful evasive action would have to be taken in the final moments before the Moon's impact. The two cosmic giants were almost like ancient knights in a joust. They were charging toward one another, galloping across the distance separating them, but the victor would only be decided in the blink-of-an-eye before they made contact.

At 22,000 miles, both sides began their maneuvers. The Devourer's engines were first to flare, shooting blue flames more than 5,000 miles out into space. It began its evasion. On the Moon, nuclear bombs were once again ignited, ferociously detonating with unprecedented intensity and frequency. It carried out its adjustments, matching its course to ensure a collision. Its arcing tail of debris clearly described its change of direction. The blue light of the Devourer's 5,000 mile flames merged with the silver flashes of the Moon's nuclear blasts; it was the most magnificent vista ever to grace the solar system.

“The Dinosaur Civilization lasted twenty thousand years on Earth,” he continued, “but its true expansion was a matter of a few thousand years. From a geological perspective, its effects are indistinguishable from those of an explosive catastrophe; what you call the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event.

“Finally, one day all the Dinosaurs boarded ten giant generation ships and with these ships sailed into the vast sea of stars. In the end, all these ten ships were joined together. Then, whenever this newly united ship reached another star's planet, it expanded. Now, sixty million years later, it has become the Devourer Empire you know.”

“As far as sentimentality is concerned, we have lived through tens of millions of arduous years and fought stellar wars beyond number. The hearts of the Dinosaur race have long since petrified. Now the Devourer Empire must consume as much as it possibly can in preparation for our million-year journey.” Fangs again paused, deep in thought. “What is civilization? Civilization is devouring, ceaselessly eating, endlessly expanding; everything else comes second.”

“First, you must get off this rock!” The god spread out his arms towards space. His white robe danced in the fall wind like a sail. “Where will we go?” Qiusheng’s father asked in confusion. “Begin by flying to the other planets in the Solar System, then to other stars. Don’t ask why, but use all your energy towards the goal of flying away, the further the better. In that process you will spend a lot of money and many people will die, but you must get away from here. Any civilization that stays in her birth world is committing suicide! You must go into the universe and find new worlds, new homes, and spread your descendants across the galaxy like drops of spring rain.”