The Eternaut

Everything here glows with millennia of intelligence... Millennia of art... Of tenderness... A shame there's no time to learn why this vessel is cylindrical, why this table has supports shaped like legs, and why...

He kept talking. His words transformed the dented mate cup, the blackened pans, the ancient coal stove into precious things, more sacred than any artifacts taken from a tomb in Egypt.

Can you appreciate, you humans, the wonders around you? Do you know how many worlds in the universe are inhabited, and in how few you can find something like this [a teapot]? Back on our planet we have a similar object; it's used in a beautiful ceremony, every afternoon, when the two suns set...

It sounded gruesome, but Fava was right. There were no authorities or police. Soon the few survivors would fall back on the law of the jungle. Survival would be a question of kill or be killed...