Adventures in the Far Future & Tales of Outer Space — page 120: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ON A GREAT plain outside the capital city of the planet Maiden there were gigantic structures showing the silvery films of matter-transmitters. No visitors ever came to this city. It was not allowed. Very, very few visitors indeed ever came to Maiden any longer. Travelers were told there was a quarantine, or that space lines to Maiden ran rarely. lf a traveler did reach Maiden, he did not leave—not ever. But the people of Maiden did not mind. From time to time the communicator systems of the planet gave notice. Then great mobs assembled before the matter-transmitter films. Presently the blunt noses of spaceships appeared, and Spaceships came out of the wavering films, in long lines of ugly shapelessness, and they settled on the meadows. Then the mobs surged toward them. And the crews of the spaceships threw out treasure to the mobs. Jewels, and gold, and fine fabrics, and all the treasures of looted Galaxy were lavished on the Maiden population. And then the Emperor showed himself, strutting, and shouts of adulation filled the air. True, only a fraction of the brigand-ships’ cargoes was distributed, but that was richness. True, the Emperor himself possessed such wealth as had never been dreamed possible, but that was natural. The Emperor and the people of Maiden, alike, believed that they would go on forever in his fashion: that the planet Maiden could be a bandit stronghold while it tore down the civilization of the worlds beyond, and then—without changing —be the capital of the empire of all inhabited worlds. That was foolish. Its downfall had already begun... . The man at the controls of the Delilah began to scream crazily. The controls did not control anything. The Ship sped on through a horrible blackness which had only One tiny point of light In it, and that faint glimmering blinked and wavered and seemed perpetually about to go out. Nothing changed her motion. Nothing could touch her. Nothing could communicate with her. She was a runaway in CORniclooo SS CO