Adventures in the Far Future & Tales of Outer Space — page 159: what you’re looking at

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

“If you hold it to your ear,” said Julith, “you can hear the sea.” Her childish voice was curiously tender around the rough syllables of Earth’s language. He nodded and obeyed her hint. It was only the small pulse of blood within him—you heard the same thing out In the great hollow silence of soace—but it did sing of restless immensities, wind and foam, and the long waves marching under the moon. “| have two of them myself,” said Julith. “Il want them so | can always remember this beach. And my children and their children will hold them, too, and hear our sea talking.” She folded his fingers around the shell. “You keep this one for yourself.” “Thank you,” he said. “I will.” The combers rolled in, booming and spouting against the land. The Terrans called them the horses of God. A thin cloud in the west was turning rose and gold. “Are there oceans on our new planet?” asked Julith. “Yes,” he said. “It’s the most Earthlike world we could find that wasn’t already inhabited. You’ll be happy there.” But the trees and grasses, the soil and the fruits thereof, the beasts of the field and the birds of the air and the fish of the waters beneath, form and color, smell and sound, taste and texture, everything is different. Is alien. The difference is small, subtle, but it is the abyss of two billion years of separate evolution, and no other world can ever quite be Earth. Julith looked straight at him with solemn eyes. “Are you folk afraid of Hulduvians?” she asked. “Why, no,” he said. “Of course not.” “Then why are you giving Earth to them?” It was a soft question, but it trembled just a little. “I thought all your people understood the reason by now,” said Jorun. “Civilization—the civilization of man and his non-human allies—has moved inward, toward the great Star-clusters of Galactic center. This part of space means CORniclooo SS (SO)