Adventures in the Far Future & Tales of Outer Space — page 264: what you’re looking at

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

Craig sat at his desk, writing his report to the Solar power board, his pen traveling rapidly over the paper: —they waited for five hundred years before they acted. Perhaps this was merely caution or in the hope they might find a better way. Or it may be that time has a different value for them than it has for us. In an existence which stretches into eternity, time would have but little value. For all those five hundred years they have watched and Studied us. They have read our minds, absorbed our thoughts, dug out our knowledge, soaked up our personalities. Perhaps they know us better than we know ourselves. Whether their crude mimicry of our thoughts is merely a clever ruse to make us think they are harmless or whether it reflects differing degrees of the art of mimicry— the difference between a cartoon and a masterpiece of painting— | cannot say. | cannot even guess. Heretofore we have never given thought to protect ourselves against them, for we have considered them, in general, aS amusing entities and little else. Whether or not the cat in the refrigerator was the Candle or Mathilde | do not know, but it was the cat in the refrigerator that gave me the idea of using liquid oxygen. Undoubtedly there are better ways. Anything that would swiftly deprive them of energy would serve. Convinced they will try again, even if they have to wait another five hundred years, | urgently suggest— He stopped and. laid down the pen. The wastebasket in the corner moved slightly and Mathilde slunk out, tail at half-mast. With a look of contempt at Craig, she stalked to the door and down the ramp. Creepy was tuning up his fiddle, but only half-heartedly. Creepy felt badly about Knut. Despite their checker arguments, the two had been good friends. CORniclooo SS CO