"The Monster" is a science fiction short story by Canadian-American writer A. E. van Vogt, originally published in Astounding in August 1948. It was one of van Vogt's favorite stories. It was included in several anthologies, including 1952's Destination: Universe!, sometimes under the title "Resurrection".

Plot

In the distant future, Earth is discovered by the Ganae, an expansionist species who begin surveying the planet as a potential colony. The planet has suffered a mysterious catastrophe; all animal life is gone, and slowly-decaying cities are littered with the skeletons of dead humans, but there is ample plant life, and no signs of warfare or any other obvious disaster.

The Ganae possess "reconstructor" technology that can restore a dead being to life with all of their memories intact based on a tiny biological sample. They establish their headquarters in a museum and begin reviving humans whose remains they find there, intending to interrogate them and learn the cause of the depopulation of Earth. Their efforts meet with limited success: the first to be revived is an Egyptian pharaoh, who believes the Ganae to be demons from the underworld; the second is a comparatively-modern alcoholic who thinks they are merely part of a drunken hallucination; the third is an advanced human from some millennia in the future, who recognizes the Ganae as aliens but can tell them nothing about the catastrophe. Each revivee is summarily executed once the Ganae have learned what they want; however, this proves difficult with the last one, who manages to telepathically activate some of the advanced technology on display in the museum's and use it to defend himself, killing./ several guards. The Ganae are forced to flee to their mothership and destroy the entire city with an atomic projectile.

The survey team determines that Earth is suitable for colonization, but because the unknown cause of mankind's eradication could conceivably threaten a future Ganae colony, the captain reluctantly decides to revive another human for questioning. Immediately after awakening, the fourth man to be brought back to life teleports away for a brief time; upon reappearing, he shrugs off all Ganae attempts to kill him, using extraordinary mental powers. After all attempts to harm him - inluding atomic projectiles - fail, the horrified Ganae attemtp to communicate with the "monster," who readily reveals the cause of Earth's depopulation: a "nucleonic storm" dozens of light-years across, extending beyond humanity's limited range of teleportation. Not having the Ganae's "locator," a method of determining which stars possess planets (something the Ganae had themselves only discovered by sheer luck), humanity had only managed to find one other habitable planet, which was also in the path of the storm. When the Ganae assert that they must colonize Earth due to the great population pressure within their empire, the human suggests that the Ganae instead limit their population. The infuriated Ganae interpret his suggestion as a denial of their biological imperative to expand, which has entailed the extermination of all other races with which they have come into contact, but the human calmly informs them that if they will not control their population, "we will." The Ganae leave, promising to return with a fleet of warships large enough to overwhelm the human's powers via sustained atomic bombardment.

En route to the nearest Ganae planet, the aliens discover that the human has stowed away aboard their ship. They realize that range of his teleportation power is larger than he has led them to believe, and deduce that he intends to accompany them to the planet, steal the reconstructor technology, then teleport back to Earth and revive more humans before the Ganae can return; it would be impossible for them to destroy the planet if it were defended by more humans with the same powers. Unwilling to transmit a warning, for fear that the human would trace their transmission beam and teleport ahead to the planet, the Ganae decide to aim their nearly-indestructible ship for a star and destroy the controls, killing both the human and themselves. Too late, one of the Ganae realizes that when the human disappeared upon waking up, he teleported aboard their ship and has already learned the secret of both the reconstructor and the locator; he had only returned aboard to manipulate the Ganae into committing suicide before they could warn their empire, ensuring that "no alien mind" will know about the impending rebirth of the human race.

External links

• Full text of "The Monster"