The Monster (short story)

"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 visited by the Ganae, a race of warlike aliens who are surveying the planet as the site for a potential colony. Earth has suffered a mysterious catastrophe; its cities have decayed into ruins and the skeletons of dead humans litter the planet, but there are no signs of warfare or any other obvious disaster.

The Ganae possess "reconstructor" technology that can restore dead people to life with all of their memories intact. They attempt to interrogate revived humans for information about the destruction of Earth, but their efforts meet with limited success. The first man to be revived is an Egyptian pharaoh who believes the Ganae to be demons from the underworld; the second is an alcoholic who thinks they are merely part of a drunken hallucination; the third is comparatively modern and recognizes that the Ganae are aliens, but he knows nothing about the end of the world. Each revived person is summarily executed once they are no longer useful to the Ganae. This proves difficult with the last human, who uses some mental power to defend himself and kill the Ganae guards. The Ganae's heavy guns have to be used.

The expedition determines that Earth is suitable for Ganae colonization, but because the unknown cause of mankind's eradication could conceivably threaten the Ganae's colonization efforts, the survey team reluctantly decides to revive another human for questioning. The fourth man to be restored was present at the end of all animal life on Earth and possesses extraordinary mental abilities. After awakening, he immediately teleports away for a brief time; upon reappearing, he is attacked by the Ganae, but all attempts to kill him fail. When approached, the human readily reveals the cause of the disaster: a "nucleonic storm," dozens of light-years across that extended beyond humanity's limited range for teleportation. Not having the Ganae locator method of determining which few stars possess planets (which the Ganae themselves had 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 claim 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 Ganae interpret his suggestion as a threat to their perceived destiny to expand, killing any race they encounter without remorse. The human tells them that if they will not control their population, "we will". The Ganae promise to return with a fleet of warships to destroy every city via sustained atomic bombardment, making it impossible to revive anyone else.

While travelling to the nearest Ganae planet, the Ganae discover that the human has stowed away aboard their ship. They deduce that he intends to accompany them to the planet, steal the reconstructor technology, then teleport back to Earth and revive more people before the Ganae can return; it would be impossible for them to destroy the planet if 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 fly their nearly indestructible ship into a star, killing both the human and themselves. One of them realizes, too late, that when the human disappeared upon waking up, he teleported aboard their ship and has already learned about the reconstructor and the locator; he 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 revival of the human race.