No-one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that human affairs were
being watched from the timeless worlds of space. No-one could have dreamed that we were being
scrutinized, as someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of
water. Few men even considered the possibility of life on other planets. And yet, across the gulf
of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this earth with envious eyes; and slowly,
and surely, they drew their plans against us.