The Wailing Asteroid
by Murray Leinster
There was no life on the asteroid, but the miles of corridors carved into the rocks where the earth's party roamed left no doubt about the asteroid's purpose. It was a powerful fortress equipped with weapons of destruction that mankind could not understand. And yet life was not here, as it had not been for countless centuries. What race built this castle? Against what incredible force did they defend? Why was it abandoned? There was no answer, everyone was dead. But that's not all. Because in the room above the castle, like a tomb, a powerful transmitter glowed with a bird, and there were sounds fluttering to the ground. Nearby, in a gigantic star map of the universe, in inches measured as light years, ten small red sparks moved and crawled relentlessly toward the center. Moving, many times the speed of light, with the resulting mass of the sun ... It moves along a course through the solar system. Unknown aliens wouldn't even be able to see how our sun would explode from the transit force, not even noticing a small speck in the name of Earth when it died....
