The Universe Wreckers by Edmond Hamilton — Read

As the great globe's voice ceased for a moment, that strange, staccato voice to which for many minutes Marlin and I had listened, I found my brain whirling with the things we had just heard. For a moment I glanced around as though to assure myself of the reality of what was about me, of what had just been told us. The great globe, the thirty silent Neptunians of the Council around it, the other disk-bodied Neptunians who guarded us -- these, with the towering black walls and strange twilight about us, only deepened the strange trance of horror in which I had listened. And now the great globe was speaking again.

"Thus it is clear to you how unalterable is the doom that we are loosing upon the sun's other planets, upon your own planet, to save our own. Nothing now can save your world, and the other worlds of the sun, from annihilation, and it is to make that clear to you that we of the Council have told you this much of what we have done. Nothing can save your world from death, yet you two of that world shall escape that death with us Neptunians. For it is evident that your race and you must have considerable scientific knowledge to enable you to imitate our great force-ray and use it to venture out here to Neptune. So that, though lesser than our own great ancient race in science and knowledge, it may well be that you have certain knowledge, which would be new and useful to us. For that reason you have been saved, and have been taught our Neptunian tongue. From now on our scientists will question you, and whatever of new knowledge you are able to give to us, you shall give. You have heard, from us, how hopeless it is to think more of your own doomed world, and you know, of course, how entirely in our power you are. Therefore think well, when you are taken back to your cell, upon what you have learned here, since it is only for the sake of what little our knowledge might gain from you that you two have been preserved from the death."