night closed down on the raw chaotic world, huge beasts closed in on the strange star-fallen souvenir. they snuffled over it; then enraged at discovering it was nothing they could fill their clamoring mindless stomachs with, attempted to wreck it. they were unsuccessful, for the machine had been given an extra heavy coat of shellac and things to withstand such monkeyshines. and the machine, in its own finely calibrated way, ignored its harassers, for they had no resemblance to the life it had been tuned to influence.

days lengthened into decades, eons. the seas came shouldering in to stand towers tall above the ethics ray, lost in the far ooze below. then even the seas receded, and the mountains buckled upward in their place, their arrogant stone faces staring changelessly across the epochs. until they too were whittled down by erosion. the ice caps crept down, crackling and grinding the valleys. the ground stretched and tossed like a restless sleeper, settled, and the ethics ray was brought to light once more.

as it always had, it continued beaming its particular signal, on a cosmic ray carrier modulated by a pulse a particular number of angstroms below infrared. the beasts that blundered within its field were entirely different now, but they still weren't the right ones. among them were some shambling pale bipeds, dressed in skins of other beasts, who clucked over its gleaming exterior and tried to chip it away for spearheads. in this of course they were unsuccessful.

and then one day the first human wandered by, paused square in the path of the beam. his physiology was only approximate, his i.q. was regrettably low—but he was pre-moral life, such as it was, on this planet.

the ethics ray made the necessary frequency adjustments, tripped on full force. the primitive froze under the bombardment, its germ plasm shifting in the most minute and subtle dimensions. then, its mission fulfilled, the ethics ray collapsed into heavy molecules and sank into the ground. the first convert raced away in fright, having no idea what had happened. neither did his billion sons and daughters....