Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930

These were the men who had been imprisoned in their youth, with Axelson's father, and had escaped and made their way into space, and had been supposed dead long since. Somewhere they must have survived. And here they were, speaking a jargon of past generations, and ignorant that the world had changed, relics of the past, dead as the dead Moon from which the black ship was winging away through the ether. "Don't go, Captain," pleaded Madge. "Tell him we'll all go together." Nat shook his head. "Maybe I'll be able to make terms with him," he answered, and stepped out upon the vessel's deck. The graybeard slammed the door and laughed savagely. "You'll make no terms with the Black Caesar," he said. "This is the reign of the proletariat. The bourgeois must die! So Lenin decreed!" But he stopped suddenly and passed his hand over his forehead like a man awakening from a dream. "Surely the proletariat has already triumphed on earth?" he asked. "A long time has passed, and daily we expect the summons to return and establish the new world-order. What year is this? Is it not 2017? It is so hard to reckon on Eros." "On Eros?" thought Nat. "This is the year 2044," he answered. "You've been dreaming, my friend. We've had our new world-order, and it's not in the least like the one you and your friends anticipated." "Gott!" screamed the old man. "Gott, you're lying to me, bourgeois! You're lying, I tell you!"