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 ............