Eu não me lembro de uma história de Bradbury que se encaixa na sua descrição, mas me faz lembrar um monte de " Esquecimento " por John W. Campbell, Jr. , originalmente publicado em seu" Don A. Stuart "pseudônimo em Histórias Astounding , junho de 1937 , que está disponível no Arquivo da Internet .
Longe no futuro, exploradores de outra estrela visitam o planeta "Rhth". Eles encontram uma cidade antiga com máquinas fantasticamente avançadas, mas sem habitantes. Os homens nativos Rhth, presumivelmente os degenerados descendentes dos construtores da cidade, vivem no campo, em "cúpulas arredondadas de seis metros e meio":
The city flamed before him. Across ten—or was it twenty—thousand millenniums, the thought of the builders reached to this man of another race. A builder who thought and dreamed of a mighty future, marching on, on forever in the aisles of time. He must have looked from some high, wind-swept balcony of the city to a star-sprinkled sky—and seen the argosies of space: mighty treasure ships that swept back to this remembered home, coming in from the legion worlds of space, from far stars and unknown, clustered suns; Titan ships, burdened with strange cargoes of unguessed things.
And the city peopled itself before him; the skies stirred in a moment's flash. It was the day of Rhth's glory then! Mile-long ships hovered in the blue, settling, slow, slow, home from worlds they'd circled. Familiar sights, familiar sounds, greeting their men again. Flashing darts of silver that twisted through mazes of the upper air, the soft, vast music of the mighty city. The builder lived, and looked out across his dream—
But, perhaps, from his height in the looming towers he could see across the swelling ground to the low, rounded domes of his people, his far descendants seeking the friendly shelter of the shading trees—.
Os homens do Rhth esqueceram sua antiga tecnologia:
"We have forgotten so much of the things the city builders knew, their arts and techniques," Seun explained. "They built things and labored that things might surround and protect them, as they thought. They labored generations that this city might be. They strove and thought and worked, and built fleets that sailed beyond the farthest star the clearest night reveals. They brought here their gains, their hard-won treasures—that they might build and make to protect these things.
"They were impermanent things, at best. How little is left of their five-million-year striving! We have no things today, nor any protecting of things. And we have forgotten the arts they developed to protect and understand these things. And with them, I am sorry, I have forgotten the thoughts that make the lathan understandable."
Os homens Rh não são dependentes da tecnologia antiga; eles não têm utilidade, se dão bem sem isso. Os visitantes do espaço decidem colonizar:
It is ordered that the first colony city on Rhth shall be established at the spot represented on the accompanying maps as N'yor, as called in the language of the Rhth people, near the point of landing of the first expedition. The near-by settlement of the Rhth people is not to be molested in any way, unless military action is forced upon the colonists.
It is ordered that if this condition shall arise, if the Rhth people object to the proposed settlement at the spot designated as N'yor, arbitration be attempted. Should this measure prove unsuccessful, military penalties shall be exacted, but only to the extent found necessary for effective action. The colonists shall aid in the moving of the settlement of the Rhth people, if the Rhth people do not desire to be near the city of the colonists.
O povo Rh não é tão indefeso quanto parece. Os visitantes espaciais são banidos de Rhth, mas como um consolo, o povo Rhuit graciosamente mostra a eles onde existem outros planetas que eles podem colonizar. Um dos vencedores derrotados explica ao seu companheiro:
"Once"—Ron Thule's voice was tense—"the city builders made atomic generators to release the energy bound in that violent twist of space called an atom. He made the sorgan to distribute its power to his clumsy shells of metal and crystal—the caves that protected him from the wild things of space.
"Seun has forgotten the atom; he thinks in terms of space. The powers of space are at his direct command. He created the crystal that brought us here from the energy of space, because it made easy a task his mind alone could have done. It was no more needful than is an adding machine. His people have no ships; they are anywhere in space they will without such things. Seun is not a decadent son of the city builders. His people never forgot the dream that built the city. But it was a dream of childhood, and his people were children then. Like a child with his broomstick horse, the mind alone was not enough for thought; the city builders, just as ourselves, needed something of a solid metal and crystal, to make their dreams tangible."