Del Rey, Lester,  1915-1993 <br/><br/>
Keepers of the house 

 - 1 online resource :  multiple file formats 
 - Produced from Fantastic Universe, January 1956 (Vol. 4, No. 6). .
 - Produced from Fantastic Universe, January 1956 (Vol. 4, No. 6). .
<br/><br/> Release date is 2025-12-22 
<br/><br/>Tom Trussel (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)  Tom Trussel (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) 
<br/><br/> Keepers of the house by Lester Del Rey is a science fiction short story written in the mid-20th century. It follows a lone dog in a ruined, post-apocalyptic landscape, focusing on memory, loss, and the aftermath of misused technology.<br/><br/>An old, intelligent dog named King is drawn by scent and dream back to a ruined university city, where he finds the Promethean Laboratory and discovers his long-lost master, “Doc,” dead beside a tape machine that still plays his voice. Through King’s memories we glimpse the collapse: a hated tower that broadcast a tingling power, failed experiments that revived rats and altered dogs, a plague of rabbits, and desperate rocket launches that carried infants away as civilization died. Chasing a white lab rat, King shelters from a storm in a crashed rocket and gorges on leftover rations; lightning later ignites the wired lab and consumes Doc’s remains. In the morning King returns, confirms the finality of death, gives a single mourning howl from the bridge, and turns south along the river to survive, leaving the last house he kept behind. (This is an automatically generated summary.) 
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<br/><br/><label>Subjects--Index Terms: </label>Science fiction Short stories Dogs -- Fiction Apocalyptic fiction 
<br/><br/><label>LC Class. No.: </label>PS