"Precious Artifact" tells the tale of Milt Biskle, a terraforming engineer who has just turned his section of Mars into habitable land for human occupation. But something is nagging him in the back of his mind and he has doubts about the recent war in which Terra defeated the invading Proxmen. On his return to Earth his doubts are confirmed and he finds that beneath the surface of the seemingly normal world there is complete destruction. The Proxmen won the war, not the Terrans... ____ *first published in the October 1964 issue of Galaxy magazine