ET- Earth Makes Him Die

  The ages-old being slumped forward. His density was changing. He was like the core of a collapsing star, the force of Earth’s gravity fully upon him. He was becoming a black hole in space.

  Lance was hit with it too, his own form weighted down, so that his lowness became still lower and he crouched, like a rat, under E.T.’s other arm. “Look, he communicates through you. He belongs to you. But you gotta make it legal. My dad’s a lawyer. He’ll figure something out. We’ll be millionaires, we’ll go everywhere. Everyone will want to know us because we’ll be the most famous boys in the world. They’ll all want to meet E.T. And he’ll be ours!”

  But E.T. wasn’t anybody’s, except gravity’s. He had come fully to himself, had neutralized drunkenness out of his system with one instant’s focus. But this other thing, this deep imploding of his being, that he could not change.

  Ah, me . . .

  He swayed back and forth, the contraction upon him. It was the end of his star-life. He was inwardly shrinking to the size of a pinhead. His span was over . . .

  But he must not take the boy with him. And yet it was happening; the black hole was open and nothing could escape it. Those pilots who fly too close will be swallowed—that is the law of space.

  “Spell . . . go away . . .”

  He tried to move them back. But they were clinging to him, and he felt their love sweeping under each arm. Foolish children, you don’t wish to follow me. For I am E.T. Your minds cannot follow where I go. I am an ancient traveler in the void, and you are puppies . . .

  “Leave me . . .” said E.T., trying to lift his arms, but the Great Theory was working itself out in him, and his concentrated energy form, so perfectly suited for outer environments of space, was falling in on itself.

  He had to find a way to die alone. But even then, the force might be so great that it would start to suck nearby forces into it. Could he, a single alien, implode the entire earth? Would his death turn it inside out?

  “Spell . . . danger . . .”

  He shifted through all the cosmic levels, but could not find a correct formula for neutralizing this. He was stuck fast, held, and his Ship was light-years away.
...

  E.T. clung at the edge of the void, on a last thin thread of energy. A roaring filled his ears, and the mouth of the dragon was open below him; awesome, black tongues of cosmic fire licked upward, eager to consume a planet, a solar system, whatever might come its way. E.T. felt the envelope of his nature rupturing and star-knowledge funneling out, faster and faster.

- E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in His Adventure on Earth, chapters 13, 15