The Sentinel

by Arthur C. Clarke

  Contents

  Introduction: Of Sand and Stars

  Rescue Party

  Guardian Angel

  Breaking Strain

  The Sentinel

  Jupiter V

  Refugee

  The Wind From the Sun

  A Meeting with Medusa

  The Songs of Distant Earth

  Contributors

  Introduction

  OF SAND

  AND STARS

  FORTY MILES TO THE EAST, the sun has just climbed above the Sacred Mountain, which for so long has haunted my imagination. Another quarter turn of the planet, and it will bring a cold winter dawn to the English seaside town where I was born sixty-five years ago this morning.

  So it is already a little late in the day to consider why I became an author, or to wonder if there was ever any real alternative; that may have been as genetically determined as the color of my eyes or the shape of my head. But the kind of author I became is another matter: here, I suspect, both chance and environment played decisive roles.

  The fact that I was born half a mile from the sea—or at least an arm of the Bristol Channel, which to a child seemed positively oceanic—has certainly colored all my life. As usual, A. E. Housman expressed it perfectly, in the poem from which I took the title of my first novel:

  Smooth between sea and land

  Is laid the yellow sand,

  And here through summer days

  The seed of Adam plays.

  Much of my youth was spent on the Minehead beach, exploring rock-pools and building wave-defying battlements. Even now, I feel completely relaxed only by the edge of the sea—or, better still, hovering weightless beneath it, over the populous and polychromatic landscape of my favorite reef.

  So in an earlier age, I would probably have written stories about the sea. However, I was born at the time when men were first thinking seriously of escaping from their planetary cradle, and so my imagination was deflected into space.

  Yet first I made a curious detour, which is obviously of great importance because it involves virtually the only memory I have of my father—a shadowy figure who has left no other mark, even though I was over thirteen when he died.

  The date would have been around 1925; we were riding together in a small pony-cart near the Somerset farm into which First Lieutenant Charles Wright Clarke had sunk what was left of his army gratuity, after an earlier and still more disastrous adventure as a gentleman farmer. As he opened a pack of cigarettes, he handed me the card inside; it was one of a series illustrating prehistoric animals. From that moment, I became hooked on dinosaurs, collected all the cards I could on the subject, and used them in class to illustrate little adventure stories I told the other children in the village school. These must have been my first ventures into fiction—and the schoolmistress who encouraged them celebrated her birthday a week ago. Sorry I forgot to send a card, Maud Hanks—I’ll make a special point of it for your 95th . . .

  There is a certain irony in the fact that the tobacco trade (one of the few professions where I consider the mandatory death penalty is justified) had such a decisive and indeed beneficial impact on my career. To this day I retain my fascination with dinosaurs, and eagerly look forward to the time when the genetic engineers will re-create Tyrannosaurus rex.

  For a couple of years I collected fossils, and at one time even acquired a mammoth’s tooth, until the main focus of my interest shifted rather abruptly from the past to the future. Once again—significantly—I can recall exactly how this happened, though almost all the other events of my childhood seem irretrievably lost.

  There were three separate crucial incidents, all of equal importance, and I can even date them with some precision. The earliest must have been in 1929, when at the age of twelve I saw my first science fiction magazine, the November 1928 Amazing Stories.

  The cover is in front of me at the moment—and it really is amazing, for a reason which neither editor Hugo Gernsback nor artist Frank Paul could ever have guessed.

  A spaceship looking like a farm silo with picture windows is disgorging its exuberant passengers onto a tropical beach, above which floats the orange ball of Jupiter, filling half the sky. The foreground is, alas, improbable, because the temperature of the Jovian satellites is around minus a hundred and fifty degrees centigrade. But the giant planet is painted with such stunning accuracy that one could use this cover to make a very good case for precognition; Paul has shown turbulent cloud formations, cyclonic patterns and enigmatic white structures like earth-sized amoebae which were not revealed until the Voyager missions over fifty years later. How did he know?

  Young readers of today, born into a world when science fiction magazines, books and movies are part of everyday life, cannot possibly imagine the impact of such garish pulps as that old Amazing and its colleagues Astounding and Wonder. Of course, the literary standards were usually abysmal—but the stories brimmed with ideas, and amply evoked that “sense of wonder” which is (or should be) one of the goals of the best fiction. No less a critic than C.S. Lewis has described the ravenous addiction that these magazines inspired; the same phenomenon has led me to call science fiction the only genuine consciousness-expanding drug.

  During my lunch hour from school I used to haunt the local Woolworth’s in search of my fix, which cost threepence a shot—roughly a quarter, at today’s prices. Much of the hard-earned money my widowed mother had saved for my food went on these magazines, and I set myself the goal of acquiring complete runs. By 1940 I had almost succeeded—but, alas, all my beloved pulps disappeared during the war years. That collection would now be worth thousands of dollars.

  In 1930 I came under the spell of a considerably more literate influence, when I discovered W. Olaf Stapledon’s just-published Last and First Men in the Minehead Public Library. No book before or since ever had such an impact on my imagination; the Stapledonian vistas of millions and hundreds of millions of years, the rise and fall of civilizations and entire races of men, changed my whole outlook on the universe and has influenced much of my writing ever since. Twenty years later, as Chairman of the British Interplanetary Society, I persuaded Stapledon to give us an address on the social and biological aspects of space exploration, which he entitled “Interplanetary Man.” His was the noblest and most civilized mind I have ever encountered; I am delighted to see a revival of interest in his work, and have just contributed a preface to a new collection of his writings.

  By the time I encountered Stapledon I had begun my secondary (U.S.: high school) education in the nearby town of Taunton, making the ten-mile round trip by bicycle every day after sorting the local mail in the small hours of the morning and then delivering it (another five or so miles). It was at Huish’s Grammar School—now Richard Huish College—that I began to write sketches and short stories for the school magazine.

  I can still recall those editorial sessions, fifty years ago. About once a week, after class, our English master, Captain E.B. Mitford (who was actually a fiery Welshman), would gather his schoolboy staff together, and we would all sit around a table on which there was a large bag of assorted toffees. Bright ideas were rewarded instantly; “Mitty” invented positive reinforcement years before B.F. Skinner. He also employed a heavy meter rule for negative reinforcement, but this was used only in class—never, so far as I recall, at editorial conferences.

  My very first printed words thus appeared in the Huish Magazine and from the beginning my science-fictional tendencies were obvious. Although this Christmas 1933 message purports to come from “Ex-Sixth Former” stationed at a torrid and high-altitude Outpost of Empire (Vrying Pan, British Malaria) its true locale is at least a quarter of a million miles further away:

  The precautions we have to take to preserve our liv
es are extraordinary. Our houses are built on the principle of the Dewar vacuum flask, to keep out the heat, and the outsides are silvered to reflect the sunlight . . . We have to take great care to avoid cutting ourselves in any way, for if this happens our blood soon boils and evaporates.

  Such attention to technical detail shows that even at sixteen I was already a hard-core science fiction (as opposed to fantasy) writer. Credit for this must go to the book which had almost as great an impact on me as Stapledon’s epic—and which illustrates rather well the fundamental distinction between art and science. No one else could ever have created Last and First Men—but if David Lasser had not written The Conquest of Space in 1931, someone similar would certainly have appeared in a very few years. The time was ripe.

  Although there was already considerable German and Russian literature on the subject, The Conquest of Space was the very first book in the English language to discuss the possibility of flight to the Moon and planets, and to describe the experiments and dreams (mostly the latter) of the early rocket pioneers. Only a few hundred copies of the British edition were sold, but chance brought one of them to a bookstore a few yards from my birthplace. I saw it in the window, knew instinctively that I had to read it, and persuaded my good-natured Aunt Nellie—who was looking after me while Mother struggled to run the farm and raise my three siblings—to buy it on the spot. And so I learned, for the first time, that space travel was not merely delightful fiction. One day it could really happen. Soon afterwards I discovered the existence of the British Interplanetary Society, and my fate was sealed.

  When he wrote The Conquest of Space, the twenty-eight-year-old David Lasser was editor of a whole group of Gernsback magazines, including Wonder Stories. Later he became a labor organizer and was denounced in Congress—not only as a dangerous radical but also as a madman, because he believed that we would one day fly to the Moon . . . When I met him in Los Angeles just a couple of weeks ago, he told me he was working on a new book; a good title might be Lasser’s Last Laugh.

  Despite all these influences, I was well over thirty before writing graduated from a pleasant and occasionally profitable hobby to a profession. The Civil Service, the Royal Air Force and editorship of a scientific abstracting journal provided my bread-and-butter until 1950. By that time I had published numerous stories and articles, and a slim technical book, Interplanetary Flight. The modest success of this volume led me to seek a wider public with The Exploration of Space, which the Book of the Month Club, in a moment of wild abandon, made a dual selection in 1952. To allay the alarm of its anxious readership, Clifton Fadiman explained in the BoM newsletter that The Exploration of Space was no crazy fantasy but a serious and level-headed work because “Mr. Clarke does not appear to be a very imaginative man.” I’ve never quite forgiven him, and my agent, Scott Meredith, has never forgotten my plaintive query: “What is the Book-of-the-Month Club?”

  This stroke of luck—repeated exactly thirty years later with 2010: Odyssey Two, so I can claim it wasn’t a fluke—encouraged me to give up my editorial job and become a full-time writer. It was not a very daring or heroic decision: if all else failed, I could always go back to the farm.

  I was lucky; unlike most of the writers I know, I had very few setbacks or disappointments, and my rare rejection slips were doubtless thoroughly justified. And because every author is unique, the only advice I have ever been able to pass on to would-be writers is incorporated in a few lines on the notorious form letter which Archie, my word-processor, spits out at all hopeful correspondents at the drop of a floppy disk: “Read at least one book a day, and write as much as you can. Study the memoirs of authors who interest you. (Somerset Maugham’s A Writer’s Notebooks is a good example.) Correspondence courses, writer’s schools, etc., are probably useful—but all the authors I know were self-taught. There is no substitute for living; as Hemingway wisely remarked, ‘Writing is not a full-time occupation.’”

  Nor is reading—though it would have to be, if I tried to keep up with the avalanche of science fiction now being published. I estimate that almost as much is printed each day as appeared every year when I was a boy.

  Today’s readers are indeed fortunate; this really is the Golden Age of science fiction. There are dozens of authors at work today who can match all but the giants of the past. (And probably one who can do even that, despite the handicap of being translated from Polish . . . ) Yet I do not really envy the young men and women who first encounter science fiction as the days shorten towards 1984, for we old-timers were able to accomplish something that was unique.

  Ours was the last generation that was able to read everything. No one will ever do that again.

  Of course, it may well be argued that no one should want to do so, in deference to Theodore Sturgeon’s much-quoted Law: “Ninety percent of everything is crud.” It is—to say the least—a sobering thought that this might apply even to my writing.

  I can only hope that everything that follows comes from the other ten percent.

  Colombo, Sri Lanka

  16 December 1982

  RESCUE PARTY

  “Rescue Party,” written in March 1945, while I was still in the Royal Air Force, was the first story I sold to the legendary John W. Campbell, Jr., editor of Astounding Science-Fiction. It was not, however, the first of my stories he published; “Loophole” (April 1946) beat it by a month.

  I don’t believe I’ve reread it since its original appearance, and I refuse to do so now—for fear of discovering how little I have improved in almost four decades. Those who claim that it’s their favorite story get a cooler and cooler reception over the passing years.

  However, I cannot resist tantalizing any readers who may be new to this tale with a quotation from a recent paper by Gregory Benford, “Aliens and Knowability: A Scientist’s Perspective”:

  “Aliens as a mirror for our own experiences abound in sf. Arthur Clarke’s “Rescue Party” has humans as the true focus, though the action follows aliens who are a dumber version of ourselves. The final lines give us a human-chauvinist thrill, telling us more about ourselves than we may nowadays wish to know.”

  I must admit that I’d never thought of it that way; but Dr. Benford may be right. You have been warned.

  WHO WAS TO BLAME? For three days Alveron’s thoughts had come back to that question, and still he had found no answer. A creature of a less civilized or a less sensitive race would never have let it torture his mind, and would have satisfied himself with the assurance that no one could be responsible for the working of fate. But Alveron and his kind had been lords of the Universe since the dawn of history, since that far distant age when the Time Barrier had been folded round the cosmos by the unknown powers that lay beyond the Beginning. To them had been given all knowledge—and with infinite knowledge went infinite responsibility. If there were mistakes and errors in the administration of the galaxy, the fault lay on the heads of Alveron and his people. And this was no mere mistake: it was one of the greatest tragedies in history.

  The crew still knew nothing. Even Rugon, his closest friend and the ship’s deputy captain, had been told only part of the truth. But now the doomed worlds lay less than a billion miles ahead. In a few hours, they would be landing on the third planet.

  Once again Alveron read the message from Base; then, with a flick of a tentacle that no human eye could have followed, he pressed the “General Attention” button. Throughout the mile-long cylinder that was the Galactic Survey Ship S9000, creatures of many races laid down their work to listen to the words of their captain.

  “I know you have all been wondering,” began Alveron, “why we were ordered to abandon our survey and to proceed at such an acceleration to this region of space. Some of you may realize what this acceleration means. Our ship is on its last voyage: the generators have already been running for sixty hours at Ultimate Overload. We will be very lucky if we return to Base under our own power.

  “We are approaching a sun which is about to become a Nova
. Detonation will occur in seven hours, with an uncertainty of one hour, leaving us a maximum of only four hours for exploration. There are ten planets in the system about to be destroyed—and there is a civilization on the third. That fact was discovered only a few days ago. It is our tragic mission to contact that doomed race and if possible to save some of its members. I know that there is little we can do in so short a time with this single ship. No other machine can possibly reach the system before detonation occurs.”

  There was a long pause during which there could have been no sound or movement in the whole of the mighty ship as it sped silently toward the worlds ahead. Alveron knew what his companions were thinking and he tried to answer their unspoken question.

  “You will wonder how such a disaster, the greatest of which we have any record, has been allowed to occur. On one point I can reassure you. The fault does not lie with the Survey.

  “As you know, with our present fleet of under twelve thousand ships, it is possible to reexamine each of the eight thousand million solar systems in the Galaxy at intervals of about a million years. Most worlds change very little in so short a time as that.

  “Less than four hundred thousand years ago, the survey ship S5060 examined the planets of the system we are approaching. It found intelligence on none of them, though the third planet was teeming with animal life and two other worlds had once been inhabited. The usual report was submitted and the system is due for its next examination in six hundred thousand years.

  “It now appears that in the incredibly short period since the last survey, intelligent life has appeared in the system. The first intimation of this occurred when unknown radio signals were detected on the planet Kulath in the system X29.35, Y34.76, Z27.93. Bearings were taken on them; they were coming from the system ahead.

  “Kulath is two hundred light-years from here, so those radio waves had been on their way for two centuries. Thus for at least that period of time a civilization has existed on one of these worlds—a civilization that can generate electromagnetic waves and all that that implies.