Prelude to Space

by Arthur C. Clarke

  It was not to be. A brilliant light passed like a rising sun across the mouth of his cave, then returned to shine full upon him. It was moving down the tunnel, and behind it was something strange and huge which his mind could not grasp.

  He screamed in terror as those metal claws came full into the light and reached forward to grasp him. Then he was being dragged helplessly out into the open where his unknown enemies were waiting.

  There was a confusion of light and noises all around him. A great machine that seemed to be alive was holding him in its metal arms and rolling away from a tremendous winged shape that should have aroused memories, but did not. Then he was lowered to the ground in a circle of waiting men.

  He wondered why they did not come near, why they kept so far away and looked at him so strangely. He did not resist when long poles carrying shining instruments were waved around him as if exploring his body. Nothing mattered now; he felt only a dull sickness and an overwhelming desire for sleep.

  Suddenly a wave of nausea swept over him and he crumpled to the ground. Impulsively, the men standing in that wide circle moved a pace towards him—and then drew back.

  The twisted, infinitely pathetic figure lay like a broken doll beneath the glaring lights. There was no sound or movement anywhere; in the background, the great wings of the “Prometheus” brooded above their pools of shadow. Then the robot glided forward, trailing its armored cables across the concrete. Very gently, the metal arms reached down and the strange hands unfolded.

  Jefferson Wilkes had reached the end of his journey.

  11

  Dirk hoped that the crew had spent a better night than he had. He was still sleepy and confused, but he had a distinct impression of being awakened more than once by the sound of cars driven recklessly through the night. Perhaps there had been a fire somewhere, but he had heard no alarm.

  He was shaving when McAndrews came into his room, obviously bursting with news. The Director of Public Relations looked as if he had been up half the night, which indeed was very nearly the case.

  “Have you heard the news?” he said breathlessly.

  “What news?” asked Dirk, switching off his shaver with some annoyance.

  “There’s been an attempt to sabotage the ship.”

  “What!”

  “It happened about one o’clock this morning. The detectors spotted a man trying to get aboard ‘Alpha.’ When the watchman challenged him the damn fool tried to hide himself—in ‘Beta’s’ exhaust!”

  It was some seconds before the full meaning of the words dawned. Then Dirk remembered what Collins had told him when he had looked through the telescope into that deadly pit.

  “What happened to him?” he said thickly.

  “They called to him through loudspeakers, but he took no notice. So they had to get him out with the servicing robot. He was still alive but too hot to go near. He died a couple of minutes later. The doctors say he probably never knew what had happened to him—you don’t when you get a dose like that.”

  Feeling a little sick, Dirk slumped down on his bed.

  “Did he do any damage?” he asked at length.

  “We don’t think so. He never got into the ship, and there was nothing he could do to the jet. They were afraid he might have left a bomb, but luckily he hadn’t.”

  “He must have been crazy! Any idea who he was?”

  “Probably a religious maniac of some kind. We get a lot of them after us. The police are trying to trace him from the contents of his pockets.”

  There was a gloomy pause before Dirk spoke again.

  “Not a very good send-off for the ‘Prometheus,’ is it?”

  McAndrews shrugged his shoulders, somewhat callously.

  “I don’t think anyone round here’s likely to be superstitious! Are you coming out to watch the fuelling? It’s scheduled for two o’clock. I’ll give you a lift down in the car.”

  Dirk was not enthusiastic.

  “Thanks all the same,” he said, “but I’ve got rather a lot to do. And anyway, there won’t be much to see, will there? I mean, pumping a few hundred tons of fuel isn’t going to be very exciting. I suppose it could be—but in that event I’d rather not be there!”

  McAndrews seemed slightly annoyed, but Dirk couldn’t help that. At the moment he felt singularly little desire to go near the “Prometheus” again. It was an irrational feeling, of course; for why should one blame the great ship if it protected itself against its enemies?

  Throughout the day Dirk could hear the roar of helicopters arriving in a continual stream from the great Australian cities, while from time to time a transcontinental jet would come whistling down into the airport. Where these early arrivals expected to spend the night he could not imagine. It was none too warm in the centrally heated huts, and the news reporters unlucky enough to be under canvas had told terrible stories of hardship, many of which were very nearly true.

  Late in the afternoon he met Collins and Maxton in the lounge and heard that the fuelling had been carried out with no difficulty. As Collins said: “We have now only to light the blue touch-paper and retire.”

  “By the way,” remarked Maxton, “didn’t you say the other night that you’d never seen the Moon through a telescope? We’re going over to the Observatory in a minute. Why not come along?”

  “I’d love to—but don’t say that you’ve never looked at her, either!”

  Maxton grinned.

  “That would be a ‘very poor show,’ as Ray would put it. I happen to know my way around the Moon quite well, but I doubt if more than half the people in Interplanetary have ever used a telescope. The D.-G.‘s the best example of that. He spent ten years on astronomical research before he ever went near an observatory.”

  “Don’t say I told you,” said Collins with great seriousness, “but I’ve found that astronomers are divided into two species. The first is purely nocturnal and spends its working hours taking photos of objects so far away that they probably don’t exist any more. They’re not interested in the solar system, which they consider a very odd and almost inexcusable accident. During the daytime they may be found sleeping under large stones and in warm, dry places.

  “Members of the second species work more normal hours and inhabit offices full of calculating machines and lady computors. This hinders them a lot; nevertheless they manage to produce reams of mathematics about the—probably non-existent—objects photographed by their colleagues, with whom they communicate through little notes left with the night-watchman.

  “Both species have one thing in common. They are never known, except in moments of extreme mental aberration, actually to look through their telescopes. Still, they do get some very pretty photographs.”

  “I think,” laughed Professor Maxton, “that the nocturnal species should be emerging any moment now. Let’s go.”

  The “Observatory” at Luna City had been erected largely for the amusement of the technical staff, which included far more amateur astronomers than professionals. It consisted of a group of wooden huts which had been drastically modified to hold about a dozen instruments of all sizes from three to twelve inches’ aperture. A twenty-inch reflector was now under construction, but would not be completed for some weeks.

  The visitors had, it seemed, already discovered the Observatory and were making full use of it. Some scores of people were lining up hopefully in front of the various buildings, while the thwarted owners of the telescopes were giving them two-minute peeks accompanied by impromptu lectures. They had not bargained for this when they had gone out to have a look at the four-day-old Moon, and they had now given up all hope of having a view themselves.

  “It’s a pity they can’t charge a pound a head,” said Collins thoughtfully as he looked at the queue.

  “Perhaps they are,” answered Professor Maxton. “We might at least put up a collecting box for impecunious atomic engineers.”

  The dome of the twelve-inch reflector—the only instrument which was not privately owned
and which actually belonged to Interplanetary—was closed and the building was locked. Professor Maxton drew out a bunch of master keys and tried them one by one until the door opened. The nearest in line immediately broke ranks and started to pour towards them.

  “Sorry,” shouted the Professor, as he slammed the door behind them, “it’s out of order!”

  “You mean it will be out of order,” said Collins darkly. “Do you know how to use one of these things?”

  “We should be able to figure it out,” answered Maxton, with just a shade of uncertainty in his voice.

  Dirk’s very high opinion of the two scientists began to fall abruptly.

  “Do you mean to tell me,” he said, “that you’re going to risk using an instrument as complicated and expensive as this without knowing anything about it? Why, it would be like someone who didn’t know how to drive getting into an automobile and trying to start it!”

  “Goodness gracious,” protested Collins, though with a slight twinkle in his eye. “You don’t think this thing is complicated, do you? Compare it with a bicycle, if you like—but not a car!”

  “Very well,” retorted Dirk, “just try and ride a bicycle without any practice beforehand!”

  Collins merely laughed and continued his examination of the controls. For some time he and the Professor exchanged technical conversation which no longer impressed Dirk, since he could see that they knew very little more about the telescope than he did himself.

  After some experimenting, the instrument was swung round to the Moon, now fairly low in the southwest. For a long time, it seemed to Dirk, he waited patiently in the background while the two engineers looked to their full. Finally he got fed up.

  “You did invite me, you know,” he remonstrated. “Or have you forgotten?”

  “Sorry,” apologized Collins, giving up his position with obvious reluctance. “Have a look now—focus up with this knob.”

  At first Dirk could see only a blinding whiteness with darker patches here and there. He slowly turned the focusing knob, and suddenly the picture became clear and sharp, like some brilliant etching.

  He could see a good half of the crescent, the tips of the horns being out of the field. The edge of the Moon was a perfect arc of a circle, without any sign of unevenness. But the line dividing night and day was ragged, and broken in many places by mountains and uplands which threw long shadows across the plains below. There were few of the great craters he had expected to see, and he guessed that most of them must lie in the part of the disk that was still unlit.

  He focused his attention upon a great oval plain bordered with mountains, which reminded him irresistibly of a dried-up ocean bed. It was, he supposed, one of the Moon’s so-called seas, but it was easy to tell that there was no water anywhere in that calm, still landscape spread out beneath him. Every detail was sharp and brilliant, save when a ripple like a heat-haze made the whole picture tremble for a moment. The Moon was sinking into the horizon mists, and the image was being disturbed by its slanting, thousand-mile passage through the Earth’s atmosphere.

  At one point just inside the darkened area of the disk a group of brilliant lights shone like beacon fires blazing in the lunar night. They puzzled Dirk for a moment, until he realized that he was looking upon great mountain peaks which had caught the sun hours before the dawning light had struck into the lowlands around their bases.

  He understood now why men had spent their lives watching the shadows come and go across the face of that strange world which seemed so near yet which, until his generation, had been the symbol of all that could never be attained. He realized that in a lifetime one could not exhaust its wonders; always there would be something fresh to see as the eye grew more skilled in tracing out that wealth of almost infinite detail.

  Something was blocking his view and he looked up in annoyance. The Moon was descending below the level of the dome; he could lower the telescope no farther. Someone switched on the lights again and he saw that Collins and Maxton were grinning at him.

  “I hope you’ve seen all you want to,” said the Professor. “We had ten minutes apiece—you have been there for twenty-five and I’m darned glad the Moon set when it did!”

  “Tomorrow we launch the ‘Prometheus.’ I say ‘we,’ because I find it no longer possible to stand aside and play the part of a disinterested spectator. No one on Earth can do that; the events of the next few hours will shape the lives of all men who will ever be born, down to the end of time.

  “Someone once pictured humanity as a race of islanders who have not yet learned the art of making ships. Out across the ocean we can see other islands about which we have wondered and speculated since the beginning of history. Now, after a million years, we have made our first primitive canoe; tomorrow we will watch it sail through the coral reef and vanish over the horizon.

  “This evening I saw, for the first time in my life, the Moon’s glittering mountains and great dusky plains. The country over which Leduc and his companions will be walking in less than a week was still invisible, waiting for the sunrise which will not come for another three of our days. Yet its night must be brilliant beyond imagination, for the Earth will be more than half-full in its sky.

  “I wonder how Leduc, Richards and Taine are spending their last night on Earth? They will, of course, have put all their affairs in order, and there’ll be nothing left for them to do. Are they relaxing, listening to music, reading—or just sleeping?”

  James Richards was doing none of these things. He was seated in the lounge with his friends, drinking very slowly and carefully, while he regaled them with entertaining stories of the tests he had been given by crazy psychologists trying to decide if he was normal, and if so, what could be done about it. The psychologists he was libeling formed the largest—and most appreciative—part of his audience. They let him talk until midnight; then they put him to bed. It took six of them to do it.

  Pierre Leduc had spent the evening out at the ship, watching some fuel evaporation tests that were being carried out on “Alpha.” There was very little point in his being present, but although gentle hints had been dropped from time to time, no one could get rid of him. Just before midnight the Director-General arrived, exploded good-naturedly and sent him back in his own car with strict orders to get some sleep. Whereupon Leduc spent the next two hours in bed reading La Comedie Humane.

  Only Lewis Taine—the precise, unemotional Taine—had used his last night on Earth in ways that might have been expected. He had sat for hours at his desk preparing drafts and destroying them one by one. Late in the evening he had finished; in careful long-hand he transcribed the letter which had cost him so much thought. Then he sealed it and attached a formal little note:

  Dear Professor Maxton,

  If I do not return, I should be obliged if you would arrange for this letter to be delivered.

  Sincerely, L. Taine.

  Letter and note he placed in a large envelope which he addressed to Maxton. Then he picked up the bulky file of alternative flight orbits and began to make pencil notes in the margins.

  He was himself again.

  12

  The message which Sir Robert had been expecting arrived soon after dawn by one of the high-speed mail-planes which, later in the day, would be carrying the films of the launching back to Europe. It was a brief official minute, signed only with a pair of initials which the whole world would have recognized even without the help of the words: “10, Downing Street” which ran along the head of the paper. Yet it was not entirely a formal document, for beneath the initials the same hand had written: “Good luck!”

  When Professor Maxton arrived a few minutes later, Sir Robert handed him the paper without a word. The American read it slowly and gave a sigh of relief.

  “Well, Bob,” he said, “we’ve done our share. It’s up to the politicians now—but we’ll keep pushing them from behind.”

  “It’s not been as difficult as I feared; the statesmen have learned to pay attention t
o us since Hiroshima.”

  “And when will the plan come up before the General Assembly?”

  “In about a month, when the British and American governments will formally propose that ‘all planets or celestial bodies unoccupied or unclaimed by non-human forms of life, etc. etc., be deemed international areas freely accessible to all peoples, and that no sovereign state be permitted to claim any such astronomical bodies for its exclusive occupation or development …’ and so on.”

  “And what about the proposed Interplanetary Commission?”

  “That will have to be discussed later. At the moment the important thing is to get agreement on the first stages. Now that our governments have formally adopted the plan—it will be on the radio by this afternoon—we can start lobbying like hell. You’re best at this sort of thing—can you write a little speech on the lines of our first Manifesto—one that Leduc can broadcast from the Moon? Emphasize the astronomical viewpoint, and the stupidity of even attempting to carry nationalism into space. Think you can do it before take-off? Not that it matters if you can’t, except that it may leak out too soon if we have to radio the script.”

  “O.K.—I’ll get the rough draft checked over by the political experts, and then leave you to put in the adjectives as usual. But I don’t think it will need any purple passages this time. As the first message to come from the Moon, it will have quite enough psychological punch by itself!”

  Never before had any part of the Australian desert known such a population density. Special trains from Adelaide and Perth had been arriving throughout the night, and thousands of cars and private aircraft were parked on either side of the launching track. Jeeps were continually patrolling up and down the kilometer-wide safety zones, shooing away too inquisitive visitors. No one at all was allowed past the five-kilometer mark, and at this point the canopy of circling aircraft also came to an abrupt end.

  The “Prometheus” lay glittering in the low sunlight, throwing a fantastic shadow far across the desert. Until now she had seemed only a thing of metal, but at last she was alive and waiting to fulfill the dreams of her creators. The crew was already aboard when Dirk and his companions arrived. There had been a little ceremony for the benefit of the newsreels and television cameras, but no formal speeches. These could come, if they were needed, in three weeks’ time.