Collected Stories Of Arthur C. Clarke

by C. , Clarke, Arthur

  From where he was standing Wheeler could see the throats of her bow projectors – little pits of flame that looked as if they had been carved from the Sun. The summit of the mountain had been caught in those beams. It did not have time to melt – the peak vanished and only a ragged smoking plateau was left.

  Wheeler was going to risk no further damage to his eyes, which were already paining him. With a word of explanation to Jamieson he raced back to the tractor and returned a few minutes later with a set of heavy-duty filters.

  The relief was immense. No longer were the screens of the cruisers like artificial suns and they could look once more in the direction of the fortress. Though he could see only the ray-shields against which the beams of the battleships were still splashing in vain it seemed to Wheeler that the hemisphere had lost its original symmetry during the battle.

  At first he thought one of the generators might have failed. Then he saw that the lake of lava was at least a mile across and he knew that the whole fort had floated off its foundations. Probably the defenders were scarcely aware of the fact. Their insulation was taking care of solar heat and would hardly notice molten rock.

  And now a strange thing was beginning to happen. The rays with which the battle was being fought were no longer quite invisible, for the fortress was no longer in a vacuum. Around it the boiling rock was releasing enormous volumes of gas through which the paths of the rays were as clearly visible as searchlights on Earth on a misty night.

  At the same time Wheeler began to notice a continual hail of tiny particles around him. For a moment he was puzzled. Then he realised that the rock vapour was condensing after it had been blasted up into the sky. It seemed too light to be dangerous and he did not mention it to Jamieson.

  As long as it was not too heavy the insulation of the space-suits could deal with it.

  Accustomed though they were to the eternal silences of the Moon both men felt a sense of unreality at the sight of those tremendous weapons blasting overhead without a whisper of sound. Now and then there would be a hammerblow underfoot as a torpedo crashed, deflected by the fields of the fort. But most of the time there was absolute silence, even when there were half a dozen rockets detonating in the sky at once. It was like watching a television programme when the sound had failed.

  They never knew why the fortress waited so long before it used its main weapon. Possibly Fletcher could not get it into action earlier or perhaps he was waiting for the attack to slacken so that some energy could be diverted from the screens. For it was during a lull in the engagement that the polaron beam operated for the first time in history.

  The two watchers saw it strike upward like an inverted lightning flash. It was clearly visible along its whole length, not merely in patches where it passed through dust and gas. Even in that brief instant of time Wheeler noticed this staggering violation of the laws of optics and wondered at its implications. Not until many years later did he learn how a polaron beam radiates some of its energy at right angles to its direction of propagation so that it can be seen even in a vacuum.

  The beam went through the Phlegethon as if she did not exist. The most terrible thing Wheeler ever saw in his life was the way the screens of that great ship suddenly vanished as her generators died, leaving her helpless and unprotected in the sky. The secondary weapons of the fortress were at her instantly, tearing out great gashes of metal and boiling away her armour layer by layer.

  Then, quite slowly, she began to settle towards the Moon, still on an even keel. No one will ever know what stopped her – probably some short-circuit in her controls since none of her crew could have been left alive. For suddenly she went off to the west in a long flat trajectory.

  By that time most of her hull had been boiled away and the steel skeleton of her framework was almost completely exposed. The crash came minutes later as she plunged into the mountains beyond Plato.

  When Wheeler looked again for the cruisers they were so far away that their screens had shrunk to little balls of fire against the stars. At first he thought they were retreating – then abruptly the screens began to expand as they came down in an attack under terrific vertical acceleration. Around the fortress the lava was throwing itself madly into the sky as the beams tore into it.

  The cruisers came out of their dives about a mile above the fort. For an instant they were motionless – then they went back into the sky together. But the Eridanus had been mortally wounded though the two watchers knew only that one of the screens was shrinking much more slowly than the other.

  With a feeling of helpless fascination they watched the stricken cruiser fall back toward the Moon. About twenty miles up her screens seemed to explode and she hung unprotected, a sleek torpedo of black metal, visible only as a shadow against the stardust of the Milky Way.

  Almost instantly her light-absorbing paint and the armour beneath were torn off by the beams of the fortress. The great ship turned cherry-red, then white. She swung over so that her prow pointed toward the Moon and began her last dive.

  Wheeler felt his friend’s grip upon his arm and Jamieson’s voice rang through the speakers. ‘Back to the cleft for God’s sake!’

  He never knew how they reached the cleft in time and had no recollection of entering it. The last thing Wheeler saw was the remaining cruiser dwindling into space and the Eridanus coming down at him like an onrushing meteor. Then he was lying flat on his face among the rocks, expecting every moment to be his last.

  She landed nearly five miles away. The impact threw Wheeler a yard off the ground and set the boulders dancing in the cleft. The whole surface of the plain quivered for seconds before the rocks settled back to rest.

  Wheeler turned over on to his back, breathless, and looked up at the gibbous Earth that was just visible from his position. He wondered what Earth had thought of the battle, which must have been clearly visible to the naked eye over the hemisphere facing the Moon. But his main feeling was relief at his escape. He did not know that the final paroxysm was yet to come.

  Jamieson’s voice brought him back to life. ‘You all right, Con?’

  ‘Yes – I think so. That’s two of them gone. By the way she was travelling I don’t think number three will be coming back.’

  ‘Nor do I. Looks as if Earth’s won the first round. Shall we go back to the tractor?’

  ‘Just a minute – what’s the matter with those rocks up there?’

  Wheeler glanced towards the northern face of the cleft, which was several feet higher than the other. Over the exposed surfaces of the rock waves of light were passing in slow undulations.

  Jamieson was the first to realise the cause. ‘It’s the glare from that lava over by the fort. It will probably take a good while to cool off.’

  ‘It isn’t cooling. Look – it’s getting brighter!’

  At first Wheeler had blamed his eyes but now there was no room for doubt. The rock was not merely reflecting light – it was turning cherry-red. Soon it was too bright to watch with the unprotected eye. With a feeling of sick helplessness he saw that everywhere the exposed rock surfaces were becoming incandescent.

  Suddenly the appalling truth reached Wheeler’s brain. The generators of the wrecked ship had not yet detonated and the energy which it would have poured out in hours of continuous fighting was leaking away at a rate rising swiftly toward catastrophe. And he realised that all the atomic explosions of the past would be as nothing against what might happen now.

  Then the Moon awoke from its sleep. The plain seemed to tear itself asunder and he could almost hear a mighty wind of radiation sweeping overhead. This was the last thing he knew before the quake reached him.

  Ages later he was awakened by the glare of Earthlight in his eyes. For a long time he lay in a half dazed condition, knitting together the broken threads of memory. Then he recalled what had happened and began to look around for his friend.

  It gave him a shock to discover that his torch was broken. There was no sign of Jamieson in the narrow portion o
f the cleft illuminated by the Earth and he could not explore the shadows without a light. As he lay there wondering what to do next, a strange sound began to intrude upon his consciousness. It was an unpleasant rasping noise that grew stronger minute by minute.

  Not since his childhood, when night had once caught him in a strange wood far from home, had Wheeler known such real terror as he felt now. This was the airless Moon – there could be no sound here! Then his fuddled wits cleared and he burst into peals of relieved and half hysterical laughter.

  Somewhere in the darkness near him Jamieson, still unconscious, was breathing heavily into his microphone.

  Wheeler’s laughter must have aroused his friend, for suddenly he heard Jamieson calling unsteadily through the speaker. ‘Hello, Con – what the devil’s the matter?’

  Wheeler took a firm grip of himself. ‘It’s okay, Sid – I’m just a bit giddy. Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes – at least I think so. But my head’s still ringing.’

  ‘So is mine. Do you think it’s safe to climb out now?’

  ‘I don’t see what else can happen now but I guess we’ll have to wait here for a while. Look at that rock.’

  The walls overhead had been partly sheared away by the blast and were still glowing dully. The rock was too hot to touch and it was many minutes before the two men could crawl out of their refuge.

  They were both prepared for a scene of devastation but the reality exceeded their wildest fears. Around them was a vision of the inferno. The whole landscape, from horizon to horizon, had altered beyond recognition. To the east the beautiful mountain that had been Pico was gone.

  In its place was a sheared and blistered stump, only a fraction of its former height. It must have caught the full blast of that mammoth explosion. In all the plain, as far as the eye could see, there was no other outstanding projection. Of the fortress not a trace was left. Everything had been levelled by that final incredible blast of radiation.

  That was Wheeler’s first impression. Then he realised that it was not completely correct. About five miles away to the west was another pool of lava, a mile or two across, and in its centre was a roughly hemispherical bulge. As he watched, it settled down into the molten rock until there was nothing left.

  Then there came a faint trembling underfoot, and a curious disturbance at the centre of the lake. Like some evil thing emerging from the sea a great column of lava slowly climbed towards the stars, tottered and slowly fell. So sluggish was its motion that it never reached the ground but froze even as it fell to form a crooked finger jutting out of the plain. And that was the end of the Eridanus.

  Jamieson broke the long silence at last. ‘Ready to start walking?’ he said.

  Ten million miles away, the mortally wounded Acheron was limping back to Mars, bearing the shattered hopes of the Federation. On the second moon of Jupiter, white-faced men were sitting in conference and the destinies of the outer planets were passing from the hands of those who had planned the raid against the Moon.

  Down on Earth the statesmen of the mother world faced reality at last. They had seen the Wilson drive in action and knew that the day of the rocket was gone. They also realised that although they had – at tremendous cost – won the first round the greater science of the Federation must prevail in the end. Peace and the Wilson drive were worth all the uranium in the universe. A message was already on its way to Mars with the news that Earth was willing to reopen negotiations.

  It was well for humanity that the battle ended as it had. The Acheron would never fight again and no one could tell that any building made by man had ever stood in the Sea of Rains. Both sides had exhausted themselves.

  Had Jamieson refused to continue his journey to the fortress complete victory might have gone to the Federation. Flushed with success, it might have been tempted to further adventures and the Treaty of Phoebus would never have been signed. Upon such small decisions may world destinies depend.

  For hours, it seemed to Wheeler, they had been trudging across this seared and shattered plain, the brilliant Earthlight casting their shadows ahead of them. They spoke seldom, wishing to conserve the batteries of their suit radios. The curvature of the Moon made it impossible to signal the Observatory and there were still fifty miles to go.

  It was not a pleasant prospect, for they had been able to salvage nothing from the tractor – it was now a pile of fused metal. But at least they could not lose their way with the Earth hanging fixed in the sky to guide them. They had only to keep walking into their shadows and in due course the Alps would come up over the horizon.

  Wheeler was plodding along behind his friend, lost in his own thoughts, when Jamieson suddenly changed his direction of march. Slightly to the left a low ridge had appeared. When they reached it they found themselves climbing a hill not more than fifty feet high.

  They looked eagerly to the north, but there was still no sign of the Alps. Jamieson switched on his radio.

  ‘They can’t be far below the horizon,’ he said. ‘I’m going to risk it.’

  ‘Risk what?’

  ‘Emergency transmission. You can key these sets for two minutes at fifty times normal power. Here goes.’

  Very carefully, he broke the seal on the little control board inside the suit, and sent out the three dots, three dashes and three dots which were all that was left of the old Morse code.

  Then they waited, staring toward the featureless skyline of the north. Below its edge, beyond sight and perhaps beyond signalling, lay safety. But the Observatory gave no sign.

  Five minutes later Jamieson signalled again. This time he did not wait. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’d better start walking again.’ Wheeler followed glumly.

  They were halfway down the slope when a golden flare climbed into the northern sky and erupted slowly against the stars. The sense of relief was so great that Wheeler was left weak.

  He sat down clumsily on the nearest boulder and stared at that beautiful, heart-warming symbol hanging in the sky. Even now, he knew, the rescue tractors would be racing down the slope of the mountains.

  He turned to his friend. ‘Well, Sid, that’s that, thank God.’

  For a moment Jamieson did not reply. He too was staring up toward the stars – but along the path the retreating warship had followed hours before. ‘I wish I could be sure,’ he murmured half to himself, ‘that I did the right thing. They might have won …’

  Then he turned toward the blinding disc of Earth, breathtakingly lovely beneath its belts of clouds. The future might belong to the Federation but almost all that it possessed it had inherited from the mother world. How could one choose between the two?

  He shrugged his shoulders – there was nothing he could do about it now. Resolutely he turned toward the north and walked forward to receive the fame from which he would never escape.

  Second Dawn

  First published in Science Fiction Quarterly, August 1951

  Collected in Expedition to Earth

  ‘Here they come,’ said Eris, rising to his forefeet and turning to look down the long valley. For a moment the pain and bitterness had left his thoughts, so that even Jeryl, whose mind was more closely tuned to his than to any other, could scarcely detect it. There was even an undertone of softness that recalled poigantly the Eris she had known in the days before the War – the old Eris who now seemed almost as remote and as lost as if he were lying with all the others out there on the plain.

  A dark tide was flowing up the valley, advancing with a curious, hesitant motion, making odd pauses and little bounds forward. It was flanked with gold – the thin line of the Atheleni guards, so terrifyingly few compared with the black mass of the prisoners. But they were enough: indeed, they were only needed to guide that aimless river on its faltering way. Yet at the sight of so many thousands of the enemy, Jeryl found herself trembling and instinctively moved towards her mate, silver pelt resting against gold. Eris gave no sign that he had understood or even noticed the action.

 
The fear vanished as Jeryl saw how slowly the dark flood was moving forwards. She had been told what to expect, but the reality was even worse than she had imagined. As the prisoners came nearer, all the hate and bitterness ebbed from her mind, to be replaced by a sick compassion. No one of her race need ever more fear the aimless, idiot horde that was being shepherded through the pass into the valley it would never leave again.

  The guards were doing little more than urge the prisoners on with meaningless but encouraging cries, like nurses calling to infants too young to sense their thoughts. Strain as she might, Jeryl could detect no vestige of reason in any of these thousands of minds passing so near at hand. That brought home to her, more vividly than could anything else, the magnitude of the victory – and the defeat. Her mind was sensitive enough to detect the first faint thoughts of children, hovering on the verge of consciousness. The defeated enemy had become not even children, but babies with the bodies of adults.

  The tide was passing within a few feet of them now. For the first time, Jeryl realised how much larger than her own people the Mithraneans were, and how beautifully the light of the twin suns gleamed on the dark satin of their bodies. Once a magnificent specimen, towering a full head above Eris, broke loose from the main body and came blundering towards them, halting a few paces away. Then it crouched down like a lost and frightened child, the splendid head moving uncertainly from side to side as if seeking it knew not what. For a moment the great, empty eyes fell full upon Jeryl’s face. She was as beautiful, she knew, to the Mithraneans as to her own race – but there was no flicker of emotion on the blank features, and no pause in the aimless movement of the questing head. Then an exasperated guard drove the prisoner back to his fellows.