Reach for Tomorrow

by Arthur C. Clarke

  The Professor then uttered a number of what are usually called deep-space oaths, though I can assure you they're much the same as any other oaths. That seemed to relieve his feelings a lot and he became fiendishly friendly.

  "My dear Mr. Mays," he said, "You're an unmitigated crook, and accordingly I've no compunction left in dealing with you. I'm prepared to use force, knowing that the law will justify me."

  Mays looked slightly alarmed, though not unduly so. We had moved to strategic positions round the door.

  "Please don't be so melodramatic," he said haughtily. "This is the twenty-first century, not the Wild West back in 1800."

  "1880," said Bill, who is a stickler for accuracy.

  "I must ask you," the Professor continued, "to consider yourself under detention while we decide what is to be done. Mr. Searle, take him to Cabin B."

  Mays sidled along the wall with a nervous laugh.

  "Really, Professor, this is too childish! You can't detain me against my will." He glanced for support at the Captain of the "Henry Luce."

  Donald Hopkins dusted an imaginary speck of fluff from his uniform.

  "I refuse," he remarked for the benefit of all concerned, "to get involved in vulgar brawls."

  Mays gave him a venomous look and capitulated with bad grace. We saw that he had a good supply of reading matter, and locked him in.

  When he was out of the way, the Professor turned to Hopkins, who was looking enviously at our fuel gauges.

  "Can I take it, Captain," he said politely, "that you don't wish to get mixed up in any of your employer's dirty business?"

  "I'm neutral. My job is to fly the ship here and take her home. You can fight this out among yourselves."

  "Thank you. I think we understand each other perfectly. Perhaps it would be best if you returned to your ship and explained the situation. We'll be calling you in a few minutes."

  Captain Hopkins made his way languidly to the door. As he was about to leave he turned to Searle.

  "By the way, Kingsley," he drawled. "Have you thought of torture? Do call me if you get round to it— I've some jolly interesting ideas." Then he was gone, leaving us with our hostage.

  I think the Professor had hoped he could do a direct exchange. If so, he had not bargained on Marianne's stubborness.

  "It serves Randolph right," she said. "But I don't really see that it makes any difference. He'll be just as comfortable in your ship as in ours, and you can't do anything to him. Let me know when you're fed up with having him around."

  It seemed a complete impasse. We had been too clever by half, and it had got us exactly nowhere. We'd captured Mays, but he wasn't any use to us.

  The Professor was standing with his back to us, staring morosely out of the window. Seemingly balanced on the horizon, the immense bulk of Jupiter nearly filled the sky.

  "We've got to convince her that we really do mean business," he said. Then he turned abruptly to me.

  "Do you think she's actually fond of this blackguard?"

  "Er—I shouldn't be surprised. Yes, I really believe so."

  The Professor looked very thoughtful. Then he said to Searle, "Come into my room. I want to talk something over."

  They were gone quite a while. When they returned, they both had an indefinable air of gleeful anticipation, and the Professor was carrying a piece of paper covered with figures. He went to the radio, and called the "Henry Luce."

  "Hello," said Marianne, replying so promptly that she'd obviously been Waiting for us. "Have you decided to call it off? I'm getting so bored."

  The Professor looked at her gravely.

  "Miss Mitchell," he replied. "It's apparent that you have not been taking us seriously. I'm therefore arranging a somewhat—er—drastic little demonstration for your benefit. I'm going to place your employer in a position from which he'll be only too anxious for you to retrieve him as quickly as possible."

  "Indeed?" replied Marianne noncommittally—though I thought I could detect a trace of apprehension in her voice.

  "I don't suppose," continued the Professor smoothly, "that you know anything about celestial mechanics. No? Too bad, but your pilot will confirm everything I tell you. Won't you, Hopkins?"

  "Go ahead," came a painstakingly neutral voice from the background.

  "Then listen carefully, Miss Mitchell. I want to remind you of our curious—indeed our precarious—position on this satellite. You've only got to look out of the window to see how close to Jupiter we are, and I need hardly remind you that Jupiter has by far the most intense gravitational field of all the planets. You follow me?"

  "Yes," replied Marianne, no longer quite so self-possessed. "Go on."

  "Very well. This little world of ours goes round Jupiter in almost exactly twelve hours. Now there's a well-known theorem stating that if a body falls from an orbit to the center of attraction, it will take point one seven seven of a period to make the drop. In other words, anything falling from here to Jupiter would reach the center of the planet in about two hours seven minutes. I'm sure Captain Hopkins can confirm this."

  There was a long pause. Then we heard Hopkins say, "Well, of course I can't confirm the exact figures, but they're probably correct. It would be something like that, anyway."

  "Good," continued the Professor. "Now I'm sure you realize," he went on with a hearty chuckle, "that a fall to the center of the planet is a very theoretical case. If anything really was dropped from here, it would reach the upper atmosphere of Jupiter in a considerably shorter time. I hope I'm not boring you?"

  "No," said Marianne, rather faintly.

  "I'm so glad to hear it. Anyway, Captain Searle has worked out the actual time for me, and it's one hour thirty five minutes—with a few minutes either way. We can't guarantee complete accuracy, ha, ha!

  "Now, it has doubtless not escaped your notice that this satellite of ours has an extremely weak gravitational field. It's escape velocity is only about ten meters a second, and anything thrown away from it at that speed would never come back. Correct, Mr. Hopkins?"

  "Perfectly correct."

  . "Then, if I may come to the point, we propose to take Mr. Mays for a walk until he's immediately under Jupiter, remove the reaction pistols from his suit, and—ah—launch him forth. We will be prepared to retrieve him with our ship as soon as you've handed over the property you've stolen. After what I've told you, I'm sure you'll appreciate that time will be rather vital. An hour and thirty five minutes is remarkably short, isn't it?"

  "Professor!" I gasped, "You can't possibly do this!"

  "Shut up!" he barked. "Well, Miss Mitchell, what about it?"

  Marianne was staring at him with mingled horror and disbelief.

  "You're simply bluffing!" she cried. "I don't believe you'd do anything of the kind! Your crew won't let you!"

  The Professor sighed.

  "Too bad," he said. "Captain Searle—Mr. Groves—will you take the prisoner and proceed as instructed."

  "Aye-aye, sir," replied Searle with great solemnity.

  Mays looked frightened but stubborn.

  "What are you going to do now?" he said, as his suit was handed back to him.

  Searle unholstered his reaction pistols. "Just climb in," he said. "We're going for a walk."

  I realized then what the Professor hoped to do. The whole thing was a colossal bluff: of course he wouldn't really have Mays thrown into Jupiter; and in any case Searle and Groves wouldn't do it. Yet surely Marianne would see through the bluff, and then we'd be left looking mighty foolish.

  Mays couldn't run away; without his reaction pistols he was quite helpless. Grasping his arms and towing him along like a captive balloon, his escorts set off toward the horizon—and towards Jupiter.

  I could see, looking across the space to the other ship, that Marianne was staring out through the observation windows at the departing trio. Professor Forster noticed it too.

  "I hope you're convinced, Miss Mitchell, that my men aren't carrying along an empty spaces
uit. Might I suggest that you follow the proceedings with a telescope? They'll be over the horizon in a minute, but you'll be able to see Mr. Mays when he starts to—er—ascend."

  There was a stubborn silence from the loudspeaker. The period of suspense seemed to last for a very long time. Was Marianne waiting to see how far the Professor really would go?

  By this time I had got hold of a pair of binoculars and was sweeping the sky beyond the ridiculously close horizon. Suddenly I saw it—a tiny flare of light against the vast yellow back-cloth of Jupiter. I focused quickly, and could just make out the three figures rising into space. As I watched, they separated: two of them decelerated with their pistols and started to fall back toward Five. The other went on ascending helplessly toward the ominous bulk of Jupiter.

  I turned on the Professor in horror and disbelief.

  "They've really done it!" I cried. "I thought you were only bluffing!"

  "So did Miss Mitchell, I've no doubt," said the Professor calmly, for the benefit of the listening microphone. "I hope I don't need to impress upon you the urgency of the situation. As I've remarked once or twice before, the time of fall from our orbit to Jupiter's surface is ninety-five minutes. But, of course, if one waited even half that time, it would be much too late. . . ."

  He let that sink in. There was no reply from the other ship.

  "And now," he continued, "I'm going to switch off our receiver so we can't have any more arguments. We'll wait until you've unloaded that statue—and the other items Mr. Mays was careless enough to mention—before we'll talk to you again. Good-by."

  It was a very uncomfortable ten minutes. I'd lost track of Mays, and was seriously wondering if we'd better overpower the Professor and go after him before we had a murder on our hands. But the people who could fly the ship were the ones who had actually carried out the crime. I didn't know what to think.

  Then the airlock of the "Henry Luce" slowly opened. A couple of space-suited figures emerged, floating the cause of all the trouble between them.

  "Unconditional surrender," murmured the Professor with a sigh of satisfaction. "Get it into our ship," he called over the radio, "I'll open up the airlock for you."

  He seemed in no hurry at all. I kept looking anxiously at the clock; fifteen minutes had already gone by. Presently there was a clanking and banging in the airlock, the inner door opened, and Captain Hopkins entered. He was followed by Marianne, who only needed a bloodstained axe to make her look like Clytaemnestra. I did my best to avoid her eye, but the Professor seemed to be quite without shame. He walked into the airlock, checked that his property was back, and emerged rubbing his hands.

  "Well, that's that," he said cheerfully. "Now let's sit down and have a drink to forget all this unpleasantness, shall we?"

  I pointed indignantly at the clock.

  "Have you gone crazy!" I yelled. "He's already halfway to Jupiter!"

  Professor Forster looked at me disapprovingly.

  "Impatience," he said, "is a common failing in the young. I see no cause at all for hasty action."

  Marianne spoke for the first time; she now looked really scared.

  "But you promised," she whispered.

  The Professor suddenly capitulated. He had had his little joke, and didn't want to prolong the agony.

  "I can tell you at once, Miss Mitchell—and you too, Jack—that Mays is in no more danger than we are. We can go and collect him whenever we like."

  "Do you mean that you lied to me?"

  "Certainly not. Everything I told you was perfectly true. You simply jumped to the wrong conclusions. When I said that a body would take ninety-five minutes to fall from here to Jupiter, I omitted—not, I must confess, accidentally—a rather important phrase. I should have added "a body at rest with respect to Jupiter." Your friend Mr. Mays was sharing the orbital speed of this satellite, and he's still got it. A little matter of twenty-six kilometers a second, Miss Mitchell.

  "Oh yes, we threw him completely off Five and toward Jupiter. But the velocity we gave him then was trivial. He's still moving in practically the same orbit as before. The most he can do—I've got Captain Searle to work out the figures—is to drift about a hundred kilometers inward. And in one revolution—twelve hours—he'll be right back where he started, without us bothering to do anything at all."

  There was a long, long silence. Marianne's face was a study in frustration, relief, and annoyance at having been fooled. Then she turned on Captain Hopkins.

  "You must have known all the time! Why didn't you tell me?"

  Hopkins gave her a wounded expression.

  "You didn't ask me," he said.

  We hauled Mays down about an hour later. He was only twenty kilometers up, and we located him quickly enough by the flashing light on his suit. His radio had been disconnected, for a reason that hadn't occurred to me. He was intelligent enough to realize that he was in no danger, and if his set had been working he could have called his ship and exposed our bluff. That is, if he wanted to. Personally, I think I'd have been glad enough to call the whole thing off even if I had known that I was perfectly safe. It must have been awfully lonely up there.

  To my great surprise, Mays wasn't as mad as I'd expected. Perhaps he was too relieved to be back in our snug little cabin when we drifted up to him on the merest fizzle of rockets and yanked him in. Or perhaps he felt that he'd been worsted in fair fight and didn't bear any grudge. I really think it was the latter.

  There isn't much more to tell, except that we did play one other trick on him before we left Five. He had a good deal more fuel in his tanks than he really needed, now that his payload was substantially reduced. By keeping the excess ourselves, we were able to carry The Ambassador back to Ganymede after all. Oh, yes, the Professor gave him a cheque for the fuel we'd borrowed. Everything was perfectly legal.

  There's one amusing sequel I must tell you, though. The day after the new gallery was opened at the British Museum I went along to see The Ambassador, partly to discover if his impact was still as great in these changed surroundings. (For the record, it wasn't—though it's still considerable and Bloomsbury will never be quite the same to me again.) A huge crowd was milling around the gallery, and there in the middle of it was Mays and Marianne.

  It ended up with us having a very pleasant lunch together in Holborn. I'll say this about Mays—he doesn't bear any grudges. But I'm still rather sore about Marianne.

  And, frankly, I can't imagine what she sees in him.

  THE POSSESSED

  And now the sun ahead was so close that the hurricane of radiation was forcing the Swarm back into the dark night of space. Soon it would be able to come no closer; the gales of light on which it rode from star to star could not be faced so near their source. Unless it encountered a planet very soon, and could fall down into the peace and safety of its shadow, this sun must be abandoned as had so many before.

  Six cold outer worlds had already been searched and discarded. Either they were frozen beyond all hope of organic life, or else they harbored entities of types that were useless to the Swarm. If it was to survive, it must find hosts not too unlike those it had left on its doomed and distant home. Millions of years ago the Swarm had begun its journey, swept starward by the fires of its own exploding sun. Yet even now the memory of its lost birthplace was still sharp and clear, an ache that would never die.

  There was a planet ahead, swinging its cone of shadow through the flame-swept night. The senses that the Swarm had developed upon its long journey reached out toward the approaching world, reached out and found it good.

  The merciless buffeting of radiation ceased as the black disc of the planet eclipsed the sun. Falling freely under gravity, the Swarm dropped swiftly until it hit the outer fringe of the atmosphere. The first time it had made planetfall it had almost met its doom, but now it contracted its tenuous substance with the unthinking skill of long practice, until it formed a tiny, close-knit sphere. Slowly its velocity slackened, until at last it was floating motionles
s between earth and sky.

  For many years it rode the winds of the stratosphere from Pole to Pole, or let the soundless fusillades of dawn blast it westward from the rising sun. Everywhere it found life, but nowhere intelligence. There were things that crawled and flew and leaped, but there were no things that talked or built. Ten million years hence there might be creatures here with minds that the Swarm could possess and guide for its own purposes; there was no sign of them now. It could not guess which of the countless life-forms on this planet would be the heir to the future, and without such a host it was helpless—a mere pattern of electric charges, a matrix of order and self-awareness in a universe of chaos. By its own resources the Swarm had no control over matter, yet once it had lodged in the mind of a sentient race there was nothing that lay beyond its powers.

  It was not the first time, and it would not be the last, that the planet had been surveyed by a visitant from space— though never by one in such peculiar and urgent need. The Swarm was faced with a tormenting dilemma. It could begin its weary travels once more, hoping that ultimately it might find the conditions it sought, or it could wait here on this world, biding its time until a race had arisen which would fit its purpose.

  It moved like mist through the shadows, letting the vagrant winds take it where they willed. The clumsy, ill-formed reptiles of this young world never saw its passing, but it observed them, recording, analyzing, trying to extrapolate into the future. There was so little to choose between all these creatures; not one showed even the first faint glimmerings of conscious mind. Yet if it left this world in search of another, it might roam the Universe in vain until the end of time.

  At last it made its decision. By its very nature, it could choose both alternatives. The greater part of the Swarm would continue its travels among the stars, but a portion of it would remain on this world, like a seed planted in the hope of future harvest.