Clarke, Arthur C - SSC 04 (8 page)

           
There’s no need to tell how I
juggled duty lists, cooked logs and fuel registers, and persuaded my colleagues
to cover up for me. All that matters is that, about once a week, I would climb
into my personal space suit, strap myself to the spidery framework of a Mark
III Scooter, and drift away from the station at minimum power. When I was well
clear, I’d go over to full throttle, and the tiny rocket motor would hustle me
across the nine-hundred-mile gap to the observatory.

           
The trip took about thirty minutes,
and the navigational requirements were elementary. I could see where I was
going and where I’d come from, yet I don’t mind admitting that I often felt –
well, a trifle lonely – around the mid-point of the journey. There was no other
solid matter within almost five hundred miles – and it looked an awfully long
way down to Earth. It was a great help, at such moments, to tune the suit radio
to the general service band, and to listen to all the back-chat between ships
and stations.

           
At midflight I’d have to spin the
scooter around and start braking, and ten minutes later the observatory would
be close enough for its details to be visible to the unaided eye. Very shortly
after that I’d drift up to a small, plastic pressure bubble that was in the
process of being fitted out as a spectroscopic laboratory – and there would be
Julie, waiting on the other side of the air lock …

           
I won’t pretend that we confined our
discussions to the latest results in astrophysics, or the progress of the
satellite construction schedule. Few things, indeed, were further from our
thoughts; and the journey home always seemed to flash by at a quite astonishing
speed.

           
It was around mid-orbit on one of
those homeward trips that the radar started to flash on my little control
panel. There was something large at extreme range, and it was coming in fast. A
meteor, I told myself – maybe even a small asteroid. Anything giving such a
signal should be visible to the eye: I read off the bearings and searched the
star fields in the indicated direction. The thought of a collision never even
crossed my mind; space is so inconceivably vast that I was thousands of times
safer than a man crossing a busy street on Earth.

           
There it was – a bright and steadily
growing star near the foot of Orion. It already outshone Rigel, and seconds
later it was not merely a star, but had begun to show a visible disc. Now it
was moving as fast as I could turn my head; it grew to a tiny misshaped moon,
then dwindled and shrank with that same silent, inexorable speed.

           
I suppose I had a clear view of it
for perhaps half a second, and that half-second has haunted me all my life. The
– object – had already vanished by the time I thought of checking the radar
again, so I had no way of gauging how close it came, and hence how large it
really was. It could have been a small object a hundred feet away – or a very
large one, ten miles off. There is no sense of perspective in space, and unless
you know what you are looking at, you cannot judge its distance.

           
Of course, it
could
have been a very large and oddly shaped meteor; I can never
be sure that my eyes, straining to grasp the details of so swiftly moving an
object, were not hopelessly deceived. I may have imagined that I saw that
broken, crumpled prow, and the cluster of dark ports like the sightless sockets
of a skull. Of one thing only was I certain, even in that brief and fragmentary
vision. If it
was
a ship, it was not
one of ours. Its shape was utterly alien, and it was very, very old.

           
It may be that the greatest
discovery of all time slipped from my grasp as I struggled with my thoughts
midway between the two space stations. But I had no measurements of speed or
direction; whatever it was that I had glimpsed was now lost beyond recapture in
the wastes of the solar system.

           
What should I have done? No one
would ever have believed me, for I would have had no proof. Had I made a
report, there would have been endless trouble. I should have become the
laughingstock of the Space Service, would have been reprimanded for misuse of
equipment – and would certainly not have been able to see Julie again. And to
me, at that age, nothing else was as important. If you’ve been in love
yourself, you’ll understand; if not, then no explanation is any use.

           
So I said nothing. To some other man
(how many centuries hence?) will go the fame for proving that we were not the
first-born of the children of the sun. Whatever it may be that is circling out
there on its eternal orbit can wait, as it has waited ages already.

           
Yet I sometimes wonder. Would I have
made a report, after all – had I known that Julie was going to marry someone
else?

           
Down there on Earth the twentieth
century is dying. As I look across at the shadowed globe blocking the stars, I
can see the lights of a hundred sleepless cities, and there are moments when I
wish that I could be among the crowds now surging and singing in the streets of
London, Capetown, Rome, Paris, Berlin, Madrid … Yes, I can see them all at a
single glance, burning like fireflies against the darkened planet. The line of
midnight
is now bisecting
Europe
: in the eastern
Mediterranean
a tiny, brilliant star is pulsing as some
exuberant pleasure ship waves her searchlights to the sky. I think she is
deliberately aiming at us; for the past few minutes the flashes have been quite
regular and startlingly bright. Presently I’ll call the communications centre
and find out who she is, so that I can radio back our own greetings.

           
Passing into history now, receding
forever down the stream of time, is the most incredible hundred years the world
has ever seen. It opened with the conquest of the air, saw at its mid-point the
unlocking of the atom – and now ends with the bridging of space.

           
(For the past five minutes I’ve been
wondering what’s happening to
Nairobi
; now I realise that they are putting on a
mammoth fireworks display. Chemically fuelled rockets may be obsolete out here
– but they’re still using lots of them down on Earth tonight.)

           
The end of a century – and the end
of a millennium. What will the hundred years that begin with two and zero
bring? The planets, of course; floating there in space, only a mile away, are
the ships of the first Martian expedition. For two years I have watched them
grow, assembled piece by piece, as the space station itself was built by the
men I worked with a generation ago.

           
Those ten ships are ready now, with
all their crews aboard, waiting for the final instrument check and the signal
for departure. Before the first day of the new century has passed its noon,
they will be tearing free from the reins of Earth, to head out toward the
strange world that may one day be man’s second home.

           
As I look at the brave little fleet
that is now preparing to challenge infinity, my mind goes back forty years, to
the days when the first satellites were launched and the moon still seemed very
far away. And I remember – indeed, I have never forgotten – my father’s fight
to keep me down on Earth.

           
There were not many weapons he had
failed to use. Ridicule had been the first: ‘Of course they can do it,’ he had
sneered, ‘but what’s the point? Who wants to go out into space while there’s so
much to be done here on Earth? There’s not a single planet in the solar system
where men can live. The moon’s a burnt-out slag heap, and everywhere else is
even worse.
This
is where we were
meant to live.’

           
Even then (I must have been eighteen
or so at the time) I could tangle him up in points of logic. I can remember
answering, ‘How do you know where we were meant to live, Dad? After all, we
were in the sea for about a billion years before we decided to tackle the land.
Now we’re making the next big jump: I don’t know where it will lead – nor did
that first fish when it crawled up on the beach, and started to sniff the air.’

           
So when he couldn’t outargue me, he
had tried subtler pressures. He was always talking about the dangers of space
travel, and the short working life of anyone foolish enough to get involved in
rocketry. At that time, people were still scared of meteors and cosmic rays;
like the ‘Here Be Dragons’ of the old map makers, they were the mythical
monsters on the still-blank celestial charts. But they didn’t worry me; if
anything, they added the spice of danger to my dreams.

           
While I was going through college,
Father was comparatively quiet. My training would be valuable whatever
profession I took up in later life, so he could not complain – though he
occasionally grumbled about the money I wasted buying all the books and
magazines on astronautics that I could find. My college record was good, which naturally
pleased him; perhaps he did not realise that it would also help me to get my
way.

           
All through my final year I had
avoided talking of my plans. I had even given the impression (though I am sorry
for that now) that I had abandoned my dream of going into space. Without saying
anything to him, I put in my application to Astrotech, and was accepted as soon
as I had graduated.

           
The storm broke when that long blue
envelope with the embossed heading ‘Institute of Astronautical Technology’
dropped into the mailbox. I was accused of deceit and ingratitude, and I do not
think I ever forgave my father for destroying the pleasure I should have felt
at being chosen for the most exclusive – and most glamorous – apprenticeship
the world has ever known.

           
The vacations were an ordeal; had it
not been for Mother’s sake, I do not think I would have gone home more than
once a year, and I always left again as quickly as I could. I had hoped that
Father would mellow as my training progressed and as he accepted the inevitable,
but he never did.

           
Then had come that stiff and awkward
parting at the spaceport, with the rain streaming down from leaden skies and
beating against the smooth walls of the ship that seemed so eagerly waiting to
climb into the eternal sunlight beyond the reach of storms. I know now what it
cost my father to watch the machine he hated swallow up his only son: for I
understand many things today that were hidden from me then.

           
He knew, even as we parted at the
ship, that he would never see me again. Yet his old, stubborn pride kept him
from saying the only words that might have held me back. I knew that he was
ill, but how ill, he had told no one. That was the only weapon he had not used
against me, and I respect him for it.

           
Would I have stayed had I known? It
is even more futile to speculate about the unchangeable past than the
unforeseeable future; all I can say now is that I am glad I never had to make
the choice. At the end he let me go; he gave up his fight against my ambition,
and a little while later his fight with Death.

           
So I said goodbye to Earth, and to
the father who loved me but knew no way to say it. He lies down there on the
planet I can cover with my hand; how strange it is to think that of the
countless billion human beings whose blood runs in my veins, I was the very
first to leave his native world …

           
The new day is breaking over Asia; a
hairline of fire is rimming the eastern edge of Earth. Soon it will grow into a
burning crescent as the sun comes up out of the Pacific – yet Europe is
preparing for sleep, except for those revellers who will stay up to greet the
dawn.

           
And now, over there by the flagship,
the ferry rocket is coming back for the last visitors from the station. Here
comes the message I have been waiting for: CAPTAIN STEVENS PRESENTS HIS
COMPLIMENTS TO THE STATION COMMANDER. BLAST-OFF WILL BE IN NINETY MINUTES; HE
WILL BE GLAD TO SEE YOU ABOARD NOW.