Collected Stories Of Arthur C. Clarke (195 page)

Shortly before the end, they encountered an energy crisis, partly triggered by their enormous physical size and violent activity. For a while, the widespread use of uranium fission and hydrogen fusion postponed the inevitable. Then, driven by necessity, they made desperate attempts to find superior alternatives. After several false starts, involving low-temperature nuclear reactions of scientific interest but no practical value, they succeeded in tapping the quantum fluctuations that occur at the very foundations of space-time. This gave them access to a virtually infinite source of energy.

What happened next is still a matter of conjecture. It may have been an industrial accident, or an attempt by one of their many competing organisations to gain advantage over another. In any event, by mishandling the ultimate forces of the Universe, they triggered a cataclysm which detonated their own planet – and, very shortly afterwards, its single large moon.

Although the annihilation of any intelligent beings should be deplored, it is impossible to feel much regret in this particular case. The history of these huge creatures contains countless episodes of violence, against their own species and the numerous others that occupied their planet. Whether they would have made the necessary transition – as we did, ages ago – from carbon- to germanium-based consciousness, has been the subject of much debate. It is quite surprising what they were able to achieve, as massive individual entities exchanging information at a pitiably low data rate – often by very short-range vibrations in their atmosphere!

They were apparently on the verge of developing the necessary technology that would have allowed them to abandon their clumsy, chemically fuelled bodies and thus achieve multiple connectivity: had they succeeded, they might well have been a serious danger to all the civilizations of our Local Cluster.

Let us ensure that such a situation never arises again.

Dedicated to Drs Pons and Fleischmann, Nobel laureates of the twenty-first century
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A Gollancz eBook

This Collection copyright © Arthur C. Clarke 2000
All rights reserved.

The right of Arthur C. Clarke to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in Great Britain in 2000 by
Victo r Gollancz
An imprint of Orion Books Ltd

This eBook first published in 2011 by Gollancz.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 575 09877 0

All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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