Collected Stories Of Arthur C. Clarke (64 page)

Yes, John was quite right. It was too good a chance to miss, and if she didn’t go now, it might be ages before she would see him again. She turned to the anxiously waiting family and said with a smile, ‘I’ve got some news for you.’

In the ordinary way, a Transatlantic crossing would have been quite an excitement for Daphne and Michael, since it was something they had done only two or three times before in their lives. Now, however, they regarded the two hours’ flight from London Airport to New York as merely an unimportant episode, and occupied most of the time talking about the Moon clearly enough to impress the other passengers.

They spent only an hour in New York before flying on across the Continent, steadily gaining on the sun, until when they finally swept down over the great Arizona desert it was, by the clock, a couple of hours
before
the time they had left the flat that same morning.

From the air, the space-port was an impressive sight. Looking through the observation windows, Daphne could see, spread out below, the great steel frameworks supporting the slim, torpedo-shaped monsters that would soon go roaring up to the stars. Everywhere were huge, gasometer-like fuel-tanks, radio aerials pointing at the sky, and mysterious buildings and structures whose purpose she couldn’t even guess.

Through all this maze tiny figures scurried to and fro, and vehicles looking like metallic beetles rolled swiftly along the roads.

Daphne belonged to the first generation that had taken space-travel for granted. The Moon had been reached almost thirty years ago – twelve years before she was born – and she could just remember the excitement when the first expeditions had landed on Mars and Venus.

In her short life she had seen Man set out to conquer space, just as, hundreds of years before, Columbus and the great explorers of the Middle Ages had discovered the world. The first stages of the conquest were now over. Small colonies of scientists had been established on Mars and Venus, and on the Moon the great Lunar Observatory, of which Professor Martin was director, had now become the centre of all astronomical research.

On the Moon’s silent, lonely plains, beneath velvet skies, in which the stars shone brilliantly night and day, with never the least trace of cloud to dim them, the astronomers could work at last under perfect conditions, unhindered by the obscuring atmosphere against which they had always had to fight on Earth.

The next two hours they spent in the space-port’s headquarters building, being weighed, medically examined and filling up forms. When this was all over, and they were beginning to wonder if the whole thing was really worth while, they found themselves in a small, comfortable office, looking across a desk at a rather jolly, plump man, who seemed to be someone very important.

‘Well, Mrs Martin,’ he said cheerfully, ‘I’m glad to say you’re all in excellent health and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t leave in the
Centaurus
when she takes off. I hope all these examinations haven’t scared you. There is really nothing dangerous about space-flight, but we mustn’t take any chances.

‘As you know, a space-ship takes off rather quickly and for a few minutes you feel as if you weigh a ton – but if you’re lying down comfortably that won’t do you any harm, as long as you don’t suffer from certain kinds of heart trouble. Then, when you’re out in space, you won’t have any weight at all, which will feel very odd at first. That used to cause space-sickness in the early days, but we can prevent it now. You’ll be given a couple of tablets to swallow just before take-off. So there’s nothing to worry about, and I’m sure you’ll have a pleasant voyage.’

He looked at his littered desk and sighed deeply. ‘I wish
I
had time to go up myself. I’ve only been off Earth once in the last two years!’

‘Who was that?’ asked Daphne, as the waiting bus whisked them away across the desert.

‘That was the Controller of the Space Fleet,’ said her mother.

‘What!’ exclaimed Michael. ‘He runs all these space-ships and never gets a chance to fly in them?’

Mrs Martin smiled. ‘I’m afraid it’s often that way. Daddy says he’s too busy to look through a telescope nowadays!’

They had now left the built-up area and were racing along a wide road with nothing but desert on either side. About a mile ahead they could see the great streamlined shape of the
Centaurus
, the space-ship that was to take them to the Moon. The giant rocket was standing vertically on a concrete platform, with cranes and scaffolding grouped around it, and its needle-shaped prow pointing to the sky. Even from this distance it looked enormous – Daphne thought it must be almost as tall as Nelson’s column – and with the sunlight glinting on its metal sides it was a beautiful as well as an impressive sight.

The closer they came, the larger it seemed to grow, until when they had reached its base they appeared to be standing at the foot of a great curving metal cliff. A tall gantry had been moved up to the side of the rocket, and they were directed into the maze of girders until they came to a tiny lift just big enough to hold the three of them. There was the whirring of motors, the ground began to drop away, and the gleaming walls of the space-ship slid swiftly past.

It seemed a long way up to the cabin at the nose of the rocket. Daphne paused once on the little gangway leading into the space-ship, and looked down at the ground below and the people standing around, their upturned faces white blobs far beneath. She felt rather giddy, then pulled herself together as she realised she had travelled only the first hundred feet or so of her 240,000–mile journey.

The pilot and navigator were already waiting for them in the little cabin with its mass of complicated machinery and its thickly padded couches. These were wonderfully comfortable and Michael began to bounce up and down on his until reprimanded.

‘Just lie down flat,’ said the pilot. ‘Swallow this pill – you won’t taste it – and take things easy. You’ll feel very heavy when we start, but it won’t hurt and doesn’t last long. One other thing – don’t try to get up until I tell you. Now, we’ve got just ten minutes before we start, so relax.’

It wasn’t as easy as all that, Daphne found. That ten minutes seemed to last for ever. She explored the little cabin with her eyes, wondering how anyone could
ever
learn what all those gadgets and controls were for. Just suppose the pilot made a mistake and pressed the wrong button …

Mother smiled at her reassuringly from the next couch, while Michael was obviously so intrigued by all the machinery that he hated having to lie down at all.

Daphne gave a jump when suddenly an electric motor started to whirr very close at hand. Then things began to happen all over the place. Switches clicked, powerful pumps began to whine, and valves snapped open down in the heart of the great rocket.

Each time she thought, ‘This is it!’, but still they didn’t move. When the voyage finally began, she wasn’t prepared for it.

A long way off, it seemed, there was a noise like a thousand waterfalls, or a thunderstorm in which the crashes followed each other so quickly that there was no moment of silence between them. The rockets had started, but were not yet delivering enough power to lift the ship.

Quickly the roar mounted, the cabin began to vibrate, and the
Centaurus
began to ascend from the desert, spraying the sands with flame for a hundred yards around. To Daphne, it seemed that something was pushing her down, quite gently, into the thick padding of the couch. It wasn’t at all uncomfortable, but the pressure mounted until her limbs seemed to be made of lead and it needed a deliberate effort to keep breathing.

She tried to lift her hand, and the effort to move it even a few inches was so tiring that she let it drop back on the couch. After that, she just lay limp and relaxed, waiting to see what would happen next. She wasn’t really frightened – it was too exciting for that, this feeling of infinite power sweeping her up into the sky.

There was a sudden fall in the thunder of the rockets, the feeling of immense weight ebbed away, and she could breathe more easily. Power was being reduced: they had almost escaped the Earth’s grip. A moment later silence came flooding back as the last of the motors was cut out, and all feeling of weight vanished completely.

*

For several minutes the pilot conferred with his navigator, checking instruments and figures. Then he swung round in his seat, smiled at the passengers and said, ‘That wasn’t so bad, was it? We’ve reached escape velocity now – 25,000 miles an hour – and you won’t feel any weight again until we’re nearly at the Moon and we start the rockets to slow down.’

He rose from his seat, still holding on to it with one hand, and Daphne saw that both his feet were clear of the floor. Releasing his grip, he floated towards them like something in a slow-motion film. Daphne knew that this sort of thing happened in space, but it was weird to see it before her own eyes. And it was weirder still when it began to happen to
her
.

It was a long time before she got used to the idea that ‘up’ and ‘down’ simply didn’t have any meaning, and got the knack of gliding across the cabin without hitting the other side too hard, or colliding head-first with the walls. But it was such great fun that several minutes had passed before Daphne suddenly remembered what she must be missing, and dived towards the nearest of the little circular windows set in the wall of the ship.

She had expected to see Earth as a great globe hanging in space, with the seas and continents clearly visible – just like those globes you see in map-sellers’ windows.

What she saw, however, was totally unexpected and so wonderful that it took away her breath. Almost filling the sky was a tremendous, blinding crescent, the shape of a new moon, but hundreds of times bigger. The rocket must have passed over the night side of Earth, and the greater part of the planet was in darkness.

But presently, as she stared at that great shadowy circle eclipsing the stars, she could see here and there upon its face tiny patches of light, and knew that she was looking down upon the cities of mankind, shining like fireflies in the night.

It was several minutes before she could tear her eyes away from that huge crescent and the disc of darkness it embraced. As she watched, the crescent slowly narrowed, for the space-ship was still speeding into the shadow of the Earth. For a few minutes the sun would be totally eclipsed before the
Centaurus
came racing out into the light again, and only the Moon and the stars would be visible.

The Moon! Where was it? She moved to another window, and there it was, still looking just the same as she had always seen it from Earth. Of course, it wouldn’t be any bigger yet: the journey had scarcely begun. But in the next two days it would slowly grow until it filled the sky and they were dropping down towards its shining mountains and great, dusty plains – towards that strange and silent world that had now become Man’s first stepping-stone on the road to the stars. What would it be like? Who would she meet? Daphne’s excitement was so great that she felt certain this was one night when sleep would be impossible.

It was a lovely dream. Daphne was flying – gliding effortlessly over the ground, able to move as freely as a bird in whatever direction she pleased. She had experienced such dreams before, of course, but they had never been as vivid as this, and even the fact that, somehow, she
knew
she was dreaming, did not destroy the beautiful illusion.

A sudden jolt broke the spell of sleep and dragged her back to reality. She opened her eyes, stretched herself – and gave a shriek of pure terror. There was darkness all around, and wherever she reached she could feel nothing at all, only the empty air. The dream had turned suddenly to a nightmare: she was in truth floating in space, but helpless, without any power of movement …

The cabin light came on with a ‘click’ and the rocket pilot pushed his head through the curtains round the door.

‘What’s the fuss?’ he said. Then he shook his head reprimandingly. ‘There! And after all my warnings!’

Daphne felt very sheepish. It was her own fault, of course. She had loosened the broad elastic bands that held her in the bunk, and while she had been sleeping she must have gently drifted out into the room. Now she was floating in mid-air, slowly revolving, but unable to move in any direction.

‘I’ve got a good mind to leave you there as an object lesson,’ said the pilot. But his eyes were twinkling as he grabbed a pillow from the empty bunk. ‘Catch!’ he said.

The gentle impact set Daphne moving again, and a moment later she had reached the wall and was no longer helpless. Mrs Martin and Michael had now awakened and were rubbing their eyes sleepily.

‘We’re landing in an hour,’ the pilot explained. ‘We’ll have breakfast in a few minutes, and then I suggest you go to the observation windows and make yourselves comfortable.’

Breakfast was soon finished. In space, because the absence of gravity reduced physical effort to a minimum, one never had much appetite. Even Michael was satisfied with two pieces of toast and a quarter pint of milk, stored in a flexible container so that it could be squirted straight into the mouth simply by squeezing.

Pouring liquids was, of course, impossible where there was neither ‘up’ nor ‘down’. Any attempt to do so would simply have resulted in a very large drop drifting through the air until it reached the wall and spattered over everything.