Clarke, Arthur C - SSC 04 (12 page)

‘We had to do it,’ said Brayldon sadly, ‘but
I did not wish to see my work destroyed.’

Grayle nodded in sympathy.

‘I understand,’ he said.

Shervane ran his eye up the long flight of
steps on which no feet would ever tread again. He felt few regrets: he had
striven, and no one could have done more. Such victory as was possible had been
his.

Slowly he raised his hand and gave the
signal. The Wall swallowed the explosion as it had absorbed all other sounds,
but the unhurried grace with which the long tiers of masonry curtsied and fell
was something he would remember all his life. For a moment he had a sudden,
inexpressibly poignant vision of another stairway, watched by another Shervane,
falling in identical ruins on the far side of the Wall.

But that, he realised, was a foolish
thought: for none knew better than he that the Wall possessed no other side.

First published in
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
,
June 1957

Collected in
The Other Side of the Sky

It is often said that in our age of assembly
lines and mass production there’s no room for the individual craftsman, the
artist in wood or metal who made so many of the treasures of the past. Like
most generalisations, this simply isn’t true. He’s rarer now, of course, but
he’s certainly not extinct. He has often had to change his vocation, but in his
modest way he still flourishes. Even on the island of Manhattan he may be
found, if you know where to look for him. Where rents are low and fire
regulations unheard of, his minute, cluttered workshops may be discovered in
the basements of apartment houses or in the upper storeys of derelict shops. He
may no longer make violins or cuckoo clocks or music boxes, but the skills he
uses are the same as they always were, and no two objects he creates are ever
identical. He is not contemptuous of mechanisation: you will find several
electric hand tools under the debris on his bench. He has moved with the times:
he will always be around, the universal odd-job man who is never aware of it
when he makes an immortal work of art.

Hans Muller’s workshop consisted of a large
room at the back of a deserted warehouse, no more than a vigorous stone’s throw
from the Queensborough Bridge. Most of the building had been boarded up
awaiting demolition, and sooner or later Hans would have to move. The only
entrance was across a weed-covered yard used as a parking place during the day,
and much frequented by the local juvenile delinquents at night. They had never
given Hans any trouble, for he knew better than to cooperate with the police
when they made their periodic inquiries. The police fully appreciated his
delicate position and did not press matters, so Hans was on good terms with
everybody. Being a peaceable citizen, that suited him very well.

The work on which Hans was now engaged would
have deeply puzzled his Bavarian ancestors. Indeed, ten years ago it would have
puzzled Hans himself. And it had all started because a bankrupt client had
given him a TV set in payment for services rendered …

Hans had accepted the offer reluctantly, not
because he was old-fashioned and disapproved of TV, but simply because he
couldn’t imagine where he would find time to look at the darned thing. Still,
he thought, at least I can always sell it for fifty dollars. But before I do
that, let’s see what the programmes are like …

His hand had gone out to the switch: the
screen had filled with moving shapes – and, like millions of men before him,
Hans was lost. He entered a world he had not known existed – a world of
battling spaceships, of exotic planets and strange races – the world, in fact,
of Captain Zipp, Commander of the Space Legion.

Only when the tedious recital of the virtues
of Crunche, the Wonder Cereal, had given way to an almost equally tedious
boxing match between two muscle-bound characters who seemed to have signed a
nonaggression pact, did the magic fade. Hans was a simple man. He had always
been fond of fairy tales – and
this
was the modern fairy tale, with
trimmings of which the Grimm Brothers had never dreamed. So Hans did not sell
his TV set.

It was some weeks before the initial naïve,
uncritical enjoyment wore off. The first thing that began to annoy Hans was the
furniture and general décor in the world of the future. He was, as has been
indicated, an artist – and he refused to believe that in a hundred years taste
would have deteriorated as badly as the Crunche sponsors seemed to imagine.

He also thought very little of the weapons
that Captain Zipp and his opponents used. It was true that Hans did not pretend
to understand the principles upon which the portable proton disintegrator was
based, but however it worked, there was certainly no reason why it should be
that
clumsy. The clothes, the spaceship interiors – they just weren’t convincing.
How did he know? He had always possessed a highly developed sense of the
fitness of things, and it could still operate even in this novel field.

We have said that Hans was a simple man. He
was also a shrewd one, and he had heard that there was money in TV. So he sat
down and began to draw.

Even if the producer of Captain Zipp had not
lost patience with his set designer, Hans Muller’s ideas would certainly have
made him sit up and take notice. There was an authenticity and realism about
them that made them quite outstanding. They were completely free from the
element of phonyness that had begun to upset even Captain Zipp’s most juvenile
followers. Hans was hired on the spot.

He made his own conditions, however. What he
was doing he did largely for love, notwithstanding the fact that it was earning
him more money than anything he had ever done before in his life. He would take
no assistants, and would remain in his little workshop. All that he wanted to
do was to produce the prototypes, the basic designs. The mass production could
be done somewhere else – he was a craftsman, not a factory.

The arrangement had worked well. Over the
last six months Captain Zipp had been transformed and was now the despair of
all the rival space operas. This, his viewers thought, was not just a serial
about the future. It
was
the future – there was no argument about it.
Even the actors seemed to have been inspired by their new surroundings: off the
set, they sometimes behaved like twentieth-century time travellers stranded in
the Victorian Age, indignant because they no longer had access to the gadgets
that had always been part of their lives.

But Hans knew nothing about this. He toiled
happily away, refusing to see anyone except the producer, doing all his
business over the telephone – and watching the final result to ensure that his
ideas had not been mutilated. The only sign of his connection with the slightly
fantastic world of commercial TV was a crate of Crunche in one corner of the
workshop. He had sampled one mouthful of this present from the grateful sponsor
and had then remembered thankfully that, after all, he was not paid to eat the
stuff.

He was working late one Sunday evening,
putting the final touches to a new design for a space helmet, when he suddenly
realised that he was no longer alone. Slowly he turned from the workbench and
faced the door. It had been locked – how could it have been opened so silently?
There were two men standing beside it, motionless, watching him. Hans felt his
heart trying to climb into his gullet, and summoned up what courage he could to
challenge them. At least, he felt thankfully, he had little money here. Then he
wondered if, after all, this was a good thing. They might be annoyed …

‘Who are you?’ he asked. ‘What are you doing
here?’

One of the men moved toward him while the
other remained watching alertly from the door. They were both wearing very new
overcoats, with hats low down on their heads so that Hans could not see their
faces. They were too well dressed, he decided, to be ordinary holdup men.

‘There’s no need to be alarmed, Mr Muller,’
replied the nearer man, reading his thoughts without difficulty. ‘This isn’t a
holdup. It’s official. We’re from – Security.’

‘I don’t understand.’

The other reached into a portfolio he had
been carrying beneath his coat, and pulled out a sheaf of photographs. He
riffled through them until he had found the one he wanted.

‘You’ve given us quite a headache, Mr
Muller. It’s taken us two weeks to find you – your employers were so secretive.
No doubt they were anxious to hide you from their rivals. However, here we are
and I’d like you to answer some questions.’

‘I’m not a spy!’ answered Hans indignantly
as the meaning of the words penetrated. ‘You can’t do this! I’m a loyal
American citizen!’

The other ignored the outburst. He handed
over the photograph.

‘Do you recognise this?’ he said.

‘Yes. It’s the inside of Captain Zipp’s
spaceship.’

‘And you designed it?’

‘Yes.’

Another photograph came out of the file.

‘And what about this?’

‘That’s the Martian city of Paldar, as seen
from the air.’

‘Your own idea?’

‘Certainly,’ Hans replied, now too indignant
to be cautious.

‘And
this
?’

‘Oh, the proton gun. I was quite proud of
that.’

‘Tell me, Mr Muller – are these all your own
ideas?’

‘Yes,
I
don’t steal from other
people.’

His questioner turned to his companion and
spoke for a few minutes in a voice too low for Hans to hear. They seemed to
reach agreement on some point, and the conference was over before Hans could
make his intended grab at the telephone.

‘I’m sorry,’ continued the intruder. ‘But
there has been a serious leak. It may be – uh – accidental, even unconscious,
but that does not affect the issue. We will have to investigate you. Please
come with us.’

There was such power and authority in the
stranger’s voice that Hans began to climb into his overcoat without a murmur.
Somehow, he no longer doubted his visitors’ credentials and never thought of
asking for any proof. He was worried, but not yet seriously alarmed. Of course,
it was obvious what had happened. He remembered hearing about a science fiction
writer during the war who had described the atom bomb with disconcerting
accuracy. When so much secret research was going on, such accidents were bound
to occur. He wondered just what it was he had given away.

At the doorway, he looked back into his
workshop and at the men who were following him.

‘It’s all a ridiculous mistake,’ he said.
‘If I
did
show anything secret in the programme, it was just a
coincidence. I’ve never done anything to annoy the FBI.’

It was then that the second man spoke at
last, in very bad English and with a most peculiar accent.

‘What is the FBI?’ he asked.

But Hans didn’t hear him. He had just seen
the spaceship.

First published in
Time to Come
, ed. August Derleth, 1954

Collected in
The Other Side of the Sky

‘But this is terrible!’ said the Supreme
Scientist. ‘Surely there is
something
we can do!’

‘Yes, Your Cognisance, but it will be
extremely difficult. The planet is more than five hundred light-years away, and
it is very hard to maintain contact. However, we believe we can establish a
bridgehead. Unfortunately, that is not the only problem. So far, we have been
quite unable to communicate with these beings. Their telepathic powers are
exceedingly rudimentary – perhaps even nonexistent. And if we cannot talk to
them, there is no way in which we can help.’

There was a long mental silence while the
Supreme Scientist analysed the situation and arrived, as he always did, at the
correct answer.

‘Any intelligent race must have
some
telepathic individuals,’ he mused. ‘We must send out hundreds of observers,
tuned to catch the first hint of stray thought. When you find a single
responsive mind, concentrate all your efforts upon it. We
must
get our
message through.’

‘Very good, Your Cognisance. It shall be
done.’

Across the abyss, across the gulf which
light itself took half a thousand years to span, the questing intellects of the
planet Thaar sent out their tendrils of thought, searching desperately for a
single human being whose mind could perceive their presence. And as luck would
have it, they encountered William Cross.

At least they thought it was luck at the
time, though later they were not so sure. In any case, they had little choice.
The combination of circumstances that opened Bill’s mind to them lasted only
for seconds, and was not likely to occur again this side of eternity.