Clarke, Arthur C - SSC 04 (18 page)

‘Of course. It suits us fine, anyhow. Until
the next expedition’s ready, the moon’s all yours.’

I remembered that phrase, two weeks later,
as I watched the
Goddard
blast up into the sky toward the distant,
beckoning Earth. It was lonely, then, when the Americans and all but two of the
Russians had gone. We envied them the reception they got, and watched jealously
on the TV screens their triumphant processions through Moscow and New York.
Then we went back to work, and bided our time. Whenever we felt depressed, we
would do little sums on bits of paper and would be instantly restored to
cheerfulness.

The red crosses marched across the calendar
as the short terrestrial days went by – days that seemed to have very little
connection with the slow cycle of lunar time. At last we were ready; all the
instrument readings were taken, all the specimens and samples safely packed
away aboard the ship. The motors roared into life, giving us for a moment the
weight we would feel again when we were back in Earth’s gravity. Below us the
rugged lunar landscape, which we had grown to know so well, fell swiftly away;
within seconds we could see no sign at all of the buildings and instruments we
had so laboriously erected and which future explorers would one day use.

The homeward voyage had begun. We returned
to Earth in uneventful discomfort, joined the already half-dismantled
Goddard
beside Space Station Three, and were quickly ferried down to the world we had
left seven months before.

Seven months
: that, as Williams had pointed out, was the
all-important figure. We had been on the moon for more than half a financial
year – and for all of us, it had been the most profitable year of our lives.

Sooner or later, I suppose, this
interplanetary loop-hole will be plugged; the Department of Inland Revenue is
still fighting a gallant rear-guard action, but we seem neatly covered under
Section 57, paragraph 8 of the Capital Gains Act of 1972. We wrote our books
and articles on the moon – and until there’s a lunar government to impose
income tax, we’re hanging on to every penny.

And if the ruling finally goes against us –
well, there’s always Mars….

First published in
London Evening News
, 1953

Collected in
The Other Side of the Sky

For the first few decades after the Martians lowered New Jersey real
estate values [referrring to Orson Welles’ famous
War of the Worlds
broadcast], benevolent aliens were few and far between, perhaps the most
notable example being Klaatu in
The Day The Earth Stood Still
. Yet
nowadays, largely thanks to
E.T
., friendly and even cuddly aliens are
taken almost for granted. Where does the truth lie? …

Of course, hostile and malevolent aliens make for much more exciting stories
than benevolent ones. Moreover, the Things You Wouldn’t Like to Meet of the
1950s and 1960s, as has often been pointed out, were reflections of the
paranoia of that time, particularly in the United States. Now the Cold War has,
hopefully, given way to the Tepid Truce, we may look at the skies with less
apprehensions.

For we have already met Darth Vader – and he is us.

The concussion of the last atom bomb still
seemed to linger as the lights came on again. For a long time, no one moved.
Then the assistant producer said innocently: ‘Well, R.B., what do you think of
it?’

R.B. heaved himself out of his seat while
his acolytes waited to see which way the cat would jump. It was then that they
noticed that R.B.’s cigar had gone out. Why, that hadn’t happened even at the
preview of ‘G.W.T.W.’!

‘Boys,’ he said ecstatically, ‘we’ve got
something here! How much did you say it cost, Mike?’

‘Six and a half million, R.B.’

‘It was cheap at the price. Let me tell you,
I’ll eat every foot of it if the gross doesn’t beat “Quo Vadis”.’ He wheeled,
as swiftly as could be expected for one of his bulk, upon a small man still
crouched in his seat at the back of the projection room. ‘Snap out of it, Joe!
The Earth’s saved! You’ve seen all these space films. How does this line up
with the earlier ones?’

Joe came to with an obvious effort.

‘There’s no comparison,’ he said. ‘It’s got
all the suspense of “The Thing”, without that awful let down at the end when
you saw the monster was human. The only picture that comes within miles of it
is “War of the Worlds”. Some of the effects in that were nearly as good as
ours, but of course George Pal didn’t have 3D. And that sure makes a
difference! When the Golden Gate Bridge went down, I thought that pier was
going to hit me!’

‘The bit I liked best,’ put in Tony Auerbach
from Publicity, ‘was when the Empire State Building split right up the middle.
You don’t suppose the owners might sue us, though?’

‘Of course not. No one expects
any
building to stand up to – what did the script call them? – city busters. And
after all, we wiped out the rest of New York as well. Ugh – that scene in the
Holland Tunnel when the roof gave way! Next time, I’ll take the ferry!’

‘Yes, that was very well done – almost
too
well done. But what really got me was those creatures from space. The animation
was perfect – how did you do it, Mike?’

‘Trade secret,’ said the proud producer.
‘Still, I’ll let you in on it. A lot of that stuff is genuine.’

‘What!’

‘Oh, don’t get me wrong! We haven’t been on
location to Sirius B. But they’ve developed a microcamera over at Cal Tech, and
we used that to film spiders in action. We cut in the best shots, and I think
you’d have a job telling which was micro and which was the full-sized studio
stuff. Now you understand why I wanted the Aliens to be insects, and not
octopuses, like the script said first.’

‘There’s a good publicity angle here,’ said
Tony. ‘One thing worries me, though. That scene where the monsters kidnap
Gloria. Do you suppose the censor … I mean the way we’ve done it, it almost
looks …’

‘Aw, quit worrying!
That’s
what
people are supposed to think! Anyway, we make it clear in the next reel that
they really want her for dissection, so that’s all right.’

‘It’ll be a riot!’ gloated R.B., a faraway
gleam in his eye as if he was already hearing the avalanche of dollars pouring
into the box office. ‘Look – we’ll put another mllion into publicity! I can
just see the posters – get all this down, Tony. WATCH THE SKY! THE SIRIANS ARE
COMING! And we’ll make thousands of clockwork models – can’t you imagine them
scuttling around on their hairy legs! People love to be scared, and we’ll scare
them. By the time we’ve finished, no one will be able to look at the sky
without getting the creeps! I leave it to you, boys – this picture is going to
make
history
!’

He was right. ‘Monsters from Space’ hit the
public two months later. Within a week of the simultaneous London and New York
premières
,
there could have been no one in the western world who had not seen the posters
screaming EARTH BEWARE! or had not shuddered at the photograph of the hairy
horrors stalking along deserted Fifth Avenue on their thin, many-jointed legs.
Blimps cleverly disguised as spaceships cruised across the skies, to the vast
confusion of pilots who encountered them, and clockwork models of the Alien
invaders were everywhere, scaring old ladies out of their wits.

The publicity campaign was brilliant, and
the picture would undoubtedly have run for months had it not been for a
coincidence as disastrous as it was unforeseeable. While the number of people
fainting at each performance was still news, the skies of Earth filled suddenly
with long, lean shadows sliding swiftly through the clouds….

Prince Zervashni was good-natured but
inclined to be impetuous – a well-known failing of his race. There was no
reason to suppose that his present mission, that of making peaceful contact
with the planet Earth, would present any particular problems. The correct
technique of approach had been thoroughly worked out over many thousands of
years, as the Third Galactic Empire slowly expanded its frontiers, absorbing
planet after planet, sun upon sun. There was seldom any trouble: really
intelligent races can always co-operate, once they have got over the initial
shock of learning that they are not alone in the universe.

It was true that humanity had emerged from
its primitive, warlike stage only within the last generation. This however, did
not worry Prince Zervashni’s chief adviser, Sigisnin II, Professor of
Astropolitics.

‘It’s a perfectly typical Class E culture,’
said the professor. ‘Technically advanced, morally rather backward. However,
they are already used to the conception of space flight, and will soon take us
for granted. The normal precautions will be sufficient until we have won their
confidence.’

‘Very well,’ said the prince. ‘Tell the
envoys to leave at once.’

It was unfortunate that the ‘normal
precautions’ did not allow for Tony Auerbach’s publicity campaign, which had
now reached new heights of interplanetary xenophobia. The ambassadors landed in
New York’s Central Park on the very day that a prominent astronomer, unusually
hard up and therefore amenable to infuence, announced in a widely reported
interview that any visitors from space probably would be unfriendly.

The luckless ambassadors, heading for the
United Nations Building, had got as far south as 60th Street when they met the
mob. The encounter was very one-sided, and the scientists at the Museum of
Natural History were most annoyed that there was so little left for them to examine.

Prince Zervashni tried once more, on the
other side of the planet, but the news had got there first. This time the
ambassadors were armed, and gave a good account of themselves before they were
overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Even so, it was not until the rocket bombs
started climbing up toward his fleet that the prince finally lost his temper
and decided to take drastic action.

It was all over in twenty minutes, and was
really quite painless. Then the prince turned to his adviser and said, with
considerable understatement: ‘That appears to be that. And now – can you tell
me exactly what went wrong?’

Sigisnin II knitted his dozen flexible
fingers together in acute anguish. It was not only the spectacle of the neatly
disinfected Earth that distressed him, though to a scientist the destruction of
such a beautiful specimen is always a major tragedy. At least equally upsetting
was the demolition of his theories and, with them, his reputation.

‘I just don’t understand it!’ he lamented.
‘Of course, races at this level of culture are often suspicious and nervous
when contact is first made. But they’d never had visitors before, so there was
no reason for them to be hostile.’

‘Hostile! They were demons! I think they
were all insane.’ The prince turned to his captain, a tripedal creature who
looked rather like a ball of wool balanced on three knitting needles.

‘Is the fleet reassembled?’

‘Yes, Sire.’

‘Then we will return to Base at optimum
speed. This planet depresses me.’

On the dead and silent Earth, the posters
still screamed their warnings from a thousand hoardings. The malevolent
insectile shapes shown pouring from the skies bore no resemblance at all to
Prince Zervashni, who apart from his four eyes might have been mistaken for a
panda with purple fur – and who, moreover, had come from Rigel, not Sirius.

But, of course, it was now much too late to
point this out.

First published in
Startling Stories
, July 1952

Collected in
The Other Side of the Sky

This was my first story ever to be adapted for TV – ABC, 13 June 1952.
Although I worked on the script, I have absolutely no recollection of the
programme, and can’t imagine how it was produced in pre-video-tape days!

When the quiet knock came on the door,
Robert Ashton surveyed the room in one swift, automatic movement. Its dull
respectability satisfied him and should reassure any visitor. Not that he had
any reason to expect the police, but there was no point in taking chances.

‘Come in,’ he said, pausing only to grab
Plato’s
Dialogues
from the shelf beside him. Perhaps this gesture was a
little too ostentatious, but it always impressed his clients.

The door opened slowly. At first, Ashton
continued his intent reading, not bothering to glance up. There was the
slightest acceleration of his heart, a mild and even exhilarating constriction
of the chest. Of course, it couldn’t possibly be a flatfoot: someone would have
tipped him off. Still, any unheralded visitor was unusual and thus potentially
dangerous.