Collected Stories Of Arthur C. Clarke (158 page)

Tibor scarcely heard him, and never even glanced at the tiny spool of tape lying in Nick’s palm. He could not guess, in this moment beyond all feeling, that the Furies had yet to close in upon his soul – and that soon the whole world would be listening to an accusing voice from beyond the grave, branding him more irrevocably than any man since Cain.

Love that Universe

First published in
Escapade
, 1967

Collected in
The Wind from the Sun

Mr President, National Administrator, Planetary Delegates, it is both an honour and a grave responsibility to address you at this moment of crisis. I am aware – I can very well understand – that many of you are shocked and dismayed by some of the rumours that you have heard. But I must beg you to forget your natural prejudices at a time when the very existence of the human race –
of the Earth itself
– is at stake.

Some time ago I came across a century-old phrase: ‘thinking the unthinkable’. This is exactly what we have to do now. We must face the facts without flinching; we must not let our emotions sway our logic. Indeed, we must do the precise opposite:
we must let our logic sway our emotions!

The situation is desperate, but it is not hopeless, thanks to the astonishing discoveries my colleagues have made at the Antigean Station. For the reports are indeed true; we
can
establish contact with the supercivilisations at the Galactic Core. At least we can let them know of our existence – and if we can do that, it should be possible for us to appeal to them for help.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that we can do by our own efforts in the brief time available. It is only ten years since the search for trans-Plutonian planets revealed the presence of the Black Dwarf. Only ninety years from now, it will make its perihelion passage and swing around the Sun as it heads once more into the depths of space – leaving a shattered solar system behind it. All our resources, all our much-vaunted control over the forces of nature, cannot alter its orbit by a fraction of an inch.

But ever since the first of the so called ‘beacon stars’ was discovered, at the end of the twentieth century, we have known that there were civilisations with access to energy sources incomparably greater than ours. Some of you will doubtless recall the incredulity of the astronomers – and later of the whole human race – when the first examples of cosmic engineering were detected in the Magellanic Clouds. Here were stellar structures obeying no natural laws; even now, we do not know their purpose – but we know their awesome implications. We share a universe with creatures who can juggle with the very stars. If they choose to help, it would be child’s play for them to deflect a body like the Black Dwarf, only a few thousand times the mass of Earth…. Child’s play, did I call it? Yes, that may be
literally
true!

You will all, I am certain, remember the great debate that followed the discovery of the supercivilisations. Should we attempt to communicate with them, or would it be best to remain inconspicuous? There was the possibility, of course, that they already knew everything about us, or might be annoyed by our presumption, or might react in any number of unpleasant ways. Though the benefits from such contacts could be enormous, the risks were terrifying. But now we have nothing to lose, and everything to gain….

And until now, there was another fact that made the matter of no more than long-term philosophical interest. Though we could – at great expense – build radio transmitters capable of sending signals to these creatures, the nearest supercivilisation is seven thousand light-years away. Even if it bothered to reply, it would be fourteen thousand years before we could get an answer. In these circumstances, it seemed that our superiors could be neither a help to us nor a threat.

But now all this has changed. We can send signals to the stars at a speed that cannot yet be measured, and that may well be infinite. And we know that
they
are using such techniques – for we have detected their impulses, though we cannot begin to interpret them.

These impulses are not electromagnetic, of course. We do not know what they are; we do not even have a name for them. Or, rather, we have too many names….

Yes, gentlemen, there
is
something, after all, in the old wives’ tales about telepathy, ESP, or whatever you care to call it. But it is no wonder that the study of such phenomena never made any progress here on Earth, where there is the continuous background roar of a billion minds to swamp all signals. Even the pitiably limited progress that was made before the Space Age seems a miracle – like discovering the laws of music in a boiler factory. It was not until we could get away from our planet’s mental tumult that there was any hope of establishing a real science of parapsychology.

And even then we had to move to the other side of the Earth’s orbit, where the noise was not only diminished by a hundred and eighty million miles of distance, but also shielded by the unimaginable bulk of the Sun itself. Only there, on our artificial planetoid Antigeos, could we detect and measure the feeble radiations of mentality, and uncover their laws of propagation.

In many respects, those laws are still baffling. However, we have established the basic facts. As had long been suspected by the few who believed in these phenomena, they are triggered by emotional states – not by pure will-power or deliberate, conscious thought. It is not surprising, therefore, that so many reports of paranormal events in the past were associated with moments of death or disaster. Fear is a powerful generator; on rare occasions it can manifest itself above the surrounding noise.

Once this fact was recognised, we began to make progress. We induced artificial emotional states, first in single individuals, then in groups. We were able to measure how the signals attenuated with distance. Now, we have a reliable, quantitative theory that has been checked out as far as Saturn. We believe that our calculations can be extended even to the stars. If this is correct, we can produce a … a
shout
that will be heard instantly over the whole galaxy. And surely there will be someone who will respond!

Now there is only one way in which a signal of the required intensity can be produced. I said that fear was a powerful generator – but it is not powerful enough. Even if we could strike all humanity with a simultaneous moment of terror, the impulse could not be detected more than two thousand light-years away. We need at least four times this range. And we can achieve it –
by using the only emotion that is more powerful than fear
.

However, we also need the co-operation of not fewer than a billion individuals, at a moment of time that must be synchronized to the second. My colleagues have solved all the purely technical problems, which are really quite trivial. The simple electrostimulation devices required have been used in medical research since the early twentieth century, and the necessary timing pulse can be sent out over the planetary communications networks. All the units needed can be mass-produced within a month, and instruction in their use requires only a few minutes. It is the psychological preparation for – let us call it O Day – that will take a little longer….

And
that
, gentlemen, is your problem; naturally, we scientists will give you all possible help. We realise that there will be protests, cries of outrage, refusals to co-operate. But when one looks at the matter logically, is the idea really so offensive? Many of us think that, on the contrary, it has a certain appropriateness – even a poetic justice.

Mankind now faces its ultimate emergency. In such a moment of crisis, is it not right for us to call upon the instinct that has always ensured our survival in the past? A poet in an earlier, almost equally troubled age put it better than I can ever hope to do:

WE MUST LOVE ONE ANOTHER OR DIE.

Dog Star

First published in
Galaxy
, April 1962, as ‘Moondog’

Collected in
Tales of Ten Worlds

I can no longer bear to read this story, now that Laika sleeps forever in the garden of the home we once shared.

When I heard Laika’s frantic barking, my first reaction was one of annoyance. I turned over in my bunk and murmured sleepily, ‘Shut up, you silly bitch.’ That dreamy interlude lasted only a fraction of a second; then consciousness returned – and, with it, fear. Fear of loneliness, and fear of madness.

For a moment I dared not open my eyes; I was afraid of what I might see. Reason told me that no dog had ever set foot upon this world, that Laika was separated from me by a quarter of a million miles of space – and, far more irrevocably, five years of time.

‘You’ve been dreaming,’ I told myself angrily. ‘Stop being a fool – open your eyes! You won’t see anything except the glow of the wall paint.’

That was right, of course. The tiny cabin was empty, the door tightly closed. I was alone with my memories, overwhelmed by the transcendental sadness that often comes when some bright dream fades into drab reality. The sense of loss was so desolating that I longed to return to sleep. It was well that I failed to do so, for at that moment sleep would have been death. But I did not know this for another five seconds, and during that eternity I was back on Earth, seeking what comfort I could from the past.

No one ever discovered Laika’s origin, though the Observatory staff made a few enquiries and I inserted several advertisements in the Pasadena newspapers. I found her, a lost and lonely ball of fluff, huddled by the roadside one summer evening when I was driving up to Palomar. Though I have never liked dogs, or indeed any animals, it was impossible to leave this helpless little creature to the mercy of the passing cars. With some qualms, wishing that I had a pair of gloves, I picked her up and dumped her in the baggage compartment. I was not going to hazard the upholstery of my new ’92 Vik, and felt that she could do little damage there. In this, I was not altogether correct.

When I had parked the car at the Monastery – the astronomers’ residential quarters, where I’d be living for the next week – I inspected my find without much enthusiasm. At that stage, I had intended to hand the puppy over to the janitor; but then it whimpered and opened its eyes. There was such an expression of helpless trust in them that – well, I changed my mind.

Sometimes I regretted that decision, though never for long. I had no idea how much trouble a growing dog could cause, deliberately and otherwise. My cleaning and repair bills soared; I could never be sure of finding an unravaged pair of socks or an unchewed copy of the
Astrophysical Journal
. But eventually Laika was both house-trained and Observatory-trained: she must have been the only dog ever to be allowed inside the two-hundred-inch dome. She would lie there quietly in the shadows for hours, while I was up in the cage making adjustments, quite content if she could hear my voice from time to time. The other astronomers became equally fond of her (it was old Dr Anderson who suggested her name), but from the beginning she was my dog, and would obey no one else. Not that she would always obey me.

She was a beautiful animal, about ninety-five per cent Alsatian. It was that missing five per cent, I imagine, that led to her being abandoned. (I still feel a surge of anger when I think of it, but since I shall never know the facts, I may be jumping to false conclusions.) Apart from two dark patches over the eyes, most of her body was a smoky grey, and her coat was soft as silk. When her ears were pricked up, she looked incredibly intelligent and alert; sometimes I would be discussing spectral types or stellar evolution with my colleague, and it would be hard to believe that she was not following the conversation.

Even now, I cannot understand why she became so attached to me, for I have made very few friends among human beings. Yet when I returned to the Observatory after an absence, she would go almost frantic with delight, bouncing around on her hind legs and putting her paws on my shoulders – which she could reach quite easily – all the while uttering small squeaks of joy which seemed highly inappropriate from so large a dog. I hated to leave her for more than a few days at a time, and though I could not take her with me on overseas trips, she accompanied me on most of my shorter journeys. She was with me when I drove north to attend that ill-fated seminar at Berkeley.

We were staying with university acquaintances; they had been polite about it, but obviously did not look forward to having a monster in the house. However, I assured them that Laika never gave the slightest trouble, and rather reluctantly they let her sleep in the living room. ‘You needn’t worry about burglars tonight,’ I said. ‘We don’t have any in Berkeley,’ they answered, rather coldly.

In the middle of the night, it seemed that they were wrong. I was awakened by a hysterical, high-pitched barking from Laika which I had heard only once before – when she had first seen a cow, and did not know what on earth to make of it. Cursing, I threw off the sheets and stumbled out into the darkness of the unfamiliar house. My main thought was to silence Laika before she roused my hosts – assuming that this was not already far too late. If there had been an intruder, he would certainly have taken flight by now. Indeed, I rather hoped that he had.