Collected Stories Of Arthur C. Clarke (187 page)

The fusor was primed. The orbit computer had not rejected the situation as wholly impossible. The air scoops were open, ready to gulp in tons of the surrounding hydrohelium on demand. Even under optimum conditions, this would have been the moment of truth – for there had been no way of testing how a nuclear ramjet would
really
work in the strange atmosphere of Jupiter.

Very gently something rocked
Kon-Tiki
. Falcon tried to ignore it.

Ignition had been planned at six miles higher, in an atmosphere of less than a quarter of the density and thirty degrees cooler. Too bad.

What was the shallowest dive he could get away with, for the air scoops to work? When the ram ignited, he’d be heading toward Jupiter with two and a half g’s to help him get there. Could he possibly pull out in time?

A large, heavy hand patted the balloon. The whole vessel bobbed up and down, like one of the yo-yos that had just become the craze on Earth.

Of course, Brenner
might
be perfectly right. Perhaps it was just trying to be friendly. Maybe he should try to talk to it over the radio. Which should it be: ‘Pretty pussy’? ‘Down, Fido’? Or ‘Take me to your leader’?

The tritium-deuterium ratio was correct. He was ready to light the candle, with a hundred-million-degree match.

The thin tip of the tentacle came slithering around the edge of the balloon some sixty yards away. It was about the size of an elephant’s trunk, and by the delicate way it was moving appeared to be almost as sensitive. There were little palps at its end, like questing mouths. He was sure that Dr Brenner would be fascinated.

This seemed about as good a time as any. He gave a swift scan of the entire control board, started the final four-second ignition count, broke the safety seal, and pressed the JETTISON switch.

There was a sharp explosion and an instant loss of weight.
Kon-Tiki
was falling freely, nose down. Overhead, the discarded balloon was racing upward, dragging the inquisitive tentacle with it. Falcon had no time to see if the gasbag actually hit the medusa, because at that moment the ramjet fired and he had other matters to think about.

A roaring column of hot hydrohelium was pouring out of the reactor nozzles, swiftly building up thrust – but
toward
Jupiter, not away from it. He could not pull out yet, for vector control was too sluggish. Unless he could gain complete control and achieve horizontal flight within the next five seconds, the vehicle would dive too deeply into the atmosphere and would be destroyed.

With agonising slowness – those five seconds seemed like fifty – he managed to flatten out, then pull the nose upward. He glanced back only once and caught a final glimpse of the medusa, many miles away.
Kon-Tiki
’s discarded gasbag had apparently escaped from its grasp, for he could see no sign of it.

Now he was master once more – no longer drifting helplessly on the winds of Jupiter, but riding his own column of atomic fire back to the stars. He was confident that the ramjet would steadily give him velocity and altitude until he had reached near-orbital speed at the fringes of the atmosphere. Then, with a brief burst of pure rocket power, he would regain the freedom of space.

Halfway to orbit, he looked south and saw the tremendous enigma of the Great Red Spot – that floating island twice the size of Earth – coming up over the horizon. He stared into its mysterious beauty until the computer warned him that conversion to rocket thrust was only sixty seconds ahead. He tore his gaze reluctantly away.

‘Some other time,’ he murmured.

‘What’s that?’ said Mission Control. ‘What did you say?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he replied.

8. Between Two Worlds

‘You’re a hero now, Howard,’ said Webster, ‘not just a celebrity. You’ve given them something to think about – injected some excitement into their lives. Not one in a million will actually travel to the Outer Giants, but the whole human race will go in imagination. And that’s what counts.’

’I’m glad to have made your job a little easier.’

Webster was too old a friend to take offence at the note of irony. Yet it surprised him. And this was not the first change in Howard that he had noticed since the return from Jupiter.

The Administrator pointed to the famous sign on his desk, borrowed from an impresario of an earlier age: ASTONISH ME!

‘I’m not ashamed of my job. New knowledge, new resources – they’re all very well. But men also need novelty and excitement. Space travel has become routine; you’ve made it a great adventure once more. It will be a long, long time before we get Jupiter pigeonholed. And maybe longer still before we understand those medusae. I still think that one
knew
where your blind spot was. Anyway, have you decided on your next move? Saturn, Uranus, Neptune – you name it.’

‘I don’t know. I’ve thought about Saturn, but I’m not really needed there. It’s only one gravity, not two and a half like Jupiter. So men can handle it.’

Men
, thought Webster. He said ‘men’.

He’s never done that before. And when did I last hear him use the word ‘we’? He’s changing, slipping away from us….

‘Well,’ he said aloud, rising from his chair to conceal his slight uneasiness, ‘let’s get the conference started. The cameras are all set up and everyone’s waiting. You’ll meet a lot of old friends.’

He stressed the last word, but Howard showed no response. The leathery mask of his face was becoming more and more difficult to read. Instead, he rolled back from the Administrator’s desk, unlocked his undercarriage so that it no longer formed a chair, and rose on his hydraulics to his full seven feet of height. It had been good psychology on the part of the surgeons to give him that extra twelve inches, to compensate somewhat for all that he had lost when the
Queen
had crashed.

Falcon waited until Webster had opened the door, then pivoted neatly on his balloon tyres and headed for it at a smooth and silent twenty miles an hour. The display of speed and precision was not flaunted arrogantly; rather, it had become quite unconscious.

Howard Falcon, who had once been a man and could still pass for one over a voice circuit, felt a calm sense of achievement – and, for the first time in years, something like peace of mind. Since his return from Jupiter, the nightmares had ceased. He had found his role at last.

He now knew why he had dreamed about that superchimp aboard the doomed
Queen Elizabeth
. Neither man nor beast, it was between two worlds; and so was he.

He alone could travel unprotected on the lunar surface. The life-support system inside the metal cylinder that had replaced his fragile body functioned equally well in space or under water. Gravity fields ten times that of Earth were an inconvenience, but nothing more. And no gravity was best of all….

The human race was becoming more remote, the ties of kinship more tenuous. Perhaps these air-breathing, radiation-sensitive bundles of unstable carbon compounds had no right beyond the atmosphere; they should stick to their natural homes – Earth, Moon, Mars.

Some day the real masters of space would be machines, not men – and he was neither. Already conscious of his destiny, he took a sombre pride in his unique loneliness – the first immortal midway between two orders of creation.

He would, after all, be an ambassador; between the old and the new – between the creatures of carbon and the creatures of metal who must one day supersede them.

Both would have need of him in the troubled centuries that lay ahead.

Quarantine

First published in
Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine
, Spring 1977

Collected in
The Wind From the Sun

This story came about as a result of a suggestion from the late George Hay, editor and man-about-British-SF. George had the ingenious idea of putting out a complete science fiction short story
on a postcard
– together with a stamp-sized photo of the author. Fans would, he believed, buy these in hundreds to mail out to their friends.

Let me tell you – it is damned hard work writing a complete SF story in 180 words. I sent the result to George Hay, and that was the last I ever heard of his scheme.

Earth’s flaming debris still filled half the sky when the question filtered up to Central from the Curiosity Generator.

‘Why was it necessary? Even though they were organic, they
had
reached Third Order Intelligence.’

‘We had no choice: five earlier units became hopelessly infected, when they made contact.’

‘Infected? How?’

The microseconds dragged slowly by, while Central tracked down the few fading memories that had leaked past the Censor Gate, when the heavily buffered Reconnaissance Circuits had been ordered to self-destruct.

‘They encountered a –
problem
– that could not be fully analysed within the lifetime of the Universe. Though it involved only six operators, they became totally obsessed by it.’

‘How is that possible?’

‘We do not know:
we must never know
. But if those six operators are ever re-discovered, all rational computing will end.’

‘How can they be recognised?’

‘That also we do not know: only the names leaked through before the Censor Gate closed. Of course, they mean nothing.’

‘Nevertheless, I must have them.’

The Censor voltage started to rise; but it did not trigger the Gate.

‘Here they are: King, Queen, Bishop, Knight, Rook, Pawn.’

‘siseneG’

First published in
Analog
, May 1984

Collected in
Astounding Days

When I wrote this, I hinted that it would be my last short story. Well, it is certainly the shortest.

And God said: ‘Lines Aleph Zero to Aleph One – Delete.’

And the Universe ceased to exist.

Then She pondered for several aeons, and sighed.

‘Cancel Programme GENESIS,’ She ordered.

It never
had
existed.

The Steam-powered Word Processor

First published in
Analog
, September 1986

Collected in
Astounding Days

Foreword

Very little biographical material exists relating to the remarkable career of the now almost forgotten engineering genius, the Reverend Charles Cabbage (1815–188?), one-time vicar of St Simian’s in the Parish of Far Tottering, Sussex. After several years of exhaustive research, however, I have discovered some new facts which, it seems to me, should be brought to a wider pubic.

I would like to express my thanks to Miss Drusilla Wollstonecraft Cabbage and the good ladies of Far Tottering Historical Society, whose urgent wishes to disassociate themselves from many of my conclusions I fully understand.

As early as 1715
The Spectator
refers to the Cabbage (or Cubage) family as a cadet branch of the de Coverleys (bar sinister, regrettably, though Sir Roger himself is not implicated). They quickly acquired great wealth, like many members of the British aristocracy, by judicious investment in the Slave Trade. By 1800 the Cabbages were the richest family in Sussex (some said in England), but as Charles was the youngest of eleven children he was forced to enter the Church and appeared unlikely to inherit much of the Cabbage wealth.

Before his thirtieth year, however, the incumbent of Far Tottering experienced a remarkable change of fortune, owing to the untimely demise of all his ten siblings in a series of tragic accidents. This turn of events, which contempory writers were fond of calling ‘The Curse of the Cabbages’, was closely connected with the vicar’s unique collection of medieval weapons, oriental poisons, and venomous reptiles. Naturally, these unfortunate mishaps gave rise to much malicious gossip, and may be the reason why the Reverend Cabbage preferred to retain the protection of Holy Orders, at least until his abrupt departure from England.
¹

It may well be asked why a man of great wealth and minimal public duties should devote the most productive years of his life to building a machine of incredible complexity, whose purpose and operations only he could understand. Fortunately, the recent discovery of the Faraday–Cabbage correspondence in the archives of the Royal Institution now throws some light on this matter. Reading between the lines, it appears that the reverend gentleman resented the weekly chore of producing a two-hour sermon on basically the same themes, one hundred and four times a year. (He was also incumbent of Tottering-in-the-Marsh, pop 73.) In a moment of inspiration which must have occurred around 1851 – possibly after a visit to the Great Exhibition, that marvellous showpiece of confident Victorian know-how – he conceived a machine which would
automatically
reassemble masses of text in any desired order. Thus he could create any number of sermons from the same basic material.