Collected Stories Of Arthur C. Clarke (71 page)

The two astronomers, feeling rather sheepish, assented.

‘As you know radio communication to the outer planets is carried out in stages and not by direct point-to-point transmission. If we want to send a message to Titan it has to go, for example, Earth–Mars–Callisto–Titan, with repeater stations and all their masses of equipment at each leg of the journey. We want to do away with all that. This is going to be Communications Centre for the entire Solar System and from here we can call any planet direct.’

‘Even Persephone when they get there?’

‘Yes.’

‘One in the eye for the Federation, won’t it be? They own all the relay stations outside Earth.’

The Director looked at Wheeler sharply. ‘Well, I don’t suppose they’ll like it at first,’ he admitted. ‘But in the long run it will reduce costs and give everyone a much better service.’

‘The secrecy, I suppose, is to prevent the Federation thinking of the idea first?’

The Director looked a little embarrassed and refused to answer directly. He rose, made a gesture of dismissal. ‘Well, that’s all, gentlemen. I hope you have a pleasant trip back to the Alps. And please ask your friends to keep away.’

‘Thanks for being so frank with us,’ said Jamieson as they turned to go. ‘We’ll keep it to ourselves. But we’re glad to know the truth, as there are so many rumours flying round nowadays.’

‘Such as?’

‘To be perfectly honest we thought this might be the mythical uranium mine there’s been so much talk about.’

The Director laughed easily. ‘Doesn’t look much like a mine, does it?’

‘It certainly doesn’t. Well, goodbye.’

‘Goodbye.’

The Director remained standing in moody silence for a while after Jamieson and Wheeler had left the room. Then he pressed the buzzer for his secretary. ‘You’ve recorded that?’

‘Yes.’

‘They’re nice chaps. I feel rather ashamed of myself. But if we just sent them away they’d start discussing us with their colleagues – and they might hit on the truth. Now that they think they know it their curiosity will be satisfied and they won’t talk, especially since I’ve asked them not to and they’re the sort who’ll respect a promise. A dirty trick but I think it will work.’

The secretary looked at his chief with a new respect. ‘You know, Chief, there are times when you remind me of that old Roman politician – you know the chap I mean.’

‘Machiavelli, I suppose – though he was a bit later than the Romans. By the way, did the screens detect them all right when they came in?’

‘Yes – the alarms went off in plenty of time.’

‘Good! Then there’s no need to increase our precautions. The only other step we could take is to publicly announce that this part of the Moon is tabu – and the last thing we want to do is to attract attention.’

‘What about the people at the Observatory? There may be more visitors.’

‘We’ll call up Maclaurin again and ask him to discourage these private expeditions. He’s a touchy old bird but I think he’ll play. Now let’s get on with that progress report.’

Jamieson and Wheeler did not return directly to the Observatory, for they were not expected back for a couple of days and there was still a lot of the Moon to explore. Their visit to the dome, they felt, had been something of an anticlimax. It was true that they were sharing a secret and that was always exciting but they could not pretend it was a very spectacular secret.

‘Well, where do we go from here?’ asked Wheeler when the dome had dropped out of sight below the horizon.

Jamieson produced a large-scale photographic map of the
Mare Imbrium
and pinned it down with his forefinger.

‘This is where we are now,’ he said. ‘I’m going on a circular tour that will really show you some lunar scenery. The
Sinus Iridum
’s just two hundred miles east over quite good terrain and I’m heading for that. When we get there we’ll go north until we reach the edge of the plain, and then follow the mountains back to the Observatory. We’ll be home tomorrow or the next day.’

For nearly four hours uneventful landscape flowed past the windows as Jamieson drove the tractor across the Sea. From time to time they passed low ridges and small craters only a few hundred feet high but for the greater part of their journey the terrain was almost flat.

After a while Wheeler ceased to take much notice of it and tried to do some reading but the jolting of the machine made it very uncomfortable and he soon gave up the attempt. In any case the only book in the tractor was Maclaurin’s
Studies of the Dynamics of Multiple Star Systems
and this
was
supposed to be a holiday after all.

‘Sid,’ began Wheeler abruptly. ‘What do you think about the Federation? You’ve met a lot of their people.’

‘Yes and liked them. Pity you weren’t here when the last crowd left. We had about a dozen of them at the Observatory, studying the telescope mounting. They’re thinking of building a fifteen-hundred-inch reflector on one of the moons of Saturn, you know.’

‘That would be some job – I always said we were too close to the Sun here. But to get back to the argument – did they strike you as likely to start a quarrel with Earth?’

‘It’s difficult to say. They were very open and friendly with us but then we were all scientists together and that helps a lot. It might have been different if we’d been politicians or civil servants.’

‘Dammit, we
are
civil servants! Who pays our salaries?’

‘Yes, but you know what I mean. I could tell that they didn’t care a lot for Earth though they were too polite to say so. There’s no doubt that they’re annoyed about the uranium allocation – I often heard them complain about it. Their main point was that they
had
to have atomic power to open up the cold outer planets and that Earth could manage quite easily with alternative sources of energy. After all, she’s done so for a good many thousand years.’

‘Which side do you think is right?’

‘I don’t know. But I will say this – if more uranium does turn up and Earth doesn’t let the Federation have a bigger share of it, then we shall be in the wrong.’

‘I don’t think that’s likely to happen.’

‘Don’t be so sure. As old Mole said, there are a lot of people on Earth who are afraid of the Federation and don’t want to give it any more power. The Federation knows that and it may grab first and argue afterwards.’

‘Hm. Then it’s nice to know that our friends out by Pico aren’t mining the stuff, after all,’ said Wheeler thoughtfully. ‘
Ouch
– was that necessary?’

‘Sorry. But if you will keep me talking you can’t expect me to avoid all the cracks. Looks as though the suspension wants adjusting. I’ll have to turn Ferdy in for an overhaul when we get back. Ah, that’s Mount Helicon coming up over there. No talking while I concentrate on the driving for the next few miles – the next section’s a bit tricky.’

The tractor turned northward and slowly the great wall of tbe beautiful
Sinus Iridum
– the Bay of Rainbows – rose over the horizon until it stretched east and west as far as the eye could see. So overwhelming was the sight that Wheeler was voluntarily silent and sat for the next twenty miles without a word while Jamieson drove the machine toward the three-mile-high cliffs ahead.

He remembered his first glimpse of the
Sinus Iridum
through a two-inch telescope on Earth many years ago – it seemed scarcely possible that now he was actually skirting its towering walls. What unbelievable changes the twentieth century had brought! It needed a considerable effort to realise that at its beginning man had not even possessed flying machines, still less dreamed of crossing space.

The history of two thousand years seemed to have been crowded into the single century with its vast technical achievements and two tremendous wars. In its first half the air had been conquered more thoroughly than had the sea in all the millennia before.

In its closing quarter the first crude rockets had reached the Moon and the age-long isolation of the human race had ended. Within a single generation there were children to whom the word ‘home’ no longer conveyed the green fields and blue skies of Earth, so swift had been the colonisation of the inner planets.

History, it has been said, never repeats itself but historical situations recur. Inevitably the new worlds began to loosen their ties with Earth. Their populations were still very small compared with those of the mother world but they contained the most brilliant and active minds the race possessed. Free at last from the crushing burden of tradition they planned to build civilisations which would avoid the mistakes of the past. The aim was a noble one – it might yet succeed.

Venus had been the first world to declare its independence and set up a separate government. For a little while there had been considerable tension but good sense had prevailed and since the beginning of the twenty-first century only minor disagreements had disturbed relations between the two governments. Ten years later Mars and the four inhabited moons of Jupiter – Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto – had formed the union which was later to become the Federation of the Outer Planets.

Wheeler had never been to any of these outer worlds. Indeed this was the first time he had even left his native Earth. Like most terrestrials he was a little scared of the Federation though the scientist in him made him admire many of its achievements. He did not believe in the possibility of war but if there were ‘incidents’ – as earlier statesmen would have put it – his loyalties lay with Earth.

The tractor rolled to a halt and Jamieson got up from the controls, stretching himself mightily. ‘Well, that’s enough for today. Let’s have some food before I turn cannibal.’

One corner of the tractor was fitted up as a tiny galley but the two explorers were much too lazy to use it and had been living entirely on meals already prepared in the Observatory, which could be heated at the turn of a switch. They did not believe in unnecessary hardships. If a psychologist had examined the machine’s stores he would have been convinced that its passengers suffered from an almost pathological fear of starvation.

Since it was always daylight they slept, ate, argued and drove whenever the spirit moved them. For nearly thirty hours they worked their way slowly along the foot of the Bay’s mighty cliffs, pausing now and then to don space-suits and carry out explorations on foot. They found little but minerals, although Wheeler was greatly excited by the discovery of a peculiar red moss his friend had never seen before.

So little of the Moon had been explored in detail that it was quite possibly new to science and Wheeler pictured himself receiving all kinds of honours from the botanical world. These hopes were rudely shattered by the staff biologist a couple of days later but they were enjoyable while they lasted.

The Sun was still high when they were once again on the Alpine slopes though noon was long past and the thin rind of the crescent Earth was visible in the sky. Wheeler had enjoyed the trip but was getting tired of the cramped quarters. Also he was becoming more and more aware of accumulated aches and pains caused by the bumping of the vehicle over the worst ground any machine could possibly travel.

It was pleasant to get back to the bustle of life in the common-room, even though the same ancient magazines were displayed and the same people were monopolising the best chairs. Very little had happened, it seemed, during their short absence.

The main topic of conversation was the complete breaking off of diplomatic relations between the Director’s young and extremely pretty private secretary and the chief engineer, generally supposed to be her most favoured suitor. This quite outshadowed more important items such as the recent discovery, by an incredible feat of mathematics, that van Haarden’s planet possessed a system of rings like that of Saturn.

And not until they had heard the first news broadcast from Earth did Wheeler and Jamieson learned that the Federation’s latest request for reconsideration of the uranium agreement had been received and rejected. ‘That will make old Mole excited,’ commented Wheeler.

‘Yes – who would have thought the old boy took such an interest in politics. Let’s have a word with him.’

The old astronomer was in the far corner of the room, talking volubly with one of the junior physicists. He broke off when he saw the newcomers. ‘So you’re back. I thought you would break your necks out in the
Mare
. Seen any mooncalves?’

The references to H. G. Wells’ fabulous beasts was a lunar joke of such long standing that many terrestrials took it quite seriously and thought the creatures actually existed.

‘No, or we would have brought one back for the menu. How are things going?’

‘Nothing out of the ordinary as far as I’m concerned. But Reynolds here thinks he has found something.’

‘Think – I
know
! Two hours ago all my recorders went haywire and I’m still trying to find what has happened.’

‘Which recorders?’

‘The magnetic field strength meters. Usually the field is pretty constant except when there is a magnetic storm and we always know when to expect those. But today all the indicators have gone clean off the graph paper and I’ve been running around the Observatory to find if anyone has switched on something outside in the way of electro-magnetics. I’ve eliminated everything, so it must be external. It’s still on and Jones is trying to get a bearing on it while I come up for a breather.’