The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (8 page)

I

If it weren’t for the fact,’ said Conrad Wheeler morosely, ‘that it might be considered disrespectful I’d say that the Old Man is completely nuts. And not just slightly touched like the rest of the people I’ve met on the Moon.’

He looked balefully at Sid Jamieson, two years his senior on the staff of the Observatory. The latter grinned goodnaturedly and refused to rise to the bait. ‘When you’ve known the Old Man as long as I have,’ he said, ‘you’ll realise he doesn’t do anything like this without a very good reason.’

‘It had better be good! My series of spectrograms was supposed to be finished tonight—and now look at the ‘scope!’

The giant dome that housed the thousand-inch reflector was a shambles, or so a casual visitor would have thought. Even the natives were somewhat appalled by the confusion. A small army of technicians was gathered round the base of the great telescope, which was now pointing aimlessly at the zenith. Aimlessly because the dome of the Observatory was closed and sealed against the outer vacuum. It was strange to see men unprotected by space-suits walking over the tessellated floor, to hear voices ringing where normally no slightest sound could be heard.

High up on a balcony on the far side of the dome the Director was giving orders into a microphone. His voice, enormously amplified, roared from the speakers that had been specially installed for the occasion. ‘
Mirror crew—stand clear!
’

There was a scurrying round the base of the telescope: then an expectant pause.

‘
Lower away!
’

With infinite slowness the great disc of quartz, that had cost a hundred million to make, was lowered from its cell to the strange vehicle beneath the telescope. The ninety-foot-wide truck sank visibly on its scores of tiny balloon tyres as it took up the weight of the immense mirror. Then the hoisting gear was released and with a purr of motors the truck and its precious cargo began to move slowly down the ramp leading to the resurfacing room.

It was a breathtaking sight. The men scattered over the floor were utterly dwarfed by the lattice-work of the telescope towering hundreds of feet above them. And the mirror itself, over eighty feet in diameter, seemed like a lake of fire as it reflected the glare of overhead lights. When at last it had left the room it was as though dusk had suddenly fallen.

‘And now they’ve got to put it back!’ grunted Wheeler. ‘I suppose that will take even longer.’

‘That’s right,’ said his companion cheerfully. ‘
Much
longer. Why, last time we resurfaced the mirror—’ The amplifiers drowned his voice.

‘
Four hours twenty-six minutes
,’ remarked the Director in a fifty-watt aside. ‘
Not too bad. Okay—get her back and carry on
.’

There was a click as he switched off the microphone. In a strained and hostile silence the observatory staff watched his small rather plump figure leave the balcony. After a discreet interval someone said, ‘Damn!’ in a very determined voice. The assistant chief computer did a wicked thing. She lit a cigarette and threw the ash on the sacred floor.

‘
Well
!’ exploded Wheeler. ‘He might have told us what it was all about! It’s bad enough to stop the work of the whole observatory while we get the big mirror out when it’s not due for resurfacing for months. But to tell us to put the blasted thing back as soon as we’ve dismounted it, without a word of explanation…’ He left the sentence in mid-air and looked at his companion for support.

‘Take it easy,’ said Jamieson with a grin. ‘The Old Man’s not cracked and you know it. Therefore he’s got a good reason for what he’s doing. Also he’s not the secretive sort—therefore he’s keeping quiet because he has to. And there must be a
very
good reason for risking the near-mutiny he’s got on his hands now. Orders from Earth, I’d say. One doesn’t interrupt a research programme like ours just for a whim. Hello, here comes Old Mole—what’s he got to say?’

‘Old Mole’—alias Dr Robert Molton—came trotting towards them, carrying the inevitable pile of photographs. He was probably the only member of the Observatory staff who even remotely resembled the popular conception of an astronomer. All the rest, one could see at a glance, were businessmen, undergraduates of the athletic rather than the intellectual type, artists, prosperous bookmakers, journalists or rising young politicians. Anything but astronomers.

Dr Molton was the exception that proved the rule. He looked out at the world and his beloved photographic plates through thick rimless lenses. His clothes were always just a little too tidy and never less than ten years out of date—though incongruously enough his ideas and interests were often not only modern but years ahead of the times.

He was very partial to boutonnieres—but as the indigenous lunar vegetation gave him little scope in this direction he had to content himself with a somewhat restricted collection of artificial flowers imported from Earth.

These he varied with such ingenuity and resource that the rest of the staff had spent a good deal of fruitless effort trying to discover the laws governing their order of appearance. Indeed, a very famous mathematician had once lost a considerable sum of money because one day Old Mole appeared wearing a carnation rather than the rose advanced statistical theory had predicted.

‘Hello, Doc,’ said Wheeler. ‘What’s it all about?
You
ought to know!’

The old man paused and looked at the young astronomer doubtfully. He was never sure whether or not Wheeler was pulling his leg and usually assumed correctly that he was. Not that he minded, for he possessed a dry sense of humour and got on well with the numerous youngsters in the Observatory. Perhaps they reminded him of the time, a generation ago, when he too had been young and full of ambition.

‘Why should I know? Professor Maclaurin doesn’t usually confide his intentions to me.’

‘But surely you’ve got your theories?’

‘I have but they won’t be popular.’

‘Good old Doc! We knew you wouldn’t let us down!’

The old astronomer turned to look at the telescope. Already the mirror was in position beneath its cell, ready to be hoisted back.

‘Twenty years ago the last Director, van Haarden, got that mirror out in a hurry and rushed it to the vaults. He didn’t have time for a rehearsal. Professor Maclaurin has.’

‘Surely you don’t mean…?’

‘In Ninety-five, as you should know but probably don’t, the Government was having its first squabble with the Venus Administration. Things were so bad that for a time we expected an attempt to seize the Moon. Not war, of course, but too close an approximation to be comfortable. Well, that mirror is the human race’s most valuable single possession and van Haarden was taking no risks with it. Nor, I think, is Maclaurin.’

‘But that’s ridiculous! We’ve had peace for more than half a century. Surely you don’t think that the Federation would be mad enough to start anything?’

‘Who knows just what the Federation is up to? It’s dealing with the most dangerous commodity in the universe—human idealism. Out there on Mars and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn are the finest brains in the Solar System, fired with all the pride and the sense of power that the crossing of real space has given to man.

‘They’re not like us Earthbound planet-grubbers. Oh, I know we’re on the Moon and all that but what’s the Moon now but Earth’s attic? Forty years ago it was the frontier and men risked their lives reaching it—but today the theatre in Tycho City holds two thousand!

‘The real frontier’s out beyond Uranus and it won’t be long before Pluto and Persephone are inside it—if they’ve not been reached already. Then the Federation will have to spend its energies elsewhere and it will think about reforming Earth. That’s what the Government’s afraid of.’

‘Well, and we never knew you were interested in politics! Sid, fetch the Doctor his soap-box.’

‘Don’t take any notice of him, Doc,’ said Jamieson. ‘Let’s have the rest of your idea. After all, we’re on quite good terms with the Federation. Their last scientific delegation left only a few months ago and a darn nice crowd they were too. I got an invitation to Mars I want to use as soon as the Director will let me go. You don’t think they would declare war, or anything crazy like that? What good would it do to smash up Earth?’

‘The Federation’s much too sensible to try anything of the sort. Remember, I said they were idealists. But they may feel that Earth hasn’t been taking them seriously enough and that’s the one thing that reformers can’t tolerate. However, the main cause of trouble is this haggling over the uranium supply.’

‘I don’t see what that’s got to do with
us
,’ said Wheeler. ‘If there is a fight I hope they leave the Moon out of it.’

Molton said thoughtfully, ‘Haven’t you heard?’

‘Heard what?’ asked Wheeler, an uncomfortable sensation creeping up his spine.

‘They say uranium has been found on the Moon at last.’

‘
That
story! It’s been going around for years.’

‘I think there’s something in it this time. I’ve had it from pretty reliable sources.’

‘So have I,’ put in Jamieson unexpectedly. ‘Isn’t it something to do with Johnstone’s theory of satellite formation?’

‘Yes. You know Earth’s the only planet with any appreciable uranium—it’s connected in some way with its abnormally high density. Most of the uranium’s a thousand miles down in the core where no one can get at it. But when the Moon split off it took some of the core with it—and the remnant’s quite close to the surface here. The story’s going round that it’s been detected by lowering counters down drill-holes and they’ve found enough uranium to make all the deposits on Earth look like very small stuff.’

‘I see,’ said Wheeler slowly. ‘If that’s true the Federation will be asking for increased supplies.’

‘And those nervous old women down on Earth will be afraid to let them have any,’ interjected Jamieson.

‘Well, why should they?’

‘Surely that’s easy enough to answer. Earth’s requirements are static—while the Federation’s are increasing with each new planet that colonised.’

‘And you think the Federation might try to grab any lunar deposits before Earth could get there?’

‘Exactly—and if we are in the way we might get hurt. That would upset both sides very much but it wouldn’t be much compensation to us.’

‘This is just what used to happen a hundred and fifty years ago back on Earth, when gold and diamonds were valuable. Claim-jumping, they used to call it. Funny thing, history.’

‘But supposing the Federation
did
seize a bit of the Moon—how could they hold it so far from their bases? Remember, there aren’t any weapons left nowadays.’

‘With the legacy of the two World Wars it wouldn’t take long to make some, would it? Most of the finest scientists in the Solar System belong to the Federation. Suppose they took a big spaceship and put guns or rocket torpedoes on it. They could grab the whole Moon and Earth couldn’t push them off. Especially when they’d got hold of the uranium and cut off Earth’s supplies.’

‘You should be writing science fiction, Doc! Battleship of Space and all that sort of thing! Don’t forget to bring in the death-rays!’

‘It’s all right for you to laugh but you know perfectly well that with atomic power it
is
possible to put enough energy into a beam to do real damage. No one’s tried it yet as far as we know—because there wasn’t much point. But if they ever want to…’

‘He’s right, Con. How do we know what’s been going on in the Government labs for the last generation? I hadn’t thought about it before but it rather frightens me. You
do
think of the nicest things, Doc.’

‘Well, you asked for my theories and you’ve got ‘em. But I can’t stand here all day talking.
Some
people in this establishment have work to do.’ The old astronomer picked up his plates and wandered off toward his office, leaving the two friends in a somewhat disturbed frame of mind.

Jamieson gazed glumly at the telescope while Wheeler looked thoughtfully at the lunar landscape outside the dome. He ran his fingers idly along the transparent plastic of the great curving wall. It always gave him a thrill to think of the pressures that wall was withstanding—and the uncomfortable things that would happen if it ever gave way.

The view from the Observatory was famous throughout the entire Solar System. The plateau on which it had been built was one of the highest points in the great lunar mountain range which the early astronomers had called the Alps. To the south the vast plain so inappropriately named the
Mare Imbrium
—Sea of Rains—stretched as far as the eye could reach.

To the southeast the solitary peak of the volcanic mountain Pico jutted above the horizon. East and west ran the Alps, merging on the eastern side of the Observatory into the walled plain of Plato. It was nearly midnight and the whole vast panorama was lit by the brilliant silver light of the full Earth.

Wheeler was just turning away when the flash of rockets far out across the Sea of Rains attracted his notice. Officially no ship was supposed to fly over the northern hemisphere, for the brilliant glare of a rocket exhaust could ruin in a second an exposure that might have taken hours, even days, to make. But the ban was not always obeyed, much to the annoyance of the Observatory directorate.

‘Wonder who that blighter is?’ growled Wheeler. ‘I sometimes wish we
did
have some guns on the Moon. Then we could shoot down trippers who try to wreck our programme.’

‘I call that a really charitable thought. Maybe Tech Stores can fix you up—they keep everything.’

‘Except what you happen to want. I’ve been trying to get a Hilger magnitude tabulator for the last month. “Sorry, Mr Wheeler, might be on the next consignment.” I’d see the Director about it if I weren’t in his bad books.’

Jamieson laughed. ‘Well, if you must compose somewhat—er—personal limericks better not type them out next time. Stick to the old oral tradition like the ancient troubadours—it’s much safer. Hello, what’s he up to?’

The last remark was prompted by the manoeuvres of the distant ship. It was losing height steadily, its main drive cut off, only the vertical jets cushioning its fall.