The Star (37 page)
The slow sunrise had been under way for two days, Earth time, and though the needle-sharp shadows were shortening, it was still five days to noon. We were ready to make the first static tests of
Alpha
’s motors, for the power plant had been installed and the framework of the ship was complete. It stood out there on the plain looking more like a half-built oil refinery than a space ship, but to us it was beautiful, with its promise of the future. It was a tense moment; never before had a thermonuclear engine of such size been operated, and despite all the safety precautions that had been taken, one could never be sure… If anything went wrong now, it could delay Project Ares by years.
The countdown had already begun when Hutchins, looking rather pale, came hurrying up to me. ‘I have to report to Base at once,’ he said. ‘It’s very important,’ ‘More important than
this
?’ I retorted sarcastically, for I was mighty annoyed. He hesitated for a moment, as if wanting to tell me something; then he replied, ‘I think so,’ ‘OK,’ I said, and he was gone in a flash. I could have questioned him, but one has to trust one’s subordinates. As I went back to the central control panel, in rather a bad temper, I decided that I’d had enough of my temperamental young American and would ask for him to be transferred. It was odd, though—he’d been as keen as anybody on this test, and now he was racing back to Base on the cable car. The blunt cylinder of the shuttle was already halfway to the nearest suspension tower, sliding along its almost invisible wires like some strange bird skimming across the lunar surface.
Five minutes later, my temper was even worse. A group of vital recording instruments had suddenly packed up, and the whole test would have to be postponed for at least three hours. I stormed around the blockhouse telling everyone who would listen (and of course everyone had to) that we used to manage things much better at Kapustin Yar. I’d quietened down a bit and we were on our second round of coffee when the General Attention signal sounded from the speakers. There’s only one call with a higher priority than that—the wail of the emergency alarms, which I’ve heard just twice in all my years in the Lunar Colony, and hope never to hear again.
The voice that echoed through every enclosed space on the Moon, and over the radios of every worker out on the soundless plains, was that of General Moshe Stein, Chairman of the Astronautics Authority. (There were still lots of courtesy titles around in those days, though they didn’t mean anything any more.)
‘I’m speaking from Geneva,’ he said, ‘and I have an important announcement to make. For the last nine months, a great experiment has been in progress. We have kept it secret for the sake of those directly involved, and because we did not wish to raise false hopes or fears. Not long ago, you will remember, many experts refused to believe that men could survive in space; this time, also, there were pessimists who doubted if we could take the next step in the conquest of the universe. We have proved that they were wrong; for now I would like to introduce you to George Jonathan Hutchins—first Citizen of Space.’
There was a click as the circuit was rerouted, followed by a pause full of indeterminate shufflings and whisperings. And then, over all the Moon and half the Earth, came the noise I promised to tell you about—the most awe-inspiring sound I’ve ever heard in my life.
It was the thin cry of a newborn baby—the first child in all the history of mankind to be brought forth on another world than Earth. We looked at each other, in the suddenly silenced blockhouse, and then at the ships we were building out there on the blazing lunar plain. They had seemed so important, a few minutes ago. They still were—but not as important as what had happened over in Medical Centre, and would happen again billions of times on countless worlds down all the ages to come.
For that was the moment, gentlemen, when I knew that Man had
really
conquered space.
First published in
Playboy
, March 1960
Collected in
Tales of Ten Worlds
This is one of the rare cases where I violated Sam Goldwyn’s excellent rule: ‘If you gotta message, use Western Union.’ This story
was
a message, five years before the first commercial communications satellite was launched, warning of their possible danger. Apart from some minor political earthquakes, everything in it has since come true.
My name is Arthur C. Clark, and I wish I had no connection with this whole sordid business. But as the moral—repeat, moral—integrity of the United States is involved, I must first establish my credentials. Only thus will you understand how, with the aid of the late Dr Alfred Kinsey, I have unwittingly triggered an avalanche that may sweep away much of Western civilisation.
Back in 1945, while a radar officer in the Royal Air Force, I had the only original idea of my life. Twelve years before the first Sputnik started beeping, it occurred to me that an artificial satellite would be a wonderful place for a television transmitter, since a station several thousand miles high could broadcast to half the globe. I wrote up the idea the week after Hiroshima, proposing a network of relay satellites twenty-two thousand miles above the Equator; at this height, they’d take exactly one day to complete a revolution, and so would remain fixed over the same spot on the Earth.
The piece appeared in the October 1945 issue of
Wireless World
; not expecting that celestial mechanics would be commercialised in my lifetime, I made no attempt to patent the idea, and doubt if I could have done so anyway. (If I’m wrong, I’d prefer not to know.) But I kept plugging it in my books, and today the idea of communications satellites is so commonplace that no one knows its origin.
I did make a plaintive attempt to put the record straight when approached by the House of Representatives Committee on Astronautics and Space Exploration; you’ll find my evidence on page thirty-two of its report,
The Next Ten Years in Space
. And as you’ll see in a moment, my concluding words had an irony I never appreciated at the time: ‘Living as I do in the Far East, I am constantly reminded of the struggle between the Western World and the USSR for the uncommitted millions of Asia… When line-of-sight TV transmissions become possible from satellites directly overhead, the propaganda effect may be decisive…’
I still stand by those words, but there were angles I hadn’t thought of—and which, unfortunately, other people have.
It all began during one of those official receptions which are such a feature of social life in Eastern capitals. They’re even more common in the West, of course, but in Colombo there’s little competing entertainment. At least once a week, if you are anybody, you get an invitation to cocktails at an embassy or legation, the British Council, the US Operations Mission, L’Alliance Française, or one of the countless alphabetical agencies the United Nations has begotten.
At first, being more at home beneath the Indian Ocean than in diplomatic circles, my partner and I were nobodies and were left alone. But after Mike
compèred
Dave Brubeck’s tour of Ceylon, people started to take notice of us—still more so when he married one of the island’s best-known beauties. So now our consumption of cocktails and canapés is limited chiefly by reluctance to abandon our comfortable sarongs for such Western absurdities as trousers, dinner jackets, and ties.
It was the first time we’d been to the Soviet Embassy, which was throwing a party for a group of Russian oceanographers who’d just come into port. Beneath the inevitable paintings of Lenin and Marx, a couple of hundred guests of all colours, religions, and languages were milling around, chatting with friends, or single-mindedly demolishing the vodka and caviar. I’d been separated from Mike and Elizabeth, but could see them at the other side of the room. Mike was doing his ‘There was I at fifty fathoms’ act to a fascinated audience, while Elizabeth watched him quizzically—and rather more people watched Elizabeth.
Ever since I lost an eardrum while pearl-diving on the Great Barrier Reef, I’ve been at a considerable disadvantage at functions of this kind; the surface noise is about twelve decibels too much for me to cope with. And this is no small handicap when being introduced to people with names like Dharmasiriwardene, Tissaveerasinghe, Goonetilleke, and Jayawickrema. When I’m not raiding the buffet, therefore, I usually look for a pool of relative quiet where there’s a chance of following more than fifty per cent of any conversation in which I may get involved. I was standing in the acoustic shadow of a large ornamental pillar, surveying the scene in my detached or Somerset Maugham manner, when I noticed that someone was looking at me with that ‘Haven’t we met before?’ expression.
I’ll describe him with some care, because there must be many people who can identify him. He was in the mid-thirties, and I guessed he was American; he had that well-scrubbed, crew-cut, man-about-Rockefeller-Center look that used to be a hallmark until the younger Russian diplomats and technical advisers started imitating it so successfully. He was about six feet in height, with shrewd brown eyes and black hair, prematurely grey at the sides. Though I was fairly certain we’d never met before, his face reminded me of someone. It took me a couple of days to work it out: remember the late John Garfield? That’s who it was, as near as makes no difference.
When a stranger catches my eye at a party, my standard operating procedure goes into action automatically. If he seems a pleasant-enough person but I don’t feel like introductions at the moment, I give him the Neutral Scan, letting my eyes sweep past him without a flicker of recognition, yet without positive unfriendliness. If he looks like a creep, he receives the
Coup d’oeil
, which consists of a long, disbelieving stare followed by an unhurried view of the back of my neck. In extreme cases, an expression of revulsion may be switched on for a few milliseconds. The message usually gets across.
But this character seemed interesting, and I was getting bored, so I gave him the Affable Nod. A few minutes later he drifted through the crowd, and I aimed my good ear toward him.
‘Hello,’ he said (yes, he
was
American), ‘my name’s Gene Hartford. I’m sure we’ve met somewhere.’
‘Quite likely,’ I answered, ‘I’ve spent a good deal of time in the States. I’m Arthur Clarke.’
Usually that produces a blank stare, but sometimes it doesn’t. I could almost see the IBM cards flickering behind those hard brown eyes, and was flattered by the brevity of his access time.
‘The science writer?’
‘Correct.’
‘Well, this is fantastic.’ He seemed genuinely astonished. ‘
Now
I know where I’ve seen you. I was in the studio once when you were on the Dave Garroway show.’
(This lead may be worth following up, though I doubt it; and I’m sure that ‘Genea Hartford’ was phony—it was too smoothly synthetic.)
‘So you’re in TV?’ I said. ‘What are you doing here—collecting material, or just on vacation?’
He gave me the frank, friendly smile of a man who has plenty to hide.
‘Oh, I’m keeping my eyes open. But this is really amazing, I read your
Exploration of Space
when it came out back in, Ah—’
‘Nineteen fifty-two; the Book-of-the-Month Club’s never been quite the same since.’
All this time I had been sizing him up, and though there was something about him I didn’t like, I was unable to pin it down. In any case, I was prepared to make substantial allowances for someone who had read my books and was also in TV; Mike and I are always on the lookout for markets for our under-water movies. But that, to put it mildly, was not Hartford’s line of business.
‘Look,’ he said eagerly, ‘I’ve a big network deal cooking that will interest you—in fact,
you
helped to give me the idea.’
This sounded promising, and my coefficient of cupidity jumped several points.
‘I’m glad to hear it. What’s the general theme?’
‘I can’t talk about it here, but could we meet at my hotel, around three tomorrow?’
‘Let me check my diary; yes, that’s OK.’
There are only two hotels in Colombo patronised by Americans, and I guessed right the first time. He was at the Mount Lavinia, and though you may not know it, you’ve seen the place where we had our private chat. Around the middle of
Bridge on the River Kwai
, there’s a brief scene at a military hospital, where Jack Hawkins meets a nurse and asks her where he can find Bill Holden. We have a soft spot for this episode, because Mike was one of the convalescent naval officers in the background. If you look smartly you’ll see him on the extreme right, beard in full profile, signing Sam Spiegel’s name to his sixth round of bar chits. As the picture turned out, Sam could afford it.
