THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

BY

ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 Also by Arthur C. Clarke Published by Ballantine Books:

 CHILDHOOD'S END
 EARTHLIGHT
 EXPEDITION TO EARTH
 THE FOUNTAINS OF PARADISE
 IMPERIAL EARTH
 1984 SPRING: A CHOICE OF FUTURES
 THE ODYSSEY FILE
  Arthur C. Clarke and Peter Hyams
 PRELUDE TO SPACE
 REACH FOR TOMORROW
 RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA
 TALES FROM THE WHITE HART
 2010: ODYSSEY TWO
 THE VIEW FROM SERENDIP
             I
 I
 I             HE ON
      DIMNT ARTH

A Del Rey Book
BALLANTM BOOKS 0 NEW YORK
                                      A Del Rey Book
 Published by Ballantine Books

 Copyright C 1986 by Serendib BV

 All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
 Conventions. Published in the United States of America by Ballantine
 Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in
 Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 85-26825

 ISBN 0-345-33908-8

 Manufactured in the United States of America

 First International Edition: Oictoba 1986

 Cover an by Michael Whelan
For Tamara and Cherene,
Valerie and Hector
-for love and loyalty
                                               CONTENTS

 Author's Note

           1. THALASSA

 1. The Beach at Tama            3
 2 * The Little Neutral One      7
 3. Village Council              9
 4. Tocsin                    15
 5. Night Ride                18

           11. MAGELLAN

 6. Planetfall                 31
 7. Lords of the Last Days      37
 8. Remembrance of Love Lost    43
 9. The Quest for Superspace    47

         111. SOUTH ISLAND

 10. First Contact              55
 11. Delegation               61
 12. Heritage                 70
 13. Task Force               74
 14. Mirissa                  76
 15. Terra Nova               81
 16. Party Gaines             84
 17. Chain of Command           91
 18. Kumar                    96
 19. Pretty Polly             98
 20. Idyll                   109
           IV. KRAKAN

 21. Academy                  119
 22. Krakan                   131
 23. Ice Day                  138
 24. Archive                  142
 25. Scorp                    151
 26. Snowf Like Rising         157
 27. Mirror of the Past        162
 28. The Sunken Forest         166
 29. Sabra                    172
 30. Child of Krakan           175

      V. THE BOUNTY SYNDROME

 31. Petition                 187
 32. Clinic                   191
 33. Tides                    194
 34. Shipnet                  196
 35. Convalescence             200
 36 ' Kilimanjaro             203
 37. In Vino Veritas           206
 38. Debate                   211
 39. The Leopard in the Snows  220
 40. Confrontation             224
 41. Pillow Talk              228
 42. Survivor                 231
 43. Interrogation             236

     VI. THE FORESTS OF THE SEA

 44. Spyball                  245
 45. Bait                     248
  46. Whatever Gods May Be. .  253

    VII. AS THE SPARKS FLY UPWARD

 47. Ascension                263
 48. Decision                 271
 49. Fire on the Reef          275
  VIII. THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 50. Shield of Ice             281
 51. Relic                    284
 52. The Songs of Distant Earth   286
 53. The Golden Mask           291
 54. Valediction              301
 55. Departure                303
 56. Below the Interface       308

          IX SAGAN TWO

 57. The Voices of Time        313
 Chronology                   314
 Bibliographical Note          316
 Acknowledgments               317
 Nowhere in all space or on a thousand worlds will there be men to share our
 loneliness. There may be wisdom; there may be power; somewhere across space
 great instruments ... may stare vainly at our floating cloud wrack, their
 owners yearning as we yearn. Nevertheless, in the nature of life and in the
 principles of evolution we have had our answer. Of men elsewhere, and
 beyond, there will be none forever ...
              Loren Eiseley,
              The Immense Journey (1957)

 1 have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb.
            Melville to Hawthorne (1851)
 AUTHOR'S NOTE

 This novel is based on an idea developed almost thirty years ago in a short
 story of the same name (now in my collection The Other Side of the Sky).
 However, this version was directly-and negatively-inspired by the recent
 rash of space-operas on TV and movie screen. (Query: what is the opposite of
 inspirationexpiration?')
  Please do not misunderstand me: I have enormously enjoyed the best of Star
  Trek and the Lucas/ Spielberg epics, to mention only the most famous
  examples of the genre. But these works are fantasy, not science fiction in
  the strict meaning of the term. It now seems almost certain that in the
  real universe we may never exceed the velocity of fight. Even the very
  closest star systems will always be decades or centuries apart; no Warp Six
  will ever get you from one episode to another in time for next week's in-
  stallment. The great Producer in the Sky did not arrange his program
  planning that way.
  In the last decade, there has also been a significant, and rather
  surprising, change in the attitude of scientists toward the problem of
  Extraterrestrial Intelligence. The whole subject did not become respectable
  (except among dubious characters like the
 writers of science fiction) until the 1960s: Shklovskii and Sagan's
 Intelligent Life in the Universe (1966) is the landmark here.
  But now there has been a backlash. The total failure to find any trace of
  life in this Solar System, or to pick up any of the interstellar radio
  signals that our great antennas should be easily able to detect, has
  prompted some scientists to argue "Perhaps we are alone in the Universe. .
  ." Dr Frank Tipler, the best-known exponent of this view, has (doubtless
  deliberately) outraged the Saganites by giving one of his papers the
  provocative title "There Are No Intelligent Extra-Terrestrials." Carl Sagan
  et al argue (and I agree with them) that it is much too early to jump to
  such far-reaching conclusions.
  Meanwhile, the controversy rages; as has been well said, either answer will
  be awe-inspiring. The question can only be settled by evidence, not by any
  amount of logic, however plausible. I would like to see the whole debate
  given a decade or two of benign neglect, while the radioastronomers, like
  gold miners panning for dust, quietly sieve through the torrents of noise
  pouring down from the sky.
  This novel is, among other things, my attempt to create a wholly realistic
  piece of fiction on the interstellar theme-just as, in Prelude to Space
  (1951), 1 used known or foreseeable technology to depict mankind's first
  voyage beyond the Earth. There is nothing in this book that defies or
  denies known principles; the only really wild extrapolation is the "quantum
  drive," and even this has a highly respectable paternity. (See
  Acknowledgments.) Should it turn
 out to be a pipe-dream, there are several possible alternatives; and if we
 twentieth-century primitives can imagine them, future science will
 undoubtedly discover something much better.

           Arthur C. Clarke
           Colombo, Sri Lanka, July 3, 1985

               1
 I, THALASSA
 1.. THE BEACH AT TARNA

 Even before the boat came through the reef, Mirissa could tell that Brant
 was angry. The tense attitude of his body as he stood at the wheel-the very
 fact that he had not left the final passage in Kumar's capable hands-showed
 that something had upset him.
  She left the shade of the palm trees and walked slowly down the beach, the
  wet sand tugging at her feet. When she reached the water's edge, Kumar was
  already furling the sail. Her "baby" brotber-now almost as tall as she was,
  and solid muscle-waved to her cheerfully. How often she had wished that
  Brant shared Kumar's easygoing good nature, which no crisis ever seemed
  capable of disturbing ...
  Brant did not wait for the boat to hit the sand, but jumped into the water
  while it was still waist deep and came splashing angrily toward her. He was
  carrying a twisted mass of metal festooned with broken wires and held it up
  for her inspection.
 "Look!" he cried. "They've done it again!"
  With his free hand, he waved toward the northern horizon.
 "This time-I'm not going to let them get away

               3
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 with it! And the mayor can say what she damn well pleases!"
  Mirissa stood aside while the little catamaran, like some primeval
  sea-beast making its first assault on the dry land, heaved itself slowly up
  the beach on its spinning outboard rollers. As soon as it was above the
  high-water line, Kumar stopped the engine and jumped out to join his
  still-furning skipper.
  I keep telling Brant," he said, "that it must be an accident-maybe a
  dragging anchor. After all, why should the Northers do something like this
  deliberately? "
  "I'll tell you," Brant retorted. "Because they're too lazy to work out the
  technology themselves. Because they're afraid we'll catch too many fish.
  Because-"
  He caught sight of the other's grin and sent the cat's cradle of broken
  wires spinning in his direction. Kumar caught it effortlessly.
  "Anyway-even if it is an accident, they shouldn't be anchoring here. That
  area's clearly marked on the chart: KEEP OUT-RESEARCH PROJECT. SO I'M Still
  going to lodge a protest."
  Brant had already recovered his good humor; even his most furious rages
  seldom lasted more than a few minutes. To keep him in the right mood,
  Mirissa started to run her fingers down his back and spoke to him in her
  most soothing voice.
 "Did you catch any good fish?"
  "Of course not," Kumar answered. "He's only interested in catching
  statistics-kilograms per kilowatt-that sort of nonsense. Lucky I took my
  rod. We'll have tuna for dinner."

                4
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

  He reached into the boat and pulled out almost a meter of streamlined power
  and beauty, its colors fading rapidly, its sightless eyes already glazed in
  death.
  "Don't often get one of these," he said proudly. They were still admiring
  his prize when History returned to Thalassa, and the simple, carefree world
  they had known all their young lives came abruptly to its end.
  The sign of its passing was written there upon the sky as if a giant hand
  had drawn a piece of chalk across the blue dome of heaven. Even as they
  watched, the gleaming vapor trail began to fray at the edges, breaking up
  into wisps of cloud, until it seemed that a bridge of snow had been thrown
  from horizon to horizon.
  And now a distant thunder was rolling down from the edge of space. It was
  a sound that Thalassa had not heard for seven hundred years but which any
  child would recognize at once.
  Despite the wan-nth of the evening, Mirissa shivered and her hand found
  Brant's. Though his fingers closed about hers, he scarcely seemed to
  notice; he was still staring at the riven sky.
  Even Kumar was subdued, yet he was the first to speak. "One of the colonies
  must have found us."
  Brant shook his head slowly but without much conviction. "Why should they
  bother? They must have the old maps-they'll know that Thalassa is almost
  all ocean. It wouldn't make any sense to come here. "
 "Scientific curiosity?" Mirissa suggested. "To see

               5
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 what's happened to us? I always said we should repair the communications
 link
  This was an old dispute, which was revived every few decades. One day, most
  people agreed, Thalassa really should rebuild the big dish on East Island,
  destroyed when Krakan erupted four hundred years ago. But meanwhile there
  was so much that was more important-or simply more amusing.
  "Building a starship's an enormous project," Brant said thoughtfully. "I
  don't believe that any colony would do it-unless it had to. Like Earth . .
  ."
  His voice trailed off into silence. After all these centuries, that was
  still a hard name to say.
  As one person, they turned toward the east, where the swift equatorial
  night was advancing across the sea.
  A few of the brighter stars had already emerged, and just climbing above
  the palm trees was the unmistakable, compact little group of the Triangle.
  Its three stars were of almost equal magnitude-but a far more brilliant
  intruder had once shone, for a few weeks, near the southern tip of the
  constellation.
  Its now-shrunken husk was still visible, in a telescope of moderate power.
  But no instrument could show the orbiting cinder that had been the planet
  Earth.

 6
2. THE LITTLE NEUTRAL
ONE

 More than a thousand years later, a great historian had called the period
 1901-2000 "the Century when everything happened." He added that the people
 of the time would have agreed with him-but for entirely the wrong reasons.
  They would have pointed, often with justified pride, to the era's
  scientific achievements-the conquest of the air, the release of atomic
  energy, the discovery of the basic principles of life, the electronics and
  communications revolution, the beginnings of artificial intelligence, and
  most spectacular of all, the exploration of the solar system and the first
  landing on the Moon. But as the historian pointed out~ with the 20/20
  accuracy of hindsight, not one in a thousand would even have heard of the
  discovery that transcended all these events by threatening to make them
  utterly irrelevant.
  It seemed as harmless, and as far from human affairs, as the fogged
  photographic plate in Becquerel's laboratory that led, in only fifty years,
  to the fireball above Hiroshima. Indeed, it was a by-product of that same
  research and began in equal innocence.

               7
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

  Nature is a very strict accountant and always balances her books. So
  physicists were extremely puzzled when they discovered certain nuclear
  reactions in which, after all the fragments were added up, something seemed
  to be missing on one side of the equation.
  Like a bookkeeper hastily replenishing the petty cash to keep one jump
  ahead of the auditors, the physicists were forced to invent a new particle.
  And, to account for the discrepancy, it had to be a most peculiar one-with
  neither mass nor charge, and so fantastically penetrating that it could
  pass, without noticeable inconvenience, through a wall of lead billions of
  kilometers thick.
  This phantom was given the nickname "neutrino"-neutron plus bambino. There
  seemed no hope of ever detecting so elusive an entity; but in 1956, by
  heroic feats of instrumentation, the physicists had caught the first few
  specimens. It was also a triumph for the theoreticians, who now found their
  unlikely equations verified.
  The world as a whole neither knew nor cared; but the countdown to doomsday
  had begun.

 8
 3. VILLAGE COUNCIL

 Tama's local network was never more than ninetyfive percent operational-but
 on the other hand never less than eighty-five percent of it was working at.
 any one time. Like most of the equipment on Thalassa, it had been designed
 by long-dead geniuses so that catastrophic breakdowns were virtually impos-
 sible. Even if many components failed, the system would still continue to
 function reasonably well until someone was sufficiently exasperated to make
 repairs.
  The engineers called this "graceful degradation"-a phrase that, some cynics
  had declared, rather accurately described the Lassan way of life.
 I According to the central computer, the network was now hovering around its
 normal ninety percent serviceability, and Mayor Waldron would gladly have
 settled for less. Most of the village had called her during the past half
 hour, and at least fifty adults and children were milling round in the
 council charnber-which was more than it could comfortably hold, let alone
 seat. The quorum for an ordinary meeting was twelve, and it sometimes took
 draconian measures to collect even that number of warm bodies in

               9
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 one place. The rest of Tama's five hundred and sixty inhabitants preferred
 to watch-and vote, if they felt sufficiently interested-in the comfort of
 their own homes.
  There had also been two calls from the provincial governor, one from the
  president's office, and one from the North Island news service, all making
  the same completely unnecessary request. Each had received the same short
  answer: Of course we'll tell you if anything happens and thanks for your
  interest.
  Mayor Waldron did not like excitement, and her moderately successful career
  as a local administrator had been based on avoiding it. Sometimes, of
  course, that was impossible; her veto would hardly have deflected the
  hurricane of '09, which-until todayhad been the century's most notable
  event.
  "Quiet, everybody!" she cried. "Reena-leave those shells alone-someone went
  to a lot of trouble arranging them! Time you were in bed, anyway! Billy-off
  the table! Now!"
  The surprising speed with which order was restored showed that, for once,
  the villagers were anxious to hear what their mayor had to say. She
  switched off the insistent beeping of her wrist-phone and routed the call
  to the message center.
  "Frankly, I don't know much more than you doand it's not likely we'll get
  any more information for several hours. But it certainly was some kind of
  spacecraft, and it had already reentered-I suppose I should say
  entered-when it passed over us. Since there's nowhere else for it to go on
  Thalassa, pre10
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 sumably it will come back to the Three Islands sooner or later. That might
 take hours if it's going right round the planet."
 "Any attempt at radio contact?" somebody asked.
 "Yes, but no luck so far."
 "Should we even try?" an anxious voice said.
  A brief hush fell upon the whole assembly; then Councillor Simmons, Mayor
  Waldron's chief gadfly, gave a snort of disgust.
  "That's ridiculous. Whatever we do, they can find us in about ten minutes.
  Anyway, they probably know exactly where we are."
  "I agree completely with the councillor," Mayor Waldron said, relishing
  this unusual opportunity. "Any colony ship will certainly have maps of
  Thaiassa. They may be a thousand years old-but they'll show First Landing."
  "But suppose-just suppose-that they are aliens?"
  The mayor sighed; she thought that thesis had died through sheer exhaustion
  centuries ago.
  "There are no aliens," she said firmly. "At least none intelligent enough
  to go starfaring. Of course, we can never be one hundred percent
  certain-but Earth searched for a thousand years with every conceivable
  instrument." -
  "There's another possibility," said Mirissa, who was standing with Brant
  and Kumar near the back of the chamber. Every head turned toward her, but
  Brant looked slightly annoyed. Despite his love for Mirissa, there were
  times when he wished that she was not quite so well informed and that her
  family
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 had not been in charge of the Archives for the last five generations.
 "What's that, my dear?"
  Now it was Mirissa's turn to be annoyed, though she concealed her
  irritation. She did not enjoy being condescended to by someone who was not
  really very intelligent, though undoubtedly shrewd-or perhaps cunning was
  the better word. The fact that Mayor Waldron was always making eyes at
  Brant did not bother Mirissa in the least; it merely amused her, and she
  could even feel a certain sympathy for the older woman.
  "It could be another robot seedship, like the one that brought our
  ancestor's gene patterns to Thalassa. "
 "But now-so late?"
  "Why not? The first seeders could only reach a few percent of light
  velocity. Earth kept improving them-right up to the time it was destroyed.
  As the later models were almost ten times faster, the earlier ones were
  overtaken in a century or so; many of them must still be on the way. Don't
  you agree, Brant?"
  Mirissa was always careful to bring him into any discussion and, if
  possible, to make him think he had originated it. She was well aware of his
  feelings of inferiority and did not wish to add to them.
  Sometimes it was rather lonely being the brightest person in Tarna;
  although she networked with half a dozen of her mental peers on the Three
  Islands, she seldom met them in the face-to-face encounters that, even
  after all these millennia, no communications technology could really match.

               12
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

  "It's an interesting idea," Brant said. "You could be right."
  Although history was not his strong point, Brant Falconer had a
  technician's knowledge of the complex series of events that had led to the
  colonization of Thalassa. "And what shall we do," he asked, "if it's
  another seedship, and tries to colonize us all over again? Say, 'Thanks
  very much, but not today'?"
  There were a few nervous little laughs; then Councillor Simmons remarked
  thoughtfully, "I'm sure we could handle a seedship if we had to. And
  -wouldn't its robots be intelligent enough to cancel their program when
  they saw that the job had already been done?"
  "Perhaps. But they might think they could do a better one. Anyway, whether
  it's a relic from Earth or a later model from one of the colonies, it's
  bound to be a robot of some kind."
  There was no need to elaborate; everyone knew the fantastic difficulty and
  expense of manned interstellar flight. Even though technically possible, it
  was completely pointless. Robots could do the job a thousand times more
  cheaply.
  "Robot or rehc-what are we going to do about it?" one of the villagers
  demanded.
  "It may ilot be our problem," the mayor said. "Everyone seems to have
  assumed that it will head for First Landing, but why should it? After all,
  North Island is much more likely-"
  The mayor had often been proved wrong, but never so swiftly. This time the
  sound that grew in the sky above Tarna was no distant thunder from the

               13
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 ionosphere but the piercing whistle of a low, fastflying jet. Everyone
 rushed out of the council chamber in unseemly haste; only the first few were
 in time to see the blunt-nosed delta-wing eclipsing the stars as it headed
 purposefully toward the spot still sacred as the last link with Earth.
  Mayor Waldron paused briefly to report to central, then joined the others
  miffing around outside.
 "Brant-you can get there first. Take the kite."
  Tarna's chief mechanical engineer blinked; it was the first time he had
  ever received so direct an order from the mayor. Then he looked a little
  abashed.
  "A coconut went through the wing a couple of days ago. I've not had time to
  repair it because of that problem with the fishtraps. Anyway, it's not
  equipped for night flying."
 The mayor gave him a long, hard look.
 "I hope my car's working," she said sarcastically.
  "Of course," Brant answered, in a hurt voice. "AD fueled up, and ready to
  go."
  It was quite unusual for the mayor's car to go anywhere; one could walk the
  length of Tama in twenty minutes, and all local transportation of food and
  equipment was handled by small sandrollers. In seventy years of official
  service the car had clocked up less than a hundred thousand kilometers and,
  barring accidents, should still be going strong for at least a century to
  come.
  The Lassans had experimented cheerfully with most vices; but planned
  obsolescence and conspicuous consumption were not among them. No one could
  have guessed that the vehicle was older than any of its passengers as it
  started on the most historic journey it would ever make.

               14
 4. TOCSIN

 No one heard the first tolling of Earth's funeral bellnot even the
 scientists who made the fatal discovery, far underground, in an abandoned
 Colorado gold mine.
  It was a daring experiment, quite inconceivable before the mid-twentieth
  century. Once the neutrino had been detected, it was quickly realized that
  mankind had a new window on the universe. Something so penetrating that it
  passed through a planet as easily as light through a sheet of glass could
  be used to look into the hearts of suns.
  Especially the Sun. Astronomers were confident that they understood the
  reactions powering the solar furnace, upon which all life on Earth
  ultimately depended.. At the enormous pressures and temperatures at the
  Sun's core, hydrogen was fused to helium in a series of reactions that
  liberated vast amounts of energy. And, as an incidental by-product,
  neutrinos.
  Finding the trillions of tons of matter in their way no more obstacle than
  a wisp of smoke, those solar neutrinos raced up from their birthplace at
  the velocity of fight. Just two seconds later they emerged

               15
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 into space and spread outward across the universe. However many stars and
 planets they encountered, most of them would still have evaded capture by
 the insubstantial ghost of "solid" matter when Time itself came to an end.
  Eight minutes after they bad left the Sun, a tiny fraction of the solar
  torrent swept through the Earth-and an even smaller fraction was
  intercepted by the scientists in Colorado. They had buried their equipment
  more than a kilometer underground so that all the less penetrating
  radiations would be filtered out and they could trap the rare, genuine mes-
  sengers from the heart of the Sun. By counting the captured neutrinos, they
  hoped to study in detail conditions at a spot that, as any philosopher
  could easily prove, was forever barred from human knowledge or observation.
  The experiment worked; solar neutrinos were detected. But-there were far
  too few of them. There should have been three or four times as many as the
  massive instrumentation had succeeded in capturing.
  Clearly, something was wrong, and during the 1970s the Case of the Missing
  Neutrinos escalated to a major scientific scandal. Equipment was checked
  and rechecked, theories were overhauled, and the experiment rerun scores of
  times-always with -the same baffling result.
  By the end of the twentieth century, the astrophysicists had been forced to
  accept a disturbing conclusion-though as yet no one realized its full
  implications.

               16
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

  There was nothing wrong with the theory, or with the equipment, The trouble
  lay inside the Sun.

 The first secret meeting in the history of the International Astronomical
 Union took place in 2008 at Aspen, Colorado-not far from the scene of the
 original experiment, which had now been repeated in a dozen countries. A
 week later JAU Special Bulletin #55/08, bearing the deliberately low-key
 title "Some Notes on Solar Reactions," was in the hands of every government
 on Earth.
  One might have thought that as the news slowly leaked out, the announcement
  of the End of the World would have produced a certain amount of panic. In
  fact, the general reaction was a stunned silence-then a shrug of the
  shoulders and the resumption of normal, everyday business.
  Few governments had ever looked more than an election ahead, few
  individuals beyond the lifetimes of their grandchildren., And anyway, the
  astronomers might be wrong ...
  Even if humanity was under senfence of death, the date of execution was
  still indefinite. The Sun would not blow up for at least a thousand years;
  and who could weep for the fortieth generation?

 17
 5. NIGHT RIDE

 Neither of the two moons had risen when the car set off along Tarna's most
 famous road, carrying Brant, Mayor Waldron, Councillor Simmons, and two
 senior villagers. Though he was driving with his usual effortless skill,
 Brant was still smouldering slightly from the mayor's reprimand. The fact
 that her plump arm was accidentally draped over his bare shoulders did
 little to improve matters.
  But. the peaceful beauty of the night and the hypnotic rhythm of the palm
  trees as they swept steadily through the car's moving fan of light quickly
  restored his normal good humor. And how could such petty personal feelings
  be allowed to intrude at such an historic moment as this?
  In ten minutes, they would be at First Landingand the beginning of their
  history. What was waiting for them there? Only one thing was certain; the
  visitor had homed on the still-operating beacon of the ancient seedship. It
  knew where to look, so it must be from some other human colony in this
  sector of space.
  On the other hand-Brant was suddenly struck by a disturbing thought.
  Anyone-anything-could

               18
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 have detected that beacon, signaling to all the universe that Intelligence
 had once passed this way. He recalled that a few years ago there had been a
 move to switch off the transmission on the grounds that it served no useful
 purpose and might conceivably do harm. The motion had been rejected by a
 narrow margin for reasons that were sentimental and emotional rather than
 logical. Thalassa might soon regret that decision, but it was certainly much
 too late to do anything about it.
  Councillor Simmons, leaning across from the backseat, was talking quietly
  to the mayor,
  "Helga," he said-and it was the first time Brant had ever heard him use the
  mayor's first name-"do you think we'll still be able to communicate? Robot
  languages evolve very rapidly, you know."
  Mayor Waldron didn't know, but she was very good at concealing ignorance.
  "That's the least of our problems; let's wait until it arises. Brant-could
  you drive a little more slowly? I'd like to get there alive. "
  Their present speed was perfectly safe on this familiar road, but Brant
  dutifully slowed to forty kficks. He wondered if the mayor was trying to
  postpone the confrontation; it was an awesome responsibility, facing only
  the second outworld spacecraft in the history of the planet. The whole of
  Thalassa would be watching.
  "Krakan!" one of the passengers swore in the backseat. "Did anybody bring
  a camera?"
  "Too late to go back," Councillor Simmons answered. "Anyway, there will be
  plenty of time f6r pho19
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 tographs. I don't suppose they'll take off again right after saying hello!"
  There was a certain mild hysteria in his voice, and Brant could hardly
  blame him. Who could tell what was waiting for them just over the brow of
  the noxt hill?
  "I'll report just as soon as there's anything to tell you, Mr. President."
  Mayor Waldron was using the car radio. Brant had never even noticed the
  call; he had been too lost in a reverie of his own. For the first time in
  his life, he wished he had learned a little more history.
  Of course, he was familiar enough with the basic facts; every child on
  Thalassa. grew up with them. He knew how, as the centuries ticked remorsely
  by, the astronomers' diagnosis became ever more confident, the date of
  their prediction steadily more precise. In the year 3600, plus or minus
  seventy-five years, the Sun would become a nova. Not a very spectacular
  one-but big enough ...
  An old philosopher had once remarked that it setdes a man's mind
  wonderfully to know that he will be hanged in the morning. Something of the
  same kind occurred with the entire human race during the closing years of
  the Fourth Millennium. If there was a single moment when humanity at last
  faced the truth with both resignation and determination, it was at the
  December midnight when the year 2999 changed to 3000. No one who saw that
  first 3 appear could forget that there would never be a 4.
  Yet more than half a millennium remained; much could be done by the thirty
  generations that would

               20
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 still live and die on Earth as had their ancestors before them. At the very
 least, they could preserve the knowledge of the race and the greatest
 creations of human art.
  Even at the dawn of the space age, the first robot probes to leave the
  Solar System had carried recordings of music, messages, and pictures in
  case they were ever encountered by other explorers of the cosmos. And
  though no sign of alien civilizations had ever been detected in the home
  galaxy, even the most pessimistic believed that intelligence must occur
  somewhere in the billions of other island universes that stretched as far
  as the most powerful telescope could see.
  For centuries, terabyte upon terabyte of human 'knowledge and culture were
  beamed toward the Andromeda Nebula and its more distant neighbors. No one,
  of course, would ever know if the signals were received-or, if received,
  could be interpreted. But the motivation was one that most men could share;
  it was the impulse to leave some last message-some signal saying, "Look-1,
  too, was once alive!"
  By the year 3000, astronomers believed that their giant orbiting telescopes
  had detected all planetary systems within five hundred fight-years of the
  Sun. Dozens of approximately Earth-size worlds had been discovered, and
  some of the closer ones had been crudely mapped. Several had atmospheres
  bearing that unmistakable signature of life, an abnormally high percentage
  of oxygen. There was a reasonable chance that men could survive there-if
  they could reach them.

                21
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 Men could not, but Man could.
  The first seedships were primitive, yet even so they stretched technology
  to the limit. With the propulsion systems available by 2500, they could
  reach the nearest planetary system in two hundred years, carrying their
  precious burden of frozen embryos.
  But that was the least of their tasks. They also had to carry the automatic
  equipment that would revive and rear these potential humans and teach them
  how to survive in an unknown but probably hostile environment. It would be
  useless-indeed, cruel-to decant naked, ignorant children on to worlds as
  unfriendly as the Sahara or the Antarctic. They had to be educated, given
  tools, shown how to locate and use local resources. After it bad landed and
  the seedship became a Mother Ship, it might have to cherish its brood for
  generations.
  Not only humans had to be carried but -a complete biota. Plants (even
  though no one knew if there would be soil for them), farm animals, and a
  surprising variety of essential insects and microorganisms also had to be
  included in case normal foodproduction systems broke down and it was
  necessary to revert to basic agricultural techniques.
  There was one advantage in such a new beginning. All the diseases and
  parasites that had plagued humanity since the beginning of time would be
  left behind, to perish in the sterilizing fire of Nova Solis.
  Data banks, "expert systems" able to handle any conceivable situation,
  robots, repair and backup mechanisms-all these had to be designed and
  built. And they had to function over a time-span at least

               22
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 as long as that between the Declaration of Independence and the first
 landing on the Moon.
  Though the task seemed barely possible, it was so inspiring that almost the
  whole of mankind united to achieve it. Here was a long-term goal-the last
  long-term goal-that could now give some meaning to life, even after Earth
  had been destroyed.
  The first seedship left the Solar System in 2553, heading toward the Sun's
  near twin, Alpha Centauri A. Although the climate of the Earth-sized planet
  Pasadena was subject to violent extremes, owing to nearby Centauri B, the
  next likely target was more than twice as far away. The voyage time to
  Sirius X would be over four hundred years; when the seeder arrived, Earth
  might no longer exist.
  But if Pasadena could be successfully colonized, there would be ample time
  to send back the good news. Two hundred years for the voyage, fifty years
  to secure a foothold and build a small transmitter, and a mere four years
  for the signal to get back to Earth-why, with luck, there would be shouting
  in the streets around the year 2800 ...
  In fact, it was 2786; Pasadena had done better than predicted. The news was
  electrifying and gave renewed encouragement to the seeding program. By this
  time, a score of ships had been launched, each with more advanced
  technology than its precursor. The latest models could reach a twentieth of
  the velocity of light, and more than fifty targets lay within their range.
  Even when the Pasadena beacon became silent after beaming no more than the
  news of the initial 23
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 landing, discouragement was only momentary. What had been done once could be
 done again-and yet again-with greater certainty of success.
  By 2700 the crude technique of frozen embryos was abandoned. The genetic
  message that Nature encoded in the spiral structure of the DNA molecule
  could now be stored more easily, more safely, and even more compactly in
  the memories of the ultimate computers, so that a million genotypes could
  be carried in a seedship no larger than an ordinary thousand-passenger
  aircraft. An entire unborn nation, with all the replicating equipment
  needed to set up a new civilization, could be contained in a few hundred
  cubic meters and carried to the stars.
  This, Brant knew, was what had happened on Thalassa seven hundred years
  ago. Already, as the road climbed up into the hills, they had passed some
  of the scars left by the first robot excavators as they sought the raw
  materials from which his own ancestors had been created. In a moment, they
  would see the long-abandoned processing plants and-
  "What's that?" Councillor Simmons whispered urgently.
  "Stop!" the mayor ordered. "Cut the engine, Brant." She reached for the car
  microphone.
  "Mayor Waldron. We're at the seven-kilometer mark. There's a light ahead of
  us-we can see it through the trees-as far as I can tell, it's exactly at
  First Landing. We can't hear anything. Now we're starting up again."
  Brant did not wait for the order but eased the speed
 control gently forward. This was the second most
               24
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 exciting thing that had happened to him in his entire life, next to being
 caught in the hurricane of '09.
  That had been more than exciting; he had been lucky to escape alive.
  Perhaps there was also danger here, but he did not really believe so. Could
  robots be hostile? Surely there was nothing that any outworlders could
  possibly want from Thalassa except knowledge and friendship ...
  "You know," Councillor Simmons said, "I had a good view of the thing before
  it went over the trees, and I'm certain it was some kind of aircraft. Seed-
  ships never had wings and streamlining, of course. And it was very small."
  "Whatever it is," Brant said, "we'll know in five minutes. Look at that
  light-it's come down in Earth Park-the obvious place. Should we stop the
  car and walk the rest of the way?"
  Earth Park was the carefully tended oval of grass on the eastern side of
  First Landing, and it was now hidden from their direct view by the black,
  looming column of the Mother Ship, the oldest and most revered monument on
  the planet. Spilling around the edges of the still-untarnished cylinder was
  a flood of light, apparently from a single brilliant source.
  "Stop the car just before we reach the ship," the mayor ordered. "Then
  we'll get out and peek around it. Switch off your lights so they won't see
  us until we want them to."
  "Them-or It?" asked one of the passengers, just a little hysterically.
  Everyone ignored him.
The car came to a halt in the ship's immense 25
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 shadow, and Brant swung it around through a hundred and eighty degrees.
  "Just so we can make a quick getaway," he explained, half seriously, half
  out of mischief; he still could not believe that they were in any real
  danger. Indeed, there were moments when he wondered if this was really
  happening. Perhaps he was still asleep and this was merely a vivid dream.
  They got quietly out of the car and walked up to the ship, then circled it
  until they came to the sharply defined wall of light. Brant shielded his
  eyes and peered around the edge, squinting against the glare.
  Councillor Simmons had been perfectly correct. It was some kind of
  aircraft-or aerospacecraft-and a very small one at that. Could the
  Northers?- No, that was absurd. There was no conceivable use for such a
  vehicle in the limited area of the Three Islands, and its development could
  not possibly have been concealed.
  It was shaped like a blunt arrowhead and must have landed vertically, for
  there were no marks on the surrounding grass. The light came from a single
  source in a streamlined dorsal housing, and a small red beacon was flashing
  on and off just above that. Altogether, it was a reassuringly-indeed,
  disappointingly-ordinary machine. One that could not conceivably have
  traveled the dozen light-years to the nearest known colony.
  Suddenly, the main fight went out, leaving the little group of observers
  momentarily blind. When he recovered his night vision, Brant could see that
  there were windows in the forepart of the machine, glow26
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 ing faintly with internal illumination. Why-it looked almost like a manned
 vehicle, not the robot craft they had taken for granted!
  Mayor Waldron had come to exactly the same astonishing conclusion.
  "It's not a robot-there are people in it! Let's not waste any more time.
  Shine your flashlight on me, Brant, so they can see us."
 "Helga!" Councillor Simmons protested.
 "Don't be an ass, Charlie. Let's go, Brant."
  What was it that the first man on the Moon had said almost two millennia
  ago? "One small step. . . " -They had taken about twenty when a door opened
  in the side of the vehicle, a double-jointed ramp flipped rapidly downward,
  and two humanoids walked out to meet them.
  That was Brant's first reaction. Then he realized that he had been misled
  by the color of their skinor what he could see of it through the flexible,
  transparent film that covered them from head to foot.
 They were not humanoids-they were human. If
 he never went * out into the sun again, he might be
 come almost as bleached as they were.
  . The mayor was holding out her hands in the traditional "See-no weapons!"
  gesture as old as history.
  "I don't suppose you'll understand me," she said, "but welcome to
  Thalassa."
  The visitors smiled, and the older of the two-a handsome gray-haired man in
  his late sixties-held up his hands in response.
 "On the contrary," he answered in one of the deep-
               27
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 est and most beautifully modulated voices that Brant had ever heard, "we
 understand you perfectly. We're delighted to meet you."
  For a moment, the welcoming party stood in stunned silence. But it was
  silly, thought Brant, to have been surprised. After all, they did not have
  the slightest difficulty understanding the speech of men who had lived two
  thousand years ago. When sound recording was invented, it froze the basic
  phoneme patterns of all languages. Vocabularies would expand, syntax and
  grammar might be modified-but pronunciation would remain stable for
  millennia.
 Mayor Waldron was the first to recover.
  "Well, that certainly saves a lot of trouble," she said rather lamely. "But
  where have you come from? I'm afraid we've lost touch with-our neighbors-
  since our deep-space antenna was destroyed."
  The older man glanced at his much taller companion, and some silent message
  flashed between them. Then he again turned toward the waiting mayor.
  There was no mistaking the sadness in that beautiful voice as he made his
  preposterous claim.
  "It may be difficult for you to believe this," he said. "But we're not from
  any of the colonies. We've come straight from Earth."

 28
 11. MAGELLAN

 i
 6. PLANETFALL

 Even before he opened his eyes, Loren knew exactly where he was, and he
 found this quite surprising. After sleeping for two hundred years, some
 confusion would have been understandable, but it seemed only yesterday that
 he had made his last entry in the ship's log. And as far as he could
 remember, he had not had a single dream. He was thankful for that.
  Still keeping his eyes closed, he concentrated one at a time on all his
  other sense channels. He could hear a soft murmur of voices, quietly
  reassuring. There was the familiar sighing of the air exchangers, and he
  could feel a barely perceptible current wafting pleasant antiseptic smells
  across his face.
  The one sensation he did not feel was that of weight. He lifted his right
  arm effortlessly: it remained floating in midair, awaiting his next order.
  "Hello, Mister Lorenson," a cheerfully bullying voice said. "So you've
  condescended to join us again. How do you feel?"
  Loren finally opened his eyes and tried to focus them on the blurred figure
  floating beside his bed.
 "Hello ... doctor. I'm fine. And hungry."
 "That's always a good sign. You can get dressed-
               31
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 don't move too quickly for a while. And you can decide later if you want to
 keep that beard."
  Loren directed his still-floating hand toward his chin; he was surprised at
  the amount of stubble he found there. Like the majority of men, he had
  never taken the option of permanent eradication-whole volumes of psychology
  had been written on that subject. Perhaps it was time to think about doing
  so; amusing how such trivia cluttered up the mind, even at a moment like
  this.
 "We've arrived safely?"
  "Of course-otherwise you'd still be asleep. Everything's gone according to
  plan. The ship started to wake us a month ago-now we're in orbit above
  Thalassa. The maintenance crews have checked all the systems; now it's your
  turn to do some work. And we have a little surprise for you."
 "A pleasant one, I hope."
  "So do we. Captain Bey has a briefing two hours from now in Main Assembly.
  If you don't want to move yet, you can watch from here."
  $(I'll come to Assembly-I'd like to meet everyone. But can I have breakfast
  first? It's been a long time . . . "

 Capt. Sirdar Bey looked tired but happy as he welcomed the fifteen men and
 women who had just been revived and introduced them to the thirty who formed
 the current A and B crews. According to ship's regulations, C crew was
 supposed to be sleeping-but several figures were lurking at the back of the
 Assembly room, pretending not to be there.

               32
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

  "I'm happy you've joined us," he told the newcomers. "It's good to see some
  fresh faces around here. And it's better still to see a planet and to know
  that our ship's carried out the first two hundred years of the mission plan
  without any serious anomalies. Here's Thalassa, right on schedule."
  Everyone turned toward the visual display covering most of one wall. Much
  of it was devoted to data and state-of-ship information, but the largest
  section might have been a window looking out into space. It was completely
  filled by a stunningly beautiful image of a blue-white globe, almost fully
  illuminated. Probably everyone in the room had noticed the heartbreaking
  similarity to the Earth as seen from high above the Pacific-almost all
  water, with only a few isolated landmasses.
  And there was land here-a compact grouping of three islands, partly hidden
  by a veil of cloud. Loren thought of Hawaii, which he had never seen and
  which no longer existed. But there was one fundamental difference between
  the two planets. The other hemisphere of Earth was mostly land; the other
  hemisphere of Thalassa was entirely ocean.
  "There it is," the captain said proudly. "Just as the mission planners
  predicted. But there's one detail they didn't expect, which will certainly
  affect our operations.
  "You'll recall that Thalassa was seeded by a Mark 3A fifty-thousand-unit
  module which left Earth in 2751 and arrived in 3109. Everything went well,
  and the first transmissions were received a hundred and sixty years later.
  They continued intermittently for

               33
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 almost two centuries, then suddenly stopped after a brief message reporting
 a major volcanic eruption. Nothing more was ever heard, and it was assumed
 that our colony on Thalassa had been destroyed-or at 'any rate reduced to
 barbarism as seems to have happened in several other cases.
  "For the benefit of the newcomers, let me repeat what we've found.
  Naturally, we listened out on all ft-equencies when we entered the system.
  Nothingnot even power-system leakage radiation.
  "When we got closer, we realized this didn't prove a thing. Thalassa has a
  very dense ionosphere. There might be a lot of medium- and short-wave
  chatter going on beneath it, and nobody outside would ever know. Microwaves
  would go through, of course, but maybe they don't need them, or we haven't
  been lucky enough to intercept a beam.
  "Anyway, there's a well-developed civilization down there. We saw the
  lights of their cities-towns, at least-as soon as we had a good view of the
  nightside. There are plenty of small industries, a little coastal
  traffic-no large ships-and we've even spotted a couple of aircraft moving
  at all of five hundred klicks, which will get them anywhere in fifteen
  minutes.
  "Obviously, they don't need much air transport in such a compact community,
  and they have a good system of roads. But we've still not been able to
  detect any communications. And no satellites, either-not even
  meteorological ones, which you'd think- they'd need ... though perhaps not,
  as their ships probably 34
    THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 never get out of sight of land. There's simply no other land to go to, of
 course.
  "So there we are. It's an interesting situationand a very pleasant
  surprise. At least I hope it will be. Now, any questions? Yes, Mister
  Lorenson?"
 "Have we tried to contact them, sir?"
  "Not yet; we thought it inadvisable until we know the exact level of their
  culture. Whatever we do, it may be a considerable shock."
 "Do they know we're here?"
 "Probably not."
  "But surely-our drive-they must have seen that!"
  It was a reasonable question, since a quantum ramjet at full power was one
  of the most dramatic spectacles ever contrived by man. It was as brilliant
  as an atomic bomb, and it lasted much longermonths instead of milliseconds.
  "Possibly, but I doubt it. We were on the other side of the sun when we did
  most of our braking. They wouldn't have seen us in its glare."
  Then someone asked the question that everybody had been thinking.
 "Captain, how will this affect our mission?"
 Sirdar Bey looked thoughtfully at the speaker.
  "At this stage, it's still quite impossible to say. A few hundred thousand
  other humans-or whatever the population is-could make things a lot easier
  for us. Or at least much more pleasant. On the other hand, if they don't
  like us-"
 He gave an expressive shrug.
"I've just remembered a piece of advice that an ~ 35
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 old explorer gave to one of his colleagues. If you assume that the natives
 are friendly, they usually are. And vice versa.
  "So until they prove otherwise, we'll assume that they're friendly. And
  if they're not. . . "
  The captain's expression hardened, and his voice became that of a
  commander who had just brought a great ship across fifty light-years of
  space.
  "I've never claimed that might is right, but it's always very comforting
  to have it."

 36
7. LORDS OF THE LAST
DAYS

 It was hard to believe that he was really and truly awake, and that life
 could begin again.
  Lt. Comdr. Loren Lorenson knew that he could never wholly escape from the
  tragedy that had shadowed more than forty generations and had reached its
  climax in his own lifetime. During the course of his first new day, he had
  one continuing fear. Not even the promise, and mystery, of the beautiful
  ocean-world hanging there below Magellan could keep at bay the thought:
  what dreams will come when I close my eyes tonight in natural sleep for the
  first time in two hundred years?
  He had witnessed scenes that no one could ever forget and which would haunt
  Mankind until the end of time. Through the ship's telescopes, he had
  watched the death of the Solar System. With his own eyes, he had seen the
  volcanoes of Mars erupt for the first time in a billion years; Venus
  briefly naked as her atmosphere was blasted into space before she herself
  was consumed; the gas giants exploding into incandescent fireballs. But
  these were empty, meaningless spectacles compared with the tragedy of
  Earth.

               37
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

  That, too, he had watched through the lenses of cameras that had survived
  a few minutes longer than the devoted men who had sacrificed the last mo-
  ments of their lives to set them up. He had seen ...
  I ... the Great Pyramid glowing dully red before it slumped into a puddle
  of molten stone ...
  ... the floor of the Atlantic, baked rock hard in seconds before it was
  submerged again by the lava gushing from the volcanoes of the Mid-ocean
  Rift ...
  ... the Moon rising above the flaming forests of Brazil and now itself
  shining almost as brilliantly as had the Sun, on its last setting, only
  minutes before ...
  ... the continent of Antarctica emerging briefly after its long burial as
  the kilometers of ancient ice were burned away ...
  ... the mighty central span of the Gibraltar Bridge melting even as it
  slumped downward through the burning air ...
  In that last century the Earth was haunted with ghosts-not of the dead but
  of those who now could never be born. For five hundred years the birthrate
  had been held at a level that would reduce the human population to a few
  million when the end finally came. Whole cities-even countries-had been
  deserted as mankind huddled together for History's closing act.
  It was a time of strange paradoxes, of wild oscillations between despair
  and feverish exhilaration. Many, of course, sought oblivion through the
  traditional routes of drugs, sex, and dangerous sports-
  
               38
     THE SONGS OF D15TANT EARTH

 including what were virtually miniature wars, carefully monitored and fought
 with agreed weapons. Equally popular was the whole spectrum of electronic
 catharsis, from endless video games, interactive dramas, and direct
 stimulation of the brain's pleasure centers.
  Because there was no longer any reason to take heed for the future on this
  planet, Earth's resources and the accumulated wealth of all the ages could
  be squandered with a clear conscience. In terms of material goods, all men
  were millionaires, rich beyond the wildest dreams of their ancestors, the
  fruits of whose toil they had inherited. They called themselves wryly, yet
  not without a certain pride, the Lords of the Last Days.
  Yet though myriads sought forgetfulness, even more,found satisfaction, as
  some men had always done, in working for goals beyond their own lifetimes.
  Much scientific research continued, using the immense resources that had
  now been freed. If a physicist needed a hundred tons of gold for an ex-
  periment, that was merely a minor problem in logistics, not budgeting.
  Three themes dominated. First was the continual monitoring of the Sun-not
  because there was any remaining doubt but to predict the moment of det-
  onation to the year, the day, the hour ...
  Second was the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, neglected after
  centuries of failure, now resumed with desperate urgency-and, even to the
  end, yielding no greater success than before. To all 39
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 Man's questioning, the Universe still gave a dusty answer.
  And the third, of course, was the seeding of the nearby stars in the hope
  that the human race would not perish with the dying of its Sun.
  By the dawn of the final century, seedships of ever-increasing speed and
  sophistication had been sent to more than fifty targets. Most, as expected,
  had been failures, but ten had radioed back news of at least partial
  success. Even greater hopes were placed on the later and more advanced
  models, though they would not reach their distant goals until long after
  Earth had ceased to exist. The very last to be launched could cruise at a
  twentieth of the speed of fight and would make planetfall in nine hundred
  and fifty years-if all went well.
  Loren could still remember the launching of Excalibur from its construction
  cradle at the Lagrangian point between Earth and Moon. Though he was only
  five, even then he knew that this seedship would be the very last of its
  kind. But why the centurieslong program had been, canceled just when it had
  reached technological maturity, he was still too young to understand. Nor
  could he have guessed how his own life would be changed by the stunning
  discovery that had transformed the entire situation and given mankind a new
  hope in the very last decades of terrestrial history.
  Though countless theoretical studies had been made, no one had ever been
  able to make a plausible case for manned spaceflight even to the nearest
  star. That such a journey might take a century was not

               40
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 the decisive factor; hibernation could solve that problem. A rhesus monkey
 had been sleeping in the Louis Pasteur satellite hospital for almost a
 thousand years and still showed perfectly normal brain activity. There was
 no reason to suppose that human beings could not do the same-though the
 record, held by a patient suffering from a peculiarly baffling form of
 cancer, was less than two centuries.
  The biological problem had been solved; it was the engineering one that
  appeared insuperable. A vessel that could carry thousands of sleeping
  passengers, and all they needed for a new life on another world, would have
  to be as large as one of the great ocean liners that had once ruled the
  seas of Earth.
  It would be easy enough to build such a ship beyond the orbit of Mars and
  using the abundant resources of the asteroid belt. However, it was impos-
  sible to devise engines that could get it to the stars in any reasonable
  length of time.
  Even at a tenth of the speed of light, all the most promising targets were
  more than five hundred years away. Such a velocity had been attained by
  robot probes-flashing through nearby star systems and radioing back their
  observations during a few hectic hours of transit. But there was no way in
  which they could slow down for rendezvous or landing; barring accidents,
  they would continue speeding through the galaxy forever.
  This was the fundamental problem with rocketsand no one had ever discovered
  any alternative for deep-space propulsion. It was just as difficult to lose
  speed as to acquire it, and carrying the necessary 41
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 propellant for deceleration did not merely double the difficulty of a
 mission; it squared it.
  A full-scale hibership, could indeed be built to reach a tenth of the speed
  of light. It would require about a million tons of somewhat exotic elements
  as propellant; difficult but not impossible.
  But in order to cancel that velocity at the end of the voyage, the ship
  must start not with a millionbut a preposterous million, million tons of
  propellant. This, of course, was so completely out of the question that no
  one had given the matter any serious thought for centuries.
  And then, by one of history's greatest ironies, Mankind was given the keys
  to the Universe-and barely a century in which to use them.

 42
8. REMEMBRANCE OF
LOVE LOST

 How glad I am, thought Moses Kaldor, that I never succumbed to that
 temptation-the seductive lure that art and technology had 'first given to
 mankind more than a thousand years ago. Had I wished, I could have brought
 Evelyn's electronic ghost with me into exile, trapped in a few gigabytes of
 programming. She could have appeared before me, in any one of the
 backgrounds we both loved, and carried on a conversation so utterly
 convincing that a stranger could never have guessed that no onenothing-was
 really there.
  But I would have known after five or ten minutes unless I deluded myself by
  a deliberate act of will. And that I could never do. Though I am still not
  sure why my instincts revolt against it, I always refused to accept the
  false solace of a dialogue with the dead. I do not even possess, now, a
  simple recording of her voice.
  It is far better this way, to watch her moving in silence in the little
  garden of our last home, knowing that this is no illusion of the
  image-makers but that it really did happen two hundred years ago on Earth.

               43
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

  And the only voice will be mine, here and now, speaking to the memory that
  still exists in my own human, living brain.
  Private recording One. Alpha scrambler. Autoerase program.
  You were right, Evelyn, and I was wrong. Even though I am the oldest man on
  the ship, it seems that I can still be useful.
  When I awoke, Captain Bey was standing beside me., I felt flattered-as soon
  as I was able to feel anything.
  "Well, Captain," I said, "this is quite a surprise. I half expected you to
  dump me in space as unnecessary mass."
  He laughed and answered: "It could still happen, Moses; the voyage isn't
  over yet. But we certainly need you now. The Mission planners were wiser
  than you gave them credit."
  "They listed me on the ship's manifest as quote Ambassador-Counsellor
  unquote. In which capacity am I required?"
  "Probably both. And perhaps in your even betterknown role as-"
  "Don't hesitate if you wanted to say crusader, even though I never liked
  the word and never regarded myself as a leader of any movement. I only
  tried to make people think for themselves-I never wanted anyone to follow
  me blindly. History has seen too many leaders."
  "Yes, but not all have been bad ones. Consider your namesake."
 "Much overrated, though I can understand if you

               44
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 admire him. After all, you, too, have the task of leading homeless tribes
 into a promised land. I assume that some slight problem has arisen."
  The captain smiled and answered: "I'm happy to see that you're fully alert.
  At this stage, there's not even a problem, and there's no reason why there
  should be. But a situation has arisen that no one expected, and you're our
  official diplomat. You have the one skill we never thought we'd need."
  I can tell you, Evelyn, that gave me a shock. Captain Bey must have read my
  mind very accurately when he saw my jaw drop.
  "Oh," he said quickly, "we haven't run into aliens! But it turns out that
  the human colony on Thalassa wasn't destroyed as we'd imagined. In fact,
  it's doing very well. I
  That, of course, was another surprise, though quite a pleasant one.
  Thalassa-the Sea, the Sea!was a world I had never expected to set eyes
  upon. When I awoke, it should have been light-years behind and centuries
  ago.
  "What are the people like? Have you made contact with them?"
  "Not yet; that's your job. You know better than anyone else the mistakes
  that were made in the past. We don't want to repeat them here. Now, if
  you're ready to come up to the bridge, I'll give you a bird'seye view of
  our long-lost cousins."
  That was a week ago, Evelyn; how pleasant it is to have no time pressures
  after decades of unbreakable-and all too literal-deadlines! Now we know as
  much about the Thalassans as we can hope to do 45
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE -
 without 'actually meeting them face-to-face. And this we shall do tonight.
  We have chosen common ground to show that we recognize our kinship. The
  site of the first landing is clearly visible and has been well kept, like
  a parkpossibly a shrine. That's a very good sign: I only hope that our
  landing there won't be taken as sacrilege. Perhaps it will confirm that we
  are gods, which should make it easier for us. If the Thalassans have
  invented gods-that's one thing I want to find out.
  I am beginning to live again, my darling. Yes, yes-you were wiser than 1,
  the so-called philosopher! No man has a right to die while he can still
  help his fellows. It was selfish of me to have wished otherwise ... to have
  hoped to he forever beside you in the spot we had chosen so long ago, so
  far away . . . Now I can even accept the fact that you are scattered across
  the Solar System with all else that I ever loved on Earth.
  But now there is work to be done; and while I talk to your memory, you are
  still alive.

 46
9. THE QUEST FOR
SUPERSPACE

 Of all the psychological hammer blows that the scientists of the twentieth
 century had to endure, perhaps the most devastating-and unexpected-was the
 discovery that nothing was more crowded than "empty" space.
  The old Aristotelian doctrine that Nature abhorred a vacuum was perfectly
  true. Even when every atom of seemingly solid matter was removed from a
  given volume, what remained was a seething inferno of energies of an
  intensity and scale unimaginable to the human mind. By comparison, even the
  most condensed form of matter-the hundred-million-tons-
  to-the-cubic-centimeter of a neutron star-was an impalpable ghost, a barely
  perceptible perturbation in the inconceivably dense, yet foamlike structure
  of 94superspace. "
  That there was much more to space than naive intuition suggested was first
  revealed *by the classic work of Lamb and Retherford in 1947. Studying the
  simplest of elements-the hydrogen atom-they discovered that something very
  odd happened when the solitary electron orbited the nucleus. Far from
  trav-
  
               47
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 eling in a smooth curve, it behaved as if being continually buffeted by
 incessant waves on a sub-submicroscopic scale. Hard though it was to grasp
 the concept, there were fluctuations in the vacuum itself.
  Since the time of the Greeks, philosophers had been divided into two
  schools-those who believe that the operations of Nature flowed smoothly and
  those who argued that this was an illusion; everything really happened in
  discrete jumps or jerks too small to be perceptible in everyday life. The
  establishment of the atomic theory was a triumph for the second school of
  thought; and when Planck's Quantum Theory demonstrated that even light and
  energy came in little packets, not continuous streams, the argument finally
  ended.
  In the ultimate analysis, the world of Nature was granular-discontinuous.
  Even if, to the naked human eye, a waterfall and a shower of bricks ap-
  peared very different, they were really much the same. The tiny "bricks" of
  H20 were too small to be visible to the unaided senses, but they could be
  easily discerned by the instruments of the physicists.
  And now the analysis was taken one step further. What made the granularity
  of space so hard to envisage was not only its sub-submicroscopic scalebut
  its sheer violence.
  No one could really imagine a millionth of a centimeter, but at least the
  number itself-a thousand thousands-was familiar in such human affairs as
  budgets and population statistics. To say that it

               48
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 would require a million viruses to span the distance of a centimeter did
 convey something to the mind.
  But a million-millionth of a centimeter? That was comparable to the size of
  the electron, and already it was far beyond visualization. It could perhaps
  be grasped intellectually, but not emotionally.
  And yet the scale of events in the structure of space was unbelievably
  smaller than this-so much so that, in comparison, an ant and an elephant
  were of virtually the same size. If one imagined it as a bubbling, foamlike
  mass (almost hopelessly misleading, yet a first approximation to the truth)
  then those bubbles were ...
  ... a thousandth of a millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a
  millionth of a millionth ...
 ... of a centimeter across.
  And now imagine them continually exploding with energies comparable to
  those of nuclear bombs-and then reabsorbing that energy, and spitting it
  out again, and so on forever and forever.
  This, in a grossly simplified form, was the picture that some late
  twentieth-century physicists had developed of the fundamental structure of
  space. That its intrinsic energies might ever be tapped must, at the time,
  have seemed completely ridiculous.
  So, a lifetime earlier, had been the idea of releasing the newfound forces
  of the atomic nucleus; yet that had happened in less than half a century.
  To harness the "quantum fluctuations" that embodied the energies of space
  itself was a task orders of magnitude more difficult-and the prize
  correspondingly greater.

               49
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

  Among other things, it would give mankind the freedom of the universe. A
  spaceship could accelerate literally forever, since it would no longer need
  any fuel. The only practical limit to speed would, paradoxically, be that
  which the early aircraft had to contend with-the friction of the
  surrounding medium. The space between the stars contained appreciable
  quantities of hydrogen and other atoms, which could cause trouble long
  before one reached the ultimate limit set by the velocity of light.
  The quantum drive might have been developed at any time after the year
  2500, and the history of the human race would then have been very
  different. Unfortunately-as had happened many times before in the zigzag
  progress of science-faulty observations and erroneous theories delayed the
  final breakthrough for almost a thousand years.
  The feverish centuries of the Last Days produced much brilliant-though
  often decadent-art but httle new fundamental knowledge. Moreover, by that
  time the long record of failure had convinced almost everyone that tapping
  the energies of space was like perpetual motion, impossible even in theory,
  let alone in practice. However-unlike perpetual motion-it had not yet been
  proved to be impossible, and until this was demonstrated beyond all doubt,
  some hope still remained.
  Only a hundred and fifty years before the end, a group of physicists in the
  Lagrange One zero-gravity research satellite announced that they had at
  last found such a proof; there were fundamental reasons why the immense
  energies of superspace, though

               50
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 they were real enough, could never be tapped. No one was in the least
 interested in this tidying up of an obscure comer of science.
  A year later, there was an embarrassed cough from Lagrange One. A slight
  mistake had been found in the proof It was the sort of thing that had
  happened often enough in the past, though never with such momentous
  consequences.
  A minus sign had been accidentally converted into a plus.
  Instantly, the whole world was changed. The road to the stars had been
  opened up-five minutes before midnight.

 51
 III, SOUTH ISLAND
 10. FIRST CONTACT

 Perhaps I should have broken it more gently, Moses Kaldor told himself; they
 all seem in a state of shock. But that in itself is very instructive; even
 if these people are technologically backward (just look at that car!) they
 must realize that only a miracle of engineering could have brought us from
 Earth to Thalassa. First they will wonder how we did it, and then they will
 start to wonder why.
  That, in fact, was the very first question that had occurred to Mayor
  Waldron. These two men in one small vehicle were obviously only the
  vanguard. Up there in orbit might be thousands-even millions. And the
  population of Thalassa, thanks to strict regulation, was already within
  ninety percent of ecological optimum ...
  "My name is Moses Kaldor," the older of the two visitors said. "And this is
  Lieutenant Commander Loren Lorenson, Assistant Chief Engineer, Starship
  Magellan. We apologize for these bubble suitsyou'll realize that they are
  for our mutual protection. Though we come in friendship, our bacteria may
  have different ideas."
 What a beautiful voice, Mayor Waldrontold her-
               55
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 self-as well she might. Once it had been the best known in the world,
 consoling-and sometimes provoking-millions in the decades before the End.
  The mayor's notoriously roving eye did not, however, remain long on Moses
  Kaldor; he was obviously well into his sixties, and a little too old for
  her. The younger man was much more to her liking, though she wondered if
  she could ever really grow accustomed to that ugly white pallor. Loren
  Lorenson (what a charming name!) was nearly two meters in height, and his
  hair was so blond as to be almost silver. He was not as husky as-well,
  Brant-but he was certainly more handsome.
  Mayor Waldron was a good judge both of men and of women, and she classified
  Lorenson very quickly. Here were intelligence, determination, perhaps even
  ruthlessness-she would not like to have him as an enemy, but she was
  certainly interested in having him as a friend. Or better ...
  At the same time, she did not doubt that Kaldor was a much nicer person. In
  his face and voice she could already discern wisdom, compassion, and also
  a profound sadness. Little wonder, considering the shadow under which he
  must have spent the whole of his life.
  All the other members of the reception committee had now approached and
  were introduced one by one. Brant, after the briefest of courtesies, headed
  straight for the aircraft and began to examine it from end to end.
  Loren followed him; he recognized a fellow engineer when he saw one and
  would be able to learn 56
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 a good deal from the Thalassan's reactions. He guessed, correctly, what
 Brant's first question would be about. Even so, he was taken off balance.
  "What's the propulsion system? Those jet orifices are ridiculously small-if
  that's what they are."
  It was a very shrewd observation; these people were not the technological
  savages they had seemed at first sight. But it would never do to show that
  he was impressed. Better to counterattack and let,him have it right between
  the eyes.
  "It's a derated quantum ramjet, adapted for atmospheric flight by using air
  as a working fluid. Taps the Planck fluctuations-you know, ten to the minus
  thirty-three centimeters. So of course it has infinite range, in air or in
  space." Loren felt rather pleased with that "of course."
  Once again he had to give Brant credit; the Lassan barely blinked and even
  managed to say, "Very interesting," as if he really meant it.
 "Can I go inside?"
  Loren hesitated. It might seem discourteous to refuse, and after all, they
  were anxious to make ftiends as quickly as possible. Perhaps more
  important, this would show who really had the mastery here.
  "Of course," he answered. "But be careful not to touch anything." Brant was
  much too interested to notice the absence of "please."
  Loren led the way into the spaceplane's tiny airlock. There was just enough
  room for the two of them, and it required complicated gymnastics to seal
  Brant into the spare bubble suit.
"I hope these won't be necessary for long," Loren 57
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 explained, "but we have to wear them until the microbiology checks are
 complete. Close your eyes until we've been through the sterilization cycle."
  Brant was aware of a faint violet glow, and there was a brief hissing of
  gas. Then the inner door opened, and they walked into the control cabin.
  As they sat down side by side, the tough, yet scarcely visible films around
  them barely hindered their movements. Yet it separated them as effectively
  as if they were on different worlds-which, in many senses, they still were.
  Brant was a quick learner, Loren had to admit. Give him a few hours and he
  could handle this machine-even though he would never be able to grasp the
  underlying theory. For that matter, legend had it that only a handful of
  men had ever really comprehended the geodynamics of superspace-and they
  were now centuries dead.
  They quickly became so engrossed in technical discussions that they almost
  forgot the outside world. Suddenly, a slightly worried voice remarked from
  the general direction of the control panel, "Loren? Ship calling. What's
  happening? We've not heard from you for half an hour. "
 Loren reached lazily for a switch.
  "Since you're monitoring us on six video and five audio channels, that's a
  slight exaggeration." He hoped that Brant had got the message: We're in
  full charge of the situation, and we're not taking anything for granted.
  "Over to Moses-he's doing all the talking, as usual."

               58
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

  Through the curved windows, they could see that Kaldor and the mayor were
  still in earnest discussion, with Councillor Simmons joining in from time
  to time. Loren threw a switch, and their amplified voices suddenly filled
  the cabin, more loudly than if they had been'standing beside them.
 41
  -our hospitality. But you realize, of course, that this is an
  extraordinarily small world, as far as land surface is concerned. How many
  people did you say were aboard your ship?"
  "I don't think I mentioned a figure, Madame Mayor. In any event, only a
  very few of us will ever come down to Thalassa, beautiful though it is. I
  fully understand your-ah -concern, but there's no need to feel the
  slightest apprehension. In a year or two, if all goes well, we'll be on out
  way again.
  "At the same time, this isn't a social call-after all, we never expected to
  meet anyone here! But a starship doesn't delta-vee through half the
  velocity of fight except for very good reasons. You have something that we
  need, and we have something to give you. "
 "What, may I ask?"
  "From us, if you will accept it, the final centuries of human art and
  science. But I should warn youconsider what such a gift may do to your own
  culture. It might not be wise to accept everything we can offer. "
  "I appreciate your honesty-and your understanding. You must have treasures
  beyond price. What can we possibly offer in exchange?"

               59
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

  Kaldor gave his resonant laugh. "Luckily, that's no problem. You wouldn't
  even notice, if we took it without asking.
  "All we want from Thalassa is a hundred thousand tons of water. Or, to be
  more specific, ice."

 60
 11. DELEGATION

 The President of Thalassa had been in office for only two months and was
 still unreconciled to his misfortune. But there was nothing he could do
 about it except to make the best of a bad job for the three years it would
 last. Certainly it was no use demanding a recount; the selection program,
 which involved the generation and interleaving of thousand-digit random
 numbers, was the nearest thing to pure chance that human ingenuity could
 devise.
  There were exactly five ways to avoid the danger of being dragged into the
  Presidential Palace (twenty rooms, one large enough to hold almost a
  hundred guests). You could be under thirty or over seventy; you could be
  incurably ill; you could be mentally defective; or you could have committed
  a grave crime. The only option really open to President Edgar Farradine was
  the last, and he had given it serious thought.
  Yet he had to admit that despite the personal inconvenience it had caused
  him, this was probably the best form of goverm-nent that mankind had ever
  devised. The mother planet had taken some ten thousand years to perfect it,
  by trial and often hideous error.

               61
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

  As soon as the entire adult population had been educated to the limits of
  its intellectual ability (and sometimes, alas, beyond), genuine democracy
  became possible. The final step required the development of instantaneous
  personal communications, linked with central computers. According to the
  historians, the first true democracy on Earth was established in the
  (Terran) year 2011, in a country called New Zealand.
  Thereafter, selecting a head of state was relatively unimportant. Once it
  was universally accepted that anyone who deliberately aimed at the job
  should automatically be disqualified, almost any system would serve equally
  well, and a lottery was the simplest procedure.
  "Mr. President," the Secretary to the Cabinet said, "the visitors are
  waiting in the library."
  "Thank you, Lisa. And without their bubble suits?"
  "Yes-all the medical people agree that it's perfectly safe. But I'd better
  warn you, sir. They-ahsmell a little odd."
 "Krakan! In what way?"
 The secretary smiled.
  "Oh, it's not unpleasant-at least, I don't think so. It must be something
  to do with their food; after a thousand years, our biochemistries may have
  diverged. 'Aromatic' is probably the best word to describe it,"
  The president was not quite sure what that meant and was debating whether
  to ask when a disturbing thought occurred to him.

               62
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

  "And how," he said, "do you suppose we smell to them?"
  To his relief, his five guests showed no obvious signs of olfactory
  distress when they were introduced, one at a time. But Secretary Elisabeth
  Ishihara was certainly wise to have warned him; now he knew exactly what
  the word "aromatic" implied. She was also correct in saying that it was not
  unpleasant; indeed, he was reminded of the spices his wife used when it was
  her turn to do the cooking in the palace.
  As he sat down at the curve of the horseshoeshaped conference table, the
  President of Tbalassa found himself musing wryly about Chance and
  Fate-subjects that had never much concerned him in the past. But Chance, in
  its purest form, had put him in his present position. Now it-or its
  sibling, Fate-had struck again. How odd that he, an unambitious
  manufacturer of sporting equipment, had been chosen to preside at this
  historic meeting! Still, somebody had to do it; and he had to admit that he
  was beginning to enjoy himself At the very least, no one could stop him
  from making his speech of welcome ...
  ... It was, in fact, quite a good speech, though perhaps a little longer
  than necessary even for such an occasion as this. Toward the end he became
  aware that his listeners' politely attentive expressions were becoming a
  trifle glazed, so he cut out some of the productivity statistics and the
  whole section about the new power grid on South Island. When he sat down,
  he felt confident that he had painted a picture of a vigorous, progressive
  society with a high level of

               63
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 technical skills. Any superficial impressions to the contrary
 notwithstanding, Thalassa was neither backward nor decadent and still
 sustained the finest traditions of its great ancestors. Et cetera.
  "Thank you very much, Mr. President," Captain Bey said in the appreciative
  pause that followed. "It was indeed a welcome surprise when we discovered
  that Thalassa was not only inhabited but flourishing. It will make our stay
  here all the more pleasant, and we hope to leave again with nothing but
  goodwill on both sides."
  "Pardon me for being so blunt-it may even seem rude to raise the qbestion
  just as soon as guests arrive-but how long do you expect to be here? We'd
  like to know as soon as possible so that we can make any necessary
  arrangements."
  "I quite understand, Mr. President. We can't be specific at this stage,
  because it depends partly on the amount of assistance you can give us. My
  guess is at least one of your years-more probably two."
  Edgar Farradine, like most Lassans, was not good at concealing his
  emotions, and Captain Bey was alanned by the sudden gleeful-one might even
  say crafty-expression that spread across the chief executive's countenance.
  "I hope, Your Excellency, that won't create any problems?" he asked
  anxiously.
  "On the contrary," the president said, practically rubbing his hands. "You
  may not have heard, but our two hundredth Olympic Games are due in two
  years." He coughed modestly. "I got a bronze in the thousand meters when I
  was a young man, so they've 64
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 put me in charge of the arrangements. We could do with some competition from
 outside."
  "Mr. President," the Secretary to the Cabinet said, "I'm not sure that the
  rules-"
  "Which I make," the president continued firmly. "Captain, please consider
  this an invitation. Or a challenge, if you prefer."
  The commander of the starship Magellan was a man accustomed to making swift
  decisions, but for once he was taken completely aback. Before he could
  think of a suitable reply, his chief medical officer stepped into the
  breach.
  "That's extremely kind of you, Mr. President," Surgeon Commander Mary
  Newton said. "But as a medperson, may I point out that all of us are over
  thirty, we're completely out of training-and Thalassa's gravity is six
  percent stronger than Earth's, which would put us at a severe disadvantage.
  So unless your Olympics includes chess or card games . . . "
  The president looked disappointed but quickly recovered.
  "Oh, well-at least, Captain Bey, I'd like you to present some of the
  prizes."
  "I'd be delighted," the slightly dazed commander said. He felt that the
  meeting was getting out of hand and determined to return to the agenda.
  "May I explain what we hope to do here, Mr. President?"
  "Of course" was the somewhat disinterested reply. His excellency's thoughts
  still seemed elsewhere. Perhaps he was still reliving the triumphs of his
  65
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 youth. Then, with an obvious effort, he focused his attention upon the
 present. "We were flattered, but rather puzzled, by your visit. There seems
 very little that our world can offer you. I'm told there was some talk of
 ice; surely that was a joke."
  "No, Mr. President-we're absolutely serious. That's all we need of
  Thalassa, though now we've sampled some of your food products-I'm thinking
  especially of the cheese and wine we had at lunchwe may increase our
  demands considerably. But ice is the essential; let me explain. First
  image, please."
  The starship Magellan, two meters long, floated in front of the president.
  It looked so real that he wanted to reach out and touch it and would
  certainly have done so had there been no spectators to observe such naive
  behavior.
  "You'll see that the ship is roughly cylindricallength four kilometers,
  diameter one. Because our propulsion system taps the energies of space
  itself, there's no theoretical limit to speed, up to the velocity of light.
  But in practice, we run into trouble at about a fifth of that speed, owing
  to interstellar dust and gas. Tenuous though that is, an object moving
  through it at sixty thousand kilometers a second or more hits a surprising
  amount of material-and at that velocity even a single hydrogen atom can do
  appreciable damage.
  "So Magellan, just like the first primitive space
 ships, carries an ablation shield ahead of it. Almost
 any material would do as long as we use enough of
 it. And at the near-zero temperature between the
 stars, it's hard to find anything better than ice.
               66
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 Cheap, easily worked, and suiprisingly strong! This blunt cone is what our
 little iceberg looked like when we left the Solar System two hundred years
 ago. And this is what it's like now."
  The image flickered, then reappeared. The ship was unchanged, but the cone
  floating ahead of it had shrunk to a thin disc.
  "That's the result of drilling a hole fifty fight-years long through this
  rather dusty sector of the galaxy. I'm pleased to say the rate of ablation
  is within five percent of estimate, so we were never in any danger-though
  of course there was always the remote possibility that we might hit
  something really big. No shield could protect us against that-whether it
  was made of ice or the best armor-plate steel.
  "We're still good for another ten light-years, but that's not enough. Our
  final destination is the planet Sagan Two-seventy-five lights to go.
  "So now you understand, Mr. President, why we stopped at Thalassa. We would
  like to borrow-well, beg, since we can hardly promise to return it-a
  hundred or so thousand tons of water from you. We must build another
  iceberg, up there in orbit, to sweep the path ahead of us when we go on to
  the stars. "
  "How can we possibly help you to do that? Technically, you must be
  centuries ahead of us."
  "I doubt it-except for the quantum drive. Perhaps Deputy Captain Malina can
  outline our planssubject to your approval, of course."
 "Please go ahead."
 "First we have to locate a site for the freezing

               67
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 plant. There are many possibilities-it could be on any isolated stretch of
 coastline. It will cause absolutely no ecological disturbance, but if you
 wish, we'll put it on East Island-and hope that Krakan won't blow before
 we've finished!
  "The plant design is virtually complete, needing only minor modifications
  to match whatever site we finally choose. Most of the main components can
  go into production right away. They're all very straightforward-pumps,
  refrigerating systems, heat exchangers, cranes-good old-fashioned Second
  Millennium Technology!
  "If everything goes smoothly, we should have our first ice in ninety days.
  We plan to make standardsized blocks, each weighing six hundred tons-flat,
  hexagonal plates-someone's christened them snowflakes, and the name seems
  to have stuck.
  "When production's started, we'll lift one snowflake every day. Theyll be
  assembled in orbit and keyed together to build up the shield. From first
  lift to final structural test should take two hundred fifty days. Then
  we'll be ready to leave."
  When the deputy captain had finished, President Farradine sat in silence
  for a moment, a faraway look in his eye. Then he said, almost reverently,
  "IceI've never seen any, except at the bottom of a drink .

 As he shook hands with the departing visitors, President Farradine became
 aware of something strange. Their aromatic odor was now barely perceptible.

               68
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

  Had he grown accustomed to it already-or was he losing his sense of smell?
  Although both answers were correct, around midnight he would have accepted
  only the second. He woke up with his eyes watering and his nose so clogged
  that it was dffficult to breathe.
  "What's the matter, dear?" Mrs. President asked anxiously.
  "Call the-atischoo!-doctor," the chief executive answered. "Ours-and the
  one up in the ship. I don't believe there's a damn thing they can do, but
  I want to give them-atischoo-a piece of my mind. And I hope you haven't
  caught it, as well."
  The president's lady started to reassure him but was interrupted by a
  sneeze.
  They both sat up in bed and looked at each other unhappily.
  "I believe it took seven days to get over it," sniffed the president. "But
  perhaps medical science has advanced in the last few centuries."
  His hope was fulfilled, though barely. By heroic efforts, and with no loss
  of fife, the epidemic was stamped out-in six miserable days.
  It was not an auspicious beginning for the first contact between
  star-sundered cousins in almost a thousand years.

 69
 12. HERITAGE

 We've been here two weeks, Evelyn-though it doesn't seem like it as that's
 only eleven of Thalassa's days. Sooner or later we'll have to abandon the
 old calendar, but my heart will always beat to the ancient rhythms of Earth.
  It's been a busy time, and on the whole a pleasant one. The only real
  problem was medical; despite all precautions, we broke quarantine too soon,
  and about twenty percent of the Lassans caught some kind of virus. To make
  us feel even guiltier, none of us developed any symptoms whatsoever.
  Luckily, no one died, though I'm afraid we can't give the local doctors too
  much credit for that. Medical science is definitely backward here; they've
  grown to rely on automated systems so much that they can't handle anything
  out of the ordinary.
  But we've been forgiven; the Lassans are very good-natured, easygoing
  people. They have been incredibly lucky-perhaps too lucky!-with their
  planet; it makes the contrast with Sagan Two even bleaker.
  Their only real handicap is lack of land, and they've been wise enough to
  hold the population well

               70
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 below the sustainable maximum. If they're ever tempted to exceed it, they
 have the records of Earth's city-slums as a terrible warning.
  Because they're such beautiful and charming people, it's a great temptation
  to help them instead of letting them develop their own culture in their own
  way. In a sense, they're our children-and all parents find it hard to
  accept that sooner or later they must cease to interfere.
  To some extent, of course, we can't help interfering; our very presence
  does that. We're unexpected-though luckily not unwelcome-guests on their
  planet. And they can never forget that Magellan is orbiting just above the
  atmosphere, the last emissary from the world of their own ancestors.
  I've revisited First Landing-their birthplaceand gone on the tour that
  every Lassan makes at least once in his life. It's a combination of museum
  and shrine, the only place on the whole planet to which the word "sacred"
  is remotely applicable. Nothing has changed in seven hundred years. The
  seedship, though it is now an empty husk, looks as if it has only just
  landed. All around it are the silent machines-the excavators and
  constructors and chemical processing plants with their robot attendants.
  And, of course, the nurseries and schools of Generation One.
  There are almost no records of those first decades-perhaps deliberately.
  Despite all the skills and precautions of the planners, there must have
  been biological accidents, ruthlessly eliminated by the overriding program.
  And the time when those 71
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 who had no organic parents gave way to those who did must have been full of
 psychological traumas.
  But the tragedy and sadness of the Genesis Decades is now centuries in the
  past. Like the graves of all pioneers, it has been forgotten by the
  builders of the new society.
  I would be happy to spend the rest of my life here; there's material on
  Thalassa for a whole army of anthropologists and psychologists and social
  scientists. Above all, how I wish I could meet some of my longdead
  colleagues and let them know how many of our endless arguments have been
  finally resolved!
  It is possible to build a rational and humane culture completely free from
  the threat of supernatural restraints. Though in principle I don't approve
  of censorship, it seems that those who prepared the archives for the
  Thalassan colony succeeded in an almost-impossible task. They purged the
  history and literature of ten thousand years, and the result has justified
  their efforts. We must be very cautious before replacing anything that was
  lost-however beautiful, however moving a work of art.
  The Thalassans were never poisoned by the decay products of dead religions,
  and in seven hundred years no prophet has arisen here to preach a new
  faith. The very word "God" has almost vanished from their language, and
  they're quite surprised-or amused-when we happen to use it.
  My scientist ftiends are fond of saying that one sample makes very poor
  statistics, so I wonder if the total lack of religion in this society
  really proves anything. We know that the Thalassans were also very 72
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 carefully selected genetically to elimmate as many undesirable social traits
 as possible. Yes, yes-I know that only about fifteen percent of human be-
 havior is determined by the genes-but that fraction is very important! The
 Lassans certainly seem remarkably free from such unpleasant traits as envy,
 intolerance, jealousy, anger. Is this entirely the result of cultural
 conditioning?
  How I would love to know what happened to the seedships that were sent out
  by those religious groups in the twenty-sixth century! The Mormons' Ark of
  the Covenant, the Sword of the Prophetthere were half a dozen of them. I
  wonder if any of them succeeded, and if so, what part religion played in
  their success or their failure. Perhaps one day, when the local
  communications grid is established, we'll find what happened to those early
  pioneers.
  One result of Thalassa's total atheism is a serious shortage of expletives.
  When a Lassan drops something on his toe, he's at a loss for words. Even
  the usual references to bodily functions aren't much help because they're
  all taken for granted. About the only general-purpose exclamation is
  "Krakan!" and that's badly overworked. But it does show what an impression
  Mount Krakan made when it erupted four hundred years ago; I hope I'll have
  a chance of visiting it before we leave.
  That's still many months ahead, yet already I fear it. Not for the possible
  danger-if anything happens to the ship, I'll never know. But because it
  will mean that another link with Earth has been broken-and, my dearest,
  with you.

               73
 13. TASK FORCE

 "The president's not going to like this," Mayor Waldron said with relish.
 "He's set his heart on getting you to North Island."
  "I know," Deputy Captain Malina answered. "And we'll be sorry to disappoint
  him-he's been very helpful. But North Island's far too rocky; the only
  suitable coastal areas are already developed. Yet there's a completely
  deserted bay, with a gently sloping beach, only nine kilometers from
  Tarna-it wffl be perfect."
  "Sounds too good to be true. Why is it deserted, Brant?"
  "That was the Mangrove Project. All the trees died-we still don't know
  why-and no one's had the heart to tidy up the mess. It looks terrible, and
  smells worse."
  "So it's already an ecological disaster area-you're welcome, Captain! You
  can only improve matters."
  "I can assure you that our plant will be very handsome and won't damage the
  environment in the slightest. And of course it will A be dismantled when we
  leave. Unless you want to keep it."
  "Thank you-but I doubt if we'd have much use for several hundred tons of
  ice a day. Meanwhile,

               74
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 what facilities can Tarna offer-accommodation, catering, transport?-we'll be
 happy to oblige. I assume that quite a number of you will be coming down to
 work here."
  "Probably about a hundred, and we appreciate your offer of hospitality. But
  I'm afraid we'd be terrible guests: we'll be having conferences with the
  ship at all hours of the day and night. So we have to stick together-and as
  soon as we've assembled our little prefabricated village, we'll move into
  it with all our equipment. I'm sorry if this seems ungraciousbut any other
  arrangement simply wouldn't be practical. "
  "I suppose you're right." The mayor sighed. She had been wondering how she
  could bend protocol and offer what passed for the hospitality suite to the
  spectacular Lieutenant Commander Lorenson instead of to Deputy Captain
  Malina. The problem had appeared insoluble; now, alas, it would not even
  arise.
  She felt so discouraged that she was almost tempted to call North Island
  and invite her last official consort back for a vacation. But the wretch
  would probably turn her down again, and she simply couldn't face that.

 75
 14. MIRISSA

 Even when she was a very old woman, Mirissa Leonidas could still remember
 the exact moment when she first set eyes on Loren. There was no one elsenot
 even Brant-of which this was true.
  Novelty had nothing to do with it; she had already met several of the
  Earthmen before encountering Loren, and they had made no unusual impression
  on her. Most of them could have passed as Lassans if they had been left out
  in the sun for a few days.
  .But not Loren; his skin never tanned, and his startling hair became, if
  anything, even more silvery. That was certainly what had first drawn her
  notice as he was emerging from Mayor Waldron's office with two of his
  colleagues-all of them bearing that slightly frustrated look that was the
  usual outcome of a session with Tarna's lethargic and well-entrenched
  bureaucracy.
  Their eyes had met, but for a moment only. Mirissa took a few more paces;
  then, without any conscious volition, she came to a dead halt and looked
  back over her shoulder-to see that the visitor was staring at her. Already,
  they both knew that their lives had been irrevocably changed.

               76
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 Later that night, after they had made love, she asked Brant, "Have they said
 how long they're staying?"
  "You do choose the worst times," he grumbled sleepily. "At least a year.
  Maybe two. Good nightagain.
  She knew better than to ask any more questions even though she still felt
  wide awake. For a long time she lay open-eyed, watching the swift shadows
  of the inner moon sweep across the floor while the cherished body beside
  her sank gently into sleep.
  She had known not a few men before Brant, but
 since they had * been together, she had been utterly
 indifferent to anyone else. Then why this sudden in
 terest-she still pretended it was no stronger than
 that-in a man she had glimpsed only for a few sec
 onds and whose very name she did not even know?
 (Though that would certainly be one of tomorrow's
 first priorities.)
  Mirissa prided herself on being honest and clearsighted; she looked down on
  women-or men-who let themselves be ruled by their emotions. Part of the
  attraction, she was quite sure, was the element of novelty, the glamour of
  vast new horizons. To be able to speak to someone who had actually walked
  through the cities of Earth-had witnessed the last hours of the Solar
  System-and was now on the way to new suns was a wonder beyond her wildest
  dreams. It made her once more aware of that underlying dissatisfaction with
  the placid tempo of Thalassan life despite herhappiness with Brant.
 Or was it merely contentment and not true hap-
               77
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 piness? What did she really want? Whether she could find it with these
 strangers from the stars, she did not know, but before they left Thalassa
 forever, she meant to try.
  That same morning, Brant had also visited Mayor Waldron, who greeted him
  with slightly less than her usual warmth when he dumped the fragments of
  his fish-trap on her desk.
  "I know you've been busy with more important matters," he said, "but what
  are we going to do about this?"
  The mayor looked without enthusiasm at the tangled mess of cables. It was
  hard to focus on the dayto-day routine after the heady excitements of
  interstellar politics.
 "What do you think happened?" she asked.
  "It's obviously deliberate-see how this wire was twisted until it broke.
  Not only was the grid damaged, but sections have been taken away. I'm sure
  no one on South Island would do such a thing. What motive would they have?
  And I'd be bound to find out sooner or later. . . "
  Brant's pregnant pause left no doubt as to what would happen then.
 "Who do you suspect?"
  "Ever since I started experimenting with electric trapping, I've been
  fighting not only the Conservers but those crazy people who believe that
  all food should be synthetic because it's wicked to eat living creatures,
  like animals-or even plants."
 "The Conservers, at least, may have a point. If

               78
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 your trap is as efficient as you claim, it could upset the ecological
 balance they're always talking about."
  "The regular reef census would tell us if that was happening, and we'd just
  switch off for a while. Anyway, it's the pelagics I'm really after; my
  field seems to attract them from up to three or four kilometers away. And
  even if everyone on the Three Islands ate nothing but fish, we couldn't
  make a dent in the oceanic population."
  "I'm sure you're right-as far as the indigenous pseudofish are concerned.
  And much good that does, since most of them are too poisonous to be worth
  processing. Are you sure that the Terran stock has established itself
  securely? You might be the last straw, as the old saying goes."
  Brant looked at the mayor with respect; she was continually surprising him
  with shrewd questions like this. It never occurred to him that she would
  not have held her position for so long if there was not a great deal more
  in her than met the eye.
  "I'm afraid the tuna aren't going to survive; it will be a few billion
  years before the oceans are salty enough for them. But the trout and salmon
  are doing very well."
  "And they're certainly delicious; they might even overcome the moral
  scruples of the Synthesists. Not that I really accept your interesting
  theory. Those people may talk, but they don't do anything."
  "They released a whole herd of cattle from that experimental farm a couple
  of years ago."
  "You mean they tried to-the cows walked straight home again. Everyone
  laughed so much that 79
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 they called off any further demonstrations. I simply can't imagine that
 they'd go to all this trouble." She gestured toward the broken grid.
  "It wouldn't be dffficult-a small boat at night, a couple of divers-the
  water's only twenty meters deep.
  "Well, I'll make some inquiries. Meanwhile, I want you to do two things."
  "What?" Brant said, trying not to sound suspicious and failing completely.
  "Repair the grid-Tech Stores will give you anything you need. And stop
  making any more accusations until you're one hundred percent certain. If
  you're wrong, you'll look foolish and may have to apologize. If you're
  right, you may scare the perpetrators away before we can catch them.
  Understand?"
  Brant's jaw dropped slightly: he had never seen the mayor in so incisive a
  mood. He gathered up Exhibit A and made a somewhat chastened departure.
  He might have been even more chastened-or perhaps merely amused-to know
  that Mayor Waldron was no longer quite so enamored of him.
  Assistant Chief Engineer Loren Lorenson had impressed more than one of
  Tarna's citizens that morning.

 80
 15; TERRA NOVA

 Such a reminder of Earth was an unfortunate name for the settlement, and no
 one admitted responsibility. But it was slightly more glamorous than "base
 camp," and was quickly accepted.
  The complex of prefabricated huts had shot up with astonishing
  speed-literally overnight. It was Tama's first demonstration of
  Earthpersons-or rather Earth robots-in action, and the villagers were
  hugely impressed. Even Brant, who had always considered that robots were
  more trouble than they were worth, except for hazardous or monotonous work,
  began to have second thoughts. There was one elegant general-purpose mobile
  constructor that operated with such blinding speed that it was often
  impossible to follow its movements. Wherever it went, it was followed by an
  admiring crowd of small Lassans. When they got in its way, it politely
  stopped whatever it was doing until the coast was clear. Brant decided that
  this was exactly the kind of assistant he needed; perhaps there was some
  way he could persuade the visitors ...
  By the end of a week, Terra Nova was a fully functioning microcosm of the
  great ship orbiting beyond

               81     -         ARTHUR C., CLARKE

 the atmosphere. There was plain but comfortable accommodation for a hundred
 crewmembers, with all the life-support systems they needed-as well as li-
 brary, gymnasium, swimming pool, and theater. The Lassans approved of these
 facilities and hastened to make full use of them. As a result, the
 population of terra Nova was usually at least double the nominal one
 hundred.
  Most of the guests-whether invited or not-were anxious to help and
  determined to make their visitors' stay as comfortable as possible. Such
  friendliness, though very welcome and much appreciated, was often
  embarrassing. The Lassans were insatiably inquisitive, and the concept of
  privacy was almost unknown to them. A Please Do Not Disturb sign was often
  regarded as a personal challenge, which led to interesting complications
  ...
  "You're all senior, officers and highly intelligent adults," Captain Bey
  had said at the last staff conference aboard ship. "So it shouldn't be
  necessary to tell you this. Try not to get involved in any, ah, en-
  tanglements until we know exactly how the Lassans think about such matters.
  They appear very easygoing, but that could be deceptive. Don't you agree,
  Dr. Kaldor?"
  I can't pretend, Captain, to be an authority on Lassan mores after so short
  a period of study. But there are some interesting historical parallels,
  when the old sailing-ships on Earth put to port after long sea voyages-I
  expect many of you have seen that classic video antique, Mutiny on the
  Bounty."

               82
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

  "I trust, Dr. Kaldor, that you're not comparing me to Captain Cook-I mean
  Bligh."
  "It wouldn't be an insult; the real Bfigh was a brilhant seaman, and most
  unfairly maligned. At this stage, all we need are common sense, good man-
  ners-and, as you indicated, caution."
  Had Kaldor looked in his direction, Loren wondered, when he made that
  remark? Surely it was not already so obvious ...
  After all, his official duties put him in contact With Brant Falconer a
  dozen times a day. There was no way he could avoid meeting Mirissa-even if
  he wished to.
  They had never yet been alone together and had still exchanged no more than
  a few words of polite conversation. But already there was no need to say
  anything more.

 Ike                 83
 16. PARTY GAMES

 "It's called a baby," Mirissa said, "and despite appearances, one day it
 will grow up into a perfectly normal human being."
  She was smiling, yet there was moisture in her eyes. It had never occurred
  to her until she noticed Loren's fascination that there were probably more
  children in the little village of Tarna than there had been on the entire
  planet Earth during the final decades of virtually zero birthrate.
 "Is it ... yours?" he asked quietly.
  "Well, first of all it's not an it; it's a he. Brant's nephew, Lester-we're
  looking after him while his parents are on North Island."
 "He's beautiful. Can I hold him?"
 As if on cue, Lester started to wail.
  "That wouldn't be a good idea." Mirissa laughed, scooping him up hastily
  and heading toward the nearest bathroom. "I recognize the signals. Let
  Brant or Kumar show you around while we're waiting for the other guests."
  The Lassans loved parties and missed no opportunity for arranging them. The
  arrival of Magellan was, quite literally, the chance of a lifetime-indeed,

               84
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 of many lifetimes. If they had been rash enough to accept all the
 invitations they received, the visitors would have spent every waking moment
 staggering from one official or unofficial reception to another. None too
 soon, the captain had issued one of his infrequent but implacable
 directives-"Bey thunderbolts," or simply "Beybolts," as they were wryly
 called-rationing his officers to a maximum of one party per five days. There
 were some who considered that, in view of the time it often took to recover
 from Lassan hospitality, this was much too generous.
  The Leonidas residence, currently occupied by Mirissa, Kumar, and Brant,
  was a large ring-shaped building that had been the family's home for six
  generations. One story high-there were few upper floors in Tarna-it
  enclosed a grass-covered patio about thirty meters across. At the very
  center was a small pond complete with a tiny island accessible by a
  picturesque wooden bridge. And on the island was a solitary palm-tree that
  did not seem to be in the best of health.
  "They have to keep replacing it," Brant said apologetically. "Some Terran
  plants do very well hereothers just fade away despite all the chemical
  boosters we give them. It's the same problem with the fish we've tried to
  introduce. Freshwater farms work fine, of course, but we don't have space
  for them. It's frustrating to think that there's a million times as much
  ocean, if only we could use it properly."
  In Loren's private opinion, Brant Falconer was something of a bore when he
  started talking about the sea. He had to admit, however, that it was a
  safer 85
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 subject of conversation than Mirissa, who had now managed to get rid of
 Lester and was greeting the new guests as they arrived.
  Could he ever have dreamed, Loren asked himself, that he would find himself
  in a situation like this? He had been in love before, but the memories-even
  the names-were mercifully blurred by the erasing programs they had all
  undergone before leaving the Solar System. He would not even attempt to
  recapture them; why torment himself with images from a past that had been
  utterly destroyed?
  Even Kitani's face was blurring, though be had seen her in the hibernaculum
  only a week ago. She was part of a future they had planned but might never
  share: Mirissa was here and now-full of life and laughter, not frozen in
  half a millennium of sleep. She had made him feel whole once more, joyful
  in the knowledge that the strain and exhaustion of the Last Days had not,
  after all, robbed him of his youth.
  Every time they were together, be felt the pressure that told him he was a
  man again; until it had been relieved, he would know little peace and would
  not even be able to perform his work efficiently. There had been times when
  he had seen Mirissa's face superimposed on the Mangrove Bay plans and flow
  diagrams and had been forced to give the computer a PAUSE command before
  they could continue their joint mental conversation. It was a peculiarly
  exquisite torture to spend a couple of hours within meters of her, able to
  exchange no more than polite trivialities.

               86
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

  To Loren's relief, Brant suddenly excused himself and hurried away. Loren
  quickly discovered the reason.
  "Commander Lorenson!" Mayor Waldron said. "I hope Tarna's been treating you
  well."
  Loren groaned inwardly. He knew that he was supposed to be polite to the
  mayor, but the social graces had never been his strong point.
  "Very well, thank you. I don't believe you've met these gentlemen-"
  He called, much more loudly than was really necessary, across the patio to
  a group of colleagues who had just arrived. By good luck, they were all
  heutenants; even off duty, rank had its privileges, and he never hesitated
  to use it.
  "Mayor Waldron, this is Lieutenant Fletcheryour first time down, isn't it
  Owen? Lieutenant Werner Ng, Lieutenant Ranjit Winson, Lieutenant Karl
  Bosley . . . "
  Just like the clannish Martians, he thought, always sticking together.
  Well, that made them a splendid target, and they were a personable group of
  young men. He did not believe that the mayor even noticed when he made his
  strategic withdrawal.

 Doreen Chang would have much preferred to talk to the captain, but he had
 made a high-velocity, token appearance, downed one drink, apologized to his
 hosts, and departed.
  "Why won't he let me interview him?" she asked Kaldor, who had no such
  inhibitions and had already logged several days' worth of audio and video
  time.

               87
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

  "Captain Sirdar Bey," he answered, "is in a privfleged position. Unlike the
  rest of us, he doesn't have to explain-or to apologize."
  "I detect a note of mild sarcasm in your voice," the Thalassa Broadcasting
  Corporation's star newsperson said.
  "It wasn't intended. I admire the captain enormously and even accept his
  opinion of me-with reservations, of course. Er-are you recording?"
 "Not now. Too much background noise."
  "Lucky for you I'm such a trusting person, since there's no way I could
  tell if you were."
  "Definitely off the record, Moses. What does he think of you?"
  "He's glad to have my views, and my experience, but he doesn't take me very
  seriously. I know exactly why. He once said, 'Moses-you like power but not
  responsibility. I enjoy both.' It was a very shrewd statement; it sums up
  the difference between us."
 "How did you answer?"
  "What could I say? It was perfectly true. The only time I got involved in
  practical politics was-well, not a disaster, but I never really enjoyed
  it."
 "The Kaldor Crusade?"
  "Oh-you know about that. Silly name-it annoyed me. And that was another
  point of disagreement between the captain and myself. He thoughtstill
  thinks, I'm sure-the Directive ordering us to avoid all planets with
  life-potential is a lot of sentimental nonsense. Another quote from the
  good captain: 'Law I understand. Metalaw is bal-'er, balderdash.

               88
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

  "T'his is fascinating-one day you must let me record it."
 "Definitely not. What's happening over there?"
  Doreen Chang was a persistent lady, but she knew when to give up.
  "Oh, that's Mirissa's favorite gas-sculpture. Surely you had them on
  Earth."
  "Of course. And since we're still off the record, I don't think it's art.
  But it's amusing."
  The main lights had been switched off in one section of the patio, and
  about a dozen guests had gathered around what appeared to be a very large
  soap bubble, almost a meter in diameter. As Chang and Kaldor walked toward
  it, they could see the first swirls of color forming inside, like the birth
  of a spiral nebula.
  "It's called 'Life,"' Doreen said, "and it's been in Mirissa's family for
  two hundred years. But the gas is beginning to leak; I can remember when it
  was much brighter."
  Even so, it was impressive. The battery of electron guns and lasers in the
  base had been programmed by some patient, long-dead artist to generate a
  series of geometrical shapes that slowly evolved into organic structures.
  From the center of the sphere, ever more complex forms appeared, expanded
  out of sight, and were replaced by others. In one witty sequence,
  single-celled creatures were shown climbing a spiral staircase,
  recognizable at once as a representation of the DNA molecule. With each
  step, something new was added; within a few minutes,

               89
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 the display had encompassed the four-billion-year odyssey from amoeba to
 man.
  Then the artist tried to go beyond, and Kaldor lost him. The contortions of
  the fluorescent gas became too complex and too abstract. Perhaps if one saw
  the display a few more times, a pattern would emerge-
  "What happened to the sound?" Doreen asked when the bubble's maelstrom of
  seething colors abruptly winked out. "There used to be some very good
  music, especially at the end."
  "I was afraid someone would ask that question," Mirissa said with an
  apologetic smile. "We're not certain whether the trouble is in the playback
  mechanism or the program itself."
 "Surely you have a backup!"
  "Oh, yes, of course. But the spare module is somewhere in Kumar's room,
  probably buried under bits of his canoe. Until you've seen his den, you
  won't understand what entropy really means."
  "It's not a canoe-it's a kayak," protested Kumar, who had just arrived with
  a pretty local girl clinging to each arm. "And what's entropy?"
  One of the young Martians was foolish enough to attempt an explanation by
  pouring two drinks of different colors into the same glass. Before he could
  get very far, his voice was drowned by a blast of music from the
  gas-sculpture.
  "You see!" Kumar shouted above the din, with obvious pride. "Brant can fix
  anything!"
 . Anything? thought Loren. I wonder ... I wonder ...

               90
 17. CHAIN OF COMMAND

 From: Captain
 To: All Crew Members

         CHRONOLOGY

 As there has already been a great deal of unnecessary confusion in this
 matter, I wish to make the following points:
  1. All Ship's records and schedules will remain on Earth Time-corrected for
  relativistic effectsuntil the end of the voyage. All clocks and timing
  systems aboard ship will continue to run on ET.
  2. For convenience, ground crews will use Thalassan time (TT) when
  necessary, but will keep all records in ET with Tr in parenthesis.
 3. To remind you:
  The duration of the Thalassan Mean Solar Day is 29.4325 hours ET.
  There are 313.1561 Thalassan days in the Thalassan Sidereal Year, which is
  divided into I I months of 28 days. January is omitted from the calendar,
  but the five extra days to make up the total of 313 follow immediately
  after the last day (28th) of December. Leap clays are intercalated every
  six years, but there will be none during our stay.
  4. Since the Thalassan day is 22% longer than Earth's, and the number of
  those days in its year is

             91
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 14% shorter, the actual length of the Thalassan year is only about 5% longer
 than Earth's. As you are all aware, this has one practical convenience, in
 the matter of birthdays. Chronological age means almost the same on Thalassa
 as on Earth. A 20-year-old Thalassan has lived as long as a 21-year-old
 Earthperson. The Lassan calendar starts at First Landing, which was 3109 ET.
 The current year is 718TT or 754 Earth years later.
   5. Finally-and we can also be thankful for this-there is only one Time
   Zone to worry about on Thalassa.

                   Sirdar Bey (Capt.)
                   3863.02.27.21.30 ET
                   718.00.02.15.00 Tr

 "Who would have thought anything so simple could be so complicated!" Mirissa
 laughed when she had scanned the printout pinned up on the Terra Nova
 bulletin board. "I suppose this is one of the famous Beybolts. What sort of
 man is the captain? I've never had a real chance of talking to him. "
  "He's not an easy person to know," Moses KaIdor answered. "I don't think
  I've spoken to him in private more than a dozen times. And he's the only
  man on the ship who everyone calls 'Sir'-always. Except maybe Deputy
  Captain Malina, when they're alone together ... Incidentally, that notice
  was certainly not a genuine Beybolt-it's too technical. Science Officer
  Varley and Secretary LeRoy must have drafted it. Captain Bey has a
  remarkable grasp of engineering principles-much better than I do-but

               92
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 he's primarily an administrator. And occasionally, when he has to be,
 commander-in-chief
 "I'd hate his responsibility."
  "It's a job someone has to do. Routine problems can usually be solved by
  consulting the senior officers and the computer banks. But sometimes a de-
  cision has to be made by a single individual, who has the authority to
  enforce it. That's why you need a captain. You can't run a ship by -a
  committee-at least not all the time."
  "I think that's the way we run Thalassa. Can you imagine President
  Farradine as captain of anything?"
  "These peaches are delicious," Kaldor said tactfully, helping himself to
  another, though he knew perfectly well that they had been intended for
  Loren. "But you've been lucky; you've had no real crises for seven hundred
  years! Didn't one of your own people once say: 'Thalassa has no
  history-only statistics?"'
 "Oh, that's not true! What about Mount Krakan?"
  "That was a natural disaster-and hardly a major one. I'm referring to, ah,
  political crises: civil unrest, that sort of thing."
  "We can thank Earth for that. You gave us a Jefferson Mark Three
  Constitution-someone once called it utopia in two megabytes-and it's worked
  amazingly well. The program hasn't been modified for three hundred years.
  We're still only on the Sixth Amendment. "
  "And long may you stay there," Kaldor said fervently. "I should hate to
  think that we were responsible for a seventh."

               93
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

  "If that happens, it will be processed first in the Archives memory banks.
  When are you coming to visit us again? There are so many things I want to
  show you."
  "Not as many as I want to see. You must have so much that will be useful
  for us on Sagan Two, even though it's a very different kind of world." And
  a far less attractive one, he added to himself.
  While they were talking, Loren had come quietly into the reception area,
  obviously on his way from the games room to the showers. He was wearing the
  briefest of shorts and had a towel draped over his bare shoulders. The
  sight left Mirissa distinctly weak at the knees.
  "I suppose you've beaten everyone, as usual," Kaldor said. "Doesn't it get
  boring?"
 Loren gave a wry grin.
  "Some of the young Lassans show promise. One's just taken three points off
  me. Of course, I was playing with my left hand."
  "In the very unlikely event he hasn't already told you," Kaldor remarked to
  Mirissa, "Loren was once table-tennis champion of Earth."
  "Don't exaggerate, Moses. I was only about number five-and standards were
  miserably low toward the end. Any Third Millennium Chinese player would
  have pulverized me."
  "I don't suppose you've thought of teaching Brant," Kaldor said
  mischievously. "That should be interesting. "
  There was a brief silence. Then Loren answered, smugly but accurately, "It
  wouldn't be fair."

               94
    THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

  "As it happens," Mirissa said, "Brant would like to show you something."
 "Oh?"
 "You said you've never been on a boat."
 "That's true. "
  "Then you have an invitation to join Brant and Kumar at Pier
  Three-eight-thirty tomorrow morning."
 Loren turned to Kaldor.
  "Do you think it's safe for me to go?" he asked in mock seriousness. "I
  don't know how to swim."
  "I shouldn't worry," Kaldor answered helpfully. "If they're planning a
  one-way trip for you, that won't make the slightest difference."

 95
 18. KUMAR

 Only one tragedy had darkened Kumar Leonidas's eighteen years of life; he
 would always be ten centimeters shorter than his heart's desire. It was not
 surprising that his nickname was "The Little Lion"-though very few dared use
 it to his face.
  To compensate for his lack of height, he had worked assiduously on width
  and depth. Many times Mirissa had told him, in amused exasperation,
  "Kumar-if you spent as much time building your brain as your body, you'd be
  the greatest genius on Thalassa." What she had never told him-and scarcely
  admitted even to herself-was that the spectacle of his regular morning
  exercises often aroused most unsisterly feelings in her breast as well as
  a certain jealously of 0 the other admirers -who had gathered to watch. At
  one time or other this had included most of Kumar's age group. Although the
  envious rumor that he had made love to all the girls and half the boys in
  Tama was wild hyperbole, it did contain a considerable element of truth.
  But Kumar, despite the intellectual gulf between him and his sister, was no
  muscle-bound moron. If anything really interested him, he would not be
  sat-
  
               96
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 isfied until he had mastered it, no matter how long that took. He was a
 superb seaman and for over two years, with occasional help from Brant, had
 been building an exquisite four-meter kayak. The hull was complete, but he
 had not yet started on the deck.
  One day, he swore, he was going to launch it, and everyone would stop
  laughing. Meanwhile, the phrase "Kumar's kayak" had come to mean any un-
  finished job around Tarna-of which, indeed, there were a great many.
  Apart from this common Lassan tendency to procrastinate, Kumar's chief
  defects were an adventurous nature and a fondness for sometimes risky prac-
  tical jokes. This, it was widely believed, would someday get him into
  serious trouble.
  But it was impossible to be angry with even his most outrageous pranks, for
  they lacked all malice. He was completely open, even transparent; no one
  could ever imagine his telling a lie. For this, he could be forgiven much,
  and frequently was.
  The arrival of the visitors had, of course, been the most exciting event in
  his life. He was fascinated by their equipment, the sound, video, and
  sensory recordings they had brought, the stories they toldeverything about
  them. And because he saw more of Loren than any of the others, it was not
  surprising that Kumar attached himself to him.
  This was not a development that Loren altogether appreciated. If there was
  one thing even more unwelcome than an inconvenient mate, it was that tra-
  ditional spoilsport, an adhesive kid brother.

               97
 19. PRETTY POLLY

 "I stiff can't believe it, Loren," Brant Falconer said. "You've never been
 in a boat-or on a ship?"
  "I seem to remember paddling a rubber dinghy across a small pond. That
  would have been when I was about five years old."
  "Then you'll enjoy this. Not even a swell to upset your stomach. Perhaps we
  can persuade you to dive with us."
  "No, thanks-I'll take one new experience at a time. And I've learned never
  to get in the way when other men have work to do."
  Brant was right; he was beginning to enjoy himself as the hydrojets drove
  the little trimaran almost silently out toward the reef Yet soon after he
  had climbed aboard and seen the firm safety of the shoreline rapidly
  receding, he had known a moment of near panic.
  Only a sense of the ridiculous had saved him from making a spectacle of
  himself. He had traveled fifty light-years-the longest journey ever made by
  human beings-to reach this spot. And now he was worried about the few
  hundred meters to the nearest land.

               98
   ~ THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

  Yet there was no way in which he could turn down the challenge. As he lay
  at ease in the stem, watching Falconer at the wheel (how had he acquired
  that white scar across his shoulders?-oh, yes, he had mentioned something
  about a crash in a microflyer, years ago ... ), he wondered just what was
  going through the Lassan's mind.
  It was hard to believe that any human society, even the most enlightened
  and easygoing, could be totally free from jealousy or some forrn of sexual
  possessiveness. Not that there was-so far, alas!much for Brant to be
  jealous about.
  Loren doubted if he had spoken as many as a hundred words to Mirissa; most
  of them had been in the company of her husband. Correction: On Thalassa,
  the terms husband and wife were not used until the birth of the first
  child. When a son was chosen, the mother usually-but not invariably-assumed
  the name of the father. If the firstborn was a girl, both kept the mother's
  name-at least until the birth of the second, and final, child.
  There were very few things indeed that shocked the Lassans.
  Cruelty-especially to children-was one of them. And having a third
  pregnancy, on this world with only twenty thousand square kilometers of
  land, was another.
  Infant mortality was so low that multiple births were sufficient to
  maintain a steady population. There had been one famous case-the only one
  in the whole history of Thalassa-when a family had been blessed, or
  afflicted, with double quintuplets. Although the poor mother could hardly
  be blamed,

               99
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 her memory was now surrounded with that aura of delicious depravity that had
 once enveloped Lucrezia Borgia, Messalina, or Faustine.
  I'll have to play my cards very, very carefully, Loren told himself.
  That.Mirissa found him attractive, he already knew. He could read it in her
  expression and in the tone of her voice. And he had even stronger proof in
  accidental contacts of hand and soft collisions of body that had lasted
  longer than were strictly necessary.
  They both knew that it was only a matter of time. And so, Loren was quite
  sure, did Brant. Yet despite the mutual tension between them, they were
  still friendly enough.
  The pulsation of the jets died away, and the boat drifted to a halt, close
  to a large glass buoy that was gently bobbing up and down in the water.
  "That's our power supply," Brant said. "We only need a few hundred watts,
  so we can manage with solar cells. One advantage of freshwater seas-it
  wouldn't work on Earth. Your oceans were much too salty-they'd have gobbled
  up kilowatts and kilowatts. "
  "Sure you won't change your mind, uncle?" Kumar grinned.
  Loren shook his head. Though it had startled him at first, he had now grown
  quite accustomed to the universal salutation employed by younger Lassans.
  It was really rather pleasant, suddenly acquiring scores of nieces and
  nephews.
"No, thanks. I'll stay and watch through the un100
     TliE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 derwater window just in case you get eaten by sharks. "
  "Sharks!" Kumar said wistfully. "Wonderful, wonderful animals-I wish we had
  some here. It would make diving much more exciting."
  Loren watched with a technician's interest as Brant and Kumar adjusted
  their gear. Compared with the equipment one needed to wear in space, it was
  remarkably simple-and the pressure tank was a tiny thing that could easily
  fit in the palm of one hand.
  "That oxygen tank," he said, "I wouldn't have thought it could last more
  than a couple of minutes."
 Brant and Kumar looked at him reproachfully.
  "Oxygen!" Brant snorted. "That's a deadly poison at below twenty meters.
  This bottle holds air-and it's only the emergency supply, good for fifteen
  minutes. "
  He pointed to the gill-like structure on the backpack that Kumar was
  already wearing.
  "There's all the oxygen you need dissolved in seawater, if you can extract
  it. But that takes energy, so you have to have a powercell to run the pumps
  and filters. I could stay down for a week with this unit if I wanted to. "
  He tapped the greenly fluorescent computer display on his left wrist.
  "This gives all the information I need-depth, powercell status, time to
  come up, decompression stops-"
 Loren risked another foolish question.

               101
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

  "Why are you wearing a facemask, while Kumar isn't?"
 "But I am." Kumar grinned. "Look carefully."
 "Oh ... I see. Very neat."
  "But a nuisance," Brant said, "unless you practically live in the water,
  like Kumar. I tried contacts once, and found they hurt my eyes. So I stick
  to the good old facemask-much less trouble. Ready?"
 "Ready, skipper."
  They rolled simultaneously over port and starboard sides, their movements
  so well synchronized that the boat scarcely rocked. Through the thick glass
  panel set in the keel, Loren watched them glide effortlessly down to the
  reef It was, he knew, more than twenty meters down but looked much closer.
  Tools and cabling had already been dumped there, and the two divers went
  swiftly to work repairing the broken grids. Occasionally, they exchanged
  cryptic monosyllables, but most of the time they worked in complete
  silence. Each knew his job-and his partner-so well that there was no need
  for speech.
  Time went very swiftly for Loren; he felt he was looking into a new world,
  as indeed he was. Though he had seen innumerable video records made in the
  terrestrial oceans, almost all the fife that moved below him now was
  completely unfamiliar. There were whirling discs and pulsating jellies,
  undulating carpets and corkscrewing spirals-but very few creatures that, by
  any stretch of the imagination, could be called genuine fish. Just once,
  near the edge of vision, he caught a glimpse of a swiftly moving tor-
  
               102
    THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 pedo which he was almost sure he recognized. If he was correct, it, too, was
 an exile from Earth.
  He thought that Brant and Kumar had forgotten all about him when he was
  startled by a message over the underwater intercom.
  "Coming up. We'll be with you in twenty minutes. Everything okay?"
  "Fine," Loren answered. "Was that a fish from Earth I spotted just now?"
 "I never noticed."
  "Uncle's right, Brant-a twenty-kilo mutant trout went by five minutes ago.
  Your welding arc scared it away."
  They had now left the seabed and were slowly ascending along the graceful
  catenary of the anchor line. About five meters below the surface they came
  to a halt.
  "This is the dullest part of every dive," Brant said. "We have to wait here
  for fifteen minutes. Channel two, please-thanks-but not quite so loud . .
  ."
  The music-to-decompress-by had probably been chosen by Kumar; its jittery
  rhythm hardly seemed appropriate to the peaceful underwater scene. Loren
  was heartily glad he was not immersed in it and was happy to switch off the
  player as soon as the two divers started to move upward again.
  "That's a good morning's work," Brant said as he scrambled onto the deck.
  "Voltage and current normal. Now we can go home."
  Loren's inexpert aid in helping them out of their equipment was gratefully
  received. Both men were tired and cold but quickly revived after several
  cups

               103
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 of the hot, sweet liquid the Lassans called "tea," though it bore little
 resemblance to any terrestrial drink of that name.
  Kumar started the motor and got under way, while Brant scrabbled through
  the jumble of gear at the bottom of the boat and located a small, brightly
  colored box.
  "No, thanks," Loren said as Brant handed him one of the mildly narcotic
  tablets. "I don't want to acquire any local habits that won't be easy to
  break."
  He regretted the remark as soon as it was made; it must have been prompted
  by some perverse impulse of the subconscious-or perhaps by his sense of
  guilt. But Brant had obviously seen no deeper meaning as he lay back, with
  his hands clasped under his head, staring up into the cloudless sky.
  "You can see Magellan in the daytime," Loren said, anxious to change the
  subject, "if you know exactly where to look. But I've never done it myself.
  "
  "Mirissa has-often," Kumar interjected. "And she showed me how. You only
  have to call Astronet for the transit time and then go out and lie on your
  back. It's like a bright star, straight overhead, and it doesn't seem to be
  moving at all. But if you look away for even a second, you've lost it."
  Unexpectedly, Kumar throttled back the engine, cruised at low power for a
  few minutes, then brought the boat to a complete halt. Loren glanced around
  to get his bearings and was surprised to see that they were now at least a
  kilometer from Tarna. There was another buoy rocking in the water beside
  them, bearing a large letter P and carrying a red flag.

               104
    THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTIi

 "Why have we stopped?" asked Loren.
  Kumar chuckled and started emptying a small bucket over the side. Luckily,
  it had been sealed until now; the contents looked suspiciously like blood
  but smelled far worse. Loren moved as far away as possible in the limited
  confines of the boat.
  "Just calling on an old friend," Brant said very softly. "Sit still-don't
  make any noise. She's quite nervous."
 She? Loren thought. What's going on?
  Nothing whatsoever happened for at least five minutes; Loren would not have
  believed that Kumar could have remained still for so long. Then he noticed
  that a dark curved band had appeared, a few meters from the boat, just
  below the surface of the water. He traced it with his eyes and realized
  that it formed a ring, completely encircling them.
  He also realized, at about the same moment, that Brant and Kumar were not
  watching it; they were watching him. So they're trying to give me a
  surprise, he told himself; well, we'll see about that ...
  Even so, it took all of Loren's willpower to stifle a cry of sheer terror
  when what seemed to be a wall of brilliantly-no, putrescently-pink flesh
  emerged from the sea. It rose, dripping, to about half the height of a man
  and formed an unbroken barrier around- them. And as a final horror, its
  upper surface was almost completely covered with writhing snakes, colored
  vivid reds and blues.
  An enormous tentacle-fringed mouth had risen from the deep and was about to
  engulf them ...

               105
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

  Yet clearly they were in no danger; he could tell that from his companions'
  amused expressions.
  "What in God's-Krakan's-name is that?" he whispered, trying to keep his
  voice steady.
  "You reacted fine," Brant said admiringly. "Some people hide in the bottom
  of the boat. It's Polly-for polyp. Pretty Polly. Colonial
  invertebrate-billions of specialized cells, all cooperating. You had very
  simflar animals on Earth, though I don't believe they were anything like as
  large."
  "I'm sure they weren't," Loren answered fervently. "And if you don't mind
  me asking-how do we get out of here?"
  Brant nodded to Kumar, who brought the engines up to full-power. With
  astonishing speed for something so huge, the living wall around them sank
  back into the sea, leaving nothing but an oily ripple on the surface.
  "The vibrations scared it," Brant explained. "Look through the viewing
  glass-now you can see the whole beast."
  Below them, something like a tree-trunk ten meters thick was retracting
  toward the seabed. Now Loren realized that the "snakes" he had seen wrig-
  gling on the surface were slender tentacles; back in their normal element,
  they were waving weightlessly again, searching the waters for what-or whom-
  they might devour.
  "What a monster!" he breathed, relaxing for the first time in many minutes.
  A warm feeling of prideeven exhilaration-swept over him. He knew that he

               106
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 had passed another test; he had won Brant's and Kumar's approval and
 accepted it with gratitude.
 "Isn't that thing-dangerous?" he asked.
 "Of course; that's why we have the warning buoy.
 "Frankly, I'd be tempted to kill it."
  "Why?" Brant asked, genuinely shocked. "What harm does it do?"
  "Well-surely a creature that size must catch an enormous number of fish."
  "Yes, but only Lassan-not fish that we can eat. And here's the interesting
  thing about it. For a long time we wondered how it could persuade fish-even
  the stupid ones here-to swim into its maw. Eventually, we discovered that
  it secretes some chemical lure, and that's what started us thinking about
  electric traps. Which reminds me . . ."
 Brant reached for his comset.
  "Tarna Three calling Tarna Autorecord-Brant here. We've fixed the grid.
  Everything functioning normally. No need to acknowledge. End message."
  But to everyone's surprise, there was an immediate response from a familiar
  voice.
  "Hello, Brant, Dr. Lorenson. I'm happy to hear that. And I've got some
  interesting news for you. Like to hear it?"
  "Of course, Mayor," Brant answered as the two men exchanged glances of
  mutual amusement. "Go ahead. "
  "Central Archives has dug up something surprising. All this has happened
  before. Two hundred fifty years ago, they tried to build a reef out from
  North Island by electroprecipitation-a technique that had 107
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 worked well on Earth. But after a few weeks, the underwater cables were
 broken-some of them stolen. The matter was never followed up because the
 experiment was a total failure, anyway. Not enough minerals in the water to
 make it worthwhile. So there you are-you can't blame the Conservers. They
 weren't around in those days."
  Brant's face was such a study in astonishment that Loren burst out
  laughing.
  "And you tried to surprise me!" he said. "Well, you certainly proved that
  there were things in the sea that I'd never imagined.
  "But now it looks as if there are some things that you never imagined,
  either."

 108
 20. IDYLL

 The Tamans thought it was very funny and pretended not to believe him.
  "First you've never been in a boat-now you say you can't ride a bicycle!"
  "You should be ashamed of yourself," Mirissa had chided him, with a twinkle
  in her eye. "The most efficient method of transportation ever inventedand
  you've never tried it!"
  "Not much use in spaceships and too dangerous in cities," Loren had
  retorted. "Anyway, what is there to learn?" He soon discovered that there
  was a good deal; biking was not quite as easy as it looked. Tbough it took
  real talent actually to fall off the low center-of-gravity, small-wheeled
  machines (he managed it several times) his initial attempts were frus-
  trating. He would not have persisted without Mirissa's assurance that it
  was the best way to discover the island-and his own hope that it would also
  be the best way to discover Mirissa.
  The trick, he realized after a few more tumbles, was to ignore the problem
  completely and leave matters to the body's own reflexes. That was logical
  enough; if one had to think about every footstep one

               109
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 took, ordinary walking would be impossible. Although Loren accepted this
 intellectually, it was some time before he could trust his instincts. Once
 he had overcome that barrier, progress was swift. And at last, as he had
 hoped, Mirissa offered to show him the remoter byways of the island.

 It would have been easy to believe that they were the only two people in the
 world, yet they could not be more than five kilometers from the village.
 They had certainly ridden much farther than that, but the narrow cycle track
 had been designed to take the most picturesque route, which also turned out
 to be the longest. Although Loren could locate himself in an instant from
 the position-finder in his comset, he did not bother. It was amusing to
 pretend to be lost.
  Mirissa would have been happier if he had left the comset behind.
  "Why must you carry that thing?" she had said, pointing to the
  control-studded band on his left forearm. "It's nice to get away from
  people sometimes."
  "I agree, but ship's regs are very strict. If Captain Bey wanted me in a
  hurry and I didn't answer-"
 "Well-what would he do? Put you in irons?"
  "I'd prefer that to the lecture I'd undoubtedly get. Anyway, I've switched
  to sleep mode. If Shipcom overrides that, it will be a real emergency-and
  I'd certainly want to be in touch."
  Like almost all Terrans for more than a thousand years, Loren would have
  been far happier without his clothes than without his comset. Earth's
  history was replete with horror stories of careless or reckless

               110
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 individuals who had died-often within meters of safety-because they could
 not reach the red EMERGENcy button.
  The cycle lane was clearly designed for economy, not heavy traffic. It was
  less than a meter wide, and at first the inexperienced Loren felt that he
  was riding along a tightrope. He had to concentrate on Mirissa's back (not
  an unwelcome task) to avoid falling off. But after the first few kilometers
  he gained confidence and was able to enjoy the other views, as well. If
  they met anyone coming in the opposite direction, all parties would have to
  dismount; the thought of a collision at fifty klicks or more was too
  horrible to contemplate. It would be a long walk home, carrying their
  smashed bicycles ...
  Most of the time they rode in perfect silence, broken only when Mirissa
  pointed out some unusual tree or exceptional beauty spot. The silence
  itself was something that Loren had never before experienced in his whole
  life; on Earth he had always been surrounded by sounds-and shipboard life
  was an entire symphony of reassuring mechanical noises, with occasional
  heart-stopping alarms.
  Here the trees surrounded them with an invisible, anechoic blanket, so that
  every word seemed sucked into silence the moment it was uttered. At first
  the sheer novelty of the sensation made it enjoyable, but now Loren was
  beginning to yearn for something to fill the acoustic vacuum. He was even
  tempted to summon up a little background music from his comset but felt
  certain that Mirissa would not approve.
It-was a great surprise, therefore, when he heard ill
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 the beat of some now-familiar Thalassan dance music from the trees ahead. As
 the narrow road seldom proceeded in a straight line for more than two or
 three hundred meters, he could not see the source until they rounded a sharp
 curve and found themselves confronted by a melodious mechanical monster
 straddling the entire road surface and advancing toward them at a slow
 walking pace. It looked rather like a robot caterpillar. As they dismounted
 and let it trundle past, Loren realized that it was an automatic road
 repairer. He had noticed quite a few rough patches, and even potholes, and
 had been wondering when the South Island Department of Works would bestir
 itself to deal with them.
  "Why the music?" he asked. "This hardly seems the kind of machine that
  would appreciate it."
  He had barely made his little joke when the robot addressed him severely:
  "Please do not ride on the road surface within one hundred meters of me, as
  it is still hardening. Please do not ride on the road surface within one
  hundred meters of me, as it is still hardening. Tbank you."
 Mirissa laughed at his surprised expression.
  "You're right, of course-it isn't very intelligent. The music is a warriing
  to oncoming traffic."
 "Wouldn't some kind of hooter be more effective?"
 "Yes, but how-unfriendly!"
  They pushed their bicycles off the road and waited for the line of
  articulated tanks, control units, and road-laying mechanisms to move slowly
  past. Loren could not resist touching the freshly extruded surface; it was
  warm and slightly yielding and looked 112
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 moist even though it felt perfectly dry. Within seconds, however, it had
 become as hard as rock; Loren noted the faint impression of his fingerprint
 and thought wryly, I've made my mark on Thalassauntil the robot comes this
 way again.
  Now the road was rising up into the hills, and Loren found that unfamiliar
  muscles in thigh and calf were beginning to call attention to themselves.
  A little auxiliary power would have been welcomed, but Mirissa had spurned
  the electric models as too effete. She had not slackened her speed in the
  least, so Loren had no alternative but to breathe deeply and keep up with
  her.
  What was that faint roar from ahead? Surely no one could be testing rocket
  engines in the interior of South Island! The sound grew steadily louder as
  they pedaled onward; Loren identified it only seconds before the source
  came into view.
  By Terran standards, the waterfall was not very impressive-perhaps one
  hundred meters high and twenty across. A small metal bridge glistening with
  spray spanned the pool of boiling foam in which it ended.
  To Loren's relief, Mirissa dismounted and looked at him rather
  mischievously.
  "Do you notice anything ... peculiar?" she asked, waving toward the scene
  ahead.
  "In what way?" Loren answered, fishing for clues. All he saw was an
  unbroken vista of trees and veg-etation, with the road winding away through
  it on the other side of the fall.
  "The trees-the trees!"

               113
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 "What about them? I'm not a-botanist."
  "Nor am 1, but it should be obvious. Just look at them. "
  He looked, still puzzled. And presently he understood, because a tree is a
  piece of natural engineering-and he was an engineer.
  A different designer had been at work on the other side of the waterfall.
  Although he could not name any of the trees among which he was standing,
  they were vaguely familiar, and he was sure that they came from Earth ...
  Yes, that was certainly an oak, and somewhere, long ago, he had seen the
  beautiful yellow flowers on that low bush.
  Beyond the bridge, it was a different world. The trees-were they really
  trees?-seemed crude and unfinished. Some had short, barrel-shaped trunks
  from which a few prickly branches extended; others resembled huge ferns;
  others looked like giant, skeletal fingers, with bristly haloes at the
  joints. And there were no flowers ...
 "Now I understand. Thalassa's own vegetation."
  "Yes-only a few million years out of the sea. We call this the Great
  Divide. But it's more like a battlefront between two annies, and no one
  knows which side will win. Neither, if we can help it! The vegetation from
  Earth is more advanced; but the natives are better adapted to the
  chemistry. From time to time one side invades the other-and we move in with
  shovels before it can get a foothold."
  How strange, Loren thought as they pushed their bicycles across the slender
  bridge. For the first time

               114
         THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

    since landing on Thalassa, I feel that I am indeed on
    an alien world
      These clumsy trees and crude ferns could have
    been the raw material of the coal beds that had pow
    ered the Industrial Revolu tion- barely in time to
    save the human race. He could easily believe that a
    dinosaur might come charging out of the under
    growth at any moment; then he recalled that the ter
    rible lizards had still been a hundred million years
    in the future, when such plants had flourished on
    Earth
      They were just remounting when Loren ex
    claimed, "Krakan and damnation!"
      "What's the matter?"
      Loren collapsed on what, providentially, appeared
    to be a thick layer of wiry moss.
      "Cramp," he muttered through clenched teeth,
    grabbing at his knotted calf muscles.
      "Let me," Mirissa said in a concerned but confi
    dent voice.
      Under her pleasant, though somewhat amateur,
    ministrations, the spasms slowly ebbed.
      "Thanks," Loren said after a while. "That's much
    better. But please don't stop."
      "Did you really think I would?" she whispered.
 "oo                                  And presently, between two worlds,
 they became
    one.

 115
 IV. KRAKAN
 21. ACADEMY

 The membership of the Thalassan Academy of Science was strictly limited to
 the nice round binary number 100000000-or for those who preferred to count
 on their fingers, 256. Magellan's Science Officer approved of such
 exclusivity; it maintained standards. And the academy took its
 responsibilities very seriously; the president had confessed to her that at
 the moment there were only 241 members, as it had proved impossible to fill
 all the vacancies with qualified personnel.
  Of those 241, no less than 105 were physically present in the academy's
  auditorium, and 116 had logged in on their comsets. It was a record
  turnout, and Dr. Anne Varley felt extremely flatteredthough she could not
  suppress a fleeting curiosity about the missing 20.
  She also felt a mild discomfort at being introduced as one of Earth's
  leading astronomers-even though, alas, by the date of Magellan's departure,
  that had been all too true. Time and Chance had given the late director of
  the-late-Shklovskiy Lunar Observatory this unique opportunity of survival.
  She knew perfectly well that she was no more than com-
  
               119
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 petent when judged by the standards of such giants as Ackerley or
 Chandrasekhar or Herschel-still less by those of Galileo or Copernicus or
 Ptolemy.
  "Here it is," she began. "I'm sure you've A seen this map of Sagan Two-the
  best reconstruction possible from fly-bys and radioholograms. The detail's
  very poor, of course-ten kilometers at the bestbut it's enough to give us
  the basic facts.
  "Diameter-fifteen thousand kilometers, a little larger than Earth. A dense
  atmosphere-almost entirely nitrogen. And no oxygen-fortunately."
  That "fortunately" was always anaittention getter; it made the audience sit
  up with a jolt.
  "I understand your surprise; most human beings have a prejudice in favor of
  breathing. But in the decades before the Exodus, many things happened to
  change our outlook on the universe.
  "The absence of other living creatures-past or present-in the Solar System
  and the failure of the SETI programs despite sixteen centuries of effort
  convinced virtually everyone that life must be very rare elsewhere in the
  universe, and therefore very precious.
  "Hence it followed that all life forms were worthy of respect and should be
  cherished. Some argued that even virulent pathogens and disease vectors
  should not be exterminated but should be preserved under strict safeguards.
  'Reverence for Life' became a very popular phrase during the Last Days-and
  few applied it exclusively to human life.
  "Once the principle of biological noninterference was accepted, certain
  practical consequences fol-
  
               120
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 lowed. It had long been agreed that we should not attempt any settlement on
 a planet with intelligent life-forms; the human race had a bad enough record
 on its home world. Fortunately-or unfortunately!this situation has never
 arisen.
  "But the argument was taken further. Suppose we found a planet on which
  animal fife had just begun. Should we stand aside and let evolution take
  its course on the chance that megayears hence intelligence might arise?
  "Going still further back-suppose there was only plant life? Only
  single-cell microbes?
  "You may find it surprising that when the very existence of the human race
  was at stake, men bothered to debate such abstract moral and philosophical
  questions. But Death focuses the mind on the things that really matter: why
  are we here, and what should we do?
  "The concept of 'Metalaw'-I'm sure you've all heard the term-became very
  popular. Was it possible to develop legal and moral codes applicable to all
  intelligent creatures, and not merely to the bipedal, air-breathing mammals
  who had briefly dominated Planet Earth?
  "Dr. Kaldor, incidentally, was one of the leaders of the debate. It made
  him quite unpopular with those who argued that since H. sapiens was the
  only intelligent species known, its survival took precedence over all other
  considerations. Someone coined the effective slogan, 'If it's Man or Slime
  Molds, I vote for Man!'
"Fortunately, there's never been a direct confron121
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 tation-as far as we know. It may be centuries before we get reports from a
 the seedships that went out. And if some remain silent-well, the slime molds
 may have won ...
  "In 3505, during the final session of the World Parliament, certain
  guidelines-the famous Geneva Directive-were laid down for future planetary
  colonization. Many thought that they were too idealistic, and there was
  certainly no way in which they could ever be enforced. But they were an
  expression of intent-a final gesture of goodwill toward a universe which
  might never be able to appreciate it.
  "Only one of the directive's guidelines concerns us here-but it was the
  most celebrated and aroused intense controversy, since it ruled out some of
  the most promising targets.
  "The presence of more than a few percent oxygen in a planet's atmosphere is
  definite proof that life exists there. The element is far too reactive to
  occur in the free state unless it is continually replenished by plants-or
  their equivalent. Of course, oxygen doesn't necessarily mean animal fife,
  but it sets the stage for it. And even if animal life only rarely leads to
  intelligence, no other plausible route to it has ever been theorized.
  "So, according to the principles of Metalaw, oxygen-bearing planets were
  placed out of bounds. Frankly, I doubt so drastic a decision would have
  been made if the quantum drive hadn't given us essentially unlimited
  range-and power.
  "Now let me tell you our plan of operation, when we have reached Sagan Two.
  As you will see by the

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     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 rnap, more than fifty percent of the surface is ice covered, to an estimated
 average depth of three kilometers. All the oxygen we shall ever need!
  "When it's established its final orbit, Magellan will use the quantum
  drive, at a small fraction of fullpower, to act as a torch. It will burn
  off the ice and simultaneously crack the steam into oxygen and hydrogen.
  The hydrogen will quickly leak away into space; we may help it with tuned
  lasers, if necessary.
  "In only twenty years, Sagan Two will have a ten percent 02 atmosphere,
  though it will be too full of nitrogen oxides and other poisons to be
  breatheable. About that time we'll start dumping specially developed
  bacteria, and even plants, to accelerate the process. But the planet will
  still be far too cold; even allowing for the heat we've pumped into it, the
  temperature will be below freezing everywhere except for a few hours near
  noon at the Equator.
  "So that's where we use the quantum drive, probably for the last time.
  Magellan, which has spent its entire existence in space, will finally
  descend to the surface of a planet.
  "And then, for about fifteen minutes every day at the appropriate time, the
  drive will be switched on at the maximum power the structure of the shipand
  the bedrock on which it is resting-can withstand. We won't know how long
  the operation will take until we have made the first tests; it may be
  necessary to move the ship again if the initial site is geologically
  unstable.
  "At a first approximation, it appears that we'll need to operate the drive
  for thirty years, to slow the planet

               123
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 until it drops sunward far enough to give it a temperate climate. And we'll
 have to run the drive for another twenty-five years to circularize the
 orbit. But for much of that time Sagan Two will be quite livable-though the
 winters will be fierce until final orbit is achieved.
  "So then we will have a virgin planet, larger than Earth, with about forty
  percent ocean and a mean temperature of twenty-five degrees. The atmosphere
  will have an oxygen content seventy percent of Earth's-but still rising. It
  will be time to awaken the nine hundred thousand sleepers still in hiber-
  nation and present them with a new world.
  "That is the scenario unless unexpected developments-or discoveries-force
  us to depart from it. And if the worst comes to the worst . , ."
 Dr. Varley hesitated, then smiled grimly.
  "No-whatever happens, you won't be seeing us again! If Sagan Two is
  impossible, there is another target, thirty light-years farther on. It may
  be an even better one.
  "Perhaps we will eventually colonize both. But that is for the future to
  decide."

 The discussion took a little time to get under way; most of the Academicians
 seemed stunned, though their applause was certainly genuine. The president,
 who through long experience always had a few questions prepared in advance,
 started the ball rolling.
  "A trivial point, Dr. Varley-but who or what is Sagan Two named after?"

               124
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

  "A writer of scientific romances, early Third Millennium."
  That broke the ice, just as the president had intended.
  "You mentioned, Doctor, that Sagan Two has at least one satellite. What
  will happen to it, when you change the planet's orbit?"
  "Nothing, apart from very slight perturbations. It will move along with its
  primary."
 "If the directive of-what was it, 3500-"
 "3505"
  "-had been ratified earlier, would we be here now? I mean, Thalassa would
  have been out of bounds!"
  "It's a very good question, and we've often debated it. The 2751 seeding
  mission-your Mother Ship on South Island-would certainly have gone against
  the directive. Luckily, the problem hasn't arisen. Since you have no land
  animals here, the principle of noninterference hasn't been violated."
  "This is very speculative," one of the youngest of the Academicians said-to
  the obvious amusement of many of her elders. "Granted that oxygen means
  life, how can you be sure that the reverse proposition is true? One can
  imagine all sorts of creatures-even intelligent ones-on planets with no
  oxygen, even with no atmosphere. If our evolutionary successors are
  intelligent machines, as many philosophers have suggested, they'd prefer an
  atmosphere in which they wouldn't rust. Have you any idea how old Sagan Two
  is? It might have passed through the oxygen-
  
               125
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 biological era; there could be a machine civilization waiting for you
 there."
  There were a few groans from dissenters in the audience, and someone
  muttered "science fiction!" in tones of disgust. Dr. Varley waited for the
  disturbance to die away, then answered briefly, "We've not lost much sleep
  over that. And if we did run into a machine civilization, the principle of
  noninterference would hardly matter. I'd be much more worried about what it
  would do to us than the other way round!"
  A very old man-the oldest person Dr. Varley had seen on Thalassa-was slowly
  rising to his feet at the back of the room. The chairman scribbled a quick
  note and passed it over: "Prof. Derek Winslade115-G.O.M. of T.
  science-historian." Dr. Varley puzzled over G.O.M. for a few seconds before
  some mysterious flash of insight told her that it stood for "Grand Old
  Man."
  And it would be typical, she thought, if the dean of Lassan science was an
  historian. In all their seven hundred years of history, the Three Islands
  had produced only a handful of original thinkers.
  Yet this did not necessarily merit criticism. The Lassans had been forced
  to build up the infrastructure of civilization from zero; there had been
  little opportunity, or incentive, for any research that was not of direct
  practical application. And there was a more serious and subtle problem-that
  of population. At any one time, in any one scientific discipline, there
  would never be enough workers on Thalassa to reach "critical mass"-the
  minimum number of 126
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 reacting minds needed to ignite fundamental research into some new field of
 knowledge.
  Only in mathematics-as in music-were there rare exceptions to this rule. A
  solitary genius-a Ramanujan or a Mozart-could arise from nowhere and sail
  strange seas of thought alone. The famous example from Lassan science was
  Francis Zoltan (214242); his name was still revered five hundred years
  later, but Dr. Varley had certain reservations even about his undoubted
  skills. No one, it seemed to her, had really understood his discoveries in
  the field of hypertransfinite numbers; still less extended them further-the
  true test of all genuine breakthroughs. Even now, his famous "Last
  Hypothesis" defied either proof or disproof
  She suspected-though she was far too tactful to mention this to her Lassan
  friends-that Zoltan's tragically early death had exaggerated his
  reputation, investing his memory with wistful hopes of what might have
  been. The fact that he had disappeared while swimming off North Island had
  inspired legions of romantic myths and theories-disappointment in love,
  jealous rivals, inability to discover critical proofs, terror of the
  hyperinfinite itself-none of which had the slightest factual foundation.
  But they had all added to the popular image of Thalassa's greatest genius,
  cut down in the prime of his achievement.
  What was the old professor saying? Oh, dearthere was always someone during
  the question period who brought up a totally irrelevant subject or seized
  the opportunity to expound a pet theory. 127
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 Through long practice, Dr. Varley was quite good at dealing with such
 interpolators and could usually get a laugh at their expense. But she would
 have to be polite to a G.O.M., surrounded by respectful colleagues, on his
 own territory.
  "Professor, ah, Winsdale"-'Winslade' the chairman whispered urgently, but
  she decided that any correction would only make matters worse-"the question
  you have asked is a very good one but should really be the subject of
  another lecture. Or series of lectures; even then, it would barely scratch
  the subject.
  "But to deal with your first point. We have heard that criticism several
  times-it is simply not true. We have made no attempt to keep the'secret,'as
  you call it, of the quantum drive. The complete theory is in the ship's
  Archives and is among the material being transferred to your own.
  "Having said that, I don't want to raise any false hopes. Frankly, there is
  no one in the ship's active crew who really understands the drive. We know
  how to use it-that's all.
  "There are three scientists in hibernation who are supposed to be experts
  on the drive. If we have to wake them up before we reach Sagan Two, we'll
  be in really serious trouble.
  "Men went insane trying to visualize the geometrodynamic structure of
  superspace, and asking why the universe originally had eleven dimensions
  instead of a nice number like ten or twelve. When I took the Propulsion
  Basics course, my instructor

               128
     THE SONGS OF IJISTANT EARTH

 said; 'If you could understand the quantum drive, you wouldn't be here-you'd
 be up on Lagrange One at the Institute for Advanced Studies.' And he gave me
 a useful comparison that helped me get to sleep again when I had nightmares
 trying to imagine what ten to the minus thirty three centimeters really
 means.
  "'Magellan's crew only has to know what the drive does,'my instructor told
  me. 'They're like engineers in charge of an electric distribution network.
  As long as they know how to switch the power around, they don't have to
  know how it's generated. It may come from something simple, like an
  oil-fueled dynamo or a solar panel or a water turbine. They would certainly
  understand the principles behind these-but they wouldn't need to in order
  to do their jobs perfectly well.
  "'Or the electricity might come from something more complex, like a fission
  reactor or a thermonuclear fusor or a muon catalyzer or a Penrose Node or
  a Hawking-Schwarzschild kemel-you see what I mean? Somewhere along the line
  they'd have to give up any hope of comprehension; but they'd still be
  perfectly competent engineers, capable of switching electric power where
  and when it was needed.'
  "In the same way, we can switch Magellan from Earth to Thalassa-and, I
  hope, on to Sagan Twowithout really knowing what we're doing. But one day,
  perhaps centuries hence, we will again be able to match the genius that
  produced the quantum drive.

               129
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

  "And-who knows?-you may do it first. Some latter-day Francis Zoltan may
  be born on Thalassa. And then perhaps you will come to visit us."
  She didn't really believe it. But it was a nice way to end, and it drew a
  tremendous round of applause.

 130
 22. KRAKAN

 "We can do it with no trouble, of course," said Captain Bey thoughtfully.
 "Planning's essentially complete-that vibration problem with the compressors
 seems to be solved-site preparation is ahead of schedule. There's no doubt
 that we can spare the men and equipment-but is it really a good idea?" He
 looked at his five senior officers gathered around the oval table in the
 Terra Nova staff conference room; with one accord they all looked at Dr.
 Kaldor, who sighed and spread his hands in resignation.
  "So it's not a purely technical problem. Tell me all I have to know."
  "This is the situation," Deputy Captain Malina said. The lights dimmed, and
  the Three Islands covered the table, floating a fraction of a centimeter
  above it like some beautifully detailed model. But this was no model, for
  if the scale was expanded enough, one could watch the Lassans going about
  their business.
  "I think the Lassans are still scared of Mount Krakan, though really it's
  a very well behaved volcano-after all, it's never actually killed anyone!
  And it's the key to the inter-island communications sys-
  
               131
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 tem. The summit is six kilometers above sea levelthe highest point on the
 planet, of course. So it's the ideal site for an antenna park; all
 long-distance services are routed through here and beamed back to the two
 other islands."
  "It's always seemed a little odd to me," Kaldor said mildly, "that after
  two thousand years we've not found anything better than radio waves."
  "The universe came equipped with only one electromagnetic spectrum, Dr.
  Kaldor-we have to make the best use of it we can. And the Lassans are for-
  tunate; because even the extreme ends of the North and South islands are
  only three hundred kilometers apart, Mount Krakan can blanket them both.
  They can manage very nicely without comsats.
  "The only problem is accessibility-and weather. The local joke is that
  Krakan's the only place on the planet that has any. Every few years someone
  has to climb the mountain, repair a few antennas, replace some solar cells
  and batteries-and shovel away a lot of snow. No real problem but a lot of
  hard work."
  "Which," interjected Surgeon Commander Newton, "Lassans avoid whenever
  possible. Not that I blame them for saving their energies for more im-
  portant things-like sports and athletics."
  She could have added "making love," but that was already a sensitive
  subject with many of her colleagues, and the remark might not be
  appreciated.
  "Why do they have to climb the mountain?" Kaldor asked. "Why don't they
  just fly to the top? They've got vertical-lift aircraft. "
"Yes, but the air's thin up there-and what there 132
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 is tends to be boisterous. After several bad accidents, the Lassans decided
 to do it the hard way."
  441 see," Kaldor said thoughtfully. "It's the old noninterference problem.
  Will we weaken their self-reliance? Only to a trivial extent, I'd say. And
  if we don't accede to such a modest request, we'd provoke resentment.
  Justified, too, considering the help they're giving us with the ice plant."
  "I feel exactly the same way. Any objections? Very good. Mister
  Lorenson-please make the arrangements. Use whichever spaceplane you think
  fit, as long as it's not needed for Operation Snowflake."

 Moses Kaldor had always loved mountains; they made him feel nearer to the
 God whose nonexistence he still sometimes resented.
  From the rim of the great caldera, he could look down into a sea of lava,
  long since congealed but still emitting wisps of smoke from a dozen
  crevasses. Beyond that, far to the west, both the big islands were clearly
  visible, lying like dark clouds on the horizon.
  The stinging cold and the need to make each breath count added a zest to
  every moment. Long ago he had come across a phrase in. some ancient travel
  or adventure book: "Air like wine." At the time he had wished he could ask
  the author just how much wine he'd breathed lately; but now the expression
  no longer seemed so ridiculous.
  "Everything's unloaded, Moses. We're ready to fly back. "
 "Thank you, Loren. I felt like waiting here until

               133
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 you collect everyone in the evening, but it might be risky to stay too long
 at this altitude."
  "The engineers have brought oxygen bottles, of course. "
  "I wasn't thinking only of that. My namesake once got into a lot of trouble
  on a mountain."
 "Sorry-I don't understand."
 "Never mind; it was a long, long time ago."
  As the spaceplane lifted off the rim of the crater, the work party waved
  cheerfully up at them. Now that all the tools and equipment had been
  unloaded, they were engaged in the essential preliminary to any Lassan
  project. Someone was making tea.
  Loren was careful to avoid the complex mass of antennas, of practically
  every known design, as he climbed slowly up into the sky. They were all
  aimed toward the two islands dimly visible in the west; if he interrupted
  their multiple beams countless gigabits of infon-nation would be
  irretrievably lost, and the Lassans would be sorry that they ever asked him
  to help.
 "You're not heading toward Tarna?"
  "In a minute. I want to look at the mountain first. Ah-there it is!"
 "What? Oh, I see. Krakan!"
  The borrowed expletive was doubly appropriate. Beneath them, the ground had
  been split into a deep ravine about a hundred meters wide. And at the bot-
  tom of that ravine lay Hefl.
  The fires from the heart of this young world were still burning here, just
  below the surface. A glowing river of yellow, flecked with crimson, was
  moving 134
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 sluggishly toward the sea. How could they be sure, Kaldor wondered, that the
 volcano had really settled down and was not merely biding its time?
  But the river of lava was not their objective. Beyond it lay a small crater
  about a kilometer across, on the rim of which stood the stump of a single
  ruined tower. As they came closer, they could see that there had once been
  three such towers, equally spaced around the rim of the caldera, but of the
  other two only the foundations were left.
  The floor of the crater was covered with a mass of tangled cables and metal
  sheets, obviously the remains of the great radio reflector that had once
  been suspended here. At its center lay the wreckage of the receiving and
  transmitting equipment, partly submerged in a small lake formed by the
  frequent rainstorms over the mountain.
  They circled the ruins of the last link with Earth, neither caring to
  intrude on the thoughts of the other. At last Loren broke the silence.
  "It's a mess-but it wouldn't be hard to repair. Sagan Two is only twelve
  degrees north-closer to the Equator than Earth was. Even easier to point
  the beam there with an offset antenna."
  "Excellent idea. When we've finished building our shield, we could help
  them get started. Not that they should need much help, for there's
  certainly no hurry. After all, it will be almost four centuries before they
  can hear from us again-even if we start transmitting just as soon as we
  arrive."
  Loren finished recording the scene andprepared to fly down the slope of the
  mountain before turning 135
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 toward South Island. He had descended scarcely a thousand meters when Kaldor
 said in a puzzled voice, "What's that smoke over to the northeast? It looks
 like a signal."
  Halfway to the horizon, a thin white column was rising against the
  cloudless blue of the Thalassan sky. It had certainly not been there a few
  minutes before.
  "Let's have a look. Perhaps there's a boat in trouble. "
 "You know what it reminds me of?" Kaldor said.
 Loren answered with a silent shrug.
  "A spouting whale. When they came up to breathe, the big cetaceans used to
  blow out a column of water vapor. It looked very much like that."
  "There are two things wrong with your interesting theory," Loren said.
  "That column is now at least a kilometer high. Some whale!"
  "Agreed. And whale spouts only lasted a few seconds-this is continuous.
  What's your second objection?"
  "According to the chart, that's not open water. So much for the boat
  theory."
  "But that's ridiculous-Thalassa is all ocean-oh, I see. The Great Eastern
  Prairie. Yes-there's its edge. You'd almost imagine that was land down
  there. "
  Coming swiftly toward them was the floating continent of seaborne
  vegetation that covered much of the Thalassan oceans and generated
  virtually all the oxygen in the planet's atmosphere. It was one continuous
  sheet of vivid-almost virulent-green and 136
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 looked solid enough to walk upon. Only the complete absence of hills or any
 other change of elevation revealed its true nature.
  But in one region, about a kilometer across, the floating prairie was
  neither flat nor unbroken. Something was boiling beneath the surface,
  throwing up great clouds of steam and occasional masses of tangled weed.
  "I should have remembered," Kaldor said. "Child of Krakan. "
  "Of course," Loren answered. "That's the first time it's been active since
  we arrived. So this is how the other islands were born."
  "Yes-the volcanic plume is moving steadily eastward. Perhaps in a few
  thousand years the Lassans will have a whole archipelago."
  They circled for another few minutes, then turned back toward East Island.
  To most spectators, this submarine volcano, still struggling to be born,
  would have been an awesome sight.
  But not to men who had seen the destruction of a Solar System.

 137
 23. ICE DAY

 The presidential yacht, alias Inter-Island Ferry Number One, had certainly
 never looked so handsome at any previous stage of its three-centuries-long
 career. Not only was it festooned with bunting, but it had been given a new
 coat of white paint. Unfortunately, either paint or labor had become
 exhausted before the job was quite finished, so the captain had to be
 careful to anchor with only the starboard side visible from land.
  President Farradine was also ceremonially attired in a striking outfit
  (designed by Mrs. President) that made him look like. a cross between a
  Roman emperor and a pioneer astronaut. He did not appear altogether at ease
  in it; Capt. Sirdar Bey was glad that his uniform consisted of the plain
  white shorts, openneck shirt, shoulder badges, and gold-braided cap in
  which he felt completely at home-though it was hard to remember when he had
  last worn it. *
  Despite the president's tendency to trip over his toga, the official tour
  had gone very well, and the beautiful onboard model of the freezing plant
  had worked perfectly. It had produced an unlimited supply of hexagonal ice
  wafers just the right size to fit

              138
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 into a tumbler of cool drink. But the visitors could hardly be blamed for
 failing to understand the appropriateness of the name Snowflake; after all,
 few on Thalassa had ever seen snow.
  And now they had left the model behind to inspect the real thing, which
  covered several hectares of the Tama coastline. It had taken some time to
  shuttle the president and his entourage, Captain Bey and his officers, and
  all the other guests from yacht to shore. Now, in the last fight of day,
  they were standing respectfully around the rim of a hexagonal block of ice
  twenty meters across and two meters thick. Not onlywas it the largest mass
  of frozen water that anyone had ever seen-it was probably the largest on
  the planet. Even at the Poles, ice seldom had a chance to form. With no
  major continents to block circulation, the rapidly moving currents from the
  equatorial regions quickly melted any incipient floes.
 "But why is it that shape?" the president asked.
  Deputy Captain Malina sighed; he was quite sure that this had already been
  explained several times.
  "It's the old problem of covering any surface with identical tiles," he
  said patiently. "You have only three choices-squares, triangles, or
  hexagons. In our case, the hex is slightly more efficient and easier to
  handle. The blocks-over two hundred of them, each weighing six hundred
  tons-will be keyed into each other to build up the shield. It will be a
  kind of ice-sandwich three layers thick. When we accelerate, all the blocks
  will fuse together to make a single huge disk. Or a blunt cone, to be
  precise."
"You've given me an idea." The president was 139
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 showing more animation than he had done all afternoon. "We've never had
 ice-skating on Thalassa. It was a beautiful sport-and there was a game
 called ice-hockey, though I'm not sure I'd like to revive that, from the
 vids I've seen of it. But it would be wonderful if you could make us an
 ice-rink in time for the Olympics. Would that be possible?"
  "I'll have to think about it," Deputy Captain Malina replied rather
  faintly. "It's a very interesting idea. Perhaps you'll let me know how much
  ice you'd need. "
  "I'll be delighted. And it will be an excellent way of using all this
  freezing plant when it's done its job."
  A sudden explosion saved Mahna the necessity of a reply. The fireworks had
  started, and for the next twenty minutes the sky above the island erupted
  with polychromatic incandescence.
  The Lassans loved fireworks and indulged in them at every opportunity. The
  display was intermingled with laser imagery-even more spectacular, and
  considerably safer, but lacking the smell of gunpowder that added that
  final touch of magic.
  When all the festivities were over and the VIPs had departed to the ship,
  Captain Malina said thoughtfully, "The president's full of surprises, even
  though he does have a one-track mind. I'm tired of hearing about his damned
  Olympics-but that icerink is an excellent idea and should generate a lot of
  goodwill for us."
  "I've won my bet, though," Lieutenant Commander Lorenson said.
 "What bet was that?" Captain Bey asked.
               140
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 Malina gave a laugh.
  "I would never have believed it. Sometimes the Lassans don't seem to have
  any curiosity-they take everything for granted. Though I suppose we should
  be flattered that they have such faith in our technological know-how.
  Perhaps they think we have antigravity!
  "It was Loren's idea that I should leave it out of the briefing-and he was
  right. President Farradine never bothered to ask what would have been my
  very first question-just how we're going to lift a hundred and flfty
  thousand tons of ice up to Magellan."

 141
 24. ARCHIVE

 Moses Kaldor was happy to be left alone, for as many hours or days as he
 could be spared, in the cathedral calm of First Landing. He felt like a
 young student again, confronted with all the art and knowledge of mankind.
 The experience was both exhilarating and depressing; a whole universe lay at
 his ftngertips, but the fraction of it he could explore in an entire
 lifetime was so negligible that he was sometimes almost overwhelmed with
 despair. He was like a hungry man presented with a banquet that stretched as
 far as the eye could see-a feast so staggering that it completely destroyed
 his appetite.
  And yet all this wealth of wisdom and culture was only a tiny fraction of
  mankind's heritage. Much that Moses Kaldor knew and loved was missing-not,
  he was well aware, by accident but by deliberate design.
  A thousand years ago, men of genius and goodwill had rewritten history and
  gone through the libraries of Earth deciding what should be saved and what
  should be abandoned to the flames. The criterion of choice was simple,
  though often very hard to apply. Only if it would contribute to survival
  and social stability on the new worlds would any work of literature,

               142
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 any record of the past, be loaded into the memory of the seedships.
  The task was, of course, impossible as well as heartbreaking. With tears in
  their eyes, the selection panels had thrown away the Veda, the Bible, the
  Tripitaka, the Qur'an, and all the immense body of literature-fiction and
  nonfiction-that was based upon them. Despite all the wealth of beauty and
  wisdom these works contained, they could not be allowed to reinfect virgin
  planets with the ancient poisons of religious hatred, belief in the
  supernatural, and the pious gibberish with which countless billions of men
  and women had once comforted themselves at the cost of addling their minds.
  Lost also in the great purge were virtually all the works of the supreme
  novelists, poets, and playwrights, which would in any case have been mean-
  ingless without their philosophical and cultural background. Homer,
  Shakespeare, Milton, Tolstoy, Melville, Proust-the last great fiction
  writer before the electronic revolution overwhelmed the printed page-all
  that was left were a few hundred thousand carefully selected passages.
  Excluded were everything that concerned war, 'crime, violence, and the
  destructive passions. If the newly designed-and it was hoped
  improved-successors to H. sapiens rediscovered these, they would doubtless
  create their own literature in response. There was no need to give them
  premature encouragement.
  Music-except for opera-had fared better, as had the visual arts.
  Nevertheless, the sheer volume of material was so overwhelming that
  selection had 143
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 been imperative, though sometimes arbitrary. Future generations on many
 worlds would wonder about Mozart's first thirty-eight symphonies, Bee-
 thoven's Second and Fourth, and Sibelius's Third to Sixth.
  Moses Kaldor was deeply aware of his responsibility and also conscious of
  his inadequacy-of any one man's inadequacy, however talented he might be-to
  handle the task that confronted him. Up there aboard Magellan, safely
  stored in its gigantic memory banks, was much that the people of Thalassa
  had never known and certainly much that they would greedily accept and
  enjoy, even if they did not wholly understand. The superb twenty-fifth
  century recreation of the Odyssey, the war classics that looked back in
  anguish across half a millennium of peace, the great Shakspearean tragedies
  in Feinberg's miraculous Lingua translation, Lee Chow's War and Peace-it
  would take hours and days even to name all the possibilities.
  Sometimes, as he sat in the library of the First Landing Complex, Kaldor
  was tempted to play god with these reasonably happy and far-from-innocent
  people. He would compare the listings from the memory banks here with those
  aboard the ship, noting what had been expunged or condensed. Even though he
  disagreed in principle with any form of censorship, often he had to admit
  the wisdom of the deletions-at least in the days when the colony was
  founded. But now that it was successfully established, perhaps a little
  disturbance, or injection of creativity, might be in order ...

               144
    THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

  Occasionally, he was disturbed himself either by calls from the ship or by
  parties of young Lassans being given guided tours back to the beginning of
  their history. He did not mind the interruptions, and there was one that he
  positively welcomed.
  Most afternoons, except when what passed for ur
 gent business in Tarna prevented her, Mirissa would
 come riding up the hill on her beautiful palomino
 gelding, Bobby. The visitors had been much sur
 prised to find horses on Thalassa, since they had
 never seen any alive on Earth. - But the Lassans loved
 animals and had recreated many from the vast files
 of genetic material they had inherited. Sometimes
 they were quite useless-or even a nuisance, like the
 engaging little squirrel monkeys that were always
 stealing small objects from Taman households.
  Mirissa would invariably bring some delicacyusually fruit or one of the
  many local cheeseswhich Kaldor would accept with gratitude. But he was even
  more grateful for her company; who would believe that often he had
  addressed five million people-more than half the last generation!-yet was
  now content with an audience of one ...

 "Because you've descended from a long line of librarians," Moses Kaldor
 said, "you only think in megabytes. But may I remind you that the name 'li-
 brary'comes from a word meaning book. Do you have books on Thalassa?"
  "Of course we do," Mirissa said indignantly; she had not yet learned to
  tell when Kaldor was joking. "Millions ... well, thousands. There's a man
  on

               145
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 North Island who prints about ten a year, in editions of a few hundred.
 They're beautiful-and very expensive. They all go as gifts for special
 occasions. I had one on my twenty-first birthday-Alice in Wonderland. "
  "I'd like to see it someday. I've always loved books and have almost a
  hundred on the ship. Perhaps that's why whenever I hear someone talking
  bytes, I divide mentally by a million and think of one book ... one
  gigabyte equals a thousand books, and so on. That's the only way I can
  grasp what's really involved when people talk about data banks and
  information transfer. Now, how big is your library?"
  Without taking her eyes off Kaldor, Mirissa let her fingers wander over the
  keyboard of her console.
  "That's another thing I've never been able to do," he said admiringly.
  "Someone once said that after the twenty-first century, the human race
  divided into two species-Verbals and Digitals. I can use a keyboard when I
  have to, of course-but I prefer to talk to my electronic colleagues."
  "As of the last hourly check," Mirissa said, "six hundred and forty-five
  terabytes."
  "Umm-almost a billion books. And what was the initial' size of the
  library?"
  '1 can tell you that without looking it up. Six hundred and forty."
 "So in seven hundred years-"
  "Yes, yes-we've managed to produce only a few million books."
  "I'm not criticizing; after all, quality is far more important than
  quantity. I'd like you to show me what

              146
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 you consider the best works of Lassan literaturemusic, too. The problem we
 have to decide is what to give you. MageUan has over a thousand megabooks
 aboard, in the General Access bank. Do you realize just what that implies?"
  "If I said. yes, it would stop you from telling me. I'm not that cruel."
  "Thank you, my dear. Seriously, it's a terrifying problem that's haunted me
  for years. Sometimes I think that the Earth was destroyed none too soon;
  the human race was being crushed by the information it was generating.
  "At the end of the Second Millennium, it was producing only-only!-the
  equivalent of a million books a year. And I'm referring merely to
  information that was presumed to be of some permanent value, so it was
  stored indefinitely.
  "By the Third Millennium, the figure had multiplied by at least a hundred.
  Since writing was invented, until the end of Earth, it's been estimated
  that ten thousand million books were produced. And as I told you, we have
  about ten percent of that on board.
  "If we dumped it all on you, even assuming you have the storage capacity,
  you'd be overwhelmed. It would be no kindness-it would totally inhibit your
  cultural and scientific growth. And most of the material would mean nothing
  at all to you; you'd take centuries to sort the wheat from the chaff . , ."
  Strange, Kaldor said to himself, that I've not thought of the analogy
  before. This is precisely the danger that the opponents of SETI kept
  raising. Well, 147
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 we never communicated with extraterrestrial intelligence, or even detected
 it. But the Lassans have done just that-and the ETs are us ...
  Yet despite their totally different backgrounds, he and Mirissa had so much
  in common. Her curiosity and intelligence were traits to be encouraged; not
  even among his fellow crewmembers was there anyone with whom he could have
  such stimulating conversations. Sometimes Kaldor was so hard put to answer
  her questions that the only defense was a counterattack.
  "I'm surprised," he told her after a particularly thorough
  cross-examination on Solar politics, "that you never took over from your
  father and worked here full-time. This would be the perfect job for you."
  "I was tempted. But he spent all his life answering other people's
  questions and assembling files for the bureaucrats on North Island. He
  never had time to do anything himself."
 "And you?"
  "I like collecting facts, but I also like to see them used. That's why they
  made me deputy director of the Tama Development Project."
  "Which I fear may have been slightly sabotaged by our operations. Or so the
  director told me when I met him coming out of the mayor's office."
  "You know Brant wasn't serious. It's a long-range plan, with only
  approximate completion dates. If the Olympic Ice Stadium is built here,
  then the project may have to be modified-for the better, most of us
  believe. Of course, the Northers want to have it on 148
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 their side-they think that First Landing is quite enough for us."
  Kaldor chuckled; he knew all about the generations-old rivalry between the
  two islands.
  "Well-isn't it? Especially now that you have us as an additional
  attraction. You mustn't be too greedy. "
  They had grown to know-and like-each other so well that they could joke
  about Thalassa or Magellan with equal impartiality. And there were no
  longer any secrets between them; they could talk frankly about Loren and
  Brant, and at last Moses Kaldor found he could speak of Earth.

 ". . . Oh, I've lost count of my various jobs, Mirissamost of them weren't
 very important, anyway. The one I held longest was professor of political
 science in Cambridge, Mars. And you can't imagine the confusion that caused,
 because there was an older university at a place called Cambridge, Mass.-and
 a still older one in Cambridge, England.
  "But toward the end, Evelyn and I got more and more involved in the
  immediate social problems, and the planning for the Final Exodus. It seemed
  that I had some-well, oratorical talent-and could help people face what
  future was left to them.
  ."Yet we never really believed that the End would be in our time-who could!
  And if anyone had ever told me that I should leave Earth and everything I
  loved . . . "
  A spasm of emotion crossed his face, and Mirissa waited in sympathetic
  silence until he had regained

               149
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 his composure. There were so many questions she wanted to ask that it might
 take a lifetime to answer them- all; and she had only a year before Magellan
 set forth once more for the stars.
  "When they told me I was needed, I used all my philosophical and debating
  skills to prove them wrong. I was too old; all the knowledge I had was
  stored in the memory banks; other men could do a better job ... everything
  except the real reason.
  "In the end, Evelyn made up my mind for me; it's true, Mirissa, that in
  some ways women are much stronger than men-but why am I telling you that?
  "'They need you,' her last message said. 'We have spent forty years
  together-now there is only a month left. Go with my love. Do not try to
  find me.'
  "I shall never know if she saw the end of the Earth as I did-when we were
  leaving the Solar System."

 150
 25. SCORP

 He had seen Brant stripped before, when they had gone on that memorable
 boat-ride, but had never realized how formidably muscled the younger man
 was. Though Loren had always taken good care of his body, there had been
 little opportunity for sport or exercise since leaving Earth. Brant,
 however, was probably involved in some heavy physical exertion every day of
 his life-and it showed. Loren would have absolutely no chance against him
 unless he could conjure up one of the reputed martial arts of old Earth-none
 of which he had ever known.
  The whole thing was perfectly ridiculous. There were his fellow officers
  grinning their stupid heads off. There was Captain Bey holding a stopwatch.
  And there was Mirissa with an expression that could only be described as
  smug.
  ". . . two ... one ... zero ... GO!" the captain said. Brant moved like a
  striking cobra. Loren tried to avoid the onslaught but discovered to his
  horror that he had no control over his body. Time seemed to have slowed
  down ... His legs were made of lead and refused to obey him ... He was
  about to lose not only Mirissa but his very manhood ...

               151
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

  At that point, luckily, he had woken up, but the dream still bothered him.
  Its sources were obvious, but that did not make it any the less disturbing.
  He wondered if he should tell it to Mirissa.
  Certainly he could never tell it to Brant, who was still perfectly friendly
  but whose company he now found embarrassing. Today, however, he positively
  welcomed it; if he was right, they were now confronted with something very
  much greater than their own private affairs.
  He could hardly wait to see the reaction when Brant met the unexpected
  visitor who had arrived during the night.

 The concrete-lined channel that brought seawater into the freezing plant was
 a hundred meters long and ended in a circular pool holding just enough water
 for one snowflake. Since pure ice was an indifferent building material, it
 was necessary to strengthen it, and the long strands of kelp from the Great
 Eastern Prairie made a cheap and convenient reinforcement. The frozen
 composite had been nicknamed icecrete and was guaranteed not to flow, gla-
 cierlike, during the weeks and months of MageUan's acceleration.
 "There it is."
  Loren stood with Brant Falconer at the edge of the pool, looking down
  through a break in the matted raft of marine vegetation. The creature
  eating the kelp was built on the same general plan as a terrestrial
  lobster-but was more than twice the size of a man.

               152
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 "Have you ever seen anything like that before?" "No," Brant answered
 fervently, "and I'm not at all sorry. What a monster! How did you catch it?"
  "We didn't. It swayn-or crawled-in from the sea, along the channel. Then it
  found the kelp and decided to have a free lunch."
  "No wonder it has pinchers like that; those stems are really tough."
 "Well, at least it's a vegetarian."
 "I'm not sure I'd care to put that to the test."
  "I was hoping you could tell us something about it."
  ,,We don't know a hundredth of the creatures in the Lassan sea. One day
  we'll build some research subs and go into deep water. But there are so
  many other priorities, and not enough people are interested. "
  They soon will be, Lorenson thought grimly. Let's see how long Brant takes
  to notice for himself...
  "Science Officer Varley has been checking the records. She tells me that
  there was something very much like this on Earth millions of years ago. The
  paleontologists gave it a good name-sea scorpion. Those ancient oceans must
  have been exciting places."
  "Just the sort of thing Kumar would like to chase," Brant said. "What are
  you going to do with it?"
 "Study it and then let it go."
 "I see you've already tagged it."
 So Brant's noticed, thought Loren. Good for him.
 "No-we haven't. Look more carefully-,,
 There was a puzzled expression on Brant's face

               153
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 as he knelt at the side of the tank. The giant scorpion ignored him
 completely as it continued to snip away at the seaweed with its formidable
 pinchers.
  One of those pinchers was not altogether as nature had designed it. At the
  hinge of the right-hand claw there was a loop of wire twisted around
  several times like a crude bracelet.
  Brant recognized that wire. His jaw dropped, and for a moment he was at a
  loss for words.
  "So I guessed right," Lorenson said. "Now you know what happened to your
  fish-trap. I think we'd better talk to Dr. Varley again-not to mention your
  own scientists."

 "I'm an astronomer," Anne Varley had protested from her office aboard
 Magellan. "What you need is a combination of zoologist, paleontologist,
 ethologist-not to mention a few other disciplines. But I've done my best to
 set up a search program, and you'll find the result dumped in your bank two
 under file heading SCORP. Now all you need to do is to search that-and good
 luck to you."
  Despite her disclaimer, Dr. Varley had done her usual efficient job of
  winnowing through the almostinfinite store of knowledge in the ship's main
  memory banks. A pattern was beginning to emerge; meanwhile, the source of
  all the attention still browsed peacefully in its tank, taking no notice of
  the continual flow of visitors who came to study or merely to gape.
  Despite its terrifying appearance- those pinchers were almost half a meter
  long and looked capable of

               154
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 taking off a man's head with one neat snip-the creature seemed completely
 nonaggressive. It made no effort to escape, perhaps because it had found
 such an abundant source of food. Indeed, it was generally believed that some
 trace chemical from the kelp had been responsible for luring it here.
  If it was able to swim, it showed no inclination to do so, but was content
  to crawl around on its six stubby legs. Its four-meter-long body was
  encased in a vividly colored exoskeleton, articulated to give it surprising
  flexibility.
  Another remarkable feature was the fringe of palps, or small tentacles,
  surrounding the beakfike mouth. They bore a striking-indeed, uncomforta-
  ble-resemblance to stubby human fingers and seemed equally dexterous.
  Although handling food appeared to be their main function, they were
  clearly capable of much more, and it was fascinating to watch the way that
  the scorp used them in conjunction with its claws.
  Its two sets of eyes-one pair large, and apparently intended for low fight,
  since during the daytime they were kept closed-must also provide it with
  excellent vision. Altogether, it was superbly equipped to survey and to
  manipulate its environment-the prime requirements for intelligence.
  Yet no one would have suspected intelligence in such a bizarre creature if
  not for the wire twisted purposefully around its right claw. That, however,
  proved nothing. As the records showed, there had been animals on Earth who
  collected foreign ob155
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 jects-often man-made-and used them in extraordinary ways.
  If it had not been fully documented, no one would have believed the
  Australian bowerbird's, or the North American pack rat's, mania for
  collecting shiny or colored objects, and even arTanging them in artistic
  displays. Earth had been full of such mysteries, which now would never be
  solved. Perhaps the Thalassan scorp was merely following the same mindless
  tradition, and for equally inscrutable reasons.
  There were several theories. The most popularbecause it put the least
  demands on the scorp's mentality-was that the wire bracelet was merely an
  ornament. Fixing it in place must have required some dexterity, and there
  was a good deal of debate as to whether the creature could have done it
  without assistance.
  That assistance, of course, could have been human. Perhaps the scorp was
  some eccentric scientist's escaped pet, but this seemed very improbable.
  Since everyone on Thalassa knew everyone else, such a secret could not have
  been kept for long.
  There was one other theory, the most farfetched of all-yet the most thought
  provoking.
 Perhaps the bracelet was a badge of rank.

 156
  26. SNOWFLAKE RISING

 It was highly skilled work with long periods of boredom, which gave Lt. Owen
 Fletcher plenty of time to think. Far too much time, in fact.
  He was an angler, reeling in a six-hundred-ton catch on a line of almost
  unimaginable strength. Once a day the self-guided, captive probe would dive
  down toward Thalassa, spinning out the cable behind it along a complex,
  thirty-thousand-kilometer curve. It would home automatically on the waiting
  payload, and when all the checks had been completed, the hoisting would
  begin.
  The critical moments were at lift-off, when the snowflake was snatched out
  of the freezing plant, and the final approach to Magellan, when the huge
  hexagon of ice had to be brought to rest only a kilometer from the ship.
  Lifting began at midnight, and from Tarna to the stationary orbit in which
  Magellan was hovering, took just under six hours.
  As Magellan was in daylight during the rendezvous and assembly, the first
  priority was keeping the snowflake in shadow, lest the fierce rays of
  Thalassa's sun boil off the precious cargo into space. Once it was safely
  behind the big radiation shield, the

               157
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 claws of the robot teleoperators could rip away the insulating foil that had
 protected the ice during its ascent to orbit.
  Next the lifting cradle had to be removed, to be sent back for another
  load. Sometimes the huge metal plate, shaped like a hexagonal saucepan lid
  designed by some eccentric cook, stuck to the ice, and a little carefully
  regulated heating was required to detach it.
  At last, the geometrically perfect ice floe would be poised motionless a
  hundred meters away from Magellan, and the really tricky part would begin.
  The combination of six hundred tons of mass with zero weight was utterly
  outside the range of human instinctive reaction; only computers could tell
  what thrusts were needed, in what direction, at what moments of time, to
  key the artifical iceberg into position. But there was always the
  possibility of some emergency or unexpected problem beyond the capabilities
  of even the most intelligent robot; although Fletcher had not yet had to
  intervene, he would be ready if the time came.
  I'm helping to build, he told himself, a giant honeycomb of ice. The first
  layer of the comb was now almost completed, and there were two more to go.
  Barring accidents, the shield would be finished in another hundred and
  fifty days. It would be tested under low acceleration to make sure that all
  the blocks had fused together properly; and then Magellan would set forth
  upon the final leg of its journey to the stars.
Fletcher was still doing his job conscientiously158
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 but with his mind, not with his heart. That was already lost to Thalassa.
  He had been born on Mars, and this world had everything his own barren
  planet had lacked. He had seen the labor of generations of his ancestors
  dissolve in flame; why start again centuries from now on yet another
  world-when Paradise was here?
  And, of course, a girl was waiting for him, down there on South Island ...
  He had almost decided that when the time came, he would jump ship. The
  Terrans could go on without him to deploy their strength and skills-and
  perhaps break their hearts and bodies-against the stubborn rocks of Sagan
  Two. He wished them luck; when he had done his duty, his home was here.

 Thirty thousand kilometers below, Brant Falconer had also made a crucial
 decision.
 "I'm going to North Island."
  Mirissa lay silent; then, after what seemed to Brant a very long time, she
  said, "Why?" There was no surprise, no regret in her voice; so much, he
  thought, has changed.
  But before he could answer, she added, "You don't like it there."
  "Perhaps it is better than here-as things are now. This is no longer my
  home."
 "It will always be your home."
 "Not while Magellan is still in orbit."
  Miris'sa reached out her hand in the darkness to the stranger beside her.
  At least he did not move away.

               159
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

  "Brant," she said, "I never intended this. And nor, I'm quite certain, did
  Loren."
  "That doesn't help much, does it? Frankly, I can't understand what you see
  in him."
  Mirissa almost smiled. How many men, she wondered, had said that to how
  many women in the course of human history? And how many women had said,
  "What can you see in her?"
  There was no way of answering, of course; even the attempt would only make
  matters worse. But sometimes she had tried, for her own satisfaction, to
  pinpoint what had drawn her and Loren together since the very moment they
  had first set eyes upon each other.
  The major part was the mysterious chemistry of love, beyond rational
  analysis, inexplicable to anyone who did not share the same illusion. But
  there were other elements that could be clearly identified and explained in
  logical terms. It was useful to know what they were; one day (all too
  soon!) that wisdom might help her face the moment of parting.
  First there was the tragic glamour that surrounded all the Terrans; she did
  not discount the importance of that, but Loren shared it with all his
  comrades. What did he have that was so special and that she could not find
  in Brant?
  As lovers, there was little to choose between them; perhaps Loren was more
  imaginative, Brant more passionate-though had he not become a little per-
  functory in the last few weeks? She would be perfectly happy with either.
  No, it was not that ...
 Perhaps she was searching for an ingredient that

               160
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 did not even exist. There was no single element but an entire constellation
 of qualities. Her instincts, below the level of conscious thought, had added
 up the score; and Loren bad come out a few points ahead of Brant. It could
 be as simple as that.
  There was certainly one respect in which Loren far eclipsed Brant. He had
  drive, ambition-the very things that were so rare on Thalassa. Doubtless he
  had been chosen for these qualities; he would need them in the centuries to
  come.
  Brant had no ambition whatsoever, though he was not lacking in enterprise;
  his still-uncompleted fishtrapping project was proof of that. All he asked
  from the universe was that it provided him with interesting machines to
  play with; Mirissa sometimes thought that he included her in that category.
  Loren, by contrast, was in the tradition of the great explorers and
  adventurers. He would help to make history, not merely submit to its
  imperatives. And yet he could-not often enough but more and more fre-
  quently-be warm and human. Even as he froze the seas of Thalassa, his own
  heart was beginning to thaw.
  "What are you going to do on North Island?" Mirissa whispered. Already,
  they had taken his decision for granted.
  "They want me there to help fit out Calypso. The Northers don't really
  understand the sea."
  Mirissa felt relieved; Brant was not simply running away-he had work to do.
  Work that would help him to forget-until, perhaps, the time came to
  remember once again.

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 27. MIRROR OF THE PAST

 Moses Kaldor held the module up to the light, peering into it as if he could
 read its contents.
  "It will always seem a miracle to me," he said, "that I can hold a million
  books between my thumb and forefinger. I wonder what Caxton and Gutenberg
  would have thought."
 "Who?" Mirissa asked.
  "The men who started the human race reading. But there's a price we have to
  pay now for our ingenuity. Sometimes I have a little nightmare and imagine
  that one of these modules contains some piece of absolutely vital
  information-say the cure for a raging epidemic-but the address has been
  lost. It's on one of those billion pages, but we don't know which. How
  frustrating to hold the answer in the palm of your hand and not be able to
  find it!"
  "I don't see the problem," the captain's secretary said. As an expert on
  information storage and retrieval, Joan LeRoy had been helping with the
  transfers between Thalassa Archives and the ship. "You'll know the key
  words; all you have to do is set up a search program. Even a billion pages
  could be checked in a few seconds."

               162
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

  "You've spoiled my nightmare." Kaldor sighed. Then he brightened. "But
  often you even don't know the key words. How many times have you come
  across something that you didn't know you neededuntil you found it?"
  "Then you're badly organized," said Lieutenant LeRoy.
  They enjoyed these little tongue-in-cheek exchanges, and Mirissa was not
  always sure when to take them seriously. Joan and Moses did not delib-
  erately try to exclude her from their conversations, but their worlds of
  experience were so utterly different from hers that she sometimes felt that
  she was listening to a dialogue in an unknown language.
  "Anyway, that completes the Master Index. We each know what the other has;
  now we merelymerely!-have to decide what we'd like to transfer. It may be
  inconvenient, not to say expensive, when we're seventy-five lights apart."
  "Which reminds me," Mirissa said. "I don't suppose I should tell you-but
  there was a delegation from North Island here last week. The president of
  the science academy, and a couple of physicists."
 "Let me guess. The quantum drive."
 "Right."
 "How did they react?"
  "They seemed pleased-and surprised-that it really was there. They made a
  copy, of course."
  "Good luck to them; they'll need it. And you might tell them this. Someone
  once said that the QD's real purpose is nothing as trivial as the
  exploration of the universe. We'll need its energies one day to stop the

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         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 cosmos' collapsing back into the primordial black hole-and to start the next
 cycle of existence."
  There was an awed silence; then Joan LeRoy broke the spell.
  "Not in the lifetime of this administration. Let's get back to work. We
  still have megabytes to go before we sleep."

 It was not all work, and there were times when Kaldor simply had to get away
 from the library section of First Landing in order to relax. Then he would
 stroll across to the art gallery, take the computerguided tour through the
 Mother Ship (never the same route twice-he tried to cover as much ground as
 possible) or let the museum carry him back in time.
  There was always a long line of visitors-mostly students, or children with
  their parents-for the Terrama displays. Sometimes Moses Kaldor felt a
  little guilty at using his privileged status to jump to the head of the
  queue. He consoled himself with the thought that the Lassans had a whole
  lifetime in which they could enjoy these panoramas of the world they had
  never known; he had only months in which to revisit his lost home.
  He found it very difficult to convince his new friends that Moses Kaldor
  had never been in the scenes they sometimes watched together. Everything
  they saw was at least eight hundred years in his own past, for the Mother
  Ship had left Earth in 2751-and he had been born in 3541. Yet occasionally
  there would be a shock of recognition, and some

               164
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 memory would come flooding back with almost unbearable power.
  The "Sidewalk Cafe" presentation was the most uncanny and the most
  evocative. He would be sitting at a small table, under an awning, drinking
  wine or coffee while the life of a city flowed past him. As long as he did
  not get up from the table, there was absolutely no way in which his senses
  could distinguish the display from reality.
  In microcosm, the great cities of Earth were brought back to life. Rome,
  Paris, London, New York-in summer and winter, by night and day, he watched
  the tourists and businessmen and students and lovers go about their ways.
  Often, realizing that they were being recorded, they would smile at him
  across the centuries, and it was impossible not to respond.
  Other panoramas showed no human beings at all, or even any of the
  productions of Man. Moses Kaldor looked again, as he had done in that other
  life, upon the descending smoke of Victoria Falls, the Moon rising above
  the Grand Canyon, the Himalayan snows, the ice cliffs of Antarctica. Unlike
  the glimpses of the cities, these things had not changed in the thousand
  years since they were recorded. And though they had existed long before
  Man, they had not outlasted him.

 165
 28. THE SUNKEN FOREST

 The scorp did not seem to be in a hurry; it took a leisurely ten days to
 travel fifty kilometers. One curious fact was quickly revealed by the sonar
 beacon that had been attached, not without difficulty, to the angry
 subject's carapace. The path it traced along the seabed was perfectly
 straight, as if it knew precisely where it was going.
  Whatever its destination might be, it seemed to have found it, at a depth
  of two hundred and fifty meters. Thereafter, it still kept moving around,
  but inside a very limited area. This continued for two more days; then the
  signals from the ultrasonic pinger suddenly stopped in mid-pulse.
  That the scorp had been eaten by something even bigger and nastier than
  itself was far too naive an explanation. The pinger was enclosed in a tough
  metal cylinder; any conceivable arrangement of teeth, claws, or tentacles
  would take minutes-at the very least-to demolish it, and it would continue
  to function quite happily inside any creature that swallowed it whole.
 This left only two possibilities, and the first was

               166
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 indignantly denied by the staff of the North Island Underwater Lab.
  "Every single component had a backup," the director said. "What's more,
  there was a diagnostic pulse only two seconds earlier; everything was nor-
  mal. So it could not have been an equipment failure."
  That left only the impossible explanation. The pinger had been switched
  off. And to do that, a lockingbar had to be removed.
  It could not happen by accident; only by curious meddling-or deliberate
  intent.

 The twenty meter twin-hull Calypso was not merely the largest but the only
 oceanographic research vessel on Thalassa. It was normally based on North
 Island, and Loren was amused to note the good-natured banter between its
 scientific crew and their Tarnan passengers, whom they pretended to treat as
 ignorant fishermen. For their part, the South Islanders lost no opportunity
 of boasting to the Northers that they were the ones who had discovered the
 scorps. Loren did not remind them that this was not strictly in accord with
 the facts.
  It was a slight shock to meet Brant again, though Loren should have
  expected it, since the other had been partly responsible for Calypso's new
  equipment. They greeted each other with cool politeness, ignoring the
  curious or amused glances of the other passengers. There were few secrets
  on Thalassa; by this time everyone would know who was occupying the main
  guest-room of the Leonidas home.

               167
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

  The small underwater sledge sitting on the afterdeck would have been
  familiar to almost any oceanographer of the last two thousand years. Its
  metal framework carried three television cameras, a wire basket to hold
  samples collected by the remote-controlled arm, and an arrangement of
  water-jets that permitted movement in any direction. Once it had been
  lowered over the side, the robot explorer could send its images and
  information back through a fiber-optic cable not much thicker than the lead
  of a pencil. The technology was centuries old-and still perfectly adequate.
  Now the shoreline had finally disappeared, and for the first time Loren
  found himself completely surrounded by water. He recalled his anxiety on
  that earlier trip with Brant and Kumar when they had traveled hardly a
  kilometer from the beach. This time, he was pleased to discover, he felt
  slightly more at ease despite the presence of his rival. Perhaps it was
  because he was on a much larger boat ...
  "That's odd," Brant said, "I've never seen kelp this far to the west."
  At first Loren could see nothing; then he noticed the dark stain low in the
  water ahead. A few minutes later, the boat was nosing its way through a
  loose mass of floating vegetation, and the captain slowed speed to a crawl.
  "We're almost there, anyway," he said. "No point in clogging our intakes
  with this stuff Agreed, Brant?"
  Brant adjusted the cursor on the display screen and took a reading.

               168
    THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

  "Yes-we're only fifty meters from where we lost the pinger. Depth two
  hundred and ten. Let's get the fish overboard."
  "Just a minute," one of the Norther scientists said. "We spent a lot of
  time and money on that machine, and it's the only one in the world. Suppose
  it gets tangled up in that damned kelp?"
  There was a thoughtful silence; then Kumar, who had been
  uncharacteristically quiet-perhaps overawed by the high-powered talent from
  North Island-put in a difflident word.
  "It looks much worse from here. Ten meters down, there are almost no
  leaves-only the big stems, with plenty of room between them. It's like a
  forest."
  Yes, thought Loren, a submarine forest, with fish swimming between the
  slender, sinuous trunks. While the other scientists were watching the main
  video screen and the multiple displays of instrumentation, he had put on a
  set of full-vision goggles, excluding everything from his field of view
  except the scene ahead of the slowly descending robot. Psychologically, he
  was no longer on the deck of Calypso; the voices of his companions seemed
  to come from another world that had nothing to do with him.
  He was an explorer entering an alien universe, not knowing what he might
  encounter. It was a restricted, almost monochrome universe; the only colors
  were soft blues and greens, and the limit of vision was less than thirty
  meters away. At any one time he could see a dozen slender trunks, supported
  at regular intervals by the gas-filled bladders that gave them buoyancy,
  reaching up from the gloomy

               169
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 depths and disappearing into the luminous "sky" overhead. Sometimes he felt
 that he was walking through a grove of trees on a dull, foggy day; then a
 school of darting fish destroyed the illusion.
  "Two hundred fifty meters," he heard someone call. "We should see the
  bottom soon. Shall we use the lights? The image quality is deteriorating."
  Loren had scarcely noticed any change, because the automatic controls had
  maintained the picture brilliance. But he realized that it must be almost
  completely dark at this depth; a human eye would have been virtually
  useless.
  "No-we don't want to disturb anything until we have to. As long as the
  camera's operating, let's stick to available light."
  "There's the bottom! Mostly rock-not much sand. "
  "Naturally. Macrocystis thalassi needs rocks to cling to-it's not like the
  free-floating Sargassum."
  Loren could see what the speaker meant. The slender trunks ended in a
  network of roots, grasping rock-outcroppings so firmly that no storms or
  surface cur-rents could dislodge them. The analogy with a forest on land
  was even closer than he had thought.
  Very cautiously, the robot surveyor was working its way into the submarine
  forest, playing out its cable behind it. There seemed no risk of becoming
  entangled in the serpentine trunks that reared up to the invisible surface,
  for there was plenty of space between the giant plants. Indeed, they might
  have been deliberately-
  
               170
    THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

  The scientists looking at the monitor screen realized the incredible
  truth just a few seconds after Loren.
  "Kraken!" one of them whispered. "This isn't a natural forest-it's
  a-plantation!"

 171
 29. SABRA

 They called themselves Sabras, after the pioneers who, a millennium and a
 half before, had tamed an almost equally hostile wilderness on Earth.
  The Martian Sabras had been lucky in one respect; they had no human enemies
  to oppose themonly the fierce climate, the barely perceptible atmosphere,
  the planet-wide sandstorms. All these handicaps they had conquered; they
  were fond of saying that they had not merely survived, they had prevailed.
  That quotation was only one of countless borrowings from Earth, which their
  fierce independence would seldom allow them to acknowledge.
  For more than a thousand years, they had lived in the shadow of an
  illusion-almost a religion. And, like any religion, it had performed an
  essential role in their society; it had given them goals beyond themselves,
  and a purpose to their lives.
  Until the calculations proved otherwise, they had believed-or at least
  hoped-that Mars might escape the doom of Earth. It would be a close thing,
  of course; the extra distance would merely reduce the radiation by fifty
  percent-but that might be suffi-
  
               172
    THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 cient. Protected by the kilometers of ancient ice at the Poles, perhaps
 Martians could survive when Men could not. There had even been a
 fantasy-though only a few romantics had really believed it-that the melting
 of the polar caps would restore the planet's lost oceans. And then, perhaps,
 the atmosphere might become dense enough for men to move freely in the open
 with simple breathing equipment and thermal insulation ...
  These hopes died hard, killed at last by implacable equations. No amount of
  skill or effort would allow the Sabras to save themselves. They, too, would
  perish with the mother world whose softness they often affected to despise.
  Yet now, spread beneath Magellan, was a planet that epitomized all the
  hopes and dreams of the last generations of Martian colonists. As Owen
  Fletcher looked down at the endless oceans of Thalassa, one thought kept
  hammering in his brain.
  According to the star-probes, Sagan Two was much like Mars-which was the
  very reason he and his compatriots had been selected for this voyage. But
  why resume a battle, three hundred years hence and seventy-five light-years
  away, when Victory was already here and now?
  Fletcher was no longer thinking merely of desertion; that would mean
  leaving far too much behind. It would be easy enough to hide on Thalassa;
  but how would he feel, when Magellan left, with the last friends and
  colleagues of his youth?
 Twelve Sabras were still in hibernation. Of the five

               173
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 awake, he had already cautiously sounded out two and had received a
 favorable response. And if the other two also agreed with him, he knew
 that they could speak for the sleeping dozen.
 Magellan must end its starfaring,- here at Thalassa.

 174
 30. CHILD OF KRAKAN

 There was little conversation aboard as Calypso headed back toward Tama at
 a modest twenty klicks; her passengers were lost in their thoughts, brooding
 over the implications of those images from the seabed. And Loren was still
 cut off from the outside world; he had kept on the full-view goggles and was
 playing back yet again the underwater sledge's exploration of the submarine
 forest.
  Spinning out its cable like a mechanical spider, the robot had moved slowly
  through the great trunks, which looked slender because of their enormous
  length but were actually thicker than a man's body. It was now obvious that
  they were ranged in regular columns and rows, so no one was really
  surprised when they came to a clearly defined end. And there, going about
  their business in their jungle encampment, were the scorps.
  It had been wise not to switch on the floodlights; the creatures were
  completely unaware of the silent observer floating in the near darkness
  only meters overhead. Loren had seen videos of ants, bees, and termites,
  and the way in which the scorps were functioning reminded him of these. At
  first sight, it was

               175
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 impossible to believe that such intricate organization could exist without
 a controlling intelligence-yet their behavior might be entirely automatic,
 as in the case of Earth's social insects.
  Some scorps were tending the great trunks that soared up toward the surface
  to harvest the rays of the invisible sun; others were scuttling along the
  seabed carrying rocks, leaves-and yes, crude but unmistakable nets and
  baskets. So the scorps were tool-makers; but even that did not prove
  intelligence. Some bird's nests were much more carefully fashioned than
  these rather clumsy artifacts, apparently constructed from stems and fronds
  of the omnipresent kelp.
  I feel like a visitor from space, Loren thought, poised above a Stone Age
  village on Earth, just when Man was discovering agriculture. Could he-or
  ithave correctly assessed human intelligence from such a survey? Or would
  the verdict have been: pure instinctive behavior?
  The probe had now gone so far into the clearing that the surrounding forest
  was no longer visible, though the nearest trunks could not have been more
  than fifty meters away. It was then that some wit among the Northers
  uttered the name that was thereafter unavoidable, even in the scientific
  reports: "Downtown Scorpville."
  It seemed to be, for want of better terms, both a residential and a
  business area. An outcropping of rock, about five meters high, meandered
  across the opening, and its face was pierced by numerous dark holes just
  wide enough to admit a scorp. Although 176
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 these little caves were irregularly spaced, they were of such uniform size
 that they could hardly be natural, and the whole effect was that of an
 apartment building designed by an eccentric architect.
  Scorps were coming and going through the entrances-like office workers in
  one of the old cities before the age of telecommunications, Loren thought.
  Their activities seemed as meaningless to him as, probably, the commerce of
  humans would have been to them.
  "Hello," one of Calypso's other watchers called, "what's that? Extreme
  right-can you move closer?"
  The interruption from outside his sphere of consciousness was jolting; it
  dragged Loren momentarily from the seabed back to the world of the surface.
  His panoramic view tilted abruptly with the probe's change of attitude. Now
  it was level again and drifting slowly toward an isolated pyramid of rock,
  which was about ten meters high-judging by the two scorps at its base-and
  pierced by a single cave entrance. Loren could see nothing unusual about
  it; then, slowly, he became aware of certain anomalies-jarring elements
  that did not quite fit into the now-familiar Scorpvffle scene.
  All the other scorps had been busily scurrying about. These two were
  motionless except for the continual swinging of their heads, back and
  forth. And there was something else-
  These scorps were big. It was hard to judge scale here, and not until
  several more of the animals had scurried past was Loren quite sure that
  this pair was almost fifty percent larger than average.

               177
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 "What are they doing?" somebody whispered.
  "I'll tell you," another voice answered. "They're guards-sentries. "
  Once stated, the conclusion was so obvious that no one doubted it.
 "But what are they guarding?"
  "The queen, if they have one? The First Bank of Scorpville?"
  "How can we find out? The sled's much too big to go inside-even if they'd
  let us try."
  It was at this point that the discussion became academic. The robot probe
  had now drifted down to within less than ten meters of the pyramid's
  summit, and the operator gave a brief burst from one of the control jets to
  stop its descending further.
  The sound, or the vibration, must have alerted the sentries. Both of them
  reared up simultaneously, and Loren had a sudden nightmare vision of
  clustered eyes, waving palps, and giant claws. I'm glad I'm not really
  here, even though it seems like it, he told himself. And it's lucky they
  can't swim.
  But if they could not swim, they could climb. With astonishing speed, the
  scorps scrambled up the side of the pyramid and within seconds were on its
  summit, only a few meters below the sled.
  "Gotta get out of here before they jump," the operator said. "Those
  pinchers could snap our cable like a piece of cotton."
  He was too late. A scorp launched itself off the rock, and seconds later
  its claw grabbed one of the skis of the sled's undercarriage.
 The operator's human reflexes were equally swift

               178
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 and in control of a superior technology. At the same instant, he went into
 full reverse and swung the robot arm downward to the attack. And what was
 perhaps more decisive, he switched on the floodlights.
  The scorp must have been completely blinded. Its claws opened in an almost
  human gesture of astonishment, and it dropped back to the seabed before the
  robot's mechanical hand could engage it in combat.
  For a fraction of a second, Loren was also blind, as his goggles blacked
  out. Then the camera's automatic circuits corrected for the increased light
  level, and he had one startlingly clear close-up of the baffled scorp just
  before it dropped out of the field of view.
  Somehow he was not in the least surprised to see that it was wearing two
  bands of metal below its right claw.

 He was reviewing this final scene as Calypso headed back for Tama, and his
 senses were still so concentrated on the underwater world that he never felt
 the mild shockwave as it raced past the boat. But then he became aware of
 the shouts and confusion around him and felt the deck heel as Calypso
 suddenly changed course. He tore off the goggles and stood blinking in the
 brilliant sunlight.
  For a moment he was totally blind; then, as his eyes adjusted to the glare,
  he saw that they were only a few hundred meters from South Island's palm-
  fringed coast. We've hit a reef, he thought. Brant will never hear the last
  of this ...

               179
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

  And then he saw, climbing up over the eastern horizon, something he had
  never dreamed of witnessing on peaceful Thalassa. It was the mushroom cloud
  that had haunted men's nightmares for two thousand years.
  What was Brant doing? Surely he should be heading for land; instead, he was
  swinging Calypso around in the tightest possible turning circle, heading
  out to sea. But he seemed to have taken charge, while everyone else on deck
  was staring slackmouthed toward the east.
  "Krakan!" one of the Norther scientists whispered, and for a moment Loren
  thought he was merely using the overworked Lassan expletive. Then he
  understood, and a vast feeling of relief swept over him. It was very
  short-lived.
  "No," Kumar said, looking more alarmed than Loren would have thought
  possible. "Not Krakanmuch closer. Child of Krakan."
  The boat radio was now emitting continuous beeps of alarm, interspersed
  with solemn warning messages. Loren had no time to absorb any of them when
  he saw that something very strange was happening to the horizon. It was not
  where it should have been.
  This was all very confusing; half of his mind was still down there with the
  scorps, and even now he had to keep blinking against the glare from sea and
  sky. Perhaps there was something wrong with his vision. Although he was
  quite certain that Calypso was now on an even keel, his eyes told him that
  it was plunging steeply downward.

               180
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

  No; it was the sea that was rising, with a roar that now obliterated all
  other sounds. He dared not judge the height of the wave that was bearing
  down upon them; now he understood why Brant was heading out into deep
  water, away from the deadly shallows against which the tsunami was about to
  expend its fury.
  A giant hand gripped Calypso and lifted her bow up, up toward the zenith.
  Loren started to slide helplessly along the deck; he tried to grasp a
  stanchion, missed it' then found himself in the water.
  Remember your emergency training, he told himself fiercely. In sea or in
  space, the principle is always the same. The greatest danger is panic, so
  keep your head ...
  -There was no risk of drowning; his life-jacket would see to that. But
  where was the inflation lever? His fingers scrabbled wildly around the
  webbing at his waist, and despite all his resolve, he felt a brief, icy
  chill before he found the metal bar. It moved easfly, and to his great
  relief he felt the jacket expand around him, gripping him in a welcome
  embrace.
  Now the only real danger would be from Calypso herself if she crashed back
  upon his head. Where was she?
  Much too close for comfort, in this raging water, and with part of her
  deck-housing hanging into the sea. Incredibly, most of the crew still
  seemed on board. Now they were pointing at him, and someone was preparing
  to throw a life-belt.
  The water was full of floating debris-chairs, boxes, pieces of
  equipment-and there went the

               181
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 sled, slowly sinking as it blew bubbles from a damaged buoyancy tank. I hope
 they can salvage it, Loren thought. If not, this will be a very expensive
 trip, and it may be a long time before we can study the scorps again. He
 felt rather proud of himself for so calm an appraisal of the situation,
 considering the circumstances.
 I Something brushed against his right leg; with an automatic reflex, he
 tried to kick it away. Though it bit uncomfortably into the flesh, he was
 more annoyed than alarmed. He was safely afloat, the giant wave had passed,
 and nothing could harm him now.
  He kicked again, more cautiously. Even as he did so, he felt the same
  entanglement on the other leg. And now this was no longer a neutral caress;
  despite the buoyancy of his life-jacket, something was pulling him
  underwater.
  That was when Loren Lorenson felt the first,moment of real panic, for he
  suddenly remembered the questing tentacles of the great polyp. Yet those
  must be soft and fleshy-this was obviously some wire or cable. Of course-it
  was the umbilical cord from the sinking sled.
  He might still have been able to disentangle himself had he not swallowed
  a mouthful of water from an unexpected wave. Choking and coughing, he tried
  to clear his lungs, kicking at the cable at the same time.
  And then the vital boundary between air and water-between life and
  death-was less than a meter overhead; but there was no way that he could
  reach it.

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     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

  At such a moment, a man thinks of nothing but his own survival. There were
  no flashbacks, no regrets for his past life-not even a fleeting glimpse of
  Mirissa.
  When he realized it was all over, he felt no fear. His last conscious
  thought was pure anger that he had traveled fifty light-years, only to meet
  so trivial and unheroic an end.
  So Loren Lorenson died for the second time in the warm shallows of the
  Thalassan sea. He had not learned from experience; the first death had been
  much easier two hundred years ago.

 183
V, THE BOUNTY
SYNDROME
                                      31. PETITION

 Though Capt. Sirdar Bey would have denied that he had a milligram of
 superstition in his body, he always started to worry when things went well.
 So far, Thalassa had been almost too good to be true; everything ha(j gone
 according to the most optimistic plan. The shield was being constructed
 right on schedule, and there had been absolutely no problems worth talking
 about.
  But now, all within the space of twenty-four hours ...
  Of course, it could have been much worse. Lieutenant Commander Lorenson had
  been very, very lucky-thanks to that kid. (They'd have to do something for
  him ... ) According to the medics, it had been extremely close. Another few
  minuutes and brain damage would have been irreversible.
  Annoyed at letting his attention stray from the immediate problem, the
  captain reread the message he now knew by heart:

 SHIPNET: NO DATE NO TIME
 TO: CAPTAIN
 FROWANON
 Sir: A number of us wish to make the following pro-
               187
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 posal, which we put forward for your most serious consideration. We suggest
 that our mission be terminated here at Thalassa. All its objectives will be
 realized, without the additional risks involved in proceeding to Sagan Two.
 We fully recognize that this will involve problems with the existing
 population, but we believe they can be solved with the technology we
 possess-specifically, the use of tectonic engineering to increase the
 available land area. As per Regulations, Section 14, Para 24 (a), we
 respectfully request that a Ship's Council be held to discuss this matter
 as soon as possible.

 "Well, Captain Malina? Ambassador Kaldor? Any comments?"
  The two guests in the spacious but simply furnished captain's quarters
  looked at each other simultaneously. Then Kaldor gave an almost imper-
  ceptible nod to the deputy captain, and confirmed his relinquishment of
  priority by taking another slow, deliberate sip of the excellent Thalassan
  wine their hosts had provided.
  Deputy Captain Malina, who was rather more at ease with machines than with
  people, looked at the printout unhappily.
 "At least it's very polite."
  "So I should hope," Captain Bey said impatiently. "Have you any idea who
  could have sent it?"
  "None whatsoever. Excluding the three of us, I'm afraid we have 158
  suspects."
 "157," Kaldor interjected. "Lieutenant Com-
               188
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 mander Lorenson has an excellent alibi. He was dead at the time."
  "That doesn't narrow the field much," the captain said, managing a bleak
  smile. "Have you any theories, Doctor?"
  Indeed I have, Kaldor thought. I lived on Mars for two of its long years;
  my money would be on the Sabras. But that's only a hunch, and I may be
  wrong . . .
  "Not yet, Captain. But I'll keep my eyes open. If I find anything, I'll
  inform you-as far as possible."
  The two officers understood him perfectly. In his role as counsellor, Moses
  Kaldor was not even responsible to the captain. He was the nearest thing
  aboard Magellan to a father confessor.
  "I assume, Dr. Kaldor, that you'll certainly let me know-if you uncover
  inforrnation that could endanger this mission."
  Kaldor hesitated, then nodded briefly. He hoped he would not find himself
  in the traditional dilemma of the priest who received the confession of a
  murderer-who was still planning his crime.
  I'm not getting much help, the captain thought sourly. But I have absolute
  trust in these two men and need someone to confide in. Even though the
  final decision must be mine ...
  "The first question is: should I answer this message or ignore it? Either
  move could be risky. If it's only a casual suggestion-perhaps from a single
  individual in a moment of psychological disturbanceI might be unwise to
  take it too seriously. But if it's from a determined group, then perhaps a
  dialogue

               189
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 may help. It could defuse the situation. It could also identify those
 concerned." And what would you do then? the Captain asked himself Clap them
 in irons?
  "I think you should talk to them," Kaldor said. "Problems seldom go away if
  they're ignored."
  "I agree," said Deputy Captain Malina. "But I'm sure it's not any of the
  Drive or Power crews. I've known all of them since they graduated-or
  before."
  You could be surprised, Kaldor thought. Who ever really knows anyone?
  "Very well," the captain said, rising to his feet. "That's what I'd already
  decided. And, just in case, I think I'd better reread some history. I
  recall that Magellan had a little trouble with his crew."
  "Indeed he did," Kaldor answered. "But I trust you won't have to maroon
  anyone."
  Or hang one of your commanders, he added to himself; it would have been
  very tactless to mention that particular piece of history.
  And it would be even worse to remind Captain Bey-though surely he could not
  have forgotten!that the great navigator had been killed before he could
  complete his mission.

                     I

 190
 32. CLINIC

 This time, the way back to life had not been prepared so carefully in
 advance. Loren Lorenson's second awakening was not as comfortable as his
 first; indeed, it was so unpleasant that he sometimes wished he had been
 left to sink into oblivion.
  When he regained semiconsciousness, he quickly regretted it. There were
  tubes down his throat and wires attached to his arms and legs. Wires! He
  felt a sudden panic at the memory of that deadly, downward tugging, -then
  brought his emotions under control.
  Now there was something else to worry about. He did not seem to be
  breathing; he could detect no movement of his diaphragm. How very odd-oh,
  I suppose they've by-passed my lungs-
  A nurse must have been alerted by his monitors, for suddenly there was a
  soft voice in his ear, and he sensed a shadow falling across eyelids that
  he was still too tired to open.
  "You're doing very well, Mister Lorenson. There's nothing to worry about.
  You'll be up in a few daysNo, don't try to talk."
  I'd no intention of it, Loren thought. I know exactly what's happened-
  
              191
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

  Then there was the faint hiss of a hypodermic jet, a brief freezing
  coldness on his arm, and once more, blessed oblivion.
  The next time, to his great relief, everything was quite different. The
  tubes and wires were gone. Though he felt very weak, he was in no
  discomfort. And he was breathing again in a steady, normal rhythm.
  "Hello," said a deep male voice from a few meters away. "Welcome back."
  Loren rolled his head toward the sound and had a blurred glimpse of a
  bandaged figure in an adjacent bed.
  "I guess you don't recognize me, Mister Lorenson. Lieutenant Bill Horton,
  communications engineerand exsurfboard rider."
  "Oh, hello, Bill-what have you been doing-" Loren whispered. But then the
  nurse arrived and ended that conversation with another well-placed
  hypodermic.

 Now he was perfectly fit and only wanted to be allowed to get up. Surgeon
 Commander Newton believed that, on the whole, it was best to let her pa-
 tients know what was happening to them and why. Even if they didn't
 understand, it helped to ' keep them quiet so that their annoying presence
 did not interfere too much with the smooth running of the medical
 establishment.
  "You may feel all right, Loren," she said, "but your lungs are still
  repairing themselves, and you must avoid exertion until they're back to
  full capacity. If

               192
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 Thalassa's ocean was like Earth's, there would have been no problem. But
 it's much less saline-it's drinkable, remember, and you drank about a liter
 of it. And as your body fluids are saltier than the sea, the isotonic
 balance was all wrong. So there was a good deal of membrane damage through
 osmotic pressure. We had to do a lot of high-speed research in Ship's
 Archives before we could handle you. After all, drowning is not a normal
 space hazard."
  "I'll be a good patient," Loren said. "And I certainly appreciate all
  you've done. But when can I have visitors?"
  "There's one waiting outside right now. You can have fifteen minutes. Then
  nurse will throw her out. "
  "And don't mind me," Bill Horton said. "I'm fast asleep. "

 193
 33. TIDES

 Mirissa felt distinctly unwell, and of course it was all the fault of the
 Pill. But at least she had the consolation of knowing that this could only
 happen one more time-when (and if!) she had the second child permitted to
 her.
  It was incredible to think that virtually all the generations of women who
  had ever existed had been forced to endure these monthly inconveniences for
  half their lives. Was it pure coincidence, she wondered, that the cycle of
  f6rtility approximated that of the Earth's single giant Moon? Just suppose
  it had worked the same way on Thalassa, with its two close satellites!
  Perhaps it was just as well that their tides were barely perceptible; the
  thought of five- and seven-day cycles clashing discordantly together was so
  condcally horrible that she could not help smiling and immediately felt
  much better.
  It had taken her weeks to make the decision, and she had not yet told
  Loren-still less Brant, busily repairing Calypso back on North Island.
  Would she have done this if he had not left her-for all his bluster and
  bravado, running away without a fight?
 No-that was unfair, a primitive, even prehuman

               194
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 reaction. Yet such instincts died hard; Loren had told her, apologetically,
 that sometimes he and Brant stalked each other down the corridors of his
 dreams.
  She could not blame Brant; on the contrary, she should be proud of him. It
  was not cowardice but consideration that had sent him north until they
  could work out both their destinies.
  Her decision had not been made in haste; she realized now that it must have
  been hovering below the verge of consciousness for weeks. Loren's temporary
  death had reminded her-as if she needed reminding!-that soon they must part
  forever. She knew what must be done before he set forth for the stars.
  Every instinct told her that it was right.
  And what would Brant say? How would he react? That was another of the many
  problems yet to be faced.
  I love you, Brant, she whispered. I w ' ant you to
 come back; my second child will be yours.
 But not my first.

 195
 34. SHIPNET

 How odd, thought Owen Fletcher, that I share my name with one of the most
 famous mutineers of all time! Could I be a descendant? Let's see-it's more
 than two thousand years since they landed on Pitcairn Island ... say, a
 hundred generations, to make it easy . . .
  Fletcher took a naive pride in his ability to make mental calculations
  that, though elementary, surprised and impressed the vast majority; for
  centuries Man had pushed buttons when faced with the problem of adding two
  and two. Remembering a few logarithms and mathematical constants helped
  enormously and made his performance even more mysterious to those who did
  not know how it was done. Of course, he only chose examples that he knew
  how to handle, and it was very seldom that anyone bothered to check his
  answers ...
 I A hundred generations back-so two to the hundred ancestors then. Log two
 is point three zero one zero-that's thirty point one ... Olympus!-a million,
 million, million, million, million people! Something wrong-nothing like that
 number ever lived on Earth since the 'beginning of time-of

               196
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 course, that assumes there was never any overlapping-the human family tree
 must be hopelessly intertwined-anyway, after a hundred generations everyone
 must be related to everyone else-I'll never be able to prove it, but
 Fletcher Christian must be my ancestor-many times over.
  All very interesting, he thought, as he switched off the display and the
  ancient records vanished from the screen. But I'm not a mutineer. I'm
  a-a-petitioner, with a perfectly reasonable request. Karl, Ranjit, Bob, all
  agree ... Werner is uncertain but won't give us away. How I wish we could
  talk to the rest of the Sabras and let them know about the lovely world
  we've found while they're asleep.
 Meanwhile, I have to answer the captain....

 Captain Bey found it distinctly unsettling, having to go about the ship's
 business not knowing who-or how many-of his officers or crew were addressing
 him through the anonymity Of SHIPNET. There was no way that these unlogged
 inputs could be tracedconfidentiality was their very purpose, built in as a
 stabilizing social mechanism by the long-dead geniuses who had designed
 Magellan. He had tentatively raised the subject of a tracer with his chief
 communications engineer, but Commander Rocklynn had been so shocked that he
 had promptly dropped the matter.
  So now he was continually searching faces, noting expressions, listening to
  voice inflections-and trying to behave as if nothing had happened. Perhaps
  he was overreacting and nothing important had hap-
  
               197
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 pened. But he feared that a seed had been planted, and it would grow and
 grow with every day the ship remained in orbit above Thalassa.
  His first acknowledgment, drafted after consultation with Mahna and Kaldor,
  had been bland enough:

 From: CAPTAIN
 To: ANON
 In reply to your undated communication, I have no
 objection to discussions along the lines you propose,
 either through SHIPNET or formally in Ship's
 Council.

  In fact, he had very strong objections; he had spent almost half his adult
  life training for the awesome responsibility of transplanting a million
  human beings across a hundred and twenty-five light-years of space. That
  was his mission; if the word "sacred" had meant anything to him, he would
  have used it. Nothing short of catastrophic damage to the ship or the
  unlikely discovery that Sagan Two's sun was about to go nova could possibly
  deflect him from that goal.
  Meanwhile, there was one obvious line of action. Perhaps-like Bfigh's
  men!-the crew was becoming demoralized, or at least slack. The repairs to
  the ice plant after the minor damage caused by the tsunami had taken twice
  as long as expected, and that was typical. The whole tempo of the ship was
  slowing down; yes, it was time to start cracking the whip again.
 "Joan," he- said to his secretary, thirty thousand

               198
    THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 kilometers below. "Let me have the latest shield assembly report. And tell
 Captain Malina I want to discuss the hoisting schedule with him."
  He did not know if they could lift more than one snowflake a day. But
  they could try.

 199
 35. CONVALESCENCE

 Lieutenant Horton was an amusing companion, but Loren was glad to get rid of
 him as soon as the electrofusion currents had welded his broken bones. As
 Loren discovered in somewhat wearisome detail, the young engineer had fallen
 in with a gang of hairy hunks on North Island, whose second main interest in
 life appeared to be riding microjet surfboards up vertical waves. Horton had
 found, the hard way, that it was even more dangerous than it looked.
  "I'm quite surprised," Loren had interjected at one point in a rather seamy
  narrative. "I'd have sworn you were ninety percent hetero."
  "Ninety-two, according to my profile," Horton said cheerfully. "But I like
  to check my calibration from time to time."
  The lieutenant was only half joking. Somewhere he had heard that hundred
  percenters were so rare that they were classed as pathological. Not that he
  really believed it; but it worried him slightly on those very few occasions
  when he gave the matter any thought.
  Now Loren was the sole patient and had convinced the Lassan nurse that her
  continuous pres-
  
               200
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 ence was quite unnecessary-at least when Mirissa was paying her daily visit.
 Surgeon Commander Newton, who like most physicians could be embarrassingly
 frank, had told him bluntly, "You still need another week to recuperam If
 you must make love, let her do all the work."

 He had many other visitors, of course. With two exceptions, most were
 welcome.
  Mayor Waldron could bully his little nurse to let her in at any time;
  fortunately, her visitations never coincided with Mirissa's. The first time
  the mayor arrived, Loren contrived to be in an almost moribund state, but
  this tactic proved disastrous, as it made it impossible for him to fend off
  some moist caresses. On the second visit-luckily there had been a tenminute
  warning-he was propped up by pillows and fully conscious. However, by a
  strange coincidence, an elaborate respiratory function test was in
  progress, and the breathing-tube inserted in Loren's mouth made
  conversation impossible. The test was completed about thirty seconds after
  the mayor's departure.
  Brant Falconer's one courtesy visit was something of a strain for them
  both. They talked politely about the scorps, progress at the Mangrove Bay
  freezing plant, North Island politics-anything, in fact, except Mirissa.
  Loren could see that Brant was worried, even embarrassed, but the very last
  thing he expected was an apology. His visitor managed to get it off his
  chest just before he left.
 "You know, Loren," he said reluctantly, "there

               201
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 was nothing else I could have done about that wave. If I'd kept on course,
 we'd have smashed into the reef. It was just too bad Calypso couldn't reach
 deep water in time."
  "I'm quite sure," Loren said with complete sincerity, "that no one could
  have done a better job."
 "Er-I'm glad you understand that."
  Brant was obviously relieved, and Loren felt a surge of sympathy-even of
  pity-for him. Perhaps there had been some criticism of his seamanship; to
  anyone as proud of his skills as Brant, that would have been intolerable.
 "I understand that they've salvaged the sledge."
  "Yes-it will soon be repaired, and as good as new. "
 "Like me."
  In the brief comradeship of their joint laughter, Loren was struck by a
  sudden, ironic thought.
  Had Brant, he wondered, ever wished that Kumar had been a little less
  courageous.

 202
 36. KILIMANJARO

 Why had he dreamed of Kilimanjaro?
  It was a strange word; a name, he felt sure-but of what?
  Moses Kaldor lay in the gray light of the Thalassan dawn, slowly wakening
  to the sounds of Tarna. Not that there were many at this hour; a
  sand-sledge was whirring somewhere on its way to the beach, probably to
  meet a returning fisherman.
 Kilimanjaro.
  Kaldor was not a boastful man, but he doubted if any other human being had
  read quite so many ancient books on such a wide range of subjects. He had
  also received several terabytes of memory implant, and though information
  stored that way was not really knowledge, it was available if you could
  recall the access codes.
  It was a little early to make the effort, and he doubted if the matter was
  particularly important. Yet he had learned not to neglect dreams; old
  Sigmund Freud had made some valid points two thousand years ago. And
  anyway, he would not be able to get to sleep again....
 He closed his eyes, triggered the SEARCH COM-
               203
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 mand, and waited. Though that was pure imagination-the process took place at
 a wholly subconscious level-he could picture myriads of Ks flickering past
 somewhere in the depths of his brain.
  Now something was happening to the phosphenes that forever dance in random
  patterns on the retina of the tightly closed eye. A dark window had
  appeared magically in the faintly luminescent chaos; letters were
  forming-and there it was:

KILIMANJARO: Volcanic mountain, Africa. Ht. 5.9 km. Site of first Space
 Elevator Earth Terminus.

  Well! What did that mean? He let his mind play with this scanty
  information.
  Something to do with that other volcano, Krakan-which had certainly been in
  his thoughts a good deal recently? That seemed rather farfetched.. And he
  needed no warning that Krakan-or its boisterous offspring-might erupt
  again.
  The, first space elevator? That was indeed ancient history; it marked the
  very beginning of planetary colonization by giving mankind virtually free
  access to the Solar System. And they were employing the same technology
  here, using cables of superstrength material to lift the great blocks of
  ice up to Magellan as the ship hovered in stationary orbit above the
  Equator.
  Yet this, too, was a very far cry from that African mountain. The
  connection was too remote; the answer, Kaldor felt certain, must be
  somewhere else

               204
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

  The direct approach had failed. The only way to find the fink-if he ever
  could-was to leave it to chance and time and the mysterious workings of the
  unconscious mind.
 He would do hi's best to forget about Kilimanjaro
 until it chose the auspicious time to erupt in his
 brain.                        -
 205
 37. IN VINO VERITAS

 Next to Mirissa, Kumar was Loren's most welcomeand most frequent-visitor.
 Despite his nickname, it seemed to Loren that Kumar was more like a faithful
 dog-or, rather, a friendly puppy-than a lion. There were a dozen
 much-pampered dogs in Tama, and someday they might also live again on Sagan
 Two, resuming their long acquaintanceship with man.
  Loren had now learned what a risk the boy had taken in that tumultuous sea.
  It was well for them both that Kumar never left shore without a diver's
  knife strapped to his leg; even so, he had been underwater for more than
  three minutes, sawing through the cable entangling Loren. Calypso's crew
  had been certain that they had both drowned.
  Despite the bond that now united them, Loren found it difficult to make
  much conversation with Kumar. After all, there were only a limited number
  of ways in which one could say, "Thank you for saving my life," and their
  backgrounds were so utterly dissimilar that they had very few common
  grounds of reference. If he talked to Kumar about Earth or the ship,
  everything had to be explained in agonizing detail; and after a while Loren
  realized that he was

               206
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 wasting his time. Unlike his sister, Kumar lived in the world of immediate
 experience; only the here and now of Thalassa were important to him. "How I
 envy him!" Kaldor had once remarked. "He's a creature of today-not haunted
 by the past or fearful of the future!"
  Loren was about to go to sleep on what he hoped would be his last night in
  the clinic when Kumar arrived carrying a very large bottle, which he held
  up in triumph.
 "Guess!"
 "I've no idea," Loren said quite untruthfully.
  "The first wine of the season, from Krakan. They say it will be a very good
  year."
 "How do you know anything about it?"
  "Our family's had a vineyard there for more than a hundred years. The Lion
  Brands are the most famous in the world."
  Kumar hunted around until he had produced two glasses and poured generous
  helpings into each. Loren took a cautious sip; it was a little sweet for
  his taste but very, very smooth.
 "What do you call it?" he asked.
 "Krakan Special."
  "Since Krakan's nearly killed me once, should I risk it?"
 "It won't even give you a hangover."
  Loren took another, longer draught, and in a surprismigly short time the
  glass was empty. In an even shorter time it was full again.
  This seemed an excellent way of spending his last night in hospital, and
  Loren felt his normal gratitude 207
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 toward Kumar extending to the entire world. Even one of Mayor Waldron's
 visits would no longer be unwelcome.
  "By the way, how is Brant? I haven't seen him for a week."
  "Still on North Island, arranging repairs to the boat and talking to the
  marine biologists. Everyone's very excited about the scorps. But no one can
  decide what to do about them. If anything."
  "You know, I feel rather the same way about Brant. "
 Kumar laughed.
 "Don't worry. He's got a girl on North Island."
 "Oh. Does Mirissa know?"
 "Of course. "
 "And she doesn't mind?"
  "Why should she? Brant loves her-and he always comes back."
  Loren processed this information, though rather slowly. It occurred to him
  that he was a new variable in an already complex equation. Did Mirissa have
  any other lovers? Did he really want to know? Should he ask?
  "Anyway," Kumar continued as he refilled both their glasses, "all that
  really matters is that their gene maps have been approved, and they've been
  registered for a son. When he's born, it will be different. Then they'll
  only need each other. Wasn't it the same on Earth?"
  "Sometimes," Loren said. So Kumar doesn't know; the secret was still
  between the two of them.

               208
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

  At least I will see my son, Loren thought, if only for a few months. And
  then ...
  To his horror, he felt tears trickling down his cheeks. When had he last
  cried? Two hundred years ago, looking back on the burning Earth ...
  "What's the matter?" Kumar asked. "Are you thinking about your wffe?" His
  concern was so genuine that Loren found it impossible to take offense at
  his bluntness-or at his reference to a subject that, by mutual consent, was
  seldom mentioned, because it had nothing to do with the here and, now. Two
  hundred years ago on Earth and three hundred years hence on Sagan Two were
  too far from Thalassa for his emotions to grasp, especially in his present
  somewhat bemused condition.
 "No, Kumar, I was not thinking of-my wife-"
 "Will you ... ever ... tell her ... about Mirissa?"
  "Perhaps. Perhaps not. I really don't know. I feel very sleepy. Did we
  drink the whole bottle? Kumar? Kumar!"

 The nurse came in during the night, and suppressing her giggles, tucked in
 the sheets so that they would not fall out.
  Loren woke first. After the initial shock of recognition, he started to
  laugh.
  "What's so funny?" Kumar said, heaving himself rather blearily out of bed.
  "If you really want to know-I was wondering if Mirissa. would be jealous."
 Kumar grinned wryly.

               209
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE .

  "I may have been a little drunk," he said, "but I'm quite sure that nothing
  happened."
 "So am 1.11
  Yet he realized that he loved Kumar-not because he had saved his life or
  even because he was Mirissa's brother-but simply because he was Kumar. Sex
  had ,absolutely nothing to do with it; the very idea would have filled them
  not with embarrassment but hilarity. That was just as well. Life on Tarna
  was already sufficiently complicated.
  "And you were right," Loren added, "about the Krakan Special. I don't have
  a hangover. In fact, I feel wonderful. Can you send a few bottles up to the
  ship? Better stffl-a few hundred liters."

 210
 38. DEBATE

 It was a simple question, but it did not have a simple answer: What would
 happen to discipline aboard Magellan if the very purpose of the ship's
 mission was put to the vote?
  Of course, any result would not be binding, and he could override it if
  necessary. He would have to if a majority decided to stay (not that for a
  moment he imagined ... ) But such an outcome would be psychologically
  devastating. The crew would be divided into two factions, and that could
  lead to situations he preferred not to contemplate.
  And yet-a commander had to be firm but not pigheaded. There was a good deal
  of sense in the proposal, and it had many attractions. After all, he had
  enjoyed the benefits of presidential hospitality himself and had every
  intention of meeting that lady decathlon champion again. This was a
  beautiful world; perhaps they could speed up the slow process of continent
  building so that there was room for the extra millions. It would be
  infinitely easier than colonizing Sagan Two.
  For that matter, they might never reach Sagan Two. Although the ship's
  operational reliability was

               211
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 still estimated to be ninety-eight percent, there were external hazards that
 no one could predict. Only a few of his most trusted officers knew about the
 section of the ice-shield that had been lost somewhere around light-year
 forty-eight. If that interstellar meteoroid, or whatever it was, had been
 just a few meters closer ...
  Someone had suggested that the thing could have been an ancient space-probe
  from Earth. The odds against this were literally astronomical, and of
  course such an ironic hypothesis could never be proved.
  And now his unknown petitioners were calling themselves the New Thalassans.
  Did that mean, Captain Bey wondered, that there were many of them and they
  were getting organized into a political movement? If so, perhaps the best
  thing would be to get them out into the open as soon as possible.
 Yes, it was time to call Ship's Council.

 Moses Kaldor's rejection had been swift and courteous.
  "No, Captain; I can't get involved in the debatepro or con. If I did, the
  crew would no longer trust my impartiality. But I'm willing to act as
  chairman, or moderator-whatever you like to call it."
  "Agreed," Captain Bey said promptly; this was as much as he had really
  hoped for. "And who will present the motions? We can't expect the New Thal-
  assans to come out into the open and plead their case. "
 "I wish we could have a straight vote without any

               212
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTI-f

 arguments and discussions," Deputy Captain Malina had lamented.
  Privately, Captain Bey agreed. But this was a democratic society of
  responsible, highly educated men, and Ship's Orders recognized that fact.
  The New Tbalassans had asked for a Council to air their views; if he
  refused, he would be disobeying his own letters of appointment and
  violating the trust given him on Earth two hundred years ago.
  It had not been easy to arrange the Council. Since everyone, without
  exception, had to be given a chance of voting, schedules and duty rosters
  had to be reorganized and sleep periods disrupted. The fact that half the
  crew was down on Thalassa. presented another problem that had never arisen
  before-that of security. Whatever its outcome might be, it was highly
  undesirable that the Lassans overhear the debate ...
  And so Loren Lorenson was alone, with the door of his Tarna office locked
  for the first time he could recall, when the Council began. Once again he
  was wearing full-view goggles; but this time he was not drifting through a
  submarine forest. He was aboard Magellan, in the familiar Assembly room,
  looking at the faces of colleagues, and whenever he switched his viewpoint,
  at the screen on which their comments and their verdict would be displayed.
  At the moment it bore one brief message:

RESOLVED: That the Starship Magellan terminate its mission at Thalassa as A
 its prime objectives can be achieved here.

               213
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

  So Moses is up on the ship, Loren thought as he scanned the audience; I
  wondered why I'd not seen him lately. He looks tired-and so does the
  captain. Maybe this is more serious than I'd imagined....
 Kaldor rapped briskly for attention.
  "Captain, officers, fellow crewmembers-although this is our first Council,
  you all know the rules of procedure. If you wish to speak, hold up your
  hand to be recognized. If you wish to make a written statement, use your
  keypad; the addresses have been scrambled to ensure anonymity. In either
  case, please be as brief as possible.
  "If there are no questions, we will open with Item zero zero one."
  The New Thalassans had added a few arguments, but essentially 001 was still
  the memorandum that had jolted Captain Bey two weeks ago-a period in which
  he had made no progress at all in discovering its authorship.
  Perhaps the most telling additional point was the suggestion that it was
  their duty to stay here; Lassa needed them, technically, culturally,
  genetically. I wonder, Loren thought, tempted though he was to agree. In
  any event, we should ask their opinion first. We're not old-style
  imperialists-or are we?
  Everyone had had time to reread the memorandum; Kaldor rapped for attention
  again.
  "No one has, ah, requested permission to speak in favor of the resolution;
  of course, there will be opportunities later. So I will ask Lieutenant
  Elgar to put the case against."
 Raymond Elgar was a thoughtful young Power

               214
    THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 and Communications engineer whom Loren knew only slightly; he had musical
 talents and claimed to be writing an epic poem about the voyage. When
 challenged to produce even a single verse, he invariably replied, "Wait
 until Sagan Two plus one year."
  It was obvious why Lieutenant Elgar had volunteered (if indeed he had
  volunteered) for this role. His poetic pretensions would hardly allow him
  to do otherwise; and perhaps he really was working on that epic.
 "Captain-shipmates-lend me your ears-"
  That's a striking phrase, Loren thought. I wonder if it's original?
  "I think we will all agree, in our hearts as well as our minds, that the
  idea of remaining on Thalassa has a great many attractions. But consider
  these points:
  "There are only 161 of us. Have we the right to make an irrevocable
  decision for the million who are still sleeping?
  "And what of the Lassans? It's been suggested that we'll help them by
  staying on. But will we? They have a way of life that seems to suit them
  perfectly. Consider our background, our training-the goal to which we
  dedicated ourselves years ago. Do you really imagine that a million of us
  could become part of Thalassan society without disrupting it completely?
  "And there is the question of duty. Generations Of men and women sacrificed
  themselves to make this mission possible-to give the human race a better
  chance of survival. The more suns we reach, the 215
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 greater our insurance against disaster. We have seen what the Thalassan
 volcanoes can do; who knows what may happen here in the centuries to come?
  "There has been glib talk of tectonic engineering to make new land, to
  provide room for the increased population. May I remind you that even on
  Earth, after thousands of years of research and development, that was still
  not an exact science. Remember the Nazca Plate Catastrophe of 3175! 1 can
  imagine nothing more reckless than to meddle with the forces pent up inside
  Thalassa. ,
  "There's no need to say any more. There can be only one decision in this
  matter. We must leave the Lassans to their own destiny; we have to go on to
  Sagan Two."
  Loren was not surprised at the slowly mounting applause. The interesting
  question was: Who had not joined it? As far as he could judge, the audience
  was almost equally divided. Of course, some people might be applauding
  because they admired the very effective presentation-not necessarily
  because they agreed with the speaker.
  "Thank you, Lieutenant Elgar," Chain-nan Kaldor said. "We particularly
  appreciate your brevity. Now would anyone like to express the contrary
  opinion?"
  There was an uneasy stirring followed by a profound silence. For at least
  a minute, nothing happened. Then letters began to appear on the screen.

 002. WOULD THE CAPTAIN PLEASE GIVE THE
     LATEST ESTIMATE OF PROBABLE MIS
     SION SUCCESS

               216
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

003.WHY NOT REVIVE A REPRESENTATIVE SAMPLE OF THE SLEEPERS TO POLL THEIR
 OPINION

004.WHY NOT ASK THE LASSANS WHAT THEY THINK. IT'S THEIR WORLD

  With total secrecy and neutrality, the computer stored and numbered the
  inputs from the Council members. In two millennia, no one had been able to
  invent a better way of sampling group opinion and obtaining a consensus.
  All over the ship-and down on Thalassa-men and women were tapping out
  messages on the seven buttons of their little onehand keypads. Perhaps the
  earliest skill acquired by any child was the ability to touch-type all the
  necessary combinations without even thinking about them.
  Loren swept his eye across the audience and was amused to note that almost
  everyone had both hands in full view. He could see nobody with the typical
  far-off look, indicating that a private message was being transmitted via
  a concealed keypad. But somehow a lot of people were talking.

015.WHAT ABOUT A COMPROMISE? SOME OF US MIGHT PREFER TO STAY. THE SHIP
 COULD GO ON

 Kaldor rapped for attention.
  "That's not the resolution we're discussing," he said, "but it's been
  noted."

               217
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

  "To answer Zero Zero Two," Captain Bey said, barely remembering in time to
  get a go-ahead nod from the chain-nan, "the figure is ninety-eight percent.
  I wouldn't be surprised if our chance of reaching Sagan Two is better than
  that of North or South Island staying above water."

021.APART FROM KRAKAN, WHICH THEY CAN'T DO MUCH ABOUT, THE LASSANS DON'T
 HAVE ANY SERIOUS CHALLENGES. MAYBE WE SHOULD LEAVE THEM SOME. KNR

  That would be, let's see ... Of course-Kingsley Rasmussen. Obviously he had
  no wish to remain incognito. He was expressing a thought that at one time
  or other had occurred to almost everyone.

022.WE'VE ALREADY SUGGESTED THEY REBUILD THE DEEP SPACE ANTENNA ON KRAKAN
 TO KEEP IN TOUCH WITH US. RMM

 023.                         A TEN YEAR JOB AT THE MOST. KNR

  "Gentlemen," Kaldor said a little impatiently, i4we're getting away from
  the point."
  Have I anything to contribute? Loren asked himself. No, I will sit out this
  debate; I can see too many sides. Sooner or later I will have to choose
  between duty and happiness. But not yet. Not yet ...
  "I'm quite surprised," ' Kaldor said after nothing more had appeared on the
  screen for a full two min-
  
               218
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 utes, "that no one has anything more to say on such an important matter."
 He waited hopefully for another minute.
  "Very well. Perhaps you'd like to continue the discussion informally. We
  will not take a vote now, but during-the next forty-eight hours you can
  record your opinion in the usual way. Thank you."
  He glanced at Captain Bey, who rose to his feet with a swiftness that
  showed his obvious relief
  "Thank you, Dr. Kaldor. Ship's Council terminated. "
  Then he looked anxiously at Kaldor, who was staring at the display screen
  as if he had just noticed it for the first time.
 "Are you all right, Doctor?"
  "Sorry, Captain-I'm fine. I've just remembered something important, that's
  all."
  Indeed he had. For the thousandth time, at least, he marveled at the
  labyrinthine workings of the subconscious mind.
  Entry 021 had done it. "The Lassans don't have any serious challenges."
 Now he knew why he had dreamed of Kilimanjaro.

 219
39. THE LEOPARD IN THE
SNOWS

 I'm sorry, Evelyn-it's been many days since I last talked to you. Does this
 mean that your image is fading in my mind as the future absorbs more and
 more of my energies and attention?
  I suppose so, and logically I should welcome it. Clinging too long to the
  past is a sickness-as you often reminded me. But in my heart I still can't
  accept that bitter truth.
  Much has happened in the last few weeks. The ship has been infected with
  what I call the Bounty Syndrome. We should have anticipated it-indeed, we
  did, but only as a joke. Now it's serious, though so far not too serious.
  I hope.
  Some of the crew would like to remain on Thalassa-who can blame them?-and
  have frankly admitted it. Others want to terminate the whole mission here
  and forget about Sagan Two. We don't know the strength of this faction,
  because it hasn't come out into the open.
  Forty-eight hours after the Council, we had the vote. Although of course
  the balloting was secret, I

               220
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 don't know how far the results can be trusted. 151 were for going on; only
 6 wanted to terminate the mission here; and there were 4 undecideds.
  Captain Bey was pleased. He feels the situation's under control but is
  going to take some precautions. He realizes that the longer we stay here,
  the greater the pressure will be not to. leave at all. He won't mind a few
  deserters-"If they want to go, I certainly don't want to keep them," was
  the way he put it. But he's worried about disaffection spreading to the
  rest of the crew.
  So he's accelerating shield construction. Now that the system is completely
  automatic and running smoothly, we plan to make two lifts a day instead of
  one. If this works out, we can leave in four months. This hasn't been
  announced yet. I hope there are no protests when it is, from the New
  Lassans or anyone else.
  And now another matter that may be completely unimportant but which I find
  fascinating. Do you remember how we used to read stories to each other when
  we first met? It was a wonderful way of getting to know how people really
  lived and thought thousands of years ago-long before sensory or even video
  recordings existed . . .
  Once you read to me-I had not the slightest conscious memory of it-a story
  about a great mountain in Africa with a strange name, Kilimanjaro. I've
  looked it up in Ship's Archives, and now I understand why it's been
  haunting me.
 It seems that there was a cave high up on the

               221
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 mountain, above the snow line. And in that cave was the frozen body of a
 great hunting cat-a leopard. That's the mystery; no one ever knew what the
 leopard was doing at such an altitude, so far from its normal territory.
  You know, Evelyn, that I was always proudmany people said vain!-about my
  powers of intuition. Well, it seems to me that something like this is
  happening here.
  Not once but several times, a large and powerful marine animal has been
  detected a long way from its natural habitat. Recently, the first one was
  captured; it's a kind of huge crustacean, like the sea scorpions that once
  lived on Earth.
  We're not sure if they're intelligent, and that may even be a meaningless
  question. But certainly they are highly organized social animals, with
  primitive technologies-though perhaps that's too strong a word. As far as
  we've discovered, they don't show any greater abilities than bees or ants
  or termites, but their scale of operations is different and quite
  impressive.
  Most important of all, they've discovered metal, though as yet they seem to
  use it only for ornament, and their sole source of supply is what they can
  steal from the Lassans. They've done this several times.
  And recently a scorp crawled up the channel right into the heart of our
  freezing plant. The naive assumption was that it was hunting for food. But
  there was plenty where it came from-at least fifty kilometers away.

               222
    THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

  I want to know what that scorp was doing so far from home; I feel that
  the answer may be very important to the Lassans.
  I wonder if we'll find it before I begin the long sleep to Sagan Two.

 723
 40. CONFRONTATION

 The instant that Captain Bey walked into President Farradine's office, he
 knew that something was wrong.
  Normally, Edgar Farradine greeted him by his first name and immediately
  produced the wine decanter. This time there was no "Sirdar," and no wine,
  but at least he was offered a chair.
  "I've just received some disturbing news, Captain Bey. If you don't mind,
  I'd like the prime minister to join us."
  This was the first time the captain had ever heard, the president come
  straight to the point-whatever it was-and also the first time he had met
  the PM in Farradine's office.
  "In that case, Mr. President, may I ask Ambassador Kaldor to join me?"
  The president hesitated only a moment; then he replied, "Certainly." The
  captain was relieved to see a ghost of a smile, as if in recognition of
  this diplomatic nicety. The visitors might be outranked-but not
  outnumbered.
  Prime Minister Bergman, as Captain Bey knew perfectly well, was really the
  power behind the

               224
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 throne. Behind the PM was the cabinet, and behind the cabinet was the
 Jefferson Mark 3 Constitution. The arrangement had worked well for the last
 few centuries; Captain Bey had a foreboding that it was now about to undergo
 some major perturbation.
  Kaldor was quickly rescued from Mrs. Farradine, who was using him as a
  guinea pig to try out her ideas for redecorating the President's House. The
  prime minister arrived a few seconds later, wearing his usual inscrutable
  expression.
  When they were all seated, the president folded his arms, leaned back in
  his ornate swivel chair, and looked accusingly at his visitors.
  "Captain Bey-Dr. Kaldor-we have received some most disturbing information.
  We would like to know if there is any truth in the report that you now
  intend to end your mission here-and not at Sagan Two."
  Captain Bey felt a great sensation of relief-followed instantly by
  annoyance. There must have been a bad breach of security; he had hoped that
  the Lassans would never hear of the petition and Ship's Council-though
  perhaps that was too much to expect.
  "Mr. President-Mr. Prime Minister-if you have heard such a rumor, I can
  assure you that there is absolutely no truth in it. Why do you think we are
  hoisting six hundred tons of ice a day to rebuild our shield? Would we
  bother to do that if we planned to stay here?"
"Perhaps. If for some reason you've changed your ??5
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 mind, you would hardly alert us by suspending operations. "
  The quick rejoiner gave the captain a momentary shock; he had underrated
  these amiable people. Then he realized that they-and their computersmust
  have already analyzed all the obvious possibilities.
  "True enough. But I'd like to tell you-it's still confidential and not yet
  announced-that we plan to double the rate of hoisting to finish the shield
  more quickly. Far from staying on, we plan to leave early. I had hoped to
  infonn you of this in more pleasant circumstances. "
  Even the prime minister could not completely conceal his surprise; the
  president did not even try. Before they could recover, Captain Bey resumed
  his attack:
  "And it's only fair, Mr. President, that you give us the evidence for
  your-accusation. Otherwise, how can we refute it?"
  The president looked at the prime minister. The prime minister looked at
  the visitors.
  "I'm afraid that's impossible. It would reveal our sources of information."
  "Then it's a stalemate. We won't be able to convince you until we really do
  leave-one hundred and thirty days from now according to the revised
  schedule. "
  There was a thoughtful and rather gloomy silence; then Kaldor said quietly:
  "Could I have a brief private talk with the captain?"
 "Of course.

               226
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

  While they were gone, the president asked the prime minister: "Are they
  telling the truth?"
  "Kaldor wouldn't lie; I'm certain of that. But perhaps he doesn't know all
  the facts."
  There was no time to continue the discussion before the parties of the
  second part returned to face their accusers.
  "Mr. President," the captain said, "Dr. Kaldor and I both agree that there
  is something we should tell you. We'd hoped to keep it quiet-it was embar-
  rassing and we thought the matter had been settled. Possibly we're wrong;
  in that case, we may need your help. "
  He gave a brief summary of the Council proceedings and the events that had
  led up to them and concluded, "If you wish, I'm prepared to show you the
  recordings. We have nothing to hide."
  "That won't be necessary, Sirdar," the president said, obviously vastly
  relieved. The prime minister, however, still looked worried.
  "Er-just a minute, Mr. President. That doesn't dispose of the reports we've
  received. They were very convincing, you'll recall."
 "I'm sure the captain will be able to explain them."
 "Only if you tell me what they are."
  There was another pause. Then the president moved toward the wine decanter.
  "Let's have a drink first," he said cheerfully. "Then I'll tell you how we
  found out."

               72 7
 - 41. PILLOW TALK

 It had gone very smoothly, Owen Fletcher told himself. Of course, he was
 somewhat disappointed by the vote, though he wondered how accurately it re-
 flected opinion aboard the ship. After all, he had instructed two of his
 fellow conspirators to register noes, lest the-stffl-pitiful-strength of the
 New Thalassan movement be revealed.
  What to do next was, as always, the problem. He was an engineer, not a
  politician-though he was rapidly moving in that direction-and could see no
  way of recruiting further support without coming out into the open.
  This left only two alternatives. The first, and easier, was to jump ship,
  as close to launch-time as possible, by simply failing to report back.
  Captain Bey would be too busy to hunt for them-even if he felt inchned-and
  their Lassan friends would hide them until Magellan's departure.
  But that would be a double desertion-one unheard of in the closely knit
  Sabra community. He would have abandoned his sleeping colleagues-including
  his own brother and sister. What would they think of him, three centuries
  hence on hostile Sagan

               228
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 Two, when they learned that he could have opened the gates of Paradise for
 them but had failed to do so?
  And now the time was running out; those computer simulations of up-rated
  lifting schedules could have only one meaning. Though he had not even
  discussed this with his friends, he saw no alternative to action.
  But his mind still shied away from the word sabotage.

 Rose Killian had never heard of Delilah and would have been horrified to be
 compared to her. She was a simple, rather naive Norther who-like so many
 young Lassans-had been overwhelmed by the glamorous visitors from Earth. Her
 affair with Karl Bosley was not only her first really profound emotional
 experience; it was also his.
  They were both heartsick at the thought of parting. Rose was weeping on
  Karl's shoulder late one night when he could bear her misery no longer.
  "Promise not to tell anyone," he said, fondling the strands of hair lying
  along his chest. "I've some good news for you. It's a big secret-nobody
  knows it yet. The ship isn't going to leave. We're all staying here on
  Thalassa."
 Rose almost fell off the bed in her surprise.
 "You're not saying this just to make me happy?"
  "No-it's true. But don't say a word to anyone. It must be kept completely
  secret."
 "Of course, darling."

               229
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

  But Rose's closest friend Marion was also weeping for her Earth lover, so
  she had to be told ....
  ... and Marion passed the good news on to Pauline ... who couldn't resist
  telling Svedana ... who mentioned it in confidence to Crystal.
 And Crystal was the president's daughter.

 230
 42. SURVIVOR

 This is a very unhappy business, Captain Bey thought. Owen Fletcher is a
 good man; I approved his selection myself. How could he have done such a
 thing?
  There was probably no single explanation. If he had not been a Sabra and in
  love with that girl, it might never have happened. What was the word for
  one plus one adding up to more than two? Sin-something-ah, yes, synergy.
  Yet he could not help feeling that there was something more, something that
  he would probably never know.
  He remembered a remark that Kaldor, who always had a phrase for every
  occasion, had made to him once when they were talking about crew
  psychology.
  "We're all maimed, Captain, whether we admit it or not. No one who's been
  through our experiences during those last years on Earth could possibly be
  unaffected. And we all share the same feeling of guilt. "
 "Guilt?" he had asked in surprise and indignation.
  "Yes, even though it's not our fault. We're survivors-the only survivors.
  And survivors always feel guilty at being alive."

               231
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

  It was a disturbing remark, and it might help to explain Fletcher-and many
  other things.
 We're all maimed men.
  I wonder what your injury is, Moses Kaldor-and how you handle it. I know
  mine and have been able to use it for the benefit of my fellow humans. It
  brought me to where I am today, and I can be proud of that.
  Perhaps in an earlier age I might have been a dictator, or a warlord.
  Instead, I have been usefully employed as Chief of Continental Police, as
  General-inCharge of Space Construction Facilities-and finally as commander
  of a starship. My fantasies of power have been successfully sublimated.
  He walked to the captain's safe, to which he alone held the key, and
  slipped the coded metal bar into its slot. The door swung smoothly open to
  reveal assorted bundles of papers, some medals and trophies, and a small,
  flat wooden box bearing the letters S.B. inlaid in silver.
  As the captain placed it on the table, he was happy to feel the familiar
  stirring in his loins. He opened the lid and stared down at the gleaming
  instrument of power, snug in its velvet bed.
  Once his perversion had been shared by millions. Usually it was quite
  harmless-in primitive societies, even valuable. And many times it had
  changed the course of history, for better or for worse.
  "I know you're a phallic symbol, " the captain whispered. "But you're also
  a gun. I've used you before; I can use you again . . ."
 The flashback could not have lasted for more than

               232
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 a fraction of a second, yet it seemed to cover years of time. He was still
 standing by his desk when it was over; just for a moment, all the careful
 work of the psychotherapists was undone, and the gates of memory opened
 wide.
  He looked back in horror-yet with fascinationon those last turbulent
  decades, which had brought out the best and the worst in humanity. He
  remembered how, as a young Inspector of Police in Cairo, he had given his
  first order to fire on a rioting crowd. The bullets were supposed to be
  merely incapacitating. But two people had died.
  What had they been rioting about? He had never even known-there were so
  many political and religious movements in the final days. And it was also
  the great era of the supercriminals; they had nothing to lose and no future
  to look forward to, so they were prepared to take any risks. Most of them
  had been psychopaths, but some had been near geniuses. He thought of Joseph
  Kidder, who had almost stolen a starship. No one knew what had happened to
  him, and sometimes Captain Bey had been struck by a nightmare fantasy:
  "Just suppose that one of my sleepers is really . . ."
  The forcible running down of the population, the total prohibition of any
  new births after the year 3600, the absolute priority given to the
  development of the quantum drive and the building of the Magellan-class
  ships-all these pressures, together with the knowledge of impending doom,
  had imposed such strains on terrestrial society that it still seemed a
  miracle that anyone had been able to escape from 233
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 the Solar System. Captain Bey remembered, with admiration and gratitude,
 those who had burned up their last years for a cause whose success or
 failure they would never know.
  He could see again the last world president, Ehzabeth Windsor, exhausted
  but proud as she left the ship after her tour of inspection, returning to
  a planet that had only days to live. She had even less time; the bomb in
  her spaceplane had exploded just before it was due to land at Port
  Canaveral.
  The captain's blood still ran cold at the memory;, that bomb had been
  intended for Magellan, and only a mistake in timing had saved the ship. It
  was ironic that each of the rival cults had claimed responsibility ...
  Jonathan Cauldwell and his dwindling but still vocal band of followers
  proclaimed ever more desperately that all would be well, that God was
  merely testing Mankind as He had once tested Job. Despite everything that
  was happening to the Sun, it would soon return to normal, and humanity
  would be saved-unless those who disbelieved in His mercy provoked His
  wrath. And then He might change His mind ...
  The Will of God cult believed the exact opposite. Doomsday had come at
  last, and no attempt should be made to avoid it. Indeed, it should be
  welcomed, since after Judgment those who were worthy of salvation would
  live in eternal bliss.
  And so, from totally opposing premises, the Cauldwellites and the WOGs
  arrived at the same conclu234
     THE ~ONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 sion: The human race should not attempt to escape its destiny. All starships
 should be destroyed.
  Perhaps it was fortunate that the two rival cults were so bitterly opposed
  that they could not cooperate even toward a goal that they both shared. In
  fact, after the death of President Windsor their hostility turned to
  internecine violence. The rumor was started-almost certainly by the World
  Security Bureau, though Bey's colleagues had never admitted it to him-that
  the bomb had been planted by the WOGs and its timer sabotaged by the
  Cauldwellites. The exactly opposite version was also popular; one of them
  might even have been true.
  All this was history, now known only to a handful of men besides himself
  and soon to be forgotten. Yet how strange that Magellan was once again
  threatened by sabotage.
  Unlike the WOGs and the Cauldwellites, the Sabras were highly competent and
  not unhinged by fanaticism. They could therefore be a more serious problem,
  but Captain Bey believed he knew how to handle it.
  You're a good man, Owen Fletcher, he thought grimly. But I've killed better
  ones in my time. And when there was no alternative, I've used torture.
  He was more than a little proud of the fact that he had never enjoyed it;
  and this time, there was a better way.

               235
 43. INTERROGATION

 And now Magellan had a new crewmember, untimely awakened from his slumber
 and still adjusting to the realities of the situation-as Kaldor had done a
 year ago. Nothing but an emergency justified such action. But according to
 the computer records only Dr. Marcus Steiner, once Chief Scientist of the
 Terran Bureau of Investigation, possessed the knowledge and skills that,
 unfortunately, were needed now.
  Back on Earth, his friends had often asked him why he had chosen to become
  a professor of criminology. And he had always given the same answer: "The
  only alternative was to become a criminal."
  It had taken Steiner almost a week to modify the sickbay's standard
  encephalographic equipment and to check the computer programs. Meanwhile,
  the four Sabras remained confined to their quarters and stubbornly refused
  to make any admissions of guilt.
  Owen Fletcher did not look very happy when he saw the preparations that had
  been made for him; there were too many similarities to electric chairs and
  torture devices from the bloodstained history of Earth. Dr. Steiner quickly
  put him at ease with the synthetic familiarity of the good interrogator.

               236
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

  "There's nothing to be alarmed at, Owen-I promise you won't feel a thing.
  You won't even be aware of the answers you're giving me-but there's no way
  you can hide the truth. Because you're an intelligent man, I'll tell you
  exactly what I'm going to do. Surprisingly enough, it helps me do my job;
  whether you like it or not, your subconscious mind will trust me-and
  cooperate."
  What nonsense, thought Lieutenant Fletcher; surely he doesn't think he can
  fool me as easily as that! But he made no reply, as he was seated in the
  chair and the orderlies fastened leather straps loosely around his forearms
  and waist. He did not attempt to resist; two of his largest excolleagues
  were standing uncomfortably in the background, carefully avoiding his eye.
  "If you need a drink or want to go to the toilet, just say so. This first
  session will take exactly one hour; we may need some shorter ones later. We
  want to make you relaxed and comfortable."
  In the circumstances, this was a highly optimistic remark, but no one
  seemed to think it at all funny.
  "Sorry we've had to shave your head, but scalp electrodes don't like hair.
  And you'll have to be blindfolded so we don't pick up confusing visual
  inputs ... Now you'll start getting drowsy, but you'll remain perfectly
  conscious ... We're going to ask you a series of questions which have just
  three possible answers-Yes, no, or don't know. But you won't have to reply;
  your brain will do it for you, and the computer's trinary logic system will
  know what it's saying.

               237
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

  "And there's absolutely no way you can he to us; you're very welcome to
  try! Believe me, some of the best minds of Earth invented this machine-and
  were never able to fool it. If it gets ambiguous answers, the computer will
  simply reframe the questions. Are you ready? Very well ... Recorder on
  high, please . . . Check gain on Channel 5 ... Run the program.

YOUR NAME IS OWEN FLETCHER ... ANSWER YES ... OR NO ...
YOUR NAME IS JOHN SMITH ... ANSWER YES ... OR NO ...
YOU WERE BORN IN LOWELL CITY, MARS ... ANSWER YES ... OR NO ...
YOUR NAME IS JOHN SMITH ... ANSWER YES ... OR NO ...
YOU WERE BORN IN AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND ... ANSWER YES ... OR NO ...
 YOUR NAME IS OWEN FLETCHER ...
 YOU WERE BORN ON 3 MARCH 3585 ...
 YOU WERE BORN ON 31 DECEMBER 3584 ...

  The questions came at such short intervals that even if he had not been in
  a mildly sedated condition, Fletcher would have been unable to falsify the
  answers. Nor would it have mattered had he done so; within a few minutes,
  the computer had established the pattern of his automatic responses to all
  the questions whose answers were already known.
  From time to time the calibration was rechecked (YOUR NAME IS OWEN FLETCHER
  ... YOU WERE BORN IN CAPETOWN, ZULULAND ... ), and questions were
  occasionally repeated to confirm

               238
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 answers already given. The whole process was completely automatic, once the
 physiological constellation of YES-NO responses had been identified.
  The primitive 'lie detectors' had tried to do this with fair success-but
  seldom complete certainty. It had taken no more than two hundred years to
  perfect the technology and thereby to revolutionize the practice of law,
  both criminal and civil, to the point when few trials ever lasted more than
  hours.
  It was not so much an interrogation as a computerized-and
  cheat-proof-version of the ancient game Twenty Questions. In principle, any
  piece of information could be quickly pinned down by a series of YES-NO
  replies, and it was surprising how seldom as many as twenty were needed
  when an expert human cooperated with an expert machine.
  When a rather dazed Owen Fletcher staggered from the chair, exactly one
  hour later, he had no idea what he had been asked or how he had responded.
  He was fairly confident, however, that he had given nothing away.
  He was mildly surprised when Dr. Steiner said cheerfully, "That's it, Owen.
  We won't need you again. "
  The professor was proud of the fact that he had never hurt anybody, but a
  good interrogator had to be something of a sadist-if only a psychological
  one. Besides, it added to his reputation for infallibility, and that was
  half the battle.
  He waited until Fletcher had regained his balance and was being escorted
  back to the detention cell.

               239
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

  "Oh, by the way, Owen-that trick with the ice would never have worked."
  In fact, it might well have; but that didn't matter now. The expression on
  Lieutenant Fletcher's face gave Dr. Steiner all the reward he needed for
  the exercise of his considerable skills.
  Now he could go back to sleep until Sagan Two. But first he would relax and
  enjoy himself, making the most of this unexpected interlude.
  Tomorrow he would have a look at Thalassa and perhaps go swimming off one
  of those beautiful beaches. But for the moment he would enjoy the company
  of an old and beloved friend.
  The book he drew reverently out of its vacuumsealed package was not merely
  a first edition; it was now the only edition. He opened it at random; after
  all, he knew practically every page by heart.
  He started to read, and fifty light-years from the ruins of Earth, the fog
  rolled once more down Baker Street.

 "The cross-checking has confirmed that only the four Sabras were involved,"
 Captain Bey said. "We can be thankful that there's no need to interrogate
 anyone else."
  "I still don't understand how they hoped to get away with it," Deputy
  Captain Malina said unhappily.
  "I don't believe they would, but it's lucky it was never put to the test.
  Anyway, they were still undecided.
 "Plan A involved damaging the shield. As you

               240
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 know, Fletcher was on the assembly crew and was working out a scheme to
 reprogram the last stage of the lifting procedure. If a block of ice could
 be allowed to impact at just a few meters a second-you see what I mean?
  "It could be made to look like an accident, but there was a risk that the
  subsequent inquiry would soon prove it was nothing of the sort. And even if
  the shield was damaged, it could be repaired. Fletcher hoped that the delay
  would give time to acquire more recruits. He might have been right; another
  year on Thalassa ...
  "Plan B involved sabotaging the life-support system so that the ship had to
  be evacuated. Again, the same objections.
  "Plan C was the most disturbing one because it would have terminated the
  mission. Luckily, none of the Sabras was in Propulsion; it would have been
  very hard for them to get at the drive . . ."
  Everyone looked shocked-though none more so than Commander Rocklynn.
  "It would not have been at all difficult, sir, if they were sufficiently
  determined. The big problem would have been to arrange something that would
  put the drive out of action-pennanently-without damaging the ship. I very
  much doubt if they'd have the technical knowledge necessary."
  "They were working on it," the captain grimly said. "We have to review our
  security proceedings, I'm afraid. There will be a conference on that to-
  morrow for all senior officers-here, at noon."

               241
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

  And then Surgeon Commander Newton put the question that everyone hesitated
  to ask.
 "Will there be a court martial, Captain?"
  "It's not necessary; guilt has been established. According to Ship's
  Orders, the only problem is the sentence. "
 Everyone waited. And waited.
  "Thank you, ladies and gentlemen," the captain said, and his officers left
  in silence.
  Alone in his quarters, he felt angry and betrayed. But at least it was
  over; Magellan had ridden out the man-made storm.
  The other three Sabras were-perhaps-harmless; but what about Owen Fletcher?
  His mind strayed to the deadly plaything in his safe. He was captain: it
  would be easy to arrange an accident ...
  He put the fantasy aside; he could never do it, of course. In any event, he
  had already made up his mind and was certain that there would be universal
  agreement.
  Someone had once said that for every problem there is a solution that is
  simple, attractive-and wrong. But this solution, he was certain, was
  simple, attractive-and absolutely right.
  The Sabras wanted to remain on Thalassa; they could do so. He did not doubt
  that they would become valuable citizens-perhaps exactly the aggressive,
  forceful type that this society needed.
  How strange that History was repeating itself; like Magellan, he would be
  marooning some of his men.
  But whether he had punished them or rewarded them, he would not know for
  three hundred years.

              242
VI. THE FORESTS
OF THE SEA
                                                               I,N.

 44. SPYBALL

 The North Island Marine Lab had been less than enthusiastic.
  "We still need a week to repair Calypso," the director said, "and we were
  lucky to find the sledge. It's the only one on Thalassa, and we don't want
  to risk it again."
  I know the symptoms, thought Science Officer Varley; even during the last
  days on Earth, there were still some lab directors who wanted to keep their
  beautiful equipment unsullied by actual use.
  "Unless Krakan Junior-or Senior-misbehaves again, I don't see that there's
  any risk. And haven't the geologists promised that they'll be quiet again
  for at least fifty years?"
  "I've a small bet with them on that. But franklywhy do you think this is so
  important?"
  What tunnel vision! Varley thought. Even if the man is a physical
  oceanographer, one would have expected him to have some interest in marine
  Iffe. But perhaps I've misjudged him; he may be sounding me out ...
  "We have a certain emotional interest in the subject since Dr. Lorenson was
  killed-luckily not per-
  
               245
 00,

             ARTHUR C. CLARKE

    manently. But quite apart from that, we find the scorps fascinating.
    Anything we can discover about alien intelligence could be of vital
    importance someday. And to you even more than to us since they're on your
    doorstep."
      "I can appreciate that. Perhaps it's lucky we occupy such different
      ecological niches."
      For how long? the science officer thought. If Moses Kaldor is right ...
      "Tell me just what a spyball does. The name's certainly intriguing."
      "They were developed a couple of thousand years ago for security and
      espionage but had many other applications. Some weren't much bigger
      than pinheads-tbe one we'll use is the size of a football."
      Varley spread the drawings on the director's table.
      "This one was designed especially for underwater use-I'm surprised
      you're not familiar with it-tbe reference date is as early as 2045. We
      found complete specifications in Tech Memory, and fed them into the
      repheator. The first copy wouldn't work-we still don't know why-but
      number two tests out fine.
      "Here are the acoustic generators-ten megahertz-so we've got millimeter
      resolution. Hardly video quality, of course, but good enough.
      "The signal-processor is quite intelligent. When the spyball's switched
      on, it sends out a single pulse which builds up an acoustical hologram
      of everything within twenty or thirty meters. It transmits this
      information on a two-hundred-kilohertz narrowband to the buoy floating
      topside, which radios it

                   246
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 back to base. The first image takes ten seconds to build up; then the
 spyball pulses again.
  "If there's no change in the picture, it sends a null signal. But if
  something happens, it transmits the new information so that an updated
  image can be generated.
  "What we get, then, is a snapshot every ten seconds, which is good enough
  for most purposes. Of course, if things happen quickly, there will be bad
  image smearing. But you can't have everything; the system will work
  anywhere, in total darkness-it isn't easy to spot-and it's economical."
  The director was obviously interested and was doing his best to keep his
  enthusiasm from showing.
  "It's a clever toy-may be useful for our work. Can you give us the
  specs-and a few more models?"
  "T'he specs-certainly, and we'll check that they interface with your
  replicator so you can make as many copies as you like. The first working
  modeland maybe the next two or three-we want to dump on Scorpville.
 "And then we'll just wait and see what happens."

 247
 45. BAIT

 The image was grainy, and sometimes hard to interpret despite the
 false-color coding that revealed details the eye could not otherwise detect.
 It was a flattened-out 360-degree panorama of seabed, with a distant view of
 kelp on the left, a few rock outcroppings at center, and kelp again on the
 right. Though it looked like a still photograph, the changing numbers at the
 lower left-hand comer revealed the passage of time; and occasionally the
 scene changed with a sudden jerk when some movement altered the information
 pattern being transmitted.
  "As you'll see," Commander Varley told the invited audience in the Terra
  Nova auditorium, "there were no scorps around when we arrived, but they may
  have heard-or felt-the bump when our, ah, package landed. Here's the first
  investigator, at one minute, twenty seconds."
  Now the image was changing abruptly at every ten-second interval, and more
  scorps were appearing in each frame.
  "I'll freeze this one," said the science officer, "so that you can study
  the details. See that scorp on the right? Look at his left claw-no less
  than five of those

               248
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 metal bands! And he seems to be in a position of authority-in the next
 frames the other scorps have moved out of his way-now he's examining the
 mysterious pile of junk that's just fallen out of his skythis is a
 particularly good shot-see how he uses claws and mouth palps together-one
 set for power, the other for precision-now he's pulling at the wire, but our
 little gift is too heavy to move-look at his attitude-I'll swear he's giving
 orders, though we haven't detected any signal-maybe it's subsonichere comes
 another of the big fellows-"
 The scene shifted abruptly, tilting at a crazy angle.
  "Here we go; they're dragging us along-and you were right, Dr.
  Kaldor-they're heading for that cave in the rock pyramid-the package is too
  big to go inside-just the way we planned it, of course-this is the really
  interesting part-"
  A good deal of thought had gone into the present for the scorps. Although
  it consisted mostly of junk, that junk had been carefully selected. There
  were bars of steel, copper, aluminum, and lead; wooden planks; tubes and
  sheets of plastic; pieces of iron chain; a metal mirror-and several coils
  of copper wire of assorted gauges. The entire mass weighed over a hundred
  kilograms and had been carefully fastened together so that it could only be
  moved as a single unit. The spyball nestled inconspicuously at one comer,
  attached by four separate short cables.
  The two big scorps were now attacking the pile of junk with determination
  and, it seemed, a definite plan. Their powerful claws quickly disposed of
  the wires holding it together, and they immediately dis249
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 carded the pieces of wood and plastic; it was obvious that they were only
 interested in the metal.
  The mirror gave them pause. They held it up and stared at their
  reflections-invisible, of course, in the spyball's acoustical image.
  "We rather expected them to attack-you can start a good fight by putting a
  mirror in a tank of fish. Perhaps they recognize themselves. That seems to
  indicate a fair level of intelligence. "
  The scorps abandoned the mirror and began to drag the rest of the debris
  across the seabed. For the next few frames, the views were hopelessly
  confused. When the image stabilized again, it showed a completely different
  scene.
  "We were in luck-things worked out exactly as we'd hoped, They've dragged
  the spyball into that guarded cave. But it isn't the Queen Scorp's throne
  room-if there is a Queen Scorp, which I very much doubt ... Theories,
  anyone?"
  There was silence for a long time while the audience studied the strange
  spectacle. Then someone .remarked, "It's a junk room!"
  "But it must have a purpose-"
  "Look-that's a ten-kilowatt outboard motorsomeone must have dropped it!"
  "Now we know who's been stealing our anchor chains!"
  "But why-it doesn't make sense."
  "Obviously it does-to them."
  Moses Kaldor gave his attention-demanding cough, which seldom failed to
  work.
"This is still only a theory," he began, "but more 250
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 and more the facts seem to support it. You'll notice that everything here is
 metal, carefully collected from a wide variety of sources ...
  "Now, to an intelligent marine creature, metal would be very mysterious,
  something quite different from all the other natural products of the ocean.
  The scorps seem to be still in the Stone Age-and there's no way they can
  get out of it as we land animals did on Earth. Without fire, they are
  trapped in a technological cul-de-sac.
  "I think we may be seeing a replay of something that happened long ago on
  our own world. Do you know where prehistoric man got his first supplies of
  iron? From space!
  "I don't blame you for looking surprised. But pure iron never occurs in
  nature-it rusts too easily. Primitive man's only source of supply was
  meteorites. No wonder they were worshiped; no wonder our ancestors believed
  in supernatural beings beyond the sky ...
  "Is the same story happening here? I urge you to consider it seriously. We
  still don't know the level of intelligence of the scorps. Perhaps they are
  collecting metals out of mere curiosity and fascination with their-shall I
  say magical? -properties. But will they discover how to use them for
  anything more than decoration? How far can they progress-while they stay
  underwater? Will they stay there?
  "My friends, I think you should learn all you possibly can about the
  scorps. You may be sharing your planet with another intelligent race. Are
  you going to cooperate or fight? Even if they are not really in251
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 telligent, the scorps could be a deadly menace-or a useful tool. Perhaps you
 should cultivate them. By the way, look up the reference Cargo Cult in your
 History Banks ... that's C-A-R-G-0 C-U-L-T.
  I would love to know the next chapter in this story. Are there scorp
  philosophers, even now, gathering in the kelp forests-to consider what to
  do about us?
  "So please, repair the deep-space antenna so we can keep in touch!
  Magellan's computer will be waiting for your report-as it watches over us
  on the road to Sagan Two."

 252
46. WHATEVER GODS MAY BE ...

 "What is God?" Mirissa asked.
  Kaldor sighed and looked up from the centuriesold display he was scanning.
 "Oh, dear. Why do you ask?"
  "Because Loren said yesterday, 'Moses thinks the scorps may be looking for
  God."'
  "Did he indeed? I'll speak to him later. And you, young lady, are asking me
  to explain something that has obsessed millions of men for thousands of
  years and generated more words than any other single subject in history.
  How much time can you spare this morning?"
  Mirissa laughed. "Oh, at least an hour. Didn't you once tell me that
  anything really important can be expressed in a single sentence?"
  "Umm. Well, I've come across some exceedingly long-winded sentences in my
  time. Now, where shall I start
  He let his eyes wander to the glade outside the library window and the
  silent-yet so eloquent!hulk of the Mother Ship looming above it. Here human
  life began on this planet; no wonder it often

               253
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 reminds me of Eden. And am I the Snake, about to destroy its innocence? But
 I won't be telling a girl as clever as Mirissa anything that she doesn't
 already know-or guess.
  "The trouble with the word God," he began slowly, "is that it never meant
  the same thing to any two people-especially if they were philosophers.
  That's why it slowly dropped out of use during the Third Millennium except
  as an expletive-in some cultures, too obscene for polite use.
  "In stead, it was replaced by a whole constellation of specialized words.
  This at least stopped people arguing at cross-purposes, which caused ninety
  percent of the trouble in the past.
  "The Personal God, sometimes called God One, became Alpha. It was the
  hypothetical entity supposed to watch over the affairs of everyday life-
  every individual, every animal!-and to reward good and punish evil, usually
  in a vaguely described existence after death. You worshiped Alpha, prayed
  to it, carried out elaborate religious ceremonies, and built huge churches
  in its honor ...
  "Then there was the God who created the universe and might or might not
  have had anything to do with it since then. That was Omega. By the time
  they'd finished dissecting God, the philosophers had used up all the other
  twenty or so letters of the ancient Greek alphabet, but Alpha and Omega
  will do very nicely for this morning. I'd guess that not more than ten
  billion man-years were ever spent discussing them.
"Alpha was inextricably entangled with religion254
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 and that was its downfall. It might still have been around right up to the
 destruction of the Earth if the myriads of competing religions had left each
 other alone. But they couldn't do that, because each claimed to possess the
 One and Only Truth. So they had to destroy their rivals-which meant, in
 effect, not only every other religion but dissenters inside their own faith.
  "Of course, I'm grossly simplifying; good men and women often transcended
  their beliefs, and it's quite possible that religion was essential to early
  human societies. Without supernatural sanctions to restrain them, men might
  never have cooperated in anything larger than tribal units. Not until it
  became corrupted by power and privilege did religion become an essentially
  antisocial force, the great good it had done being eclipsed by greater
  evils.
  "You've never heard, I hope, of the Inquisition, of Witch Hunts, of Jihads.
  Would you believe that even well into the Space Age there were nations in
  which children could be officially executed because their parents adhered
  to a heretical subset of the state's particular brand of Alpha? You look
  shocked, but these things-and worse-happened while our ancestors were
  beginning the exploration of the Solar System.
  "Fortunately for mankind, Alpha faded out of the picture, more or less
  gracefully, in the early 2000s. It was killed by a fascinating development
  called statistical theology. How much time do I have left? Won't Bobby be
  getting impatient?"
Mirissa glanced out of the big picture window. The 255
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 palomino was happily munching at the grass around the base of the Mother
 Ship, and was clearly perfectly content.
  "He won't wander off-as long as there's something to eat here. What was
  statistical theology?"
  "It was the final assault on the problem of Evil. What brought it to a head
  was the rise of a very eccentric cult-they called themselves Neo-Manichees,
  don't ask me to explain why-around 2050. Incidentally, it was the first
  'orbital religion'; although all the other faiths had used communications
  satellites to spread their doctrines, the NMs relied on them exclusively.
  They had no meeting place except the television screen.
  "Despite this dependence on technology, their tradition was actually very
  old. They believed that Alpha existed but was completely evil-and that
  mankind's ultimate destiny was to confront and destroy it.
  "In support of their faith, they marshaled an immense array of horrible
  facts from history and zoology. I think they must have been rather -sick
  people, because they seemed to take a morbid delight in collecting such
  material.
  "For example-a favorite proof of Alpha's existence was what's called the
  Argument from Design. We now know it's utterly fallacious, but the NMs made
  it sound totally convincing and irrefutable.
  "If you find a beautifully designed system-their favorite' example was a
  digital watch-then there must be a planner, a creator, behind it. So just
  look at the world of Nature-
"And they did, with a vengeance. Their special 256
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 field was parasitology-you don't know how lucky you are on Thalassa, by the
 way! I won't revolt you by describing the incredibly ingenious methods and
 adaptations that various creatures used to invade other organisms-humans
 especially-and to prey on them, often until they were destroyed. I'll only
 mention one special pet of the NMs, the ichneumon fly.
  "This delightful creature laid its eggs in other insects, after first
  paralyzing them, so that when their larvae hatched out, they would have an
  ample supply of fresh-living-meat.
  "The NMs could go on for hours along these lines, expounding the wonders of
  Nature as proof that Alpha was, if not supremely evil, then utterly indif-
  ferent to human standards of morality and goodness. Don't worry-I can't
  imitate them, and won't.
  "But I must mention another of their favorite proofs-the Argument from
  Catastrophe. A typical example, which could be multiplied countless times:
  Alpha worshipers gather to appeal for help in the face of disaster-and are
  all killed by the collapse of their refuge, whereas most of them would have
  been saved had they stayed at home.
  "Again, the NMs collected volumes of such horrors-burning hospitals and old
  people's homes, infant schools engulfed by earthquakes, volcanoes, or tidal
  waves destroying cities-the fist is endless.
  "Of course, rival Alpha worshipers didn't take this lying down. They
  collected equal numbers of counterexamples-the wonderful things that had
  hap257
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 pened, time and again, to save devout believers from catastrophe.
  "In various forms, this debate had been going on for several thousand
  years. But by the twenty-first century, the new information technologies
  and methods of statistical analysis as well as a wider understanding of
  pr9bability theory allowed it to be settled.
  "It took a few decades for the answers to come in, and a few more before
  they were accepted by virtually all intelligent men: Bad things happened
  just as often as good; as had long been suspected, the universe simply
  obeyed the laws of mathematical probability. Certainly there was no sign of
  any supernatural intervention, either for good or for ill.
  "So the problem of Evil never really existed. To expect the universe to be
  benevolent was like imagining one could always win at a game of pure
  chance.
  "Some cultists tried to save the day by proclaiming the religion of Alpha
  the Utterly Indifferent and used the bell-shaped curve of normal
  distribution as the symbol of their faith. Needless to say, so abstract a
  deity didn't inspire much devotion.
  "And while we're on the subject of mathematics, it gave Alpha another
  devastating blow in the twentyfirst (or was it the twenty-second?) century.
  A brilliant Terran named Kurt G6del proved that there were certain
  absolutely fundamental limits to knowledge, and hence the idea of a
  completely Omniscient Being-one of the definitions of Alpha-was logi-
  
               258
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 cally absurd. This discovery has come down to us in one of those
 unforgettable bad puns: 'G6del Deleted God.' Students used to write graffiti
 on walls with the letters G, 0, and the Greek Delta; and of course there
 were versions that read: 'God Deleted G6del.'
  "But back to Alpha. By mid-millennium, it had more or less faded from human
  concerns. Virtually all thinking men had. finally come to agree with the
  harsh verdict of the great philosopher Lucretius: all religions were
  fundamentally immoral, because the superstitions they peddled wrought more
  evil than good.
  "Yet a few of the old faiths managed to survive, though in drastically
  altered fonns, right up to the end of the Earth. The Latter Day Mormons and
  the Daughters of the Prophet even managed to build seedships of their own.
  I often wonder what happened to them.
  "With Alpha discredited, that left Omega, the Creator of everything. It's
  not so easy to dispose of Omega; the universe takes a certain amount of ex-
  plaining. Or does it? There's an ancient philosophical joke that's much
  subtler than it seems. Question: Why is the Universe here? Answer: Where
  else would it be? And I think that's quite enough for one morning."
  "Thank you, Moses," Mirissa answered, looking slightly dazed. "You've said
  all this before, haven't you?"
  "Of course I have-many times. And promise me this-"

               259
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 "What is it?"
  "Don't believe anything I've told you-merely because I said it. No
  serious philosophical problem is ever settled. Omega is still around-and
  sometimes I wonder about Alpha. . . "

 260
VII, AS THE
SPARKS
FLY UPWARD
                                      I
 47. ASCENSION

 Her name was Carina; she was eighteen years old, and though this was the
 first time she had ever been out at night in Kumar's boat, it was not by any
 means the first time she had lain in his arms. She had, indeed, perhaps the
 best title to the much-disputed claim of being his favorite girl.
  Though the sun had set two hours ago, the inner moon-so much brighter and
  closer than the lost Moon of Earth-was almost full, and the beach, half a
  kilometer away, was awash with its cold, blue light. A small fire was
  burning just outside the line of the palm-trees, where the party was still
  in progress. And the faint sound of music could be heard from time to time
  above the gentle murmur of the jet drive operating at its very lowest
  power. Kumar had already arrived at his prime goal and was in no great
  hurry to go elsewhere. Nevertheless, like the good seaman he was, he
  occasionally disengaged himself to speak a few words of instruction to the
  autopilot and made a swift scan of the horizon.
  Kumar had spoken the truth, thought Carina blissfully. There was something
  very erotic about the regular, gentle rhythm of a boat, especially when it

               263
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 was amplified by the airbed on which they were lying. After this, would she
 ever be satisfied by lovemaking on dry land?
  And Kumar, unlike quite a few other young Tarnans she could mention, was
  surprisingly tender and considerate. He was not one of those men who was
  only concerned with his own satisfaction; his pleasure was not complete
  unless it was shared. While he's in me, Carina thought, I feel I'm the only
  girl in his universe-even though I know perfectly well that isn't true.
  Carina was vaguely aware that they were still heading away from the
  village, but she did not mind. She wished that this moment could last
  forever and would hardly have cared if the boat had been driving at full
  speed out into the empty ocean, with no land ahead until the
  circumnavigation of the globe. Kumar knew what he was doing-in more ways
  than one. Part of her pleasure derived from the utter confidence he
  inspired; within his arms, she had no worries, no problems. The future did
  not exist; there was only the timeless present.
  Yet time did pass, and now the inner moon was much higher in the sky. In
  the aftermath of passion, their lips were still languidly exploring the
  territories of love when the pulsing of the hydrojet ceased and the boat
  drifted to a stop.
  "We're here," Kumar said, a note of excitement in his voice.
  And where may "here" be? Carina thought lazily as they rolled apart. It
  seemed hours since she had 264
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 last bothered to glance at the coastline ... even assuming that it was still
 within sight.
  She climbed slowly to her feet, steadying herself against the gentle
  rocking of the boat-and stared wide-eyed at the Fairyland that, not long
  ago, had been the dismal swamp hopefully but inaccurately christened
  Mangrove Bay.
  It was not, of course, the first time she had encountered high technology;
  the fusion plant and Main Replicator on North Island were much larger and
  more impressive. But to see this brilliantly illuminated labyrinth of pipes
  and storage tanks and cranes and handling mechanisms-this bustling
  combination of shipyard and chemical plant, all functioning silently and
  efficiently under the stars with not a single human being in sight-was a
  real visual and psychological shock.
  There was a sudden splash, startling in the utter silence of the night, as
  Kumar threw out the anchor.
  "Come on," he said mischievously. "I want to show you something."
 "Is it safe?"
 "Of course-I've been here lots of times."
  And not by yourself, I'm sure, Carina thought. But he was already over the
  side before she could make any comment.
  The water was barely more than waist deep and
 still retained so much of the day's heat that it was
 almost uncomfortably warm. When Carina and
 Kumar walked up on to the beach, hand in hand, it
 was refreshing to feel the cool night breeze against
 their bodies. They emerged from the random rippling
               265
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 of tiny wavelets like a new Adam and Eve given the keys to a mechanized
 Eden.
  "Don't worry!" Kumar said. "I know my way around. Dr. Lorenson's explained
  everything to me. But I've found something I'm sure he doesn't know."
  They were walking along a line of heavily insulated pipes, supported a
  meter from the ground, and now for the first time Carina could hear a
  distinct sound-the throbbing of pumps forcing cooling fluid through the
  maze of plumbing and heat exchangers that surrounded them.
  Presently they came to the famous tank in which the scorp, had been found.
  Very little water was now visible; the surface was almost completely
  covered with a tangled mass of kelp. There were no reptiles on Thalassa,
  but the thick, flexible stalks reminded Carina of intertwining snakes.
  They walked along a series of culverts and past small sluice gates, all of
  them closed at the moment, until they reached a wide, open area, well away
  from the main plant. As they left the central complex, Kumar waved
  cheerfully at the lens of a pointing camera. No one ever discovered, later,
  why it had been switched off at the crucial moment.
  "The freezing tanks," Kumar said. "Six hundred tons in each. Ninety-five
  percent water, five percent kelp. What's so funny?"
  "Not funny-but very strange," answered Carina, still smiting. "Just think
  of it-carrying some of our ocean forest all the way to the stars. Who would
  ever imagine such a thing! But that's not why you brought me here."

               266
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 "No," said Kumar softly. "Look. . ."
  At first, she could not see what he was pointing at. Then her mind
  interpreted the image that flickered at the very edge of vision, and she
  understood.
  It was an old miracle, of course. Men had done such things on many worlds
  for over a thousand years. But to witness it with her own eyes was more
  than breathtaking-it was awesome.
  Now that they had walked closer to the last of the tanks, she could see it
  more clearly. The thin thread of light-it could not have been more than a
  couple of centimeters wide!-climbed upward to the stars, straight and true
  as a laser beam. Her eyes followed it until it narrowed into invisibility,
  teasing her to decide the exact place of its disappearance. And still her
  gaze swept onward, dizzyingly, until she was staring at the zenith itself
  and at the single star that was poised motionless there while all its
  fainter, natural companions marched steadily past it toward the west. Like
  some cosmic spider, Magellan had lowerd a thread of gossamer and would soon
  be hoisting the prize it desired from the world below.
  Now that they were standing at the very edge of the waiting ice block,
  Carina had another surprise. Its surface was completely covered with a
  glittering layer of golden foil, reminding her of the gifts that were
  presented to children on their birthdays or at the annual Landing Festival.
  "Insulation," Kumar explained. "And it really is gold-about two atoms
  thick. Without it, half the ice would melt again before it could get up to
  the shield."
 Insulation or no, Carina could feel the bite of cold

            - 267
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 through her bare feet as Kumar led her out on to the frozen slab. They
 reached its center in a dozen steps-and there, glittering with a curious
 nonmetallic sheen, was the taut ribbon that stretched, if not to the stars,
 at least the thirty thousand kilometers up to the stationary orbit in which
 Magellan was now parked.
  It ended in a cylindrical drum, studded with instruments and control jets,
  which clearly served as a mobile, intelligent crane-hook, homing on to its
  load after its long descent through the atmosphere. The whole arrangement
  looked surprisingly simple and even unsophisticated-deceptively so, like
  most products of mature, advanced technologies.
  Carina suddenly shivered, and not from the cold underfoot, which she now
  scarcely noticed.
 "Are you sure it's safe here?" she asked anxiously.
  "Of course. They always lift at midnight, on the second-and that's still
  hours away. It's a wonderful sight, but I don't think we'll stay so late."
  Now Kumar was kneeling, placing his ear against the incredible ribbon that
  bound ship and planet together. If it snapped, she wondered anxiously,
  would they fly apart?
 "Listen," he whispered ...

 She had not known what to expect. Sometimes in later years, when she could
 endure it, she tried to recapture the magic of this moment. She could never
 be sure if she had succeeded.
  At first it seemed that she was hearing*the deepest note of a giant harp
  whose strings were stretched

               268
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 between the worlds. It sent shivers down her spine, and she felt the little
 hairs at the nape of her neck stirring in that immemorial fear response
 forged in the primeval jungles of Earth.
  Then, as she grew accustomed to it, she became aware of a whole spectrum of
  shifting overtones covering the range of hearing to the very limits of au-
  dibility-and doubtless far beyond. They blurred and merged one into the
  other, as inconstant, yet steadily repeating, as the sounds of the sea.
  The more she listened, the more she was reminded of the endless beating of
  the waves upon a desolate beach. She felt that she was hearing the sea of
  space wash upon the shores of all its worlds-a sound terrifying in its
  meaningless futility as it reverberated through the aching emptiness of the
  universe.
  And now she became aware of other elements in this immensely complex
  symphony. There were sudden, plangent twangings, as if giant fingers had
  plucked at the ribbon somewhere along its thousands of taut kilometers.
  Meteorites? Surely not. Perhaps some electrical discharge in Thalassa's
  seething ionosphere? And-was this pure imagination, something created by
  her own unconscious fears?-it seemed that from time to time she heard the
  faint wailing of demon voices or the ghostly cries of all the sick and
  starving children who had died on Earth during the Nightmare Centuries.
 Suddenly, she could bear it no longer.
  "I'm ffightened, Kumar," she whispered, tugging at his shoulder. "Let's
  go."

             - 269
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

  But Kumar was still lost in the stars, his mouth half open as he pressed
  his head against that resonant ribbon, hypnotized by its siren song. He
  never even noticed when, angry as much as scared, Carina stomped across the
  foil-covered ice and stood waiting for him on the familiar warmth of dry
  land.
  For now he had noticed something new-a series of rising notes that seemed
  to be calling for his attention. It was like a Fanfare for Strings, if one
  could imagine such a thing, and it was ineffably sad and distant.
  But it was coming closer, growing louder. It was the most thrilling sound
  that Kumar had ever heard, and it held him paralyzed with astonishment and
  awe. He could almost imagine that something was racing down the ribbon
  toward him ...
  Seconds too late, he realized the truth as the first shock of the precursor
  wave jolted him flat against the golden foil and the ice block stirred
  beneath him. Then, for the very last time, Kumar Leonidas looked upon the
  fragile beauty of his sleeping world and the teirified, upturned face of
  the girl who would remember this moment until her own dying day.
  Already, it was too late to jump. And so the Little Lion ascended to the
  silent stars-naked and alone.

 270
 48. DECISION

 Captain Bey had graver problems on his mind and was very glad to delegate
 this task. In any event, no emissary could have been more appropriate than
 Loren Lorenson.
  He had never met the Leonidas elders before and dreaded the encounter.
  Though Mirissa had offered to accompany him, he preferred to go alone.
  The Lassans revered their old folk and did everything possible for their
  comfort and happiness. Lal and Nikri Leonidas lived in one of the small,
  selfcontained retirement colonies along the south coast of the island. They
  had a six-room chalet with every conceivable labor-saving device, including
  the only general-purpose house robot that Loren had ever seen on South
  Island. By Earth chronology, he would have judged them to be in their late
  sixties.
  After the initial subdued greetings, they sat on the porch, looking out to
  the sea while the robot fussed around bearing drinks and plates of assorted
  fruit. Loren forced himself to eat a few morsels, then gathered his courage
  and tackled the hardest task of his life.
 "Kumar-" The name stuck in his throat,,and he

               271
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 had to begin again. "Kumar is still on the ship. I owe my life to him; he
 risked his to save mine. You can understand how I feel about this-I would do
 anything . . . "
  Once more he had to fight for control. Then, trying to be as brisk and
  scientific as he could-like Surgeon Commander Newton during her briefing-he
  made yet another start.
  "His body is almost undamaged, because decompression was slow and freezing
  took place 'immediately. But, of course, he is clinically dead-just as I
  was myself a few weeks ago ...
  "However, the two cases are very different. Mybody-was recovered before
  there was time for brain damage, so revival was a fairly straightforward
  process.
  "It was hours before they recovered Kumar. Physically, his brain is
  undamaged-but there is no trace of any activity.
  "Even so, revival may be possible with extremely advanced technology.
  According to our recordswhich cover the entire history of Earth's medical
  science-it has been done before in similar cases, with a success rate of
  sixty percent.
  "And that places us in a dilemma, which Captain Bey has asked me to explain
  to you frankly. We do not have the skills or the equipment to carry out
  such an operation. But we may-in three hundred year's time ...
  "There are a dozen brain experts among the hundreds of medical specialists
  sleeping aboard the ship. There are technicians who can assemble and 272
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 operate every conceivable type of surgical and lifesupport gear. All that
 Earth ever possessed will be ours again-soon after we reach Sagan Two. . .
 "
  He paused to let the implications sink in. The robot took this inopportune
  moment to- offer its services; he waved it away.
  "We would be willing-no, glad, for it is the very least we can do-to take
  Kumar with us. Though we cannot guarantee it, one day he may live again. We
  would like you to think it over; there is plenty of time before you have to
  make the decision."
  The old couple looked at each other for a long,
 silent moment while Loren stared out to sea. How
 quiet and peaceful it was! He would be glad to spend
 his own dechn ' ing years here, visited from time to
 time by children and grandchildren ...
  Like so much of Tama, it might almost be Earth. Perhaps through deliberate
  planning, there was no Lassan vegetation anywhere in sight; all the trees
  were hauntingly familiar.
  Yet something essential was lacking; he realized that it had been puzzling
  him for a long time-indeed, ever since he had landed on this planet. And
  suddenly, as if this moment of grief had triggered the memory, he knew what
  he had missed.
  There were no sea gulls wheeling in the sky, fiffing the air with the
  saddest and most evocative of all the sounds of Earth.
  Lal Leonidas and his wife had still not exchanged a word, yet somehow Loren
  knew that they had made their decision.

               273
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

  "We appreciate your offer, Commander Lorenson; please express our thanks to
  Captain Bey.
  "But we do not need any time to consider it. Whatever happens, Kumar will
  be lost to us forever.
  "Even if you succeed-and as you say, there is no guarantee-he will awaken
  in a strange world, knowing that he will never see his home again and that
  all those he loved are centuries dead. It does not bear thinking of You
  mean well, but that would be no kindness to him.
  "We know what he would have wished and what must be done. Give him back to
  us. We will return him to the sea he loved."
  There was nothing more to be said. Loren felt both an overwhelming sadness
  and a vast relief
  He had done his duty. It was the decision he had expected.

 274
 49. FIRE ON THE REEF

 Now the little kayak would never be completed; but it would make its first
 and its last voyage.
  Until sunset, it had lain at the water's edge, lapped by the gentle waves
  of the tideless sea. Loren was moved, but not surprised, to see how many
  had come to pay their last respects. All Tarna was here, but many had also
  come from all over South Island-and even from North. Though some, perhaps,
  had been drawn by morbid curiosity-for the whole world had been shocked by
  the uniquely spectacular accident-Loren had never seen such a genuine out-
  pouring of grief. He had not realized that the Lassans were capable of such
  deep emotion, and in his mind he savored once again a phrase that Mirissa
  had found, searching the Archives for consolation: "Little friend of all
  the world. " Its origin was lost, and no one could guess what long-dead
  scholar, in what century, had saved it for the ages to come.
  Once be had embraced them both with wordless sympathy, he had left Mirissa
  and Brant with the Leonidas family, gathered with numerous relatives from
  both islands. He did not want to meet any strangers, for he knew what many
  of them must be

               275'
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 thinking. "He saved you-but you could not save him." That was a burden he
 would carry for the rest of his life.
  He bit his lip to check the tears that were not appropriate for a senior
  officer of the greatest starship ever built and felt one of the mind's
  defense mechanisms come to his rescue. At moments of deep grief, sometimes
  the only way to prevent loss of control is to evoke some wholly
  incongruous-even comicimage from the depths of memory.
  Yes-the universe had a strange sense of humor. Loren was almost forced to
  suppress a smile; how Kumar would have enjoyed the final joke it had played
  on him!
  "Don't be surprised," Commander Newton had warned as she opened the door of
  the ship's morgue and a gust of icy, formalin-tainted air rolled out to
  meet them. "It happens more often than you think. Sometimes it's a final
  spasm-almost like an unconscious attempt to defy Death. This time, it was
  probably caused by the loss of external pressure and the subsequent
  freezing."
  Had it not been for the crystals of ice defining the muscles of the
  splendid young body, Loren might have thought that Kumar was not merely
  sleeping, but lost in blissful dreams.
  For in death, the Little Lion was even more male than he had been in fife.

 And now the sun had vanished behind the low hills to the west, and a cool
 evening breeze was rising from the sea. With scarcely a ripple, the kayak

               276
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 slipped into the water, drawn by Brant and three other of Kumar's closest
 friends. For the last time Loren glimpsed the calm and peaceful face of the
 boy to whom he owed his fife.
  There had been little weeping until now, but as the four swimmers pushed
  the boat slowly out from the shore, a great wail of lamentation rose from
  the assembled crowd. Now Loren could no longer contain his tears and did
  not care who saw them.
  Moving strongly and steadily under the powerful drive of its four escorts,
  the little kayak headed out to the reef. The quick Thalassan night was
  already descending as the craft passed between the two flashing beacons
  that marked the channel to the open sea. It vanished beyond them, and for
  a moment was hidden by the white line of breakers foaming lazily against
  the outer reef.
  The lamentation ceased; everyone was waiting. Then there was a sudden flare
  of light against the darkling sky, and a pillar of fire rose out of the
  sea. It burned cleanly and fiercely, with scarcely any smoke; how long it
  lasted, Loren never knew, for time had ceased on Tarna.
  Then, abruptly, the flames collapsed; the crown of fire shrank back into
  the sea. All was darkness; but for a moment only.
  As fire and water met, a fountain of sparks erupted into the sky. Most of
  the embers fell back upon the sea, but others continued to soar upward
  until they were lost from view.
  And so, for the second time, Kumar Leonidas ascended to the stars.

               277
VIII, THE SONGS
OF DISTANT
EARTH
                                      50. SHIELD OF ICE

 The lifting of the last snowflake should have been a joyful occasion; now it
 was merely one of somber satisfaction. Thirty thousand kilometers above
 Thalassa, the final hexagon of ice was jockeyed into position, and the
 shield was complete.
  For the first time in almost two years, the quantum drive was activated,
  though at minimum power. Magellan broke away from its stationary orbit,
  accelerating to test the balance and the integrity of the artificial
  iceberg it was to carry out to the stars. There were no problems; the work
  had been well done. This was a great relief to Captain Bey, who had never
  been able to forget that Owen Fletcher (now under reasonably strict
  surveillance on North Island) had been one of the shield's principal
  architects. And he wondered what Fletcher and the other exiled Sabras had
  thought when they watched the dedication ceremony.
  It had begun with a video retrospective showing the building of the
  freezing plant and the lifting of the first snowflake. Then there had been
  a fascinating, speeded-up space ballet showing the great blocks of ice
  being maneuvered into place and keyed

               281
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 into the steadily growing shield. It had started in real time, then rapidly
 accelerated until the last sections were being added at the rate of one
 every few seconds. Thalassa's leading composer had contrived a witty musical
 score beginning with a slow pavane and culminating in a breathless
 polka-slowing down to normal speed again at the very end as the final block
 of ice was jockeyed into position.
  Then the view had switched to a five camera hovering in space a kilometer
  ahead of Magellan as it orbited in the shadow of the planet. The big sun-
  screen that protected the ice during the day had been moved aside, so the
  entire shield was now visible for the first time.
  The huge greenish-white disc gleamed coldly beneath the floodlights; soon
  it would be far colder as it moved out into the few-degrees-above-absolute
  zero of the galactic night. There it would be warmed only by the background
  light of the stars, the radiation leakage from the ship-and the occasional
  rare burst of energy from impacting dust.
  The camera drifted slowly across the artificial iceberg, to the
  accompaniment of Moses Kaldor's unmistakable voice.
  "People of Thalassa, we thank you for your gift. Behind this shield of ice,
  we hope to travel safely to the world that is waiting for us, seventy-five
  lightyears away, three hundred years hence.
  "If all goes well, we will still be carrying at least twenty, thousand tons
  of ice when we reach Sagan Two. That will be allowed to fall on to the
  planet, and the beat of reentry will turn it into the first rain that 282
    THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 frigid world has ever known. For a little while, before it freezes again,
 it will be the precursor of oceans yet unborn.
  "And one day our descendants will know seas like yours, though not as
  wide or as deep. Water from our two worlds will mingle together, bringing
  life to our new home. And we will remember you with love and gratitude. "

 283
 51. RELIC

 "It's beautiful," Mirissa said reverently. "I can understand why gold was so
 prized on Earth."
  "The gold is the least important part," Kaldor answered as he slid the
  gleaming bell out of its velvetlined box. "Can you guess what this is?"
  "It's obviously a work of art. But it must be something much more for you
  to have carried it across fifty light-years."
  "You're right, of course. It's an exact model of a great temple, more than
  a hundred meters tall. Originally, there were seven of these caskets, all
  identical in shape, nesting one inside the other-this was the innermost,
  holding the Relic itself. It was given to me by some old and dear friends
  on my very last night on Earth. 'All things are impermanent,' they reminded
  me. 'But we have guarded this for more than four thousand years. Take it
  with you to the stars, with our blessings.'
  "Even though I did not share their faith, how could I refuse so priceless
  an offering? And now I will leave it here, where men first came to this
  planet-another gift from Earth-perhaps the last."
  "Don't say that," Mirissa said. "You have left so many gifts-we will never
  be able to count them all.

               284
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

  Kaldor smiled wistfully and did not answer for a moment as he let his eyes
  linger on the familiar view from the library window. He had been happy
  here, tracing the history of Thalassa and learning much that might be of
  priceless value when the new colony was started on Sagan Two.
  Farewell, old Mother Ship, he thought. You did your work well. We still
  have far to go; may Magellan serve us as faithfully as you served the
  people we have grown to love.
  "I'm sure my friends would have approved-Ive done my duty. The Relic will
  be safer here, in the Museum of Earth, than aboard the ship. After all, we
  may never reach Sagan Two."
  "Of course you will. But you haven't told me what's inside this seventh
  casket."
  "It's all that's left of one of the greatest men who ever lived; he founded
  the only faith that never became stained with blood. I'm'sure he would have
  been most amused to know that, forty centuries after his death, one of his
  teeth would be carried to the stars. "

 285
             1

52. THE SONGS OF
DISTANT EARTH

 Now was a time of transition, of farewells-of partings as deep as death. Yet
 for all the tears that were shed-on Thalassa as well as the ship-there was
 also a feeling of relief. Though things would never be quite the same again,
 life could now return to normal. The visitors were like guests who had
 slightly overstayed their welcome; it was time to go.
  Even President Farradine now accepted this and had abandoned his dream of
  an interstellar Olympics. He had ample consolation; the freezing units at
  Mangrove Bay were being transferred to North Island, and the first skating
  rink on Thalassa would be ready in time for the Games. Whether any com-
  petitors would also be ready was another question, but many young Lassans
  were spending hours staring incredulously at some of the great performers
  of the past.
  Meanwhile, everyone agreed that some farewell ceremony should be arranged
  to mark Magellan's departure. Unfortunately, few could agree what form it
  should take. There were innumerable private parties-which put a
  considerable mental and physical strain on all concemed-but no.official,
  public one.

               286
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

  Mayor Waldron, claiming priority on behalf of Tarna, felt that the ceremony
  should take place at First Landing. Edgar Farradine argued that the Pres-
  ident's Palace, despite its modest size, was more appropriate. Some wit
  suggested Krakan as a compromise, pointing out that its famous vineyards
  would be an appropriate place for the farewell toasts. The matter was still
  unresolved when the Thalassan Broadcasting Corporation-one of the planet's
  more enterprising bureaucracies-quietly preempted the entire project.
  The farewell concert was to be remembered, and replayed, for generations to
  come. There was no video to distract the senses-only music and the briefest
  of narration. The heritage of two thousand years was ransacked to recall
  the past and to give hope for the future..It was not only a-Requiem but
  also a Berceuse.
  It still seemed a miracle that after their art had reached technological
  perfection, composers of music could find anything new to say. For two
  thousand years, electronics had given them complete command over every
  sound audible to the human ear, and it might have been thought that all the
  possibilities of the medium had been long exhausted.
  There had, indeed, been about a century of beepings and twitterings and
  electroeructations before composers had mastered their now infinite powers
  and had once again successfully married technology and art. No one had ever
  surpassed Beethoven or Bach; but some had approached them.
 To the legions of listeners, the concert was a re-
               287
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 minder of things they had never known-things that belonged to Earth alone.
 The slow beat of mighty bells, climbing like invisible smoke from old cathe-
 dral spires; the chant of patient boatmen, in tongues now lost forever,
 rowing home against the tide in the last light of day; the songs of armies
 marching into battles that Time had robbed of all their pain and evil; the
 merged murmur of ten million voices as man's greatest cities awoke to meet
 the dawn; the cold dance of the aurora over endless seas of ice; the roar of
 mighty engines climbing upward on the highway to the stars. All these the
 listeners heard in the music that came out of the night-the songs of distant
 Earth, carried across the light-years ...
  For the concluding item, the producers bad selected the last great work in
  the symphonic tradition. Written in the years when Thalassa had lost touch
  with Earth, it was totally new to the audience. Yet its oceanic theme made
  it peculiarly appropriate to this occasion-and its impact upon the
  listeners was everything the long-dead composer could have wished.

 ". . . When I wrote the 'Lamentation for Atlantis,' almost thirty years ago,
 I had no specific images in mind; I was concerned only with emotional reac-
 tions, not explicit scenes; I wanted the music to convey a sense of mystery,
 of sadness-of overwhelming loss. I was not trying to paint a sound-portrait
 of ruined cities full of fish. But now something strange happens whenever
 I hear the Lento lugubre-as I am doing in my mind at this very moment ...
   "It begins at Bar 136, when the series of chords descending to the organ's
   lowest register first meets

               288
   THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 the soprano's wordless aria, rising higher and higher out of the depths ...
 You know, of course, that I based that theme on the songs of the great
 whales, those mighty minstrels of the sea with whom we made peace too late,
 too late ... I wrote it for Olga Kondrashin, and no one else could ever sing
 those passages without electronic backing ...
  "When the vocal line begins, it's as if I'm seeing something that really
  exists. I'm standing in a great city square almost as large as St. Marks or
  St. Peters. All around are half-ruined buildings, like Greek temples, and
  overturned statues draped with seaweeds, green fronds waving slowly back
  and forth. Everything is partly covered by a thick layer of silt.
  "The square seems empty at first; then I notice something-disturbing. Don't
  ask me why it's always a surprise, why I'm always seeing it for the first
  time ...
  "There's a low mound in the center of the square with a pattern of lines
  radiating from it. I wonder if they are ruined walls, partly buried in the
  silt. But the arrangement makes no sense; and then I see that the mound,
  is-pulsing.
  "And a moment later I notice two huge, unblinking eyes staring out at me.
  "That's all; nothing happens. Nothing has happened here for six thousand
  years, since that night when the land barrier gave way and the sea poured
  in through the Pillars of Hercules.
  "The Lento is my favorite movement, but I couldn't end the symphony in such
  a mood of tragedy and despair. Hence the Finale, 'Resurgence.'
  "I know, of course, that Plato's Atlantis never really existed. And for
  that very reason, it can never die. It will always be an ideal-a dream of
  perfection-a goal to inspire men for all ages to come. So that's why the
  symphony ends with a triumphant march into the future.

             289
       ARTHUR C. CLARKE

  "I know that the popular interpretation of the march is a New Atlantis
  emerging from the waves. That's rather too literal; to me the finale
  depicts the conquest of space. Once I'd found it and pinned it down, it
  took me months to get rid of that closing theme. Those damned fifteen notes
  were hammering away in my brain night and day ...
  "Now, the Lamentation exists quite apart from me; it has taken on a life of
  its own. Even when Earth is gone, it will be speeding out toward the Andro-
  meda Galaxy, driven by fifty thousand megawatts from the Deep Space
  transmitter in Tsiolkovski Crater.
  "Someday, centuries or millennia hence, it will be captured-and
  understood."
 Spoken Memoirs-Sergei Di Pietro (3411-3509)

 290
 53. THE GOLDEN MASK

 "We've always pretended she doesn't exist," Mirissa said. "But now I would
 like to see her-just once."
  Loren was silent for a while. Then he answered, "You know that Captain Bey
  has never allowed any visitors. "
  Of course she knew that; she also understood the reasons why. Although it
  had aroused some resentment at first, everyone on Thalassa now realized
  that Magellan's small crew was far too busy to act as tour guides-or
  nursemaids-to the unpredictable fifteen percent who would become nauseated
  in the ship's zero-gravity sections. Even President Farradine had been
  tactfully turned down.
  "I've spoken to Moses-and he's spoken to the captain. It's all arranged.
  But it's to be kept secret until the ship has left."
  Loren stared at her in amazement; then he smiled. Mirissa was always
  surprising him; that was part of her attraction. And he realized, with a
  twinge of sadness, that no one on Thalassa had a better right to this
  privilege; her brother was the only other Lassan

               291
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 to have made the journey. Captain Bey was a fair man, willing to alter the
 rules when necessary. And once the ship had left, only three days from
 now, it would not matter.
 "Suppose you're spacesick?"
 "I've never even been seasick-"
 "-that doesn't prove anything-"

 11
  -and I've seen Commander Newton. She's given me a ninety-five percent
  rating. And she suggests the midnight shuttle-there won't be any villagers
  around then."
  "You've thought of everything, haven't you?" Loren said in frank
  admiration. "I'll meet you at Number Two Landing, fifteen minutes before
  midnight."
  He paused, then added with difficulty, "I won't be coming down again.
  Please say good-bye to Brant for me. 11

  That was an ordeal he could not face. Indeed, he had not set foot in the
  Leonidas residence since Kumar had made his last voyage and Brant had re-
  turned to comfort Mirissa. Already, it was almost as if Loren had never
  entered their lives.
  And he was inexorably leaving theirs, for now he could look on Mirissa with
  love but without desire. A deeper emotion-one of the worst pains he had
  ever known-now filled his mind.
  He had longed, and hoped, to see his child-but Magellan's new schedule made
  that impossible. Though he had heard his son's heartbeats mingled with his
  mother's, he would never hold him in his arms.

               292
    THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 The shuttle made its rendezvous on the day side of the planet, so Magellan
 was.still almost a hundred kilometers away when Mirissa first saw it. Even
 though she knew its real size, it looked like a child's toy as it glittered
 in the sunlight.
  From ten kilometers, it seemed no larger. Her brain and eyes insisted that
  those dark circles around the center section were only portholes. Not until
  the endless, curving hull of the ship loomed up beside them did her mind
  admit that they were cargo and docking hatches, one of which the ferry was
  about to enter.
  Loren looked at Mirissa anxiously as she unbuckled her seatbelt; this was
  the dangerous moment when, free from restraints for the first time, the
  overconfident passenger suddenly realized that zero-gravity was not as
  enjoyable as it looked. But Mirissa seemed completely at ease as she
  drifted through the airlock, propelled by a few gentle pushes from Loren.
  "Luckily there's no need to go into the one-gee section, so you'll avoid
  the problem of readapting twice. You won't have to worry about gravity
  again until you're back on the ground."
  It would have been interesting, Mirissa thought, to have visited the living
  quarters in the spinning section of the ship-but that would have involved
  them in endless polite conversations and personal contacts, which were the
  last things she needed now. She was rather glad that Captain Bey was still
  down

               293
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 on Thalassa; there was no need even for a courtesy visit of thanks.
  Once they had left the airlock they found themselves in a tubular corridor
  that seemed to stretch the whole length of the ship. On one side was a lad-
  der; on the other, two fines of flexible loops, convenient for hands or
  feet, glided slowly in either direction along parallel slots.
  "This is not a very good place to be when we're accelerating," Loren said.
  "Then it becomes a vertical shaft-two kilometers deep. That's when you
  really need the ladderand handholds. Just grab that loop and let it do all
  the work."
  They were swept effortlessly along for several hundred meters, then
  switched to a corridor at right angles to the main one. "Let go of the
  strap," Loren said when they had traveled a few dozen meters. I want to
  show you something."
  Mirissa released her hold, and they drifted to a stop beside a long, narrow
  window set in the side of the tunnel. She peered through the thick glass
  into a huge, brightly lit metal cavern. Though she had quite lost her
  bearings, she guessed that this great cylindrical chamber must span almost
  the entire width of the ship-and that central bar must therefore lie along
  its axis.
 "The quantum drive," Loren said proudly.
  He did not even attempt to name the shrouded metal and crystal shapes, the
  curiously formed flying buttresses springing from the walls of the chamber,
  the pulsing constellations of lights, the sphere of utter blackness that
  even though it was completely 294
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 featureless, somehow seemed to be spinning ... But after a while he said:
  "The greatest achievement of human geniusEarth's last gift to its children.
  One day it will make us masters of the galaxy."
  There was an arrogance about the words that made Mirissa wince. That was
  the old Loren speaking again, before he had been mellowed by Thalassa. So
  be it, she thought; but part of him has been changed forever.
  "Do you suppose," she asked gently, "that the galaxy will even notice?"
  Yet she was impressed, and stared for a long time at the huge and
  meaningless shapes that had carried Loren to her across the light-years.
  She did not know whether to bless them for what they had brought her or to
  curse them for what they would soon take away.
  Loren led her on through the maze, deeper into Magellan's heart. Not once
  did they meet another person; it was a reminder of the ship's size-and the
  smallness of its crew.
  "We're nearly there," Loren said in a voice that was now hushed and solemn.
  "And this is the Guardian. "
  Taken completely by surprise, Mirissa floated toward the golden face
  staring at her out of the alcove until she was about to collide with it.
  She put out her hand and felt cold metal. So it was real-and not, as she
  had first imagined, a holodisplay.
 "What-who-is it?" she whispered.
  "We have many of Earth's greatest art treasures on board," Loren said with
  somber pride. "This was 295
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 one of the most famous. He was a king who died very young-when he was still
 a boy. . . "
  Loren's voice faded away as they shared the same thought. Mirissa had to
  blink away her tears before she could read the inscription below the mask.

TUTANKHAMEN
1361-1353 B.C.
(Valley of the Kings, Egypt, A.D. 1922)

  Yes, he had been almost exactly the same age as Kumar. The golden face
  stared out at them across the millennia and across the light-years-the face
  of a young god struck down in his prime. There was power and confidence
  here, but not yet the arrogance and cruelty that the lost years would have
  given.
  "Why here?" Mirissa asked, half guessing the answer.
  "It seemed an appropriate symbol. The Egyptians believed that if they
  carried out the right ceremonies, the dead would exist againin some kind of
  afterworld. Pure superstition, of course-yet here we have made it come
  true."
  But not in the way I would have wished, Mirissa thought sadly. As she
  stared into the jet-black eyes of the boy king, looking out at her from his
  mask of incorruptible gold, it was hard to believe that this was only a
  marvelous work of art and not a living person.
  She could not tear her eyes away from that calm yet hypnotic gaze across
  the centuries. Once more she put forth her hand and stroked a golden cheek.
  The precious metal suddenly reminded her of a poem

               296
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 she had found in the First Landing Archives, when she set the computer
 searching the literature of the past for words of solace. Most of the
 hundreds of lines had been inappropriate, but this one ("Author unknown-?
 1800-2100") fitted perfectly:

They carry back bright to the coiner the mintage of man,
The lads that will. die in their glory and never be old.

  Loren waited patiently until Mirissa's thoughts had run their course. Then
  he slid a card into an almost invisible slot beside the death-mask, and a
  circular door opened silently.
  It was incongruous to find a cloak-room full of heavy furs inside a
  spaceship, but Mirissa could appreciate the need for them. Already the
  temperature had fallen many degrees, and she found herself shivering with
  the unaccustomed cold.
  Loren helped her into the thennosuit-not without difficulty in zero
  gravity-and they floated toward a circle of frosted glass set in the far
  wall of the little chamber. The crystal trapdoor swung toward them like an
  opening watchglass, and out of it swirled a blast of frigid air such as
  Mirissa had never imagined, far less experienced. Thin wisps of moisture
  condensed in the freezing air, dancing around her like ghosts. She looked
  at Loren as if to say,"Surely you don't expect me to go in there!"
He took her arm reassuringly and said, "Don't 297
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 worry-the suit will protect you, and after a few minutes you won't notice
 the cold on your face."
  She found this hard to believe; but he was right. As she followed him
  through the trapdoor, breathing cautiously at first, she was surprised to
  find the experience not at all unpleasant. Indeed, it was positively
  stimulating; for the first time she could understand why people had
  willingly gone into the polar regions of the Earth.
  She could easily imagine that she was there herself, for she seemed to be
  floating in a frigid, snowwhite universe. All around her were glittering
  honeycombs that might have been made of ice, forming thousands of hexagonal
  cells. It was almost like a smaller version of Magellan's shield-except
  that here the units were only about a meter across and laced together with
  clusters of pipes and bundles of wiring.
  So here they were, sleeping all around her-the hundreds of thousands of
  colonists to whom Earth was still, in literal truth, a memory of only
  yesterday. What were they dreaming, she wondered, less than halfway through
  their fiv6-hundred-year sleep? Did the brain dream at all in this dim
  no-man's-land between life and death? Not according to Loren; but who could
  be really sure?
  Mirissa had seen videos of bees scurrying about their mysterious business
  inside a hive; she felt like a human bee as she followed Loren, hand over
  hand along the grid-work of rails crisscrossing the face of the great
  honeycomb. She was now quite at ease in zero gravity and was no longer even
  aware of the

               298
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 bitter cold. Indeed, she was scarcely aware of her body and sometimes had to
 persuade herself that this was not all a dream frotn which she would
 presently awake.
  The cells bore no names but were all identified by an alphanumeric code;
  Loren went unerringly to H-354. At the touch of a button, the hexagonal
  metaland-glass container slid outward on telescopic rails to reveal the
  sleeping woman inside.
  She was not beautiful-though it was unfair to pass judgment on any woman
  without the crowning glory of her hair. Her skin was of a color that
  Mirissa had never seen and which she knew had become very rare on Earth-a
  black so deep that it held almost a hint of blue. And it was so flawless
  that Mirissa could not resist a spasm of envy; into her mind came a
  fleeting image of intertwined bodies, ebon and ivory-an image that, she
  knew, would haunt her in the years ahead.
  She looked again at the face. Even in this centuries-long repose, it showed
  determination and.intelligence. Would we have been friends? Mirissa
  wondered. I doubt it; we are too much alike.
  So you are Kitani, and you are carrying Loren's first child out to the
  stars. But will she really be the first, since she will be born centuries
  after mine? First or second, I wish her well ...
  She was still numb, though not only with cold, when the crystal door closed
  behind them. Loren steered her gently back along the corridor and past the
  Guardian.
 Once more her fingers brushed the cheek of the

               299
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 immortal golden boy. For a shocked moment, it felt warm to her touch; then
 she realized that her body was still adjusting to non-nal temperature.
  That would take only minutes; but how long, she wondered, b6fore the ice
  would melt around her heart?

 300
 54. VALEDICTION

 This is the last time I shall talk to you, Evelyn, before I begin my longest
 sleep. I am still on Thalassa, but the shuttle will be lifting for Magellan
 in a few minutes; there is nothing more for me to do-until planetfall, three
 hundred years from now ...
  I feel a great sadness, for I have just said goodbye to my dearest friend
  here, Mirissa Leonidas. How you would have enjoyed meeting her! She is
  perhaps the most intelligent person I have met on Thalassa, and we had many
  long talks together-though I fear that some were more like the monologues
  for which you so often criticized me ...
  She asked about god, of course; but perhaps her shrewdest question was one
  I was quite unable to answer.
  Soon after her beloved young brother was killed, she asked me, "What is the
  purpose of grief? Does it serve any biological function?"
  How strange that I had never given any serious thought to that! One could
  imagine an intelligent species that functioned perfectly well if the dead
  were remembered with no emotion-if indeed they were remembered at all. It
  would be an utterly in-
  
               301
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 human society, but it could be at least as successful as the termites and
 the ants were on Earth.
  Could grief be an accidental-even a pathological-by-product of love, which
  of course does have an essential biological function? It's a strange and
  disturbing thought. Yet it's our emotions that make us human; who would
  abandon them, even knowing that each new love is yet another hostage to
  those twin terrorists, Time and Fate?
  She often talked to me about you, Evelyn. It puzzled her that a man could
  love only one woman in all his life and not seek another when she was gone.
  Once I teased her by saying that fidelity was almost as strange to the
  Lassans as jealousy; she retorted that they had gained by losing both.
  They are calling me; the shuttle is waiting. Now I must say good-bye to
  Thalassa forever. And your image, too, is beginning to fade. Though I am
  good at giving advice to others, perhaps I have clung too long to my own
  grief, and it does no service to your memory.
  Thalassa has helped to cure me. Now I can rejoice that I knew you, rather
  than mourn because I lost you.
  A strange calmness has come upon me. For the first time, I feel that I
  really understand my old Buddhist friends' concepts of Detachment-even of
  Nirvana ...
  And if I do not wake on Sagan Two, so be it. My work here is done, and I am
  well content.

               302
 55. DEPARTURE

 The trimaran reached the edge of the kelp bed just before midnight, and
 Brant anchored in thirty meters of water. He would start to drop the
 spyballs at dawn, until the fence was laid between Scorpvffle and South
 Island. Once that was established, any comings and goings would be observed.
 If the scorps found one of the spyballs and carried it home as a trophy, so
 much the better. It would continue to operate, doubtless providing even more
 useful information than in the open sea.
  Now there was nothing to do but to he in the gently rocking boat and listen
  to the soft music from Radio Tarna, tonight uncharacteristically subdued.
  From time to time there would be an announcement or a message of goodwill
  or a poem in honor of the visitors, There could be few people sleeping on
  either island tonight; Mirissa wondered fleetingly what thoughts must be
  passing through the minds of Owen Fletcher and his fellow exiles, marooned
  on an alien world for the rest of their lives. The last time she had seen
  them on a Norther videocast, they had not appeared at all unhappy and had
  been cheerfully discussing local business opportunities.

               303
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

  Brant was so quiet that she would have thought he was sleeping except that
  his grip on her hand was as firm as ever as they lay side by side, looking
  up at the stars. He had changed-perhaps even more than she had. He was less
  impatient, more considerate. Best of all, he had already accepted the
  child, with words whose gentleness had reduced her to tears: "He will have
  two fathers."
  Now Radio Tarna was starting the final and quite unnecessary launch
  countdown-the first that any Lassan had ever heard except for historic
  recordings from the past. Will we see anything at all, Mirissa wondered?
  Magellan is on the other side of the world, hovering at high noon above a
  hemisphere of ocean. We have the whole thickness of the planet between
 US. . .
  ". . . Z e r o . . . " Radio Tama said-and instantly was obliterated by a
  roar of white noise. Brant reached for the gain control and had barely cut
  off the sound when the sky erupted.
  The entire horizon was ringed with fire. North, south, east, west-there was
  no difference. Long streamers of flame reached up out of the ocean, halfway
  toward the zenith, in an auroral display such as Thalassa had never
  witnessed before, and would never see again.
  It was beautiful but awe-inspiring. Now Mirissa understood why Magellan had
  been placed on the far side of the world; yet this was not the quantum
  drive itself but merely the stray energies leaking from it, being absorbed
  harmlessly in the ionosphere. Loren had told her something incomprehensible
  about su-
  
               304
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 perspace shockwaves, adding that not even the inventors of the drive had
 ever understood the phenomenon.
  She wondered, briefly, what the scorps would make of these celestial
  fireworks; some trace of this actinic fury must surely filter down through
  the forests of kelp to illuminate the byways of their sunken cities.
  Perhaps it was imagination, but the radiating, multicolored beams that
  formed the encircling crown of light seemed to be creeping slowly across
  the sky. The source of their energy was gaining speed, accelerating along
  its orbit as it left Thalassa forever. It was many minutes before she could
  be quite sure of the movement; in the same time, the intensity of the
  display had also diminished appreciably.
  Then, abruptly, it ceased. Radio Tama came back on the air, rather
  breathlessly.
  ". . . everything according to plan ... the ship is now being reorientated
  ... other displays later, but not so spectacular ... all stages of the
  initial breakaway will be on the other side of the world, but we'll be able
  to see Magellan directly in three days, when it's leaving the system . . ."
  Mirissa scarcely heard the words as she stared up into the sky to which the
  stars were now returningthe stars that she could never see again without
  remembering Loren. She was drained of emotion now; if she had tears, they
  would come later.
  She felt Brant's arms around her and welcomed their comfort against the
  loneliness of space. This was where she belonged; her heart would not stray

               305
         ARTTiUR C. CLARKE

 again. For at last she understood; though she had loved Loren for his
 strength, she loved Brant for his weakness.
  Good-bye, Loren, she whispered-may you be happy on that far world which you
  and your children will conquer for mankind. But think of me sometimes,
  three hundred years behind you on the road from Earth.
  As Brant stroked her hair with clumsy gentleness, he wished he had words to
  comfort her, yet knew that silence was the best. He felt no sense of
  victory; though Mirissa was his once more, their old, carefree
  companionship was gone beyond recall. All the days of his life, Brant knew,
  the ghost of Loren would come between them-the ghost of a man who would
  -not be one day older when they were dust upon the wind.

 When, three days later, Magellan rose above the eastern horizon, it was a
 dazzling star too brilliant to look upon with the naked eye, even though the
 quantum drive had been carefully aligned so that most of its radiation
 leakage would miss Thalassa.
  Week by week, month by month, it slowly faded, though even when it moved
  back into the daylight sky it was still easy to find if one knew exactly
  where to look. And at night, for years it was often the brightest of the
  stars.
  Mirissa saw it one last time, just before her eyesight failed. For a few
  days the quantum drive-now

               306
    THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 harmlessly gentled by distance-must have been aimed directly toward
 Thalassa.
  It was then fifteen light-years away, but her grandchildren had no
  dffficulty in pointing out the blue, third magnitude star, shining above
  the watchtowers of the electrified scorp-barrier.

 307
 56. BELOW THE INTERFACE

 They were not yet intelligent, but they possessed curiosity-and that was the
 first step along the endless road.
  Like many of the crustaceans that had once flourished in the seas of Earth,
  they could survive on land for indefinite periods. Until the last few
  centuries, however, there had been little incentive to do so; the great
  kelp forests provided for all their needs. The long, slender leaves
  supplied food; the tough stalks were the raw material for their primitive
  artifacts.
  They had only two natural enemies. One was a huge but very rare deep-sea
  fish-little more than a pair of ravening jaws attached to a never-satisfied
  stomach. The other was a poisonous, pulsing jellythe motile form of the
  giant polyps-that sometimes carpeted the seabed with death, leaving a
  bleached desert in its wake.
  Apart from sporadic excursions through the airwater interface, the scorps
  might well have spent their entire existence in the sea, perfectly adapted
  to their environment. But-unlike the ants and- termites-they had not yet
  entered any of the blind alleys of evolution. They could still respond to
  change.
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

  And change, although as yet only on a very small scale, had indeed come to
  this ocean world. Marvelous things had fallen out of the sky. Where these
  had come from, there must be more. When they were ready, the scorps would
  go in search of them.
  There was no particular hurry in the timeless world of the Thalassan sea;
  it would be many years before they made their first assault upon the alien
  element from which their scouts had brought back such strange reports.
  They could never guess that other scouts were reporting on them. And when
  they finally moved, their timing would be most unfortunate.
  They would have the bad luck to emerge on land during President Owen
  Fletcher's quite unconstitutional but extremely0competent second term of
  office.

 309
 IX, SAGAN TWO
 57. THE VOICES OF TIME

 The starship Magellan was still no more than a few light-hours distant when
 Kumar Lorenson was born, but his father was already sleeping and did not
 hear the news until three hundred years later.
  He wept to think that his dreamless slumber had spanned the entire lifetime
  of his first child. When he could face the ordeal, he would summon the rec-
  ords that were waiting for him in the memory banks. He would watch his son
  grow to manhood and hear his voice calling across the centuries with
  greetings he could never answer.
  And he would see (there was no way he could avoid it) the slow aging of
  the~ long-dead girl he had held in his arms-only weeks ago. Her last
  farewell would come to him from wrinkled lips long turned to dust.
  His grief, though piercing, would slowly pass. The light of a new sun
  filled the sky ahead; and soon there would be another birth, on the world
  that was already drawing the starship Magellan into its final orbit.
  One day the pain would be gone; but never the memory.

               313
 CHRONOLOGY (TERRAN
         YEARS)

  1956Detection of neutrino
  1967Solar neutrino anomaly
        discovered
 2000
        Sun's fate confirmed
  100
        Interstellar probes
  200
  300Robot seeders planned
  400
        Seeding started
 2500          (embryos)
  600        (DNA codes)

   700
      751 Seeder Leaves for Thalassa
   800

   900
      999 Last Millennium

               314
     THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 3000                               THALASSA
  100             3109 First Landing0
  200                   LordsBirth of Nation100
         of       Contact with Earth
  300                            the200
            Last  Mt. Krakan Erupts,
  400                           DaysContact Lost300
 3500               Quantum Drive400
  600               Final ExodusStasis
        617 Starship
 Magellan
 3620                  End of Earth
                  3827 Magellan arrives718
                  3829 Magellan leaves720
                  4135 SAGAN TWO1026

 315
 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

 The first version of this novel, a 12,500-word short story, was written
 between February and April 1957 and subsequently published in IF Magazine
 (US) for June 1958 and Science Fantasy (UK) in June 1959. It may be more
 conveniently located in my own Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich collections The
 Other Side of the Sky (1958) and From the Ocean, From the Stars (1962).
  In 1979, 1 developed the theme in a short movie outline that appeared in
  OMNI Magazine (Vol. 3, No. 12, 1980). This has since been published in the
  illustrated Byron Preiss/Berkley collection of my short stories The
  Sentinel (1984), together with an introduction explaining its origin and
  the unexpected manner in which it lead to the writing and filming of 2010:
  Odyssey Two.
  This novel, the third and final version, was begun in May 1983 and
  completed in June 1985.
                     July 1, 1985
                     Colombo, Sri Lanka

 316
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

 The first suggestion that vacuum energies might be used for propulsion
 appears to have been made by Shinichi Seike in 1969. ("Quantum electric
 space vehicle"; 8th Symposium on Space Technology and Science, Tokyo)
  Ten years later, H.D. Froning of McDonnell Douglas Astronautics introduced
  the idea at the British Interplanetary Societies' Interstellar Studies
  Conference, London (September 1969) and followed it up with two papers:
  "Propulsion Requirements for a Quantum Interstellar Ramjet" (JBIS, Vol. 33,
  1980) and "Investigation of a quantum ramjet for interstellar flight" (AlAA
  Preprint 81-1534, 1981).
  Ignoring the countless inventors of unspecifi6d "space drives," the first
  person to use the idea in fiction appears to have been Dr. Charles
  Sheffield, chief scientist of Earth Satellite Corporation; he discusses the
  theoretical basis of the "quantum drive" (or, as he has named it, "vacuum
  energy drive") in his novel The McAndrew Chronicles (Analog magazine 1981;
  Tor, 1983).
  An admittedly naive calculation by Richard Feynman suggests that every
  cubic centimeter of vacuum contains enough energy to boil all the oceans of
  Earth. Another estimate by John Wheeler gives a value a mere seventy-nine
  orders of magnitude larger. When two of the world's greatest physicists
  disagree by a little matter of seventy-nine zeroes, the rest of us may be
  excused a certain skepticism; but it's at least an interesting thought that
  the vacuum inside an ordinary light bulb contains enough energy to

               317
         ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 destroy the Galaxy ... and perhaps, with a little extra effort, the Cosmos.
  In what may hopefully be an historic paper ("Extracting electrical energy
  from the vacuum by cohesion of charged foliated conductors," Physical
  Review, Vol. 30B, pp. 17001702, August 15, 1984) Dr. Robert L. Forward of
  the Hughes Research Labs has shown that at least a minute fraction of this
  energy can be tapped. If it can be harnessed for propulsion by anyone
  besides science-fiction writers, the purely engineering problems of
  interstellar-or even intergalactic-flight would be solved.
  But perhaps not. I am extremely grateful to Dr. Alan Bond for his detailed
  mathematical analysis of the shielding necessary for the mission described
  in this novel and for pointing out that a blunt cone is the most
  advantageous shape. It may well turn out that the factor limiting high-
  velocity interstellar flight will not be energy but ablation of the shield
  mass by dust grains, and evaporation by protons.

 The history and theory of the "space elevator" will be found in my address
 to the Thirtieth Congress of the International Astronautical Federation,
 Munich, 1979: "The Space Elevator: 'Thought Experiment' or Key to the
 Universe?" (Reprinted in Advances in Earth Orientated Applications of Space
 Technology, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1981, pp. 39-48 and Ascent to Orbit: John Wiley,
 1984). 1 have also developed the idea in the novel The Fountains of Paradise
 (Del Rey, Gollancz, 1978).
  The first experiments in this direction, involving payloads lowered into
  the atmosphere on hundred-kilometerlong "tethers" from the space shuttle,
  will be commencing around the time this novel is published.

 My apologies to Jim Ballard and JT. Frazer for stealing the title of their
 own two very different volumes for my final chapter.

               318
    THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH

 My special gratitude to the Diyawadane Nilame and his staff at the Temple
 of the Tooth, Kandy, for kindly inviting me into the Relic Chamber during
 a time of troubles.

 319
  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 Arthur C. Clarke was born at Minehead, Somerset, England, in 1917 and is a
 graduate of King's College, London, where he obtained First Class Honors in
 Physics and Mathematics. He is past Chairman of the British Interplanetary
 Society, a member of the Academy of Astronautics, the Royal Astronomical
 Society, and many other scientific organizations. During World War 11, as an
 RAF officer, he was in charge of the first radar talk-down equipment during
 its experimental trials. His only non-science-fiction novel, Glide Path, is
 based on this work.
  Author of fifty books, some, twenty million-plus copies of which have been
  printed in over thirty languages, his numerous awards include the 1961 Kal-
  inga Prize, the AAAS-Westinghouse science-writing prize, the Bradford
  Washburn Award, and the Hugo, Nebula, and John W. Campbell Awards-all three
  of which were won by his novel Rendezvous with Rama.
  In 1968 he shared an Oscar nomination with Stanley Kubrick for 2001: A
  Space Odyssey, and his thirteen-part TV series Arthur C. Clarke's Mysteri-
  ous World has now been screened in many countries. He joined Walter
  Cronkite during CBS' coverage of the Apollo missions.
  His invention of the communications satellite in 1945 has brought him
  numerous honors, such as the 1982 Marconi International Fellowship, a gold
  medal of the Franklin Institute, the Vikram Sarabhai Professorship of the
  Physical Research Laboratory, Ali-. medabad, and a Fellowship of King's
  College, London. The President of Sri Lanka recently nominated him
  Chancellor of the University of Moratuwa, near Colombo.
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