A Fall of Moondust

by Arthur C. Clarke

It was a sea of dust, not of water, and therefore it was alien to all the experience of men

There were no millennia of trial and error here, stretching back to the first Neolithic man who ever launched a log out into a stream.

there were other forces that had not died, and were merely biding their time.

There could be no ghosts upon a world that had never known life.

perhaps no man could appreciate his own world, until he had seen it from space.

The mind has many watchdogs; sometimes they bark unnecessarily, but a wise man never ignores their warning.

Few men in this age ever knew the need for physical bravery. From birth to death, they never came face to face with danger.

They no longer formed a single group, united in the common cause of survival. Now their lives had diverged again into a score of independent aims and ambitions. Humanity had swallowed them up once more, as the ocean swallows a rain-drop.

No man could ever become so blasé that the promise of the unknown and the unexplored completely failed to move him.

one could neither bully nor cajole trained and devoted men into working faster than their maximum.

call him at 3443 as soon as you’re awake.” I’m hardly likely to call him before I’m awake,