A Fall of Moondust

by Arthur C. Clarke

The whole subject had been thoroughly investigated by a group of psychologists during—if Hansteen remembered correctly—the 1970s. They had concluded that around the mid-twentieth century a substantial percentage of the population was convinced that the world was about to be destroyed, and that the only hope lay in intervention from space. Having lost faith in themselves, men had sought salvation in the sky. The Flying Saucer religion flourished among the lunatic fringe of mankind for almost exactly ten years; then it had abruptly died out, like an epidemic that had run its course. Two factors, the psychologists had decided, were responsible for this: the first was sheer boredom—the second was the International Geophysical Year, that had heralded Man’s own entry into space. In the eighteen months of the IGY, the sky was watched and probed by more instruments, and more trained observers, than in the whole of previous history. If there had been celestial visitors poised above the atmosphere, this concentrated scientific effort would have revealed them. It did nothing of the sort; and when the first manned vehicles started leaving Earth, the Flying Saucers were still more conspicuous by their absence. For most men, that settled the matter. The thousands of unidentified flying objects that had been seen over the centuries had some natural cause, and with better understanding of meteorology and astronomy there was no lack of reasonable explanations. As the Age of Space dawned, r...