The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

by Arthur C. Clarke

Please remember that while these stories were written the world underwent greater changes than in the whole of previous history. Inevitably some of them have been dated by events: however I have resisted all temptations for retrospective editing. To put matters in perspective, roughly a third of these stories were written when most people believed talk of space flight was complete lunacy. By the time the last dozen were written, men had walked on the Moon.

Then, when they weren’t looking, we borrowed a guinea pig from the biology people on the 37th floor, and sent it through the apparatus. It came through in excellent condition, except for the fact it was dead.

I rapidly outlined the situation and explained the need for complete calm. After the resulting hysteria had subsided,

Our first move was to investigate the air. We decided unanimously (only Mr Guzzbaum dissenting), that Mr Guzzbaum should be detailed to enter the air-lock and sample the Martian atmosphere. Fortunately for him, it proved fit for human consumption,

‘Skip it,’ he said. ‘It’s about fifty miles away as the crow flies, though as there aren’t any crows on Mars we have never been able to check this very accurately.

After this we were not bothered any more and were able to spend most of our time indoors playing poker and some curious Martian games we had picked up, including an interesting mathematical one which I can best describe as ‘four-dimensional chess’. Unfortunately, it was so complicated that none of my companions could understand it, and accordingly I had to play against myself. I am sorry to say that I invariably lost.

‘You know,’ he said to Rugon, ‘I feel rather afraid of these people. Suppose they don’t like our little Federation?’ He waved once more toward the star-clouds that lay massed across the screen, glowing with the light of their countless suns. ‘Something tells me they’ll be very determined people,’ he added. ‘We had better be polite to them. After all, we only outnumber them about a thousand million to one.’ Rugon laughed at his captain’s little joke. Twenty years afterward, the remark didn’t seem funny.

But no one expected he’d ever get very far, because I don’t suppose he could even integrate e to the x.’ ‘Is such ignorance possible?’ gasped someone. ‘Maybe I exaggerate. Let’s say x e to the x.

It would have needed very little intelligence to deduce that Brant was an artist; it was not so easy to decide if he was a good one.

No one had ever told her, and she had not yet discovered, that when one has to ask ‘Am I really in love?’ the answer is always ‘No’.

At length the great rock mass of Pico came once more into sight until presently it dominated the landscape. One of the most famous landmarks on the Moon it rose sheer out of the Sea of Rains, from which, ages ago, volcanic action had extruded it. On Earth it would have been completely unclimbable. Even under one-sixth of Earth’s gravity only two men had ever reached its summit. One of them was still there.

At this stage, Grand Admiral Taxaris expressed his disapproval of Norden by committing suicide, and I assumed supreme command.

I kept my eyebrows from going up, but I caught a glance from Bill that said, without any need for words: If you’re thinking what I’m thinking, I’m ashamed of you.

You know Thurber’s “Only a naïve domestic Burgundy, but I think you’ll admire its presumption”. The Baron would have known at the first sniff whether it was domestic or not—and if it had been presumptuous he’d have smacked it down.

The man who would, presumably, one day be Henry IX of England was still in his early twenties. He was slightly below average height, and had fine-drawn, regular features that really lived up to all the genealogical clichés. Captain Saunders, who came from Dallas and had no intention of being impressed by any prince, found himself unexpectedly moved by the wide, sad eyes. They were eyes that had seen too many receptions and parades, that had had to watch countless totally uninteresting things, that had never been allowed to stray far from the carefully planned official routes. Looking at that proud but weary face, Captain Saunders glimpsed for the first time the ultimate loneliness of royalty. All his dislike of that institution became suddenly trivial against its real defect: what was wrong with the Crown was the unfairness of inflicting such a burden on any human being….

We could not tell, before we reached the nebula, how long ago the explosion took place. Now, from the astronomical evidence and the record in the rocks of that one surviving planet, I have been able to date it very exactly. I know in what year the light of this colossal conflagration reached our Earth. I know how brilliantly the supernova whose corpse now dwindles behind our speeding ship once shone in terrestrial skies. I know how it must have blazed low in the east before sunrise, like a beacon in that oriental dawn. There can be no reasonable doubt: the ancient mystery is solved at last. Yet, oh God, there were so many stars you could have used. What was the need to give these people to the fire, the symbol of their passing might shine above Bethlehem?

There were still fifteen minutes to go. Not for the first time, I wished there was a reliable way of smoking a cigarette inside a space suit without getting the helmet so badly fogged that you couldn’t see. Our scientists had solved so many much more difficult problems; it seemed a pity that they couldn’t do something about that one.

Sooner or later, I suppose, this interplanetary loop-hole will be plugged; the Department of Inland Revenue is still fighting a gallant rear-guard action, but we seem neatly covered under Section 57, paragraph 8 of the Capital Gains Act of 1972. We wrote our books and articles on the moon—and until there’s a lunar government to impose income tax, we’re hanging on to every penny.

‘But let’s leave the General for a minute and have a look at the scientists. There were about fifty of them, as well as a couple of hundred technicians. They’d all been carefully screened by the F.B.I., so probably not more than half a dozen were active members of the Communist party.

‘Jumping Jehosophat!’ yelled Hercules. It was very seldom indeed that he used such strong language.

In a number of his tales, Harry had shown distinct evidence of some hostility towards what a Polish friend of mine, whose command of English did not match his gallantry, always referred to as ladies of the female sex.

Charlie, who is the most promising author I know (he has been promising for more than twenty-five years)

It was only on the long, dull runs between the stars, when I had no one to talk to but the computer, that I found my glands getting the better of me. Max, my electronic colleague, was good enough company in the ordinary course of events, but there are some things that a machine can’t be expected to understand. I often hurt his feelings when I was in one of my irritable moods and lost my temper for no apparent reason. ‘What’s the matter, Joe?’ Max would say plaintively. ‘Surely you’re not mad at me because I beat you at chess again? Remember, I warned you I would.’ ‘Oh, go to hell!’ I’d snarl back—and then I’d have an anxious five minutes while I straightened things out with the rather literal-minded Navigation Robot.

This again illustrates my fascination with the most mysterious creature of the deep sea. And it was quite daring, back in 1962, to suggest that Russians might be decent human beings.

I’m—ah—making some last-minute adjustments to improve the efficiency of the system.’ And that, of course, was the truth; for I was indeed hoping to raise the efficiency of the system from its present value of exactly zero.

‘I really hate to say this.’ He sighed. ‘But the only identifiable fragment of the pride of the United States Space Navy was—one star mangled spanner.’

Commander Falcon decided to go upstairs and watch the rendezvous.

A distraught simp was a powerful and potentially dangerous animal, especially if fear overcame its conditioning

Never before had he been so close to a simp, and able to study its features in such detail. He felt that strange mingling of kinship and discomfort that all men experience when they gaze thus into the mirror of time.

‘siseneG’ First published in Analog, May 1984 Collected in Astounding Days When I wrote this, I hinted that it would be my last short story. Well, it is certainly the shortest. *** And God said: ‘Lines Aleph Zero to Aleph One—Delete.’ And the Universe ceased to exist. Then She pondered for several aeons, and sighed. ‘Cancel Programme GENESIS,’ She ordered. It never had existed.

As early as 1715 The Spectator refers to the Cabbage (or Cubage) family as a cadet branch of the de Coverleys (bar sinister, regrettably, though Sir Roger himself is not implicated).

Had matters turned out slightly differently, Charles Cabbage might now have been as famous as James Watt, George Stevenson—or even Isambard Kingdom Brunel.