The Ghost Canal

The Ghost Canal

They knew what would happen, of course, when the mining companies and the archaeologists discovered a plentiful supply of water. That water would still be contaminated by centuries of leakage from an alien superbomb and would have to be filtered, probably not very thoroughly. That wouldn’t be much of a problem especially with expendable prison labor working down there. Stone guessed what the exploiters would do with the great calm waterway perpetually pouring into a bottomless canyon to be captured and recycled, by some mysterious process, back into the canal again. Power.  (The Lost Canal by Michael Moorcock)

On the west side of the canal, someone seemed to be trying to raise wheat again – that happened every decade or so, according to his father, when new settlers arrived from Earth. It never worked very well, but it usually produced enough spindly stalks to feed a few goats. (The Sunstone by Phyllis Eisentstein).

And Dave thought, not for the first time, how much more beautiful the stars were without that big, bright Earth satellite to spoil them ; the Martian moons were far more modest, with Phobos a fraction of the size and brightness of Earth’s moon and Deimos just another pinpoint in the great darkness. (King of the Cheap Romance by Joe R. Lansdale).

If you die on Mars, do you go to Martian Heaven? (Joe R. Lansdale). Image: © by Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

Jason’ first day on his new world would have been his last, his journeys ended in the belly of a sand-shark, had a passing Praxian naval ship not hauled him on board,(Chris Roberson, Mariner).

My last great excitement had been the night before we left for Mars. Ships! Space travel! Why, I could hardly sleep the night before launch. I soon discovered that space travel is very much like an ocean cruise, without the promenade decks and the excursions, and far, far fewer people. And much, much worse food. However tedious and braying the company for me, I derived some pleasure from the fact that for them it was three months locked in with Count Jack. (Ian McDonald, The Queen of the Night’s Aria)

Just a few weeks of being in the abandoned place, alone with a half-sane man, and she was already starting to hear whispers, to forget where she was leaving thing, finding light on she swore she’d turned off. Either she was going crazy, or Solo found humor in making her feel that way. (Wool, by Hugh Howey)

The Road to the Sea

The Road to the Sea

Arthur C. Clarke

“They have not always succeeded. The planets defeated them once; why should the worlds of other suns be more hospitable?”

It was a fair question. After five hundred years, the memory of the first failure was still bitter. With what hopes and dreams had Man set out for the planets, in the closing years of the twentieth century – only to find them not merely barren and lifeless, but fiercely hostile! From the sullen fires of the Mercurian lava seas to Pluto’s creeping glaciers of solid nitrogen, there was nowhere that he could live unprotected beyond his own world; and to his own world, after a century of fruitless struggle, he had returned.

Yet the vision had not wholly died; when the planning had been abandoned, there were still some who dared to dream of the stars. Out of that dream had come at last the Transcendental Drive, the first Expedition – and now the heady wine of long-delayed success.

“There are fifty solar-type stars within ten years’ flight of Earth,” Durven replied, “and almost all of them have planets. We believe now that the possession of planets is almost as much a characteristic of a G-type star as its spectrum, though we don’t know why. So the search for worlds like Earth was bound to be successful in time; I don’t think that we were particularly lucky to find Eden so soon.””

“Eden? Is that what you’ve called your new world?”

“Yes; it seemed appropriate”.

The future belongs to us; we will leave you to your dreams. We also have dreamed, and now we go to make our dreams come true. Illustration: Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

“What incurable romantics you scientists are! Perhaps the name’s too well chosen; all the life in that first Eden wasn’t friendly to Man, if you remember.”

Durven gave a bleak smile.

“That, again, depends on one’s viewpoint,” he replied. He pointed toward Shaster, where the first lights had begun to glimmer. “Unless our ancestors had eaten deeply from the Treee of Knowledge, you would never have had this.”

“And what do you suppose will happen to it now?” asked Hannar bitterly. “When you have opened the road to the stars, all the strength and vigor of the race will ebb away from Earth as from an open wound.”

“I do not deny it. It had happened before, and it will happen again. Shastar will go the way of Babylon and Carthage and New York. The future is built on the rubble of the past; wisdom lies in facing that fact, not in fighting against it. I have loved Shastar as much as you have done – so much so that know, though I shall never see it again, I dare not go down once more into its streets. You ask me what will become of it, and I will tell you. What we are doing will merely hasten the end. Even twenty years ago, when I was last here, I felt my will being sapped by the aimless ritual of your lives. Soon it will be the same in all the cities of Earth, for every one of them apes Shastar. I think the Drive has come none too soon; perhaps even you would believe me if you had spoken to the men who have come back from the stars, and felt the blood stirring in your veins once more after all these centuries of sleep. For your world is dying, Hannar; what you have now you may hold for ages yet, but in the end it will slip from your fingers. The future belongs to us; we will leave you to your dreams. We also have dreamed, and now we go to make our dreams come true”.

(Tales from Planet Earth by Arthur Clarke)

If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth

If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth

By Arthur C. Clarke

… It was so brilliant that minutes passed before Marvin could accept its challenge and look steadfastly into its glare, but at last he could discern the outline of continents, the hazy border of the atmosphere, and the white islands of cloud. And even at this distance, he could see the glitter of sunlight on the polar ice.

It was beautiful, and it called to his heart across the abyss of space. There in that shining crescent were all the wonders that he had never known – the hues of sunset skies, the moaning of the sea on pebbled shores, the patter of falling rain, the unhurried benison of snow. There and a thousand others should have been his rightful heritage, but he knew them only from the books and ancient records, and the thought filled him with the anguish of exile.

Why could they not return? It seemed so peaceful beneath those lines of marching cloud. Then Marvin, his eyes no longer blinded by the glare, saw that the portion of the disk that should have been in darkness was gleaming faintly with an evil phosphorescence: and he remembered. He was looking upon the funeral pyre of a world – upon the radioactive aftermath of Armageddon. Across a quarter of a million miles of space, the glow of dying atoms was still visible, a perennial reminder of the ruinous past. It would be centuries yet before that deadly glow died from the rocks and life could return again to fill that silent, empty world.

He did not look back as they began the homeward journey. He could not bear to see the cold glory of the crescent Earth fade from the rocks around him, as he went to rejoin his people in their long exile (Arthur C. Clarke). Illustration: © Megan Jorgensen (Elena).

And now Father began to speak, telling Marvin the story which until this moment had meant no more to him than the fairy-tales he had heard in childhood. There were many things he could not understand: it was impossible for him to picture the glowing, multi-colored pattern of life on the planet he had never seen. Nor could he comprehend the forces that had destroyed it in the end, leaving the colony, preserved by its isolation, as the sole survivor. Yet he could share the agony of those final days, when the Colony had learned at last that never again would the supply ships come flaming down through the stars with gifts from home. One by one the radio stations had ceased to call: on the shadowed globe the lights of the cities had dimmed and died, and they were alone at last, as no men had ever been alone before, carrying in their hands the future of the race.

Then had followed the years of despair, and the long-drawn battle for survival in this fierce and hostile world. That battle had been won, though barely: this little oasis of life was safe against the worst that Nature could do. But unless there was a goal, a future towards which it could work, the Colony would lose the will to live and neither machines nor skill nor science could save it then.

So, at last, Marvin understood the purpose of this pilgrimage. He would never walk beside the rivers of that lost and legendary world, or listen to the thunder raging above its softly rounded hills. Yet one day – how far ahead? – his children’s children would return to claim their heritage. The winds and the rains would scour the poisons from the burning lands and carry them to the sea, and in the depth of the sea they would waste their venom until they could harm no living things. Then the great ships that were still waiting here on the silent, dusty plains could lift once more into space along the read that led to home.

That was the dream: and one day, Marvin knew with a sudden flash of insight, he would pass it on to his own son here at this same spot with the mountains behind him and the silver light from the sky streaming into his face.

Publicity Campaign

Publicity Campaign

Arthur C. Clarke, Tales from Planet Earth

The ambassadors landed in New York’s Central Park on the very day that a prominent astronomer, unusually hard up and therefore amenable to influence, announced in a widely reported interview that any visitors from space probably would be unfriendly.

The luckless ambassadors, heading for the United Nations Building, had got as far south as 60th Street when they met the mob. The encounter was very one-sides, and the scientists at the Museum of Natural History were most annoyed that there was so little left for them to examine.

Prince Zevashni tried once more, on the other side of the planet, but the new had got there first. This time the ambassadors were armed, and gave a good account of themselves before they were overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Even though, it was not until the rocket bombs started climbing up toward his fleet that the prince finally lost his temper and decided to take drastic action.

It was all over in twenty minutes, and was really quite painless. Then the prince turned to his adviser and said, with considerable understatement: “That appears to be that. And now – can you tell me exactly what went wrong?”

On the dead and silent Earth, the posters still screamed their warning from a thousand hoarding. (Arthur C. Clarke). Illustration: Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

Sigisnin II knitted his dozen flexible fingers together in acute anguish. It was not only the spectacle of the neatly disinfected Earth that distressed his, though to a scientist the destruction of such a beautiful specimen is always a major tragedy. At least equally upsetting was the demolition of his theories and, with them, his reputation.

“I just don’t understand it”, he lamented. “Of course, races at this level of culture are often suspicious and nervous when contact is first made. But they’d never had visitors before, so there was no reason for them to be hostile.”

“Hostile! There were demons! I thing they were all insane.” The prince turned to his captain, a tripedal creature who looked rather like a ball of wool balanced on three knitting needles.

“Is the fleet reassembled?”

“Yes, Sire.”

“Then we will return to Base at optimum speed. This planet depresses me.”

On the dead and silent Earth, the posters still screamed their warning from a thousand hoarding. The malevolent insectile shapes shown pouring from the skies bore no resemblance at all to Prince Zervashni, who apart from his four eyes might have been mistaken for a panda with purple fur – and who, moreover, had come from Rigel, not Sirius.

But, of course, it was now much too late to point this out.

The Parasite

The Parasite

By Arthur C. Clarke

Omega

… There aren’t any obstacles: I know he’s there all the time, waiting for me to let down my guard. Night and day, drunk or sober, I’m conscious of his presence. At times like this he’s quiescent, watching me out of the corner of his eye. My only hope is that he’ll grow tired of waiting, and go in search of some other victim.

Try and imagine the horror of that discovery: the effect of learning that every act, every thought or desire that flitted through your mind was being watched and shared by another being. It meant, of course, the end of all normal life for me. I had to leave Ruth and I couldn’t tell her why. Then, to make matters worse, Maude came chasing after me. She wouldn’t leave me alone, and bombarded me with letters and phone calls. It was hell, I couldn’t fight both of them, so I ran away. And I thought that on Syrene, of all places, he would find enough to interest him without bothering me…

The only way I kept any control was by fighting back, trying to come to grips with him and to understand what he was. And in the end I succeeded. He’s a long way away and there must be some limit to his powers. Perhaps that first contact was an accident, though I’ not sure.

What I’ve told you, Jack, must be hard enough for you to believe, but it’s nothing to what I’ve got to say now. Yet remember – you agreed that I’m not an imaginative man, and see if you can find a always anywhere in this story.

I don’t know if you’ve read any of the evidence suggesting that telepathy is somehow independent of time. I know that it is. Omega doesn’t belong to our age: he’s somewhere in the future, immensely far ahead of us. For a while I thought he must be one of the last men – that’s why I gave him his name. But now I’m not sure; perhaps he belongs to an age when there are a myriad different races of man, scattered all over the universe – some still ascending, others sinking into decay. His people, wherever and whenever they may be, have reached the heights and fallen from them into the depths the beasts can never know. There’s a sense of evil about him, Jack – the real evil that most of us never meet in all our lives. Yet sometimes I feel almost sorry for him, because I know what has made him the thing he is.

Omega hasn’t been invented yet. Photo : Elena

Have you ever wondered, Jack, what the human race will do when science has discovered everything, when there are no more worlds to be explored, when all the stars have given up their secrets? Omega is one of the answers. I hope he’s not the only one, for if so everything we’ve striven for is in vain. I hope that he and his race are an isolated cancer in a still healthy universe, but I can never be sure.

They have pampered their bodies until they are useless, and too late they have discovered their mistake. Perhaps they have thought, as some men have thought, that they could live by intellect alone. And perhaps they are immortal, and that must be their real damnation. Through the ages their minds have been corroding in their feeble bodies, seeking some release from their intolerable boredom. They have found it at last in the only way they can, by sending back their minds to an earlier, more virile age, and becoming parasites on the emotions of others.

I wonder how many of them there are? Perhaps they explain all cases of what used to be called possession. How they must have ransacked the past to assuage their hunger! Can’t you picture them, flocking like carrion crows around the decaying Roman Empire, jostling one another for the minds of Nero and Caligula and Tiberius? Perhaps Omega failed to get those richer prizes. Or perhaps he hasn’t much choice and must take whatever mind he can contact in any age, transforming from that to the next whenever he has the chance…

He’s in a kind of hollow, egg-shaped space – surrounded by blue mist that always seems to be twisting and turning, but never changes its position. There’s no entrance or exit – and no gravity, unless he’s learned to defy it. Because he floats in the center, and around him is a circle of short, fluted cylinders, turning slowly in the air. I think they must be machines of some kind, obeying his will. And once there was a large oval hanging beside him, with perfectly human, beautifully formed arms coming from it. It could only have been a robot, yet those hands and fingers seemed alive. There were feeding and massaging him, treating him like a baby. It was horrible…

Have you ever seen a lemur or a spectral tarsier? He’s rather like that – a nightmare travesty of mankind, with huge malevolent eyes. And this is strange – it’s not the way one had imagined evolution going – he’s covered with a fine layer of fur, as blue as the room in which he lives. Every time I’ve seen him he’s been in the same position, half curled up like a sleeping baby. I think his legs have completely atrophied; perhaps his arms as well. Only his brain is still active, hunting up and down the ages for its prey,

And now you know why there was nothing you or anyone else could do. Your psychiatrists might cure me if I was insane, but the science that can deal with Omega hasn’t been invented yet.