[Dedication:]
In accordance with the
terms of the Clarke-Asimov Treaty,
the second-best science writer
dedicates this book to
the second-best science-fiction writer.
Preface
My first volume of speculative essays, The Challenge of the Spaceship, was
published in 1959 – exactly one decade before Neil Armstrong set foot on the
Moon – and has now been out of print for some years. During the sixties two
other collections appeared, Profiles of
the Future (1962) and Voices from the
Sky (1965), and these are still available to sufficiently determined
readers.
In the meantime much has happened, and I have had
later thoughts on a number of subjects. Yet the events that culminated in July
1969 at Tranquility Base have not made these speculations obsolete; indeed,
many of them are now even more timely than when they first appeared.
A number of the following pieces are reprinted from The Challenge of the Spaceship; with
very few exceptions, the others have never appeared in book form.
[…]
In the closing years of man’s last earthbound era I
ended the precursor of this book with the words:
Across the gulf of centuries, the blind
smile of Homer is turned upon our age. Along the echoing corridors of time, the
roar of the rockets merges now with the creak of the wind-taught rigging. For
somewhere in the world today, still unconscious of his destiny, walks the boy
who will be the first Odysseus of the Age of Space….
Who could have dreamed, back in 1959, that the ‘boy’
was already nearing his thirtieth birthday? But there will be other Odysseys to
come….
Colombo
January 1971
Report on Planet Three
[The following
document, which has just been deciphered for the Interplanetary Archaeological
Commission, is one of the most remarkable that has yet been discovered on Mars,
and throws a vivid light upon the scientific knowledge and mental processes of
our vanished neighbors. It dates from the Late Uranium (i.e., final) Age of the
Martian civilization, and thus was written little more than a thousand years
before the birth of Christ.
The translation is believed
to be reasonably accurate, though a few conjectural passages have been
indicated. Where necessary, Martian terms and units have been converted into
their terrestrial equivalents for ease of understanding. – Translator.]
The recent close approach of the planet Earth has
once again revived speculations about the possibility of life upon our nearest neighbor
in space. This is a question which has been debated for centuries, without
conclusive results. In the last few years, however, the development of new
astronomical instruments has given as much more accurate information about the
other planets. Though we cannot yet confirm or deny the existence of
terrestrial life, we now have much more precise knowledge of conditions on
Earth and can base our discussions on a firm scientific foundation.
One of the most tantalizing things about Earth is
that we cannot see it when it is closest, since it is then between us and the
Sun and its dark side is therefore turned toward us. We have to wait until it
is a morning or evening star, and thus a hundred million or more miles away
from us, before we can see much of its illuminated surface. In the telescope,
it then appears as a brilliant crescent, with its single giant Moon hanging
beside it. The contrast in color between the two bodies is striking; the Moon
is a pure silvery-white, but the Earth is a sickly blue-green. [The exact force of the adjective is
uncertain; it is definitely unflattering. ‘Hideous’ and ‘virulent’ have been
suggested as alternatives. – Translator.]
[…]
Looking at these well-established facts, we can weigh
the prospects for life on Earth. It must be said at once that they appear
extremely poor; however, let us be open-minded and prepared to accept even the
most unlikely possibilities, as long as they do not conflict with scientific
laws.
The first great objection to terrestrial life – which
many experts consider conclusive – is the intensely poisonous atmosphere. The
presence of such large quantities of gaseous oxygen poses a major scientific
problem, which we are still far from solving. Oxygen is so reactive that it
cannot normally exist in the free
state; on our planet, for example, it is combined
with iron to form the beautiful red deserts that cover so much of the world. It
is the absence of these areas which gives Earth its unpleasant greenish hue.
[…]
Even if we assume that creatures exist on Earth which
can survive in so poisonous and chemically reactive an atmosphere, the presence
of these immense amounts of oxygen has two other effects. The first is rather
subtle, and has only recently been discovered by a brilliant piece of theoretical
research, now fully confirmed by observations.
It appears that at a great altitude in the Earth’s
atmosphere – some twenty or thirty miles – the oxygen forms a gas known as
ozone, containing three atoms of oxygen as compared with the normal molecule’s
two. This gas, though it exists in very small quantities so far from the
ground, has an overwhelmingly important effect upon terrestrial conditions. It
almost completely blocks the ultraviolet rays of the Sun, preventing them from
reaching the surface of the planet.
This fact alone would make it impossible for the life
forms we know to exist on Earth. The Sun’s ultraviolet radiation, which reaches
the surface of Mars almost unhindered, is essential to our well-being and
provides our bodies with much of their energy. Even if we could withstand the
corrosive atmosphere of Earth, we should soon perish because of this lack of
vital radiation.
The second result of the high oxygen concentration is
even more catastrophic. It involves a terrifying phenomenon, fortunately known
only in the laboratory, which scientists have christened ‘fire.’
Many ordinary substances, when immersed in an
atmosphere like that of Earth’s and heated to quite modest temperatures, begin
a violent and continuous chemical reaction which does not cease until they are
completely consumed. During the process, intolerable quantities of heat and
light are generated, together with clouds of noxious gases. Those who have
witnessed this phenomenon under controlled laboratory conditions described it
as quite awe-inspiring; it is certainly fortunate for us that it can never occur
on Mars.
Yet it must be quite common on Earth – and no
possible form of life could exist in its presence. Observations of the night
side of Earth have often revealed bright glowing areas where fire is raging;
though some students of the planet have tried, optimistically, to explain these
glows as the lights of cities, this theory must be rejected. The glowing
regions are much too variable; with few exceptions, they are quite short-lived,
and they are not fixed in location. [These
observations were doubtless due to forest fires and volcanoes – the latter
unknown on Mars. It is a tragic irony of fate that had the Martian astronomers
survived a few more thousand years, they would have seen the lights of man’s cities. We missed each other in time by
less than a millionth of the age of our planets. – Translator.]
Its dense, moisture-laden atmosphere, high gravity
and closeness to the Sun make Earth a world of violent climatic extremes.
Storms of unimaginable intensity have been observed raging over vast areas of
the planet, some of them accompanied by spectacular electrical disturbances,
easily detected by sensitive radio receivers here on Mars. It is hard to
believe that any form of life could withstand these natural convulsions, from
which the planet is seldom completely free.
[…]
To sum up, therefore, it appears that our neighbor
Earth is a forbidding world of raw, violent energies, certainly quite unfitted
for any type of life which now exists on Mars. That some form of vegetation may
flourish beneath that rain burdened, storm-tossed atmosphere is quite possible;
indeed, many astronomers claim to have detected color changes in certain areas
which they attribute to the seasonal growth of plants.
As for animals – this is pure speculation, all the
evidence being against them. If they exist at all, they must be extremely
powerful and massively built to resist the high gravity, probably possessing
many pairs of legs and capable only of slow movement. Their clumsy bodies must
be covered with thick layers of protective armor to shield them from the many dangers
they must face, such as storms, fire, and the corrosive atmosphere. In view of
these facts, the question of intelligent life on Earth must be regarded as
settled. We must resign ourselves to the idea that we are the only rational
beings in the Solar System.
For those romantics who still hope for a more
optimistic answer, it may not be long before Planet Three reveals its last secret
to us. Current work on rocket propulsion has shown that it is quite possible to
build a spacecraft that can escape from Mars and head across the cosmic gulf
toward our mysterious neighbor. Though its powerful gravity would preclude a
landing (except by radio-controlled robot vehicles), we could orbit Earth at a
low altitude and thus observe every detail of its surface from little more than
a millionth of our present distance.
Now that we have at last released the limitless
energy of the atomic nucleus, we may soon use this tremendous new power to
escape the bonds of our native world. Earth and its giant satellite will be
merely the first celestial bodies our future explorers will survey. Beyond them
lie…
[Unfortunately,
the manuscript ends here. The remainder has been charred beyond decipherment,
apparently by the thermonuclear blast that destroyed the Imperial Library, together
with the rest of Oasis
City. It is a curious
coincidence that the missiles which ended Martian civilization were launched at
a classic moment in human history. Forty million miles away, with slightly less
advanced weapons, the Greeks were storming Troy. – Translator.]
The Star of the Magi
This article was written for
the December 1954 issue of Holiday magazine, but I have not
changed the opening paragraph, because almost every Christmas
Venus is a brilliant object either in the morning or the evening sky.
Readers of my fiction will
recognize in this essay the origins of the short story ‘The Star.’[1]
[First lines:]
Where is he that is born
King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to
worship him.
Go out of doors any morning this December and look up
at the eastern sky an hour or so before dawn. You will see there one of the
most beautiful sights in all the heavens – a blazing, blue-white beacon, many
times brighter than Sirius, the most brilliant of the stars. Apart from the
Moon itself, it will be the brightest object you will ever see in the night
sky. It will still be visible even when the Sun rises; you will even be able to
find it at midday if you know exactly where to look for.
It is the planet Venus, our sister world, reflecting
across the gulfs of space the sunlight glancing from her unbroken cloud shield.
Every nineteen months she appears in the morning sky, rising shortly before the
Sun, and all who see this brilliant herald of the Christmas dawn will
inevitably be reminded of the star that led the Magi to Bethlehem.
What was that star, assuming that it had some natural
explanation? Could it, in fact, have been Venus? At least one book has been
written to prove this theory, but it will not stand up to serious examination. To
all the people in the Eastern world, Venus was one of the most familiar objects
in the sky. Even today, she serves as a kind of alarm clock to the Arab nomads.
When she rises, it is time to start moving, to make as much progress as
possible before the Sun begins to blast the desert with its heat. For thousands
of years, shining more brilliantly than we ever see her in our cloudy northern
skies, she has watched the camps struck and the caravans begin to move.
Even to the ordinary, uneducated Jews of Herod’s
kingdom, there could have been nothing in the least remarkable about Venus. And
the Magi were no ordinary men; they were experts on astronomy, and must have
known the movements of the planets better than do ninety-nine people out of a hundred
today. To explain the Star of the Bethlehem
we must look elsewhere.
The Bible gives us very few clues; all that we can do
is to consider some possibilities which at this distance in time can be neither
proved nor disproved. One of these possibilities – the most spectacular and
awe-inspiring of all – has been discovered only in the last few years, but let
us first look at some of the earlier theories.
In addition to Venus, there are four other planets
visible to the naked eye – Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. During their
movements across the sky, two planets may sometimes appear to pass very close
to one another – though in reality, of course, they are actually millions of
miles apart.
Such occurrences are called ‘conjunctions’; on
occasion they may be so close that the planets cannot be separated by the naked
eye. This happened for Mars and Venus on October 4, 1953, when for a short
while the two planets appeared to be fused together to give a single star. Such
a spectacle is rare enough to be very striking, and the great astronomer
Johannes Kepler devoted much time to proving that the Star of Bethlehem was a
special conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. The planets passed very close
together (once again, remember, this was purely from Earth’s point of view – in
reality they were half a billion miles apart!) in May, 7 B.C. This is quite
near to the date Christ’s birth, which probably took place in the spring of 7
or 6 B.C. (This still surprises most people, but as Herod is known to have died
early in 4 B.C., Christ must have been born before 5 B.C. We should add six
years to the calendar for A.D. to mean what it says.)
Kepler’s proposal, however, is as unconvincing as the
Venus theory. Better calculations than those he was able to make in the
seventeenth century have shown that this particular conjunction was not a very
close one, and the planets were always far enough apart to be easily separated
by the eye. Moreover, there was a closer conjunction in 66 B.C., which on
Kepler’s theory should have brought a delegation of wise men to Bethlehem sixty years too
soon!
In any case, the Magi could be expected to be as
familiar with such events as with all other planetary movements, and the
Biblical account also indicates that the Star of Bethlehem was visible over a
period of weeks (it must have taken the Magi a considerable time to reach
Judea, have their interviews with Herod, and then go on to Bethlehem). The
conjunction of two planets lasts only a very few days, since they soon separate
in the sky and go once more upon their individual ways.
We can get over the difficulty if we assume that the
Magi were astrologers (‘Magi’ and ‘magician’ have a common root) and had
somehow deduced the birth of the Messiah from a particular configuration of the
planets, which to them, if to no one else, had a unique significance. It is an
interesting fact that the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction of 7 B.C. occurred in the
constellation Pisces, the Fish. Now though the ancient Jews were too sensible
to believe in astrology, the constellation Pisces was supposed to be connected
with them. Anything peculiar happening in Pisces would, naturally, direct the
attention of Oriental astrologers toward Jerusalem.
This theory is simple and plausible, but a little
disappointing. One would like to think that the Star of Bethlehem was something
more dramatic and not anything to do with the familiar planets whose behavior
had been perfectly well known for thousands of years before the birth of
Christ. Of course, if one accepts as literally
true the statement that ‘the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood
over where the young Child was,’ no natural explanation is possible. Any
heavenly body – star, planet, comet, or whatever – must share in the normal
movement of the sky, rising in the east and setting some hours later in the
west. Only the Pole Star, because it lies on the invisible axis of the turning
Earth, appears unmoving in the sky and can act as a fixed and constant guide.
[…]
Very well, then, can we discover some astronomical
phenomenon sufficiently startling to surprise men completely familiar with the
movements of the stars and planets and which fits the Biblical text?
Let’s see if a comet would answer the specification.
There have been no really spectacular comets in this century – though there
were several in the 1800s – and most people do not know what they look like or
how they behave. They even confuse them with meteors, which any observer is
bound to see if he goes out on a clear night and watches the sky for half an
hour.
No two classes of object could be more different. A
meteor is a speck of matter, usually smaller than a grain of sand, which burns
itself up by friction as it tears through the outer layers of Earth’s
atmosphere. But a comet may be millions of times larger than the entire Earth,
and may dominate the night sky for weeks on end. A really great comet may look
like a searchlight shining across the stars, and it is not surprising that such
a portentous object always caused alarm when it appeared in the heavens. As
Calpurnia said to Caesar:
When
beggars die, there are no comets seen;
The
heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.
[…]
It is perfectly possible that a comet appeared just
before the birth of Christ. Attempts have been made, without success, to see if
any of the known comets were visible around that date. […] But the number of
comets whose paths and periods we do know is very small compared with the
colossal number that undoubtedly exists. If a comet did shine over Bethlehem, it may not be
seen again from Earth for a hundred thousand years.
We can picture it in that Oriental dawn – a band of
light streaming up from the eastern horizon, perhaps stretching vertically
toward the zenith. The tail of a comet always points away from the Sun; the
comet would appear, therefore, like a great arrow, aimed at the east. As the
Sun rose, it would fade into invisibility; but the next morning, it would be in
almost the same place, still directing the travelers to their goal. It might be
visible for weeks before it disappeared once more into the depths of space.
The picture is a dramatic and attractive one. It may
even be the correct explanation; one day, perhaps, we shall know.
But there is yet another theory, and this is the one
which most astronomers would probably accept today. It makes the other
explanations look very trivial and commonplace indeed, for it leads us to
contemplate one of the most astonishing – and terrifying – events yet
discovered in the whole realm of nature.
We will forget now about planets and comets and the
other denizens of our own tight little Solar System. Let us go out across real space, right out to the stars –
those other suns, many far greater than our own, which sheer distance has
dwarfed to dimensionless points of light.
Most of the stars shine with unwavering brilliance,
century after century. Sirius appears now exactly as it did to Moses, as it did
to Neanderthal man, as it did to the dinosaurs – if they ever bothered to look at
the night sky. Its brilliance has changed little during the entire history of
our Earth and will be the same a billion years from now.
But there are some stars – the so-called ‘novae,’ or
new stars – which through internal causes suddenly become celestial atomic
bombs. Such a star may explode so violently that it leaps a
hundred-thousand-fold in brilliance within a few hours. One night it may be
invisible to the naked eye; on the next, it may dominate the sky. If our Sun
became such a nova, Earth would melt to slag and puff into vapor in a matter of
minutes, and only the outermost of the planets would survive.
Novae are not uncommon; many are observed each year,
though few are near enough to be visible except through telescopes. They are
the routine, everyday disasters of the Universe.
Two or three times in every thousand years, however,
there occurs something which makes a mere nova as inconspicuous as a firefly at
noon. When a star becomes a supernova,
its brilliance may increase not by a hundred thousand but by a billion in the course of a few hours. The
last time such an event was witnessed by human eyes was in A.D. 1604; there was
another supernova in A.D. 1572 (so brilliant that it was visible in broad
daylight); and the Chinese astronomers recorded one in A.D. 1503. It is quite
possible that the Bethlehem
star was such a supernova, and if so one can draw some surprising conclusions.
We’ll assume that Supernova Bethlehem was about as
bright as the supernova of A.D. 1572 – often called ‘Tycho’s star,’ after the
great astronomer who observed it at the time. Since this star could be seen by
day, it must have been as brilliant as Venus. As we also know that a supernova
is, in reality, at least a hundred million times more brilliant than our own
Sun, a very simple calculation tells us how far away it must have been for its apparent brightness to equal that of
Venus.
It turns out that Supernova Bethlehem was more than
three thousand light years – or, if you prefer, 18 quadrillion miles – away. That
means that its light had been traveling for at least three thousand years before
it reached Earth and Bethlehem,
so that the awesome catastrophe of which it was the symbol took place five
thousand years ago, when the Great Pyramid was still fresh from the builders.
Let us, in imagination, cross the gulfs of space and
time and go back to the moment of the catastrophe. We might find ourselves
watching an ordinary star – a sun, perhaps, no different from our own. There
may have been planets circling it; we do not know how common planets are in the
scheme of the Universe, and how many suns have these small companions. But
there is no reason to think that they are rare, and many novae must be the
funeral pyres of worlds, and perhaps races, greater than ours.
There is no warning at all – only a steadily rising
intensity of the sun’s light. Within minutes the change is noticeable; within
an hour, the nearer worlds are burning. The star is expanding like a balloon,
blasting off shells of gas at a million miles an hour as it blows its outer
layers into space. Within a day, it is shining with such supernal brilliance
that it gives off more light than all the
other suns in the Universe combined. If it had planets, they are now no
more than flecks of flame in the still-expanding shells of fire. The
conflagration will burn for weeks before the dying star collapses back into quiescence.
But let us consider what happens to the light of the
nova, which moves a thousand times more swiftly than the blast wave of the
explosion. It will spread out into space, and after four or five years it will
reach the next star. If there are planets circling that star, they will suddenly
be illuminated by a second sun. It will give them no appreciable heat, but will
be bright enough to banish night completely, for it will be more than a
thousand times more luminous than our full Moon. All that light will come from
a single blazing point, since even from its nearest neighbor Supernova
Bethlehem would appear too small to show a disk.
Century after century, the shell of light will
continue to expand around its source. It will flash past countless suns and
flare briefly in the skies of their planets. Indeed, on the most conservative
estimate, this great new star must have shone over thousands of worlds before
its light reached Earth – and to all those worlds it appeared far, far brighter
than it did to the men it led to Judea.
For as the shell of light expanded, it faded also. Remember,
by the time it reached Bethlehem
it was spread over the surface of a sphere six thousand light-years across. A
thousand years earlier, when Homer was singing the song of Troy, the nova would
have appeared twice as brilliant to any watchers further upstream, as it were, to
the time and place of the explosion.
That is a strange thought; there is a stranger one to
come. For the light of Supernova Bethlehem is still flooding out through space;
it has left Earth far behind in the twenty centuries that have elapsed since
men saw it for the first and last time. Now that light is spread over a sphere
ten thousand light-years across and must be correspondingly fainter. It is
simple to calculate how bright the supernova must be to any beings who may be
seeing it now as a new star in their
skies. To them, it will still be far more brilliant than any other star in the
entire heavens, for its brightness will have fallen only by 50 per cent on its
extra two thousand years of travel.
At this very moment, therefore, the Stat of Bethlehem
may still be shining in the skies of countless worlds, circling far suns. Any
watchers on those worlds will see its sudden appearance and its slow fading,
just as the Magi did two thousand years ago when the expanding shell of light
swept past the Earth. And for thousands of years to come, as its radiance ebbs
out toward the frontiers of the Universe, Supernova Bethlehem will still have
power to startle all who see it, wherever – and whatever – they may be.
Astronomy, as nothing else can do, teaches men
humility. We know now that our Sun is merely an undistinguished member of a
vast family of stars, and no longer think of ourselves as being at the center
of creation. Yet it is strange to think that before its light fades away below
the limits of vision, we may have shared the Star of Bethlehem with the beings
of perhaps a million worlds – and that to many of them, nearer to the source of
explosion, it must have been a far more wonderful sight than ever it was to any
eyes on earth.
What did they make of it – and did it bring them good
tidings, or ill?
Vacation in Vacuum[2]
This essay was commissioned
by Holiday
magazine in 1953 – four years before Sputnik 1. At the time, most readers must have
thought that orbiting hotels were the wildest of fantasy, but now Barron Hilton
firmly expects to be running such establishments before the year 2001
dawns.
And talking of 2001 (as we
shall be) here is the original inspiration of the space-station sequence in the
movie; Stanley
Kubrick constructed the ‘Sky Grill,’ full-sized, at M-G-M’s Borehamwood
Studios.
I must confess that I now
have my doubts about the practicability – and stability – of the spherical
swimming pool; but a hollow cylindrical one could certainly be built, and would
be just as much fun.
When the United States and the U.S.S.R.
started building the first satellite stations, back in the 1960s, the idea that
they would one day become health resorts and embarkation points for spacebound
vacationers would have seemed slightly fantastic. Yet it was no more fantastic,
of course, than the fact that since the beginning of the century the human race
had deserted the sea and lifted its commerce into the air. If anyone had dared
to prophesy that miracle when the
Wright Brothers made their first nervous hop in 1903, he would have been
laughed to scorn. And even fifty years later, though there were many who
realized that space stations might have military and scientific uses, there
were very few who looked beyond these to the day when they would become part of
everyday life.
Well, perhaps that is a slight exaggeration. Even
today, relatively few people have actually been
to a space station, but there can be nobody who has not seen one with his own
eyes. If you live near the equator you have a fine selection to choose from:
you can see not only the outer stations but the close refueling satellites that
hug the edge of the atmosphere and are so near the Earth that the curve of the
planet hides them from observers at high latitudes. In the daytime they are
bright stars, easily visible when the sky is clear, sweeping from horizon to
horizon in a matter of minutes. And, of course, they move backward, from west
to east, because they race around their tight little orbits so much more
quickly than the Earth itself turns on its axis.
[…]
Let’s go up there into the shining darkness of space,
into that paradoxical world where intense heat and unimaginable cold exist
together, where dawn and dusk are separated by minutes, not by hours.
[…]
By the end of the twentieth century there were dozens
of military reconnaissance units, meteorological stations, and astronomical
observations circling the Earth at various distances, carrying crews of up to
twenty men in conditions almost as cramped as in the old-time submarines. They
were the first forerunners of the spacious orbital cities we have today – the
nuclei around which the later satellites were built, just as on Earth itself
great capitals once grew from ancient villages or fortified camps.
The ordinary space traveler sees only the inner
station – Space Station One – as he transfers from the Earth ferry rocket to
the liner that’s taking him to Mars or Venus. It’s the nearest of all the
satellites, a mere three hundred miles up – too close, therefore, to give one a
really good view of Earth. If you want to see the planet as a whole, you’ve got
to travel out to one of the more distant stations. We’ll start our tour,
therefore, more than ten thousand miles out, in the most luxurious of all the
satellites – Sky Hotel.
[…]
The hotel is in two sections – the part with gravity
and the part without. When you first see it from your approaching rocket,
you’ll think you’re about to land on the planet Saturn. Hanging there in space
ahead of you is a great ball, with a ring surrounding it but not touching it at
any point. The ball is motionless, while the ring slowly revolves.
When the pilot has jockeyed the rocket over to the
ball, you’ll realize just how big the hotel is. Your ship will seem like a toy
when it couples itself up to the mooring socket on the axis of the station and
the air locks are joined together so that you can go aboard. The hotel staff
will collect both you and your luggage, for most people are pretty helpless
under zero gravity for the first few hours. But, believe me, it’s an experience
worth getting used to.
Sky Hotel has, by ingenious design, managed to get
the best of both worlds. Most vacationers go up there to enjoy the fun and
games under zero-gee, but weightlessness is not so amusing when you want to eat
a meal or take a bath, and some people find it impossible to sleep under
free-fall conditions. Hence the dual-purpose design of the hotel. The central
hall contains the gymnasiums and that fantastic swimming pool we’ll be visiting
presently, while over in the ring are the bedrooms, lounges, and restaurant. As
the ring rotates, centrifugal force gives everyone inside it a feeling of
weight which can’t be distinguished from the real thing. It’s not so powerful,
though – at the outer rim of the hotel you’ll weigh only half as much as you
would on Earth.
[…]
Most of the hotel’s residents divide their time more
or less equally between the gee and the zero-gee parts – between the ring and
the ball, in other words. The kids are an exception. It’s a job luring them
away from weightlessness, even for meals, so they spend almost all their time
in the ball. There is a snack bar over there, where you can get drinks served
in plastic bulbs so that you can squirt the liquid straight into your mouth. That’s
the theory – and it works, too. But the kids usually prefer less efficient
methods, and promptly empty their bulbs into the air. It’s quite a sight
watching a budding space cadet chasing a ball of Coke as it drifts slowly from
point to point and eventually splatters messily on one of the walls.
Traveling between the stationary ball and the
spinning ring that surrounds it is another of the novelties of space-station
life. The trip is made in a kind of pressurized elevator cage, running around a
track on the inside of the ring. It’s a queer sensation, feeling your weight
ebb away as you move across to the ball and centrifugal force vanishes.
[…]
However, since there’s little point in going out into
space to indulge in terrestrial-type sports, most of the excess energy in Sky
Hotel is expended in the zero-gee rooms aboard the ball. The one thing that
nobody misses is a chance to do some flying – real flying, of the kind we’ve
all dreamed about at some time or another. You may feel a little foolish as you
fasten the triangular wings between your ankles and wrists and secure the free
ends to your belt. Certainly your first few strokes will start you turning
helplessly over and over in the air. But in a few hours you’ll be flying like a
bird – and much more effortlessly. By the way, the crash helmet that goes with
the wings is not just an ornament. It may prevent your knocking yourself out if
you get up too much speed and don’t notice how near the wall you are.
Some of the zero-gee ballets, with special lightning
effects, that the expert performers can execute are unbelievably beautiful,
like fairyland filmed in slow motion. Even if you’ve already seen them on TV, don’t
miss an opportunity to attend an actual performance at the hotel.
When you’ve earned your wings in the amusing series
of tests that entitles you to your ‘Spacehound’s Certificate,’ you’ll probably
want to take part in such sports as zero-gee basketball or three-dimensional
miniature golf. Many terrestrial games have been adapted, with interesting
variations, to conditions of weightlessness, but there are also dozens of
sports and tricks that have no counterpart on Earth.
For example, there’s the quite exhausting game you
can play where everyone puts on wings and the winner is the one who can collect
the largest number of scattered water drops into a single sphere – and bring it back to goal before his
opponents tear it to pieces.
Talking of water drops leads me, inevitably, to the
hotel’s most incredible novelty – its famous swimming pool. Any resemblance to
similarly described places on Earth is not merely coincidental – it’s
nonexistent.
When you go to the ‘pool’ you’ll find yourself in a
big spherical chamber about sixty feet across, almost filled by what is claimed
– probably correctly – to be the largest
single drop of water in existence. You won’t be particularly surprised to see
people swimming around and around inside the sphere, but what will astonish you is the sight of a
group in its center talking and laughing together and perhaps even taking
refreshments. Even in space, you’ll say to yourself, people still have to
breathe!
To settle the mystery, dive into the drop and swim
through it. When you’ve gone about twenty feet and are still some distance from
the center, you’ll break through another water surface and find yourself in a
hollow space about ten feet across, breathing ordinary air. Yes, you’re inside
a bubble! It can’t escape from the inside of the drop, because only when there
is an ‘up’ can bubbles rise in liquid. So the swimming pool is really a huge
hollow shell of water and you can sit quietly at the very center and watch your
friends sporting like fish around you.
[…]
When you’re tired of swimming, you can spend a good
many happy hours in the observation lounge, simply watching the Earth and
stars. There are no windows in the ring, because it would be rather
disconcerting to see the heavens around you revolting at such a rate. So you’ll
have to do all your stargazing from the nonrotating ball.
From ten thousand miles out, the Earth is just small
enough to fill your field of vision completely, and you can see everything
except the extreme polar regions. Even to the naked eye, it’s a source of
endless enchantment. In the nine hours that the hotel takes to complete its
orbit, you’ll see the Earth change from new to full and back again, going
through the phases that the Moon takes a whole month to complete. The sight of
the dawn down there, as the Sun comes blasting up through the incandescent
mists at the edge of the atmosphere and Earth grows swiftly from a hairline
crescent to a huge glowing disk, is something no amount of repetition can
stale.
When you’ve had your fill of gazing through the
observation windows, you’ll turn to the telescopes. Some of them can magnify up
to a thousand times, so you’ll feel that you’re hanging only ten miles above
the surface of the Earth. If there’s no cloud, it’s amazing how much minute
detail you can see. Towns and cities are easy; even single large buildings can
be detected under favorable conditions. But don’t believe anyone who tells you
that they’ve been able to see individual men! That’s only possible from the
inner satellites, a mere few hundred miles up.
It’s interesting to study the effect of these novel surroundings
on your companions. Human beings are incredibly adaptable, and for most of the
time the guests in Sky Hotel enjoy themselves in the same uninhibited way as if
they were down on Earth. But from time to time you’ll catch them looking
thoughtfully at the stars, realizing that this
is space, this is the Universe.
They’ll have become suddenly aware that the familiar Earth, with its gravity
and its air and its oceans, and its teeming, multitudinous life, is a freak, an
incredible rarity; 99.999999… per cent of the cosmos is emptiness and night.
That realization can affect people in two ways. It
can depress them when they think how puny man is against the Universe, or it
can exhilarate them when they consider his courage in attempting to conquer it.
Moving in almost exactly the same orbit as the hotel,
but fifty miles away from it, is the newest and largest of the space hospitals
– Haven IV. It’s often possible to arrange a trip across in one of the
low-powered rocket shuttles that ply between the orbits of the various
stations, and sometimes there are official conducted tours of the hospital. Most
of the patients on Haven are heart cases, recuperating under conditions where
physical effort is much less than on Earth and their weakened hearts haven’t
got to pump pounds of blood up and down the body twenty-four hours a day.
[…]
Besides the heart cases, the space hospitals
specialize in polio victims, as well as people who have lost their legs and
would be virtually helpless down on Earth. There are quite a number of legless
men working permanently on the space stations. Often they are more agile than
those who are not disabled – they haven’t so much useless mass to drag around!
Quite recently, Haven IV has started to deal with
severe burns. It doesn’t take much imagination to realize how treatment and
recuperation can be speeded when the patient can float freely in space and no
longer has to lie on his dressings.
[…]
You may feel rather superior to these lower
satellites as you look down upon them from your ten-thousand-mile-high eyrie.
But if you do, then remember that the outermost of all Earth’s man-made
moonlets are twelve thousand miles beyond you. I mean, of course, the three
relay stations which now carry all long-range TV and radio traffic of the
planet.
[…]
Sometimes you can thumb a lift on a shuttle up to one
of the relay stations. Out there, more than twenty thousand miles above the
Earth, you’ll really feel you’re on the frontier of space. But don’t forget
that this is only a tenth of the distance to our nearest neighbor, the Moon, and
much less than a thousandth of the distance to Mars or Venus, even at their
closest approach. So when you get back to Earth, don’t be too boastful about
your achievements – at least until you’ve made quite sure that there are no real spacehounds in the party.
More seriously, there’s one point you must watch when
you’re home again. Take things very
easily for the first few days. Remember, we’ve got a little thing called
gravity down here, and the tricks you can play in Sky Hotel won’t work so well
back on Earth. You can’t cross Fifth
Avenue, for instance, by stepping out at the two
hundredth floor of Planet
Tower and launching
yourself in an easterly direction. (Take my word for it – it’s been tried.) Even
in your own house, you may find yourself treating the stairs with quite
unjustified contempt, so this warning is by no means as superfluous as it
seems.
So You’re Going to Mars?
This
essay was written in 1952, long before the Mariner space probes gave us our
close-up glimpses of the tantalizing red planet. Nevertheless, most of the
concepts presented here are still quite valid, though we now know that Mars is
even more rugged than anticipated. In particular, the atmospheric pressure is so
low (about one-hundredth of Earth’s) that simple breathing masks will not give
sufficient protection; we will have to wear spacesuits.
Many
of the ideas in this article were worked out in much more detail in my novel The Sands of
Mars.
So you’re going to Mars? That’s
still quite an adventure – though I suppose that in another ten years no one
will think twice about it. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that the first ships
reached Mars scarcely more than half a century ago and that our colony on the
planet is less than thirty years old. (By the way, don’t use that word when you get there. Base,
settlement, or what you like – but not colony, unless you want to hear the ice
tinkling all around you.)
I suppose you’ve read all the
forms and tourist literature they gave you at the Department of
Extraterrestrial Affairs. But there’s a lot you won’t learn just by reading, so
here are some pointers and background information that may make your trip more
enjoyable. I won’t say it’s right up to date – things change so rapidly, and
it’s a year since I got back from Mars myself – but on the whole you’ll find it
pretty reliable.
Presumably you’re going just
for curiosity and excitement – because you want to see what life is like out on
the new frontier. It’s only fair, therefore, to point out that most of your
fellow passengers will be engineers, scientists, or administrators traveling to
Mars – some of them not for the first time – because they’ve got a job of work
to do. So whatever your achievements here on Earth, it’s advisable not to talk
too much about them, as you’ll be among people who’ve had to tackle much
tougher propositions. I won’t say that you’ll find them boastful: it’s simply
that they’ve got a lot to be proud of, and they don’t mind who knows it.
[…]
You’re probably wondering how
you can possibly manage on the weight allowance you’ve got. Well, it can be
done. The first thing to remember is that you don’t need to take any suits. There’s
no weather inside a spaceship; the temperature never varies more than a couple
of degrees over the whole trip, and it’s held at a fairly high value so that
all you’ll want is an ultra-lightweight tropical kit. When you get to Mars you’ll
buy what you need there and dump it when you return. The great thing to
remember is only carry the stuff you
actually need on the trip. I strongly advise you to buy one of the complete
travel kits – a store like Abercrombie & Fitch can supply the approved
outfits. They’re expensive, but will save you money on excess baggage charges.
Take camera by all means –
there’s a chance of some unforgettable shots as you leave Earth and when you
approach Mars. But there’s nothing to photograph on the voyage itself, and I’d
advise you to take all your pictures on the outward trip. You can sell a good camera
on Mars for five times its price here – and save yourself the cost of
freighting it home. They don’t mention that
in the official handouts.
[…]
So much for the
preliminaries; now some points about the trip itself. The ferry rocket will
probably leave from the New Guinea
field, which is about two miles above sea level on the top of the Orange Range.
People sometimes wonder why they chose such an out-of-the-way spot. That’s
simple: it’s on the equator, so the ship gets the full thousand-mile-an-hour boost
of the Earth’s spin as it takes off – and there’s the whole width of the
Pacific for jettisoned fuel tanks to fall into. And if you’ve ever heard a
spaceship taking off, you’ll understand why launching sites have to be a few
hundred miles from civilization.
Don’t be alarmed by anything
you’ve been told about the strain of blast-off. There’s really nothing to it if
you’re in good health – and you won’t be allowed inside a spaceship unless you
are. You just lie down on the acceleration couch, put in your earplugs, and
relax. It takes over a minute for the full thrust to build up, and by that time
you’re quite accustomed to it. You’ll have some difficulty in breathing,
perhaps – it’s never bothered me – but if you don’t attempt to move you’ll
hardly feel the increase of weight. What you will notice is the noise, which is slightly unbelievable. Still, it
lasts only five minutes, and by the end of that time you’ll be up in the orbit
and the motors will cut out. Don’t worry about your hearing; it will get back to
normal in a couple of hours.
[…]
Space Station One, which is
where the ferries and the liners meet to transfer their cargoes, takes just two
hours to make one circuit of the Earth. You’ll spend all your time in the
observation lounge: everyone does, no matter how many times they’ve been out in
space. I won’t attempt to describe that incredible view; I’ll merely remind you
that in the hundred and twenty minutes it takes the station to complete its
orbit you’ll see the Earth wax from a thin crescent to a gigantic, multicolored
disc, and then shrink again to a black shield eclipsing the stars. As you pass
over the night side you’ll see the lights of cities down there in the darkness,
like patches of phosphorescence. And the stars! You’ll realize that you’ve
never seen them before in your life.
But enough of these purple
passages; let’s stick to business. You’ll probably remain on Space Station One
for about twelve hours, which will give you plenty of opportunity to see how
you like weightlessness. It doesn’t take long to learn how to move around; the
main secret is to avoid all violent motions – otherwise you may crack your head
on the ceiling. Except, of course, that there isn’t a ceiling since there’s no
up or down anymore. At first you’ll find this confusing: you’ll have to stop
and decide which direction you want to move in, and then adjust your personal
reference system to fit. After a few days in space it will be second nature to
you.
Don’t forget that the station
is your last link with Earth. If you want to make final purchases, or leave
something to be sent home – do it then. You won’t have another chance for a
good many million miles. But beware of buying items that the station shop
assures you are ‘just the thing on Mars.’
[…]
If you’re on one of the
larger liners, there’ll be about a hundred other passengers and a crew of
perhaps twenty. You’ll get to know them all by the end of the voyage. There’s
nothing on Earth quite like the atmosphere of a spaceship. You’re a little,
self-contained community floating in vacuum millions of miles from anywhere,
kept alive in a bubble of plastic and metal. If you’re a good mixer, you’ll
find the experience very stimulating. But it has its disadvantages. The one
great danger of space flight is that some prize bore may get on the passenger
list – and short of pushing him out of the air lock there’s nothing anyone can
do about it.
[…]
Unlike the take-off of the
ferry rocket from Earth, the breakaway of the liner from its satellite orbit is
so gentle and protracted that it lacks all drama. When the loading and
instrument checks have been completed, the ship will uncouple from the Space
Station and drift a few miles away. You’ll hardly notice it when the atomic
drive goes on; there will be the faintest of vibrations and a feeble sensation
of weight. The ship’s acceleration is so small, in fact, that you’ll weigh only
a few ounces, which will scarcely interfere with your freedom of movement at
all. Its only effect will be to make things drift slowly to one end of the
cabin if they’re left lying around.
Although the liner’s
acceleration is so small that it will take hours to break away from Earth and head
out into space, after a week of continuous drive the ship will have built up a
colossal speed. Then the motors will be cut out and you’ll carry on under your
own momentum until you reach the orbit of Mars and have to start thinking about
slowing down.
Whether your weeks in space
are boring or not depends very much on you and your fellow passengers. Quite a
number of entertainments get organized on the voyage, and a good deal of money
is liable to change hands before the end of the trip. (It’s a curious fact, but
the crew usually seems to come out on top.) You’ll have plenty of time for
reading, and the ship will have a good library of microbooks. There will be
radio and TV contact with Earth and Mars for the whole voyage, so you’ll be
able to keep in touch with things – if you want to.
On my first trip, I spent a
lot of my time learning my way around the stars and looking at clusters and
nebulae through a small telescope I borrowed from the navigation officer. Even
if you’ve never felt the slightest interest in astronomy before, you’ll
probably be a keen observer before the end of the voyage. Having the stars all
around you – not merely overhead – is an experience you’ll never forget.
[…]
The braking period doesn’t
last very long, as the ship has lost a good deal of its speed in the climb
outward from the Sun. When it’s over you’ll be dropping down onto Phobos, the
inner moon of Mars, which acts as a natural space station about four thousand
miles above the surface of the planet. Though Phobos is only a jagged lump of
rock not much bigger than some terrestrial mountains, it’s reassuring to be in
contact with something solid again after so many weeks in space.
[…]
You’ll land, of course, at
Port Lowell: besides being the largest settlement on Mars it’s still the only
place that has the facilities for handling spaceships. From the air the plastic
pressure domes look like a cluster of bubbles – a very pretty sight when the
Sun catches them. Don’t be alarmed if one of them is deflated. That doesn’t
that there’s been an accident. The domes are let down at fairly frequent
intervals so that the envelopes can be checked for leaks. If you’re lucky you
may see one being pumped up – it’s quite impressive.
After two months in a
spaceship, even Port Lowell will seem a mighty metropolis. (Actually, I believe
its population is now well over twenty thousand.) You’ll find the people
energetic, inquisitive, forthright – and very friendly, unless they think
you’re trying to be superior.
It’s a good working rule
never to criticize anything you see on Mars. As I said before, they’re very
proud of their achievements – and after all you are a guest, even if a paying one.
[…]
You shouldn’t attempt to
leave the city until you’ve become quite accustomed to living in an
oxygen-rich, low-pressure atmosphere. You’ll have grown pretty well
acclimatized on the trip, because the air in the spaceship will have been
slowly adjusted to conditions on Mars. Outside the domes, the pressure of the
natural Martian atmosphere is about equal to that on the top of Mount Everest – and it contains practically no oxygen. So
when you go out you’ll have to wear a helmet, or travel in one of those
pressurized jeeps they call ‘sand fleas.’
[…]
Don’t attempt to imitate any
of the locals you may see walking around without oxygen gear. They’re
second-generation colonists and are used to the low pressure. They can’t breathe
the Martian atmosphere any more than you can, but like the old-time native
pearl divers they can make one lungful last for several minutes when necessary.
Even so, it’s a silly sort of trick and they’re not supposed to do it.
[…]
No doubt you’ll want to see as
much of Mars as you can during your stay. There are only two methods of
transport outside the cities – sand fleas for short ranges and aircraft for
longer distances. Don’t misunderstand me when I say ‘short ranges’ – a sand
flea with a full charge of power cells is good for a couple of thousand miles,
and it can do eighty miles an hour over good ground. Mars could never have been
explored without them. You can survey
a planet from space, but in the end someone with a pick and shovel has to do
the dirty work filling the map.
One thing that few visitors
realize is just how big Mars is. Although it seems small beside the Earth, its
land area is almost as great because so much of our planet is covered with
oceans. So it’s hardly surprising that there are vast regions that have never
been properly explored, particularly around the poles. Those stubborn people
who still believe that there was once an indigenous Martian civilization pin
their theories on these great blanks. Every so often you hear rumors of some wonderful
archaeological discovery in the wastelands, but nothing ever comes of it.
Personally, I don’t believe
there ever were any Martians – but
the planet is interesting enough for its own sake. You’ll be fascinated by the
plant life and the queer animals that manage to
live without oxygen, migrating each year from hemisphere to hemisphere, across
the ancient sea beds, to avoid the ferocious winter. The fight for survival on
Mars has been fierce, and evolution has produced some pretty odd results. Don’t
go investigating any Martian life forms unless you have a guide, or you may get
some unpleasant surprises. Some of the plants are so hungry for heat that they
may try to wrap themselves around you.
God and Einstein
[complete]
For some years I have been worried by the following
astro-theological paradox. It is hard to believe that no one has ever thought
of it, yet I have never seen it discussed anywhere.
One of the most firmly established facts of modern
physics, and the basis of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, is that the velocity
of light is the speed limit of the material universe. No object, no signal, no influence, can travel any faster than
this. Please don’t ask why this should be; the Universe just happens to be
built that way. Or so it seems at the moment.
But light take not millions, but billions, of years to cross even the part of Creation we can
observe with out telescopes. So: if God obeys the laws He apparently
established, at any given time He can have control over only an infinitesimal
fraction of the Universe. All hell might (literally?) be breaking loose ten
light-years away, which is a mere stone’s throw in interstellar space, and the
bad news would take at least ten years to reach Him. And then it would be
another ten years, at least, before He could get there to do anything about it….
You may answer that this is terribly naïve – that God
is already ‘everywhere.’ Perhaps so, but that really comes to the same thing as
saying that His thoughts, and His influence, can travel at an infinite
velocity.[3]
And in this case, the Einstein speed limit is not absolute; it can be broken.
The implications of this are profound. From the human
viewpoint, it is no longer absurd – though it may be presumptuous – to hope
that we may one day have knowledge of the most distant parts of the universe. The
snail’s pace of the velocity of light need not be an eternal limitation, and
the remotest galaxies may one day lie within our reach.
But perhaps, on the other hand, God Himself is
limited by the same laws that govern the movements of electrons and protons,
stars and spaceships. And that may be the cause of our troubles.
He’s coming just as quickly as He can, but there’s
nothing that even He can do about that maddening 186,000 miles a second.
It’s anybody’s guess whether He’ll be here in time.
When the
Aliens Come
The first encounter between Earthman
and Alien is one of the oldest and most hackneyed themes of science-fiction.
Indeed, it has now become such a cliché that ‘take me to your leader’ jokes are
perfectly familiar even to those benighted souls who have never read a word of
s.f. in their lives.
How odd, therefore, that there seem to
be so few serious factual discussions
of this subject. True, there have been essays without number on the
possibilities of the extraterrestrial life and the ways we might communicate
with it, but most of them stop abruptly at the really interesting point. The
astronomers and biologists, and even the philosophers and theologians, have all
had their say in the last few years. But the sociologists and politicians have
left it to the science-fiction writers – and this at the very time when the
subject is moving out of the realm of fantasy.
[...]
The first problem we have to face is
our total ignorance of the nature of extraterrestrials (ETs) – we do not even
know if they exist! If they don’t, of course, that is the end of the matter –
but even if this is true, we can never be
sure. And the idea that we are
the only intelligent creatures in a cosmos of a hundred million galaxies is so
preposterous that there are very few astronomers today who would take it
seriously.
It is safest to assume, therefore,
that They are out there and to
consider the manner in which this fact may impinge upon human society. It could
come in ways as undramatic as the deciphering of an ancient papyrus, or as
shattering as a crash landing, with ray guns ablaze, on the White House lawn.
The most probable scenario, at least
during the foreseeable future, might be called ‘Discovery Without Contact.’ By
this I mean that we obtain unequivocal proof that intelligent ETs exist (or have
existed), but in a manner that excludes communication.
Such a proof might be obtained from archaeology
or geology. The discovery of a fossilized transistor radio in an undisturbed
coal bed, preferably accompanied by skeletons that did not fit into any
evolutionary tree, would be convincing evidence that our planet was once
visited from space. Ancient legends, wall paintings, or other works of art
might also record such visits in historic times; unfortunately, this type of
evidence can only be circumstantial – it can never be conclusive.
Shklovskii and Sagan’s fascinating
book Intelligent Life in the Universe
reproduces some three-thousand-year-old Babylonian seals which, together with
their associated legends, can very easily be taken to depict encounters between
men and non-men; parts of the Bible have been interpreted in the same manner. However,
the mythmaking abilities of the human mind are so unlimited that it would be
very foolish to accept these items as proof of anything. After all, what would
intelligent aliens make of a Superman comic strip?
No; in a matter as important as this,
the only acceptable evidence would be hardware. About twenty years ago, in a
short story “The Sentinel” (which Stanley Kubrick later used as the basis of
<i>2001: A Space Odyssey</i>), I suggested that the best place to
look for such evidence would be on a relatively stable and changeless world
like the Moon. On Earth, with its incessant weather and geological upheavals,
no extraterrestrial artifact would survive for very long, though this is no
excuse for not keeping our eyes open. The reason why space hardware has never
been discovered may simply be because no archaeologist ever dreamed of looking
for it.
Although the philosophical – and sensational
– impact of such a discovery would be enormous, after the initial excitement
had ebbed the world would probably continue on its way much as before. Once he
had read a few Sunday supplements and watched a few TV specials, the proverbial
man in the street would say: ‘This is all very interesting, but it happened a
long time ago and hasn’t anything to do with me. Sure, They could come back one
day, but there are plenty of more important things to worry about.’ And he
would be quite right.
Almost every field of scientific
inquiry, however, would be profoundly affected. If it appeared that the
visitors came from one of the other worlds in our own Solar System – Mars, for
example – this would obviously be a great stimulus to planetary exploration,
but it would also start us searching much farther afield.
Two intelligent races in the
same Solar System, even if they were separated by millions of years of time,
would provide virtually conclusive proof that higher civilizations were very
common throughout the Universe. This would immediately stimulate really
determined attempts to detect signals from other star systems.
Little more than a decade ago, the
astronomers suddenly realized, to their considerable surprise, that our radio
technology has advanced to the point where we can start talking seriously about
interstellar communication. And if, after only fifty years, we have reached such a level of
development, what might older civilizations have achieved?
Scattered among the stars there may be
radio beacons and transmitters of unimaginable power; the British cosmologist
Fred Hoyle has expressed the view that there may be a kind of Galactic communications
network, linking thousands or millions of worlds. Within a very few centuries,
we may be clever enough to plug ourselves into the circuit; it may take us a
little longer to understand what the other subscribers are saying. (Conceivably,
‘Get off the line!’)
The possibilities opened up even by
one-way communication (passive eavesdropping) are almost unlimited. The signals
would certainly contain visual material – not necessarily real-time TV – which it
would be rather easy to reconstruct. And then, across the light-years, we would
be able to look at other worlds and other races...
Now this is a situation far more
exciting than the discovery of fossil artifacts. We would be dealing not with
prehistory, but with news – though news
that had been slightly delayed in transit. If the signals came from the very
closest stars, they would have left their transmitters only five or ten years
ago; a more likely time lag would be a few centuries. In any event, we would be
listening to civilizations still in existence, not studying the relics of
vanished cultures.
The things we could learn might change
our own society beyond recognition. It would be as if the America of Lincoln’s
time could tune into the TV programs of today; though there would be much that
could not be understood, there would also be clues that could leapfrog whole
technologies into the future. (Ironically enough, the commercials would contain
some of the most valuable information!) Nineteenth-century viewers would see that
heavier-than-air machines were possible, and simple observation would reveal
the principles of their design. The still unimagined uses of electricity would
be demonstrated (the telephone, the electric light...), and this would enough
to set scientists on the right track. For knowing that a thing can be done is more than half the
battle.
As signals from the stars could be
received only by nations possessing very large radio telescopes, there would be
the opportunity – and the temptation – to keep them secret. Knowledge is the most
precious of all commodities, and it is a strange thought that the balance of
power may one day be shifted by a few micromicrowatts collected from the depths
of space. Yet it should no longer surprise us; for who dreamed, fifty years
ago, that the faint flicker of dying atoms in a physics lab would change the
course of history?
Glimpses of supercivilizations could
have either stimulating or stultifying effects on our society. If the technological
gulf was not too great to be bridged, and the programs we intercepted contained
hints and clues that we could understand, we would probably rise to the
challenge. But if we found ourselves in the position of Neanderthalers
confronted with New York City, the psychological shock could be so great that
we might give up the struggle. This appears to have happened on our own world
from time to time, when primitive races have come into contact with more
advanced ones. We will have a good chance of studying this phenomenon in a very
few years, when communications satellites start beaming our TV programs into such places as the Amazon jungle. This is the
last century during which widely disparate cultures will exist on Earth;
would-be students of astrosociology should make the most of their opportunity
before it vanishes forever. And no one will be surprised to hear that Margaret
Mead is intensely interested in space flight...
[...]
I suspect that once we had heard
voices echoing between the stars, it would not be long before curiosity – or egotism
– made us join the conversation. However, the task of framing suitable replies
might be difficult. Naturally, we would present ourselves in the best possible light,
and the temptation to gloss over unflattering aspects of human history and behavior
would be considerable. Also – who would speak for man? It is easy to imagine
our current ideologies proclaiming their rival merits to the heavens, and even
a supercivilization might well be baffled by propaganda blasts based on the
teachings of Chairman Mao.
Perhaps fortunately, the power and the
resources needed to beam a profile of Homo sapiens across interstellar space
are so great that a global, cooperative effort would be needed. Then, for the
first time, mankind might speak with a single voice; and the problem of
compiling the program might induce a certain humility.
After that, there would come the long
wait for the answer. In the unlikely event that there is a civilization
circling the very nearest star – Proxima Centauri – we could not receive a
reply in less than eight years. It is more probable that the delay would be
measured in decades, so any two-way conversation would be distinctly tedious. They
would, in fact, be long-term projects, with scientists receiving in their old
age answers to questions they had asked in their youth.
Despite its unavoidable slowness, such
conversation-without-contact would, over the centuries, have enormous and
perhaps decisive effects upon human society. Quite apart from the technological
leapfrogging already mentioned, it could produce knowledge of different races,
patterns of thought, and political systems that would completely change our
philosophical and religious views. Are good and evil man-made concepts? Do
other races have gods, and of what nature? Is death universal? These are a few
of the questions we might ask of the stars, and some of the answers might not
be to our liking.
Yet perhaps the most important result
of such contacts might be the simple proof that other intelligent races do
exist. Even if our cosmic conversations never rise above the ‘Me Tarzan – You Jane’
level, we would no longer feel so alone in an apparently hostile universe. And,
above all, knowledge that other beings had safely passed their nuclear crisis
would give us renewed hope for our own future. It would help to dispel the
present nagging doubts about the survival value of intelligence. We have, as
yet, no definite proof that too much brain, like too much armour, is not one of
those unfortunate evolutionary accidents that leads to the annihilation of its
possessors.
If, however, this dangerous gift can
be turned to advantage, then all over the Universe there must be races that
have been gathering knowledge, and perfecting their technologies, for periods
of time that may be measured in millions of years. Anything that is
theoretically possible, and is worth doing, will have been achieved. Among those
achievements will be the crossing of interstellar space.
[...]
Now although everything that is conceivable
will occur at least once, in our Galaxy of a hundred billion suns, some of these
categories seem more likely than others. The insanely malevolent invaders beloved
by the horror comics have perhaps the least plausibility – if only they would
have destroyed themselves long before they got to us. Any race intelligent
enough to conquer interstellar space must first have conquered its own inner
demons.
Moreover, there seem few grounds for
cosmic conflict, even if it were technically possible. It is hard to see what
attractions our world could offer visitors from space; since their physical
forms and requirements would be totally different from ours, it is very
unlikely that they would be able to live here. There are no material objects –
no conceivable treasures or spices or jewels or exotic drugs – valuable enough
to justify the conquest of a world. Anything we possess, they could manufacture easily enough at home. For imagine what our chemists will have done, a thousand
years from now.
There may, of course, be entities who
collect Solar Systems as a child may collect stamps. If this happened to us, we
might never be aware of it. What do the inhabitants of a beehive know of their
keeper?
That may be an analogy worth pursuing.
Men do not interfere with bees – or wasps – unless they have good reasons: as
far as possible, they prefer to leave them alone. Though we possess no better
weapons than 100-megaton bombs, we are not entirely defenceless, and even an advanced
supercivilization might think twice about tangling with us.
If they were desperate – if, for
example, they were the last survivors of an ancient race, whose mobile worldlet
had almost exhausted its supplies after aeons of voyaging – they might be
tempted to make a fresh home in our Solar System. But even in that case,
cooperation would be to their advantage – and to ours. Since they would
probably be able to transmute any element into any other, there is no reason
why they should covet Earth. The barren Moon and the drifting slag heaps of the
asteroid belt would provide all the raw materials they needed – and the Sun,
all the energy. Our planet intercepts only one part in two billion of the
radiation pouring from the Sun, and we actually utilize only a minute fraction
of that. There is matter and energy enough in the Solar System for many
civilizations, for ages to come.
Unfortunately, our record so far has
not shown much inclination for peaceful coexistence. If such writers as Robert
Ardrey are correct, much of human (and animal) behavior is determined by the
concept of ‘territoriality.’ The landowner who places a sign on a piece of
private wilderness announcing that ‘Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted’ would then
speak for his entire species. If some inoffensive visitors began to colonize the
frozen outer moon of Jupiter, there would be angry voices proclaiming it sacred
soil, and retired generals would warn us to keep our lasers dry, and not to
fire until we can see the greens of their eyes.
All of which leads to a conclusion
that may not be very original but whose importance cannot be overstressed. Everyone
recognizes that our present racial, political, and international troubles are
symptoms of a sickness which must be cured before we can survive on our own
planet – but the stakes may be even greater than that.
Though it is impossible to guard against
all the eventualities that the future may bring, if we can learn to live with
ourselves we will at least improve our chances of living with aliens. And that
word ‘ourselves’ should be interpreted in the widest possible context – to embrace,
as far as practical, all intelligent creatures
on this planet. At the moment, in a paroxysm of greed and folly, we have
virtually exterminated the largest animal this world has ever seen. Only a few
eccentrics have felt any twinges of conscience over the fact that the brain of
a blue whale is larger than a man’s, so that we do not know what kind of entity
we have really destroyed.
It is true that our aggressive
instincts, inherited from the predatory apes who were our ancestors, have made
us masters of this planet and have already propelled us into space. Without
those instincts, we might have perished long ago; they have served us well. But,
to quote the ruler of Camelot, ‘The old order changeth, giving place to new... Lest
one good custom should corrupt the world.’
We have the intelligence to change, or
at least to control, the atavistic urges programmed into our behavior. Though
it may seem a paradox, and a denial of all past history, gentleness and tolerance
may yet prove to have the greatest survival value, when we move out into the
cosmic stage.
If this is true, let us hope that we
have time to cultivate these virtues. For the hour is very late, and no one can
guess how many strange eyes and minds are already turned upon the planet Earth.
[1] One of Arthur’s most famous short stories, first
published in Infinity Science Fiction,
November 1955, later reprinted in many of his collections, for instance The Other Side of the Sky (1958), The Nine Billion Names of God (1967) and
The Best of Arthur C. Clarke,
1937-1971 (1973), and countless anthologies, including The Hugo Winners (1962), ed. Isaac Asimov (1956, Best Short Story).
Online
text.
[2] This and the next essay/story should be read as
companion pieces to “Journey by Earthlight”. For more information on this
trinity of tourist brochures, see note 4 in the selection of quotes from The
Challenge of the Spaceship (1959).
[3] Cf. “The Challenge of the Spaceship” from the eponymous
collection (1959):
But if the
Universe does hold species so greatly in advance of our own, then why have they
never visited Earth? There is one very simple answer to this question. Let us
suppose that such races exist: let us even suppose that, never having heard of
Einstein, they can pass from one end of the Galaxy to the other as quickly as
they wish.
That will help
them less than one might think. In ten minutes, a man may walk along a beach –
but in his whole lifetime he could not examine every grain of sand upon it. For
all that we know, there may be fleets of survey ships diligently charting and
recharting the Universe. Even making the most optimistic assumptions, they
could scarcely have visited our world in the few thousand years of recorded
history.
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