Arthur Clarke - The Last Theorem

But he was there! On the moon! With his dearly beloved wife and son, and on what might be his dearly beloved daughter’s happiest day ever!

Although the man-made atmosphere in the tunnels was at only about half the pressure of sea-level Earth, it had been considerably oxygen-enriched. That was more important to the balloonatic who was Natasha’s opponent, Piper Dugan, than to herself, although in the moon’s one-sixth gravity he still needed a capacity of less than thirty cubic meters of hydrogen to lift him. He was, as it happened, Australian. As he entered, with three assistants on the ropes to make sure the machine didn’t get away, his streamlined hydrogen cylinder floated overhead.

As Dugan entered, an invisible orchestra played what the program told Ranjit was Australia’s national anthem, “Advance Australia Fair,” and most of the audience on the far side of the tube went mad. “Uh-oh,” Myra whispered into Ranjit’s ear. “I don’t think there are enough Sri Lankans here to equal that for Tashy.”

There weren’t, to be sure, but there was a big contingent from next-door India, and an even bigger one from people of any nationality who just happened to give their affection to a young girl from a tiny island. When Natasha came in to take her place, she had her own single assistant, this one carrying what looked like a bicycle without wheels but with flimsy, almost gossamer-like wings. There was music for her, too—if it was the Sri Lankan anthem, that was news to Ranjit, who hadn’t known there was one—but it was almost drowned out by the yells of the spectators on her side of the tube. The yelling kept up while the handlers attached the racers to their machines—Piper Dugan suspended from his hydrogen tank, with his hands and feet free to pedal, Natasha seated at a forty-five-degree angle on the saddle of her sky-bike.

The music stopped. The yelling dwindled away. There was a moment of near silence…and then the sharp crack of the starter’s pistol.

At first Dugan’s blimp surged horizontally forward while Natasha’s sky-bike dropped half a dozen meters before she could get it up to speed.

Then she began to overtake her competitor.

It was a neck-and-neck race almost to the end of the stadium, with both flyers being loudly cheered by everybody—and not just the handful of spectators in the tube but by the tens and hundreds of millions watching wherever in the solar system a human being possessed a screen.

Twenty meters from the finish line Natasha passed her opponent. When she crossed the line, it was no longer even close, and the howling, screaming, and shouting noises of the eighteen hundred spectators in the tube was quite the loudest sound the moon had heard in many a long year.

The trip back to Earth was quite as long and quite as restricted as the journey up, but at least they had Natasha with them this time—and Natasha had her rewards of victory.

Those were quite impressive, when you added them up. It seemed that her personal screen never darkened, with messages of congratulations from basically everyone she knew, as well as a very large number of people she didn’t. The presidents of Russia, China, and the United States were among her well-wishers, not to mention the leaders of nearly every other country in the United Nations. And Dr. Dhatusena Bandara on behalf of Pax per Fidem, and just about every one of her old teachers and friends, and parents of friends. And the ones she really cared about, too, such as Beatrix Vorhulst and her whole domestic staff. And that is without mentioning the ones who wanted something from her—news programs seeking interviews, representatives of several dozen movements and charities begging for an endorsement. Not least, the International Olympic Committee itself was promising their new champion a place in the planned solar-sail spacecraft race, to be held as soon as enough viable solar-sail spaceships existed in LEO and could be spared from the urgent work of settling the solar system. “Now, that’s because they’re getting more pressure from the big three, I’ll bet,” Myra informed her family. “They want to get everything going at once for their own purposes.”

Her husband patted her shoulder. “And what purposes are those?” he asked tolerantly. “According to you, they already own just about everything.”

Myra wrinkled her nose at him. “You’ll see,” she said, though what it was he would see she did not say.

They were nearly to the upper Van Allen before the volume of calls dropped low enough for their traveling companions to catch up on some of their own neglected calls home. This time there were sixteen others sharing their capsule, two wealthy Bulgarian families, though what their wealth came from Ranjit had not been quite able to identify, and a handful of almost as wealthy Canadians. (In their case, the cash cow was petroleum from the Athabascan tar sands.) Ranjit felt an obligation to apologize to their fellow passengers for Natasha’s hogging of the communications circuits. They were having none of that, though. “Bless her,” said the oldest of the Canadian women. “Things like this don’t come often in a young girl’s life. Anyway, the news channels stayed open. Mostly that rash of new flying saucer stories, but did you hear about Egypt and Kenya?”

The Subramanians had not, and when they did, they were as delighted as any other. Kenya and Egypt had not only agreed on fairly sharing Nile water, but both countries, by a suddenly called plebiscite, had voted to join the transparency compact voluntarily.

“But that’s very good!” Ranjit said.

However, just then the shrill radiation warnings sounded and it was time for them to get into the shelter once more.

Ranjit sighed and led the way, followed by Natasha in conversation with one of the Canadian girls, and his wife, with Robert by the hand.

It took several minutes for all twenty of them to check out their bunks, with the warning whistle sounding all the time. And while Myra was fluffing up their pitiful excuse for a pillow, she stopped, looked around, and then demanded, “Where’s Robert?”

The answer came from one of the Canadians. “He was standing by the door a minute ago,” she said.

She didn’t have to say anything more. Ranjit was already out of that door himself, shouting Robert’s name above the screeching warnings. It didn’t take him long to find his son, interestedly gazing out of the window at the polychrome blur that was the Van Allen belt, and not even that long to drag him back inside the shelter, slamming the door behind them. “He’s all right,” he reassured his family—and the others, all worriedly gathered around the door together as well. “I asked him what the hell he thought he was doing, and he just said ‘fish.’”

Among all the sounds of amused relief it was the Canadian grandmother who pursed her lips. “Was he saying he thought he saw a fish?” she asked. “Because it was on the news that other people have seen things from the Skyhook—metallic sorts of things, kind of pointy at both ends. I guess you could say that might look like a fish.”

“The same things they’ve been claiming people saw all over,” her son-in-law confirmed. “I thought it was all just another of those crazy things people get themselves into, but I don’t know. I guess it’s possible they could be real.”

And at that same time those quite real Nine-Limbeds in their little canoe-shaped craft were having a great debate.

The decision to turn off the vision-deflecting shields so these Earth primitives could actually see them had seemed like a good idea at the time. Having done it, the Nine-Limbeds were all trying to talk at once over the tight-beam network that allowed them to communicate without being overheard by the humans on the ground. And there was only one subject for discussion: Had they done the right thing?