Arthur Clarke - Earthlight

Clouds had come up over the sun. They were black and ragged, their edges flame-fringed as the sunlight spilled past them. Once again, Sadler marveled at the skill with which these images—for they could be nothing else—were projected on the dome. No actual thunderstorm could have seemed more realistic, and when the first rumble rolled round the sky he did not hesitate to look for shelter. Even if the streets had not already emptied themselves, he would have guessed that the organizers of this storm were going to omit none of the details…

The little sidewalk cafe was crowded with other refugees when the initial drops came down, and the first fiery tongue of lightning licked across the heavens. Sadler could never see lightning without counting the seconds before the thunder peal. It came when he had got to “Six,” making it two kilometers away. That, of course, would put it well outside the dome, in the soundless vacuum of space. Oh well, one had to allow some artistic license, and it wasn’t fair to quibble over points like this.

Thicker and heavier came the rain, more and more continuous the flashes. The roads were running with water, and for the first time Sadler became aware of the shallow gutters which, if he had seen them before, he had dismissed without a second thought. It was not safe to take anything for granted here; you had to keep stopping and asking yourself “What function does this serve—What’s it doing here on the Moon? Is it even what I think it is?” Certainly, now he came to consider the matter, a gutter was as unexpected a thing to see in Central City as a snow plow. But perhaps even that—

Sadler turned to his closest neighbor, who was watching the storm with obvious admiration.

“Excuse me,” he said, “but how often does this sort of thing happen?”

“About twice a day—lunar day, that is,” came the reply. “It’s always announced a few hours in advance, so that it won’t interfere with business.”

“I don’t want to be too inquisitive,” continued Sadler, fearing that was just what he was, “but I’m surprised at the trouble you’ve gone to. Surely all this realism isn’t necessary?”

“Perhaps not, but we like it. We’ve got to have some rain, remember, to keep the place clean and deal with the dust. So we try to do it properly.”

If Sadler had any doubts on that score, they were dispelled when the glorious double rainbow arched out of the clouds. The last drops spattered on the sidewalk; the thunder dwindled away to an angry, distant mutter. The show was over, and the glistening streets of Central City began to fill with life once more.

Sadler remained in the cafe for a meal, and after a little hard bargaining managed to get rid of some terrestrial currency at only a trifle below the market rate. The food, somewhat to his surprise, was excellent. Every bit must have been synthesized or grown in the yeast and chlorella tanks, but it had been blended and processed with great skill. The trouble with Earth, Sadler mused, was that it could take food for granted, and seldom gave the matter the attention it deserved. Here, on the other hand, food was not something that a bountiful Nature, with a little prompting, could be relied upon to provide. It had to be designed and produced from scratch, and since the job had to be done, someone had seen that it was done properly. Like the weather, in fact…

It was time he moved. The last mail for Earth would be cleared in two hours, and if he missed it Jeannette would not get his letter for almost a week of Earth time. She had already been in suspense long enough.

He pulled the unsealed letter from his pocket, and read it through again for any final amendments.

“Jeannette, my dearest,

“I wish I could tell you where I am, but I’m not allowed to say. It wasn’t my idea, but I’ve been chosen for a special job and I’ve got to make the best of it. I’m in good health, and though I can’t contact you directly, any letters you send to the Box Number I gave you will reach me sooner or later.

“I hated being away on our anniversary, but believe me there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. I hope you received my present safely—and I hope you liked it. It took me a long time to find that necklace, and I won’t tell you how much it cost!

“Do you miss me very badly? God, how I wish I was home again! I know you were hurt and upset when I left, but I want you to trust me and to understand that I couldn’t tell you what was happening. Surely you realize that I want Jonathan Peter as much as you do. Please have faith in me, and don’t think that it was because of selfishness, or because I don’t love you, that I acted as I did. I had very good reasons, which one day I’ll be able to tell you.

“Above all, don’t worry, and don’t be impatient. You know that I’ll get back as soon as I can. And I promise you this— when I’m home again, we’ll go ahead. I wish I knew how soon that would be!

“I love you, my darling—don’t ever doubt that. This is a tough job, and your faith in me is the one thing that keeps me going.”

He read the letter with great care, trying for the moment to forget all that it meant to him, and to regard it as a message that a complete stranger might have written. Did it give too much away? He did not believe so. It might be indiscreet, but there was nothing in it that revealed his location or the nature of his work.

He sealed the envelope, but put no name or address on it. Then he did something that was, strictly speaking, a direct violation of his oath. He enclosed the letter in another envelope which he addressed, with a covering note, to his lawyer in Washington. “Dear George,” he wrote, “You’ll be surprised to see where I am now. Jeannette doesn’t know, and I don’t want her to worry. So please address the enclosed to her and post it in the nearest mailbox. Treat my present location as absolutely confidential, I’ll explain it all one day.”

George would guess the truth, but he could keep secrets just as well as anyone in Central Intelligence. Sadler could think of no other fool-proof way of getting his letter to Jeannette, and he was prepared to take the slight risk for his peace of mind— and for hers.

He asked the way to the nearest mailbox (they were hard to find in Central City) and slid the letter down the chute. In a couple of hours it would be on the way to Earth; by this time tomorrow, it would have reached Jeannette. He could only hope that she would understand—or, if she could not understand, would suspend judgment until they met again.

There was a paper rack beside the mailbox, and Sadler purchased a copy of the Central News. He still had several hours before the monorail left for the Observatory, and if anything interesting was going on in town the local paper would presumably tell him all about it.

The political news received such little space that Sadler wondered if a mild censorship was in force. No one would have realized that there was a crisis if he went by the headlines alone; it was necessary to search through the paper to find the really significant items. Low down on page two, for example, was a report that a liner from Earth was having quarantine trouble off Mars and was not being allowed to land—while another on Venus was not being allowed to take off. Sadler was fairly sure that the real trouble was political rather than medical; the Federation was simply getting tough.

On page four was a still more thought-provoking piece of news, A party of prospectors had been arrested on some remote asteroid in the vicinity of Jupiter. The charge, it seemed, was a violation of space-safety regulations. Sadler suspected that the charge was phony—and that so were the prospectors. Central Intelligence had probably lost some of its agents.