Arthur Clarke: The Songs of Distant Earth

“We appreciate your offer, Commander Lorenson; please express our thanks to Captain Bey.

“But we do not need any time to consider it. Whatever happens, Kumar will be lost to us forever.

“Even if you succeed — and as you say, there is no guarantee — he will awaken in a strange world, knowing that he will never see his home again and that all those he loved are centuries dead. It does not bear thinking of. You mean well, but that would be no kindness to him.

“We know what he would have wished and what must be done. Give him back to us. We will return him to the sea he loved.”

There was nothing more to be said. Loren felt both an overwhelming sadness and a vast relief.

He had done his duty. It was the decision he had expected.

Now the little kayak would never be completed; but it would make its first and its last voyage.

Until sunset, it had lain at the water’s edge, lapped by the gentle waves of the tideless sea. Loren was moved, but not surprised, to see how many had come to pay their last eespects. All Tarna was here, but many had also come from all over South Island — and even from North. Though some, perhaps, had been drawn by morbid curiosity — for the whole world had been shocked by the uniquely spectacular accident — Loren had never seen such a genuine outpouring of grief. He had not realized that the Lassans were capable of such deep emotion, and in his mind he savoured once again a phrase that Mirissa had found, searching the Archives for consolation: ‘Little friend of all the world’. Its origin was lost, and no one could guess what long-dead scholar, in what century, had saved it for the ages to come.

Once he had embraced them both with wordless sympathy, he had left Mirissa and Brant with the Leonidas family, gathered with numerous relatives from both islands. He did not want to meet any strangers, for he knew what many of them must be thinking. “He saved you — but you could not save him.’ That was a burden he would carry for the rest of his life.

He bit his lip to check the tears that were not appropriate for a senior officer of the greatest starship ever built and felt one of the mind’s defence mechanisms come to his rescue. At moments of deep grief, sometimes the only way to prevent loss of control is to evoke some wholly incongruous — even comic — image from the depths of memory.

Yes — the universe had a strange sense of humour. Loren was almost forced to suppress a smile; how Kumar would have enjoyed the final joke it had played on him!

“Don’t be surprised,” Commander Newton had warned as she opened the door of the ship’s morgue and a gust of icy, formalin-tainted air rolled out to meet them. “It happens more often than you think. Sometimes it’s a final spasm — almost like an unconscious attempt to defy death. This time, it was probably caused by the loss of external pressure and the subsequent freezing.”

Had it not been for the crystals of ice defining the muscles of the splendid young body, Loren might have thought that Kumar was not merely sleeping but lost in blissful dreams.

For in death, the Little Lion was even more male than he had been in life.

And now the sun had vanished behind the low hills to the west, and a cool evening breeze was rising from the sea. With scarcely a ripple, the kayak slipped into the water, drawn by Brant and three other of Kumar’s closest friends. For the last time Loren glimpsed the calm and peaceful face of the boy to whom he owed his life.

There had been little weeping until now, but as the four swimmers pushed the boat slowly out from the shore, a great wail of lamentation rose from the assembled crowd. Now Loren could no longer contain his tears and did not care who saw them.

Moving strongly and steadily under the powerful drive of its four escorts, the little kayak headed out to the reef. The quick Thalassan night was already descending as the craft passed between the two flashing beacons that marked the channel to the open sea. It vanished beyond them and for a moment was hidden by the white line of breakers foaming lazily against the outer reef.

The lamentation ceased; everyone was waiting. Then there was a sudden flare of light against the darkling sky, and a pillar of fire rose out of the sea. It burned cleanly and fiercely, with scarcely any smoke; how long it lasted, Loren never knew, for time had ceased on Tarna.

Then, abruptly, the flames collapsed; the crown of fire shrank back into the sea. All was darkness; but for a moment only.

As fire and water met, a fountain of sparks erupted into the sky. Most of the embers fell back upon the sea, but others continued to soar upward until they were lost from view.

And so, for the second time, Kumar Leonidas ascended to the stars.

The lifting of the last snowflake should have been a joyful occasion; now it was merely one of sombre satisfaction. Thirty thousand kilometres above Thalassa, the final hexagon of ice was jockeyed into position, and the shield was complete.

For the first time in almost two years, the quantum drive was activated, though at minimum power. Magellan broke away from its stationary orbit, accelerating to test the balance and the integrity of the artificial iceberg it was to carry out to the stars. There were no problems; the work had been well done. This was a great relief to Captain Bey, who had never been able to forget that Owen Fletcher (now under reasonably strict surveillance on North Island) had been one of the shield’s principal architects. And he wondered what Fletcher and the other exiled Sabras had thought when they watched the dedication ceremony.

It had begun with a video retrospective showing the building of the freezing plant and the lifting of the first snowflake. Then there had been a fascinating, speeded-up space ballet showing the great blocks of ice being manoeuvred into place and keyed into the steadily growing shield. It had started in real time, then rapidly accelerated until the last sections were being added at the rate of one every few seconds. Thalassa’s leading composer had contrived a witty musical score beginning with a slow pavane and culminating in a breathless polka — slowing down to normal speed again at the very end as the final block of ice was jockeyed into position.

Then the view had switched to a live camera hovering in space a kilometre ahead of Magellan as it orbited in the shadow of the planet. The big sun-screen that protected the ice during the day had been moved aside, so the entire shield was now visible for the first time.

The huge greenish-white disc gleamed coldly beneath the floodlights; soon it would be far colder as it moved out into the few-degrees-above-absolute zero of the galactic night. There it would be warmed only by the background light of the stars, the radiation leakage from the ship — and the occasional rare burst of energy from impacting dust.

The camera drifted slowly across the artificial iceberg, to the accompaniment of Moses Kaldor’s unmistakable voice.

“People of Thalassa, we thank you for your gift. Behind this shield of ice, we hope to travel safely to the world that is waiting for us, seventy-five light-years away, three hundred years hence.

“If all goes well, we will still be carrying at least twenty thousand tons of ice when we reach Sagan 2. That will be allowed to fall on to the planet, and the heat of reentry will turn it into the first rain that frigid world has ever known. For a little while, before it freezes again, it will be the precursor of oceans yet unborn.

“And one day our descendants will know seas like yours, though not as wide or as deep. Water from our two worlds will mingle together, bringing life to our new home. And we will remember you, with love and gratitude.”