Arthur Clarke - Imperial Earth

There was nothing he had not seen many times before, yet the old drama still gripped him. Here were the faces of the first men to ride these crazy contraptions into space, and the sound of their actual voices—sometimes emotionless, sometimes full of excitement—as they spoke to their colleagues on the receding Earth. Now the air shook with the crackling roar of a Saturn launch, magically re-created exactly as it had taken place on that bright Florida morning, three hundred and seven years ago—and still, in many ways, the most impressive spectacle ever staged by man.

The Moon drew closer—not the busy world that Duncan knew, but the virgin Moon of the twentieth century. Hard to imagine what it must have meant to the peoples of that time, to whom the Earth was not only the center of the Universe, but—even to the most sophisticated—still the whole of creation...

Now Man’s first contact with another world was barely minutes ahead. It seemed to Duncan that he was floating in space, only meters away from the spidery Lunar Module, bristling with antennas and wrapped in multicolored metal foil. The simulation was so perfect that he had an involuntary urge to hold his breath, and found himself clutching the handrail, seeking reassurance that he was still on Earth.

“Two minutes, twenty seconds, everything looking good. We show altitude about 47,000 feet...” said Houston to the waiting world of 1969, and to the centuries to come. And then, cutting across the voice of Mission Control, making a montage of conflicting accents, was a speaker whom for a moment Duncan could not identify, though he knew the voice...

“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”

Even back in 1969, that was already a voice from the grave; the President who had launched Apollo in that speech to Congress had never lived to see the achievement of his dream.

“We’re now in the approach phase, everything looking good. Altitude 5,200 feet.”

And once again that voice, silenced six years earlier in Dallas:

“We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people...”

“Roger. Go for landing. 3,000 feet. We’re go. Hang tight. We’re go. 2,000 feet. 2,000 feet...”

“And why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our goal...? Why, thirty-five years ago, fly the Atlantic? WE CHOOSE TO GO TO THE MOON!”

“200 feet, 4½ down, 5½ down, 160, 6½ down, 5½ down, 9 forward, 120 feet, 100 feet, 3½ down, 9 forward, 75 feet, thing still looking good...”

“We choose to go to the Moon in this decade because that challenge is one that we’re willing to accept, one that we are unwilling to postpone, and one that we intend to win!”

“Forward, forward 40 feet, down 2½, kicking up some dust, 30 feet, 2½ down, faint shadow, 4 forward, 4 forward, drifting to the right a little... Contact light. O.K. engine stopped, descent engine command override off... Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”

The music rose to a crescendo. There before his eyes, on the dusty Lunar plain, history had lived again. And presently he saw the clumsy, spacesuited figures climb down the ladder, cautiously test the alien soil, and utter the famous words:

“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

As always, Duncan listened for that missing “a” before the word “man,” and as always, he was unable to detect it. A whole book had been written about that odd slip of the tongue, using as its starting point Neil Armstrong’s slightly exasperated “That’s what I intended to say, and that’s what I thought I said.”

All this, of course, was simulation—utterly convincing, and apparently life-sized by the magic of holography—but actually contrived in some studio by patient technicians, two centuries after the events themselves. There was Eagle , glittering in the fierce sunlight, with the Stars and Stripes frozen motionless beside it, just as it must have appeared early in the Lunar morning of that first day. Then the music became quiet, mysterious... something was about to happen. Even though he knew what to expect, Duncan felt his skin crawling in the ancient, involuntary reflex which Man had inherited from his hirsute ancestors.

The image faded, dissolved into another—similar, yet different. In a fraction of a second, three centuries had dropped away.

They were still on the Moon, viewing the Sea of Tranquility from exactly the same vantage point. But the direction of the light had changed, for the sun was now low and the long shadows threw into relief all the myriads of footprints on the trampled ground. And there stood all that was left of Eagle —the slightly peeled and blistered descent stage, standing on its four outstretched legs like some abandoned robot.

He was seeing Tranquility Base as it was at this instant—or, to be precise, a second and a quarter ago, when the video signals left the Moon. Again, the illusion was perfect; Duncan felt that he could walk out into that shining silence and feel the warm metal beneath his hands. Or he could reach down into the dust and lift up the flag, to end the old debate that he reerupted in the Centennial Year. Should the Stars and Stripes be left where the blast of the takeoff had thrown it, or should it be erected again? Don’t tamper with history, said some. We’re only restoring it, said others...

Something was happening just beyond the fenced-off area, at the very limits of the 3-D scanners. It was shockingly incongruous to see any movement at all at such a spot; the Duncan remembered that the Sea had lost its tranquility at least two centuries ago. A busful of tourists was slowly circling the landing site, its occupants in full view through the curving glass of the observation windows. And though they could not see him, they waved across at the scanners, correctly guessing that someone on Earth was watching at this very moment.

The interruption should have destroyed the magic, yet it did not. Nothing could detract from the skill and courage of the pioneers; and they would have been happy to know that, where they had first ventured, thousands could now travel in safety and in comfort.

That, in the long run, was what History was all about.

“Today I walked at least three kilometers, and was on my feet for over two hours. I’m beginning to felt that life is possible on Earth...”

“But I must be careful not to overdo it, and I’m still using glideways and transporters most of the time. This means that I’ve not visited the White House or the Capitol, which can only be entered on foot. But I’ve been to the Museum of Technology and the National Gallery of Art. They have transport cubicles that you can program yourself, so there’s no need to waste time on exhibits that don’t interest you. Of course, I could stay in the hotel and take a holovision tour anywhere , but that would be ridiculous. I could do that any time, back at home...”

“I must remember that I’ll be replaying these words twenty, fifty, maybe a hundred years from now, when this visit to Earth is a dim memory. So it may be a good idea to describe a typical day—if there is such a thing!—here at the Centennial Hotel.”

“I wake up at six-thirty and listen to the radio news summary while I’m having my bath. Then I dial the Comsole for any messages that have arrived during the night—usually there are half a dozen. Not many people know I’m here yet, but I’ve had quite a few offers of hospitality and have been asked to speak to a number of social and cultural groups. I suspect Ambassador Farrell is behind most of these.”