Arthur Clarke: Imperial Earth

Duncan laughed sympathetically. He like Bob Farrell, and he had been extremely helpful. But he was less and less sure of the Ambassador’s loyalties, and it might soon be time to find a replacement. Unfortunately, it would again have to be a Terran, because of this infernal gravity; but that was a problem Titan would always have to live with.

He could certainly never tell his own ambassador, still less the Argus Committee, why Karl’s brainchild might be so vital to the human race. There were speculations in that Minisec—luckily, there was no hint of them in the sketchbook—which had best not be published for many years, until the project had proved itself.

Karl had been right so often in the past, seizing on truths beyond all bounds of logic and reason, that Duncan felt sure that this last awesome intuition was also correct. Or if it was not, the truth was even stranger; in any event, it was a truth that must be learned. Though the knowledge might be overwhelming, the price of ignorance could be—extinction.

Here on the streets of this beautiful city, steeped in sunlight and in history, it was hard to take Karl’s final comments seriously, as he speculated about the origin of those mysterious waves. And surely even Karl did not really believe all the thoughts he had spoken into the secret memory of his Minisec, during the long voyage to Earth...

But he was diabolically persuasive, and his arguments had an irresistible logic and momentum of their own. Even if he did not believe all his own conjectures, he might still be right.

“Item one,” he had murmured to himself (it must have been hard to get privacy on that freighter, and Duncan could sometimes hear the noises of the ship, the movements of the other crew members), “these kilohertz waves have a limited range because of interstellar absorption. They would not normally be able to pass from one star to another, unless plasma clouds act as waveguides, channeling them over greater distances. So their origin must be close to the Solar System.”

“My calculations all point to a source—or sources—at about a tenth of a light year from the Sun. Only a fortieth of the way to Alpha Centauri, but two hundred times the distance of Pluto... No man’s land—the edge of the wilderness between the stars. But that’s exactly where the comets are born, in a great, invisible shell surrounding the Solar System. There’s enough material out there for a trillion of those strange objects, orbiting in a cosmic freezer.”

“What’s going on, in those huge clouds of hydrogen and helium and all the other elements? There’s not much energy—but there may be enough. And where’s the matter and energy—and Time—sooner or later there’s organization.”

“ Call them Star Beasts . Would they be alive? No—that word doesn’t apply. Let’s just say—‘Organized systems.’ They’d be hundreds or thousands of kilometers across, and they might live—I mean, maintain their individual identity—for millions of years.”

“ That’s a thought. The comets that we observe—are they the corpses of Star Beasts, sent sunward for cremation? Or executed criminals? I’m being ridiculously anthropomorphic—but what else can I be?”

“And are they intelligent? What does that word mean? Are ants intelligent—are the cells of the human body intelligent? Do all the Star Beasts surrounding the Solar System make a single entity—and does It know about us? Or does It care?”

“Perhaps the Sun keeps them at bay, as in ancient times the campfire kept off the wolves and saber-toothed tigers. But we are already a long way from the Sun, and sooner or later we will meet them. The more we learn, the better.”

“And there’s one question I’m almost afraid to think about. Are they gods? OR ARE THEY EATERS OF GODS?

Extract from the Congressional Record for 2276 July 4. Address by the Honorable Duncan Makenzie, Special Assistant to the Chief Administrator, Republic of Titan.

Mr. Speaker, Members of Congress, Distinguished Guests—let me first express my deep gratitude to the Centennial Committee, whose generosity made possible my visit to Earth and to these United States. I bring greetings to all of you from Titan, largest of Saturn’s many moons—and the most distant world yet occupied by mankind.

Five hundred years ago this land was also a frontier—not only geographically but politically. Your ancestors, less than twenty generations in the past, created the first democratic constitution that really worked—and that still works today, on worlds that they could not have imagined in their wildest dreams.

During these celebrations, many have spoken of the legacy that the founders of the Republic left us on that day, half a thousand years ago. But there have been four Centennials since then; I would like to look briefly at each of them, to see what lessons they have for us.

At the first, in 1876, the United States was still recovering from a disastrous Civil War. Yet it was also laying the foundation of the technological revolution that would soon transform the Earth. Perhaps it is no coincidence that in the very year of the first Centennial, this country brought forth the invention which really began the conquest of space.

For in 1876 Alexander Graham Bell made the first practical telephone. We take electronic communications so utterly for granted that we cannot imagine a society without them; we would be deaf and dumb if these extensions of our senses were suddenly removed. So let us remember that just four hundred years ago, the telephone began the abolition of space—at least upon this planet.

A century later, in 1976, that process had almost finished—and the conquest of interplanetary space was about to begin. By that time, the first men had already reached the Moon, using techniques which today seem unbelievably primitive. Although all historians now agree that the Apollo Project marked the United States’s supreme achievement, and its greatest moment of triumph, it was inspired by political motives that seem ludicrous—indeed, incomprehensible—to our modern minds. And it is no reflection on those first engineers and astronauts that their brilliant pioneering effort was a technological dead end, and that serious space travel did not begin for several decades, with much more advanced vehicles and propulsion systems.

A century later, in 2076, all the tools needed to open up the planets were ready to hand. Long-duration life-support systems had been perfected; after the initial disasters, the fusion drive had been tamed. But humanity was exhausted by the effort of global rebuilding following the Time of Troubles, and in the aftermath of the Population Crash there was little enthusiasm for the colonization of new worlds.

Despite these problems, mankind set its feet irrevocably on the road to the stars. During the twenty-first century, the Lunar Base became self-supporting, the Mars Colony was established, and we had secured a bridgehead on Mercury. Venus and the Gas Giants defied us—as indeed they still do—but we had visited all the larger moons and asteroids of the Solar System.

By 2176, just a hundred years ago, a substantial fraction of the human race was no longer Earthborn. For the first time we had the assurance that whatever happened to the mother world, our cultural heritage would not be lost. It was secure until the death of the Sun—and perhaps beyond...

The century that lies behind us has been one of consolidation, rather than of fresh discovery. I am proud that my world has played a major role in this process, for without the easily accessible hydrogen of the Titanian atmosphere, travel between the planets would still be exorbitantly expensive.