The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (18 page)

‘I didn’t stay long: in three minutes I would be entering the atmosphere. I took a last look at the flaccid parachute, straightened some of the shrouds, and climbed back into the cabin. Then I jettisoned “David’s” fuel—first the oxygen, and then, as soon as it had had time to disperse, the alcohol.

‘That three minutes seemed an awfully long time. I was just over twenty-five kilometres high when I heard the first sound. It was a very high-pitched whistle, so faint that I could scarcely hear it. Glancing through the portholes, I saw that the parachute shrouds were becoming taut and the canopy was beginning to billow above me. At the same time I felt weight returning and knew that the rocket was beginning to decelerate.

‘The calculation wasn’t very encouraging. I’d fallen free for over two hundred kilometres and if I was to stop in time I’d need an
average
deceleration of ten gravities. The peaks might be twice that, but I’d stood fifteen
g
before now in a lesser cause. So I gave myself a double shot of dynocaine and uncaged the gimbals of my seat. I remember wondering whether I should let out “David’s” little wings, and decided that it wouldn’t help. Then I must have blacked out.

‘When I came round again it was very hot, and I had normal weight. I felt very stiff and sore, and to make matters worse the cabin was oscillating violently. I struggled to the port and saw that the desert was uncomfortably close. The big parachute had done its work, but I thought that the impact was going to be rather too violent for comfort. So I jumped.

‘From what you tell me I’d have done better to have stayed in the ship. But I don’t suppose I can grumble.’

We sat in silence for a while. Then Jimmy remarked casually:

‘The accelerometer shows that you touched twenty-one gravities on the way down. Only for three seconds, though. Most of the time it was between twelve and fifteen.’

David did not seem to hear and presently I said:

‘Well, we can’t hold the reporters off much longer. Do you feel like seeing them?’

David hesitated.

‘No,’ he answered. ‘Not now.’

He read our faces and shook his head violently.

‘No,’ he said with emphasis, ‘it’s not that at all. I’d be willing to take off again right now. But I want to sit and think things over for a while.’

His voice sank, and when he spoke again it was to show the real David behind the perpetual mask of extroversion.

‘You think I haven’t any nerves,’ he said, ‘and that I take risks without bothering about the consequences. Well, that isn’t quite true and I’d like you to know why. I’ve never told anyone this, not even Mavis.

‘You know I’m not superstitious,’ he began, a little apologetically, ‘but most materialists have some secret reservations, even if they won’t admit them.

‘Many years ago I had a peculiarly vivid dream. By itself, it wouldn’t have meant much, but later I discovered that two other men had put almost identical experiences on record. One you’ve probably read, for the man was J. W. Dunne.

‘In his first book,
An Experiment with Time
, Dunne tells how he once dreamed that he was sitting at the controls of a curious flying-machine with swept-back wings, and years later the whole experience came true when he was testing his inherent stability airplane. Remembering my own dream, which I’d had
before
reading Dunne’s book, this made a considerable impression on me. But the second incident I found even more striking.

‘You’ve heard of Igor Sikorsky: he designed some of the first commercial long-distance flying boats—“Clippers”, they were called. In his autobiography,
The Story of the Flying S
, he tells us how he had a dream very similar to Dunne’s.

‘He was walking along a corridor with doors opening on either side and electric lights glowing overhead. There was a slight vibration underfoot and somehow he knew that he was in a flying machine. Yet at that time there were no airplanes in the world, and few people believed there ever would be.

‘Sikorskv’s dream, like Dunne’s, came true many years later. He was on the maiden flight of his first Clipper when he found himself walking along that familiar corridor.’

David laughed, a little self-consciously.

‘You’ve probably guessed what my dream was about,’ he continued. ‘Remember, it would have made no permanent impression if I hadn’t come across these parallel cases.

‘I was in a small, bare room with no windows. There were two other men with me, and we were all wearing what I thought at the time were diving-suits. I had a curious control panel in front of me, with a circular screen built into it. There was a picture on the screen, but it didn’t mean anything to me and I can’t recall it now, though I’ve tried many times since. All I remember is turning to the other two men and saying: “Five minutes to go, boys”—though I’m not sure if those were the exact words. And then, of course, I woke up.

‘That dream has haunted me ever since I became a test pilot. No—haunted isn’t the right word. It’s given me confidence that in the long run everything would be all right—at least until I’m in that cabin with those other two men. What happens after that I don’t know. But now you understand why I felt quite safe when I brought down the A.20, and when I crashlanded the A.15 off Pantelleria.

‘So now you know. You can laugh if you please: I sometimes do myself. But even if there’s nothing in it, that dream’s given my subconscious a boost that’s been pretty useful.’

We didn’t laugh, and presently Jimmy said:

‘Those other men—did you recognise them?’

David looked doubtful.

‘I’ve never made up my mind,’ he answered. ‘Remember, they were wearing spacesuits and I didn’t see their faces clearly. But one of them looked rather like you, though he seemed a good deal older than you are now. I’m afraid you weren’t there, Arthur. Sorry.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ I said. ‘As I’ve told you before, I’ll have to stay behind to explain what went wrong. I’m quite content to wait until the passenger service starts.’

Jimmy rose to his feet.

‘OK, David,’ he said, ‘I’ll deal with the gang outside. Get some sleep now—with or without dreams. And by the way, the A.20 will be ready again in a week. I think she’ll be the last of the chemical rockets: they say the atomic drive’s nearly ready for us.’

We never spoke of David’s dream again, but I think it was often in our minds. Three months later he took the A.20 up to six hundred and eighty kilometres, a record which will never be broken by a machine of this type, because no one will ever build a chemical rocket again. David’s uneventful landing in the Nile Valley marked the end of an epoch.

It was three years before the A.21 was ready. She looked very small compared with her giant predecessors, and it was hard to believe that she was the nearest thing to a spaceship man had yet built. This time the takeoff was from sea-level, and the Atlas Mountains which had witnessed the start of our earlier shots were now merely the distant background to the scene.

By now both Jimmy and I had come to share David’s belief in his own destiny. I remember Jimmy’s parting words as the airlock closed.

‘It won’t be long now, David, before we build that three-man ship.’

And I knew he was only half joking.

We saw the A.21 climb slowly into the sky in great, widening circles, unlike any rocket the world had ever known before. There was no need to worry about gravitational loss now that we had a built-in fuel supply, and David was not in a hurry. The machine was still travelling quite slowly when I lost sight of it and went into the plotting-room.

When I got there the signal was just fading from the screen, and the detonation reached me a little later. And that was the end of David and his dreams.

The next I recall of that period is flying down the Conway Valley in Jimmy’s ‘copter, with Snowdon gleaming far away on our right. We had never been to David’s home before and were not looking forward to this visit. But it was the least we could do.

As the mountains drifted beneath us we talked about the suddenly darkened future and wondered what the next step would be. Apart from the shock of personal loss, we were beginning to realise how much of David’s confidence we had come to share ourselves. And now that confidence had been shattered.

We wondered what Mavis would do, and discussed the boy’s future. He must be fifteen now, though I had not seen him for several years and Jimmy had never met him at all. According to his father he was going to be an architect and already showed considerable promise.

Mavis was quite calm and collected, though she seemed much older than when I had last met her. For a while we talked about business matters and the disposal of David’s estate. I had never been an executor before, but tried to pretend that I knew all about it.

We had just started to discuss the boy when we heard the front door open and he came into the house. Mavis called to him and his footsteps came slowly along the passage. We could tell that he did not want to meet us, and his eyes were still red when he entered the room.

I had forgotten how much like his father he was, and I heard a little gasp from Jimmy.

‘Hello, David,’ I said.

But he did not look at me. He was staring at Jimmy, with that puzzled expression of a man who had seen someone before but cannot remember where.

And quite suddenly I knew that young David would never be an architect.

Nightfall

First published
King’s College Review
, 1947

Collected in
Reach for Tomorrow
as ‘The Curse’

‘Nightfall’, also known as ‘The Curse’, was inspired by a visit to Shakespeare’s grave at a time when I was stationed near Stratford-upon-Avon, training RAF radar mechanics,
living
what would have been sf only a decade earlier, a juxtaposition which makes this story all the more poignant.

For three hundred years, while its fame spread across the world, the little town had stood here at the river’s bend. Time and change had touched it lightly; it had heard from afar both the coming of the Armada and the fall of the Third Reich, and all Man’s wars had passed it by.

Now it was gone, as though it had never been. In a moment of time the toil and treasure of centuries had been swept away. The vanished streets could still be traced as faint marks in the vitrified ground, but of the houses, nothing remained. Steel and concrete, plaster and ancient oak—it had mattered little at the end. In the moment of death they had stood together, transfixed by the glare of the detonating bomb. Then, even before they could flash into fire, the blast waves had reached them and they had ceased to be. Mile upon mile the ravening hemisphere of flame had expanded over the level farmlands, and from its heart had risen the twisting totem-pole that had haunted the minds of men for so long, and to such little purpose.

The rocket had been a stray, one of the last ever to be fired. It was hard to say for what target it had been intended. Certainly not London, for London was no longer a military objective. London, indeed, was no longer anything at all. Long ago the men whose duty it was had calculated that three of the hydrogen bombs would be sufficient for that rather small target. In sending twenty, they had been perhaps a little overzealous.

This was not one of the twenty that had done their work so well. Both its destination and its origin were unknown: whether it had come across the lonely Arctic wastes or far above the waters of the Atlantic, no one could tell and there were few now who cared. Once there had been men who had known such things, who his watched from afar the flight of the great projectiles and had sent their own missiles to meet them. Often that appointment had been kept, high above the Earth where the sky was black and sun and stars shared the heavens together. Then there had bloomed for a moment that indescribable flame, sending out into space a message that in centuries to come other eyes than Man’s would see and understand.

But that had been days ago, at the beginning of the War. The defenders had long since been brushed aside, as they had known they must be. They had held on to life long enough to discharge their duty; too late, the enemy his learned his mistake. He would launch no further rockets; those still falling he had dispatched hours ago on secret trajectories that had taken them far out into space. They were returning now unguided and inert, waiting in vain for the signals that should lead them to their destinies. One by one they were falling at random upon a world which they could harm no more.