Tales From Planet Earth

by Arthur C. Clarke

  “Well, Doctor,” he said. “This is a surprise—I never expected to see you here.”

  He could not resist the little jab, and derived some satisfaction at watching it go home. But it was free from bitterness, as the other’s smile aknowledged.

  “Senator,” replied Harkness, in a voice that was pitched so low that he had to lean forward to hear it, “I’ve some extremely important information for you. Can we speak alone for a few minutes? It won’t take long.”

  Steelman nodded: he had his own ideas of what was important now, and felt only a mild curiosity as to why the scientist had come to see him. The man seemed to have changed a good deal since their last encounter, seven years ago. He was much more assured and self-confident, and had lost the nervous mannerisms that had helped to make him such an unconvincing witness.

  “Senator,” he began, when they were alone in the private office, “I’ve some news that may be quite a shock to you. I believe that you can be cured.”

  Steelman slumped heavily in his chair. This was the one thing he had never expected; from the first, he had not encumbered himself with the burden of vain hopes. Only a fool fought against the inevitable, and he had accepted his fate.

  For a moment he could not speak; then he looked up at his old adversary and gasped: “Who told you that? All my doctors—”

  “Never mind them; it’s not their fault they’re ten years behind the times. Look at this.”

  “What does it mean? I can’t read Russian.”

  “It’s the latest issue of the USSR Journal of Space Medicine. It arrived a few days ago, and we did the usual routine translation. This note here—the one I’ve marked—refers to some recent work at the Mechnikov Station.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You don’t know? Why, that’s their Satellite Hospital, the one they’ve built just below the Great Radiation Belt.”

  “Go on,” said Steelman, in a voice that was suddenly dry and constricted. “I’d forgotten they’d called it that.” He had hoped to end his life in peace, but now the past had come back to haunt him.

  “Well, the note itself doesn’t say much, but you can read a lot between the lines. It’s one of those advance hints that scientists put out before they have time to write a full-fledged paper, so they can claim priority later. The title is: ‘Therapeutic Effects of Zero Gravity on Circulatory Diseases.’ What they’ve done is to induce heart disease artificially in rabbits and hamsters, and then take them up to the space station. In orbit, of course, nothing has any weight; the heart and muscles have practically no work to do. And the result is exactly what I tried to tell you, years ago. Even extreme cases can be arrested, and many can be cured.”

  The tiny, paneled office that had been the center of his world, the scene of so many conferences, the birthplace of so many plans, became suddenly unreal. Memory was much more vivid: he was back again at those hearings, in the fall of 1969, when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s first decade of activity had been under review—and, frequently, under fire.

  He had never been chairman of the Senate Committee on Astronautics, but he had been its most vocal and effective member. It was here that he had made his reputation as a guardian of the public purse, as a hardheaded man who could not be bamboozled by utopian scientific dreamers. He had done a good job; from that moment, he had never been far from the headlines. It was not that he had any particular feeling for space and science, but he knew a live issue when he saw one. Like a tape-recorder unrolling in his mind, it all came back . . .

  “Dr. Harkness, you are Technical Director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration?”

  “That is correct.”

  “I have here the figures for NASA’s expenditure over the period 1959–69; they are quite impressive. At the moment the total is $82,547,450,000, and the estimate for fiscal 69–70 is well over ten billions. Perhaps you could give us some indication of the return we can expect from all this.”

  “I’ll be glad to do so, Senator.”

  That was how it all started, on a firm but not unfriendly note. The hostility had crept in later. That it was unjustified, he had known at the time; any big organization had weaknesses and failures, and one which literally aimed at the stars could never hope for more than partial success. From the beginning, it had been realized that the conquest of space would be at least as costly in lives and treasure as the conquest of the air. In ten years, almost a hundred men had died—on Earth, in space, and upon the barren surface of the Moon. Now that the urgency of the early sixties was over, the public was asking “Why?” Steelman was shrewd enough to see himself as mouthpiece for those questioning voices. His performance had been cold and calculated; it was convenient to have a scapegoat, and Dr. Harkness was unlucky enough to be cast for the role.

  “Yes, Doctor, I understand all the benefits we’ve received from space research in the way of improved communications and weather forecasting, and I’m sure everyone appreciates them. But almost all this work has been done with automatic, unmanned vehicles. What I’m worried about—what many people are worried about—is the mounting expense of the Man-in-Space program, and its very marginal utility. Since the original Dyna Soar and Apollo projects, almost a decade ago, we’ve shot billions of dollars into space. And with what result? So that a mere handful of men can spend a few uncomfortable hours outside the atmosphere, achieving nothing that television cameras and automatic equipment couldn’t do—much better and cheaper. And the lives that have been lost! None of us will forget those screams we heard coming over the radio when the X-21 burned up on re-entry. What right have we to send men to such deaths?”

  He could still remember the hushed silence in the committee chamber when he had finished. His questions were very reasonable ones, and deserved to be answered. What was unfair was the rhetorical manner in which he had framed them and, above all, the fact that they were aimed at a man who could not answer them effectively. Steelman would not have tried such tactics on a von Braun or a Rickover; they would have given him at least as good as they received. But Harkness was no orator; if he had deep personal feelings, he kept them to himself. He was a good scientist, an able administrator—and a poor witness. It had been like shooting fish in a barrel. The reporters had loved it; he never knew which of them coined the nickname “Hapless Harkness.”

  “Now this plan of yours, Doctor, for a fifty-man space laboratory—how much did you say it would cost?”

  “I’ve already told you—just under one and a half billions.”

  “And the annual maintenance?”

  “Not more than $250,000,000.”

  “When we consider what’s happened to previous estimates, you will forgive us if we look upon these figures with some skepticism. But even assuming that they are right, what will we get for the money?”

  “We will be able to establish our first large-scale research station in space. So far, we have had to do our experimenting in cramped quarters aboard unsuitable vehicles, usually when they were engaged on some other mission. A permanent, manned satellite laboratory is essential. Without it, further progress is out of the question. Astrobiology can hardly get started—”

  “Astro what?”

  “Astrobiology— the study of living organisms in space. The Russians really started it when they sent up the dog Laika in Sputnik II and they’re still ahead of us in this field. But no one’s done any serious work on insects or invertebrates—in fact, on any animals except dogs, mice, and monkeys.”

  “I see. Would I be correct in saying you would like funds for building a zoo in space?”

  The laughter in the committee room had helped to kill the project. And it had helped, Senator Steelman now realized, to kill him.

  He had only himself to blame, for Dr. Harkness had tried, in his ineffectual way, to outline the benefits that a space laboratory might bring. He had particularly stressed the medical aspects, promising nothing but pointing out the possibilities. Surgeons, he had suggeste
d, would be able to develop new techniques in an environment where the organs had no weight; men might live longer, freed from the wear and tear of gravity, for the strain on heart and muscles would be enormously reduced. Yes, he had mentioned the heart; but that had been of no interest to Senator Steelman—healthy, and ambitious, and anxious to make good copy . . .

  “Why have you come to tell me this?” he said dully. “Couldn’t you let me die in peace?”

  “That’s the point,” said Harkness impatiently. “There’s no need to give up hope.”

  “Because the Russians have cured some hamsters and rabbits?”

  “They’ve done much more than that. The paper I showed you only quoted the preliminary results; it’s already a year out of date. They don’t want to raise false hopes, so they are keeping as quiet as possible.”

  “How do you know this?”

  Harkness looked surprised.

  “Why, I called Professor Stanyukovitch, my opposite number. It turned out that he was up on the Mechnikov Station, which proves how important they consider this work. He’s an old friend of mine, and I took the liberty of mentioning your case.”

  The dawn of hope, after its long absence, can be as painful as its departure. Steelman found it hard to breathe and for a dreadful moment he wondered if the final attack had come. But it was only excitement; the constriction in his chest relaxed, the ringing in his ears faded away, and he heard Dr. Harkness’s voice saying: “He wanted to know if you could come to Astrograd right away, so I said I’d ask you. If you can make it, there’s a flight from New York at ten-thirty tomorrow morning.”

  Tomorrow he had promised to take the children to the zoo; it would be the first time he had let them down. The thought gave him a sharp stab of guilt, and it required almost an effort of will to answer: “I can make it.”

  He saw nothing of Moscow during the few minutes that the big intercontinental ramjet fell down from the stratosphere. The view-screens were switched off during the descent, for the sight of the ground coming straight up as a ship fell vertically on its sustaining jets was highly disconcerting to passengers.

  At Moscow he changed to a comfortable but old-fashioned turboprop, and as he flew eastward into the night he had his first real opportunity for reflection. It was a very strange question to ask himself, but was he altogether glad that the future was no longer wholly certain? His life, which a few hours ago had seemed so simple, had suddenly become complex again, as it opened out once more into possibilities he had learned to put aside. Dr. Johnson had been right when he said that nothing settles a man’s mind more wonderfully than the knowledge that he will be hanged in the morning. For the converse was certainly true—nothing unsettled it so much as the thought of a reprieve.

  He was asleep when they touched down at Astrograd, the space capital of the USSR. When the gentle impact of landing shook him awake, for a moment he could not imagine where he was. Had he dreamed that he was flying halfway round the world in search of life? No: it was not a dream, but it might well be a wild-goose chase.

  Twelve hours later, he was still waiting for the answer. The last instrument reading had been taken; the spots of light on the cardiograph display had ceased their fateful dance. The familiar routine of the medical examination and the gentle, competent voices of the doctors and nurses had done much to relax his mind. And it was very restful in the softly lit reception room, where the specialists had asked him to wait while they conferred together. Only the Russian magazines, and a few portraits of somewhat hirsute pioneers of Soviet medicine, reminded him that he was no longer in his own country.

  He was not the only patient. About a dozen men and women, of all ages, were sitting around the wall, reading magazines and trying to appear at ease. There was no conversation, no attempt to catch anyone’s eye. Every soul in this room was in his private limbo, suspended between life and death. Though they were linked together by a common misfortune, the link did not extend to communication. Each seemed as cut off from the rest of the human race as if he was already speeding through the cosmic gulfs where lay his only hope.

  But in the far corner of the room, there was an exception. A young couple—neither could have been older than twenty-five—were huddling together in such desperate misery that at first Steelman found the spectacle annoying. No matter how bad their own problems, he told himself severely, people should be more considerate. They should hide their emotions—especially in a place like this, where they might upset others.

  His annoyance quickly turned to pity, for no heart can remain untouched for long at the sight of simple, unselfish love in deep distress. As the minutes dripped away in a silence broken only by the rustling of papers and the scraping of chairs, his pity grew almost to an obsession.

  What was their story, he wondered? The boy had sensitive, intelligent features; he might have been an artist, a scientist, a musician—there was no way of telling. The girl was pregnant; she had one of those homely peasant faces so common among Russian woman. She was far from beautiful, but sorrow and love had given her features a luminous sweetness. Steelman found it hard to take his eyes from her—for somehow, though there was not the slightest physical resemblance, she reminded him of Diana. Thirty years ago, as they had walked from the church together, he had seen that same glow in the eyes of his wife. He had almost forgotten it; was the fault his, or hers, that it had faded so soon?

  Without any warning, his chair vibrated beneath him. A swift, sudden tremor had swept through the building, as if a giant hammer had smashed against the ground, many miles away. An earthquake? Steelman wondered; then he remembered where he was, and started counting seconds.

  He gave up when he reached sixty; presumably the sound-proofing was so good that the slower, air-borne noise had not reached him, and only the shock wave through the ground recorded the fact that a thousand tons had just leapt into the sky. Another minute passed before he heard, distant but clear, a sound as of a thunderstorm raging below the edge of the world. It was even more miles away than he had dreamed; what the noise must be like at the launching site was beyond imagination.

  Yet that thunder would not trouble him, he knew, when he also rose into the sky; the speeding rocket would leave it far behind. Nor would the thrust of acceleration be able to touch his body, as it rested in its bath of warm water—more comfortable even than this deeply padded chair.

  That distant rumble was still rolling back from the edge of space when the door of the waiting room opened and the nurse beckoned to him. Though he felt many eyes following him, he did not look back as he walked out to receive his sentence.

  The news services tried to get in contact with him all the way back from Moscow, but he refused to accept the calls. “Say I’m sleeping and mustn’t be disturbed,” he told the stewardess. He wondered who had tipped them off, and felt annoyed at this invasion of his privacy. Yet privacy was something he had avoided for years, and had learned to appreciate only in the last few weeks. He could not blame the reporters and commentators if they assumed that he had reverted to type.

  They were waiting for him when the ramjet touched down at Washington. He knew most of them by name, and some were old friends, genuinely glad to hear the news that had raced ahead of him.

  “What does it feel like, Senator,” said Macauley, of the Times, “to know you’re back in harness? I take it that it’s true—the Russians can cure you?”

  “They think they can,” he answered cautiously. “This is a new field in medicine, and no one can promise anything.”

  “When do you leave for space?”

  “Within the week, as soon as I’ve settled some affairs here.”

  “And when will you be back—if it works?”

  “That’s hard to say. Even if everything goes smoothly, I’ll be up there at least six months.”

  Involuntarily, he glanced at the sky. At dawn or sunset—even during the daytime, if one knew where to look—the Mechnikov Station was a spectacular sight, more brilliant than any of the
stars. But there were now so many satellites of which this was true that only an expert could tell one from another.

  “Six months,” said a newsman thoughtfully. “That means you’ll be out of the picture for seventy-six.”

  “But nicely in it for 1980,” said another.

  “And 1984,” added a third. There was a general laugh; people were already making jokes about 1984, which had once seemed so far away in the future, but would soon be a date no different from any other . . . it was hoped.

  The ears and the microphones were waiting for his reply. As he stood at the foot of the ramp, once more the focus of attention and curiosity, he felt the old excitement stirring in his veins. What a comeback it would be, to return from space a new man! It would give him a glamour that no other candidate could match; there was something Olympian, almost godlike, about the prospect. Already he found himself trying to work it into his election slogans . . .

  “Give me time to make my plans,” he said. “It’s going to take me a while to get used to this. But I promise you a statement before I leave Earth.”

  Before I leave Earth. Now, there was a fine, dramatic phrase. He was still savoring its rhythm with his mind when he saw Diana coming toward him from the airport buildings.

  Already she had changed, as he himself was changing; in her eyes was a wariness and reserve that had not been there two days ago. It said, as clearly as any words: “I’ts going to happen, all over again?” Though the day was warm, he felt suddenly cold, as if he had caught a chill on those far Siberian plains.

  But Joey and Susan were unchanged, as they ran to greet him. He caught them up in his arms, and buried his face in their hair, so that the cameras would not see the tears that had started from his eyes. As they clung to him in the innocent, unself-conscious love of childhood, he knew what his choice would have to be.

  They alone had known him when he was free from the itch for power; that was the way they must remember him, if they remembered him at all.