The City and the Stars/The Sands of Mars

by Arthur C. Clarke

  Hilvar nodded, preferring not to waste air. The same idea had already occurred to him. It was a good object lesson, he thought, for incautious visitors. He hoped it would not be lost on Alvin.

  They reached the hull and stared up into the exposed interior of the ship. It was like looking into a huge building that had been roughly sliced in two; floors and walls and ceilings, broken at the point of the explosion, gave a distorted chart of the ship’s cross section. What strange beings, wondered Alvin, still lay where they had died in the wreckage of their vessel?

  “I don’t understand this,” said Hilvar suddenly. “This portion of the ship is badly damaged, but it’s still fairly intact. Where’s the rest of it? Did it break in two out in space, and this part crash here?”

  Not until they had sent the robot exploring again, and had themselves examined the area around the wreckage, did they learn the answer. There was no shadow of doubt; any reservations they might have had were banished when Alvin found the line of low mounds, each ten feet long, on the little hill beside the ship.

  “So they landed here,” mused Hilvar, “and ignored the warning. They were inquisitive, just as you are. They tried to open that dome.”

  He pointed to the other side of the crater, to the smooth, still unmarked shell within which the departed rulers of this world had sealed their treasures. But it was no longer a dome; it was now an almost complete sphere, for the ground in which it had been set had been blasted away.

  “They wrecked their ship, and many of them were killed. Yet despite that, they managed to make repairs and leave again, cutting off this section and stripping out everything of value. What a task that must have been!”

  Alvin scarcely heard him. He was looking at the curious marker that had first drawn him to this spot— the slim shaft ringed by a horizontal circle a third of the way down from its tip. Alien and unfamiliar thought it was, he could respond to the mute message it had carried down the ages.

  Underneath those stones, if he cared to disturb them, was the answer to one question at least. It could remain unanswered; whatever these creatures might have been, they had earned their right to rest.

  Hilvar scarcely heard the words Alvin whispered as they walked slowly back to the ship.

  “I hope they got home,” he said.

  “And where now?” asked Hilvar, when they were once more out in space.

  Alvin stared thoughtfully at the screen before replying.

  “Do you think I should go back?” he said.

  “It would be the sensible thing to do. Our luck may not hold out much longer, and who knows what other surprises these planets may have waiting for us?”

  It was the voice of sanity and caution, and Alvin was now prepared to give it greater heed than he would have done a few days before. But he had come a long way, and waited all his life, for this moment; he would not turn back while there was still so much to see.

  “We’ll stay in the ship from now on,” he said, “and we won’t touch surface anywhere. That should be safe enough, surely.”

  Hilvar shrugged his shoulders, as if refusing to accept any responsibility for what might happen next. Now that Alvin was showing a certain amount of caution, he thought it unwise to admit that he was equally anxious to continue their exploring, though he had long ago abandoned all hope of meeting intelligent life upon any of these planets.

  A double world lay ahead of them, a great planet with a smaller satellite beside it. The primary might have been the twin of the second world they had visited; it was clothed in that same blanket of livid green. There would be no point in landing here; this was a story they already knew.

  Alvin brought the ship low over the surface of the satellite; he needed no warning from the complex mechanism which protected him to know that there was no atmosphere here. All shadows had a sharp, clean edge, and there were no gradations between night and day. It was the first world on which he had seen something approaching night, for only one of the more distant suns was above the horizon in the area where they made first contact. The landscape was bathed in a dull red light, as though it had been dipped in blood.

  For many miles they flew above mountains that were still as jagged and sharp as in the distant ages of their birth. This was a world that had never known change or decay, had never been scoured by winds and rains. No eternity circuits were needed here to preserve objects in their pristine freshness.

  But if there was no air, then there could have been no life— or could there have been?

  “Of course,” said Hilvar, when Alvin put the question to him, “there’s nothing biologically absurd in the idea. Life can’t originate in airless space— but it can evolve forms that will survive in it. It must have happened millions of times, whenever an inhabited planet lost its atmosphere.”

  “But would you expect intelligent life forms to exist in a vacuum? Wouldn’t they have protected themselves against the loss of their air?”

  “Probably, if it occurred after they achieved enough intelligence to stop it happening. But if the atmosphere went while they were still in the primitive state, they would have to adapt or perish. After they had adapted, they might then develop a very high intelligence. In fact, they probably would— the incentive would be so great.”

  The argument, decided Alvin, was a purely theoretical one, as far as this planet was concerned. Nowhere was there any sign that it had ever borne life, intelligent or otherwise. But in that case, what was the purpose of this world? The entire multiple system of the Seven Suns, he was now certain, was artificial, and this world must be part of its grand design.

  It could, conceivably, be intended purely for ornament— to provide a moon in the sky of its giant companion. Even in that case, however, it seemed likely that it would be put to some use.

  “Look,” said Hilvar, pointing to the screen. “Over there, on the right.”

  Alvin changed the ship’s course, and the landscape tilted around them. The red-lit rocks blurred with the speed of their motion; then the image stabilized, and sweeping below was the unmistakable evidence of life.

  Unmistakable— yet also baffling. It took the form of a wide-spaced row of slender columns, each a hundred feet from its neighbor and twice as high. They stretched into the distance, dwindling in hypnotic perspective, until the far horizon swallowed them up.

  Alvin swung the ship to the right, and began to race along the line of columns, wondering as he did so what purpose they could ever have served. They were absolutely uniform, marching in an unbroken file over hills and down into valleys. There was no sign that they had ever supported anything; they were smooth and featureless, tapering very slightly toward the top.

  Quite abruptly, the line changed its course, turning sharply through a right angle. Alvin overshot by several miles before he reacted and was able to swing the ship around in the new direction.

  The columns continued with the same unbroken stride across the landscape, their spacing perfectly regular. Then, fifty miles from the last change of course, they turned abruptly through another right angle. At this rate, thought Alvin, we will soon be back where we started.

  The endless sequence of columns had so mesmerized them that when it was broken they were miles past the discontinuity before Hilvar cried out and made Alvin, who had noticed nothing, turning the ship back. They descended slowly, and as they circled above what Hilvar had found, a fantastic suspicion began to dawn in their minds— though at first neither dared mention it to the other.

  Two of the columns had been broken off near their bases, and lay stretched out upon the rocks where they had fallen. Nor was that all; the two columns adjoining the gap had been bent outward by some irresistible force.

  There was no escape from the awesome conclusion. Now Alvin knew what they had been flying over; it was something he had seen often enough in Lys, but until this moment the shocking change of scale had prevented recognition.

  “Hilvar,” he said, still hardly daring to put his thoughts into words, �
�do you know what this is?”

  “It seems hard to believe, but we’ve been flying around the edge of a corral. This thing is a fence— a fence that hasn’t been strong enough.”

  “People who keep pets,” said Alvin, with the nervous laugh men sometimes use to conceal their awe, “should make sure they know how to keep them under control.”

  Hilvar did not react to his forced levity; he was staring at the broken barricade, his brow furrowed with thought.

  “I don’t understand it,” he said at last. “Where could it have got food on a planet like this? And why did it break out of its pen? I’d give a lot to know what kind of animal it was.”

  “Perhaps it was left here, and broke out because it was hungry,” Alvin surmised. “Or something may have made it annoyed.”

  “Let’s go lower,” said Hilvar. “I want to have a look at the ground.”

  They descended until the ship was almost touching the barren rock, and it was then that they noticed that the plain was pitted with innumerable small holes, no more than an inch or two wide. Outside the stockade, however, the ground was free from these mysterious pockmarks; they stopped abruptly at the line of the fence.

  “You are right,” said Hilvar. “It was hungry. But it wasn’t an animal: it would be more accurate to call it a plant. It had exhausted the soil inside its pen, and had to find fresh food elsewhere. It probably moved quite slowly; perhaps it took years to break down those posts.”

  Alvin’s imagination swiftly filled in the details he could never know with certainty. He did not doubt that Hilvar’s analysis was basically correct, and that some botanical monster, perhaps moving too slowly for the eye to see, had fought a sluggish but relentless battle against the barriers that hemmed it in.

  It might still be alive, even after all these ages, roving at will over the face of this planet. To look for it, however, would be a hopeless task, since it would mean quartering the surface of an entire globe. They made a desultory search in the few square miles around the gap, and located one great circular patch of pockmarks, almost five hundred feet across, where the creature had obviously stopped to feed— if one could apply that word to an organism that somehow drew its nourishment from solid rock.

  As they lifted once more into space, Alvin felt a strange weariness come over him. He had seen so much, yet learned so little. There were many wonders on all these planets, but what he sought had fled them long ago. It would be useless, he knew, to visit the other worlds of the Seven Suns. Even if there was still intelligence in the Universe, where could he seek it now? He looked at the stars scattered like dust across the vision screen, and knew that what was left of time was not enough to explore them all.

  A feeling of loneliness and oppression such as he had never before experienced seemed to overwhelm him. He could understand now the fear of Diaspar for the great spaces of the Universe, the terror that had made his people gather in that little microcosm of their city. It was hard to believe that, after all, they had been right.

  He turned to Hilvar for support. But Hilvar was standing, fists tightly clenched and with a glazed look in his eyes. His head was tilted on one side; he seemed to be listening, straining every sense into the emptiness around them.

  “What is it?” said Alvin urgently. He had to repeat the question before Hilvar showed any sign of hearing it. He was still staring into nothingness when he finally replied.

  “There’s something coming,” he said slowly. “Something that I don’t understand.”

  It seemed to Alvin that the cabin had suddenly become very cold, and the racial nightmare of the Invaders reared up to confront him in all its terror. With an effort of will that sapped his strength, he forced his mind away from panic.

  “Is it friendly?” he asked. “Shall I run for Earth?”

  Hilvar did not answer the first question— only the second. His voice was very faint, but showed no sign of alarm or fear. It held rather a vast astonishment and curiosity, as if he had encountered something so surprising that he could not be bothered to deal with Alvin’s anxious query.

  “You’re too late,” he said. “It’s already here.”

  The Galaxy had turned many times on its axis since consciousness first came to Vanamonde. He could recall little of those first aeons and the creatures who had tended him then— but he could remember still his desolation when they had gone and left him alone among the stars. Down the ages since, he had wandered from sun to sun, slowly evolving and increasing his powers. Once he had dreamed of finding again those who had attended his birth, and though the dream had faded now, it had never wholly died.

  On countless worlds he had found the wreckage that life had left behind, but intelligence he had discovered only once— and from the Black Sun he had fled in terror. Yet the Universe was very large, and the search had scarcely begun.

  Far away though it was in space and time, the great burst of power from the heart of the Galaxy beckoned to Vanamonde across the light-years. It was utterly unlike the radiation of the stars, and it had appeared in his field of consciousness as suddenly as a meteor trail across a cloudless sky. He moved through space and time toward it, to the latest moment of its existence, sloughing from him in the way he knew the dead, unchanging pattern of the past.

  The long metal shape, with its infinite complexities of structure, he could not understand, for it was as strange to him as almost all the things of the physical world. Around it still clung the aura of power that had drawn him across the Universe, but that was of no interest to him now. Carefully, with the delicate nervousness of a wild beast half poised for flight, he reached out toward the two minds he had discovered.

  And then he knew that his long search was ended.

  Alvin grasped Hilvar by the shoulders and shook him violently, trying to drag him back to a greater awareness of reality.

  “Tell me what’s happening!” he begged. “What do you want me to do?”

  The remote, abstracted look slowly faded from Hilvar’s eyes.

  “I still don’t understand,” he said, “but there’s no need to be frightened— I’m sure of that. Whatever it is, it won’t harm us. It seems simply— interested.”

  Alvin was about to reply when he was suddenly overwhelmed by a sensation unlike any he had ever known before. A warm, tingling glow seemed to spread through his body; it lasted only a few seconds, but when it was gone he was no longer merely Alvin. Something was sharing his brain, overlapping it as one circle may partly cover another. He was conscious, also, of Hilvar’s mind close at hand, equally entangled in whatever creature had descended upon them. The sensation was strange rather than unpleasant, and it gave Alvin his first glimpse of true telepathy— the power which in his people had so degenerated that it could now be used only to control machines.

  Alvin had rebelled at once when Seranis had tried to dominate his mind, but he did not struggle against this intrusion. It would have been useless, and he knew that this creature, whatever it might be, was not unfriendly. He let himself relax, accepting without resistance the fact that an infinitely greater intelligence than his own was exploring his mind. But in that belief, he was not wholly right.

  One of these minds, Vanamonde saw at once, was more sympathetic and accessible than the other. He could tell that both were filled with wonder at his presence, and that surprised him greatly. It was hard to believe that they could have forgotten; forgetfulness, like mortality, was beyond the comprehension of Vanamonde.

  Communication was very difficult; many of the thought-images in their minds were so strange that he could hardly recognize them. He was puzzled and a little frightened by the recurrent fear pattern of the Invaders; it reminded him of his own emotions when the Black Sun first came into his field of knowledge.

  But they knew nothing of the Black Sun, and now their own questions were beginning to form in his mind.

  “What are you?”

  He gave the only reply he could.

  “I am Vanamonde.”

&nbs
p; There came a pause (how long the pattern of their thoughts took to form!) and then the question was repeated. They had not understood; that was strange, for surely their kind had given him his name for it to be among the memories of his birth. Those memories were very few, and they began strangely at a single point in time, but they were crystal clear.

  Again their tiny thoughts struggled up into his consciousness.

  “Where are the people who built the Seven Suns? What happened to them?”

  He did not know; they could scarcely believe him, and their disappointment came sharp and clear across the abyss separating their minds from his. But they were patient and he was glad to help them, for their quest was the same as his and they gave him the first companionship he had ever known.

  As long as he lived, Alvin did not believe he would ever again undergo so strange an experience as this soundless conversation. It was hard to believe that he could be little more than a spectator, for he did not care to admit, even to himself, that Hilvar’s mind was in some ways so much more capable than his own. He could only wait and wonder, half dazed by the torrent of thought just beyond the limits of his understanding.

  Presently Hilvar, rather pale and strained, broke off the contact and turned to his friend.

  “Alvin,” he said, his voice very tired. “There’s something strange here. I don’t understand it at all.”

  The news did a little to restore Alvin’s self-esteem and his face must have shown his feelings for Hilvar gave a sudden, sympathetic smile.

  “I can’t discover what this— Vanamonde— is,” he continued. “It’s a creature of tremendous knowledge, but it seems to have very little intelligence. Of course,” he added, “its mind may be of such a different order that we can’t understand it— yet somehow I don’t believe that is the right explanation.”

  “Well, what have you learned?” asked Alvin with some impatience. “Does it know anything about the Seven Suns?”