2001: A Space Odyssey

by Arthur C. Clarke

  The stars were thinning out; the glare of the Milky Way was dimming into a pale ghost of the glory he had known—and, when he was ready, would know again.

  He was back, precisely where he wished to be, in the space that men called real.

  Chapter 47

  Star-Child

  There before him, a glittering toy no Star-Child could resist, floated the planet Earth with all its peoples.

  He had returned in time. Down there on that crowded globe, the alarms would be flashing across the radar screens, the great tracking telescopes would be searching the skies—and history as men knew it would be drawing to a close.

  A thousand miles below, he became aware that a slumbering cargo of death had awoken, and was stirring sluggishly in its orbit. The feeble energies it contained were no possible menace to him; but he preferred a cleaner sky. He put forth his will, and the circling megatons flowered in a silent detonation that brought a brief, false dawn to half the sleeping globe.

  Then he waited, marshaling his thoughts and brooding over his still untested powers. For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next.

  But he would think of something.

  1 (Extract from "Engineer Special Study of the Surface of the Moon," Office, Chief of Engineers, Department of the Army. U.S. Geological Survey, Washington, 1961.)