Islands in the Sky

by Arthur C. Clarke

  We were sorry to see them go, because they had provided much entertainment and we’d been anxious to see the famous ray guns in action. To everyone’s surprise, the entire unit eventually got back to earth safely. But we’re still waiting for the film to appear.

  It was the end, too, of Norman’s hero worship. The photo of Tex vanished from his locker and was never seen again.

  In my prowling around, I’d now visited almost every part of the station that wasn’t strictly out of bounds. The forbidden territory included the power plant—which was radioactive anyway, so that nobody could go into it—the Stores Section, guarded by a fierce quartermaster, and the main control room. This was one place I’d badly wanted to go; it was the “brain” of the station, from which radio contact was maintained with all the ships in this section of space, and of course with earth itself. Until everyone knew that I could be trusted not to make a nuisance of myself, there was little chance of my being allowed in there. But I was determined to manage it someday, and at last I got the opportunity.

  One of the tasks of the junior apprentices was to take coffee and light refreshments to the duty officer in the middle of his watch. This always occurred when the station was crossing the Greenwich Meridian. Since it took exactly a hundred minutes for us to make one trip around the earth, everything was based on this interval and our clocks were adjusted to give a local “hour” of this length. After a while one got used to being able to judge the time simply by glancing at the earth and seeing what continent was beneath.

  The coffee, like all drinks, was carried in closed containers (nicknamed “milk bottles”) and had to be drunk by sucking through a plastic tube, since it wouldn’t pour in the absence of gravity. The refreshments were taken up to the control room in a light frame with little holes for the various containers, and their arrival was always much appreciated by the staff on duty, except when they were dealing with some emergency and were too busy for anything else.

  It took a lot of persuading before I got Tim Benton to put me down for this job. I pointed out that it relieved the other boys for more important work; to which he retorted that it was one of the few jobs they liked doing. But at last he gave in.

  I’d been carefully briefed, and just as the station was passing over the Gulf of Guinea I stood outside the control room and tinkled my little bell. (There were a lot of quaint customs like this aboard the station.) The duty officer shouted, “Come in!” I steered my tray through the door and then handed out the food and drinks. The last milk bottle reached its customer just as we were passing over the African coast.

  They must have known I was coming because no one seemed in the least surprised to see me. As I had to stay and collect the empties, there was plenty of opportunity to look around the control room. It was spotlessly clean and tidy, dome-shaped, and with a wide glass panel running right round it. Besides the duty officer and his assistant, there were several radio operators at their instruments, and other men working on equipment I couldn’t recognize. Dials and TV screens were everywhere, lights were flashing on and off, yet the whole place was silent. The men sitting at their little desks were wearing headphones and throat microphones, so that any two people could talk without disturbing the others. It was fascinating to watch these experts working swiftly at their tasks, directing ships thousands of miles away, talking to the other space stations or to the moon and checking the many instruments on which our lives depended.

  The duty officer sat at a huge glass-topped desk on which glowed a complicated pattern of colored lights. It showed the earth, the orbits of the other stations and the courses of all the ships in our part of space. From time to time he would say something quietly, his lips scarcely moving, and I knew that some order was winging its way out to an approaching ship, telling it to hold off a little longer or to prepare for contact.

  I dared not hang around once I’d finished my job, but the next day I had a second chance. Because things were rather slack, one of the assistants was kind enough to show me around. He let me listen to some of the radio conversations, and explained the workings of the great display panel. The thing that impressed me most of all, however, was the shining metal cylinder, covered with controls and winking lights, which occupied the center of the room.

  “This,” said my guide proudly, “is HAVOC.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Short for Automatic Voyage Orbit Computer.”

  I thought this over for a moment.

  “What does the H stand for?”

  “Everyone asks that. It doesn’t stand for anything.” He turned to the operator.

  “What’s she set up for now?”

  The man gave an answer that consisted chiefly of mathematics, but I did catch the word “Venus.”

  “Right. Let’s suppose we wanted to leave for Venus in—oh, four hours from now.” His hands flicked across a keyboard like that of an overgrown typewriter.

  I expected HAVOC to whir and click, but all that happened was that a few lights changed color. Then, after about ten seconds, a buzzer sounded twice and a piece of tape slid out of a narrow slot. It was covered with closely printed figures.

  “There you are—everything you want to know. Direction of firing, elements of orbit, time of flight, when to start braking. All you need now is a spaceship!”

  I wondered just how many hundreds of calculations the electronic brain had carried out in those few seconds. Space travel was certainly a complicated affair, so complicated that it sometimes depressed me. Then I remembered that these men didn’t seem any cleverer than I was; they were highly trained, that was all. If one worked hard enough, one could master anything.

  My time on the Inner Station was now drawing to an end, though not in the way anyone had expected. I had slipped into the uneventful routine of life, and it had been explained to me that nothing exciting ever happened up here and if I’d wanted thrills I should have stayed back on earth. That was a little disappointing, for I’d hoped that something out of the ordinary would take place while I was here, though I couldn’t imagine what. As it turned out, my wish was soon to be fulfilled.

  But before I come to that, I see I’ll have to say something about the other space stations, which I’ve neglected so far.

  Ours, only five hundred miles up, was the nearest to the earth, but there were others doing equally important jobs at much greater distances. The farther out they were, the longer, of course, they took to make a complete revolution. Our “day” was only a hundred minutes, but the outermost stations of all took twenty-four hours to complete their orbit, thus providing the curious results which I’ll mention later.

  The purpose of the Inner Station, as I’ve explained, was to act as a refueling, repair and transfer point for spaceships, both outgoing and incoming. For this job, it was necessary to be as close to the earth as possible. Much lower than five hundred miles would not have been safe since the last faint traces of air would have robbed the station of its speed and eventually brought it crashing down.

  The Meteorological Stations, on the other hand, had to be a fair distance out so that they could “see” as much of the earth as possible. There were two of them, six thousand miles up, circling the world every six and a half hours. Like our Inner Station, they moved over the Equator. This meant that, though they could see much farther north and south than we could, the polar regions were still out of sight or badly distorted. Hence the existence of the Polar Met Station, which, unlike all the others, had an orbit passing over the poles. Together, the three stations could get a practically continuous picture of the weather over the whole planet.

  A good deal of astronomical work was also carried on in these stations. Some very large telescopes had been constructed here, floating in free orbit where their weight wouldn’t matter.

  Beyond the Met Stations, fifteen thousand miles up, circled the biology labs and the famous Space Hospital. There a great deal of research into zero-gravity conditions was carried out, and many diseases which were in
curable on earth could be treated. For example, the heart no longer had to work so hard to pump blood round the body, and so could be rested in a manner impossible on earth.

  Finally, twenty-two thousand miles out were the three great Relay Stations. They took exactly a day to make one revolution; therefore they appeared to be fixed forever over the same spots on the earth. Linked to each other by tight radio beams, they provided TV coverage over the whole planet. And not only TV, but all the long-distance radio and ’phone services passed through the Relay Chain, the building of which at the close of the twentieth century had completely revolutionized world communications.

  One station, serving the Americas, was in Latitude 90° West. A second, in 30° East, covered Europe and Africa. The third, in 150° East, served the entire Pacific area. There was no spot on earth where you could not pick up one or other of the stations. And once you had trained your receiving equipment in the right direction, there was never any need to move it again. The sun, moon and planets might rise and set, but the three Relay Stations never moved from their fixed positions in the sky.

  The different orbits were connected by a shuttle service of small rockets which made trips at infrequent intervals. On the whole, there was little traffic between the various stations. Most of their business was done directly with earth. At first I had hoped to visit some of our neighbors, but a few inquiries had made it obvious that I hadn’t a chance. I was due to return home inside a week, and there was no spare passenger space available during that time. Even if there had been, it was pointed out to me, there were many more useful loads that could be carried.

  I was in the Morning Star watching Ronnie Jordan put the finishing touches to a beautiful model spaceship when the radio called. It was Tim Benton, on duty back at the station. He sounded very excited.

  “Is that Ron? Anyone else there—what, only Roy? Well, never mind—listen to this, it’s very important.”

  “Go ahead,” replied Ron. We were both considerably surprised, for we’d never heard Tim really excited before.

  “We want to use the Morning Star. I’ve promised the commander that she’ll be ready in three hours.”

  “What!” gasped Ronnie. “I don’t believe it!”

  “There’s no time to argue—I’ll explain later. The others are coming over right away. They’ll have to use space suits, as you’ve got the Skylark with you. Now then, make a list of these points and start checking.”

  For the next twenty minutes we were busy testing the controls—that is, those which would operate at all. We couldn’t imagine what had happened, but were too fully occupied to do much speculating. Fortunately, I’d got to know my way around the Morning Star so thoroughly that I was able to give Ron quite a bit of help, calling meter readings to him, and so on.

  Presently there was a bumping and banging from the air lock and three of our colleagues came aboard, towing batteries and power tools. They had made the trip on one of the rocket tractors used for moving ships and stores around the station, and had brought two drums of fuel across with them, enough to fill the auxiliary tanks. From them we discovered what all the fuss was about.

  It was a medical emergency. One of the passengers from a Mars-Earth liner, which had just docked at the Residential Station, had been taken seriously ill and had to have an operation within ten hours. The only chance of saving his life was to get him out to the Space Hospital, but unfortunately ships at the Inner Station were being serviced and would take at least a day to get spaceworthy.

  It was Tim who’d talked the commander into giving us this chance. The Morning Star, he pointed out, had been very carefully looked after, and the requirements for a trip to the Space Hospital were not great. Only a small amount of fuel would be needed, and it wouldn’t even be necessary to use the main motors. The whole journey could be made on the auxiliary rockets.

  Since he could think of no alternative, Commander Doyle had reluctantly agreed, after stating a number of conditions. We had to get the Morning Star over to the station under her own power so that she could be fueled up and he would do all the piloting.

  During the next hour, I did my best to be useful and to become accepted as one of the crew. My chief job was going over the ship and securing loose objects, which might start crashing round when power was applied. Perhaps “crashing” is too strong a word, as we weren’t going to use much of an acceleration. But anything adrift might be a nuisance and could even be dangerous if it got into the wrong place.

  It was a great moment when Norman Powell started the motors. He gave a short burst of power at very low thrust, while everyone watched the meters for signs of danger. We were all wearing our space suits as a safety precaution. If one of the motors exploded, it would probably not harm us up here in the control room, but it might easily spring a leak in the hull.

  Everything went according to plan. The mild acceleration made us all drift toward what had suddenly become the floor. Then the feeling of weight ceased again, and everything was normal once more.

  There was much comparing of meter readings, and at last Norman said, “the motors seem O.K. Let’s get started.”

  And so the Morning Star began her first voyage for almost a hundred years. It was not much of a journey, compared with her great trip to Venus. In fact, it was only about five miles, from the graveyard over to the Inner Station. Yet to all of us it was a real adventure, for we were all very fond of the wonderful old ship.

  We reached the Inner Station after about five minutes, and Norman brought the ship to rest several hundred yards away. He was taking no risks with his first command. The tractors were already fussing around, and before long the towropes had been attached and the Morning Star was hauled in.

  It was at that point that I decided I’d better keep out of the way. Rear of the workshop (which had once been the Morning Star’s hold) were several smaller chambers, usually occupied by stores. Most of the loose equipment aboard the ship had now been stuffed into these and lashed securely in place. However, there was still plenty of room left.

  I want to make one thing quite clear. Although the word “stowaway” has been used, I don’t consider it at all accurate. No one had actually told me to leave the ship, and I wasn’t hiding. If anybody had come through the workshop and rummaged around in the storeroom, he would have seen me. But nobody did, so whose fault was that?

  Time seemed to go very slowly while I waited. I could hear distant, muffled shouts and orders, and after a while there came the unmistakable pulsing of the pumps as fuel came surging into the tanks. Then there was another long interval. I knew Commander Doyle must be waiting until the ship had reached the right point in her orbit around the earth before he turned on the motors. I had no idea when this would be, and the suspense was terrible.

  But at last the rockets roared into life. Weight returned. I slid down the walls and found myself really standing on a solid floor again. I took a few steps to see what it felt like and didn’t enjoy the experience. In the last fortnight I had grown so accustomed to lack of gravity that its temporary return was a nuisance.

  The thunder of the motors lasted for three or four minutes, and by the end of that time I was almost deafened by the noise, though I had pushed my fingers into my ears. Passengers weren’t supposed to travel so near the rockets, and I was very glad when at last there was a sudden slackening in thrust and the roar surrounding me began to fade. Soon it ebbed into silence, though my head was still ringing, and it would be quite a while before I could hear properly again. But I didn’t mind that. All that really mattered was that the journey had begun, and no one could send me back!

  I decided to wait for a while before going up to the control room. Commander Doyle would still be busy checking his course, and I didn’t want to bother him while he was occupied. Besides, I had to think of a good story.

  Everyone was surprised to see me. There was complete silence when I drifted through the door and said: “Hello! I think someone might have warned me that we were going
to take off.”

  Commander Doyle simply stared at me. For a moment I couldn’t decide whether he was going to be angry or not. Then he said: “What are you doing aboard?”

  “I was lashing down the gear in the storeroom.”

  He turned to Norman, who looked a little unhappy.

  “Is that correct?”

  “Yes, sir. I told him to do it, but I thought he’d finished.”

  The commander considered this for a moment. Then he said to me: “Well, we’ve no time to go into this now. You’re here, and we’ll have to put up with you.”

  This was not very flattering, but it might have been much worse. And the expression on Norman’s face was worth going a long way to see.

  The remainder of the Morning Star’s crew consisted of Tim Benton, who was looking at me with a quizzical smile, and Ronnie Jordan, who avoided my gaze altogether. We had two passengers. The sick man was strapped to a stretcher that had been fixed against one wall; he must have been drugged, for he remained unconscious for the whole journey. With him was a young doctor who did nothing except look anxiously at his watch and give his patient an injection from time to time. I don’t think he said more than a dozen words during the whole trip.

  Tim explained to me later that the sick man was suffering from an acute, and fortunately very rare, type of stomach trouble caused by the return of high gravity. It was very lucky for him that he had managed to reach the earth’s orbit, because if he had been taken ill on the two months’ voyage, the medical resources of the liner could not have saved him.

  There was nothing for any of us to do while the Morning Star swept outward on the long curve that would bring her, after some three and a half hours, to the Space Hospital. Very slowly, earth was receding behind us. It was no longer so close that it filled almost half the sky. Already we could see far more of its surface than was possible from the Inner Station, skimming low above the Equator. Northward, the Mediterranean crept into view; then Japan and New Zealand appeared almost simultaneously over opposite horizons.