The Songs of Distant Earth

by Arthur C. Clarke

  “Captain Sirdar Bey,” he answered, “is in a privileged position. Unlike the rest of us, he doesn’t have to explain – or to apologize.”

  “I detect a note of mild sarcasm in your voice,” the Thalassa Broadcasting Corporation’s star newsperson said.

  “It wasn’t intended. I admire the captain enormously, and even accept his opinion of me – with reservations, of course. Er – are you recording?”

  “Not now. Too much background noise.”

  “Lucky for you I’m such a trusting person since there’s no way I could tell if you were.”

  “Definitely off the record, Moses. What does he think of you?”

  “He’s glad to have my views, and my experience, but he doesn’t take me very seriously. I know exactly why. He once said, “Moses – you like power but not responsibility. I enjoy both.” It was a very shrewd statement; it sums up the difference between us.”

  “How did you answer?”

  “What could I say? It was perfectly true. The only time I got involved in practical politics was – well, not a disaster, but I never really enjoyed it.”

  “The Kaldor Crusade?”

  “Oh – you know about that. Silly name – it annoyed me. And that was another point of disagreement between the captain and myself. He thought – still thinks, I’m sure – the Directive ordering us to avoid all planets with life-potential is a lot of sentimental nonsense. Another quote from the good captain: “Law I understand. Metalaw is bal – er, balderdash”.”

  “This is fascinating – one day you must let me record it.”

  “Definitely not. What’s happening over there?”

  Doreen Chang was a persistent lady, but she knew when to give up.

  “Oh, that’s Mirissa’s favourite gas-sculpture. Surely you had them on Earth.”

  “Of course. And since we’re still off the record, I don’t think it’s art. But it’s amusing.”

  The main lights had been switched off in one section of the patio, and about a dozen guests had gathered around what appeared to be a very large soap bubble, almost a metre in diameter. As Chang and Kaldor walked towards it, they could see the first swirls of colour forming inside, like the birth of a spiral nebula.

  “It’s called “Life”,” Doreen said, “And it’s been in Mirissa’s family for two hundred years. But the gas is beginning to leak; I can remember when it was much brighter.”

  Even so, it was impressive. The battery of electron guns and lasers in the base had been programmed by some patient, long-dead artist to generate a series of geometrical shapes that slowly evolved into organic structures. From the centre of the sphere, ever more complex forms appeared, expanded out of sight, and were replaced by others. In one witty sequence, single-celled creatures were shown climbing a spiral staircase, recognizable at once as a representation of the DNA molecule. With each step, something new was added; within a few minutes, the display had encompassed the four-billion-year odyssey from amoeba to Man.

  Then the artist tried to go beyond, and Kaldor lost him. The contortions of the fluorescent gas became too complex and too abstract. Perhaps if one saw the display a few more times, a pattern would emerge –

  “What happened to the sound?” Doreen asked when the bubble’s maelstrom of seething colours abruptly winked out. “There used to be some very good music, especially at the end.”

  “I was afraid someone would ask that question,” Mirissa said with an apologetic smile. “We’re not certain whether the trouble is in the playback mechanism or the program itself.”

  “Surely you have a backup!”

  “Oh, yes, of course. But the spare module is somewhere in Kumar’s room, probably buried under bits of his canoe. Until you’ve seen his den, you won’t understand what entropy really means.”

  “It’s not a canoe – it’s a kayak,” protested Kumar, who had just arrived with a pretty local girl clinging to each arm. “And what’s entropy?”

  One of the young Martians was foolish enough to attempt an explanation by pouring two drinks of different colours into the same glass. Before he could get very far, his voice was drowned by a blast of music from the gas-sculpture.

  “You see!” Kumar shouted above the din, with obvious pride, “Brant can fix anything!”

  Anything?thought Loren. I wonder … I wonder …

  17. Chain of Command

  From: Captain

  To: All Crew Members

  CHRONOLOGY

  As there has already been a great deal of unnecessary confusion in this matter, I wish to make the following points:

  1. All ship’s records and schedules will remain on Earth Time — corrected for relativistic effects — until the end of the voyage. All clocks and timing systems aboard ship will continue to run on ET.

  2. For convenience, ground crews will use Thalassan time (TT) when necessary, but will keep all records in ET with TT in parentheses.

  3. To remind you:

  The duration of the Thalassan Mean Solar Day is 29.4325 hours ET. There are 313.1561 Thalassan days in the Thalassan Sidereal Year, which is divided into 11 months of 28 days. January is omitted from the calendar, but the five extra days to make up the total of 313 follow immediately after the last day (28th) of December. Leap days are intercalated every six years, but there will be none during our stay.

  4. Since the Thalassan day is 22% longer than Earth’s, and the number of those days in its year is 14% shorter, the actual length of the Thalassan year is only about 5% longer than Earth’s. As you are all aware, this has one practical convenience, in the matter of birthdays. Chronological age means almost the same on Thalassa as on Earth. A 21-year old Thalassan has lived as long as a 20-year old Earth-person. The Lassan calendar starts at First Landing, which was 3109 ET. The current year is 718TT or 754 Earth years later.

  5. Finally — and we can also be thankful for this — there is only one Time Zone to worry about on Thalassa.

  Sirdar Bey (Capt.)

  3864.05.26.20.30 ET

  718.00.02.1 5.00 TT

  “Who would have thought anything so simple could be so complicated!” laughed Mirissa when she had scanned the printout pinned up on the Terra Nova Bulletin Board. “I suppose this is one of the famous Beybolts. What sort of man is the captain? I’ve never had a real chance of talking to him.”

  “He’s not an easy person to know,” Moses Kaldor answered. “I don’t think I’ve spoken to him in private more than a dozen times. And he’s the only man on the ship who everyone calls “Sir” – always. Except maybe Deputy Captain Malina, when they’re alone together … Incidentally, that notice was certainly not a genuine Beybolt – it’s too technical. Science Officer Varley and Secretary LeRoy must have drafted it. Captain Bey has a remarkable grasp of engineering principles – much better than I do – but he’s primarily an administrator. And occasionally, when he has to be, commander-in-chief.”

  “I’d hate his responsibility.”

  “It’s a job someone has to do. Routine problems can usually be solved by consulting the senior officers and the computer banks. But sometimes a decision has to be made by a single individual, who has the authority to enforce it. That’s why you need a captain. You can’t run a ship by a committee – at least not all the time.”

  “I think that’s the way we run Thalassa. Can you imagine President Farradine as captain of anything?”

  “These peaches are delicious,” Kaldor said tactfully, helping himself to another, though he knew perfectly well that they had been intended for Loren. “But you’ve been lucky; you’ve had no real crisis for seven hundred years! Didn’t one of your own people once say: “Thalassa has no history – only statistics”?”

  “Oh, that’s not true! What about Mount Krakan?”

  “That was a natural disaster – and hardly a major one. I’m referring to, ah, political crises: civil unrest, that sort of thing.”

  “We can thank Earth for that. You gave us a Jefferson Mark 3 Constitution – someone once
called it Utopia in two megabytes – and it’s worked amazingly well. The program hasn’t been modified for three hundred years. We’re still only on the Sixth Amendment.”

  “And long may you stay there,” Kaldor said fervently. “I should hate to think that we were responsible for a Seventh.”

  “If that happens, it will be processed first in the Archives’ memory banks. When are you coming to visit us again? There are so many things I want to show you.”

  “Not as many as I want to see. You must have so much that will be useful for us on Sagan 2, even though it’s a very different kind of world.” (“and a far less attractive one,” he added to himself.)

  While they were talking, Loren had come quietly into the reception area, obviously on his way from the games room to the showers. He was wearing the briefest of shorts and had a towel draped over his bare shoulders. The sight left Mirissa distinctly weak at the knees.

  “I suppose you’ve beaten everyone, as usual,” Kaldor said. “Doesn’t it get boring?”

  Loren gave a wry grin.

  “Some of the young Lassans show promise. One’s just taken three points off me. Of course, I was playing with my left hand.”

  “In the very unlikely event he hasn’t already told you,” Kaldor remarked to Mirissa, “Loren was once table-tennis champion on Earth.”

  “Don’t exaggerate, Moses. I was only about number five – and standards were miserably low towards the end. Any Third Millennium Chinese player would have pulverized me.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve thought of teaching Brant,” Kaldor said mischievously. “That should be interesting.”

  There was a brief silence. Then Loren answered, smugly but accurately: “It wouldn’t be fair.”

  “As it happens,” Mirissa said, “Brant would like to show you something.”

  “Oh.”

  “You said you’ve never been on a boat.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Then you have an invitation to join Brant and Kumar at Pier Three – eight-thirty tomorrow morning.”

  Loren turned to Kaldor.

  “Do you think it’s safe for me to go?” he asked in mock seriousness. “I don’t know how to swim.”

  “I shouldn’t worry,” Kaldor answered helpfully. “If they’re planning a one-way trip for you, that won’t make the slightest difference.”

  18. Kumar

  Only one tragedy had darkened Kumar Leonidas’s eighteen years of life; he would always be ten centimetres shorter than his heart’s desire. It was not surprising that his nickname was “The Little Lion” – though very few dared use it to his face.

  To compensate for his lack of height, he had worked assiduously on width and depth. Many times Mirissa had told him, in amused exasperation, “Kumar – if you spent as much time building your brain as your body, you’d be the greatest genius on Thalassa.” What she had never told him – and scarcely admitted even to herself – was that the spectacle of his regular morning exercises often aroused most unsisterly feelings in her breast as well as a certain jealousy of all the other admirers who had gathered to watch. At one time or other this had included most of Kumar’s age group. Although the envious rumour that he had made love to all the girls and half the boys in Tarna was wild hyperbole, it did contain a considerable element of truth.

  But Kumar, despite the intellectual gulf between him and his sister, was no muscle-bound moron. If anything really interested him, he would not be satisfied until he had mastered it, no matter how long that took. He was a superb seaman and for over two years, with occasional help from Brant, had been building an exquisite four-metre kayak. The hull was complete, but he had not yet started on the deck.

  One day, he swore, he was going to launch it and everyone would stop laughing. Meanwhile, the phrase “Kumar’s kayak” had come to mean any unfinished job around Tarna – of which, indeed, there were a great many.

  Apart from this common Lassan tendency to procrastinate, Kumar’s chief defects were an adventurous nature and a fondness for sometimes risky practical jokes. This, it was widely believed, would someday get him into serious trouble.

  But it was impossible to be angry with even his most outrageous pranks, for they lacked all malice. He was completely open, even transparent; no one could ever imagine him telling a lie. For this, he could be forgiven much, and frequently was.

  The arrival of the visitors had, of course, been the most exciting event in his life. He was fascinated by their equipment, the sound, video, and sensory recordings they had brought, the stories they told – everything about them. And because he saw more of Loren than any of the others, it was not surprising that Kumar attached himself to him.

  This was not a development that Loren altogether appreciated. If there was one thing even more unwelcome than an inconvenient mate, it was that traditional spoilsport, an adhesive kid brother.

  19. Pretty Polly

  “I still can’t believe it, Loren,” Brant Falconer said. “You’ve never been in a boat – or on a ship?”

  “I seem to remember paddling a rubber dinghy across a small pond. That would have been when I was about five years old.”

  “Then you’ll enjoy this. Not even a swell to upset your stomach. Perhaps we can persuade you to dive with us.”

  “No, thanks – I’ll take one new experience at a time. And I’ve learned never to get in the way when other men have work to do.”

  Brant was right; he was beginning to enjoy himself, as the hydrojets drove the little trimaran almost silently out toward the reef. Yet soon after he had climbed aboard and seen the firm safety of the shoreline rapidly receding, he had known a moment of near panic.

  Only a sense of the ridiculous had saved him from making a spectacle of himself. He had travelled fifty light-years – the longest journey ever made by human beings – to reach this spot. And now he was worried about the few hundred metres to the nearest land.

  Yet there was no way in which he could turn down the challenge. As he lay at ease in the stern, watching Falconer at the wheel (how had he acquired that white scar across his shoulders? – oh, yes, he had mentioned something about a crash in a microflyer, years ago …), he wondered just what was going through the Lassan’s mind.

  It was hard to believe that any human society, even the most enlightened and easygoing, could be totally free from jealousy or some form of sexual possessiveness. Not that there was – so far, alas! – much for Brant to be jealous about.

  Loren doubted if he had spoken as many as a hundred words to Mirissa; most of them had been in the company of her husband. Correction: on Thalassa, the terms husband and wife were not used until the birth of the first child. When a son was chosen, the mother usually – but not invariably – assumed the name of the father. If the first born was a girl, both kept the mother’s name – at least until the birth of the second, and final, child.

  There were very few things indeed that shocked the Lassans. Cruelty – especially to children – was one of them. And having a third pregnancy, on this world with only twenty thousand square kilometres of land, was another.

  Infant mortality was so low that multiple births were sufficient to maintain a steady population. There had been one famous case – the only one in the whole history of Thalassa – when a family had been blessed, or afflicted, with double quintuplets. Although the poor mother could hardly be blamed, her memory was now surrounded with that aura of delicious depravity that had once enveloped Lucrezia Borgia, Messalina, or Faustine.

  I’ll have to play my cards very, very carefully, Loren told himself. That Mirissa found him attractive, he already knew. He could read it in her expression and in the tone of her voice. And he had even stronger proof in accidental contacts of hand, and soft collisions of body that had lasted longer than were strictly necessary.

  They both knew that it was only a matter of time. And so, Loren was quite sure, did Brant. Yet despite the mutual tension between them, they were still friendly enough. The pulsation of the
jets died away, and the boat drifted to a halt, close to a large glass buoy that was gently bobbing up and down in the water.

  “That’s our power supply,” Brant said. “We only need a few hundred watts, so we can manage with solar cells. One advantage of freshwater seas – it wouldn’t work on Earth. Your oceans were much too salty – they’d have gobbled up kilowatts and kilowatts.”

  “Sure you won’t change your mind, uncle?” Kumar grinned.

  Loren shook his head. Though it had startled him at first, he had now grown quite accustomed to the universal salutation employed by younger Lassans. It was really rather pleasant, suddenly acquiring scores of nieces and nephews.

  “No, thanks. I’ll stay and watch through the underwater window, just in case you get eaten by sharks.”

  “Sharks!” Kumar said wistfully. “Wonderful, wonderful animals – I wish we had some here. It would make diving much more exciting.”

  Loren watched with a technician’s interest as Brant and Kumar adjusted their gear. Compared with the equipment one needed to wear in space, it was remarkably simple – and the pressure tank was a tiny thing that could easily fit in the palm of one hand.

  “That oxygen tank,” he said, “I wouldn’t have thought it could last more than a couple of minutes.”

  Brant and Kumar looked at him reproachfully.

  “Oxygen!” snorted Brant. “That’s a deadly poison, at below twenty metres. This bottle holds air – and it’s only the emergency supply, good for fifteen minutes.”

  He pointed to the gill-like structure on the backpack that Kumar was already wearing.

  “There’s all the oxygen you need dissolved in seawater, if you can extract it. But that takes energy, so you have to have a powercell to run the pumps and filters. I could stay down for a week with this unit if I wanted to.”

  He tapped the greenly fluorescent computer display on his left wrist.