The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke by Arthur C. Clarke Read Free Book Online Page A

the glare of enormous lights.
    One day, Norman told her, it might be possible to develop plants which could be cultivated out on the airless surface of the Moon, and then the green carpet of life would begin to spread across the empty plains, changing the face of a world.
    Now that the early pioneering days were over, existence in the colony was a little less austere, although by the standards of Earth it was spartan enough. There were quite extensive games and recreation rooms, and although the living quarters were very small they were also extremely comfortable.
    What Daphne liked most, however, were the people themselves. They seemed much more friendly and helpful than on Earth, and she didn’t think that was merely because she was the Director’s daughter. Somehow she got the impression that they all felt part of one big family—they knew they had to work together in order to survive at all.
    ‘Well,’ said Norman with a grin, ‘what are you thinking about now?’
    Daphne woke from her day dreams with a start. ‘I was just wondering,’ she said, ‘what it really feels like to live here for a long time. Don’t you ever miss the Earth? Surely you must get fed up with all these bare rocks and that sky full of stars! I know they’re wonderfully—well, dramatic—but they never change. Don’t you sometimes wish you had clouds, or green fields, or the sea? I think I should miss the sea most of all.’
    Norman smiled, although a little wistfully. ‘Yes, we miss them sometimes, but usually we’re too busy to brood over it. You see, when you’ve got a big, exciting job to do, nothing else really matters. Besides, we go on Earth-leave every two years, and then I guess we appreciate what the old planet’s got to offer a lot more than you stay-at-homes!’
    He gave a little laugh. ‘It isn’t as if we can’t see Earth whenever we want to. After all, it’s there all the time, hanging up in the sky. From this side of the Moon, you can always see your own home town—at least, when it isn’t covered with clouds. Oh, that reminds me—I’ve been able to grab one of the smaller telescopes for you. Let’s go along and see if it’s ready.’
    It seemed a little odd that it had taken three days to arrange this. The trouble was that the telescopes were in almost continual use on various research programmes, and there was no time for casual star-gazing. Moreover, the really big instruments were permanently fitted up for photographic work, so it was impossible to look through them even when they were free.
    The room to which Norman led Daphne was only just below the Moon’s surface, as they had to climb a flight of steps from the main Observatory level to reach it. It was quite small, and crowded with apparatus in a state of extreme disorder—at least, so this seemed to Daphne. An elderly man with a very worried expression was doing something with a soldering iron to the inside of what looked like a complicated television set. He did not seem too pleased at the interruption.
    ‘I can give you only thirty minutes,’ he said. ‘I’ve promised Professor Martin to get this spectrum analyser fixed by eighteen hours. What do you want to look at?’
    ‘What have you got to offer?’
    ‘Let’s see—ten planets, about fifty satellites, a few million nebulae and several billion stars. Take your choice.’
    ‘We can’t see many of them in thirty minutes, so let’s start with—oh, say the Andromeda nebula.’
    The astronomer looked at the clock, did some mental calculations, and pressed several buttons. There was a faint whirring of electric motors and the lights began to dim.
    ‘What do I look through?’ asked Daphne, who had seen nothing at all that looked like any part of a telescope.
    ‘Sit at this desk and use this eyepiece. Focus with the knob on the right—that’s the idea. Got it?’
    She was peering into a circle of intense, blackness, across which the stars were moving so quickly that they looked like