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

in this matter, and would be safe, in case… but I cannot imagine any power which could defeat such a ship as our “Zuranther”. Will you please register your votes in the usual way? It will be a great setback if we cannot colonise Three, but it is not the only planet in the system, though it is the fairest.’
    There came subdued clicks and a faint humming of motors as the councillors pressed their coloured buttons, and on the television screen appeared the words: For 967; Against 233.
    ‘Very well, the “Zuranther” will leave at once for Three. This time we will follow her movements with the televisor and then if anything does go wrong, we shall at least obtain some idea of the weapons the enemy uses.’
    Hours later the tremendous mass of the flagship of the Martian fleet dropped thunderously through the outer reaches of Earth’s atmosphere towards the far-off waters of the Pacific. She fell in the heart of a tornado, for her captain was taking no chances and the winds of the stratosphere were being annihilated by her flaming ray screens.
    But on a tiny island far over the eastern horizon, the termites had been preparing for the attack they knew must come, and strange, fragile mechanisms had been erected by myriad blind and toiling insects. The great Martian warship was two hundred miles away when her captain located the island in his televisor. His finger reached towards the button which would start the enormous ray generators, but swift as he was the almost instant acting relays of the termite mind were far swifter. Though, in any case, the outcome would have been the same.
    The great spherical screens did not flare even once as the enemy struck home. Their slim rapier of pure heat was driven by only a score of horsepower, while behind the shields of the warship were a thousand million. But the feeble heat beam of the termites never passed through those screens—it reached out through hyperspace to gnaw at the very vitals of the ship. The Martians could not check an enemy who struck from within their defences, an enemy to whom a sphere was no more a barrier than a hollow ring.
    The termite rulers, those alien beings from outer space, had kept their agreement with the old lords of Earth, and had saved man from the danger his ancestors had long ago foreseen.
    But the watching assembly knew only that the screens of the ship which had been blazing fiercely one moment had erupted in a hurricane of flame and a numbing concussion of sound, while for a thousand miles around fragments of white-hot metal were dropping from the heavens.
    Slowly the President turned to face the Council and whispered in a low, strained voice, ‘I think it had better be planet Two, after all.’

Reverie
    First published in New Worlds , Autumn 1939
    Not previously collected in book form
    ‘All the ideas in science fiction have been used up!’
    How often we’ve heard this moan from editors, authors and fans, any one of whom should know better. Even if it were true, which is the last thing it is, it would signify nothing. How long ago do you think the themes of ordinary, mundane fiction were used up? Somewhere in the late Paleolithic, I should say. Which fact has made exactly no difference to the overwhelming outrush of modern masterpieces, four a shilling in the third tray from the left.
    No. The existing material is sufficient to provide an infinite number of stories, each individual and each worth reading. Too much stress is laid on new ideas, or ‘thought-variants’, on ‘novae’. They are all very well in their way—and it’s a way that leads to strange, delightful regions of fantasy—but at least as important are characterisation and the ability to treat a commonplace theme in your own individual style. And for this reason, in spite of all his critics, I maintain that if any could equal Weinbaum, none could surpass him.
    If, in addition to its purely literary qualities, a story has a novel idea, so much the better.