The Star by Arthur C. Clarke Read Free Book Online Page A

making his leisurely way back to the Ziolkovski . It was no concern of mine if Commander Krasnin let his people go out on solo trips, though it seemed a deplorable practice. And if Surov was breaking regulations, it was equally no concern of mine to report him.
    During the next two months, the men often spotted Surov making his lone way over the landscape, but he always avoided them if they got too near. I made some discreet inquiries, and found that Commander Krasnin had been forced, owing to shortage of men, to relax some of his safety rules. But I couldn’t find out what Surov was up to, though I never dreamed that his commander was equally in the dark.
    It was with an ‘I told you so’ feeling that I got Krasnin’s emergency call. We had all had men in trouble before and had had to send out help, but this was the first time anyone had been lost and had not replied when his ship had sent out the recall signal. There was a hasty radio conference, a line of action was drawn up, and search parties fanned out from each of the three ships.
    Once again I was with Henderson, and it was only common sense for us to backtrack along the route that we had seen Surov following. It was in what we regarded as ‘our’ territory, quite some distance away from Surov’s own ship, and as we scrambled up the low foothills it occurred to me for the first time that the Russian might have been doing something he wanted to keep from his colleagues. What it might be, I could not imagine.
    Henderson found him, and yelled for help over his suit radio. But it was much too late; Surov was lying, face down, his deflated suit crumpled around him. He had been kneeling when something had smashed the plastic globe of his helmet; you could see how he had pitched forward and died instantaneously.
    When Commander Krasnin reached us, we were still staring at the unbelievable object that Surov had been examining when he died. It was about three feet high, a leathery, greenish oval rooted to the rocks with a widespread network of tendrils. Yes—rooted; for it was a plant. A few yards away were two others, much smaller and apparently dead, since they were blackened and withered.
    My first reaction was: ‘So there is life on the moon, after all!’ It was not until Krasnin’s voice spoke in my ears that I realised how much more marvellous was the truth.
    ‘Poor Vladimir!’ he said. ‘We knew he was a genius, yet we laughed at him when he told us of his dream. So he kept his greatest work a secret. He conquered the Arctic with his hybrid wheat, but that was only a beginning. He has brought life to the moon—and death as well.’
    As I stood there, in that first moment of astonished revelation, it still seemed a miracle. Today, all the world knows the history of ‘Surov’s cactus’, as it was inevitably if quite inaccurately christened, and it has lost much of its wonder. His notes have told the full story, and have described the years of experimentation that finally led him to a plant whose leathery skin would enable it to survive in vacuum, and whose far-ranging, acid-secreting roots would enable it to grow upon rocks where even lichens would be hard put to thrive. And we have seen the realisation of the second stage of Surov’s dream, for the cactus which will forever bear his name has already broken up vast areas of the lunar rock and so prepared a way for the more specialised plants that now feed every human being upon the moon.
    Krasnin bent down beside the body of his colleague and lifted it effortlessly against the low gravity. He fingered the shattered fragments of the plastic helmet, and shook his head in perplexity.
    ‘What could have happened to him?’ he said. ‘It almost looks as if the plant did it, but that’s ridiculous.’
    The green enigma stood there on the no-longer barren plain, tantalising us with its promise and its mystery. Then Henderson said slowly, as if thinking aloud:
    ‘I believe I’ve got the answer. I’ve just