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

ten days here together at the observatory. I’ll make all the arrangements, so be a dear and don’t argue. And I want you to bring along Daphne and Mike. There’s room for them as well. I’m afraid you’ll have to make peace with the twins, somehow—tell them they’ll have their chance when they’re older!’
    ‘But, John—I can’t …’
    ‘Of course you can—and think how Daphne and Mike will love it! I can’t explain now, but we may never have an opportunity like this again. I’m sending a telegram with all the details. You should get it in an hour or so. Oh, bother—there’s the signal—I must hang up now. Give my love to them all. I do look forward to seeing you. Goodbye, darling.’
    Mrs Martin put down the receiver with a dazed expression. It was just like John. He hadn’t even allowed her time to raise a single objection. But, now she came to think of it, what real objections were there? He was right, of course. Space-travel—at least to the Moon—was safe enough, even though it was still too expensive for a regular passenger service. Presumably John had been able to use his official position to get their reservations.
    Yes, John was quite right. It was too good a chance to miss, and if she didn’t go now, it might be ages before she would see him again. She turned to the anxiously waiting family and said with a smile, ‘I’ve got some news for you.’
    In the ordinary way, a Transatlantic crossing would have been quite an excitement for Daphne and Michael, since it was something they had done only two or three times before in their lives. Now, however, they regarded the two hours’ flight from London Airport to New York as merely an unimportant episode, and occupied most of the time talking about the Moon clearly enough to impress the other passengers.
    They spent only an hour in New York before flying on across the Continent, steadily gaining on the sun, until when they finally swept down over the great Arizona desert it was, by the clock, a couple of hours before the time they had left the flat that same morning.
    From the air, the space-port was an impressive sight. Looking through the observation windows, Daphne could see, spread out below, the great steel frameworks supporting the slim, torpedo-shaped monsters that would soon go roaring up to the stars. Everywhere were huge, gasometer-like fuel-tanks, radio aerials pointing at the sky, and mysterious buildings and structures whose purpose she couldn’t even guess.
    Through all this maze tiny figures scurried to and fro, and vehicles looking like metallic beetles rolled swiftly along the roads.
    Daphne belonged to the first generation that had taken space-travel for granted. The Moon had been reached almost thirty years ago—twelve years before she was born—and she could just remember the excitement when the first expeditions had landed on Mars and Venus.
    In her short life she had seen Man set out to conquer space, just as, hundreds of years before, Columbus and the great explorers of the Middle Ages had discovered the world. The first stages of the conquest were now over. Small colonies of scientists had been established on Mars and Venus, and on the Moon the great Lunar Observatory, of which Professor Martin was director, had now become the centre of all astronomical research.
    On the Moon’s silent, lonely plains, beneath velvet skies, in which the stars shone brilliantly night and day, with never the least trace of cloud to dim them, the astronomers could work at last under perfect conditions, unhindered by the obscuring atmosphere against which they had always had to fight on Earth.
    The next two hours they spent in the space-port’s headquarters building, being weighed, medically examined and filling up forms. When this was all over, and they were beginning to wonder if the whole thing was really worth while, they found themselves in a small, comfortable office, looking across a desk at a rather jolly, plump man, who seemed to