Childhood's End

  “Very interesting,” said Karellen. He stood for another moment staring at the great jaw, then moved on to examine the squid. Sullivan hoped he did not hear his sigh of relief.

  * * *

  “If I’d known what I was going to go through,” said Professor Sullivan, “I’d have thrown you out of the office as soon as you tried to infect me with your insanity.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” Jan replied. “But we’ve got away with it.”

  “I hope so. Good luck, anyway. If you want to change your mind, you’ve still got at least six hours.”

  “I won’t need them. Only Karellen can stop me now. Thanks for all that you’ve done. If I ever get back, and write a book about the Overlords, I’ll dedicate it to you.”

  “Much good that will do me,” said Sullivan gruffly. “I’ll have been dead for years.” To his surprise and mild consternation, for he was not a sentimental man, he discovered that this farewell was beginning to affect him. He had grown to like Jan during the weeks they had plotted together. Moreover, he had begun to fear he might be an accessory to a complicated suicide.

  He steadied the ladder as Jan climbed into the great jaw, carefully avoiding the lines of teeth. By the light of the electric torch, he saw Jan turn and wave before he was lost in the cavernous hollow. There was the sound of the airlock hatch being opened and closed, and, thereafter, silence.

  In the moonlight, that had transformed the frozen battle into a scene from a nightmare, Professor Sullivan walked slowly back to his office. He wondered what he had done, and where it would lead. But this, of course, he would never know. Jan might walk this spot again, having given no more than a few months of his life in travelling to the home of the Overlords and returning to Earth. Yet if he did so, it would be on the other side of Time’s impassable barrier, for it would be eighty years in the future.

  * * *

  The lights went on in the tiny metal cylinder as soon as Jan had closed the inner door of the lock. He allowed himself no time for second thoughts, but began immediately upon the routine check he had already worked out. All the stores and provisions had been loaded days ago, but a final recheck would put him in the right frame of mind, by assuring him that nothing had been left undone.

  An hour later, he was satisfied. He lay back on the sponge-rubber couch and recapitulated his plans. The only sound was the faint whirr of the electric calendar clock, which would warn him when the voyage was coming to its end.

  He knew that he could expect to feel nothing here in his cell, for whatever tremendous forces drove the ships of the Overlords must be perfectly compensated. Sullivan had checked that, pointing out that his tableau would collapse if subjected to more than a few gravities. His — clients — had assured him that there was no danger on this score.

  There would, however, be a considerable change of atmospheric pressure. This was unimportant, since the hollow models could “breathe” through several orifices. Before he left his cell, Jan would have to equalise pressure, and he had assumed that the atmosphere inside the Overlord ship was unbreathable. A simple face-mask and oxygen set would take care of that; there was no need for anything elaborate. If he could breathe without mechanical aid, so much the better.

  There was no point in waiting any longer; it would only be a strain on the nerves. He took out the little syringe, already loaded with the carefully prepared solution. Narcosamine had been discovered during research into animal hibernation; it was not true to say — as was popularly believed — that it produced suspended animation. All it caused was a great slowing-down of the vital processes, though metabolism still continued at a reduced level. It was as if one had banked up the fires of life, so that they smouldered underground. But when, after weeks or months, the effect of the drug wore off, they would burst out again and the sleeper would revive. Narcosamine was perfectly safe. Nature had used it for a million years to protect many of her children from the foodless winter.

  So Jan slept. He never felt the tug of the hoisting cables as the huge metal framework was lifted into the hold of the Overlord freighter. He never heard the hatches close, not to open again for three hundred million million kilometres. He never heard, far-off and faint through the mighty walls, the protesting scream of Earth’s atmosphere, as the ship climbed swiftly back to its natural element.

  And he never felt the Stardrive go on.

  Chapter 14

  >

  The conference room was always crowded for these weekly meetings, but today it was so closely packed that the reporters had difficulty in writing. For the hundredth time, they grumbled to each other at Karellen’s conservatism and lack of consideration. Anywhere else in the world they could have brought TV cameras, tape recorders, and all the other tools of their highly mechanised trade. But here they had to rely on such archaic devices as paper and pencil — and even, incredible to relate, shorthand.

  There had, of course, been several attempts to smuggle in recorders. They had been successfully smuggled out again, but a single glance at their smoking interiors had shown the futility of the experiment. Everyone understood, then, why they had always been warned, in their own interest, to leave watches and other metallic objects outside the conference room.

  To make things more unfair, Karellen himself recorded the whole proceedings. Reporters guilty of carelessness, or downright misrepresentation — though this was very rare — had been summoned to short and unpleasant sessions with Karellen’s underlings and have been required to listen attentively to playbacks of what the Supervisor had really said. The lesson was not one that ever had to be repeated.

  It was strange how these rumours got around. No prior announcement was made, yet there was always a full house whenever Karellen had an important statement to make — which happened, on the average, two or three times a year.

  Silence descended on the murmuring crowd as the great doorway split open and Karellen came forward on to the dais. The light here was dim — no doubt approximating that of the Overlords’ far distant sun — so that, the Supervisor for Earth had discarded the dark glasses he normally wore when in the open.

  He replied to the ragged chorus of greetings with a formal “Good morning, everybody,” then turned to the tall, distinguished figure at the front of the crowd. Mr Golde, doyen of the Press Club, might have been the original inspirer of the butler’s announcement; “Two reporters, m’lord, and a gentleman from the Times.” He dressed and behaved like a diplomat of the old school; no one would ever hesitate to confide in him, and no one had ever regretted it subsequently.

  “Quite a crowd today, Mr Golde. There must be a shortage of news.”

  The gentleman from the Times smiled and cleared his throat.

  “I hope you can rectify that, Mr Supervisor.”

  He watched intently as Karellen considered his reply. It seemed so unfair that the Overlords’ faces, rigid as masks, betrayed no trace of emotion. The great, wide eyes, their pupils sharply contracted even in this indifferent light, stared fathomlessly back into the frankly curious human ones. The twin breathing orifices on either cheek — if those fluted, basalt curves could be called cheeks — emitted the faintest of whistles as Karellen’s hypothetical lungs laboured in the thin air of Earth. Golde could just see the curtain of tiny white hairs fluttering to and fro, keeping accurately out of phase, as they responded to Karellen’s rapid, double-action breathing cycle. Dust filters, they were generally believed to be, and elaborate theories concerning the atmosphere of the Overlords’ home had been constructed on this slender foundation.

  “Yes, I have some news for you. As you are doubtless aware, one of my supply ships recently left Earth to return to its base. We have just discovered that there was a stowaway on board.”

  A hundred pencils braked to a halt; a hundred pairs of eyes fixed themselves upon Karellen.

  “A stowaway, did you say, Mr Supervisor?” asked Golde. “May we ask who he was — and how he got aboard?”

  “His name is Jan Rodricks; he
is an engineering student from the University of Cape Town. Further details you can no doubt discover for yourselves through your own very efficient channels.”

  Karellen smiled. The Supervisor’s smile was a curious affair. Most of the effect really resided in the eyes; the inflexible, lipless mouth scarcely moved at all. Was this, Golde wondered, another of the many human customs that Karellen had copied with such skill? For the total effect was, undoubtedly, that of a smile, and the mind readily accepted it as such.

  “As for how he left,” continued the Supervisor, “that is of secondary importance. I can assure you, or any other potential astronauts, that there is no possibility of repeating the exploit.”

  “What will happen to this young man?” persisted Golde. “Will he be sent back to Earth?”

  “That is outside my jurisdiction, but I expect he will come back on the next ship. He would find conditions too — alien — for comfort where he has gone. And this leads me to the main purpose of our meeting today.”

  Karellen paused, and the silence grew even deeper.

  “There has been some complaint, among the younger and more romantic elements of your population, because outer space has been closed to you. We had a purpose in doing this; we do not impose bans for the pleasure of it. But have you ever stopped to consider — if you will excuse a slightly unflattering analogy — what a man from your Stone Age would have felt, if he suddenly found himself in a modern city?”

  “Surely,” protested the Herald Tribune, “there is a fundamental difference. We are accustomed to science. On your world there are doubtless many things which we might not understand — but they wouldn’t seem magic to us.”

  “Are you quite sure of that?” said Karellen, so softly that it was hard to hear his words. “Only a hundred years lies between the age of electricity and the age of steam, but what would a Victorian engineer have made of a television set or an electronic computer. And how long would he have lived if he started to investigate their workings? The gulf between two technologies can easily become so great that it is — lethal.”

  (“Hello,” whispered Reuters to the B.B.C. “We’re in luck. He’s going to make a major policy statement. I know the symptoms.”)

  “And there are other reasons why we have restricted the human race to Earth. Watch.”

  The lights dimmed and vanished. As they faded, a milky opalescence formed in the centre of the room. It congealed into a whirlpool of stars — a spiral nebula seen from a point far beyond its outermost sun.

  “No human eyes have ever seen this sight before,” said Karellen’s voice from the darkness. “You are looking at your own Universe, the island galaxy of which your Sun is a member, from a distance of a million light-years.”

  There was a long silence. Then Karellen continued, and now his voice held something that was not quite pity and not precisely scorn.

  “Your race has shown a notable incapacity for dealing with the problems of its own rather small planet. When we arrived, you were on the point of destroying yourselves with the powers that science had rashly given you. Without our intervention, the Earth today would be a radioactive wilderness.

  “Now you have a world at peace, and a united race. Soon you will be sufficiently civilised to run your planet without our assistance. Perhaps you could eventually handle the problems of an entire solar system — say fifty moons and planets. But do you really imagine that you could ever cope with this?”

  The nebula expanded. Now the individual stars were rushing past, appearing and vanishing as swiftly as sparks from a forge. And each of those transient sparks was a sun, with who knew how many circling worlds…

  “In this galaxy of ours,” murmured Karellen, “there are eighty-seven thousand million suns. Even that figure gives only a faint idea of the immensity of space. In challenging it, you would be like ants attempting to label and classify all the grains of sand in all the deserts of the world.

  “Your race, in its present stage of evolution, cannot face that stupendous challenge. One of my duties has been to protect you from the powers and forces that lie among the stars — forces beyond anything that you can ever imagine.”

  The image of the galaxy’s swirling fire-mists faded; light returned to the sudden silence of the great chamber.

  Karellen turned to go; the audience was over. At the door he paused and looked back upon the hushed crowd.

  “It is a bitter thought, but you must face it. The planets you may one day possess. But the stars are not for man.”

  * * *

  “The stars are not for Man.” Yes, it would annoy them to have the celestial portals slammed in their faces. But they must learn to face the truth — or as much of the truth as could mercifully be given to them.

  From the lonely heights of the stratosphere, Karellen looked down upon the world and the people that had been given into his reluctant keeping. He thought of all that lay ahead, and what this world would be only a dozen years from now.

  They would never know how lucky they had been. For a lifetime mankind had achieved as much happiness as any race can ever know. It had been the Golden Age. But gold was also the colour of sunset, of autumn; and only Karellen’s ears could catch the first wailings of the winter storms.

  And only Karellen knew with what inexorable swiftness the Golden Age was rushing to its close.

  III. THE LAST GENERATION

  Chapter 15

  “Look at this!” exploded George Greggson, hurling the paper across at Jean. It came to rest, despite her efforts to intercept it, spread listlessly across the breakfast table. Jean patiently scraped away the jam and read the offending passage, doing her best to register disapproval. She was not very good at this, because all too often she agreed with the critics. Usually she kept these heretical opinions to herself; and not merely for the sake of peace and quiet. George was perfectly prepared to accept praise from her (or anyone else), but if she ventured any criticism of his work she would receive a crushing lecture on her artistic ignorance.

  She read the review twice, then gave up. It appeared quite favourable, and she said so.

  “He seemed to like the performance. What are you grumbling about?”

  “This,” snarled George, stubbing his finger at the middle of the column. “Just read it again.”

  “ ‘Particularly restful on the eyes were the delicate pastel greens of the background to the ballet sequence.’ Well?”

  “They weren’t greens! I spent a lot of time getting that exact shade of blue! And what happens? Either some blasted engineer in the control room upsets the colour balance, or that idiot of a reviewer’s got a cock-eyed set. Hey, what colour did it look on our receiver?”

  “Er — I can’t remember,” confessed Jean. “The Poppet started squealing about then and I had to go and find what was wrong with her.”

  “Oh,” said George, relapsing into a gently simmering quiescence. Jean knew that another eruption could be expected at any moment. When it came, however, it was fairly mild.

  “I’ve invented a new definition for TV,” he muttered gloomily. “I’ve decided it’s a device for hindering communication between artist and audience.”

  “What do you want to do about it?” retorted Jean. “Go back to the live theatre?”

  “And why not?” asked George. “That’s exactly what I have been thinking about. You know that letter I received from the New Athens people? They’ve written to me again. This time I’m going to answer.”

  “Indeed?” said Jean, faintly alarmed. “I think they’re a lot of cranks.”

  “Well, there’s only one way to find out. I intend to go and see them in the next two weeks. I must say that the literature they put out looks perfectly sane. And they’ve got some very good men there.”

  “If you expect me to start cooking over a wood fire, or learning to dress in skins, you’ll have —”

  “Oh, don’t be silly! Those stories are just nonsense. The colony’s got everything that’s really needed for civilised
life. They don’t believe in unnecessary frills, that’s all. Anyway, it’s a couple of years since I visited the Pacific, it will make a nice trip for us both.”

  “I agree with you there,” said Jean. “But I don’t intend Junior and the Poppet to grow up into a couple of Polynesian savages.”

  “They won’t,” said George. “I can promise you that.”

  He was right, though not in the way he had intended.

  * * *

  “As you noticed when you flew in,” said the little man on the other side of the veranda, “the colony consists of two islands, linked by a causeway. This is Athens, the other we’ve christened Sparta. It’s rather wild and rocky, and is a wonderful place for sport or exercise.” His eye flickered momentarily over his visitor’s waistline, and George squirmed slightly in the cane chair. “Sparta is an extinct volcano, by the way. At least the geologists say it’s extinct, ha-ha!

  “But back to Athens. The idea of the colony, as you’ve gathered, is to build up an independent, stable cultural group with its own artistic traditions. I should point out that a vast amount of research took place before we started this enterprise. It’s really a piece of applied social engineering, based on some exceedingly complex mathematics which I wouldn’t pretend to understand. All I know is that the mathematical sociologists have computed how large the colony should be, how many types of people it should contain — and, above all, what constitution it should have for long-term stability.