Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clarke [40]
Man was, therefore, still a prisoner on his own planet. It was a much fairer, but a much smaller, planet than it had been a century before. When the Overlords had abolished war and hunger and disease, they had also abolished adventure.
The rising moon was beginning to paint the eastern sky with a pale milky glow. Up there, Jan knew, was the main base of the Overlords, lying within the ramparts of Pluto. Though the supply ships must have been coming and going for more than seventy years, it was only in Jan's lifetime that all concealment had been dropped and they had made their departure in clear sight of Earth. In the two-hundred-inch telescope, the shadows of the great ships could be dearly seen when the morning or evening sun cast them for miles across the lunar plains. Since everything that the Overlords did was of immense interest to mankind, a careful watch was kept of their comings and goings, and the pattern of their behaviour (though not the reason for it) was beginning to emerge. One of those great shadows had vanished a few hours ago. That meant, Jan knew, that somewhere off the moon an Overlord ship was lying in space, carrying out whatever routine was necessary before it began its journey to its distant, unknown home.
He had never seen one of those returning ships launch itself towards the stars. If conditions were good the sight was visible over half the world, but Jan had always been unlucky. One could never tell exactly when the take-off would be-and the Overlords did not advertise the fact. He decided he would wait another ten minutes, then rejoin the party.
What was that? Only a meteor sliding down through Eridanus. Jan relaxed, discovered his cigarette had gone out, and lit another.
He was half-way through it when, half a million kilometres away, the Stardrive went on. Up from the heart of the spreading moonglow a tiny spark began to climb towards the zenith. At first its movement was so slow that it could hardly be perceived, but second by second it was gaining speed. As it climbed it increased in brilliance, then suddenly faded from sight. A moment later it had reappeared, gaining speed and brightness. Waxing and waning with a peculiar rhythm, it ascended ever more swiftly into the sky, drawing a fluctuating line of light across the stars. Even if one did not know its real distance, the impression of speed was breathtaking; when one knew that the departing ship was somewhere beyond the moon, the mind reeled at the speeds and energies involved.
It was an unimportant by-product of those energies, Jan knew, that he was seeing now. The ship itself was invisible, already far ahead of that ascending light. As a high-flying jet may leave a vapour trail behind it, so the outward-bound vessel of the Overlords left its own peculiar wake. The generally accepted theory-and there seemed little doubt of its truth-was that the immense accelerations of the Stardrive caused a local distortion of space. What Jan was seeing, he knew, was nothing less than the light of distant stars, collected and focused into his eye wherever conditions were favourable along the track of the ship. It was a visible proof of relativity-the bending of light in the presence of a colossal gravitational field.
Now the end of that vast, pencil-shaped lens seemed to be moving more slowly, but that was only due to perspective. In reality the ship was still gaining speed; its path was merely being foreshortened as it hurled itself outwards to the stars. There would be many telescopes following it, Jan knew, as Earth's scientists tried to uncover the secrets of the Drive. Dozens of papers had already been published on the subject; no doubt the Overlords had read them with the greatest interest.
The phantom light was beginning