The Last Theorem - Arthur Charles Clarke [0]
TITLE PAGE
THE FIRST PREAMBLE
THE SECOND PREAMBLE
THE THIRD PREAMBLE
1 ON SWAMI ROCK
2 UNIVERSITY
3 AN ADVENTURE IN CODE-CRACKING
4 FORTY DAYS OF DATA DOWNPOUR
5 FROM MERCURY TO THE OORT
6 MEANWHILE, BACK ON EARTH
7 GETTING THERE
8 SUMMER
9 LAZY DAYS
10 A NEW LIFE FOR THE KANAKARATNAMS
11 PIRATE LIFE
12 JUDGMENT
13 A CONVENIENT PLACE FOR QUESTIONING
14 RENDITION TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER
15 INTRODUCTION TO ONE (OR MORE) GRAND GALACTICS
16 HOMEGOING
17 HEAVEN
18 COMPANY
19 FAME
20 MARRIAGE
21 HONEYMOON, PART TWO
22 THE NEW WORLD
23 FARMER “BILL”
24 CALIFORNIA
25 SILENT THUNDER
26 ON THE THRESHOLD OF PEACE
27 PAX PER FIDEM
28 MAKING A LIFE
29 BURGEONING HOPES
30 BIG NEWS
31 SKYHOOK DAYS
32 NATASHA’S GOLD
33 PRIVATE PAIN IN A REJOICING WORLD
34 PENTOMINOES AND CARS
35 THE USES OF VACCINATION
36 PREPARING FOR THE RACE
37 THE RACE
38 THE HUNT FOR NATASHA SUBRAMANIAN
39 THE INTERROGATIONS
40 THE PORTRAIT GALLERY
41 HOME AGAIN
42 A GREAT DEPRESSION
43 LANDED IMMIGRANTS
44 INTERNATIONAL DISAGREEMENTS
45 SEARCHING FOR A SOLUTION
46 DEAL-MAKING
47 PARTING
48 THE SOUL IN THE MACHINE
THE FIRST POSTAMBLE
THE SECOND POSTAMBLE
THE THIRD POSTAMBLE
THE FOURTH POSTAMBLE
ALSO BY ARTHUR C. CLARKE AND FREDERIK POHL
COPYRIGHT
THE FIRST PREAMBLE
Arthur C. Clarke says:
The incidents at Pearl Harbor lay in the future and the United States was still at peace when a British warship steamed into Nantucket with what was later called “the most valuable cargo ever to reach American shores.” It was not very impressive, a metal cylinder about an inch high, fitted with connections and cooling fins. It could easily be carried in one hand. Yet this small object had a strong claim to being responsible for winning the war in Europe and Asia—though it did take the atom bomb to finish the last of the Axis powers off.
That just-invented object was the cavity magnetron.
The magnetron was not in principle a new idea. For some time it had been known that a powerful magnetic field could keep electrons racing in tight circles, thus generating radio waves. However, this fact remained little more than a laboratory curiosity until it was realized that those radio waves could be used for a military purpose.
When it had such a military use, it was called radar.
When the American scientists working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology received that first device, they subjected it to many tests. They were surprised to find that the magnetron’s power output was so great that none of their laboratory instruments could measure it. A little later, powering the giant antennae that had quickly been erected along the Channel coast, that British radar did a fine job of spotting the Luftwaffe’s myriad warplanes as they formed up to attack England. Indeed, radar was responsible, more than any other one thing, for allowing the Royal Air Force to win the Battle of Britain.
It was soon realized that radar could be used not only to detect enemy aircraft in the sky, but to make electronic maps of the ground over which a plane was flying. That meant that, even in total darkness or complete overcast, the land below could be imaged in recognizable shape on a cathode-ray tube, thus helping navigation—and bombing missions. And as soon as the magnetron was available at MIT, a team headed by future Nobel Laureate Luis Alvarez asked the next question: “Can’t we use radar to land aircraft safely, as well as to shoot them down?”
So began GCA, or ground-controlled approach, the landing of aircraft in bad weather using precision approach radar.
The experimental Mark 1 GCA used two separate radars, one working at ten centimeters to locate the plane’s direction in azimuth, and the other—the world’s first three-centimeter radar—to measure height above ground. An operator seated before the two screens could then talk the aircraft down, telling the pilot when to fly right or left—or sometimes, more urgently, when to increase altitude—fast.
GCA was welcomed enthusiastically by the RAF Bomber Command, which every day