Read Online A Meeting With Medusa by Arthur C. Clarke - Free Book Online Page A

me a circuit to Earth.’
    This was one of the strangest things he had ever done in his life: to sit here above the Moon and listen to the telephone ring in his own home, a quarter of a million miles away. It must be near midnight down there in Africa, and it would be some time before there would be any answer. Myra would stir sleepily; then, because she was a spaceman’s wife, always alert for disaster, she would be instantly awake. But they had both hated to have a phone in the bedroom, and it would be at least fifteen seconds before she could switch on the light, close the nursery door to avoid disturbing the baby, get down the stairs, and…
    Her voice came clear and sweet across the emptiness of space. He would recognise it anywhere in the universe, and he detected at once the undertone of anxiety.
    ‘Mrs Leyland?’ said the Earthside operator. ‘I have a call from your husband. Please remember the two-second time lag.’
    Cliff wondered how many people were listening to this call, on either the Moon, the Earth, or the relay satellites. It was hard to talk for the last time to your loved ones when you didn’t know how many eavesdroppers there might be. But as soon as he began to speak, no one else existed but Myra and himself.
    ‘Darling,’ he began, ‘this is Cliff. I’m afraid I won’t be coming home, as I promised. There’s been a… a technical slip. I’m quite all right at the moment, but I’m in big trouble.’
    He swallowed, trying to overcome the dryness in his mouth, then went on quickly before she could interrupt. As briefly as he could, he explained the situation. For his own sake as well as hers, he did not abandon all hope.
    ‘Everyone’s doing their best,’ he said. ‘Maybe they can get a ship up to me in time. But in case they can’t… well, I wanted to speak to you and the children.’
    She took it well, as he had known that she would. He felt pride as well as love when her answer came back from the dark side of Earth.
    ‘Don’t worry, Cliff. I’m sure they’ll get you out, and we’ll have our holiday after all, exactly the way we planned.’
    ‘I think so, too,’ he lied. ‘But just in case, would you wake the children? Don’t tell them that anything’s wrong.’
    It was an endless half-minute before he heard their sleepy, yet excited, voices. Cliff would willingly have given these last few hours of his life to have seen their faces once again, but the capsule was not equipped with such luxuries as vision. Perhaps it was just as well, for he could not have hidden the truth had he looked into their eyes. They would know it soon enough, but not from him. He wanted to give them only happiness in these last moments together.
    Yet it was hard to answer their questions, to tell them that he would soon be seeing them, to make promises that he could not keep. It needed all his self-control when Brian reminded him of the moondust he had forgotten once before—but had remembered this time.
    ‘I’ve got it, Brian; it’s in a jar right beside me. Soon you’ll be able to show it to your friends.’ (No: soon it will be back on the world from which it came.) ‘And Susie—be a good girl and do everything that Mummy tells you. Your last school report wasn’t too good, you know, especially those remarks about behaviour…. Yes, Brian, I have those photographs, and the piece of rock from Aristarchus….’
    It was hard to die at thirty-five; but it was hard, too, for a boy to lose his father at ten. How would Brian remember him in the years ahead? Perhaps as no more than a fading voice from space, for he had spent so little time on Earth. In the last few minutes, as he swung outward and then back to the Moon, there was little enough that he could do except project his love and his hopes across the emptiness that he would never span again. The rest was up to Myra.
    When the children had gone, happy but puzzled, there was work to do. Now was the time to keep one’s head, to be