'In fact it's about three million years old.You are looking at the first proof of intelligent life beyond the Earth.'
The speaker is Dr Roy Michaels, Chief Scientist at the Clavius Base on the Moon. The audience has been carefully chosen, because it is too soon to tell the world's population that they are not alone in the universe. On the screen behind Dr Michaels is a photograph of a black object about three metres high, of regular shape and with straight edges. It was certainly made by an intelligent form of life, and it was found buried under the surface of the Moon.
If it is a message from another time, from a distant star, why has it been put there ? A possible answer comes soon afterwards, when the first light of the sun touches the object. It then sends out a powerful radio signal, aimed exactly at Saturn. As one of the scientists says,'You hide a sun-powered object in darkness — only if you want to know when it is brought out into the light.' So, far out in space, there may be intelligent beings who now know that men and women have taken their first steps away from Earth.
This book is a journey. We watch as people move forward from their early beginnings into the future, and as one man, on the space ship Discovery, travels a billion kilometres from Earth to make contact again among the rings of Saturn.
In 1964, before men had even landed on the Moon, the film director Stanley Kubrick was looking for a story for a science fiction film. He asked Arthur C. Clarke for help, and the two men worked together on the development of the plot. Clarke wrote the novel (which came out in 1968), while Kubrick made the film, and both became extremely famous.
PART ONE Ancient Night
Chapter 1 The Road to Death
Very little rain had fallen for a long time, for at least ten million years. Here, in the place that one day would be called Africa, the man-apes of the grasslands were fighting a battle to stay alive, and they were not winning.
About fifty of them lived in caves on the side of a small dry valley. There was a stream running down the middle. If the weather was very hot, its water dried up and the man-apes were thirsty.
When the first light of morning came into the cave, Moon-Watcher saw that his father had died in the night. He did not know that the Old One was his father, because he did not know what a father was. But he felt a little anxious as he dragged (he dead body out of the cave. Outside, he did something that no other animal in the world could do — he stood up.
Moon-Watcher was bigger than the others in his group. He was nearly a meter and a half high, though very thin because of I he constant hunger. His hairy body was half-way between ape and man, but his head looked quite human. His forehead was low, but there were signs of intelligence in his eyes.
As he walked down the slope, the rest of the group saw him and began to come out of their caves. They moved towards the stream for their morning drink. Moon-Watcher walked on until he found a small bush. He left the body there, knowing that animals would do the rest. He never thought of his father again.
His two females, the adults from the other cave, and most of the young ones were looking for berries among the small trees further up the valley. Only the babies and the very old were left
In the caves. If there was any extra food at the end of the day, they might be fed. If not, they would stay hungry.
Moon-Watcher climbed the slope to join the group. After some time he found honey in a dead tree. This did not happen very often, and the group was happy. Of course, they also collected a number of bee stings, but they hardly noticed these. Now, although Moon-Watcher was still hungry, he was not actually weak with hunger. He could not expect more than that.
He led his group back to the stream. The others were there, as usual. There were about thirty of them, and they looked exactly the same as Moon-Watcher's own group. As they saw him coming, they began to dance, shake their arms and shout, and his people did the same.
And that was all that happened. Although the man-apes sometimes fought among themselves, they could do little harm to each other. Their teeth were not sharp and their bodies were protected by thick hair. Also, they did not often have enough energy for fighting. After a time, the man-apes on both sides grew quiet and began to drink the muddy water.
On the grassland near the caves there were many animals, but the man-apes knew of no way to kill one of them. In fact, they could not even imagine the idea of killing one. In the middle of so much food, they were slowly dying of hunger.
That night a cold wind blew. Moon-Watcher hardly moved when the screams came from one of the lower caves. He knew what was happening before he heard the sound of the leopard. But Moon-Watcher did not think of going to help. He lay quietly, as all the others did.
Later, he went outside and sat on a rock. He looked up and down the valley, then at the Moon. The man-apes were the only animal that ever did this. Moon-Watcher had done it since his childhood. He was old now, twenty-five years old. If he was lucky, he might live another ten years.
He stayed on the rock for some time, sleeping and waking but always listening. If any animal moved in the area, Moon-Watcher would know about it. But he did not see the bright light, brighter than any star that crossed the sky twice, rising high and sinking down to the east.
Chapter 2 The New Rock
Late that night Moon-Watcher suddenly woke up. He sat up in the darkness of the cave, looking out into the night, and fear entered his soul. He had never heard a sound like this in his life. The big cats approached in silence, except perhaps for the occasional breaking of a stick or a fall of earth. But this was a continuous crashing noise that grew steadily louder. Even the elephants did not make as much noise as this.
Then he heard a sound which he could not understand, because it had never been heard before in the history of the world. It was the sound of metal hitting stone.
Moon-Watcher saw the New Rock when he led the group down to the river in the first light of morning. He had almost forgotten his fear during the night, and did not connect this strange thing with it.
It was three times his height, but when he reached out his hands to each side, it was not as wide. When he walked round and looked at it from the side, it was quite thin. And he could see right through it. In fact, he only knew it was there when the sunlight flashed on its edges. He put out his hand and touched its cold surface.
It was a rock, of course, and it had grown during the night. He knew of small round plants that grew during the night and looked a little like rocks. These tasted good, so Moon-Watcher put out his tongue and tasted the new rock. A few seconds were enough to make him understand that this thing was not food. So he continued on his way to the river and soon forgot all about it.
In the last light of day, as the group climbed back towards the caves, the sound began. It was low and continuous. It came from the new rock, and they all stopped to listen. Then they turned and, like sleep-walkers, began to move towards the rock. They sat in a circle round the strange thing as the darkness came down and a light grew inside it.
The noise grew louder and lights began to flash and move, linking patterns that changed all the time. The man-apes watched, their mouths open, not knowing that the thing was examining their minds.
Suddenly one of them stood up. He picked up a piece of grass and tried to tie it into a knot. His eyes were wide with terror as he struggled to make his fingers do what they had never done before. He failed. The broken pieces of grass fell to the ground and he froze into stillness again.
Another man-ape began to move. This one was younger and after some time it succeeded. On the planet Earth the first knot had been tied.
Others did stranger things. Some held their hands out and tried to touch their fingertips together. Some were made to stare at patterns in the rock, watching lines which became thinner and thinner until they could not be seen.
Moon-Watcher stood and picked up a stone. Now on the new rock was a series of circles, each one smaller than the next. The smallest one was black inside. Obeying the instructions in his brain, he threw the stone. He had never done this before, and he missed by some distance.
Try again, said the command. He found another stone and threw. It hit the edge of the rock and made a ringing sound. His third throw hit the circles, only centimeters from the central black one. A strong feeling of pleasure passed through his body.
One by one, every member of the group was tested and then allowed to feel either pleasure or pain. Then the light in the rock died away. Shaking their heads, the man-apes got up and began to walk along the path that led to their caves. They did not look back at the strange light that was showing them the way to their homes — and to an unknown future, perhaps even to the stars.
Chapter 3 Education
In the morning Moon-Watcher and his group had no memories of what had happened the night before. When they went out to find food, they hardly looked at the new rock as they passed it. They could not eat it and it could not eat them, so it was not important.
But that night the noise from the new rock started again, and once again the group went to sit around it. This time it seemed only interested in a few of the man-apes, and one of them was Moon-Watcher. Once again he felt the thing exploring his mind, and then he began to see things. He saw a group of man-apes resting near the entrance to a cave. The male, female and two young ones were obviously eating well. They were quite fat and their hair was shiny. He put his hand on his own thin body and thought about the difference between himself and the picture in his mind.
Later, as he sat outside the cave, Moon-Watcher felt the beginnings of a new emotion. For the first time, he felt unhappy with his life and he wanted to change it. He had taken one small step towards being human.
Night after night the rock showed him the four man-apes who were eating so well, and this made him feel even more hungry. The rock was helping this feeling to grow, because it was changing the patterns in his brain. If he lived, these changes would be passed on to his children.
It was slow work, but the rock was patient. If it failed, there were other similar rocks doing the same thing across half of the world. A hundred failures would not matter if one success could change history.
As the line of wild pigs crossed the path, Moon-Watcher stopped suddenly. Pigs and man-apes had always ignored each other, because they did not compete for the same food.
But now Moon-Watcher stood looking at them. Something was happening in his mind which he did not understand. He started to search the ground. He did not know what he was looking for, but he would know it when he found it.
It was a heavy pointed stone about fifteen centimeters long. As he swung his hand round, puzzled by the increased weight, he felt a new sense of power. He started to move towards the nearest pig.
It was a young and foolish animal, and it felt no fear until much too late. It went on looking for food in the grass until Moon-Watcher's hammer ended its life. The other pigs continued to feed, because the murder had been quick and silent.
The man-apes gathered round. One of them picked up the wet stone and began to hit the dead pig. Others helped with sticks and stones until the pig was a broken mess.
Then they became bored. Some walked away, others stood around the body, and the future of the world waited on their decision. It was quite a long time before one of the young mothers began to taste the stone she was holding.
And it was even longer before Moon-Watcher, despite all he had been shown, really understood that he need never be hungry again.
Chapter 4 The Leopard
The tools they had been programmed to use were simple enough. There was the hand-held stone and the long bone. With these they could kill, but they needed something else, because their teeth and fingers could not pull apart any animal larger than a rabbit. Luckily, Nature had provided the perfect tool. It was simply the lower jaw-bone of an animal, with the teeth still in place. There would be no great improvement on this until the invention of steel.
With these tools in their hands, they could feed on the limitless food of the grasslands and become the masters of the world. They accepted their new life easily, and did not connect it with the rock that was still standing beside the path to the river.
However, the group still had occasional days when they failed to kill anything. At the end of one of these, coming back to the caves empty-handed, they found a wild cow lying by the path. Its front leg was broken, but it still had plenty of fight left in it. Moon-Watcher's group circled the animal carefully, then moved in and killed it with their long bones and stones.
This took some time, and now it was getting dark. Moon-Watcher knew it would be dangerous to stay any longer. Then he had a wonderful idea. He thought hard, and in time managed to imagine the cow — in the safety of his own cave. He took its head and began to drag it along the path. The others understood and helped him.
The slope was steep and the animal was heavy, but eventually they got it inside the cave. As the last of the light left the sky, they started to eat.
Hours later, his stomach full, Moon-Watcher suddenly woke up. At first he did not know why, but then, from a long way away, he heard the sound of a falling stone. Afraid but curious, he moved to the entrance of...
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