Clarke, Arthur C - SSC 04 Read Free Page B

was sorry to see the end of the rockets, too. But we
could never have had a spaceport here on Salisbury Plain – the vibration would
have shaken down Stonehenge !’
     
                ‘ Stonehenge ?’ queried Saunders as he held open a hatch
and let the prince through into Hold Number 3.
     
                ‘Ancient monument – one of the most
famous stone circles in the world. It’s really impressive, and about three
thousand years old. See it if you can – it’s only ten miles from here.’
     
                Captain Saunders had some difficulty
in suppressing a smile. What an odd country this was: where else, he wondered,
would you find contrasts like this? It made him feel very young and raw when he
remembered that back home Billy the Kid was ancient history, and there was
hardly anything in the whole of Texas as much as five hundred years old. For the
first time he began to realise what tradition meant: it gave Prince Henry
something that he could never possess. Poise – self-confidence, yes, that was
it. And a pride that was somehow free from arrogance because it took itself so
much for granted that it never had to be asserted.
     
                It was surprising how many questions
Prince Henry managed to ask in the thirty minutes that had been allotted for
his tour of the freighter. They were not the routine questions that people
asked out of politeness, quite uninterested in the answers. H.R.H. Prince Henry
knew a lot about spaceships, and Captain Saunders felt completely exhausted
when he handed his distinguished guest back to the reception committee, which
had been waiting outside the Centaurus with well-simulated patience.
     
                ‘Thank you very much, Captain,’ said
the prince as they shook hands in the air lock. ‘I’ve not enjoyed myself so
much for ages. I hope you have a pleasant stay in England , and a successful voyage.’ Then his retinue
whisked him away, and the port officials, frustrated until now, came aboard to
check the ship’s papers.
     
                ‘Well,’ said Mitchell when it was
all over, ‘what did you think of our Prince of Wales?’
     
                ‘He surprised me,’ answered Saunders
frankly. ‘I’d never have guessed he was a prince. I always thought they were
rather dumb. But heck, he knew the
principles of the Field Drive ! Has he ever been up in space?’
     
                ‘Once, I think. Just a hop above the
atmosphere in a Space Force ship. It didn’t even reach orbit before it came
back again – but the Prime Minister nearly had a fit. There were questions in
the House and editorials in the Times .
Everyone decided that the heir to the throne was too valuable to risk in these
newfangled inventions. So, though he has the rank of commodore in the Royal
Space Force, he’s never even been to the moon.’
     
                ‘The poor guy,’ said Captain
Saunders.
     
                He had three days to burn, since it
was not the captain’s job to supervise the loading of the ship or the preflight
maintenance. Saunders knew skippers who hung around breathing heavily on the
necks of the servicing engineers, but he wasn’t that type. Besides, he wanted
to see London . He had been to Mars and Venus and the
moon, but this was his first visit to England . Mitchell and Chambers filled him with
useful information and put him on the monorail to London before dashing off to see their own
families. They would be returning to the spaceport a day before he did, to see
that everything was in order. It was a great relief having officers one could
rely on so implicitly: they were unimaginative and cautious, but thoroughgoing
almost to a fault. If they said that
everything was shipshape, Saunders knew he could take off without qualms.
     
                The sleek, streamlined cylinder
whistled across the carefully tailored landscape. It was so close to