The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke Read Free

Transport had ever done, reduced road fatalities to a mere ten thousand a year. We lost one client in six million, which was pretty good even to start with, though our record is even better now. Some of the mishaps that occurred were very peculiar indeed, and in fact there are quite a few cases which we haven’t explained to the dependents yet, or to the insurance companies either.
    One common complaint was earthing along the line. When that happened, our unfortunate passenger was just dissipated into nothingness. I suppose his or her molecules would be distributed more or less evenly over the entire earth. I remember one particularly gruesome accident when the apparatus failed in the middle of a transmission. You can guess the result… Perhaps even worse was what happened when two lines got crossed and the currents were mixed.
    Of course, not all accidents were as bad as these. Sometimes, owing to a high resistance in the circuit, a passenger would lose anything up to five stone in transit, which generally cost us about £1000 and enough free meals to restore the missing enbonpoint. Fortunately, we were soon able to make money out of this affair, for fat people came along to be reduced to manageable dimensions. We made a special apparatus which transmitted massive dowagers round resistance coils and reassembled them where they started, minus the cause of the trouble. ‘So quick, my dear, and quite painless! I’m sure they could take off that 150 pounds you want to lose in no time! Or is it 200?’
    We also had a good deal of trouble through interference and induction. You see, our apparatus picked up various electrical disturbances and superimposed them on the object under transmission. As a result many people came out looking like nothing on earth and very little on Mars or Venus. They could usually be straightened out by the plastic surgeons, but some of the products had to be seen to be believed.
    Fortunately these difficulties have been largely overcome now that we use the micro-beams for our carrier, though now and then accidents still occur. I expect you remember that big lawsuit we had last year with Lita Cordova, the television star, who claimed £1,000,000 damages from us for alleged loss of beauty. She asserted that one of her eyes had moved during a transmission, but I couldn’t see any difference myself and nor could the jury, who had enough opportunity. She had hysterics in the court when our Chief Electrician went into the box and said bluntly, to the alarm of both side’s lawyers, that if anything really had gone wrong with the transmission, Miss Cordova wouldn’t have been able to recognise herself had any cruel person handed her a mirror.
    Lots of people ask us when we’ll have a service to Venus or Mars. Doubtless that will come in time, but of course the difficulties are pretty considerable. There is so much sun static in space, not to mention the various reflecting layers everywhere. Even the micro-waves are stopped by the Appleton ‘Q’ layer at 100,000 km, you know. Until we can pierce that, Interplanetary shares are still safe.
    Well, I see it’s nearly 22, so I’d best be leaving. I have to be in New York by midnight. What’s that? Oh no, I’m going by plane. I don’t travel by wire! You see, I helped invent the thing!
    Rockets for me! Good night!

How We Went to Mars
    First published in Amateur Science Fiction Stories , March 1938
    Not previously collected in book form

    This story was first published in the third and final issue of Amateur Science Fiction Stories , edited by Douglas W. F. Mayer.

    (N.B. All characters in this story are entirely fictitious and only exist in the Author’s subconscious. Psychoanalysts please apply at the Tradesmens’ Entrance.)
    It is with considerable trepidation that I now take up my pen to describe the incredible adventures that befell the members of the Snoring-in-the-Hay Rocket Society in the Winter of 1952. Although we would have preferred