58 pages • 1 hour read
Arthur C. ClarkeThe Nine Billion Names of God
Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 1967A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Stories 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Story 4 Summary: “Rescue Party”
Alveron is the captain of a spaceship invented by a superhuman race. His mission is to get his team of interplanetary beings to Earth before the sun implodes in seven hours, causing the destruction off all life on the planet. The ship, called the S9000, is deployed to search for and rescue any human life it can. Alveron addresses his crew, explaining that they have a “tragic mission” (40) and it is only because the human beings on Earth developed so quickly that they did not see the disaster coming earlier.
Alveron and his Deputy Captain, Rugon, prepare to land their crafts on Earth. They see that all of Earth has been scorched with fire. There is no sign of life, nor do they pick up any radio signals. Shortly after this, a small command detaches from the mothership led by Orostron. Orostron and his team discover what looks to be an observatory. They determine that the station is built for interplanetary communication, even though Orostron and his crew don’t believe it’s possible that the human race could have achieved interplanetary travel so quickly.
When they reach a deserted city, Orostron decides to land and explore. He has only two hours left if he is to depart safely with the S9000. The narrator explains that while the city is indeed deserted, it is not because of the impending sun’s explosion. Rather, cities and urban life were abandoned in favor of returning to rural living. Orostron finds no sign of life in the city, so he returns his ship to the S9000, feeling nervous about their chances of escaping and returning to the planet Kulath before the sun detonates.
Once they dock in the mothership, they are met by a crowd of beings who tell them that Torkalee, the captain of the other exploratory vessel, lost his crew and needs to be rescued. Torkalee and his three companions landed near a manmade sea with a beautiful coastal city. The team consists of T’sinadree, Alarkane, and an unnamed member of Palador, a race of beings that are linked in consciousness. They come upon a room in a building which seems to have been used very recently. The beings don’t know what they are looking at, but the narrator explains that they are in humankind’s greatest library and recordkeeping facility. With only 30 minutes before the S9000 departs, something catches their eye: a long passageway that suggests it might lead into the center of the Earth. Torkalee wonders if the humans tunneled into the center of Earth to hide out from the Sun’s explosion. Torkalee and his team step into a kind of subway that takes them under the city and out into the sea.
In the subway, Alarkane and T’sinadree prepare themselves for their inevitable demise. The Paladorian, however, assures them that they will be rescued. He shares a brain with all other Paladorians. Therefore, the Paladorians on board the mothership know that Alveron is attempting to rescue Torkalee.
Suddenly Alveron’s voice announces over their communication system that Torkalee ought to try and stop the subway, at which point they will blast open the tunnel and rescue the team. They manage to board the S9000 with only minutes to spare. As the sun detonates, the S9000 departs Earth’s atmosphere and Alveron wonders “about the world that had just perished” (60). Alveron assumes that all of humanity buried themselves in the center of Earth and have just been decimated. Rugon theorizes that perhaps they underestimated the human race and misunderstood the machines they found. Rugon wonders if they ought to follow the transmission beam that the Earth radios were pointing toward in case there is an undiscovered planet. Alveron agrees to explore.
It takes three days to reroute the ship and follow the line of transmission. They are shocked to finally find the entire human race on board a fleet of spaceships larger than the S9000. Rugon is amazed at how much humanity has accomplished in such a short time. Just before they make contact with the fleet of ships, Alveron suggests that with their accomplishments the humans must be a “very determined people” (65), but the humans are outnumbered “about a thousand million to one” (65). The story ends with the mysterious line: “Rugon laughed at his captain’s little joke. Twenty years afterward, the remark didn’t seem funny” (65).
Story 5 Summary: “The Curse”
A third person omniscient narrator describes the town of Stratford-on-Avon —Shakespeare’s birthplace—after a nuclear world war. The narrator says that in only one destructive moment, “the toil and treasure of centuries had been swept away” (66). The narrator describes a war, which in only a few days destroyed the world. What remains of Stratford-on-Avon are the gravestones, which “still bore the messages they had carried down the centuries in vain” (67). As the land glows with radioactivity, the river surges across the land, ebbing toward the gravestones. The story concludes with the river’s water lapping against the epitaph above what is revealed to be William Shakespeare’s grave: “Undisturbed through all eternity the poet could sleep in safety now: in the silence and darkness above his head, the Avon was seeking its new outlet to the sea” (68).
Story 6 Summary: “Summertime on Icarus”
In a preface to this 1960 story, the author writes that some scientists have predicted that the asteroid Icarus may collide with Earth in 1968. He promises to erase this story if it comes true, provided that all of life hasn’t already been “deleted.”
Collin Sherard comes back to consciousness after a crash in his space-pod. He realizes he is “nearer to the sun than any man had ever been” as he has just crashed into Icarus, an asteroid set to collide with Earth. Icarus is deathly close to the sun, so Collin needs to get back to the mothership Prometheus before the sun rises on the asteroid. The ship is named after Prometheus, which “brought the gift of fire to mankind, so the ship that bore his name would return to Earth with other unimagined secrets from the heavens” (71).
The crash leaves Collin unable to get back to the mothership after completing his work on a hill nicknamed Mt. Everest. His pod is intact, but his radio antennae and rearview mirrors have broken off. He cannot call for help. He does have the ability to use his arms to move the “mechanical limbs” (73) on the pod, so he begins to crawl.
With very little gravity on Icarus, the ease of movement brings on a dangerous bout of vertigo: Suddenly the flat ground upon which Collin is moving seems like a vertical mountain from which he is sure to fall to his death. He loses control of his pod and crashes into a boulder. Collin reminds himself that “space made no allowance for human frailties or emotions, and a man who did not accept that fact had no right to be here” (75).
Suddenly, the corona of the sun becomes visible, and no sooner than he can get his shades up the sun is “upon him like a beast of prey” (76). He wonders why man ever wants to travel at all, with such dangers present. He states, “[F]or the same reason […] that they had once struggled to reach Everest […] for the excitement of the body that was adventure, and the more enduring excitement of the mind that was discovery” (76).
Collin knows he will be burned alive within moments. He sits still and lets his mind wander. He remembers first learning about Icarus: It had once been part of a planet that blew up, creating asteroids. As he feels “the first touch of fire” (78), Collin says goodbye to Earth. Wanting to end his misery, he pulls the emergency release, which will kill him instantly. However, it is jammed. As the heat becomes unbearable, he starts to “scream like a trapped animal” (79).
Suddenly, he hears the voice of his commander. His broken antennae managed to get enough signal to Captain McClellan for him to find Collin. The rescue party use a large sheet of metal to create a shadow under which to work. Collin is released from the searing heat when the shadow passes over him. He feels reborn as he cools off, knowing that he will be rescued and returned to Earth.
Stories 4-6 Analysis
Most of Clarke’s stories depict alien intelligence as far superior to human intelligence. However, “Rescue Party” is one notable exception. In this humorous story, the aliens who are supposed to be the smartest in the universe cannot fathom how the Earthlings would have escaped their planet, nor can they imagine that humans built spaceships to protect their civilization. When they see the beautifully designed cities of Earth, they cannot imagine that humans abandoned their cities for the forests once the helicopter was invented: “[W]ithin a few generations the great masses of mankind, knowing that they could reach any part of the globe in a matter of hours, had gone back to the fields and forests for which they had always longed” (48). Clarke theorized that once helicopter travel became widely available, people would lose interest in living in crowded cities. While this has not exactly come to fruition, predictions about technology’s influence on society are a common feature of the sci-fi genre. Although the people described in this nature-loving, advanced civilization seem peaceful, the end of the story implies that when humans gain superior technology or intelligence, they don’t use it generously the way these aliens do. Instead, they become arrogant and hostile, as evidenced by the final lines of the story: “Something tells me they’ll be very determined people…we had better be polite to them. After all, we only outnumber them about a thousand million to one…Twenty years afterward, the remark didn’t seem funny” (65). This implies that despite the alien’s best efforts to rescue humanity, and their staggering numbers in comparison, humans will pose a substantial threat to them.
“The Curse” offers a dark musing on the potential for worldwide destruction. This post-apocalyptic tale conveys the global destruction made possible by nuclear weapons. Focusing the story on William Shakespeare and his birth town helps reiterate the magnitude of what is at stake: In only a moment, one of the most revered historical figures and locations can be obliterated. The careful description of the aged city Stratford-On-Avon and the headstone on Shakespeare’s grave gives the reader a sense of historical perspective. This grave has been preserved, as have the words of Shakespeare, for hundreds of years. He represents the pinnacle of human achievement, intelligence, and expression. The story aims to both celebrate the achievements of humanity while simultaneously warning of the dangers inherent in modern science and technology: “The light died in the west” (67) might be read as the end of western civilization, brought on by nuclear weapons.
The title of the story “Summertime on Icarus” alludes to the Greek myth of Icarus. Icarus received the gift of flight but was warned not to fly too close to the sun. Blinded by hubris, Icarus ignored the limitations of his wings and flew too close anyway, resulting in his death. Clarke makes this allusion in order to draw comparisons between Icarus and those who push the limits of exploration. The narrator of this story, for example, goes further than any man has before, coming so close to the sun that he nearly burns to death. As he struggles to survive inside his suit, he compares his motives to other explorers: “For the same reason, he knew, that they had once struggled to reach Everest, [...] for the excitement of the body that was adventure, and the more enduring excitement of the mind that was discovery” (76). The story argues that it is within human nature to explore, push the boundaries, and incessantly search for the next greatest discovery. The narrator goes on to assert that the only way to achieve these great feats of space exploration is to cut himself off from his humanity: “But space made no allowance for human frailties or emotions, and a man who did not accept that fact had no right to be here” (75). This expresses one of Clarke’s most salient themes: that humans are not fit to survive in an environment as forbidding as space.
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