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 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Story 7 Summary: “Dog Star”
The narrator wakes suddenly upon hearing his dog, Laika, barking incessantly. He is annoyed and tells her to be quiet. Then he remembers that Laika is not with him. He is on the moon, and she has been dead five years. He opens his eyes and realizes he was only dreaming about his dog. He looks at his empty cabin and feels a “sense of loss…so desolating that I longed to return to sleep” (80). He explains that if he had gone back to sleep, rather than staying awake to reminisce about his departed dog, he would have died. In five minutes, a terrible earthquake will hit. Before this happens, however, he recounts the story of how he came to own a dog and live on the moon.
On his way to the Observatory in Palomar, the narrator finds a puppy abandoned on the side of the road. He names the dog Laika and suffers through her destructive puppyhood. She grows into an attentive, intelligent dog. He doesn’t know why, but they form an intense attachment.
One night while staying with university colleagues, Laika wakes the narrator up with her obnoxious barking. Coming downstairs to quiet her, the narrator is intensely annoyed with the dog. He goes to the door to let her outside and she bolts away into the woods. Standing in the doorway calling to his dog, he is protected by the frame when a massive earthquake strikes. The dog had sensed the impending quake and offered her warning barks. His colleagues, asleep in their beds, do not survive the quake.
When the Red Cross comes to rescue the narrator, he refuses to leave until he finds Laika. After that, he becomes isolated and never leaves the dog’s side if he can help it. When an important career opportunity arises, he is forced to choose between accepting a post in an observatory on the moon or staying on Earth with his dog. It is an agonizing decision, but he eventually chooses his career. He leaves Laika with a kind older couple. On the moon, he learns that Laika died a month after he left her.
As he continues to think about Laika in the present, “the metal building around me quivered as if under the impact of a heavy blow” (85). Reacting instantly, he manages to get his emergency suit on and trigger the emergency alarm. Because of his quick actions, spurred on by the memory of Laika and another quake back on Earth, only two men die. The narrator says that he doesn’t believe in the supernatural and knows there is a rational explanation for these events. Yet “sometimes I wake now, in the silence of the Moon, and wish that the dream could have lasted a few seconds longer—so that I could have looked just once more into those luminous brown eyes” (85).
Story 8 Summary: “Hide and Seek”
A man named Kingman hunts squirrels because they are destroying his trees. The squirrel in the tree—which he calls a “tree rat”—reminds him of a strange experience that happened just before he retired. Intrigued, the narrator asks Kingman to explain how a squirrel reminded him of “the Second Jovian War” (87).
The narrative shifts to a flashback. The narrator describes someone named K.15, a spy with military intelligence. K.15 is annoyed by an enemy cruiser, the Doradus, which has been following his ship for days. He is headed for a rendezvous with friends in a much larger ship which could protect him, but it may not reach him in time. He considers his options: try to land on Mars and risk upsetting the Martians, or use the last of his fuel to accelerate into space away from the pursuing ship. He decides to decelerate.
Commander Smith, captain of the Doradus, is surprised when K.15 heads for Phobos, a moon described as a useless pile of rocks. As K.15 nears Phobos, the Doradus loses the ability to track the ship. K.15 is broadcasting the message: “I have landed on Phobos and am being attacked by a Z-class cruiser. Think I can hold out until you come, but hurry” (88).
Commander Smith is confused by this message. Because K.15 sent the message in plain language, he may be attempting to trick the Doradus. Captain Smith can’t be sure that K.15 really landed on Phobos, yet he can safely assume there is a large warship on the way. He decides to pursue K.15 on the surface of Phobos. As he gets closer, he realizes that the jagged terrain of the moon will make it surprisingly difficult to locate K.15.
K.15’s plan is to “remain as close to the surface of Phobos as possible—and diametrically opposite the cruiser” (90). This means the Doradus has almost no chance of accurately aiming its guns and missiles at K.15 because the cruiser cannot make quick, tight moves. Commander Smith considers deploying a search party but hesitates because K.15 has a gun with 100 rounds of ammunition. The search party would be unarmed.
Suddenly, K.15 is aware of a dark shadow crossing his line of vision. The Doradus has sent homing missiles to search for him. Although this makes his ability to hide more difficult, the missiles are designed to look for spacecraft, not individuals. K.15 realizes he can tune the radio on his suit to pick up the signal of the Doradus. He can now track its location, allowing him to evade the ship more easily. He continues to hide between two rocks, watching almost with pity as Commander Smith tries in vain to find him. The game of cat and mouse continues for ten hours. Suddenly, the Doradus abandons its search and leaves at a high speed.
The flashback ends and the story returns to the original narrator and Kingman. The narrator reflects that he now understands why hunting the squirrel reminded Kingman of this story. He then asks Kingman how he could possibly know so much about K.15 and goes on to ask if Kingsman actually is K.15. Offended, Kingsman leaves the room, stating that he’ll try to catch the “tree-rat” (96) again.
Another man named Carson explains to the narrator that he offended Kingsman because he was actually the commander of the Doradus. He was disgraced by his inability to catch K.15 and forced to retire.
Story 9 Summary: “Out of the Sun”
A group of 50 astronomers and other scientists man an observatory on Mercury where they study the sun. They use a series of dark filters which allow them to look at the sun in a manner which no one living on Earth can possibly do. As one of the sun’s dark spots disappears, suddenly “something blew up on the equator” (98). The narrator says that the explosion could only be compared to that of one hundred hydrogen bombs.
The cloud is “a hundred times the size of Earth” (99) yet would go unnoticed by a human eye looking up into the sky. As the cloud approaches, the narrator zooms in to get a better idea of the nebula’s makeup. He is shocked to find something new in the center of this nebula. The core of the cloud remains stable, which confounds the scientists. Based on what they observed in the past, the center of the nebula should be breaking up by now, rather than staying solid.
Although they feel crazy for making the comparison, the scientists get the impression that this solar cloud is akin to an amoeba. For five minutes, the entire group is mesmerized by this strange living solar cloud. They watch it approach Mercury, knowing that once it hits the cloud will be destroyed.
As the cloud gets closer, the narrator pontificates on what life really means. He doesn’t know if this life-form which emerged from the sun is a form of electrical energy or if it contains a brain that understands it is about to crash into Mercury and die. As it hurtles toward Mercury, it drops below the scope of their instruments, so the scientists do not witness the moment when it collides with the surface of the planet. The group of scientists experience a collective feeling when the cloud impacts which convinces them that they have just witnessed something extraordinary, if unbelievable: “[N]ot one of us doubted then, or has ever doubted since, that we had witnessed the passing of a giant” (103). The narrator wonders if humanity will ever understand the life-forms that come from the sun, or if they have any interest in human life. The story finishes with the prediction that the sun will eventually “put forth its strength and lick the faces of its children” (104), leaving the planets scorched “as they were in the beginning—clean and bright…and sterile” (104).
Stories 7-9 Analysis
“Dog Star” continues a theme present in many of Clarke’s stories: Space exploration requires a man to cut himself off from his humanity. The narrator has a hard time relating to people or animals until he meets a stray dog. He names her Laika, a real world reference to one of the first dogs sent into space by the Russians. The narrator vacillates between extreme emotions. He first says that he feels nothing for animals, then becomes deeply attached to his dog. He is later “overwhelmed by the transcendental sadness that often comes when some bright dream fades into drab reality” (80).
After Laika saves the narrator’s life by warning him about a violent earthquake on Earth, and then again on the moon by way of a dream, he is quick to rationalize away his feelings: “[E]verything that happened had a perfectly rational explanation, obvious to any man with the slightest knowledge of psychology” (85). This story illustrates the inner work a scientist must endure in order to leave home for the moon, live without the normal comforts of human life, and cut himself off from his feelings in order to pursue scientific achievement.
“Dog Star,” like many of Clarke’s stories, touches on the loneliness of the explorer. “Hide and Seek” examines this theme as well. The narrator of the story within the frame story describes the terrain of Mars: “[T]here was an exhilarating loneliness about his mountain eyrie” (91). In contrast with the narrator of “Dog Star,” K.15 is eager to utilize the deserted loneliness to escape capture or attack. Unlike the self-sacrificing scientist of other Clarke stories, K.15 is akin to an outlaw, and Mars becomes his Wild West. The commander who ultimately loses sight of K.15 is demoted because “it just wasn’t reasonable that the commander of the fastest ship in the Fleet couldn’t catch a man in a space suit” (96). The story emphasizes that no matter how impressive the advances in technology, the ingenious nature of humans, along with their overwhelming drive to survive, will prevail.
While many of Clarke’s stories—and science fiction stories in general—celebrate the unique genius of humanity, “Out of the Sun” offers a humble perspective. The narrator asks, “for what is life but organized energy?” (102), then goes on to describe witnessing the birth of a life-form out of the sun. The awe-inspiring birth creates a paradigm shift for the narrator and his coworkers. Suddenly they realize that they may be in the presence of a superior intelligence, or even a godlike being. The narrator recognizes that their hubris may have blinded them to the fact that humans could actually be at the lowest end of the intelligence spectrum:
One day they may discover us, by whatever strange senses they possess, as we circle around their mighty, ancient home, proud of our knowledge and thinking ourselves lords of creation. They may not like what they find, for to them we should be no more than maggots (103).
Recognizing that there may be superior sentient beings in the universe humbles the narrator to the point that he loses faith in the power of human scientific progress. Thinking about the future, he wonders if other beings will discover humans and their “maggot”-like existence, only to wipe them out clean. He prophesizes that the potential sun gods will burn the planets to sterilize them of the infestation of human beings: “[T]hereafter the planets will go their way once more as they were in the beginning—clean and bright…and sterile” (104). This story suggests that space exploration may bring humankind in contact with their place in the universe, which may not be as positive or grand as initially believed. Furthermore, the metaphor of humanity as maggots implies that its spread throughout the galaxy may be a source of contamination, like pests that need to be eradicated.
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