Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke Page A

The might enshrined in their great ships had been clear enough for every eye to see. But behind that display of sleeping force were other and much subtler weapons.
    "All political problems," Karellen had once told Stormgren, "can be solved by the correct application of power."
    "That sounds a rather cynical remark," Stormgren had replied doubtfully. "It's a little too much like 'Might is Right'. In our own past, the use of power has been notably unsuccessflu in solving anything."
    "The operative word is correct. You have never possessed real power, or the knowledge necessary to apply it. As in all problems, there are efficient and inefficient approaches. Suppose, for example, that one of your nations, led by some
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    fanatical ruler, tried to revolt against me. The highly inefficient answer to such a threat would be some billions of horsepower in the shape of atomic bombs. If I used enough bombs, the solution would be complete and finèi. It would also, as I remarked, be inefficient-even if it possessed no other defects."
    "And the efficient solution?"
    "That requires about as much power as a small radio transmitter-and rather similar skills to operate. For it's the application of the power, not its amount, that matters. How long do you think Hitler's career as dictator of Germany would have lasted, if wherever he went a voice was talking quietly in his ear? Or if' a steady musical note, loud enough to drown all other sounds and to prevent sleep, filled his brain night and day? Nothing brutal, you appreciate. Yet, in the final analysis, just as irresistible as a tritium bomb."
    "I see," said Stormgren; "and there would be no place to hide?"
    "No place where I could not send my-ah-devices if I felt sufficiently strongly about it. And that is why I shall never have to use really drastic methods to maintain my position."
    The great ships, then, had never been more than symbols, and now the world knew that all save one had been phantoms.
    Yet, by their mere presence, they had changed the history of Earth. Now their task was done, and their achievementlingered behind them to go echoing down the centuries.
    Karellen's calculations had been accurate. The shock of revulsion had passed swiftly, though there were many who prided themselves on their freedom from superstition yet would never be able to face one of the Overlords. There was something strange here, something beyond all reason or logic.
    In the Middle Ages, people believed in the devil and feared him. But this was the twenty-first century: could it be that, after all, there was such a thing as racial memory?
    It was, of course, universally assumed that the Overlords, or beings of the same species, had come into violent conflict with ancient man. The meeting must have lain in the remOte past, for it had left no traces in recorded history. Here was another puzzle, and Karellen would give no help in its solution.
    The Overlords, though they had now shown themselves to man, seldom left their one remaining ship. Perhaps they found it physically uncomfortable on Earth, for their size, and the existence of their wings, indicated that they came from
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    a world of much lower gravity. They were never seen without a belt adorned with complex mechanisms which, it was generally believed, controlled their weight and enabled them to communicate with each other. Direct sunlight was painful to them, and they never stayed in it for more than a few seconds. When they had to go into the open for any length of time, they wore dark glasses which gave them a somewhat incongruous appearance. Though they seemed able to breathe terrestrial air, they sometimes carried small cylinders of gas from which they refreshed themselves occasionally.
    Perhaps these purely physical problems accounted fbr their aloofness. Only a small fraction of the human race had ever actually met an Overlord in the flesh, and no-one could guess how many of them were aboard Karellen's ship. No more than five had ever been