The Songs of Distant Earth by Arthur C. Clarke

gas-sculpture. Surely you had them on Earth.”
    “Of course. And since we’re still off the record, I don’t think it’s art. But it’s amusing.”
    The main lights had been switched off in one section of the patio, and about a dozen guests had gathered around what appeared to be a very large soap bubble, almost a metre in diameter. As Chang and Kaldor walked towards it, they could see the first swirls of colour forming inside, like the birth of a spiral nebula.
    “It’s called “Life”,” Doreen said, “And it’s been in Mirissa’s family for two hundred years. But the gas is beginning to leak; I can remember when it was much brighter.”
    Even so, it was impressive. The battery of electron guns and lasers in the base had been programmed by some patient, long-dead artist to generate a series of geometrical shapes that slowly evolved into organic structures. From the centre of the sphere, ever more complex forms appeared, expanded out of sight, and were replaced by others. In one witty sequence, single-celled creatures were shown climbing a spiral staircase, recognizable at once as a representation of the DNA molecule. With each step, something new was added; within a few minutes, the display had encompassed the four-billion-year odyssey from amoeba to Man.
    Then the artist tried to go beyond, and Kaldor lost him. The contortions of the fluorescent gas became too complex and too abstract. Perhaps if one saw the display a few more times, a pattern would emerge –
    “What happened to the sound?” Doreen asked when the bubble’s maelstrom of seething colours abruptly winked out. “There used to be some very good music, especially at the end.”
    “I was afraid someone would ask that question,” Mirissa said with an apologetic smile. “We’re not certain whether the trouble is in the playback mechanism or the program itself.”
    “Surely you have a backup!”
    “Oh, yes, of course. But the spare module is somewhere in Kumar’s room, probably buried under bits of his canoe. Until you’ve seen his den, you won’t understand what entropy really means.”
    “It’s not a canoe – it’s a kayak,” protested Kumar, who had just arrived with a pretty local girl clinging to each arm. “And what’s entropy?”
    One of the young Martians was foolish enough to attempt an explanation by pouring two drinks of different colours into the same glass. Before he could get very far, his voice was drowned by a blast of music from the gas-sculpture.
    “You see!” Kumar shouted above the din, with obvious pride, “Brant can fix anything!”
    Anything?thought Loren. I wonder … I wonder …

17. Chain of Command

    From : Captain
    To : All Crew Members
    CHRONOLOGY
    As there has already been a great deal of unnecessary confusion in this matter, I wish to make the following points:
    1. All ship’s records and schedules will remain on Earth Time — corrected for relativistic effects — until the end of the voyage. All clocks and timing systems aboard ship will continue to run on ET.
    2. For convenience, ground crews will use Thalassan time (TT) when necessary, but will keep all records in ET with TT in parentheses.
    3. To remind you:
    The duration of the Thalassan Mean Solar Day is 29.4325 hours ET. There are 313.1561 Thalassan days in the Thalassan Sidereal Year, which is divided into 11 months of 28 days. January is omitted from the calendar, but the five extra days to make up the total of 313 follow immediately after the last day (28th) of December. Leap days are intercalated every six years, but there will be none during our stay.
    4. Since the Thalassan day is 22% longer than Earth’s, and the number of those days in its year is 14% shorter, the actual length of the Thalassan year is only about 5% longer than Earth’s. As you are all aware, this has one practical convenience, in the matter of birthdays. Chronological age means almost the same on Thalassa as on Earth. A 21-year old Thalassan has lived as long