1992.

Report from an Obscure Planet After an immense journey we have at last landed on this remote planet, ready to carry out our rescue mission. The emergency signals transmitted to us were frantic in their intensity, but everything seems to be in order here. Our first surveys confirm that no natural catastrophe is imminent. The climatic cover and atmospheric circulation are stable, despite a recent rise in the levels of background radiation. There is evidence of the longterm erosion of the ecological base, but this is still more than adequate to support life.

Aerial reconnaissance of the hundreds of cities that occupy the major continents suggests that the population of the planet numbers many billions, though none of the inhabitants has emerged to greet us. Presumably they are still seeking refuge from the disaster that threatened to overwhelm them. We have entered many of the cities and have found them deserted, but there is no sign of the vast underground shelters needed to harbour this huge population. The possibility remains that the inhabitants fled from their planet in despair, fearing that their call for help had not been heard. Yet the restricted capacities of their aerospace technology rule out this escape route, and we assume that they are still in hiding.

In an attempt to reassure them, we are making use of the local television and radio facilities, and have broadcast a signal of greeting and friendship. Surprisingly, this has activated the planet's extensive computer networks, which have reacted with a sudden show of alarm, as if well used to mistrusting these declarations of good intent.

We have found that the computer system is fully operational. Large sections of the system, in particular its predictive and cognitive functions, have been selfgenerated within the recent past, when the computer networks seem to have independently mobilised themselves to face the imminent disaster.

Our investigations confirm that this threat was closely tied to an important date in the planetary calendar, represented by the notation '24.00 hours, December 31, 1999'. Evidently this marked the end of two epochs of great significance, and the beginning of both a new century and a new millennium. It now appears certain that our own arrival coincided almost exactly with, though may fractionally have overrun, this auspicious moment, which was perceived by the computer networks as a final and desperate deadline.

The planet's entire computer system is still at an ultrahigh state of arousal, registering a recent allout response to extreme peril. Only a small volume of signal traffic moves between the satellite links, but there are gigantic memory stores with a capacity far in excess of the system's needs. These memory banks are now full, guarded by complex codes that we have been unable to break, and are perhaps the treasure house and terminal repository of the planet's ancestral knowledge.

So impressive are the defences of the system that we are now convinced that it was these computers that authorised the transmission of the emergency signal summoning us to their world's rescue.

However, there is still no sign of the inhabitants, and no response to our broadcast greetings. The cities and their suburbs, the airports and highways remain silent. Meanwhile we are carrying out a survey of these people, and of their values and civic virtues, and have come across a number of striking paradoxes. It is clear that their technological and scientific skills are of an advanced order, allowing them to construct the vast cities that dominate the planet's surface. An immense infrastructure of roads, bridges and tunnels has been laid down in the recent past, augmented by an aviation system that reaches the remotest outposts of their world.

The planet's mineral, energy and agricultural resources have been efficiently, and even ruthlessly, exploited. A simple but evidently attractive system of barter, based on the concept of money, facilitates the transfer of manufactured goods and services, and the surplus wealth generated has funded an everexpanding science and technology. Spaceflight, except in its most primitive forms, still lies beyond the abilities of these people, but they have harnessed the energy of the atom, deciphered the molecular codes that oversee their own reproduction, and seem well on the way to banishing disease and solving the mysteries of life and immortality.

At the same time, our researches have shown that despite these achievements the peoples of this planet have in other respects scarcely raised themselves above the lowest levels of barbarism. The enjoyment of pain and violence is as natural to them as the air they breathe. War above all is their most popular sport, in which rival populations, and frequently entire continents, attack each other with the most vicious and destructive weapons, regardless of the death and suffering that follow. These conflicts may last for years or decades. Nations nominally at peace devote a large proportion of their collective income to constructing arsenals of lethal weapons, and satisfy the appetites of their populations with a display of brutal entertainments in which violence, humiliation and murder are almost the sole ingredients.

Not surprisingly, our latest research confirms that the imminent threat to which their computers alerted us was in fact represented by the existence of these people. They constituted the danger that was about to overwhelm their planet, and it was to save themselves that the computer networks summoned us from the far side of the universe.

The deadline set by the computers, the crucial hour when one millennium gave way to another, perhaps explains the reason for their alarm. Given these people's hunger for violence, it may be that they saw the birth of a new millennium as a licence for an even greater carnival of destruction. They waited at the threshold of space, a barbaric horde with the secret of immortality within their grasp, eager to play with their own psychopathology as the ultimate game.

The prospect of this virulent plague spreading across the universe must have prompted the planet's computers to call a halt. But the ultimate mystery remains of where the inhabitants have disappeared. If they have been physically annihilated in an act of planetary hygiene there is no trace of the billions of corpses or of the vast necropolis needed to inter them.

A possible explanation occurs to us as we prepare to return to our home star. Driven by the need for a more lifelike replica of the scenes of carnage that most entertained them, the people of this unhappy world had invented an advanced and apparently interiorised version of their television screens, a virtual replica of reality in which they could act out their most deviant fantasies. These threedimensional simulations were generated by their computers, and had reached a stage of development in the last years of the millennium in which the imitation of reality was more convincing than the original. It may even have become the new reality to the extent that their cities and highways, their fellow citizens and, ultimately, themselves seemed mere illusions by comparison with the electronically generated amusement park where they preferred to play. Here they could assume any identity, create and fulfil any desire, and explore the most deviant dreams.

But at some point in the new millennium they might well have decided to return to the world and test it against those dreams, ready to destroy it like a child bored with an unresponsive toy. Is it possible that the computers of this planet, having welcomed the population into this cave of illusion, then made a desperate decision and entombed them magnetically, translating them by some as yet undiscovered science into a memorised version of their physical selves? Once inside the cave, the door of virtual death was sealed and encrypted behind them, leaving the computers alone and safe at last.

If so, we arrived some moments too late. As we leave, the computers have calmed themselves, and are singing quietly in unison. Perhaps they miss their former companions, however brutish. Our concluding survey indicates that they have invented God, perhaps an idealised image of the race they entombed. As we set out into space we can hear them praying.

1992.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

The stories in this collection first appeared in the following publications: 'Prima Belladonna' Science Fantasy 1956 'Escapement' New Worlds 1956 'The Concentration City' (as 'BuildUp') New Worlds 1957 'Venus Smiles' (as 'Mobile') Science Fantasy 1957 'Manhole 69' New Worlds 1957 'Track 12' New Worlds 1958 'The Waiting Grounds' New Worlds 1959 'Now: Zero' Science Fantasy 1959 'The SoundSweep' Science Fantasy 1960 'Zone of Terror' New Worlds 1960 'Chronopolis' New Worlds 1960 'The Voices of Time' New Worlds 1960 'The Last World of Mr Goddard' Science Fantasy 1960 'Studio 5, The Stars' Science Fantasy 1961 'Deep End' New Worlds 1961 'The Overloaded Man' New Worlds 1961 'Mr F. is Mr F.' Science Fantasy 1961 'Billennium' New Worlds 1961 'The Gentle Assassin' New Worlds 1961 'The Insane Ones' Amazing Stories 1962 'The Garden of Time' Fantasy and Science Fiction 1962 'The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista' Amazing Stories 1962 'Thirteen to Centaurus' Amazing Stories 1962 'Passport to Eternity' Amazing Stories 1962 'The Cage of Sand' New Worlds 1962 'The WatchTowers' Science Fantasy 1962 'The Singing Statues' Fantastic Stories 1962 'The Man on the 99th Floor' New Worlds 1962 'The Subliminal Man' New Worlds 1963 'The Reptile Enclosure' (as 'The Sherrington Theory') Amazing Stories 1963 'A Question of ReEntry' Fantastic Stories 1963 'The TimeTombs' Worlds of If 1963 'Now Wakes the Sea' Fantasy and Science Fiction 1963 'The Venus Hunters' (as 'The Encounter') Amazing Stories 1963 'EndGame' New Worlds 1963 'Minus One' Science Fantasy 1963 'The Sudden Afternoon' Fantastic Stories 1963 'The Screen Game' Fantastic Stories 1963 'Time of Passage' Science Fantasy 1964 'Prisoner of the Coral Deep' Argosy 1964 'The Lost Leonardo' Fantasy and Science Fiction 1964 'The Terminal Beach' New Worlds 1964 'The Illuminated Man' Fantasy and Science Fiction 1964 'The Delta at Sunset' The Terminal Beach 1964 'The Drowned Giant' The Terminal Beach 1964 'The Gioconda of the Twilight Noon' The Terminal Beach 1964 'The Volcano Dances' The Terminal Beach 1964 'The Beach Murders' (as 'Confetti Royale') Rogue 1966 'The Day of Forever' The Impossible Man 1966 'The Impossible Man' The Impossible Man 1966 'StormBird, StormDreamer' The Impossible Man 1966 'Tomorrow is a Million Years' Argosy 1966 'The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race' Ambit 1966 'Cry Hope, Cry Fury!' Fantasy and Science Fiction 1967 'The Recognition' Dangerous Visions 1967 'The CloudSculptors of Coral D' Fantasy and Science Fiction 1967 'Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan' International Times 1968 'The Dead Astronaut' Playboy 1968 'The Comsat Angels' Worlds of If 1968 'The Killing Ground' New Worlds 1969 'A Place and a Time to Die' New Worlds 1969 'Say Goodbye to the Wind' Fantastic Stories 1970 'The Greatest Television Show on Earth' Ambit 1972 'My Dream of Flying to Wake Island' Ambit 1974 'The Air Disaster' Bananas 1975 'LowFlying Aircraft' Bananas 1975 'The Life and Death of God' Ambit 1976 'Notes Towards a Mental Breakdown' Bananas 1976 'The 60 Minute Zoom' Bananas 1976 'The Smile' Bananas 1976 'The Ultimate City' LowFlying Aircraft 1976 'The Dead Time' Bananas 1977 'The Index' Bananas 1977 'The Intensive Care Unit' Ambit 1977 'Theatre of War' Bananas 1977 'Having a Wonderful Time' Bananas 1978 'One Afternoon at Utah Beach' Anticipations 1978 'Zodiac 2000' Ambit 1978 'Motel Architecture' Bananas 1978 'A Host of Furious Fancies' Time Out 1980 'News from the Sun' Ambit 1981 'Memories of the Space Age' Interzone 1982 'Myths of the Near Future' Myths of the Near Future 1982 'Report on an Unidentified Space Station' City Limits 1982 'The Object of the Attack' Interzone 1984 'Answers to a Questionnaire' Ambit 1985 'The Man Who Walked on the Moon' Interzone 1985 'The Secret History of World War 3' Ambit 1988 'Love in a Colder Climate' Interview 1989 'The Enormous Space' Interzone 1989 'The Largest Theme Park in the World' Guardian 1989 'War Fever' Fantasy and Science Fiction 1989 'Dream Cargoes' Shincho 1990.

'A Guide to Virtual Death' Interzone 1992.

'The Message from Mars' Interzone 1992.

'Report from an Obscure Planet' Leonardo 1992.

The End.