The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke by Arthur C. Clarke

them, for all their wisdom, thirty years to reach the chamber where he slept.
    The Master’s mind awoke before his body. As he lay powerless, unable even to lift his leaden eyelids, memory came flooding back. The hundred years were safely behind him—his desperate gamble had succeeded! He felt a strange elation, and a longing to see the new world that must have arisen while he lay within his tomb.
    One by one, his senses returned. He could feel the hard surface on which he was lying: now a gentle current of air drifted across his brow. Presently he was aware of sounds—faint clickings and scratchings all around him. For a moment he was puzzled: then he realised that the surgeons must be putting their instruments away. He had not yet the strength to open his eyes, so he lay and waited, wondering.
    Would men have changed much? Would his name still be remembered among them? Perhaps it would be better if it were not—though he had feared the hatred of neither men nor nations. He had never known their love. Momentarily he wondered if any of his friends might have followed him, but he knew there would be none. When he opened his eyes, all the faces before him would be strange. Yet he longed to see them, to read the expressions they would hold as he awakened from his sleep.
    Strength returned. He opened his eyes. The light was gentle, and he was not dazzled, but for a while everything was blurred and misty. He could distinguish figures standing round, but though they seemed strange he could not see them clearly.
    Then the Master’s eyes came into focus, and as they brought their message to his mind he screamed once, feebly, and died for ever. For in the last moment of his life, as he saw what stood around him, he knew that the long war between Man and Insect was ended—and that Man was not the victor.

Whacky
    First published in The Fantast , July 1942
    Collected in The Best of Arthur C. Clarke 1937–1955

    ‘Whacky’ was first published in The Fantast , edited by Aberdeen fan, Douglas Webster, who had previously taken over the magazine from one Christopher Samuel Youd, better known to science fiction readers as John Christopher.

    The telephone honked melodiously. He picked it up and after a moment’s hesitation asked ‘Hello—is that me?’ The answer he had been fearing came back. ‘You, it is. Who are you?’ He sighed: argument was useless—besides he knew he was in the wrong. ‘All right,’ he said wearily. ‘You win.’ A sudden purple twinge of toothache nearly choked him for a moment and he added hopelessly: ‘Don’t forget to have that stopping seen to this afternoon.’ ‘Ouch! as if I would,’ growled the voice testily. There was a pause. ‘Well, what do you want me to do now?’ he asked at last. The reply, though half expected, was chilling. ‘Do? It doesn’t matter. You just aren’t !’
    ‘The amazing affair of the Elastic Sided Eggwhisk,’ said the Great Detective, ‘would no doubt have remained unsolved to this very day, if by great misfortune it had ever occurred. The fact that it didn’t I count as one of my luckiest escapes.’
    Those of us who possessed heads nodded in agreement.
    He paused to drain the sump of his hookah, then continued.
    ‘But even that fades into insignificance before the horrible tragedy that occurred in the House Where the Aspidistra Ran Amok. Fortunately I was not born at the time: otherwise I should certainly have been one of the victims.’
    We shuddered in assent. Some of us had been there. Some of us were still there.
    ‘Weren’t you connected with the curious case of the Camphorated Kipper?’
    He coughed deprecatingly.
    ‘Intimately. I was the Camphorated Kipper.’
    At this point two men arrived to carry me back to the taxidermist’s, so I cannot tell you any more.
    ‘Phew!’ said the man in the pink silk pyjamas. ‘I had a horrid dream last night!’
    ‘Oh?’ said the other disinterestedly.
    ‘Yes—I thought that my wife had poisoned me for