Here he was, adrift in this great river of suns, halfway between the banked fires of the galactic core and the lonely, scattered sentinel stars of the rim. And here he wished to be, on the far side of this chasm in the sky, this serpentine band of darkness, empty of all stars. He knew that this formless chaos, visible only by the glow that limned its edges from fire-mists far beyond, was the still unused stuff of creation, the raw material of evolution yet to be. Here, Time had not begun; not until the suns that now burned were long since dead would light and life reshape this void.
Then he remembered that he would never be alone, and his panic slowly ebbed. The crystal-clear perception of the universe was restored to him -- not, he knew, wholly by his own efforts. When he needed guidance in his first faltering steps, it would be there.
There before him, a glittering toy no Star-Child could resist, floating the planet Earth with all its peoples.
He had returned in time. Down there on that crowded globe the alarms would be flashing across the radar screens, the great tracking telescopes woul dbe searching the skies -- and history as men knew it would be drawing to a close.
A thousand miles below, he became aware that a slumbering cargo of death had awoken, and was stirring slugghishly in its orbit. The feeble energies it contained were no possible menace to him; but he preferred a cleaner sky. He put forth his will, and the circling megatons flowered in a silent detonation that brought a brief, false dawn to half the sleeping globe.
Then he waited, marshaling his thoughts and brooding over his still untested powers. For though he was master of the world, he was still quite sure what to do next.
But he would think of something.
Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey, the novel
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