One of the best of Arthur's later novels was "The Songs of Distant Earth", published in 1986, although it was based on a 1958 short story. Arthur said it was his favourite of all his novels.

What happened on Thalassa after Magellan departed? Everything belongs to the late, great Sir Arthur Charles Clarke. Part 2.

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Half an hour later Mirissa Leonidas arrived at the South Island hospital.

"I am here to see my husband, is Brant OK?"

Doctor Khan said to Mirissa "He is badly injured but he should make a full recovery, he has a broken right arm and some badly bruised ribs. His back got seriously scratched."

"Can I see him?"

"I can only give you a few minutes."

"I will take it."

A few minutes later

"Mirissa, is that you?"

"It's me Brant."

"Good to see you, where is Kumar?"

"He is with my parents, what happened to you?"

"Sam and I were on the sea bed making some repairs on damaged equipment when a huge scorp came to see what we were doing. The scorp pushed me out of the way with its pincers to investigate the metal. Fortunately Sam was able to get me up to the surface. Good job we were at a shallow enough depth that we didn't need to decompress on the way up."

"How is Sam?"

"He has a broken leg, he is in surgery now as they try and stitch together what's left of his leg bones."

Then Doctor Khan appeared "OK Mirissa, that's enough for today. Come back tomorrow."

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Three days later Mirissa arrived at the hospital to see her husband sitting up in bed, Sam was in a wheelchair next to Brant's bed. Mirissa kissed her husband and hugged Sam.

"Thank you for saving Brant's life Sam."

"He would have done the same for me. We divers work as a team as and look out for each other."

"How is your leg?"

"There is a lot of titanium in there holding the bones together, I will be in this wheelchair for a few more weeks. How are you doing, how long till the baby is due?"

"I am doing a lot better seeing that you and Brant are improving, two more months until our son is born."

"Good to see you again Mirissa, I will leave you now to have some privacy with Brant, see you later." Sam started to wheel himself away but before he could leave the door opened and two formidable ladies entered.

Mayor Waldron said "Hello Brant, good to see you again, Doctor Khan said that you were improving so we have come to have a little chat, don't leave Sam."

Then President Noguchi said "OK gentlemen, I want to know exactly what happened to you down there with the scorp…"

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Next day President Noguchi had a visitor

"Mr Fletcher, how nice to see you again, sorry that your visit got cut short last week, you know what happened."

"Yes Madam President, I saw your interview on the TV last night. We are going to have to do something to protect ourselves from the scorps."

"I suppose we will, do you have any suggestions?"

"As I am sure that you know each of the three islands of Thalassa has their own power station but these are all connected as part of an electricity grid. When we were working on the communications antenna about six months ago we had a partial power failure. We eventually found out that one of the electrical power cables from North Island had been badly damaged, we found a very dead Sea Scorpion next to the damaged cable."