The Hammer of God by Arthur C. Clarke

No.	Page	Question	Answer
STORY NINE – The Hammer of God
1	142	At the beginning of the story we are given a description of a meteor hitting earth and making some species extinct. Did any human beings die in this meteor impact?	No. There were no humans on earth at this time. It was approximately 65 million BC.
2	143	At the beginning of the story, Captain Singh walking in the forest with his little son Toby. How does Captain Singh know that Toby is about to cry and that the monkey will disappear?	He knows because this scene is not happening in reality for Captain Singh. It happened 20 years ago and he is watching it on what seems to be a virtual reality screen from outer space.
3	143	Captain Singh has been in space for decades on the Goliath ship. Through what instrument does he look back to his previous life?	Captain Singh puts a neural-input cap over his skull which enables him to call up his distant past.
4	144	The computer, David, is talking to captain Singh. Is it possible, from what you know of the computer, that it can break the law?	Yes the computer can break the law as it is a nonhuman legal person. It, therefore, has legal rights and can also break the law.

5	144	What is Chrislam? How did it form?	Chrislam is a religion embodying the best elements of Christianity and Islam . It formed after after pope John Paul XXV saw irrefutable proof that Jesus was a composite of at least three people! In the meantime, the Muslim world had lost much of its economic power.
6	144	What is Cold Fusion?	Cold Fusion seems to be a means of creating energy that means that human beings do not have to rely on fossil fuels such as oil.
7	145	Chrislam grew explosively because of the use of neural programming to give previews of paradise. Crew members land on the enormous kali, or the hammer of god. Why are the crew worried about kali? What are the chances of their worries coming true?	It is heading towards earth and there is a 99.9% chance that it will hit earth! The crew are very worried about this, as it would cause widespread destruction.
8	145	Describe how Kali looks and when it was detected.	It is the size of a small house, it weighs 9000 tons and is moving at 50,000 km/h. It looks like a fireball and leaves a long vapour trail. It was detected in late 2212 as it fell sunward past the orbit of Jupiter.
9	146	It was Senator Ledstone who agreed to spend billions and billions on the project that would help to push Kali off course. Did he quickly agree to do this?	No he did not as the senator argued that the money could be much better spent on earth.
10	147	What makes Senator Ledstone change his mind?	Senator Ledstone speaks with a scientific genius, Carlos Mendoza, who tells him that he should take the warning of an incoming asteroid impact extremely seriously. This, however, does not change his mind. What does is the emotional reaction to Carlos Mendoza being killed in a bizarre accident.

11	What is ATLAS and why is it important?	Atlas is the set or rocket engines attached to propellant tanks holding 100,000 tons of hydrogen. It is important because it will be used to divert the incoming comet off track.
12	ATLAS is much smaller than Kali. How can it be, therefore, that ATLAS can even slightly move Kali?	This is because of the frictionless vacuum of space, where momentum can never be lost, and even one ‘mousepower’ is enough if applied early and over a sufficient length of time.
13	The crew are extremely relieved when the ATLAS ignition starts, explain why their relief soon turns to heartbreak?	The ATLAS tanks began to open up and spill out the reaction mass that might have saved the Earth. In the meantime, Kali continues on its path toward earth.

14	Captain Singh meditates on his loss of everything that he loved on earth. He has an important decision to make. What is this decision?	The decision is whether to send the Goliath ship to Mars or to the moon.
15	As the crew begin to vote on the aforementioned decision, David has an idea. What is this idea? Why is David the only calm person in this situation?	His idea is to use the propellant of Goliath to hit Kali and make it move. David is the only calm person because he is nonhuman. He is a computer.
16	Captain Singh lies in his broadcast to the citizens of planet earth. What is his lie about?	He says that the probability of Kali impacting earth is 10%, when it is in fact 99.9%!
17	The humans on planet earth know that kali is coming towards them. What do some of them do to alleviate the stress that this causes?	Some of the humans take drugs in order to fall asleep.
18	Kali killed 100,000 and caused 1 trillion dollars worth of damage. Why, however, did Kali not kill more people?	Because the freezing cold Antarctic took the impact of Kali’s heat.
19	Do the crew members of Goliath survive? If so, how? If not, why not?	Unfortunately the crew members of Goliath do not survive the impact of Kali. This is because the colossal drag of the asteroid’s impact with the earth created an enormous amount of gravity which destroyed Goliath and killed the crew.