Death and the Senator

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Death and the Senator is a science fiction short story by Arthur C. Clarke. It was originally published in 1961 in Astounding Science Fiction and has since been included in several collections of Clarke's writings,

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Set in an unspecified year, but a few years before 1976, the story tells of Martin Steelman, an American Senator and potential Presidential candidate. As a member of a Senate committee, he has used his influence and rhetoric to refuse funding for an astrobiology project.

Some years later, learning that he has a potentially fatal cardiac condition, he hears from one of the space scientists, whose project he helped to kill, that the USSR is experimenting with medical treatment under zero gravity conditions in a space station in Earth orbit.

Although Steelman is offered a place on the treatment programme, which is highly experimental, he gives it up on seeing a young couple also waiting to be treated.

Back in Washington, he contemplates his fate, and as he does so, death comes quietly to him.