How does Arthur C. Clarke use imagery in Childhood's End?

Clarke's narrative is conservative, his vocabulary undemanding, his imagery conventional, and his point-of-view solidly that of the omniscient narrator.

"He felt no regrets as the work of a lifetime was swept away. He had labored to take man to the stars, and, in a moment of success, the stars - the aloof - indifferent stars - had come to him. This was the moment when history held its breath, and the present sheared asunder from the past as an iceberg splits from its frozen, parent cliffs, and goes sailing out to sea in lonely pride."

"The human race continued to bask in the long, cloudless summer afternoon of peace and prosperity. Would there ever be a winter again?"

"He was going into a realm of nightmare creatures, preying upon each other in a darkness undisturbed since the world began."