2061: A Space Odyssey
Arthur C. Clarke
Contents:
Author's Note
- THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN
- The Frozen Years
- First Sight
- Re-entry
- Tycoon
- Out of the Ice
- The Greening of Ganymede
- Transit
- Starfleet
- Mount Zeus
- Ship of Fools
- The Lie
- 'No-one told us to bring swimsuits...'
- Search
- THE VALLEY OF THE BLACK SNOW
- Rendezvous
- Touchdown
- The Valley of Black Snow
- 'Old Faithful'
- At the End of the Tunnel
- Recall
- EUROPAN ROULETTE
- The Politics of Exile
- Hazardous Cargo
- Inferno
- Shaka the Great
- The Shrouded World
- Night Watch
- Rosie
- Dialogue
- Descent
- Galaxy Down
- The Sea of Galilee
- AT THE WATER HOLE
- Diversion
- Pit Stop
- Car Wash
- Adrift
- The Alien Shore
- THROUGH THE ASTEROIDS
- Star
- Icebergs of Space
- The Captain's Table
- Monsters from Earth
- Memoirs of a Centenarian
- Minilith
- HAVEN
- Salvage
- Endurance
- Mission
- Shuttle
- Shards
- Lucy
- THE GREAT WALL
- Shrine
- Open City
- Phantom
- On the Couch
- Pressure Cooker
- Reunion
- Magma
- Perturbation Theory
- Interlude on Ganymede
- THE KINGDOM OF SULPHUR
- Fire and Ice
- Trinity
- 3001
- Midnight in the Plaza
Acknowledgements
TO THE MEMORY OF
JUDY-LYNN DEL REY,
EDITOR EXTRAORDINARY,
WHO BOUGHT THIS BOOK FOR ONE DOLLAR
- BUT NEVER KNEW IF SHE GOT HER MONEY'S WORTH
Author's Note
Just as 2010: Odyssey Two was not a direct sequel to 2001: A Space
Odyssey, so this book is not a linear sequel to 2010. They must all
be considered as variations on the same theme, involving many of
the same characters and situations, but not necessarily happening
in the same universe.
Developments since Stanley Kubrick suggested in 1964 (five years
before men landed on the Moon!) that we should attempt 'the
proverbial good science-fiction movie' make total consistency
impossible, as the later stories incorporate discoveries and events
that had not even taken place when the earlier books were written.
2010 was made possible by the brilliantly successful 1979 Voyager
flybys of Jupiter, and I had not intended to return to that
territory until the results of the even more ambitious Galileo
Mission were in.
Galileo would have dropped a probe into the Jovian atmosphere,
while spending almost two years visiting all the major satellites.
It should have been launched from the space shuttle in May 1986,
and would have reached its objective by December 1988. So around
1990 I hoped to take advantage of the flood of new information from
Jupiter and its moons...
Alas, the Challenger tragedy eliminated that scenario; Galileo -
now sitting in its clean room at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory -
must now find another launch vehicle. It will be lucky if it
arrives at Jupiter merely seven years behind schedule.
I have decided not to wait.
Colombo, Sri Lanka,
April 1987
'For a man of seventy, you're in extremely good shape,' remarked Dr
Glazunov, looking up from the Medcom's final print-out. 'I'd have
put you down as not more than sixty-five.'
'Happy to hear it, Oleg. Especially as I'm a hundred and three - as
you know perfectly well.'
'Here we go again! Anyone would think you've never read Professor
Rudenko's book.'
'Dear old Katerina! We'd planned a get-together on her hundredth
birthday. I was so sorry she never made it - that's what comes of
spending too much time on Earth.'
'Ironic, since she was the one who coined that famous slogan
"Gravity is the bringer of old age."'
Dr Heywood Floyd stared thoughtfully at the ever-changing panorama
of the beautiful planet, only six thousand kilometres away, on
which he could never walk again. It was even more ironic that,
through the most stupid accident of his life, he was still in
excellent health when virtually all his old friends were dead.
He had been back on Earth only a week when, despite all the
warnings and his own determination that nothing of the sort would
ever happen to him, he had stepped off that second-storey balcony.
(Yes, he had been celebrating: but he had earned it - he was a hero
on the new world to which Leonov had returned.) The multiple
fractures had led to complications, which could best be handled in
the Pasteur Space Hospital.
That had been in 2015. And now - he could not really believe it,
but there was the calendar on the wall - it was 2061.
For Heywood Floyd, the biological clock had not merely been slowed
down by the one-sixth Earth gravity of the hospital; twice in his
life it had actually been reversed. It was now generally believed -
though some authorities disputed it - that hibernation did more
than merely stop the ageing process; it encouraged rejuvenation.
Floyd had actually become younger on his voyage to Jupiter and
back.
'So you really think it's safe for me to go?'
'Nothing in this Universe is safe, Heywood. All I can say is that
there are no physiological objections. After all, your environment
will be virtually the same aboard Universe as it is here. She may
not have quite the standard of - ah - superlative medical expertise
we can provide at Pasteur, but Dr Mahindran is a good man. If
there's any problem he can't cope with, he can put you into
hibernation again, and ship you back to us, COD.'
It was the verdict that Floyd had hoped for, yet somehow his
pleasure was alloyed with sadness. He would be away for weeks from
his home of almost half a century, and the new friends of his later
years. And although Universe was a luxury liner compared with the
primitive Leonov (now hovering high above Farside as one of the
main exhibits at the Lagrange Museum) there was still some element
of risk in any extended space voyage. Especially like the
pioneering one on which he was now preparing to embark.
Yet that, perhaps, was exactly what he was seeking - even at a
hundred and three (or, according to the complex geriatric
accounting of the late Professor Katerina Rudenko, a hale and
hearty sixty-five.) During the last decade, he had become aware of
an increasing restlessness and a vague dissatisfaction with a life
that was too comfortable and well-ordered.
Despite all the exciting projects now in progress around the Solar
System - the Mars Renewal, the establishment of the Mercury Base,
the Greening of Ganymede - there had been no goal on which he could
really focus his interests and his still considerable energies. Two
centuries ago, one of the first poets of the Scientific Era had
summed up his feelings perfectly, speaking through the lips of
Odysseus/Ulysses:
Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one of me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things: and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
'Three suns', indeed! It was more than forty:
Ulysses would have been ashamed of him. But the next verse - which
he knew so well - was even more appropriate:
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
'To seek, to find...' Well, now he knew what he was going to seek,
and to find - because he knew exactly where it would be. Short of
some catastrophic accident, there was no way in which it could
possibly elude him.
It was not a goal he had ever consciously had in mind, and even now
he was not quite sure why it had become so suddenly dominant. He
would have thought himself immune to the fever which was once again
infecting mankind - for the second time in his life! - but perhaps
he was mistaken. Or it could have been that the unexpected
invitation to join the short list of distinguished guests aboard
Universe had fired his imagination, and awakened an enthusiasm he
had not even known he possessed.
There was another possibility. After all these years, he could
still remember what an anticlimax the 1985/6 encounter had been to
the general public. Now was a chance - the last for him, and the
first for humanity - to more than make up for any previous
disappointment.
Back in the twentieth century, only flybys had been possible. This
time, there would be an actual landing, as pioneering in its way as
Armstrong's and Aldrin's first steps on the Moon.
Dr Heywood Floyd, veteran of the 2010-15 mission to Jupiter, let
his imagination fly outwards to the ghostly visitor once again
returning from the deeps of space, gaining speed second by second
as it prepared to round the Sun. And between the orbits of Earth
and Venus the most famous of all comets would meet the still
uncompleted space-liner Universe, on her maiden flight.
The exact point of rendezvous was not yet settled, but his decision
was already made.
'Halley - here I come...' whispered Heywood Floyd.
It is not true that one must leave Earth to appreciate the full
splendour of the heavens. Not even in space is the starry sky more
glorious than when viewed from a high mountain, on a perfectly
clear night, far from any source of artificial illumination. Even
though the stars appear brighter beyond the atmosphere, the eye
cannot really appreciate the difference; and the overwhelming
spectacle of half the celestial sphere at a single glance is
something that no observation window can provide.
But Heywood Floyd was more than content with his private view of
the Universe, especially during the times when the residential zone
was on the shadow side of the slowly revolving space hospital. Then
there would be nothing in his rectangular field of view but stars,
planets, nebulae - and occasionally, drowning out all else, the
unblinking glare of Lucifer, new rival to the Sun.
About ten minutes before the beginning of his artificial night, he
would switch off all the cabin lights - even the red emergency
standby - so that he could become completely dark-adapted. A little
late in life for a space engineer, he had learned the pleasures of
naked-eye astronomy, and could now identify virtually any
constellation, even if he could glimpse only a small portion of
it.
Almost every 'night' that May, as the comet was passing inside the
orbit of Mars, he had checked its location on the star charts.
Although it was an easy object with a good pair of binoculars,
Floyd had stubbornly resisted their aid; he was playing a little
game, seeing how well his ageing eyes would respond to the
challenge. Though two astronomers on Mauna Kea already claimed to
have observed the comet visually, no-one believed them, and similar
assertions from other residents of Pasteur had been treated with
even greater scepticism.
But tonight, a magnitude of at least six was predicted; he might be
in luck. He traced the line from Gamma to Epsilon, and stared
towards the apex of an imaginary equilateral triangle set upon it -
almost as if he could focus his vision across the Solar System by a
sheer effort of will.
And there it was! - just as he had first seen it, seventy-six years
ago, inconspicuous but unmistakable. If he had not known exactly
where to look, he would not even have noticed it, or would have
dismissed it as some distant nebula.
To his naked eye it was merely a tiny, perfectly circular blob of
mist; strain as he would, he was unable to detect any trace of a
tail. But the small flotilla of probes that had been escorting the
comet for months had already recorded the first outbursts of dust
and gas that would soon create a glowing plume across the stars,
pointing directly away from its creator, the Sun,
Like everyone else, Heywood Floyd had watched the transformation of
the cold, dark - no, almost black - nucleus as it entered the inner
Solar System. After seventy years of deepfreeze, the complex
mixture of water, ammonia and other ices was beginning to thaw and
bubble. A flying mountain, roughly the shape - and size - of the
island of Manhattan was turning on a cosmic spit every fifty-three
hours; as the heat of the Sun seeped through the insulating crust,
the vaporizing gases were making Halley's Comet behave like a
leaking steam-boiler. Jets of water vapour, mixed with dust and a
witch's brew of organic chemicals, were bursting out from half a
dozen small craters; the largest - about the size of a football
field - erupted regularly about two hours after local dawn. It
looked exactly like a terrestrial geyser, and had been promptly
christened 'Old Faithful'.
Already, he had fantasies of standing on the rim of that crater,
waiting for the Sun to rise above the dark, contorted landscape
which he already knew well through the images from space. True, the
contract said nothing about passengers - as opposed to crew and
scientific personnel - going outside the ship when it landed on
Halley.
On the other hand, there was also nothing in the small print that
specifically forbade it.
They'll have a job to stop me, thought Heywood Floyd. I'm sure I
can still handle a spacesuit. And if I'm wrong...
He remembered reading that a visitor to the Taj Mahal had once
remarked: 'I'd die tomorrow for a monument like this.'
He would gladly settle for Halley's Comet.
Even apart from that embarrassing accident, the return to Earth had
not been easy.
The first shock had come soon after revival, when Dr Rudenko had
woken him from his long sleep. Walter Curnow was hovering beside
her, and even in his semi-conscious state he could tell that
something was wrong; their pleasure at seeing him awake was a
little too exaggerated, and failed to conceal a sense of strain.
Not until he was fully recovered did they let him know that Dr
Chandra was no longer with them.
Somewhere beyond Mars, so imperceptibly that the monitors could not
pinpoint the time, he had simply ceased to live. His body, set
adrift in space, had continued unchecked along Leonov's orbit, and
had long since been consumed by the fires of the Sun.
The cause of death was totally unknown, but Max Brailovsky
expressed a view that, highly unscientific though it was, not even
Surgeon-Commander Katerina Rudenko attempted to refute.
'He couldn't live without Hal.'
Walter Curnow, of all people, added another thought.
'I wonder how Hal will take it?' he asked. 'Something out there
must be monitoring all our broadcasts. Sooner or later, he'll
know.'
And now Curnow was gone too - so were they all except little Zenia.
He had not seen her for twenty years, but her card arrived
punctually every Christmas. The last one was still pinned above his
desk; it showed a troika laden with gifts speeding through the
snows of a Russian winter, watched by extremely hungry-looking
wolves.
Forty-five years! Sometimes it seemed only yesterday that Leonov
had returned to Earth orbit, and the applause of all mankind. Yet
it had been a curiously subdued applause, respectful but lacking
genuine enthusiasm. The mission to Jupiter had been altogether too
much of a success; it had opened a Pandora's box, the full contents
of which had yet to be disclosed.
When the black monolith known as Tycho Magnetic Anomaly One had
been excavated on the Moon, only a handful of men knew of its
existence. Not until after Discovery's ill-fated voyage to Jupiter
did the world learn that, four million years ago, another
intelligence had passed through the Solar System, and left its
calling card. The news was a revelation - but not a surprise;
something of the sort had been expected for decades.
And it had all happened long before the human race existed.
Although some mysterious accident had befallen Discovery out round
Jupiter, there was no real evidence that it involved anything more
than a shipboard malfunction. Although the philosophical
consequences of TMA 1 were profound, for all practical purposes
mankind was still alone in the Universe.
Now that was no longer true. Only light minutes away - a mere
stone's throw in the Cosmos - was an intelligence that could create
a star, and, for its own inscrutable purpose, destroy a planet a
thousand times the size of Earth. Even more ominous was the fact
that it had shown awareness of mankind, through the last message
that Discovery had beamed back from the moons of Jupiter just
before the fiery birth of Lucifer had destroyed it:
ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS - EXCEPT EUROPA.
ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE.
The brilliant new star, which had banished night except for the few
months in each year when it was passing behind the Sun, had brought
both hope and fear to mankind. Fear - because the Unknown,
especially when it appeared linked with omnipotence - could not
fail to rouse such primeval emotions. Hope - because of the
transformation it had wrought in global politics.
It had often been said that the only thing that could unite mankind
was a threat from space. Whether Lucifer was a threat, no-one knew;
but it was certainly a challenge. And that, as it turned out, was
enough.
Heywood Floyd had watched the geopolitical changes from his vantage
point on Pasteur, almost as if he was an alien observer himself. At
first, he had no intention of remaining in space, once his recovery
was complete. To the baffled annoyance of his doctors, that took an
altogether unreasonable length of time.
Looking back from the tranquillity of later years, Floyd knew
exactly why his bones refused to mend.
He simply did not wish to return to Earth: there was nothing for
him, down on the dazzling blue and white globe that filled his sky.
There were times when he could well understand how Chandra might
have lost the will to live.
It was pure chance that he had not been with his first wife on that
flight to Europe. Now Marion was part of another life, that might
have belonged to someone else, and their two daughters were amiable
strangers with families of their own.
But he had lost Caroline through his own actions, even though he
had no real choice in the matter. She had never understood (had he
really done so himself?) why he had left the beautiful home they
had made together, to exile himself for years in the cold wastes
far from the Sun.
Though he had known, even before the mission was half over, that
Caroline would not wait, he had hoped desperately that Chris would
forgive him. But even this consolation had been denied; his son had
been without a father for too long. By the time that Floyd
returned, he had found another, in the man who had taken his place
in Caroline's life. The estrangement was complete; he thought he
would never get over it, but of course he did - after a
fashion.
His body had cunningly conspired with his unconscious desires. When
at last he returned to Earth, after his protracted convalescence in
Pasteur, he promptly developed such alarming symptoms - including
something suspiciously like bone necrosis - that he was immediately
rushed back to orbit. And there he had stayed, apart from a few
excursions to the Moon, completely adapted to living in the zero to
one-sixth gravity regime of the slowly rotating space hospital.
He was not a recluse - far from it. Even while he was convalescing,
he was dictating reports, giving evidence to endless commissions,
being interviewed by media representatives. He was a famous man,
and enjoyed the experience - while it lasted. It helped to
compensate for his inner wounds.
The first complete decade - 2020 to 2030 - seemed to have passed so
swiftly that he now found it difficult to focus upon it. There were
the usual crises, scandals, crimes, catastrophes - notably the
Great Californian Earthquake, whose aftermath he had watched with
fascinated horror through the station's monitor screens. Under
their greatest magnification, in favourable conditions, they could
show individual human beings; but from his God's-eye-view it had
been impossible to identify with the scurrying dots fleeing from
the burning cities. Only the ground cameras revealed the true
horror.
During that decade, though the results would not be apparent until
later, the political tectonic plates were moving as inexorably as
the geological ones - yet in the opposite sense, as if time was
running backwards. For in the beginning, the Earth had possessed
the single supercontinent of Pangaea, which over the aeons had
split asunder. So had the human species, into innumerable tribes
and nations; now it was merging together, as the old linguistic and
cultural divisions began to blur.
Although Lucifer had accelerated the process, it had begun decades
earlier, when the coming of the jet age had triggered an explosion
of global tourism. At almost the same time - it was not, of course,
a coincidence - satellites and fibre optics had revolutionized
communications. With the historic abolition of long-distance
charges on 31 December 2000, every telephone call became a local
one, and the human race greeted the new millennium by transforming
itself into one huge, gossiping family.
Like most families, it was not always a peaceful one, but its
disputes no longer threatened the entire planet. The second - and
last - nuclear war saw the use in combat of no more bombs than the
first: precisely two. And though the kilotonnage was greater, the
casualties were far fewer, as both were used against sparsely
populated oil installations. At that point the Big Three of China,
the US and the USSR moved with commendable speed and wisdom,
sealing off the battle zone until the surviving combatants had come
to their senses.
By the decade of 2020-30, a major war between the Great Powers was
as unthinkable as one between Canada and the United States had been
in the century before. This was not due to any vast improvement in
human nature, or indeed to any single factor except the normal
preference of life over death. Much of the machinery of peace was
not even consciously planned: before the politicians realized what
had happened, they discovered that it was in place, and functioning
well...
No statesman, no idealist of any persuasion invented the 'Peace
Hostage' movement; the very name was not coined until well after
someone had noticed that at any given moment there were a hundred
thousand Russian tourists in the United States - and half a million
Americans in the Soviet Union, most of them engaged in their
traditional pastime of complaining about the plumbing. And perhaps
even more to the point, both groups contained a disproportionately
large number of highly non-expendable individuals - the sons and
daughters of wealth, privilege and political power.
And even if one wished, it was no longer possible to plan a
large-scale war. The Age of Transparency had dawned in the 1990s,
when enterprising news media had started to launch photographic
satellites with resolutions comparable to those that the military
had possessed for three decades. The Pentagon and the Kremlin were
furious; but they were no match for Reuters, Associated Press and
the unsleeping, twenty-four-hours-a-day cameras of the Orbital News
Service.
By 2060, even though the world had not been completely disarmed, it
had been effectively pacified, and the fifty remaining nuclear
weapons were all under international control. There was
surprisingly little opposition when that popular monarch, Edward
VIII, was elected the first Planetary President, only a dozen
states dissenting. They ranged in size and importance from the
still stubbornly neutral Swiss (whose restaurants and hotels
nevertheless greeted the new bureaucracy with open arms) to the
even more fanatically independent Malvinians, who now resisted all
attempts by the exasperated British and Argentines to foist them
off on each other.
The dismantling of the vast and wholly parasitic armaments industry
had given an unprecedented - sometimes, indeed, unhealthy - boost
to the world economy. No longer were vital raw materials and
brilliant engineering talents swallowed up in a virtual black hole
- or, even worse, turned to destruction. Instead, they could be
used to repair the ravages and neglect of centuries, by rebuilding
the world.
And building new ones. Now indeed mankind had found the 'moral
equivalent of war', and a challenge that could absorb the surplus
energies of the race - for as many millennia ahead as anyone dared
to dream.
When he was born, William Tsung had been called 'the most expensive
baby in the world'; he held the title for only two years before it
was claimed by his sister. She still held it, and now that the
Family Laws had been repealed, it would never be challenged.
Their father, the legendary Sir Lawrence, had been born when China
had re-instituted the stringent 'One Child, One Family' rule; his
generation had provided psychologists and social scientists with
material for endless studies. Having no brothers or sisters - and
in many cases, no uncles or aunts - it was unique in human history.
Whether credit was due to the resilience of the species or the
merit of the Chinese 'extended family' system would probably never
be settled. The fact remained that the children of that strange
time were remarkably free from scars; but they were certainly not
unaffected, and Sir Lawrence had done his somewhat spectacular best
to make up for the isolation of his infancy.
When his second child was born in '22, the licensing system had
become law. You could have as many children as you wished, provided
only that you paid the appropriate fee. (The surviving old guard
communists were not the only ones who thought the whole scheme
perfectly appalling, but they were outvoted by their pragmatic
colleagues in the fledgling congress of the People's Democratic
Republic.)
Numbers one and two were free. Number three cost a million sols.
Number four was two million. Number five was four million, and so
on. The fact that, in theory, there were no capitalists in the
People's Republic was cheerfully ignored.
Young Mr Tsung (that was years, of course, before King Edward gave
him his KBE) never revealed if he had any target in mind; he was
still a fairly poor millionaire when his fifth child was born. But
he was still only forty, and when the purchase of Hong Kong did not
take quite as much of his capital as he had feared, he discovered
that he had a considerable amount of small change in hand.
So ran the legend - but, like many other stories about Sir
Lawrence, it was hard to distinguish fact from mythology. There was
certainly no truth in the persistent rumour that he had made his
first fortune through the famous shoe-box-sized pirate edition of
the Library of Congress. The whole Molecular Memory Module racket
was an off-Earth operation, made possible by the United States'
failure to sign the Lunar Treaty.
Even though Sir Lawrence was not a multitrillionaire, the complex
of corporations he had built up made him the greatest financial
power on earth - no small achievement for the son of a humble
videocassette peddler in what was still known as the New
Territories. He probably never noticed the eight million for Child
Number Six, or even the thirty-two for Number Eight. The sixty-four
he had to advance on Number Nine attracted world publicity, and
after Number Ten the bets placed on his future plans may well have
exceeded the two hundred and fifty-six million the next child would
have cost him. However, at that point the Lady Jasmine, who
combined the best properties of steel and silk in exquisite
proportion, decided that the Tsung dynasty was adequately
established.
It was quite by chance (if there is such a thing) that Sir Lawrence
became personally involved in the space business. He had, of
course, extensive maritime and aeronautical interests, but these
were handled by his five sons and their associates. Sir Lawrence's
real love was communications - newspapers (those few that were
left), books, magazines (paper and electronic) and, above all, the
global television networks.
Then he had bought the magnificent old Peninsular Hotel, which to a
poor Chinese boy had once seemed the very symbol of wealth and
power, and turned it into his residence and main office. He
surrounded it by a beautiful park, by the simple expedient of
pushing the huge shopping centres underground (his newly formed
Laser Excavation Corporation made a fortune in the process, and set
a precedent for many other cities).
One day, as he was admiring the unparalleled skyline of the city
across the harbour, he decided that a further improvement was
necessary. The view from the lower floors of the Peninsular had
been blocked for decades by a large building looking like a
squashed golfball. This, Sir Lawrence decided, would have to
go.
The Director of the Hong Kong Planetarium - widely considered to be
among the five best in the world - had other ideas, and very soon
Sir Lawrence was delighted to discover someone he could not buy at
any price. The two men became firm friends; but when Dr Hessenstein
arranged a special presentation for Sir Lawrence's sixtieth
birthday, he did not know that he would help to change the history
of the Solar System.
More than a hundred years after Zeiss had built the first prototype
in Jena in 1924, there were still a few optical planetarium
projectors in use, looming dramatically over their audiences. But
Hong Kong had retired its third-generation instrument decades ago,
in favour of the far more versatile electronic system. The whole of
the great dome was, essentially, a giant television screen, made up
of thousands of separate panels, on which any conceivable image
could be displayed.
The programme had opened - inevitably - with a tribute to the
unknown inventor of the rocket, somewhere in China during the
thirteenth century. The first five minutes were a high-speed
historical survey, giving perhaps less than due credit to the
Russian, German and American pioneers in order to concentrate on
the career of Dr Hsue-Shen Tsien. His countrymen could be excused,
in such a time and place, if they made him appear as important in
the history of rocket development as Goddard, von Braun, or
Koroylev. And they certainly had just grounds for indignation at
his arrest on trumped-up charges in the United States when, after
helping to establish the famed Jet Propulsion Laboratory and being
appointed Caltech's first Goddard Professor, he decided to return
to his homeland.
The launching of the first Chinese satellite by the 'Long March 1'
rocket in 1970 was barely mentioned, perhaps because at that time
the Americans were already walking on the Moon. Indeed, the rest of
the twentieth century was dismissed in a few minutes, to take the
story up to 2007 and the construction of the spaceship Tsien.
The narrator did not gloat unduly over the consternation of the
other spacefaring powers, when a presumed Chinese space station
suddenly blasted out of orbit and headed for Jupiter, to overtake
the Russian-American mission aboard the Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov.
The story was dramatic - and tragic - enough to require no
embellishment.
Unfortunately, there was very little authentic visual material to
illustrate it: the programme had to rely largely on special effects
and intelligent reconstruction from later, long-range
photo-surveys. During their brief sojourn on the icy surface of
Europa, Tsien's crew had been far too busy to make television
documentaries, or even set up an unattended camera.
Nevertheless, the words spoken at the time conveyed much of the
drama of that first landing on the moons of Jupiter. The commentary
broadcast from the approaching Leonov by Heywood Floyd served
admirably to set the scene, and there were plenty of library shots
of Europa to illustrate it:
'At this very moment I'm looking at it through the most powerful of
the ship's telescopes; under this magnification, it's ten times
larger than the Moon as you see it with the naked eye. And it's a
really weird sight.
'The surface is a uniform pink, with a few small brown patches.
It's covered with an intricate network of narrow lines, curling and
weaving in all directions. In fact, it looks very much like a photo
from a medical textbook, showing a pattern of veins and
arteries.
'A few of these features are hundreds - or even thousands - of
kilometres long, and look rather like the illusory canals that
Percival Lowell and other early-twentieth-century astronomers
imagined they'd seen on Mars.
'But Europa's canals aren't an illusion, though of course they're
not artificial. What's more, they do contain water - or at least
ice. For the satellite is almost entirely covered by ocean,
averaging fifty kilometres deep.
'Because it's so far from the Sun, Europa's surface temperature is
extremely low - about a hundred and fifty degrees below freezing.
So one might expect its single ocean to be a solid block of
ice.
'Surprisingly, that isn't the case because there's a lot of heat
generated inside Europa by tidal forces - the same forces that
drive the great volcanoes on neighbouring Io.
'So the ice is continually melting, breaking up and freezing,
forming cracks and lanes like those in the floating ice sheets in
our own polar regions. It's that intricate tracery of cracks I'm
seeing now; most of them are dark and very ancient - perhaps
millions of years old. But a few are almost pure white; they're the
new ones that have just opened up, and have a crust only a few
centimetres thick.
'Tsien has landed right beside one of these white streaks - the
fifteen-hundred-kilometre-long feature that's been christened the
Grand Canal. Presumably the Chinese intend to pump its water into
their propellant tanks, so that they can explore the Jovian
satellite system and then return to Earth. That may not be easy,
but they'll certainly have studied the landing site with great
care, and must know what they're doing.
'It's obvious, now, why they've taken such a risk - and why they
claim Europa. As a refuelling point, it could be the key to the
entire Solar System...'
But it hadn't worked out that way, thought Sir Lawrence, as he
reclined in his luxurious chair beneath the streaked and mottled
disc that filled his artificial sky. The oceans of Europa were
still inaccessible to mankind, for reasons which were still a
mystery. And not only inaccessible, but invisible: since Jupiter
had become a sun, both its inner satellites had vanished beneath
clouds of vapour boiling out from their interiors. He was looking
at Europa as it had been back in 2010 - not as it was today.
He had been little more than a boy then, but could still remember
the pride he felt in knowing that his countrymen - however much he
disapproved of their politics - were about to make the first
landing on a virgin world.
There had been no camera there, of course, to record that landing,
but the reconstruction was superbly done. He could really believe
that was the doomed spaceship dropping silently out of the jetblack
sky towards the Europan icescape, and coming to rest beside the
discoloured band of recently frozen water that had been christened
the Grand Canal.
Everyone knew what had happened next; perhaps wisely, there had
been no attempt to reproduce it visually. Instead, the image of
Europa faded, to be replaced by a portrait as familiar to every
Chinese as Yuri Gagarin's was to every Russian.
The first photograph showed Rupert Chang on his graduation day in
1989 - the earnest young scholar, indistinguishable from a million
others, utter1y unaware of his appointment with history two decades
in the future.
Briefly, to a background of subdued music, the commentator summed
up the highlights of Dr Chang's career, until his appointment as
Science Officer aboard Tsien. Cross-sections in time, the
photographs grew older, until the last one, taken immediately
before the mission.
Sir Lawrence was glad of the planetarium's darkness; both his
friends and his enemies would have been surprised to see the
moisture gathering in his eyes as he listened to the message that
Dr Chang had aimed towards the approaching Leonov, never knowing if
it would be received.
'... know you are aboard Leonov... may not have much time... aiming
my suit antenna where I think...'
The signal vanished for agonizing seconds, then came back much
clearer, though not appreciably louder.
'... relay this information to Earth. Tsien destroyed three hours
ago. I'm only survivor. Using my suit radio - no idea if it has
enough range, but it's the only chance. Please listen carefully.
THERE IS LIFE ON EUROPA. I repeat: THERE IS LIFE ON EUROPA...
The signal faded again.
'... soon after local midnight. We were pumping steadily and the
tanks were almost half full. Dr Lee and I went out to check the
pipe insulation. Tsien stands - stood - about thirty metres from
the edge of the Grand Canal. Pipes go directly from it and down
through the ice. Very thin - not safe to walk on. The warm
upwelling...'
Again a long silence.
'... no problem - five kilowatts of lighting strung up on the ship.
Like a Christmas tree - beautiful, shining right through the ice.
Glorious colours. Lee saw it first - a huge dark mass rising up
from the depths. At first we thought it was a school of fish - too
large for a single organism - then it started to break through the
ice.
'... like huge strands of wet seaweed, crawling along the ground.
Lee ran back to the ship to get a camera - I stayed to watch,
reporting over the radio. The thing moved so slowly I could easily
outrun it. I was much more excited than alarmed. Thought I knew
what kind of creature it was - I've seen pictures of the kelp
forests off California - but I was quite wrong...
I could tell it was in trouble. It couldn't possibly survive at a
temperature a hundred and fifty below its normal environment. It
was freezing solid as it moved forward - bits were breaking off
like glass - but it was still advancing towards the ship - a black
tidal wave, slowing down all the time.
'I was still so surprised that I couldn't think straight and I
couldn't imagine what it was trying to do.
'... climbing up the ship, building a kind of ice tunnel as it
advanced. Perhaps this was insulating it from the cold - the way
termites protect themselves from Sunlight with their little
corridors of mud.
'... tons of ice on the ship. The radio antennas broke off first.
Then I could see the landing legs beginning to buckle - all in slow
motion, like a dream.
'Not until the ship started to topple did I realize what the thing
was trying to do - and then it was too late. We could have saved
ourselves - if we'd only switched off those lights.
'Perhaps it's a phototrope, its biological cycle triggered by the
Sunlight that filters through the ice. Or it could have been
attracted like a moth to a candle. Our floodlights must have been
more brilliant than anything that Europa has ever known.
'Then the ship crashed. I saw the hull split, a cloud of snowflakes
form as moisture condensed. All the lights went out, except for
one, swinging back and forth on a cable a couple of metres above
the ground.
'I don't know what happened immediately after that. The next thing
I remember, I was standing under the light, beside the wreck of the
ship, with a fine powdering of fresh snow all around me. I could
see my footsteps in it very clearly... I must have run there;
perhaps only a minute or two had elapsed...
'The plant - I still thought of it as a plant - was motionless. I
wondered if it had been damaged by the impact; large sections - as
thick as a man's arm -had splintered off, like broken twigs.
'Then the main trunk started to move again. It pulled away from the
hull, and began to crawl towards me. That was when I knew for
certain that the thing was light-sensitive: I was standing
immediately under the thousand-watt lamp, which had stopped
swinging now.
'Imagine an oak tree - better still, a banyan with its multiple
trunks and roots - flattened out by gravity and trying to creep
along the ground. It got to within five metres of the light, then
started to spread out until it had made a perfect circle around me.
Presumably that was the limit of its tolerance -the point at which
photo-attraction turned to repulsion. After that, nothing happened
for several minutes. I wondered if it was dead - frozen solid at
last.
'Then I saw that large buds were forming on many of the branches.
It was like watching a time-lapse film of flowers opening. In fact
I thought they were flowers - each about as big as a man's
head.
'Delicate, beautifully coloured membranes started to unfold. Even
then, it occurred to me that no-one - no thing - could ever have
seen these colours before; they had no existence until we brought
our lights - our fatal lights - to this world.
'Tendrils, stamens, waving feebly... I walked over to the living
wall that surrounded me, so that I would see exactly what was
happening. Neither then, or at any other time, had I felt the
slightest fear of the creature. I was certain that it was not
malevolent - if indeed it was conscious at all.
'There were scores of the big flowers, in various stages of
unfolding. Now, they reminded me of butterflies, just emerging from
the chrysalis... wings crumpled, still feeble... I was getting
closer and closer to the truth.
'But they were freezing - dying as quickly as they formed. Then,
one after another, they dropped off from the parent buds. For a few
moments they flopped around like fish stranded on dry land - and at
last I realized exactly what they were. Those membranes weren't
petals - they were fins, or their equivalent. This was the
free-swimming, larval stage of the creature. Probably it spends
much of its life rooted on the seabed, then sends these mobile
offspring in search of new territory. Just like the corals of
Earth's oceans.
'I knelt down to get a closer look at one of the little creatures.
The beautiful colours were fading now, to a drab brown. Some of the
petal-fins had snapped off, becoming brittle shards as they froze.
But it was still moving feebly, and as I approached it tried to
avoid me. I wondered how it sensed my presence.
'Then I noticed that the stamens - as I'd called them - all carried
bright blue dots at their tips. They looked like tiny star
sapphires - or the blue eyes along the mantle of a scallop - aware
of light, but unable to form true images. As I watched, the vivid
blue faded, the sapphires became dull, ordinary stones...
'Dr Floyd - or anyone else who is listening - I haven't much more
time - Jupiter will soon block my signal. But I've almost
finished.
'I knew then what I had to do. The cable to that thousand-watt lamp
was hanging almost to the ground. I gave it a few tugs, and the
light went out in a shower of sparks.
'I wondered if it was too late. For a few minutes, nothing
happened. So I walked over to the wall of tangled branches around
me, and kicked it.
'Slowly, the creature started to unweave itself, and to retreat
back to the Canal. There was plenty of light - I could see
everything perfectly. Ganymede and Callisto were in the sky -
Jupiter was a huge, thin crescent - and there was a big auroral
display on the nightside, at the Jovian end of the Io flux tube.
There was no need to use my helmet light.
'I followed the creature all the way back to the water, encouraging
it with more kicks when it slowed down, feeling the fragments of
ice crunching all the time beneath my boots... As it neared the
Canal, it seemed to gain strength and energy, as if it knew that it
was approaching its natural home. I wondered if it would survive,
to bud again.
'It disappeared through the surface, leaving a few last dead larvae
on the alien land. The exposed free water bubbled for a few minutes
until a scab of protective ice sealed it from the vacuum above.
Then I walked back to the ship to see if there was anything to
salvage - I don't want to talk about that...
'I've only two requests to make, Doctor. When the taxonomists
classify this creature, I hope they'll name it after me.
'And - when the next ship comes home - ask them to take our bones
back to China..
'Jupiter will be cutting us off in a few minutes. I wish I knew
whether anyone was receiving me. Anyway, I'll repeat this message
when we're in line of sight again - if my suit's life-support
system lasts that long.
'This is Professor Chang on Europa, reporting the destruction of
spaceship Tsien. We landed beside the Grand Canal and set up our
pumps at the edge of the ice...'
The signal faded abruptly, came back for a moment, then disappeared
completely below the noise level. There would never be any further
message from Professor Chang; but it had already deflected Lawrence
Tsung's ambitions into space.
Rolf van der Berg was the right man, in the right place, at the
right time; no other combination would have worked. Which, of
course, is how much of history is made.
He was the right man because he was a second-generation Afrikaner
refugee, and a trained geologist; both factors were equally
important. He was in the right place, because that had to be the
largest of the Jovian moons - third outwards in the sequence Io,
Europa, Ganymede, Callisto.
The time was not so critical, for the information had been ticking
away like a delayed-action bomb in the data banks for at least a
decade. Van der Berg did not encounter it until '57; even then it
took him another year to convince himself that he was not crazy -
and it was '59 before he had quietly sequestered the original
records so that no-one could duplicate his discovery. Only then
could he safely give his full attention to the main problem: what
to do next.
It had all begun, as is so often the case, with an apparently
trivial observation in a field which did not even concern van der
Berg directly. His job, as a member of the Planetary Engineering
Task Force, was to survey and catalogue the natural resources of
Ganymede; he had little business fooling around with the forbidden
satellite next door.
But Europa was an enigma which no-one - least of all its immediate
neighbours - could ignore for long. Every seven days it passed
between Ganymede and the brilliant minisun that had once been
Jupiter, producing eclipses which could last as long as twelve
minutes. At its closest, it appeared slightly smaller than the Moon
as seen from Earth, but it dwindled to a mere quarter of that size
when it was on the other side of its orbit.
The eclipses were often spectacular. Just before it slid between
Ganymede and Lucifer, Europa would become an ominous black disc,
outlined with a ring of crimson fire, as the light of the new sun
was refracted through the atmosphere it had helped to create.
In less than half a human lifetime, Europa had been transformed.
The crust of ice on the hemisphere always facing Lucifer had
melted, to form the Solar System's second ocean. For a decade it
had foamed and bubbled into the vacuum above it, until equilibrium
had been reached. Now Europa possessed a thin but serviceable -
though not to human beings - atmosphere of water vapour, hydrogen
sulphide, carbon and sulphur dioxides, nitrogen, and miscellaneous
rare gases. Though the somewhat misnamed 'nightside' of the
satellite was still permanently frozen, an area as large as Africa
now had a temperate climate, liquid water, and a few scattered
islands.
All this, and not much more, had been observed through telescopes
in Earth orbit. By the time that the first full-scale expedition
had been launched to the Galilean moons, in 2028, Europa had
already become veiled by a permanent mantle of clouds. Cautious
radar probing revealed little but smooth ocean on one face, and
almost equally smooth ice on the other; Europa still maintained its
reputation as the flattest piece of real estate in the Solar
System. Ten years later, that was no longer true: something drastic
had happened to Europa. It now possessed a solitary mountain,
almost as high as Everest, jutting up through the ice of the
twilight zone. Presumably some volcanic activity - like that
occurring ceaselessly on neighbouring Io - had thrust this mass of
material skywards. The vastly increased heat-flow from Lucifer
could have triggered such an event.
But there were problems with this obvious explanation. Mount Zeus
was an irregular pyramid, not the usual volcanic cone, and radar
scans showed none of the characteristic lava flows. Some
poor-quality photographs obtained through telescopes on Ganymede,
during a momentary break in the clouds, suggested that it was made
of ice, like the frozen landscape around it. Whatever the answer,
the creation of Mount Zeus had been a traumatic experience for the
world it dominated, for the entire crazy-paving pattern of
fractured ice floes over the nightside had changed completely.
One maverick scientist had put forward the theory that Mount Zeus
was a 'cosmic iceberg' - a cometary fragment that had dropped upon
Europa from space; battered Callisto gave ample proof that such
bombardments had occurred in the remote past. The theory was very
unpopular on Ganymede, whose would-be colonists already had
sufficient problems.
They had been much relieved when van der Berg had refuted the
theory convincingly; any mass of ice this size would have shattered
on impact - and even if it hadn't, Europa's gravity, modest though
it was, would have quickly brought about its collapse. Radar
measurements showed that though Mount Zeus was indeed steadily
sinking, its overall shape remained completely unaltered. Ice was
not the answer.
The problem could, of course, have been settled by sending a single
probe through the clouds of Europa. Unfortunately, whatever was
beneath that almost permanent overcast did not encourage
curiosity.
ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS - EXCEPT EUROPA.
ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE.
That last message relayed from the spaceship Discovery just before
its destruction had not been forgotten, but there had been endless
arguments about its interpretation. Did 'landings' refer to robot
probes, or only to manned vehicles? And what about close flybys -
manned or unmanned? Or balloons floating in the upper
atmosphere?
The scientists were anxious to find out, but the general public was
distinctly nervous. Any power that could detonate the mightiest
planet in the Solar System was not to be trifled with. And it would
take centuries to explore and exploit Io, Ganymede, Callisto and
the dozens of minor satellites; Europa could wait.
More than once, therefore, van der Berg had been told not to waste
his valuable time on research of no practical importance, when
there was so much to be done on Ganymede. ('Where can we find
carbon - phosphorus - nitrates for the hydroponic farms? How stable
is the Barnard Escarpment? Is there any danger of more mudslides in
Phrygia?' And so on and so forth...) But he had inherited his Boer
ancestors' well-deserved reputation for stubbornness: even when he
was working on his numerous other projects, he kept looking over
his shoulder at Europa.
And one day, just a few hours, a gale from the nightside cleared
the skies about Mount Zeus.
'I too take leave of all 1 ever had...'
From what depths of memory had that line come swimming up to the
surface? Heywood Floyd closed his eyes, and tried to focus on the
past. It was certainly from a poem - and he had hardly read a line
of poetry since leaving college. And little enough then, except
during a short English Appreciation Seminar.
With no further clues, it might take the station computer quite a
while - perhaps as much as ten minutes - to locate the line in the
whole body of English literature. But that would be cheating (not
to mention expensive) and Floyd preferred to accept the
intellectual challenge.
A war poem, of course - but which war? There had been so many in
the twentieth century.
He was still searching through the mental mists when his guests
arrived, moving with the effortless, slow-motion grace of longtime
one-sixth gravity residents. The society of Pasteur was strongly
influenced by what had been christened 'centrifugal
stratification'; some people never left the zero gee of the hub,
while those who hoped one day to return to Earth preferred the
almost normal-weight regime out on the rim of the huge, slowly
revolving disc.
George and Jerry were now Floyd's oldest and closest friends -
which was surprising, because they had so few obvious points in
common. Looking back on his own somewhat chequered emotional career
- two marriages, three formal contracts, two informal ones, three
children - he often envied the long-term stability of their
relationship, apparently quite unaffected by the 'nephews' from
Earth or Moon who visited them from time to time.
'Haven't you ever thought of divorce?' he had once asked them
teasingly.
As usual, George - whose acrobatic yet profoundly serious
conducting had been largely responsible for the comeback of the
classical orchestra - was at no loss for words.
'Divorce - never,' was his swift reply. 'Murder - often.'
'Of course, he'd never get away with it,' Jerry had retorted.
'Sebastian would spill the beans.'
Sebastian was a beautiful and talkative parrot which the couple had
imported after a long battle with the hospital authorities. He
could not only talk, but could reproduce the opening bars of the
Sibelius Violin Concerto, with which Jerry - considerably helped by
Antonio Stradivari - had made his reputation half a century
ago.
Now the time had come to say goodbye to George, Jerry and Sebastian
- perhaps only for a few weeks, perhaps for ever. Floyd had already
made all his other farewells, in a round of parties that had
gravely depleted the station's wine cellar, and could think of
nothing he had left undone.
Archie, his early-model but still perfectly serviceable comsec, had
been programmed to handle all incoming messages, either by sending
out appropriate replies or by routing anything urgent and personal
to him aboard Universe. It would be strange, after all these years,
not to be able to talk to anyone he wished - though in compensation
he could also avoid unwanted callers. After a few days into the
voyage, the ship would be far enough from Earth to make real-time
conversation impossible, and all communication would have to be by
recorded voice or teletext.
'We thought you were our friend,' complained George. 'It was a
dirty trick to make us your executors - especially as you're not
going to leave us anything.'
'You may have a few surprises,' grinned Floyd. 'Anyway, Archie will
take care of all the details. I'd just like you to monitor my mail,
in case there's anything he doesn't understand.'
'If he won't, nor will we. What do we know about all your
scientific societies and that sort of nonsense?'
'They can look after themselves. Please see that the cleaning staff
doesn't mess things up too badly while I'm away - and, if I don't
come back - here are a few personal items I'd like delivered -
mostly family.'
Family! There were pains, as well as pleasures, in living as long
as he had done.
It had been sixty-three - sixty-three! - years since Marion had
died in that air crash. Now he felt a twinge of guilt, because he
could not even recall the grief he must have known. Or at best, it
was a synthetic reconstruction, not a genuine memory.
What would they have meant to each other, had she still been alive?
She would have been just a hundred years old by now.
And now the two little girls he had once loved so much were
friendly, grey-haired strangers in their late sixties, with
children - and grandchildren! - of their own. At last count there
had been nine on that side of the family; without Archie's help, he
would never be able to keep track of their names. But at least they
all remembered him at Christmas, through duty if not affection.
His second marriage, of course, had overlain the memories of his
first, like the later writing on a medieval palimpsest. That too
had ended, fifty years ago, somewhere between Earth and Jupiter.
Though he had hoped for a reconciliation with both wife and son,
there had been time for only one brief meeting, among all the
welcoming ceremonies, before his accident exiled him to
Pasteur.
The meeting had not been a success; nor had the second, arranged at
considerable expense and difficulty aboard the space hospital
itself - indeed, in this very room. Chris had been twenty then, and
had just married; if there was one thing that united Floyd and
Caroline, it was disapproval of his choice.
Yet Helena had turned out remarkably well: she had been a good
mother to Chris II, born barely a month after the marriage. And
when, like so many other young wives, she was widowed by the
Copernicus Disaster, she did not lose her head.
There was a curious irony in the fact that both Chris I and II had
lost their fathers to space, though in very different ways. Floyd
had returned briefly to his eight-year-old son as a total stranger;
Chris II had at least known a father for the first decade of his
life, before losing him for ever.
And where was Chris these days? Neither Caroline nor Helena - who
were now the best of friends - seemed to know whether he was on
Earth or in space. But that was typical; only postcards
date-stamped CLAVIUS BASE had informed his family of his first
visit to the Moon.
Floyd's card was still taped prominently above his desk. Chris II
had a good sense of humour - and of history. He had mailed his
grandfather that famous photograph of the Monolith, looming over
the spacesuited figures gathered round it in the Tycho excavation,
more than half a century ago. All the others in the group were now
dead, and the Monolith itself was no longer on the Moon. In 2006,
after much controversy, it had been brought to Earth and erected -
an uncanny echo of the main building - in the United Nations Plaza.
It had been intended to remind the human race that it was no longer
alone; five years later, with Lucifer blazing in the sky, no such
reminder was needed.
Floyd's fingers were not very steady - sometimes his right hand
seemed to have a will of its own - as he unpeeled the card and
slipped it into his pocket. It would be almost the only personal
possession he would take when he boarded Universe.
'Twenty-five days - you'll be back before we've noticed you're
gone,' said Jerry. 'And by the way, is it true that you'll have
Dimitri onboard?'
'That little Cossack!' snorted George. 'I conducted his Second
Symphony, back in '22.'
'Wasn't that when the First Violin threw up, during the largo?'
'No - that was Mahler, not Mihailovich. And anyway it was the
brass, so nobody noticed - except the unlucky tuba player, who sold
his instrument the next day.'
'You're making this up!'
'Of course. But give the old rascal my love, and ask him if he
remembers that night we had out in Vienna. Who else have you got
aboard?'
'I've heard horrible rumours about press gangs,' said Jerry
thoughtful1y.
'Greatly exaggerated, I can assure you. We've all been personally
chosen by Sir Lawrence for our intelligence, wit, beauty, charisma,
or other redeeming virtue.'
'Not expendability?'
'Well, now that you mention it, we've all had to sign a depressing
legal document, absolving Tsung Spacelines from every conceivable
liability. My copy's in that file, by the way.'
'Any chance of us collecting on it?' asked George hopefully.
'No - my lawyers say it's iron-clad. Tsung agrees to take me to
Halley and back, give me food, water, air, and a room with a
view.'
'And in return?'
'When I get back I'll do my best to promote future voyages, make
some video appearances, write a few articles - all very reasonable,
for the chance of a lifetime. Oh yes - I'll also entertain my
fellow passengers - and vice versa.'
'How? Song and dance?'
'Well, I hope to inflict selected portions of my memoirs on a
captive audience. But I don't think I'll be able to compete with
the professionals. Did you know that Yva Merlin will be on
board?'
'What! How did they coax her out of that Park Avenue cell?'
'She must be a hundred and - oops, sorry, Hey.' 'She's seventy,
plus or minus five.'
'Forget the minus. I was just a kid when Napoleon came out.'
There was a long pause while each of the trio scanned his memories
of that famous work. Although some critics considered her Scarlett
O'Hara to be her finest role, to the general public Yva Merlin
(née Evelyn Miles, when she was born in Cardiff, South
Wales) was still identified with Josephine. Almost half a century
ago, David Griffin's controversial epic had delighted the French
and infuriated the British - though both sides now agreed that he
had occasionally allowed his artistic impulses to trifle with the
historical record, notably in the spectacular final sequence of the
Emperor's coronation in Westminster Abbey.
'That's quite a scoop for Sir Lawrence,' said George
thoughtfully.
'I think I can claim some credit for that. Her father was an
astronomer - he worked for me at one time - and she's always been
quite interested in science. So I made a few video calls.'
Heywood Floyd did not feel it necessary to add that, like a
substantial fraction of the human race, he had fallen in love with
Yva ever since the appearance of GWTW Mark II.
'Of course,' he continued, 'Sir Lawrence was delighted - but I had
to convince him that she had more than a casual interest in
astronomy. Otherwise the voyage could be a social disaster.'
'Which reminds me,' said George, producing a small package he had
been not very successfully hiding behind his back. 'We have a
little present for you.'
'Can I open it now?'
'Do you think he should?' Jerry wondered anxiously.
'In that case, I certainly will,' said Floyd, untying the bright
green ribbon and unwrapping the paper.
Inside was a nicely framed painting. Although Floyd knew little of
art, he had seen it before; indeed, who could ever forget it?
The makeshift raft tossing on the waves was crowded with half-naked
castaways, some already moribund, others waving desperately at a
ship on the horizon. Beneath it was the caption:
THE RAFT OF THE MEDUSA
(Theodore Géricault, 1791-1824)
And underneath that was the message, signed by George and Jerry:
'Getting there is half the fun.'
'You're a pair of bastards, and I love you dearly,' said Floyd,
embracing them both. The ATTENTION light on Archie's keyboard was
flashing briskly; it was time to go.
His friends left in a silence more eloquent than words. For the
last time, Heywood Floyd looked around the little room that had
been his universe for almost half his life.
And suddenly he remembered how that poem ended:
'I have been happy: happy now I go.'
Sir Lawrence Tsung was not a sentimental man, and was far too
cosmopolitan to take patriotism seriously - though as an
undergraduate he had briefly sported one of the artificial pigtails
worn during the Third Cultural Revolution. Yet the planetarium
re-enactment of the Tsien disaster moved him deeply, and caused him
to focus much of his enormous influence and energy upon space.
Before long, he was taking weekend trips to the Moon, and had
appointed his son Charles (the thirty-two-million-so! one) as
Vice-President of Tsung Astrofreight. The new corporation had only
two catapult-launched, hydrogen-fuelled ramrockets of less than a
thousand tons empty mass; they would soon be obsolete, but they
could provide Charles with the experience that, Sir Lawrence was
quite certain, would be needed in the decades ahead. For at long
last, the Space Age was truly about to begin.
Little more than half a century had separated the Wright Brothers
and the coming of cheap, mass air transportation; it had taken
twice as long to meet the far greater challenge of the Solar
System.
Yet when Luis Alvarez and his team had discovered muon-catalysed
fusion back in the 1950s, it had seemed no more than a tantalizing
laboratory curiosity, of only theoretical interest. Just as the
great Lord Rutherford had pooh-poohed the prospects of atomic
power, so Alvarez himself doubted that 'cold nuclear fusion' would
ever be of practical importance. Indeed, it was not until 2040 that
the unexpected and accidental manufacture of stable
muonium-hydrogen 'compounds' had opened up a new chapter of human
history - exactly as the discovery of the neutron had initiated the
Atomic Age.
Now small, portable nuclear power plants could be built, with a
minimum of shielding. Such enormous investments had already been
made in conventional fusion that the world's electrical utilities
were not - at first - affected, but the impact on space travel was
immediate; it could be paralleled only by the jet revolution in air
transport of a hundred years earlier.
No longer energy-limited, spacecraft could achieve far greater
speeds; flight times in the Solar System could now be measured in
weeks rather than months or even years. But the muon drive was
still a reaction device - a sophisticated rocket, no different in
principle from its chemically fuelled ancestors; it needed a
working fluid to give it thrust. And the cheapest, cleanest, and
most convenient of all working fluids was - plain water.
The Pacific Spaceport was not likely to run short of this useful
substance. Matters were different at the next port of call - the
Moon. Not a trace of water had been discovered by the Surveyor,
Apollo, and Luna missions. If the Moon had ever possessed any
native water, aeons of meteoric bombardment had boiled and blasted
it into space.
Or so the selenologists believed; yet clues to the contrary had
been visible, ever since Galileo had turned his first telescope
upon the Moon. Some lunar mountains, for a few hours after dawn,
glitter as brilliantly as if they are capped with snow. The most
famous case is the rim of the magnificent crater Aristarchus, which
William Herschel, the father of modem astronomy, once observed
shining so brightly in the lunar night that he decided it must be
an active volcano. He was wrong; what he saw was the Earthlight
reflected from a thin and transient layer of frost, condensed
during the three hundred hours of freezing darkness.
The discovery of the great ice deposits beneath Schroter's Valley,
the sinuous canyon winding away from Anstarchus, was the last
factor in the equation that would transform the economics of
space-flight. The Moon could provide a filling station just where
it was needed, high up on the outermost slopes of the Earth's
gravitational field, at the beginning of the long haul to the
planets.
Cosmos, first of the Tsung fleet, had been designed to carry
freight and passengers on the Earth-Moon-Mars run, and as a
test-vehicle, through complex deals with a dozen organizations and
governments, of the still experimental muon drive. Built at the
Imbriurn shipyards, she had just sufficient thrust to lift off from
the Moon with zero payload; operating from orbit to orbit, she
would never again touch the surface of any world. With his usual
flair for publicity, Sir Lawrence arranged for her maiden flight to
commence on the hundredth anniversary of Sputnik Day, 4 October
2057.
Two years later, Cosmos was joined by a sister ship. Galaxy was
designed for the Earth-Jupiter run, and had enough thrust to
operate directly to any of the Jovian moons, though at considerable
sacrifice of payload. If necessary, she could even return to her
lunar berth for refitting. She was by far the swiftest vehicle ever
built by man: if she burned up her entire propellant mass in one
orgasm of acceleration, she would attain a speed of a thousand
kilometres a second - which would take her from Earth to Jupiter in
a week, and to the nearest star in not much more than ten thousand
years.
The third ship of the fleet - and Sir Lawrence's pride and joy -
embodied all that had been learned in the building of her two
sisters. But Universe was not intended primarily for freight. She
was designed from the beginning as the first passenger liner to
cruise the space lanes - right out to Saturn, the jewel of the
Solar System.
Sir Lawrence had planned something even more spectacular for her
maiden voyage, but construction delays caused by a dispute with the
Lunar Chapter of the Reformed Teamsters' Union had upset his
schedule. There would just be time for the initial flight tests and
Lloyd's certification in the closing months of 2060, before
Universe left Earth orbit for her rendezvous. It would be a very
close thing: Halley's Comet would not wait, even for Sir Lawrence
Tsung.
The survey satellite Europa VI had been in orbit for almost fifteen
years, and had far exceeded its design life; whether it should be
replaced was a subject of considerable debate in the small Ganymede
scientific establishment.
It carried the usual collection of data-gathering instruments, as
well as a now virtually useless imaging system. Though still in
perfect working order, all that this normally showed of Europa was
an unbroken cloudscape. The overworked science team on Ganymede
scanned the recordings in 'Quick Look' mode once a week, then
squirted the raw data back to Earth. On the whole, they would be
rather relieved when Europa VI expired and its torrent of
uninteresting gigabytes finally dried up.
Now, for the first time in years, it had produced something
exciting.
'Orbit 71934,' said the Deputy Chief Astronomer, who had called van
der Berg as soon as the latest data-dump had been evaluated.
'Coming in from the nightside - heading straight for Mount Zeus.
You won't see anything for another ten seconds, though.'
The screen was completely black, yet van der Berg could imagine the
frozen landscape rolling past beneath its blanket of clouds a
thousand kilometres below. In a few hours the distant Sun would be
shining there, for Europa revolved on its axis once in every seven
Earth-days. 'Nightside' should really be called 'Twilight-side',
for half the time it had ample light - but no heat. Yet the
inaccurate name had stuck, because it had emotional validity:
Europa knew Sunrise, but never Lucifer-rise.
And the Sunrise was coming now, speeded up a thousandfold by the
racing probe. A faintly luminous band bisected the screen, as the
horizon emerged from darkness.
The explosion of light was so sudden that van der Berg could almost
imagine he was looking into the glare of an atomic bomb. In a
fraction of a second, it ran through all the colours of the
rainbow, then became pure white as the Sun leapt above the mountain
- then vanished as the automatic filters cut into the circuit.
'That's all; pity there was no operator on duty at the time - he
could have panned the camera down and had a good view of the
mountain as we went over. But I knew you'd like to see it - even
though it disproves your theory.'
'How?' said van der Berg, more puzzled than annoyed.
'When you go through it in slow motion, you'll see what I mean.
Those beautiful rainbow effects - they're not atmospheric - they're
caused by the mountain itself. Only ice could do that. Or glass -
which doesn't seem very likely.'
'Not impossible - volcanoes can produce natural glass - but it's
usually black... of course!'
'Yes?'
'Er - I won't commit myself until I've been through the data. But
my guess would be rock crystal - transparent quartz. You can make
beautiful prisms and lenses out of it. Any chance of some more
observations?'
'I'm afraid not - that was pure luck - Sun, mountain, camera all
lined up at the right time. It won't happen again in a thousand
years.'
'Thanks, anyway - can you send me over a copy? No hurry - I'm just
leaving on a field trip to Perrine, and won't be able to look at it
until I get back.'
Van der Berg gave a short, rather apologetic laugh.
'You know, if that really is rock crystal, it would be worth a
fortune. Might even help solve our balance of payments
problem...'
But that, of course, was utter fantasy. Whatever wonders - or
treasures - Europa might conceal, the human race had been forbidden
access to them, by that last message from Discovery. Fifty years
later, there was no sign that the interdiction would ever be
lifted.
For the first forty-eight hours of the voyage, Heywood Floyd could
not really believe the comfort, the spaciousness - the sheer
extravagance of Universe's living arrangements. Yet most of his
fellow passengers took them for granted; those who had never left
Earth before assumed that all spaceships must be like this.
He had to look back at the history of aeronautics to put matters in
the right perspective. In his own lifetime, he had witnessed -
indeed, experienced - the revolution that had occurred in the skies
of the planet now dwindling behind him. Between the clumsy old
Leonov and the sophisticated Universe lay exactly fifty years.
(Emotionally, he couldn't really believe that - but it was useless
arguing about arithmetic.)
And just fifty years had separated the Wright Brothers from the
first jet airliners. At the beginning of that half-century,
intrepid aviators had hopped from field to field, begoggled and
windswept on open chairs; at its end, grandmothers had slumbered
peacefully between continents at a thousand kilometres an hour.
So he should not, perhaps, have been astonished at the luxury and
elegant decor of his stateroom, or even the fact that he had a
steward to keep it tidy. The generously sized window was the most
startling feature of his suite, and at first he felt quite
uncomfortable thinking of the tons of air pressure it was holding
in check against the implacable, and never for a moment relaxing,
vacuum of space.
The biggest surprise, even though the advance literature should
have prepared him for it, was the presence of gravity. Universe was
the first spaceship ever built to cruise under continuous
acceleration, except for the few hours of the mid-course
'turnaround'. When her huge propellant tanks were fully loaded with
their five thousand tons of water, she could manage a tenth of a
gee - not much, but enough to keep loose objects from drifting
around. This was particularly convenient at mealtimes - though it
took a few days for the passengers to learn not to stir their soup
too vigorously.
Forty-eight hours out from Earth, the population of Universe had
already stratified itself into four distinct classes.
The aristocracy consisted of Captain Smith and his officers. Next
came the passengers; then crew - non-commissioned and stewards. And
then steerage...
That was the description that the five young space scientists had
adopted for themselves, first as a joke but later with a certain
amount of bitterness. When Hoyd compared their cramped and
jury-rigged quarters with his own luxurious cabin, he could see
their point of view, and soon became the conduit of their
complaints to the Captain.
Yet all things considered, they had little to grumble about; in the
rush to get the ship ready, it had been touch and go as to whether
there would be any accommodation for them and their equipment. Now
they could look forward to deploying instruments around - and on -
the comet during the critical days before it rounded the Sun, and
departed once more to the outer reaches of the Solar System. The
members of the science team would establish their reputations on
this voyage, and knew it. Only in moments of exhaustion, or fury
with misbehaving instrumentation, did they start complaining about
the noisy ventilating system, the claustrophobic cabins, and
occasional strange smells of unknown origin.
But never the food, which everyone agreed was excellent. 'Much
better,' Captain Smith assured them, 'than Darwin had on the
Beagle.'
To which Victor Willis had promptly retorted:
'How does he know? And by the way, Beagle's commander cut his
throat when he got back to England.'
That was rather typical of Victor, perhaps the planet's best-known
science communicator - to his fans - or 'pop-scientist' - to his
equally numerous detractors. It would be unfair to call them
enemies; admiration for his talents was universal, if occasionally
grudging. His soft, mid-Pacific accent and expansive gestures on
camera were widely parodied, and he had been credited (or blamed)
for the revival of full-length beards. 'A man who grows that much
hair,' critics were fond of saying, 'must have a lot to hide.'
He was certainly the most instantly recognizable of the six VIPs -
though Floyd, who no longer regarded himself as a celebrity, always
referred to them ironically as 'The Famous Five'. Yva Merlin could
often walk unrecognized on Park Avenue, on the rare occasions when
she emerged from her apartment. Dimitri Mihailovich, to his
considerable annoyance, was a good ten centimetres below average
height; this might help to explain his fondness for thousand-piece
orchestras - real or synthesized -but did not enhance his public
image.
Clifford Greenburg and Margaret M'Bala also fell into the category
of 'famous unknowns' - though this would certainly change when they
got back to Earth. The first man to land on Mercury had one of
those pleasant, unremarkable faces that are very hard to remember;
moreover the days when he had dominated the news were now thirty
years in the past. And like most authors who are not addicted to
talk shows and autographing sessions, Ms M'Bala would be
unrecognized by the vast majority of her millions of readers.
Her literary fame had been one of the sensations of the forties. A
scholarly study of the Greek pantheon was not usually a candidate
for the best-seller lists, but Ms M'Bala had placed its eternally
inexhaustible myths in a contemporary space-age setting. Names
which a century earlier had been familiar only to astronomers and
classical scholars were now part of every educated person's world
picture; almost every day there would be news from Ganymede,
Callisto, Io, Titan, Japetus - or even more obscure worlds like
Carme, Pasiphaë, Hyperion, Phoebe...
Her book would have been no more than modestly successful, however,
had she not focused on the complicated family life of Jupiter-Zeus,
Father of all the Gods (as well as much else). And by a stroke of
luck, an editor of genius had changed her original title, The View
from Olympus, to The Passions of the Gods. Envious academics
usually referred to it as Olympic Lusts, but invariably wished they
had written it.
Not surprisingly, it was Maggie M - as she was quickly christened
by her fellow passengers - who first used the phrase Ship of Fools.
Victor Willis adopted it eagerly, and soon discovered an intriguing
historical resonance. Almost a century ago, Katherine Anne Porter
had herself sailed with a group of scientists and writers aboard an
ocean liner to watch the launch of Apollo 17, and the end of the
first phase of lunar exploration.
'I'll think about it,' Ms M'Bala had remarked ominously, when this
was reported to her. 'Perhaps it's time for a third version. But I
won't know, of course, until we get back to Earth...'
It was many months before Rolf van der Berg could once again turn
his thoughts and energies towards Mount Zeus. The taming of
Ganymede was a more than full-time job, and he was away from his
main office at Dardanus Base for weeks at a time, surveying the
route of the proposed Gilgamesh-Osiris monorail.
The geography of the third and largest Galilean moon had changed
drastically since the detonation of Jupiter - and it was still
changing. The new sun that had melted the ice of Europa was not as
powerful here, four hundred thousand kilometres further out - but
it was warm enough to produce a temperate climate at the centre of
the face forever turned towards it. There were small, shallow seas
- some as large as Earth's Mediterranean - up to latitudes forty
north and south. Not many features still survived from the maps
generated by the Voyager missions back in the twentieth century.
Melting permafrost and occasional tectonic movements triggered by
the same tidal forces operating on the two inner moons made the new
Ganymede a cartographer's nightmare.
But those very factors also made it a planetary engineer's
paradise. Here was the only world, except for the arid and much
less hospitable Mars, on which men might one day walk unprotected
beneath an open sky. Ganymede had ample water, all the chemicals of
life, and - at least while Lucifer shone - a warmer climate than
much of Earth.
Best of all, full-body spacesuits were no longer necessary; the
atmosphere, though still unbreathable, was just dense enough to
permit the use of simple face-masks and oxygen cylinders. In a few
decades - so the microbiologists promised, though they were hazy
about specific dates - even these could be discarded. Strains of
oxygen-generating bacteria had already been let loose across the
face of Ganymede; most had died but some had flourished, and the
slowly rising curve on the atmospheric analysis chart was the first
exhibit proudly displayed to all visitors at Dardanus.
For a long time, van der Berg kept a watchful eye on the data
flowing in from Europa VI, hoping that one day the clouds would
clear again when it was orbiting above Mount Zeus. He knew that the
odds were against it, but while the slightest chance existed he
made no effort to explore any other avenue of research. There was
no hurry, he had far more important work on his hands - and anyway,
the explanation might turn out to be something quite trivial and
uninteresting.
Then Europa VI suddenly expired, almost certainly as a result of a
random meteoric impact. Back on Earth, Victor Willis had made
rather a fool of himself - in the opinion of many - by interviewing
the 'Euronuts' who now more than adequately filled the gap left by
the UFO-enthusiasts of the previous century. Some of them argued
that the probe's demise was due to hostile action from the world
below: the fact that it had been allowed to operate without
interference for fifteen years - almost twice its design life - did
not bother them in the least. To Victor's credit, he stressed this
point and demolished most of the cultists' other arguments; but the
consensus was that he should never have given them publicity in the
first place.
To van der Berg, who quite relished his colleagues' description of
him as a 'stubborn Dutchman' and did his best to live up to it, the
failure of Europa VI was a challenge not to be resisted. There was
not the slightest hope of funding a replacement, for the silencing
of the garrulous and embarrassingly long-lived probe had been
received with considerable relief.
So what was the alternative? Van der Berg sat down to consider his
options. Because he was a geologist, and not an astrophysicist, it
was several days before he suddenly realized that the answer had
been staring him in the face ever since he had landed on
Ganymede.
Afrikaans is one of the world's best languages in which to curse;
even when spoken politely, it can bruise innocent bystanders. Van
der Berg let off steam for a few minutes; then he put through a
call to the Tiamat Observatory - sitting precisely on the equator,
with the tiny, blinding disc of Lucifer forever vertically
overhead.
Astrophysicists, concerned with the most spectacular objects in the
Universe, tend to patronize mere geologists who devote their lives
to small, messy things like planets. But out here on the frontier,
everyone helped everyone else, and Dr Wilkins was not only
interested but sympathetic.
The Tiamat Observatory had been built for a single purpose, which
had indeed been one of the main reasons for establishing a base on
Ganymede. The study of Lucifer was of enormous importance not only
to pure scientists but also to nuclear engineers, meteorologists,
oceanographers - and, not least, to statesmen and philosophers.
That there were entities which could turn a planet into a sun was a
staggering thought, and had kept many awake at night. It would be
well for mankind to learn all it could about the process; one day
there might be need to imitate it - or prevent it.
And so for more than a decade Tiamat had been observing Lucifer
with every possible type of instrumentation, continually recording
its spectrum across the entire electromagnetic band, and also
actively probing it with radar from a modest hundred-metre dish,
slung across a small impact crater.
'Yes,' said Dr Wilkins, 'we've often looked at Europa and Io. But
our beam is fixed on Lucifer, so we can only see them for a few
minutes while they're in transit. And your Mount Zeus is just on
the dayside, so it's hidden from us then.'
'I realize that,' said van der Berg a little impatiently. 'But
couldn't you offset the beam by just a little, so you could have a
look at Europa before it comes in line? Ten or twenty degrees would
get you far enough into dayside.'
'One degree would be enough to miss Lucifer, and get Europa
full-face on the other side of its orbit. But then it would be more
than three times further away, so we'd only have a hundredth of the
reflected power. Might work, though: we'll give it a try. Let me
have the specs on frequencies, wave envelopes, polarization and
anything else your remote-sensing people think will help. It won't
take us long to rig up a phase-shifting network that will slew the
beam a couple of degrees. More than that I don't know - it's not a
problem we've ever considered. Though perhaps we should have done
so - anyway, what do you expect to find on Europa, except ice and
water?'
'If I knew,' said van der Berg cheerfully, 'I wouldn't be asking
for help, would I?'
'And I wouldn't be asking for full credit when you publish. Too bad
my name's at the end of the alphabet; you'll be ahead of me by only
one letter.'
That was a year ago: the long-range scans hadn't been good enough,
and offsetting the beam to look on to Europa's dayside just before
conjunction had proved more difficult than expected. But at last
the results were in; the computers had digested them, and van der
Berg was the first human being to look at a mineralogical map of
post-Lucifer Europa.
It was, as Dr Wilkins had surmised, mostly ice and water, with
outcroppings of basalt interspersed with deposits of sulphur. But
there were two anomalies.
One appeared to be an artefact of the imaging process; there was an
absolutely straight feature, two kilometres long, which showed
virtually no radar echo. Van der Berg left Dr Wilkins to puzzle
over that; he was only concerned with Mount Zeus.
It had taken him a long time to make the identification, because
only a madman - or a really desperate scientist - would have
dreamed that such a thing was possible. Even now, though every
parameter checked to the limits of accuracy, he still could not
really believe it. And he had not even attempted to consider his
next move.
When Dr Wilkins called, anxious to see his name and reputation
spreading through the data banks, he mumbled that he was still
analysing the results. But at last he could put it off no
longer.
'Nothing very exciting,' he told his unsuspecting colleague.
'Merely a rare form of quartz - I'm still trying to match it from
Earth samples.'
It was the first time he had ever lied to a fellow scientist, and
he felt terrible about it.
But what was the alternative?
Rolf van der Berg had not seen his Uncle Paul for a decade, and it
was not likely that they would ever again meet in the flesh. Yet he
felt very close to the old scientist - the last of his generation,
and the only one who could recall (when he wished, which was
seldom) his forefathers' way of life.
Dr Paul Kreuger - 'Oom Paul' to all his family and most of his
friends - was always there when he was needed, with information and
advice, either in person or at the end of a half-billion-kilometre
radio link. Rumour had it that only extreme political pressure had
forced the Nobel Committee - with great reluctance - to overlook
his contributions to particle physics, now once more in desperate
disarray after the general house-cleaning at the end of the
twentieth century.
If this was true, Dr Kreuger bore no grudge. Modest and unassuming,
he had no personal enemies, even among the cantankerous factions of
his fellow exiles. Indeed, he was so universally respected that he
had received several invitations to re-visit the United States of
Southern Africa, but had always politely declined - not, he
hastened to explain, because he felt he would be in any physical
danger in the USSA, but because he feared that the sense of
nostalgia would be overwhelming.
Even using the security of a language now understood by less than a
million people, van der Berg had been very discreet, and had used
circumlocutions and references that would be meaningless except to
a close relative. But Paul had no difficulty in understanding his
nephew's message, though he could not take it seriously. He was
afraid young Rolf had made a fool of himself, and would let him
down as gently as possible. Just as well he hadn't rushed to
publish: at least he had the sense to keep quiet...
And suppose - just suppose - it was true? The scanty hairs rose on
the back of Paul's head. A whole spectrum of possibilities -
scientific, financial, political - suddenly opened up before his
eyes, and the more he considered them, the more awesome they
appeared.
Unlike his devout ancestors, Dr Kreuger had no God to address in
moments of crisis or perplexity. Now, he almost wished he had; but
even if he could pray, that wouldn't really help. As he sat down at
his computer and started to access the data banks, he did not know
whether to hope that his nephew had made a stupendous discovery -
or was talking utter nonsense. Could the Old One really play such
an incredible trick on mankind? Paul remembered Einstein's famous
comment that though He was subtle, He was never malicious.
Stop daydreaming, Dr Paul Kreuger told himself. Your likes or
dislikes, your hopes or fears, have absolutely nothing to do with
the matter.
A challenge had been flung to him across half the width of the
Solar System; he would not know peace until he had uncovered the
truth.
Captain Smith kept his little surprise until day five, just a few
hours before turnaround. His announcement was received, as he had
expected, with stunned incredulity.
Victor Willis was the first to recover.
'A swimming pool! In a spaceship! You must be joking!'
The Captain leaned back and prepared to enjoy himself. He grinned
at Heywood Floyd who had already been let into the secret.
'Well, I suppose Columbus would have been amazed at some of the
facilities on the ships that came after him.'
'Is there a diving board?' asked Greenburg wistfully. 'I used to be
college champion.'
'As a matter of fact - yes. It's only five metres - but that will
give you three seconds of free fall, at our nominal tenth of a gee.
And if you want a longer time, I'm sure Mr Curtis will be happy to
reduce thrust.'
'Indeed?' said the Chief Engineer dryly. 'And mess up all my orbit
calculations? Not to mention the risk of the water crawling out,
Surface tension, you know...
'Wasn't there a space station once that had a spherical swimming
pool?' somebody asked.
'They tried it at the hub of Pasteur, before they started the
spin,' answered Floyd. 'It just wasn't practical. In zero gravity,
it had to be completely enclosed. And you could drown rather easily
inside a big sphere of water, if you panicked.'
'One way of getting into the record books - first person to drown
in space...'
'No-one told us to bring swimsuits,' complained Maggie M'Bala.
'Anyone who has to wear a swimsuit probably should,' Mihailovich
whispered to Floyd.
Captain Smith rapped on the table to restore order. 'This is more
important, please. As you know, at midnight we reach maximum speed,
and have to start braking. So the drive will shut down at 23.00,
and the ship will be reversed. We'll have two hours of
weightlessness before we commence thrust again at 01.00.
'As you can imagine, the crew will be rather busy - we'll use the
opportunity for an engine check and a hull inspection, which can't
be done while we're under power. I strongly advise you to be
sleeping then, with the restraint straps lightly fastened across
your beds. The stewards will check that there aren't any loose
articles that could cause trouble when weight comes on again.
Questions?'
There was a profound silence, as if the assembled passengers were
still somewhat stunned by the revelation and were deciding what to
do about it.
'I was hoping you'd ask me about the economics of such a luxury -
but as you haven't, I'll tell you anyway. It's not a luxury at all
- it doesn't cost a thing, but we hope it will be a very valuable
asset on future voyages.
'You see, we have to carry five thousand tons of water as reaction
mass, so we might as well make the best use of it. Number One tank
is now three-quarters empty; we'll keep it that way until the end
of the voyage. So after breakfast tomorrow - see you down at the
beach...
Considering the rush to get Universe spaceborne, it was surprising
that such a good job had been done on something so spectacularly
non-essential.
The 'beach' was a metal platform, about five metres wide, curving
around a third of the great tank's circumference. Although the far
wall was only another twenty metres away, clever use of projected
images made it seem at infinity. Borne on the waves in the middle
distance, surfers were heading towards a shore which they would
never reach, Beyond them, a beautiful passenger clipper which any
travel agent would recognize instantly as Tsung Sea-Space
Corporation's Tai-Pan was racing along the horizon under a full
spread of sail.
To complete the illusion, there was sand underfoot (slightly
magnetized, so it would not stray too far from its appointed place)
and the short length of beach ended in a grove of palm trees which
were quite convincing, until examined too closely. Overhead, a hot
tropical sun completed the idyllic picture; it was hard to realize
that just beyond these walls the real Sun was shining, now twice as
fiercely as on any terrestrial beach.
The designer had really done a wonderful job, in the limited space
available. It seemed a little unfair of Greenburg to complain:
'Pity there's no surf...'
It is a good principle in science not to believe any 'fact' -
however well-attested - until it fits into some accepted frame of
reference. Occasionally, of course, an observation can shatter the
frame and force the construction of a new one, but that is
extremely rare. Galileos and Einsteins seldom appear more than once
per century, which is just as well for the equanimity of
mankind.
Dr Kreuger fully accepted this principle: he would not believe his
nephew's discovery until he could explain it, and as far as he
could see that required nothing less than a direct Act of God.
Wielding Occam's still highly serviceable razor, he thought it
somewhat more probable that Rolf had made a mistake; if so, it
should be fairly easy to find it.
To Uncle Paul's great surprise, it proved very difficult indeed.
The analysis of radar remote-sensing observations was now a
venerable and well-established art, and the experts that Paul
consulted all gave the same answer, after considerable delay. They
also asked: 'Where did you get that recording?'
'Sorry,' he had answered. 'I'm not at liberty to say.'
The next step was to assume that the impossible was correct, and to
start searching the literature. This could be an enormous job, for
he did not even know where to begin. One thing was quite certain: a
brute-force, head-on attack was bound to fail. It would be just as
if Roentgen, the morning after he had discovered X-rays, had
started to hunt for their explanation in the physics journals of
his day. The information he needed still lay years in the
future.
But there was at least a sporting chance that what he was looking
for was hidden somewhere in the immense body of existing scientific
knowledge. Slowly and carefully, Paul Kreuger set up an automatic
search programme, designed for what it would exclude as much as
what it would embrace. It should cut out all Earth-related
references - they would certainly number in the millions - and
concentrate entirely on extraterrestrial citations.
One of the benefits of Dr Kreuger's eminence was an unlimited
computer budget: that was part of the fee he demanded from the
various organizations who needed his wisdom. Though this search
might be expensive, he did not have to worry about the bill.
As it turned out, this was surprisingly small. He was lucky: the
search came to an end after only two hours thirty-seven minutes, at
the 21,456th reference.
The title was enough. Paul was so excited that his own comsec
refused to recognize his voice, and he had to repeat the command
for a full print-out.
Nature had published the paper in 1981 - almost five years before
he was born! - and as his eyes swept swiftly over its single page
he knew not only that his nephew had been right all along - but,
just as important, exactly how such a miracle could occur.
The editor of that eighty-year-old journal must have had a good
sense of humour. A paper discussing the cores of the outer planets
was not something to grab the usual reader: this one, however, had
an unusually striking title. His comsec could have told him quickly
enough that it had once been part of a famous song, but that of
course was quite irrelevant.
Anyway, Paul Kreuger had never heard of the Beatles, and their
psychedelic fantasies.
And now Halley was too close to be seen; ironically, observers back
on Earth would get a far better view of the tail, already
stretching fifty million kilometres at right angles to the comet's
orbit, like a pennant fluttering in the invisible gale of the solar
wind.
On the morning of the rendezvous, Heywood Floyd woke early from a
troubled sleep. It was unusual for him to dream - or at least to
remember his dreams - and doubtless the anticipated excitements of
the next few hours were responsible. He was also slightly worried
by a message from Caroline, asking if he had heard from Chris
lately. He had radioed back, a little tersely, that Chris had never
bothered to say thank you when he had helped him get his current
position on Universe's sister ship Cosmos; perhaps he was already
bored with the Earth-Moon run and was looking for excitement
elsewhere.
'As usual,' Floyd had added, 'we'll hear from him in his own good
time.'
Immediately after breakfast, passengers and science team had
gathered for a final briefing from Captain Smith. The scientists
certainly did not need it, but if they felt any irritation, so
childish an emotion would have been quickly swept away by the weird
spectacle on the main viewscreen.
It was easier to imagine that Universe was flying into a nebula,
rather than a comet. The entire sky ahead was now a misty white fog
- not uniform, but mottled with darker condensations and streaked
with luminous bands and brightly glowing jets, all radiating away
from a central point. At this magnification, the nucleus was barely
visible as a tiny black speck, yet it was clearly the source of all
the phenomena around it.
'We cut our drive in three hours,' said the Captain. 'Then we'll be
only a thousand kilometres away from the nucleus, with virtually
zero velocity. We'll make some final observations, and confirm our
landing site.'
'So we'll go weightless at 12.00 exactly. Before then, your cabin
stewards will check that everything's correctly stowed. It will be
just like turnaround, except that this time it's going to be three
days, not two hours, before we have weight again.
'Halley's gravity? Forget it - less than one centimetre per second
squared - just about a thousandth of Earth's. You'll be able to
detect it if you wait long enough, but that's all. Takes fifteen
seconds for something to fall a metre.
'For safety, I'd like you all here in the observation lounge, with
your seat belts properly secured, during rendezvous and touchdown.
You'll get the best view from here anyway, and the whole operation
won't take more than an hour. We'll only be using very small thrust
corrections, but they may come from any angle and could cause minor
sensory disturbances.'
What the Captain meant, of course, was spacesickness - but that
word, by general agreement, was taboo aboard Universe. It was
noticeable, however, that many hands strayed into the compartments
beneath the seats, as if checking that the notorious plastic bags
would be available if urgently required.
The image on the viewscreen expanded, as the magnification was
increased. For a moment it seemed to Floyd that he was in an
aeroplane, descending through light clouds, rather than in a
spacecraft approaching the most famous of all comets. The nucleus
was growing larger and clearer; it was no longer a black dot, but
an irregular ellipse - now a small, pockmarked island lost in the
cosmic ocean - then, suddenly, a world in its own right.
There was still no sense of scale. Although Floyd knew that the
whole panorama spread before him was less than ten kilometres
across, he could easily have imagined that he was looking at a body
as large as the Moon. But the Moon was not hazy around the edges,
nor did it have little jets of vapour - and two large ones -
spurting from its surface.
'My God!' cried Mihailovich, 'what's that?'
He pointed to the lower edge of the nucleus, just inside the
terminator. Unmistakably - impossibly -a light was flashing there
on the nightside of the comet with a perfectly regular rhythm: on,
off, on, off, once every two or three seconds.
Dr Willis gave his patient 'I can explain it to you in words of one
syllable' cough, but Captain Smith got there first.
'I'm sorry to disappoint you, Mr Mihailovich. That's only the
beacon on Sampler Probe Two - it's been sitting there for a month,
waiting for us to come and pick it up.'
'What a shame; I thought there might be someone - something - there
to welcome us.'
'No such luck, I'm afraid; we're very much on our own out here.
That beacon is just where we intend to land - it's near Halley's
south pole and is in permanent darkness at the moment. That will
make it easier on our life-support systems. The temperature's up to
120 degrees on the Sunlit side - way above boiling point.'
'No wonder the comet's perking,' said the unabashed Dimitri. 'Those
jets don't look very healthy to me. Are you sure it's safe to go
in?'
'That's another reason we're touching down on the nightside;
there's no activity there. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must get
back to the bridge. This is the first chance I've ever had of
landing on a new world - and I doubt if I'll get another.'
Captain Smith's audience dispersed slowly, and in unusual silence.
The image on the viewscreen zoomed back to normal, and the nucleus
dwindled once more to a barely visible spot. Yet even in those few
minutes it seemed to have grown slightly larger, and perhaps that
was no illusion. Less than four hours before encounter, the ship
was still hurtling towards the comet at fifty thousand kilometres
an hour.
It would make a crater more impressive than any that Halley now
boasted, if something happened to the main drive at this stage of
the game.
The landing was just as anticlimactic as Captain Smith had hoped.
It was impossible to tell the moment when Universe made contact; a
full minute elapsed before the passengers realized that touchdown
was complete, and raised a belated cheer.
The ship lay at one end of a shallow valley, surrounded by hills
little more than a hundred metres high. Anyone who had been
expecting to see a lunar landscape would have been greatly
surprised; these formations bore no resemblance at all to the
smooth, gentle slopes of the Moon, sand-blasted by micrometeorite
bombardment over billions of years.
There was nothing here more than a thousand years old; the Pyramids
were far more ancient than this landscape. Every time around the
Sun, Halley was remoulded - and diminished - by the solar fires.
Even since the 1986 perihelion passage, the shape of the nucleus
had been subtly changed. Melding metaphors shamelessly, Victor
Willis had nevertheless put it rather well when he told his
viewers: 'The "peanut" has become wasp-waisted!'
Indeed, there were indications that, after a few more revolutions
round the Sun, Halley might split into two roughly equal fragments
- as had Biela's comet, to the amazement of the astronomers of
1846.
The virtually non-existent gravity also contributed to the
strangeness of the landscape. All around were spidery formations
like the fantasies of a surrealistic artist, and improbably canted
rockpiles that could not have survived more than a few minutes even
on the Moon.
Although Captain Smith had chosen to land Universe in the depths of
the polar night - all of five kilometres from the blistering heat
of the Sun - there was ample illumination. The huge envelope of gas
and dust surrounding the comet formed a glowing halo which seemed
appropriate for this region; it was easy to imagine that it was an
aurora, playing over the Antarctic ice. And if that was not
sufficient, Lucifer provided its quota of several hundred full
moons.
Although expected, the complete absence of colour was a
disappointment; Universe might have been sitting in an opencast
coal mine: that, in fact, was not a bad analogy, for much of the
surrounding blackness was due to carbon or its compounds,
intimately mixed with snow and ice.
Captain Smith, as was his due, was the first to leave the ship,
pushing himself gently out from Universe's main airlock. It seemed
an eternity before he reached the ground, two metres below; then he
picked up a handful of the powdery surface, and examined it in his
gloved hand.
Aboard the ship, everyone waited for the words that would go into
the history books.
'Looks like pepper and salt,' said the Captain. 'If it were thawed
out, it might grow a pretty good crop.'
* * *
The mission plan involved one complete Halley 'day' of fifty-five
hours at the south pole, then - if there were no problems - a move
of ten kilometres towards the very ill-defined equator, to study
one of the geysers during a complete day-night cycle.
Chief Scientist Pendrill wasted no time. Almost immediately, he set
off with a colleague on a two-man jet-sled towards the beacon of
the waiting probe. They were back within the hour, bearing
prepackaged samples of comet which they proudly consigned to the
deep-freeze.
Meanwhile the other teams established a spider's web of cables
along the valley, strung between poles driven into the friable
crust. These served not only to link numerous instruments to the
ship, but also made movement outside much easier. One could explore
this portion of Halley without the use of cumbersome External
Manoeuvring Units; it was only necessary to attach a tether to a
cable, and then go along it hand over hand. That was also much more
fun than operating EMUs, which were virtually one-man spaceships
with all the complications they involved.
The passengers watched all this with fascination, listening to the
radioed conversations and trying to join in the excitement of
discovery. After about twelve hours - considerably less in the case
of ex-astronaut Clifford Greenburg - the pleasure of being a
captive audience started to pall. Soon there was much talk about
'going outside' except from Victor Willis who was quite
uncharacteristically subdued.
'I think he's scared,' said Dimitri contemptuously. He had never
liked Victor, since discovering that the scientist was completely
tone-deaf. Though this was wildly unfair to Victor (who had gamely
allowed himself to be used as a guinea pig for studies of his
curious affliction) Dimitri was fond of adding darkly 'A man that
hath no music in himself, Is fit for treasons, stratagems and
spoils.'
Floyd had made up his mind even before leaving Earth orbit. Maggie
M was game enough to try anything and would need no encouragement.
(Her slogan 'An author should never turn down the opportunity for a
new experience' had impacted famously on her emotional life.)
Yva Merlin, as usual, had kept everyone in suspense, but Floyd was
determined to take her on a personal tour of the comet. It was the
very least he could do to maintain his reputation; everyone knew
that he had been partly responsible for getting the fabulous
recluse on the passenger list, and now it was a running joke that
they were having an affair. Their most innocent remarks were
gleefully misinterpreted by Dimitri and the ship's physician Dr
Mahindran, who professed to regard them with envious awe.
After some initial annoyance - because it all too accurately
recalled the emotions of his youth - Floyd had gone along with the
joke. But he did not know how Yva felt about it, and had so far
lacked the courage to ask her. Even now, in this compact little
society where few secrets lasted more than six hours, she
maintained much of her famous reserve - that aura of mystery which
had fascinated audiences for three generations.
As for Victor Willis, he had just discovered one of those
devastating little details that can destroy the best-laid plans of
mice and spacemen.
Universe was equipped with the latest Mark XX suits, with
non-fogging, non-reflective visors guaranteed to give an
unparalleled view of space. And though the helmets came in several
sizes, Victor Willis could not get into any of them without major
surgery.
It had taken him fifteen years to perfect his trademark ('a triumph
of the topiary art,' one critic had called it, perhaps
admiringly).
Now only his beard stood between Victor Willis and Halley's Comet.
Soon he would have to make a choice between the two.
Captain Smith had raised surprisingly few objections to the idea of
passenger EVAs. He agreed that to have come all this way, and not
to set foot upon the comet, was absurd.
'There'll be no problems if you follow instructions,' he said at
the inevitable briefing. 'Even if you've never worn spacesuits
before - and I believe that only Commander Greenburg and Dr Floyd
have done so - they're quite comfortable, and fully automatic.
There's no need to bother about any controls or adjustments, after
you've been checked out in the airlock.
'One absolute rule: only two of you can go EVA at one time. You'll
have a personal escort, of course, linked to you by five metres of
safety line - though that can be played out to twenty if necessary.
In addition, you'll both be tethered to the two guide-cables we've
strung the whole length of the valley. The rule of the road is the
same as on Earth; keep to the right! If you want to overtake
anyone, you only have to unclip your buckle - but one of you must
always remain attached to the line. That way, there's no danger of
drifting off into space. Any questions?'
'How long can we stay out?'
'As long as you like, Ms M'Bala. But I recommend that you return
just as soon as you feel the slightest discomfort. Perhaps an hour
would be best for the first outing - though it may seem like only
ten minutes...'
Captain Smith had been quite correct. As Heywood Floyd looked at
his time-elapsed display, it seemed incredible that forty minutes
had already passed. Yet it should not have been so surprising, for
the ship was already a good kilometre away.
As the senior passenger - by almost any reckoning - he had been
given the privilege of making the first EVA. And he really had no
choice of companion.
'EVA with Yva!' chortled Mihailovich. 'How can you possibly resist!
Even if,' he added with a lewd grin, 'those damn suits won't let
you try all the Extravehicular Activities you'd like,'
Yva had agreed, without any hesitation, yet also without any
enthusiasm. That, Floyd thought wryly, was typical. It would not be
quite true to say that he was disillusioned - at his age, he had
very few illusions left - but he was disappointed. And with himself
rather than Yva; she was as beyond criticism or praise as the Mona
Lisa - with whom she had often been compared.
The comparison was, of course, ridiculous; La Gioconda was
mysterious, but she was certainly not erotic. Yva's power had lain
in her unique combination of both - with innocence thrown in for
good measure. Half a century later, traces of all three ingredients
were still visible, at least to the eye of faith.
What was lacking - as Floyd had been sadly forced to admit - was
any real personality. When he tried to focus his mind upon her, all
he could visualize were the roles she had played. He would have
reluctantly agreed with the critic who had once said:
'Yva Merlin is the reflection of all men's desires; but a mirror
has no character.'
And now this unique and mysterious creature was floating beside him
across the face of Halley's Comet, as they and their guide moved
along the twin cables that spanned the Valley of Black Snow. That
was his name; he was childishly proud of it, even though it would
never appear on any map. There could be no maps of a world where
geography was as ephemeral as weather on Earth. He savoured the
knowledge that no human eye had ever before looked upon the scene
around him - or ever would again.
On Mars, or on the Moon, you could sometimes -with a slight effort
of imagination, and if you ignored the alien sky - pretend that you
were on Earth. This was impossible here, because the towering -
often overhanging - snow sculptures showed only the slightest
concession to gravity. You had to look very carefully at your
surroundings to decide which way was up.
The Valley of Black Snow was unusual, because it was a fairly solid
structure - a rocky reef embedded in volatile drifts of water and
hydrocarbon ice. The geologists were still arguing about its
origin, some maintaining that it was really part of an asteroid
that had encountered the comet ages ago. Corings had revealed
complex mixtures of organic compounds, rather like frozen coal-tar
- though it was certain that life had never played any part in
their formation.
The 'snow' carpeting of the floor of the little valley was not
completely black; when Floyd raked it with the beam of his
flashlight it glittered and sparkled as if embedded with a million
microscopic diamonds. He wondered if there were indeed diamonds on
Halley: there was certainly enough carbon here. But it was almost
equally certain that the temperatures and pressures necessary to
create them had never existed here.
On a sudden impulse, Floyd reached down and gathered two handfuls
of the snow: he had to push with his feet against the safety line
to do so, and had a comic vision of himself as a trapeze artist
walking a tightrope - but upside down. The fragile crust offered
virtually no resistance as he buried head and shoulders into it;
then he pulled gently on his tether and emerged with his handful of
Halley.
He wished that he could feel it through the insulation of his
gloves, as he compacted the mass of crystalline fluff into a ball
that just fitted the palm of his hand. There it lay, ebony black
yet giving fugitive flashes of light as he turned it from side to
side.
And suddenly, in his imagination, it became the purest white - and
he was a boy again, in the winter playground of his youth,
surrounded with the ghosts of his childhood. He could even hear the
cries of his companions, taunting and threatening him with their
own projectiles of immaculate snow...
The memory was brief, but shattering, for it brought an
overwhelming sensation of sadness. Across a century of time, he
could no longer remember a single one of those phantom friends who
stood around him; yet some, he knew, he had once loved...
His eyes filled with tears, and his fingers clenched around the
ball of alien snow. Then the vision faded; he was himself again.
This was not a moment of sadness, but of triumph.
'My God!' cried Heywood Floyd, his words echoing in the tiny,
reverberant universe of his spacesuit, 'I'm standing on Halley's
Comet - what more do I want! If a meteor hits me now, I won't have
a single complaint!'
He brought up his arms and launched the snowball towards the stars.
It was so small, and so dark, that it vanished almost at once, but
he kept on staring into the sky.
And then, abruptly - unexpectedly - it appeared in a sudden
explosion of light, as it rose into the rays of the hidden Sun.
Black as soot though it was, it reflected enough of that blinding
brilliance to be easily visible against the faintly luminous
sky.
Floyd watched it until it finally disappeared - perhaps by
evaporation, perhaps by dwindling into the distance. It would not
last long in the fierce torrent of radiation overhead; but how many
men could claim to have created a comet of their own?
The cautious exploration of the comet had already begun while
Universe still remained in the polar shadow. First, one-man EMUs
(few people now knew that stood for External Manoeuvring Unit)
gently jetted over both day- and nightside, recording everything of
interest. Once the preliminary surveys had been completed, groups
of up to five scientists flew out in the onboard shuttle, deploying
equipment and instruments at strategic spots.
The Lady Jasmine was a far cry from the primitive 'space pods' of
the Discovery era, capable of operating only in a gravity-free
environment. She was virtually a small spaceship, designed to ferry
personnel and light cargo between the orbiting Universe and the
surfaces of Mars, Moon, or the Jovian satellites. Her chief pilot,
who treated her like the grande dame she was, complained with mock
bitterness that flying round a miserable little comet was far
beneath her dignity.
When he was quite sure that Halley - on the surface at least - held
no surprises, Captain Smith lifted away from the pole. Moving less
than a dozen kilometres took Universe to a different world, from a
glimmering twilight that would last for months to a realm that knew
the cycle of night and day. And with the dawn, the comet came
slowly to life.
As the Sun crept above the jagged, absurdly close horizon, its rays
would slant down into the countless small craters that pockmarked
the crust. Most of them would remain inactive, their narrow throats
sealed by incrustations of mineral salts. Nowhere else on Halley
were such vivid displays of colour; they had misled biologists into
thinking that here life was beginning, as it had on Earth, in the
form of algal growths. Many had not yet abandoned that hope, though
they would be reluctant to admit it.
From other craters, wisps of vapour floated up into the sky, moving
in unnaturally straight trajectories because there were no winds to
divert them. Usually nothing else happened for an hour or two;
then, as the Sun's warmth penetrated to the frozen interior, Halley
would begin to spurt - as Victor Willis had put it 'like a pod of
whales'.
Though picturesque, it was not one of his more accurate metaphors.
The jets from the dayside of Halley were not intermittent, but
played steadily for hours at a time. And they did not curl over and
fall back to the surface, but went rising on up into the sky, until
they were lost in the glowing fog which they helped create.
At first, the science team treated the geysers as cautiously as if
they were vulcanologists approaching Etna or Vesuvius in one of
their less predictable moods. But they soon discovered that
Halley's eruptions, though often fearsome in appearance, were
singularly gentle and well-behaved; the water emerged about as fast
as from an ordinary firehose, and was barely warm. Within seconds
of escaping from its underground reservoir, it would flash into a
mixture of vapour and ice crystals; Halley was enveloped in a
perpetual snowstorm, falling upwards... Even at this modest speed
of ejection, none of the water would ever return to its source.
Each time it rounded the Sun, more of the comet's life-blood would
haemorrhage into the insatiable vacuum of space.
After considerable persuasion, Captain Smith agreed to move
Universe to within a hundred metres of 'Old Faithful', the largest
geyser on the dayside. It was an awesome sight - a whitish-grey
column of mist, growing like some giant tree from a surprisingly
small orifice in a three-hundred-metre-wide crater which appeared
to be one of the oldest formations on the comet. Before long, the
scientists were scrambling all over the crater, collecting
specimens of its (completely sterile, alas) multi-coloured
minerals, and casually thrusting their thermometers and sampling
tubes into the soaring water-ice-mist column itself. 'If it tosses
any of you out into space,' warned the Captain, 'don't expect to be
rescued in a hurry. In fact, we may just wait until you come
back.'
'What does he mean by that?' a puzzled Dimitri Mihailovich had
asked. As usual, Victor Willis was quick with the answer.
'Things don't always happen the way you'd expect in celestial
mechanics. Anything thrown off Halley at a reasonable speed will
still be moving in essentially the same orbit - it takes a huge
velocity change to make a big differenc. So one revolution later,
the two orbits will intersect again - and you'll be right back
where you started. Seventy-six years older, of course.'
Not far from Old Faithful was another phenomenon which no-one could
reasonably have anticipated. When they first observed it, the
scientists could scarcely believe their eyes. Spread out across
several hectares of Halley, exposed to the vacuum of space, was
what appeared to be a perfectly ordinary lake, remarkable only for
its extreme blackness.
Obviously, it could not be water; the only liquids which could be
stable in this environment were heavy organic oils or tars. In
fact, 'Lake Tuonela' turned out to be more like pitch, quite solid
except for a sticky surface layer less than a millimetre thick. In
this negligible gravity, it must have taken years - perhaps several
trips round the warming fires of the Sun - for it to have assumed
its present mirror-flatness.
Until the Captain put a stop to it, the lake became one of the
principal tourist attractions on Halley's Comet. Someone (nobody
claimed the dubious honour) discovered that it was possible to walk
perfectly normally across it, almost as if on Earth; the surface
film had just enough adhesion to hold the foot in place. Before
long, most of the crew had got themselves videoed apparently
walking on water...
Then Captain Smith inspected the airlock, discovered the walls
liberally stained with tar, and gave the nearest thing to a display
of anger that anyone had ever witnessed from him.
'It's bad enough,' he said through clenched teeth, 'having the
outside of the ship coated with - soot. Halley's Comet is about the
filthiest place I've ever seen...'
After that, there were no more strolls on Lake Tuonela.
In a small, self-contained universe where everyone knows everyone
else, there can be no greater shock than encountering a total
stranger.
Heywood Floyd was floating gently along the corridor to the main
lounge when he had this disturbing experience. He stared in
amazement at the interloper, wondering how a stowaway had managed
to avoid detection for so long. The other man looked back at him
with a combination of embarrassment and bravado, obviously waiting
for Floyd to speak first.
'Well, Victor!' he said at last. 'Sorry I didn't recognize you. So
you've made the supreme sacrifice, for the cause of science - or
should I say your public?'
'Yes,' Willis answered grumpily. 'I did manage to squeeze into one
helmet - but the damn bristles made so many scratching noises
no-one could hear a word I said.'
'When are you going out?'
'Just as soon as Cliff comes back - he's gone caving with Bill
Chant.'
The first flybys of the comet, in 1986, had suggested that it was
considerably less dense than water -which could only mean that it
was either made of very porous material, or was riddled with
cavities. Both explanations turned out to be correct.
At first, the ever-cautious Captain Smith flatly forbade any
cave-exploring. He finally relented when Dr Pendrill reminded him
that his chief assistant Dr Chant was an experienced speleologist -
indeed, that was one of the very reasons he had been chosen for the
mission.
'Cave-ins are impossible, in this low gravity,' Pendrill had told
the reluctant Captain. 'So there's no danger of being trapped.'
'What about being lost?'
'Chant would regard that suggestion as a professional insult. He's
been twenty kilometres inside Mammoth Cave. Anyway, he'll play out
a guideline.'
'Communications?'
'The line's got fibre optics in it. And his suit radio will
probably work most of the way.'
'Umm. Where does he want to go in?'
'The best place is that extinct geyser at the base of Etna Junior.
It's been dead for at least a thousand years.'
'So I suppose it should keep quiet for another couple of days. Very
well - does anyone else want to go?'
'Cliff Greenburg has volunteered - he's done a good deal of
underwater cave-exploring, in the Bahamas.'
'I tried it once - that was enough. Tell Cliff he's much too
valuable. He can go in as far as he can still see the entrance -
and no further. And if he loses contact with Chant, he's not to go
after him, without my authority.'
Which, the Captain added to himself, I would be very reluctant to
give...
Dr Chant knew all the old jokes about speleologists wanting to
return to the womb, and was quite sure he could refute them.
'That must be a damn noisy place, with all its thumpings and
bumpings and gurglings,' he argued. 'I love caves because they're
so peaceful and timeless. You know that nothing has changed for a
hundred thousand years, except that the stalactites have grown a
bit thicker.'
But now, as he drifted deeper into Halley, playing out the thin,
but virtually unbreakable thread that linked him to Clifford
Greenburg, he realized that this was no longer true. As yet, he had
no scientific proof, but his geologist's instincts told him that
this subterranean world had been born only yesterday, on the
time-scale of the Universe. It was younger than some of the cities
of man.
The tunnel through which he was gliding in long, shallow leaps was
about four metres in diameter, and his virtual weightlessness
brought back vivid memories of cave-diving on Earth. The low
gravity contributed to the illusion; it was exactly as if he was
carrying slightly too much weight, and so kept drifting gently
downwards. Only the absence of all resistance reminded him that he
was moving through vacuum, not water.
'You're just getting out of sight,' said Greenburg, fifty metres in
from the entrance. 'Radio link still fine. What's the scenery
like?'
'Very hard to say - I can't identify any formations, so I don't
have the vocabulary to describe them. It's not any kind of rock -
it crumbles when I touch it - I feel as if I'm exploring a giant
Gruyère cheese.'
'You mean it's organic?'
'Yes - nothing to do with life, of course - but perfect raw
material for it. All sorts of hydrocarbons - the chemists will have
fun with these samples. Can you still see me?'
'Only the glow of your light, and that's fading fast.'
'Ah - here's some genuine rock - doesn't look as if it belongs here
- probably an intrusion - ah - I've struck gold!'
'You're joking!'
'It fooled a lot of people in the old West - iron pyrites. Common
on the outer satellites, of course, but don't ask me what it's
doing here...'
'Visual contact lost. You're two hundred metres in.'
'I'm passing through a distinct layer - looks like meteoric debris
- something exciting must have happened back then - I hope we can
date it - wow!'
'Don't do that sort of thing to me!'
'Sorry - quite took my breath away - there's a big chamber ahead -
last thing I expected - let me swing the beam around...
'Almost spherical - thirty, forty metres across. And - I don't
believe it - Halley is full of surprises - stalactites,
stalagmites.'
'What's so surprising about that?'
'No free water, no limestone here, of course - and such low
gravity. Looks like some kind of wax. Just a minute while I get
good video coverage... fantastic shapes... sort of thing a dripping
candle makes... that's odd...'
'Now what?'
Dr Chant's voice had shown a sudden alteration in tone, which
Greenburg had instantly detected.
'Some of the columns have been broken. They're lying on the floor.
It's almost as if...'
'Go on!'
'... as if something has - blundered - into them.'
'That's crazy. Could an earthquake have snapped them?'
'No earthquakes here - only microseisms from the geysers. Perhaps
there was a big blow-out at some time. Anyway, it was centuries
ago. There's a film of this wax stuff over the fallen columns -
several millimetres thick.'
Dr Chant was slowly recovering his composure. He was not a highly
imaginative man - spelunking eliminates such men rather quickly -
but the very feel of the place had triggered some disturbing
memory. And those fallen columns looked altogether too much like
the bars of a cage, broken by some monster in an attempt to
escape.
Of course, that was perfectly absurd - but Dr Chant had learned
never to ignore any premonition, any danger signal, until he had
traced it to its origin. That caution had saved his life more than
once; he would not go beyond this chamber until he had identified
the source of his fear. And he was honest enough to admit that
'fear' was the correct word.
'Bill - are you all right? What's happening?'
'Still filming. Some of these shapes remind me of Indian temple
sculpture. Almost erotic.'
He was deliberately turning his mind away from the direct
confrontation of his fears, hoping thereby to sneak up on them
unawares, by a kind of averted mental vision. Meanwhile the purely
mechanical acts of recording and collecting samples occupied most
of his attention.
There was nothing wrong, he reminded himself, with healthy fear;
only when it escalated into panic did it become a killer. He had
known panic twice in his life (once on a mountainside, once
underwater) and still shuddered at the memory of its clammy touch.
Yet - thankfully - he was far from it now, and for a reason which,
though he did not understand it, he found curiously reassuring.
There was an element of comedy in the situation.
And presently he started to laugh - not with hysteria, but with
relief.
'Did you ever see those old Star Wars movies?' he asked
Greenburg.
'Of course - half a dozen times.'
'Well, I know what's been bothering me. There was a sequence when
Luke's spaceship dives into an asteroid - and runs into a gigantic
snake-creature that lurks inside its caverns.'
'Not Luke's ship - Hans Solo's Millennium Falcon. And I always
wondered how that poor beast managed to eke out a living. It must
have grown very hungry, waiting for the occasional titbit from
space. And Princess Leia wouldn't have been more than an
hors-d'oeuvre, anyway.'
'Which I certainly don't intend to provide,' said Dr Chant, now
completely at ease. 'Even if there is life here - which would be
marvellous - the food chain would be very short. So I'd be
surprised to find anything bigger than a mouse. Or, more likely, a
mushroom... Now let's see - where do we go from here... There are
two exits on the other side of the chamber... the one on the right
is bigger... I'll take that...'
'How much more line have you got?'
'Oh, a good half-kilometre. Here we go... I'm in the middle of the
chamber... damn, bounced off the wall... now I've got a
hand-hold... going in head-first... smooth walls, real rock for a
change... that's a pity..
'What's the problem?'
'Can't go any further. More stalactites... too close together for
me to get through... and too thick to break without explosives. And
that would be a shame... the colours are beautiful... first real
greens and blues I've seen on Halley. Just a minute while I get
them on video...
Dr Chant braced himself against the wall of the narrow tunnel, and
aimed the camera. With his gloved fingers be reached for the
HI-INTENSITY switch, but missed it and cut off the main lights
completely.
'Lousy design,' he muttered. 'Third time I've done that.'
He did not immediately correct his mistake, because he had always
enjoyed that silence and total darkness which can be experienced
only in the deepest caves. The gentle background noises of his
life-support equipment robbed him of the silence, but at
least...
What was that? From beyond the portcullis of stalactites blocking
further progress he could see a faint glow, like the first light of
dawn. As his eyes grew adapted to the darkness, it appeared to grow
brighter, and he could detect a hint of green. Now he could even
see the outlines of the barrier ahead.
'What's happening?' said Greenburg anxiously.
'Nothing - just observing.'
And thinking, he might have added. There were four possible
explanations.
Sunlight could be filtering down through some natural light duct -
ice, crystal, whatever. But at this depth? Unlikely.
Radioactivity? He hadn't bothered to bring a counter; there were
virtually no heavy elements here. But it would be worth coming back
to check.
Some phosphorescent mineral - that was the one he'd put his money
on. But there was a fourth possibility - the most unlikely, and
most exciting, of all.
Dr Chant had never forgotten a moonless - and Luciferless - night
on the shores of the Indian Ocean, when he had been walking beneath
brilliant stars along a sandy beach. The sea was very calm, but
from time to time a languid wave would collapse at his feet - and
detonate in an explosion of light.
He had walked out into the shallows (he could still remember the
feel of the water round his ankles, like a warm bath) and with
every step he took there had been another burst of light. He could
even trigger it by clapping his hands close to the surface.
Could similar bioluminescent organisms have evolved, here in the
heart of Halley's Comet? He would love to think so. It seemed a
pity to vandalize something so exquisite as this natural work of
art - with the glow behind it, the barrier now reminded him of an
altar screen he had once seen in some cathedral - but he would have
to go back and get some explosives. Meanwhile, there was the other
corridor...
'I can't get any further along this route,' he told Greenburg, 'so
I'll try the other. Coming back to the junction - setting the reel
on rewind.' He did not mention the mysterious glow, which had
vanished as soon as he switched on his lights again.
Greenburg did not reply immediately, which was unusual; probably he
was talking to the ship. Chant did not worry; he would repeat his
message as soon as he had got under way again.
He did not bother, because there was a brief acknowledgement from
Greenburg.
'Fine, Cliff - thought I'd lost you for a minute. Back at the
chamber - now going into the other tunnel - hope there's nothing
blocking that.'
This time, Greenburg replied at once.
'Sorry, Bill. Come back to the ship. There's an emergency - no, not
here - everything's fine with Universe. But we may have to return
to Earth at once.'
It was only a few weeks before Dr Chant discovered a very plausible
explanation for the broken columns. As the comet blasted its
substance away into space at each perihelion passage, its mass
distribution continually altered. And so, every few thousand years,
its spin became unstable, and it would change the direction of its
axis - quite violently, like a top that is about to fall over as it
loses energy. When that occurred, the resulting cometquake could
reach a respectable five on the Richter scale.
But he never solved the mystery of the luminous glow. Though the
problem was swiftly overshadowed by the drama that was now
unfolding, the sense of a missed opportunity would continue to
haunt him for the rest of his life.
Though he was occasionally tempted, he never mentioned it to any of
his colleagues. But he did leave a sealed note for the next
expedition, to be opened in 2133.
'Have you seen Victor?' said Mihailovich gleefully, as Floyd
hurried to answer the Captain's summons. 'He's a broken man.'
'He'll grow it back on the way home,' snapped Floyd, who had no
time for such trivialities at the moment. 'I'm trying to find out
what's happened.'
Captain Smith was still sitting, almost stunned, in his cabin when
he arrived. If this was an emergency affecting his own ship, he
would have been a tornado of controlled energy, issuing orders
right and left. But there was nothing he could do about this
situation, except await the next message from Earth.
Captain Laplace was an old friend; how could he have got into such
a mess? There was no conceivable accident, error of navigation, or
failure of equipment that could possibly account for his
predicament. Nor, as far as Smith could see, was there any way in
which Universe could help him get out of it. Operations Centre was
just running round and round in circles; this looked like one of
those emergencies, all too common in space, where nothing could be
done except transmit condolences and record last messages. But he
gave no hint of his doubts and reservations when he reported the
news to Floyd.
'There's been an accident,' he said. 'We've received orders to
return to Earth immediately, to be fitted out for a rescue
mission.'
'What kind of accident?'
'It's our sister ship, Galaxy. She was doing a survey of the Jovian
satellites. And she's made a crash landing.'
He saw the look of amazed incredulity on Floyd's face.
'Yes, I know that's impossible. But you've not heard anything yet.
She's stranded - on Europa.'
'Europa!'
'I'm afraid so. She's damaged, but apparently there's no loss of
life. We're still awaiting details.'
'When did it happen?'
'Twelve hours ago. There was a delay before she could report to
Ganymede.'
'But what can we do? We're on the other side of the Solar System.
Getting back to lunar orbit to refuel, then taking the fastest
orbit to Jupiter - it would be - oh, at least a couple of months!'
(And back in Leonov's day, Floyd added to himself, it would have
been a couple of years...)
'I know; but there's no other ship that could do anything.' -
'What about Ganymede's own inter-satellite ferries?'
'They're only designed for orbital operations.'
'They've landed on Callisto.'
'Much lower energy mission. Oh, they could just manage Europa, but
with negligible payload. It's being looked into, of course.'
Floyd scarcely heard the Captain; he was still trying to assimilate
this astonishing news. For the first time in half a century - and
only for the second time in all history! - a ship had landed on the
forbidden moon. And that prompted an ominous thought.
'Do you suppose,' he asked, 'that - whoever - whatever - is on
Europa could be responsible?'
'I was wondering about that,' said the Captain glumly. 'But we've
been snooping around the place for years, without anything
happening.'
'Even more to the point - what might happen to us if we attempted a
rescue?'
'That's the first thing that occurred to me. But all this is
speculation - we'll have to wait until we have more facts.
Meanwhile - this is really why I called you - I've just received
Galaxy's crew manifest, and I was wondering...'
Hesitantly, he pushed the print-out across his desk. But even
before Heywood Floyd scanned the list, he somehow knew what he
would find.
'My grandson,' he said bleakly.
And, he added to himself, the only person who can carry my name
beyond the grave.
Despite all the gloomier forecasts, the South African Revolution
had been comparatively bloodless - as such things go. Television,
which had been blamed for many evils, deserved some credit for
this. A precedent had been set a generation earlier in the
Philippines; when they know that the world is watching, the great
majority of men and women tend to behave in a responsible manner.
Though there have been shameful exceptions, few massacres occur on
camera.
Most of the Afrikaners, when they recognized the inevitable, had
left the country long before the takeover of power. And - as the
new administration bitterly complained - they had not gone
empty-handed. Billions of rands had been transferred to Swiss and
Dutch banks; towards the end, there had been mysterious flights
almost every hour out of Cape Town and Jo'burg to Zurich and
Amsterdam. It was said that by Freedom Day one would not find one
troy ounce of gold or a carat of diamond in the late Republic of
South Africa - and the mine workings had been effectively
sabotaged. One prominent refugee boasted, from his luxury apartment
in The Hague, 'It will be five years before the Kaffirs can get
Kimberley working again - if they ever do.' To his great surprise,
De Beers was back in business, under new name and management, in
less than five weeks, and diamonds were now the single most
important element in the new nation's economy.
Within a generation, the younger refugees had been absorbed -
despite desperate rearguard actions by their conservative elders -
in the deracinated culture of the twenty-first century. They
recalled, with pride but without boastfulness, the courage and
determination of their ancestors, and distanced themselves from
their stupidities. Virtually none of them spoke Afrikaans, even in
their own homes.
Yet, precisely as in the case of the Russian Revolution a century
earlier, there were many who dreamed of putting back the clock -
or, at least, of sabotaging the efforts of those who had usurped
their power and privilege. Usually they channelled their
frustration and bitterness into propaganda, demonstrations,
boycotts, petitions to the World Council - and, rarely, works of
art. Wilhelm Smuts' The Voortrekkers was conceded to be a
masterpiece of (ironically) English literature, even by those who
bitterly disagreed with the author.
But there were also groups who believed that political action was
useless, and that only violence would restore the longed-for status
quo. Although there could not have been many who really imagined
that they could rewrite the pages of history, there were not a few
who, if victory was impossible, would gladly settle for
revenge.
Between the two extremes of the totally assimilated and the
completely intransigent, there was an entire spectrum of political
- and apolitical - parties. Der Bund was not the largest, but it
was the most powerful, and certainly the richest, since it
controlled much of the lost Republic's smuggled wealth, through a
network of corporations and holding companies. Most of these were
now perfectly legal, and indeed completely respectable.
There was half a billion of Bund money in Tsung Aerospace, duly
listed in the annual balance sheet. In 2059, Sir Lawrence was happy
to receive another half-billion, which enabled him to accelerate
the commissioning of his little fleet.
But not even his excellent intelligence traced any connection
between the Bund and Tsung Aerospace's latest charter mission, In
any event, Halley was then approaching Mars, and Sir Lawrence was
so busy getting Universe ready to leave on schedule that he paid
little attention to the routine operations of her sister ships.
Though Lloyd's of London did raise some queries about Galaxy's
proposed routing, these objections were quickly dealt with. The
Bund had people in key positions everywhere; which was unfortunate
for the insurance brokers, but very good luck for the space
lawyers.
It is not easy to run a shipping line between destinations which
not only change their positions by millions of kilometres every few
days, but also swing through a velocity range of tens of kilometres
a second. Anything like a regular schedule is out of the question;
there are times when one must forget the whole idea and stay in
port - or at least in orbit - waiting for the Solar System to
rearrange itself for the greater convenience of mankind.
Fortunately, these periods are known years in advance, so it is
possible to make the best use of them for overhauls, retrofits, and
planet leave for the crew. And occasionally, by good luck and
aggressive salesmanship, one can arrange some local chartering,
even if only the equivalent of the old-time 'Once around the Bay'
boat-ride.
Captain Eric Laplace was delighted that the three-month stayover
off Ganymede would not be a complete loss. An anonymous and
unexpected grant to the Planetary Science Foundation would finance
a reconnaissance of the Jovian (even now, no-one ever called it
Luciferian) satellite system, paying particular attention to a
dozen of the neglected smaller moons. Some of these had never even
been properly surveyed, much less visited.
As soon as he heard of the mission, Rolf van der Berg called the
Tsung shipping agent and made some discreet enquiries.
'Yes, first we'll head in towards Io - then do a flyby of Europa
-'
'Only a flyby? How close?'
'Just a moment - odd, the flight plan doesn't give details. But of
course she won't go inside the Interdiction Zone.'
'Which was down to ten thousand kilometres at the last ruling...
fifteen years ago. Anyway, I'd like to volunteer as Mission
Planetologist. I'll send across my qualifications -'
'No need to do so, Dr van der Berg. They've already asked for
you.'
It is always easy to be wise after the event, and when he cast his
mind back (he had plenty of time for it later) Captain Laplace
recalled a number of curious aspects of the charter. Two crew
members were taken suddenly sick, and were replaced at short
notice; he was so glad to have substitutes that he did not check
their papers as closely as he might have done. (And even if he had,
he would have discovered that they were perfectly in order.)
Then there was the trouble with the cargo. As captain, he was
entitled to inspect anything that went aboard the ship. Of course,
it was impossible to do this for every item, but he never hesitated
to investigate if he had good reason. Space crews were, on the
whole, a highly responsible body of men; but long missions could be
boring, and there were tedium-relieving chemicals which - though
perfectly legal on Earth - should be discouraged off it.
When Second Officer Chris Floyd reported his suspicions, the
Captain assumed that the ship's chromatographic 'sniffer' had
detected another cache of the high-grade opium which his largely
Chinese crew occasionally patronized. This time, however, the
matter was serious - very serious.
'Cargo Hold Three, Item 2/456, Captain. The manifest says
"Scientific apparatus". It contains explosives.'
'What!'
'Definitely, Sir. Here's the electrogram.'
'I'll take your word for it, Mr Floyd. Have you inspected the
item?'
'No, Sir. It's in a sealed crew case, half a metre by one metre by
five metres, approximately. One of the largest packages the science
team brought aboard. It's labelled FRAGILE - HANDLE WITH CARE. But
so is everything, of course.'
Captain Laplace drummed his fingers thoughtfully on the grained
plastic 'wood' of his desk. (He hated the pattern, and intended to
get rid of it on the next refit.) Even that slight action started
him rising out of his seat, and he automatically anchored himself
by wrapping his foot around the pillar of the chair.
Though he did not for a moment doubt Floyd's report - his new
Second Officer was very competent, and the Captain was pleased that
he had never brought up the subject of his famous grandfather
-there could be an innocent explanation. The sniffer might have
been misled by other chemicals with nervous molecular bondings.
They could go down into the hold and force open the package. No -
that might be dangerous, and could cause legal problems as well.
Best to go straight to the top; he'd have to do that anyway, sooner
or later.
'Please bring Dr Anderson here - and don't mention this to anyone
else,'
'Very good, Sir.' Chris Floyd gave a respectful but quite
unnecessary salute, and left the room in a smooth, effortless
glide.
The leader of the science team was not accustomed to zero gravity,
and his entrance was quite clumsy. His obvious genuine indignation
did not help, and he had to grab the Captain's desk several times
in an undignified manner.
'Explosives! Of course not! Let me see the manifest...
2/456...'
Dr Anderson pecked out the reference on his portable keyboard, and
slowly read off: "Mark V penetrometers, Quantity three." Of course
- no problem.'
'And just what,' said the Captain, 'is a penetrometer?' Despite his
concern, he had difficulty in suppressing a smile; it sounded a
little obscene.
'Standard planetary sampling device. You drop it, and with any luck
it will give you a core up to ten metres long - even in hard rock.
Then it sends back a complete chemical analysis. The only safe way
to study places like dayside Mercury - or Io, where we'll drop the
first one.'
'Dr Anderson,' said the Captain, with great selfrestraint, 'you may
be an excellent geologist, but you don't know much about celestial
mechanics. You can't just drop things from orbit -'
The charge of ignorance was clearly unfounded, as the scientist's
reaction proved.
'The idiots!' he said. 'Of course, you should have been
notified.'
'Exactly. Solid fuel rockets are classified as "Hazardous Cargo". I
want clearance from the underwriters, and your personal assurance
that the safety systems are adequate; otherwise, they go overboard.
Now, any other little surprises? Were you planning seismic surveys?
I believe those usually involve explosives...'
A few hours later, the somewhat chastened scientist admitted that
he had also found two bottles of elemental fluorine, used to power
the lasers which could zap passing celestial bodies at
thousand-kilometre ranges for spectrographic sampling. As pure
fluorine was about the most vicious substance known to man, it was
high on the list of prohibited materials - but, like the rockets
which drove the penetrometers down to their targets, it was
essential for the mission.
When he was quite satisfied that all the necessary precautions had
been taken, Captain Laplace accepted the scientist's apologies, and
his assurance that the oversight was entirely due to the haste with
which the expedition had been organized.
He felt sure that Dr Anderson was telling the truth, but already he
felt that there was something odd about the mission.
Just how odd he could never have imagined.
Before the detonation of Jupiter, Io had been second only to Venus
as the best approximation to Hell in the Solar System. Now that
Lucifer had raised its surface temperature another couple of
hundred degrees, even Venus could no longer compete.
The sulphur volcanoes and geysers had multiplied their activity,
now reshaping the features of the tormented satellite in years
rather than decades. The planetologists had given up any attempt at
mapmaking, and contented themselves with taking orbital photographs
every few days. From these, they had constructed awe-inspiring
time-lapse movies of inferno in action.
Lloyd's of London had charged a stiff premium for this leg of the
mission, but Io posed no real danger to a ship doing a flyby at a
minimum range of ten thousand kilometres - and over the relatively
quiescent nightside at that.
As he watched the approaching yellow and orange globe - the most
improbably garish object in the entire Solar System - Second
Officer Chris Floyd could not help recalling the time, now half a
century ago, when his grandfather had come this way. Here, Leonov
had made its rendezvous with the abandoned Discovery, and here Dr
Chandra had reawakened the dormant computer Hal. Then both ships
had flown on to survey the enormous black monolith hovering at L1,
the Inner Lagrange Point between Io and Jupiter.
Now the monolith was gone - and so was Jupiter. The minisun that
had risen like a phoenix from the implosion of the giant planet had
turned its satellites into what was virtually another Solar System,
though only on Ganymede and Europa were there regions with
Earthlike temperatures. How long that would continue to be the
case, no-one knew. Estimates of Lucifer's life-span ranged from a
thousand to a million years.
Galaxy's science team looked wistfully at the L1 point, but it was
now far too dangerous to approach. There had always been a river of
electrical energy - the Io 'flux tube' - flowing between Jupiter
and its inner satellite, and the creation of Lucifer had increased
its strength several hundredfold. Sometimes the river of power
could even be seen by the naked eye, glowing yellow with the
characteristic light of ionized sodium. Some engineers on Ganymede
had talked hopefully about tapping the gigawatts going to waste
next door, but no-one could think of a plausible way of doing
so.
The first penetrometer was launched, with vulgar comments from the
crew, and two hours later drove like a hypodermic needle into the
festering satellite. It continued to operate for almost five
seconds - ten times its designed lifetime - broadcasting thousands
of chemical, physical and rheological measurements, before Io
demolished it.
The scientists were ecstatic; van der Berg was merely pleased. He
had expected the probe to work; Io was an absurdly easy target. But
if he was right about Europa, the second penetrometer would surely
fail.
Yet that would prove nothing; it might fail for a dozen good
reasons. And when it did, there would be no alternative but a
landing.
Which, of course, was totally prohibited - not only by the laws of
man.
ASTROPOL - which, despite its grandiose title, had disappointingly
little business off Earth - would not admit that SHAKA really
existed. The USSA took exactly the same position, and its diplomats
became embarrassed or indignant when anyone was tactless enough to
mention the name.
But Newton's Third Law applies in politics, as in everything else.
The Bund had its extremists -though it tried, sometimes not very
hard, to disown them - continually plotting against the USSA.
Usually they confined themselves to attempts at commercial
sabotage, but there were occasional explosions, disappearances and
even assassinations.
Needless to say, the South Africans did not take this lightly. They
reacted by establishing their own official counter-intelligence
services, which also had a rather free-wheeling range of operations
- and likewise claimed to know nothing about SHAKA. Perhaps they
were employing the useful CIA invention of 'plausible deniability'.
It is even possible that they were telling the truth.
According to one theory, SHAKA started as a codeword, and then -
rather like Prokofiev's 'Lieutenant Kije' - had acquired a life of
its own, because it was useful to various clandestine
bureaucracies. This would certainly account for the fact that none
of its members had ever defected, or even been arrested.
But there was another, somewhat far-fetched explanation for this,
according to those who believed that SHAKA really did exist. All
its agents had been psychologically conditioned to self-destruct
before there was any possibility of interrogation.
Whatever the truth, no-one could seriously imagine that, more than
two centuries after his death, the legend of the great Zulu tyrant
would cast its shadow across worlds he never knew.
During the decade after the ignition of Jupiter, and the spreading
of the Great Thaw across its satellite system, Europa had been left
strictly alone. Then the Chinese had made a swift flyby, probing
the clouds with radar in an attempt to locate the wreck of the
Tsien. They had been unsuccessful, but their maps of dayside were
the first to show the new continents now emerging as the ice-cover
melted.
They had also discovered a perfectly straight two-kilometre-long
feature which looked so artificial that it was christened the Great
Wall. Because of its shape and size it was assumed to be the
Monolith -or a monolith, since millions had been replicated in the
hours before the creation of Lucifer.
However, there had been no reaction, or any hint of an intelligent
signal, from below the steadily thickening clouds. So a few years
later, survey satellites were placed in permanent orbit, and
high-altitude balloons were dropped into the atmosphere to study
its wind patterns. Terrestrial meteorologists found these of
absorbing interest, because Europa - with a central ocean, and a
sun that never set - presented a beautifully simplified model for
their text-books.
So had begun the game of 'Europan Roulette', as the administrators
were fond of calling it whenever the scientists proposed getting
closer to the satellite.
After fifty uneventful years, it had become somewhat boring.
Captain Laplace hoped it would remain that way, and had required
considerable reassurance from Dr Anderson.
'Personally,' he had told the scientist, 'I would regard it as a
slightly unfriendly act, to have a ton of armour-piercing hardware
dropped on me at a thousand kilometres an hour. I'm quite surprised
the World Council gave you permission.'
Dr Anderson was also a little surprised, though he might not have
been had he known that the project was the last item on a long
agenda of a Science SubCommittee late on a Friday afternoon. Of
such trifles history is made.
'I agree, Captain. But we are operating under very strict
limitations, and there's no possibility of interfering with the -
ah - Europans, whoever they are. We're aiming at a target five
kilometres above sea level.'
'So I understand. What's so interesting about Mount Zeus?'
'It's a total mystery. It wasn't even there, only a few years ago.
So you can understand why it drives the geologists crazy.'
'And your gadget will analyse it when it goes in.'
'Exactly. And - I really shouldn't be telling you this - but I've
been asked to keep the results confidential, and to send them back
to Earth encrypted. Obviously, someone's on the track of a major
discovery, and wants to make quite sure they're not beaten to a
publication. Would you believe that scientists could be so
petty?'
Captain Laplace could well believe it, but did not want to
disillusion his passenger. Dr Anderson seemed touchingly
naïve; whatever was going on - and the Captain was now quite
certain there was much more to this mission than met the eye -
Anderson knew nothing about it.
'I can only hope, Doctor, that the Europans don't go in for
mountain climbing. I'd hate to interrupt any attempt to put a flag
on their local Everest.'
There was a feeling of unusual excitement aboard Galaxy when the
penetrometer was launched - and even the inevitable jokes were
muted. During the two hours of the probe's long fall towards
Europa, virtually every member of the crew found some perfectly
legitimate excuse to visit the bridge and watch the guidance
operation. Fifteen minutes before impact, Captain Laplace declared
it out of bounds to all visitors, except the ship's new steward
Rosie; without her endless supply of squeezebulbs full of excellent
coffee, the operation could not have continued.
Everything went perfectly. Soon after atmospheric entry, the
air-brakes were deployed, slowing the penetrometer to an acceptable
impact velocity. The radar image of the target - featureless, with
no indication of scale - grew steadily on the screen. At minus one
second, all the recorders switched automatically to high
speed...
But there was nothing to record. 'Now I know,' said Dr Anderson
sadly, 'just how they felt at the Jet Propulsion Lab, when those
first Rangers crashed into the Moon - with their cameras
blind.'
Only time is universal; night and day are merely quaint local
customs, found on those planets which tidal forces have not yet
robbed of their rotation. But however far they travel from their
native world, human beings can never escape the diurnal rhythm, set
ages ago by its cycle of light and darkness.
So at 01.05, Universal Time, Second Officer Chang was alone on the
bridge, while the ship was sleeping around him. There was no real
need for him to be awake either, since Galaxy's electronic senses
would detect any malfunction far sooner than he could possibly do.
But a century of cybernetics had proved that human beings were
still slightly better than machines at dealing with the unexpected;
and sooner or later, the unexpected always happened.
'Where's my coffee?' thought Chang grumpily. 'It's not like Rosie
to be late.' He wondered if the steward had been affected by the
same malaise that had overtaken both scientists and space crew,
after the disasters of the last twenty-four hours.
Following the failure of the first penetrometer, there had been a
hasty conference to decide the next step. One unit was left; it had
been intended for Callisto, but it could be used just as easily
here.
'And anyway,' Dr Anderson had argued, 'we've landed on Callisto -
there's nothing there except assorted varieties of cracked
ice.'
There had been no disagreement. After a twelve-hour delay for
modification and testing, Pen No. 3 was launched into the Europan
cloudscape, following the invisible track of its precursor.
This time, the ship's recorders did get some data - for about half
a millisecond. The accelerometer on the probe, which was calibrated
to operate up to 20,000 gee, gave one brief pulse before going
off-scale. Everything must have been destroyed in very much less
than the twinkling of an eye.
After a second, and even gloomier, post-mortem, it was decided to
report to Earth, and wait in high orbit round Europa for any
further instructions, before proceeding to Callisto and the outer
moons,
'Sorry to be late, Sir,' said Rose McCullen (one would never guess
from her name that she was slightly darker than the coffee she was
carrying) 'but I must have set the alarm wrong.'
'Lucky for us,' chuckled the Officer of the Watch, 'that you're not
running the ship.'
'I don't understand how anyone could run it,' answered Rose. 'It
all looks so complicated.'
'Oh, it's not as bad as it looks,' said Chang. 'And don't they give
you basic space theory in your training course?'
'Er - yes. But I never understood much of it. Orbits and all that
nonsense.'
Second Officer Chang was bored, and felt it would be a kindness to
enlighten his audience. And although Rose was not exactly his type,
she was undoubtedly attractive; a little effort now might be a
worthwhile investment. It never occurred to him that, having
performed her duty, Rose might like to go back to sleep.
Twenty minutes later, Second Officer Chang waved at the navigation
console and concluded expansively: 'So you see, it's really almost
automatic. You only have to punch in a few numbers and the ship
takes care of the rest.'
Rose seemed to be getting tired; she kept looking at her watch.
'I'm sorry,' said the suddenly contrite Chang. 'I shouldn't have
kept you up.'
'Oh no - it's extremely interesting. Please go on.'
'Definitely not. Maybe some other time. Goodnight, Rosie - and
thanks for the coffee.'
'Goodnight, Sir.'
Steward Third Class Rose McCullen glided (not too skilfully)
towards the still open door. Chang did not bother to look back when
he heard it close.
It was thus a considerable shock when, a few seconds later, he was
addressed by a completely unfamiliar female voice.
'Mr Chang - don't bother to touch the alarm button - it's
disconnected. Here are the landing coordinates. Take the ship
down.'
Slowly, wondering if he had somehow dozed off and was having a
nightmare, Chang rotated his chair.
The person who had been Rose McCullen was floating beside the oval
hatchway, steadying herself by holding on to the locking lever of
the door. Everything about her seemed to have changed; in a moment
of time, their roles had been reversed. The shy steward - who had
never before looked at him directly - was now regarding Chang with
a cold, merciless stare that made him feel like a rabbit hypnotized
by a snake. The small but deadly-looking gun nestling in her free
hand seemed an unnecessary adornment; Chang had not the slightest
doubt that she could very efficiently kill him without it.
Nevertheless, both his self-respect and his professional honour
demanded that he should not surrender without some sort of a
struggle. At the very least, he might be able to gain time.
'Rose,' he said - and now his lips had difficulty in forming a name
which had become suddenly inappropriate - 'this is perfectly
ridiculous. What I told you just now - it's simply not true. I
couldn't possibly land the ship by myself. It would take hours to
compute the correct orbit, and I'd need someone to help me. A
co-pilot, at least.'
The gun did not waver.
'I'm not a fool, Mr Chang. This ship isn't energy-limited, like the
old chemical rockets. The escape velocity of Europa is only three
kilometres a second. Part of your training is an emergency landing
with the main computer down. Now you can put it into practice: the
window for an optimum touchdown at the coordinates I will give you
opens in five minutes.'
'That type of abort,' said Chang, now beginning to sweat profusely,
'has an estimated twenty-five per cent failure rate' - the true
figure was ten per cent, but in the circumstances he felt that a
little exaggeration was justified - 'and it's years since I checked
out on it.'
'In that case,' answered Rose McCullen, 'I'll have to eliminate you
and ask the Captain to send me someone more qualified. Annoying,
because we'll miss this window and have to wait a couple of hours
for the next one. Four minutes left.'
Second Officer Chang knew when he was beaten; but at least he had
tried.
'Let me have those coordinates,' he said.
Captain Laplace woke instantly at the first gentle tapping, like a
distant woodpecker, of the attitude control jets. For a moment he
wondered if he was dreaming: no, the ship was definitely turning in
space.
Perhaps it was getting too hot on one side and the thermal control
system was making some minor adjustments. That did happen
occasionally, and was a black mark for the officer on duty, who
should have noticed that the temperature envelope was being
approached.
He reached for the intercom button to call - who was it? - Mr Chang
on the bridge. His hand never completed the movement.
After days of weightlessness, even a tenth of a gravity is a shock.
To the Captain it seemed like minutes, though it must have been
only a few seconds, before he could unbuckle his restraining
harness and struggle out of his bunk. This time, he found the
button and jabbed it viciously. There was no reply.
He tried to ignore the thuds and bumps of inadequately secured
objects that had been taken unawares by the onset of gravity.
Things seemed to go on falling for a long time, but presently the
only abnormal sound was the muffled, far-off scream of the drive at
full blast.
He tore open the curtain of the cabin's little window, and looked
out at the stars. He knew roughly where the ship's axis should have
been pointing; even if he could only judge it to within thirty or
forty degrees, that would allow him to distinguish between the two
possible alternatives.
Galaxy could be vectored either to gain, or to lose, orbital
velocity. It was losing it - and therefore preparing to fall
towards Europa.
There was an insistent banging on the door, and the Captain
realized that little more than a minute could really have passed.
Second Officer Floyd and two other crew members were crowded in the
narrow passageway.
'The bridge is locked, Sir,' Floyd reported breathlessly. 'We can't
get in - and Chang doesn't answer. We don't know what's
happened.'
'I'm afraid I do,' Captain Laplace answered, climbing into his
shorts. 'Some madman was bound to try it sooner or later. We've
been hijacked, and I know where. But I'm damned if I know why.'
He glanced at his watch, and did a quick mental calculation.
'At this thrust level, we'll have deorbited within fifteen minutes
- make it ten for safety. Any way we can cut the drive without
endangering the ship?'
Second Officer Yu, Engineering, looked very unhappy, but
volunteered a reluctant reply.
'We could pull the circuit breakers in the pump motor lines, and
cut off the propellant supply.'
'Can we get at them?'
'Yes - they're on Deck Three.'
'Then let's go.'
'Er - then the independent backup system would take over. For
safety, that's behind a sealed bulkhead on Deck Five - we'd have to
get a cutter - no, it couldn't be done in time.'
Captain Laplace had been afraid of that. The men of genius who had
designed Galaxy had tried to protect the ship from all plausible
accidents. There was no way they could have safeguarded it against
human malevolence.
'Any alternatives?'
'Not in the time available, I'm afraid.'
'Then let's get to the bridge and see if we can talk to Chang - and
whoever is with him.'
And who could that be? he wondered. He refused to believe that it
could be one of his regular crew. That left - of course, there was
the answer! He could see it all. Monomaniac researcher tries to
prove theory - experiments frustrated - decides that the quest for
knowledge takes precedence over everything else.
It was uncomfortably like one of those cheap 'mad scientist'
melodramas, but it fitted the facts perfectly. He wondered if Dr
Anderson had decided that this was the only road to a Nobel
Prize.
That theory was swiftly demolished when the breathless and
dishevelled geologist arrived gasping:
'For God's sake, Captain - what's happening? We're under full
thrust! Are we going up - or down?'
'Down,' answered Captain Laplace. 'In about ten minutes, we'll be
in an orbit that will hit Europa. I can only hope that whoever's at
the controls knows what he's doing.'
Now they were at the bridge, facing the closed door. Not a sound
came from the far side.
Laplate rapped as loudly as he possibly could without bruising his
knuckles.
'This is the Captain! Let us in!'
He felt rather foolish at giving an order which would certainly be
ignored, but he hoped for at least some reaction. To his surprise,
he got one.
The external speaker hissed into life, and a voice said: 'Don't
attempt anything foolish, Captain. I have a gun, and Mr Chang is
obeying my orders.'
'Who was that?' whispered one of the officers. 'It sounds like a
woman!'
'You're right,' said the Captain grimly. That certainly cut down
the alternatives, but didn't help matters in any way.
'What do you hope to do? You know you can't possibly get away with
it!' he shouted, trying to sound masterful rather than
plaintive.
'We're landing on Europa. And if you want to take off again, don't
try to stop me.'
'Her room's completely clean,' Second Officer Chris Floyd reported
thirty minutes later, when the thrust had been cut to zero and
Galaxy was falling along the ellipse which would soon graze the
atmosphere of Europa. They were now committed; although it would
now be possible to immobilize the engines, it would be suicide to
do so. They would be needed again to make a landing - although that
could be merely a more protracted form of suicide.
'Rosie McCullen! Who would have believed it! Do you suppose she's
on drugs?'
'No,' said Floyd. 'This has been very carefully planned. She must
have a radio hidden somewhere in the ship. We should search for
it.'
'You sound like a damned cop.'
'That will do, gentlemen,' said the Captain. Tempers were getting
frayed, largely through sheer frustration and the total failure to
establish any further contact with the barricaded bridge. He
glanced at his watch.
'Less than two hours before we enter atmosphere - what there is of
it. I'll be in my cabin - it's just possible they may try to call
me there. Mr Yu, please stand by the bridge and report any
developments at once.'
He had never felt so helpless in his life, but there were times
when doing nothing was the only thing to do. As he left the
officers' wardroom, he heard someone say wistfully: 'I could do
with a bulb of coffee. Rosie made the best I've ever tasted.'
Yes, thought the Captain grimly, she's certainly efficient.
Whatever job she tackles, she'll do it thoroughly.
There was only one man aboard Galaxy who could regard the situation
as anything but a total disaster. I may be about to die, Rolf van
der Berg told himself; but at least I have a chance of scientific
immortality. Though that might be poor consolation, it was more
than anyone else on the ship could hope for.
That Galaxy was heading for Mount Zeus he did not doubt for a
moment; there was nothing else on Europa of any significance.
Indeed, there was nothing remotely comparable on any planet.
So his theory - and he had to admit that it was still a theory -
was no longer a secret. How could it have leaked out?
He trusted Uncle Paul implicitly, but he might have been
indiscreet. More likely, someone had monitored his computers,
perhaps as a matter of routine. If so, the old scientist could well
be in danger; Rolf wondered if he could - or should - get a warning
to him. He knew that the communications officer was trying to
contact Ganymede via one of the emergency transmitters; an
automatic beacon alert had already gone out, and the news would be
hitting Earth any minute now. It had been on its way now for almost
an hour...
'Come in,' he said, at the quiet knock on his cabin door. 'Oh -
hello, Chris. What can I do for you?'
He was surprised to see Second Officer Chris Floyd, whom he knew no
better than any of his other colleagues. If they landed safely on
Europa, he thought gloomily, they might get to know each other far
better than they wished.
'Hello, Doctor. You're the only person who lives around here. I
wondered if you could help me.'
'I'm not sure how anyone can help anyone at the moment. What's the
latest from the bridge?'
'Nothing new: I've just left Yu and Gillings up there, trying to
fix a mike on the door. But no-one inside seems to be talking; not
surprising - Chang must have his hands full.'
'Can he get us down safely?'
'He's the best; if anyone can do it, he can. I'm more worried about
getting off again.'
'God - I'd not been looking that far ahead. I assumed that was no
problem.'
'It could be marginal. Remember, this ship is designed for orbital
operations. We hadn't planned to put down on any major moon -
though we had hoped to rendezvous with Ananke and Carme. So we
could be stuck on Europa - especially if Chang has to waste
propellant looking for a good landing site.'
'Do we know where he is trying to land?' Rolf asked, trying not to
sound more interested than might be reasonably expected. He must
have failed, because Chris looked at him sharply.
'There's no way we can tell at this stage, though we may get a
better idea when he starts braking. But you know these moons; where
do you think?'
'There's only one interesting place. Mount Zeus.'
'Why should anyone want to land there?'
RoIf shrugged.
'That was one of the things we'd hoped to find out. Cost us two
expensive penetrometers.'
'And it looks like costing a great deal more. Haven't you any
ideas?'
'You sound like a cop,' said van der Berg with a grin, not
intending it in the least seriously.
'Funny - that's the second time I've been told that in the last
hour.'
Instantly, there was a subtle change in the atmosphere of the cabin
- almost as if the life-support system had readjusted itself.
'Oh - I was just joking - are you?'
'If I was, I wouldn't admit it, would I?'
That was no answer, thought van der Berg; but on second thoughts,
perhaps it was.
He looked intently at the young officer, noticing - not for the
first time - his striking resemblance to his famous grandfather.
Someone had mentioned that Chris Floyd had only joined Galaxy on
this mission, from another ship in the Tsung fleet - adding
sarcastically that it was useful to have good connections in any
business. But there had been no criticism of Floyd's ability; he
was an excellent space officer. Those skills might qualify him for
other part-time jobs as well; look at RosieMcCulIen - who had also,
now he came to think of it, joined Galaxy just before this
mission.
Rolf van der Berg felt that he had become enmeshed in some vast and
tenuous web of interplanetary intrigue; as a scientist, accustomed
to getting - usually - straightforward answers to the questions he
put to nature, he did not enjoy the situation.
But he could hardly claim to be an innocent victim. He had tried to
conceal the truth - or at least what he believed to be the truth.
And now the consequences of that deceit had multiplied like the
neutrons in a chain reaction; with results that might be equally
disastrous.
Which side was Chris Floyd on? How many sides were there? The Bund
would certainly be involved, once the secret had leaked out. But
there were splinter groups within the Bund itself, and groups
opposing them; it was like a hall of mirrors.
There was one point, however, on which he did feel reasonably
certain. Chris Floyd, if only because of his connections, could be
trusted. I'd put my money, thought van der Berg, on him being
assigned to ASTROPOL for the duration of the mission - however
long, or short, that might now be.
'I'd like to help you, Chris,' he said slowly. 'As you probably
suspect, I do have some theories. But they may still be utter
nonsense.
'In less than half an hour, we may know the truth. Until then, I
prefer to say nothing.'
And this is not, he told himself, merely ingrained Boer
stubbornness. If he had been mistaken, he would prefer not to die
among men who knew that he was the fool who had brought them to
their doom.
Second Officer Chang had been wrestling with the problem ever since
Galaxy had been successfully - to his surprise as much as his
relief - injected into transfer orbit. For the next couple of hours
she was in the hands of God, or at least Sir Isaac Newton; there
was nothing to do but wait until the final braking and descent
manoeuvre.
He had briefly considered trying to fool Rosie by giving the ship a
reverse vector at closest approach, and so taking it out into space
again. It would then be back in a stable orbit, and a rescue could
eventually be mounted from Ganymede. But there was a fundamental
objection to this scheme: he would certainly not be alive to be
rescued. Though Chang was no coward, he would prefer not to become
a posthumous hero of the spaceways.
In any event, his chances of surviving the next hour seemed remote.
He had been ordered to take down, single-handed, a three-thousand
tonner on totally unknown territory. This was not a feat he would
care to attempt even on the familiar Moon.
'How many minutes before you start braking?' asked Rosie. Perhaps
it was more of an order than a question; she clearly understood the
fundamentals of astronautics, and Chang abandoned his last wild
fantasies of outwitting her.
'Five,' he said reluctantly. 'Can I warn the rest of the ship to
stand by?'
'I'll do it. Give me the mike... THIS IS THE BRIDGE. WE START
BRAKING IN FIVE MINUTES. REPEAT, FIVE MINUTES. OUT.'
To the scientists and officers assembled in the wardroom, the
message was fully expected. They had had one piece of luck; the
external video monitors had not been switched off. Perhaps Rose had
forgotten about them; it was more likely that she had not bothered.
So now, as helpless spectators - quite literally, a captive
audience - they could watch their unfolding doom.
The cloudy crescent of Europa now filled the field of the rear-view
camera. There was no break anywhere in the solid overcast of water
vapour recondensing on its way back to nightside. That was not
important, since the landing would be radar-controlled until the
last moment. It would, however, prolong the agony of observers who
had to rely on visible light,
No-one stared more intently at the approaching world than the man
who had studied it with such frustration for almost a decade. Rolf
van der Berg, seated in one of the flimsy low-gravity chairs with
the restraining belt lightly fastened, barely noticed the first
onset of weight as braking commenced.
In five seconds, they were up to full thrust. All the officers were
doing rapid calculations on their comsets; without access to
Navigation, there would be a lot of guesswork, and Captain Laplace
waited for a consensus to emerge.
'Eleven minutes,' he announced presently, 'assuming he doesn't
reduce thrust level - he's at max now. And assuming he's going to
hover at ten kilometres - just above the overcast - and then go
straight down. That could take another five minutes.'
It was unnecessary for him to add that the last second of those
five minutes would be the most critical.
Europa seemed determined to keep its secrets to the very end. When
Galaxy was hovering motionless, just above the cloudscape, there
was still no sign of the land - or sea - beneath. Then, for a few
agonizing seconds, the screens became completely blank - except for
a glimpse of the now extended, and very seldom used, landing gear.
The noise of its emergence a few minutes earlier had caused a brief
flurry of alarm among the passengers; now they could only hope that
it would perform its duty.
How thick is this damn cloud? van der Berg asked himself. Does it
go all the way down -No, it was breaking, thinning out into shreds
and wisps - and there was the new Europa, spread out, it seemed,
only a few thousand metres below.
It was indeed new; one did not have to be a geologist to see that.
Four billion years ago, perhaps, the infant Earth had looked like
this, as land and sea prepared to begin their endless conflict.
Here, until fifty years ago, there had been neither land nor sea -
only ice. But now the ice had melted on the Lucifer-facing
hemisphere, the resulting water had boiled upwards - and been
deposited in the permanent deep-freeze of nightside. The removal of
billions of tons of liquid from one hemisphere to the other had
thus exposed ancient seabeds that had never before known even the
pale light of the far-distant Sun.
Some day, perhaps, these contorted landscapes would be softened and
tamed by a spreading blanket of vegetation; now they were barren
lava flows and gently steaming mud flats, interrupted occasionally
by masses of up-thrust rock with strangely slanting strata. This
had clearly been an area of great tectonic disturbance, which was
hardly surprising if it had seen the recent birth of a mountain the
size of Everest.
And there it was - looming up over the unnaturally close horizon.
Rolf van der Berg felt a tightness in his chest, and a tingling of
the flesh at the back of his neck. No longer through the remote
impersonal senses of instruments, but with his own eyes, he was
seeing the mountain of his dreams.
As he well knew, it was in the approximate shape of a tetrahedron,
tilted so that one face was almost vertical. (That would be a nice
challenge to climbers, even in this gravity - especially as they
couldn't drive pitons into it...) The summit was hidden in the
clouds, and much of the gently-sloping face turned towards them was
covered with snow.
'Is that what all the fuss is about?' muttered someone in disgust.
'Looks like a perfectly ordinary mountain to me. I guess that once
you've seen one -' He was 'shushed' angrily into silence.
Galaxy was now drifting slowly towards Mount Zeus, as Chang
searched for a good landing place. The ship had very little lateral
control, as ninety per cent of the main thrust had to be used
merely to support it. There was enough propellant to hover for
perhaps five minutes; after that, he might still be able to land
safely - but he could never take off again.
Neil Armstrong had faced the same dilemma, almost a hundred years
ago. But he had not been piloting with a gun aimed at his head.
Yet for the last few minutes, Chang had totally forgotten both gun
and Rosie. Every sense was focused on the job ahead; he was
virtually part of the great machine he was controlling. The only
human emotion left to him was not fear - but exhilaration. This was
the job he had been trained to perform; this was the highlight of
his professional career - even as it might be the finale.
And that was what it looked like becoming. The foot of the mountain
was now less than a kilometre away - and he had still found no
landing site. The terrain was incredibly rugged, torn with canyons,
littered with gigantic boulders. He had not seen a single
horizontal area larger than a tennis court -and the red line on the
propellant gauge was only thirty seconds away.
But there, at last, was a smooth surface - much the flattest he'd
seen - it was his only chance within the time frame.
Delicately, he juggled the giant, unstable cylinder he was
controlling towards the patch of horizontal ground - it seemed to
be snow-covered - yes, it was - the blast was blowing the snow away
- but what's underneath? - looks like ice - must be a frozen lake -
how thick? - HOW THICK? -The five-hundred-ton hammer-blow of
Galaxy's main jets hit the treacherously inviting surface. A
pattern of radiating lines sped swiftly across it; the ice cracked,
and great sheets started to overturn. Concentric waves of boiling
water hurtled outwards as the fury of the drive blasted into the
suddenly uncovered lake.
Like the well-trained officer he was, Chang reacted automatically,
without the fatal hesitations of thought. His left hand ripped open
the SAFETY LOCK bar; his right grabbed the red lever it protected -
and pulled it to the open position.
The ABORT program, peacefully sleeping ever since Galaxy was
launched, took over and hurled the ship back up into the sky.
In the wardroom, the sudden surge of full thrust came like a stay
of execution. The horrified officers had seen the collapse of the
chosen landing site, and knew that there was only one way of
escape. Now that Chang had taken it, they once more permitted
themselves the luxury of breath.
But how long they could continue to enjoy that experience, no-one
could guess. Only Chang knew whether the ship had enough propellant
to reach a stable orbit; and even if it did, Captain Laplace
thought gloomily, the lunatic with the gun might order him down
again. Though he did not for a minute believe that she really was a
lunatic; she knew exactly what she was doing.
Suddenly, there was a change in thrust.
'Number Four motor's just cut,' said an engineering officer. 'I'm
not surprised - probably overheated. Not rated for so long at this
level.'
There was, of course, no sense of any directional change - the
reduced thrust was still along the ship's axis - but the views on
the monitor screens had tilted crazily. Galaxy was still ascending,
but no longer vertically. She had become a ballistic missile, aimed
at some unknown target on Europa.
Once more, the thrust dropped abruptly; across the video monitors,
the horizon became level again.
'He's cut the opposite motor - only way to stop us cartwheeling -
but can he maintain altitude - good man!'
The watching scientists could not see what was good about it; the
view on the monitors had disappeared completely, obscured by a
blinding white fog.
'He's dumping excess propellant - lightening the ship -'
The thrust dwindled away to zero; the ship was in free fall. In a
few seconds, it had dropped through the vast cloud of ice crystals
created when its dumped propellant had exploded into space. And
there beneath it, approaching at a leisurely one-eighth of a
gravity acceleration, was Europa's central sea. At least Chang
would not have to select a landing site; from now on, it would be
standard operating procedure, familiar as a video game to millions
who had never gone into space, and never would.
All you had to do was to balance the thrust against gravity, so
that the descending ship reached zero velocity at zero altitude.
There was some margin for error, but not much, even for the water
landings which the first American astronauts had preferred, and
which Chang was now reluctantly emulating. If he made a mistake -
and after the last few hours, he could scarcely be blamed - no home
computer would say to him: 'Sorry - you've crashed. Would you like
to try again? Answer YES/NO...'
Second Officer Yu and his two companions, waiting with their
improvised weapons outside the locked door of the bridge, had
perhaps been given the toughest assignment of all. They had no
monitor screens to tell them what was happening, and had to rely on
messages from the wardroom. Nor had there been anything through the
spy mike, which was hardly surprising. Chang and McCullen had very
little time or need for conversation.
The touchdown was superb, with hardly a jolt. Galaxy sank a few
extra metres, then bobbed up again, to float vertically and -
thanks to the weight of the engines - in the upright position.
It was then that the listeners heard the first intelligible sounds
through the spy mike.
'You maniac, Rosie,' said Chang's voice, more in resigned
exhaustion than anger. 'I hope you're satisfied. You've killed us
all.'
There was one pistol shot, then a long silence.
Yu and his colleagues waited patiently, knowing that something was
bound to happen soon. Then they heard the locking levers being
unlatched, and gripped the spanners and metal bars they were
carrying. She might get one of them, but not all -The door swung
open, very slowly.
'Sorry,' said Second Officer Chang. 'I must have passed out for a
minute.'
Then, like any reasonable man, he fainted again.
I can never understand how a man could become a doctor, Captain
Laplace told himself. Or an undertaker, for that matter. They have
some nasty jobs to do...
'Well, did you find anything?'
'No, Skipper. Of course, I don't have the right sort of equipment.
There are some implants that you could only locate through a
microscope - or so I'm told. They could only be very short range,
though.'
'Perhaps to a relay transmitter somewhere in the ship - Floyd's
suggested we make a search. You took fingerprints and - any other
idents?'
'Yes - when we contact Ganymede, we'll beam them up, with her
papers. But I doubt if we'll ever know who Rosie was, or who she
was acting for. Or why, for God's sake.'
'At least she showed some human instincts,' said Laplace
thoughtfully. 'She must have known she'd failed, when Chang pulled
the ABORT lever. She could have shot him then, instead of letting
him land.'
'Much good that will do us, I'm afraid. Let me tell you something
that happened when Jenkins and I put the cadaver out through the
refuse dump.'
The doctor pursed his lips in a grimace of distaste.
'You were right, of course - it was the only thing to do. Well, we
didn't bother to attach any weights - it floated for a few minutes
- we watched to see if it would clear the ship - and then...'
The doctor seemed to be struggling for words.
'What, dammit?'
'Something came up out, of the water, Like a parrot beak, but about
a hundred times bigger. It took - Rosie - with one snap, and
disappeared. We have some impressive company here; even if we could
breathe outside, I certainly wouldn't recommend swimming -'
'Bridge to Captain,' said the officer on duty, 'Big disturbance in
the water - camera three - I'll give you the picture.'
'That's the thing I saw!' cried the doctor. He felt a sudden chill
at the inevitable, ominous thought: I hope it's not back for
more.
Suddenly, a vast bulk broke through the surface of the ocean and
arched into the sky. For a moment, the whole monstrous shape was
suspended between air and water.
The familiar can be as shocking as the strange - when it is in the
wrong place. Both captain and doctor exclaimed simultaneously:
'It's a shark!'
There was just time to notice a few subtle differences - in
addition to the monstrous parrot-beak - before the giant crashed
back into the sea. There was an extra pair of fins - and there
appeared to be no gills. Nor were there any eyes, but on either
side of the beak there were curious protuberances that might be
some other sense organs.
'Convergent evolution, of course,' said the doctor. 'Same problems,
same solutions, on any planet. Look at Earth. Sharks, dolphins,
ichthyosaurs - all oceanic predators must have the same basic
design. That beak puzzles me, though -'
'What's it doing now?'
The creature had surfaced again, but now it was moving very slowly,
as if exhausted after that one gigantic leap. In fact, it seemed to
be in trouble - even in agony; it was beating its tail against the
sea, without attempting to move in any definite direction.
Suddenly, it vomited its last meal, turned belly up, and lay
wallowing lifelessly in the gentle swell.
'Oh my God,' whispered the Captain, his voice full of revulsion. 'I
think I know what's happened.'
'Totally alien biochemistries,' said the doctor; even he seemed
shaken by the sight. 'Rosie's claimed one victim, after all.'
The Sea of Galilee was, of course, named after the man who had
discovered Europa - as he in turn had been named after a much
smaller sea on another world.
It was a very young sea, being less than fifty years old; and, like
most new-born infants, could be quite boisterous. Although the
Europan atmosphere was still too thin to generate real hurricanes,
a steady wind blew from the surrounding land towards the tropical
zone at the point above which Lucifer was stationary. Here, at the
point of perpetual noon, the water was continually boiling - though
at a temperature, in this thin atmosphere, barely hot enough to
make a good cup of tea.
Luckily, the steamy, turbulent region immediately beneath Lucifer
was a thousand kilometres away; Galaxy had descended in a
relatively calm area, less than a hundred kilometres from the
nearest land. At peak velocity, she could cover that distance in a
fraction of a second; but now, as she drifted beneath the
low-hanging clouds of Europa's permanent overcast, land seemed as
far-off as the remotest quasar. To make matters worse - if possible
- the eternal off-shore wind was taking her further out to sea. And
even if she could manage to ground herself on some virgin beach of
this new world, she might be no better off than she was now.
But she would be more comfortable; spaceships, though admirably
watertight, are seldom seaworthy. Galaxy was floating in a vertical
position, bobbing up and down with gentle but disturbing
oscillations; half the crew was already sick.
Captain Laplace's first action, after he had been through the
damage reports, was to appeal for anyone with experience in
handling boats - of any size or shape. It seemed reasonable to
suppose that among thirty astronautical engineers and space
scientists there should be a considerable amount of seafaring
talent, and he immediately located five amateur sailors and even
one professional - Purser Frank Lee who had started his career with
the Tsung shipping lines and then switched to space.
Although pursers were more accustomed to handling accounting
machines (often, in Frank Lee's case, a two-hundred-year-old ivory
abacus) than navigational instruments, they still had to pass exams
in basic seamanship. Lee had never had a chance of testing his
maritime skills; now, almost a billion kilometres from the South
China Sea, his time had come.
'We should flood the propellant tanks,' he told the Captain. 'Then
we'll ride lower and won't be bobbing up and down so badly.'
It seemed foolish to let even more water into the ship, and the
Captain hesitated.
'Suppose we run aground?'
No one made the obvious comment 'What difference will it make?'
Without any serious discussion, it had been assumed that they would
be better off on land - if they could ever reach it.
'We can always blow the tanks again. We'll have to do that anyway,
when we reach shore, to get the ship into a horizontal position.
Thank God we have power...'
His voice trailed off; everyone knew what he meant. Without the
auxiliary reactor which was now running the life-support systems,
they would all be dead within hours. Now - barring a breakdown -
the ship could sustain them indefinitely.
Ultimately, of course, they would starve; they had just had
dramatic proof that there was no nourishment, but only poison, in
the seas of Europa.
At least they had made contact with Ganymede, so that the entire
human race now knew their predicament. The best brains in the Solar
System would now be trying to save them. If they failed, the
passengers and crew of Galaxy would have the consolation of dying
in the full glare of publicity.
'The latest news,' said Captain Smith to his assembled passengers,
'is that Galaxy is afloat, and in fairly good condition. One crew
member - a woman steward - has been killed - we don't know the
details - but everyone else is safe.
'The ship's systems are all working; there are a few leaks, but
they've been controlled. Captain Laplace says there's no immediate
danger, but the prevailing wind is driving them further away from
the mainland, towards the centre of dayside. That's not a serious
problem - there are several large islands they're virtually certain
to reach first. At the moment they're ninety kilometres from the
nearest land. They've seen some large marine animals, but they show
no sign of hostility.
'Barring further accidents, they should be able to survive for
several months, until they run out of food - which of course is now
being strictly rationed. But according to Captain Laplace, morale
is still high.
'Now, this is where we come in. If we return to Earth immediately,
get refuelled and refitted, we can reach Europa in a retrograde,
powered orbit in eighty-five days. Universe is the only ship
currently commissioned that can land there and take off again with
a reasonable payload. The Ganymede shuttles may be able to drop
supplies, but that's all - though it may make the difference
between life and death.
'I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen, that our visit has been cut short
- but I think you'll agree that we've shown you everything we
promised. And I'm sure you'll approve of our new mission - even
though the chances of success are, frankly, rather slim. That's all
for the moment. Dr Floyd, can I have a word with you?'
As the others drifted slowly and thoughtfully from the main lounge
- scene of so many less portentous briefings - the Captain scanned
a clipboard full of messages. There were still occasions when words
printed on pieces of paper were the most convenient medium of
communication, but even here technology had made its mark. The
sheets that the Captain was reading were made of the indefinitely
reusable multifax material which had done so much to reduce the
load on the humble wastepaper basket.
'Heywood,' he said - now that the formalities were over - 'as you
can guess, the circuits are burning up. And there's a lot going on
that I don't understand.'
'Ditto,' answered Floyd. 'Anything from Chris yet?'
"No, but Ganymede's relayed your message; he should have had it by
now. There's a priority override on private communications, as you
can imagine - but of course your name overrode that.'
'Thanks, Skipper. Anything I can do to help?'
'Not really - I'll let you know.'
It was almost the last time, for quite a while, that they would be
on speaking terms with each other. Within a few hours Dr Heywood
Floyd would become 'That crazy old fool!', and the short-lived
'Mutiny on the Universe' would have begun - led by the Captain.
It was not actually Heywood Floyd's idea; he only wished it
was.
Second Officer Roy Jolson was 'Stars', the navigation officer;
Floyd barely knew him by sight, and had never had occasion to say
more than good morning to him. He was quite surprised, therefore,
by the diffident knock on his cabin door.
The astrogator was carrying a set of charts, and seemed a little
ill at ease. He could not be overawed by Floyd's presence -
everyone on board now took him for granted - so there must be some
other reason.
'Dr Floyd,' he began, in a tone of such urgent anxiety that he
reminded his listener of a salesman whose entire future depends on
making the next deal. 'I'd like your advice - and assistance.'
'Of course - but what can I do?'
Jolson unrolled the chart showing the position of all the planets
inside the orbit of Lucifer.
'Your old trick of coupling Leonov and Discovery, to escape from
Jupiter before it blew up, gave me the idea.'
'It wasn't mine. Walter Curnow thought of it.'
'Oh - I never knew that. Of course, we don't have another ship to
boost us here - but we have something much better.'
'What do you mean?' asked Floyd, completely baffled.
'Don't laugh. Why go back to Earth to take on propellant - when Old
Faithful is blasting out tons every second, a couple of hundred
metres away? If we tapped that, we could get to Europa not in three
months - but in three weeks.'
The concept was so obvious, yet so daring, that it took Floyd's
breath away. He could see half a dozen objections instantly; but
none of them seemed fatal.
'What does the Captain think of the idea?'
'I've not told him; that's why I need your help. I'd like you to
check my calculations - then put the idea to him. He'd turn me down
- I'm quite certain - and I don't blame him. If I was captain, I
think I would too...'
There was a long silence in the little cabin. Then Heywood Floyd
said slowly: 'Let me give you all the reasons why it can't be done.
Then you can tell me why I'm wrong.'
Second Officer Jolson knew his commander; Captain Smith had never
heard such a crazy suggestion in his life.
His objections were all well-founded, and showed little, if any,
trace of the notorious 'not invented here' syndrome.
'Oh, it would work in theory,' he admitted. 'But think of the
practical problems, man! How would you get the stuff into the
tanks?'
'I've talked to the engineers. We'd move the ship to the edge of
the crater - it's quite safe to get within fifty metres. There's
plumbing in the unfurnished section we can rip out - then we'd run
a line to Old Faithful and wait until he spouts; you know how
reliable and well-behaved he is.'
'But our pumps can't operate in a near vacuum!'
'We don't need them; we can rely on the geyser's own efflux
velocity to give us an input of at least a hundred kilos a second.
Old Faithful will do all the work.'
'He'll just give ice crystals and steam, not liquid water.'
'It will condense when it gets on board.'
'You've really thought this out, haven't you?' said the Captain
with grudging admiration. 'But I just don't believe it. Is the
water pure enough, for one thing? What about contaminants -
especially carbon particles?'
Floyd could not help smiling. Captain Smith was developing an
obsession about soot...
'We can filter out large ones; the rest won't affect the reaction.
Oh yes - the hydrogen isotope ratio here looks better than for
Earth. You may even get some extra thrust.'
'What do your colleagues think of the idea? If we head straight for
Lucifer, it may be months before they can get home...
'I've not spoken to them. But does it matter, when so many lives
are at stake? We may reach Galaxy seventy days ahead of schedule!
Seventy days! Think what could happen on Europa in that time!'
'I'm perfectly aware of the time factor,' snapped the Captain.
'That applies to us as well. We may not have provisions for such an
extended trip.'
Now he's straining at gnats, thought Floyd - and he must know that
I know it. Better be tactful...
'An extra couple of weeks? I can't believe we have so narrow a
margin. You've been feeding us too well, anyway. Do some of us good
to be on short rations for a while.'
The Captain managed a frosty smile.
'You can tell that to Willis and Mihailovich. But I'm afraid the
whole idea is insane.'
'At least let us try it on the owners. I'd like to speak to Sir
Lawrence.'
'I can't stop you, of course,' said Captain Smith, in a tone that
suggested he wished he could. 'But I know exactly what he'll
say.'
He was quite wrong.
Sir Lawrence Tsung had not placed a bet for thirty years; it was no
longer in keeping with his august position in the world of
commerce. But as a young man he had often enjoyed a mild flutter at
the Hong Kong Race Course, before a puritanical administration had
closed it in a fit of public morality. It was typical of life, Sir
Lawrence sometimes thought wistfully, that when he could bet he had
no money - and now he couldn't, because the richest man in the
world had to set a good example.
And yet, as nobody knew better than he did, his whole business
career had been one long gamble. He had done his utmost to control
the odds, by gathering the best information and listening to the
experts his hunches told him would give the wisest advice. He had
usually pulled out in time when they were wrong; but there had
always been an element of risk.
Now, as he read the memorandum from Heywood Floyd, he felt again
the old thrill he had not known since he had watched the horses
thundering round into the last lap. Here was a gamble indeed -
perhaps the last and greatest of his career - though he would never
dare tell his Board of Directors. Still less the Lady Jasmine.
'Bill,' he said, 'what do you think?'
His son (steady and reliable, but lacking that vital spark which
was perhaps no longer needed in this generation) gave him the
answer he expected.
'The theory is quite sound. Universe can do it - on paper. But
we've lost one ship. We'll be risking another.'
'She's going to Jupiter - Lucifer - anyway.'
'Yes - but after a complete checkout in Earth orbit. And do you
realize what this proposed direct mission will involve? She'll be
smashing all speed records - doing over a thousand kilometres a
second at turnaround!'
It was the worst thing he could possibly have said; once again the
thunder of hooves sounded in his father's ears.
But Sir Lawrence merely answered: 'It won't do any harm for them to
make some tests, though Captain Smith is fighting the idea tooth
and nail. Even threatens to resign. Meanwhile, just check the
position with Lloyd's - we may have to back down on the Galaxy
claim.'
Especially, he might have added, if we're going to throw Universe
on to the table, as an even bigger chip.
And he was worried about Captain Smith. Now that Laplace was
stranded on Europa, he was the best commander he had left.
'Sloppiest job I've seen since I left college,' grumbled the Chief
Engineer. 'But it's the best we can do in the time.'
The makeshift pipeline stretched across fifty metres of dazzling,
chemical-encrusted rock to the now quiescent vent of Old Faithful,
where it ended in a rectangular, downward-pointing funnel. The sun
had just risen over the hills, and already the ground had begun to
tremble slightly as the geyser's subterranean - or subhallean -
reservoirs felt the first touch of warmth.
Watching from the observation lounge, Heywood Floyd could hardly
believe that so much had happened in a mere twenty-four hours.
First of all, the ship had split into two rival factions - one led
by the Captain, the other perforce headed by himself. They had been
coldly polite to each other, and there had been no actual exchange
of blows; but he had discovered that in certain quarters he now
rejoiced in the nickname of 'Suicide' Floyd. It was not an honour
that he particularly appreciated.
Yet no-one could find anything fundamentally wrong with the
Floyd-Jolson manoeuvre. (That name was also unfair: he had insisted
that Jolson get all the credit, but no-one had listened. And
Mihailovich had said: 'Aren't you prepared to share the
blame?')
The first test would be in twenty minutes, when Old Faithful,
rather belatedly, greeted the dawn. But even if that worked, and
the propellant tanks started to fill with sparkling pure water
rather than the muddy slurry Captain Smith had predicted, the road
to Europa was still not open.
A minor, but not unimportant, factor was the wishes of the
distinguished passengers. They had expected to be home within two
weeks; now, to their surprise and in some cases consternation, they
were faced with the prospect of a dangerous mission halfway across
the Solar System - and, even if it succeeded, no firm date for a
return to Earth.
Willis was distraught; all his schedules would be totally wrecked.
He drifted around muttering about lawsuits, but no-one expressed
the slightest sympathy.
Greenburg, on the other hand, was ecstatic; now he would really be
in the space business again! And Mihailovich - who spent a lot of
time noisily composing in his far from soundproof cabin - was
almost equally delighted. He was sure that the diversion would
inspire him to new heights of creativity.
Maggie M was philosophical: 'If it can save a lot of lives,' she
said, looking pointedly at Willis, 'how can anyone possibly
object?'
As for Yva Merlin, Floyd made a special effort to explain matters
to her, and discovered that she understood the situation remarkably
well. And it was Yva, to his utter astonishment, who asked the
question to which no-one else seemed to have paid much attention:
'Suppose the Europans don't want us to land - even to rescue our
friends?'
Floyd looked at her in frank amazement; even now, he still found it
difficult to accept her as a real human being, and never knew when
she would come out with some brilliant insight or utter
stupidity.
'That's a very good question, Yva. Believe me, I'm working on
it.'
He was telling the truth; he could never lie to Yva Merlin. That,
somehow, would be an act of sacrilege.
The first wisps of vapour were appearing over the mouth of the
geyser. They shot upwards and away in their unnatural vacuum
trajectories, and evaporated swiftly in the fierce Sunlight.
Old Faithful coughed again, and cleared its throat. A snowy-white -
and surprisingly compact - column of ice crystals and water
droplets climbed swiftly towards the sky. All one's terrestrial
instincts expected it to topple and fall, but of course it did not.
It continued onwards and upwards, spreading only slightly, until it
merged into the vast, glowing envelope of the comet's still
expanding coma. Floyd noted, with satisfaction, that the pipeline
was beginning to shake as fluid rushed into it.
Ten minutes later, there was a council of war on the bridge.
Captain Smith, still in a huff, acknowledged Floyd's presence with
a slight nod; his Number Two, a little embarrassed, did all the
talking.
'Well, it works, surprisingly well. At this rate, we can fill our
tanks in twenty hours - though we may have to go out and anchor the
pipe more securely.'
'What about the dirt?' someone asked.
The First Officer held up a transparent squeeze-bulb holding a
colourless liquid.
'The filters got rid of everything down to a few microns, To be on
the safe side, we'll run through them twice, cycling from one tank
to another. No swimming pool, I'm afraid, until we pass Mars.'
That got a much needed laugh, and even the Captain relaxed a
little.
'We'll run up the engines, at minimum thrust, to check that there
are no operational anomalies with Halley H20. If there are, we'll
forget the whole idea, and head home on good old Moon water, fob
Aristarchus.'
There was one of those 'party silences' where everyone waits
simultaneously for someone else to speak. Then Captain Smith broke
the embarrassing hiatus.
'As you all know,' he said, 'I'm very unhappy with the whole idea.
In fact - ' he changed course abruptly; it was equally well-known
that he had considered sending Sir Lawrence his resignation, though
in the circumstances that would have been a somewhat pointless
gesture.
'But a couple of things have happened in the last few hours. The
owner agrees with the project - if no fundamental objections emerge
from our tests. And - this is the big surprise, and I don't know
any more about it than you do - the World Space Council has not
only okayed but requested that we make the diversion, underwriting
any expenses incurred. Your guess is as good as mine...
'But I still have one worry -' he looked doubtfully at the little
bulb of water, which Heywood Floyd was now holding up to the light
and shaking gently. 'I'm an engineer, not a damn chemist. This
stuff looks clean - but what will it do to the tank linings?'
Floyd never quite understood why he acted as he did; such rashness
was completely uncharacteristic. Perhaps he was simply impatient
with the whole debate, and wanted to get on with the job. Or
perhaps he felt that the Captain needed a little stiffening of the
moral fibre.
With one quick movement, he flicked open the stopcock and squirted
approximately 20cc of Halley's Comet down his throat.
'There's your answer, Captain,' he said, when he had finished
swallowing.
'And that,' said the ship's doctor half an hour later, 'was one of
the silliest exhibitions I've ever seen. Don't you know that there
are cyanides and cyanogens and God knows what else in that
stuff?'
'Of course, I do,' laughed Floyd. 'I've seen the analyses - just a
few parts in a million. Nothing to worry about, But I did have one
surprise,' he added ruefully.
'And what was that?'
'If you could ship this stuff back to Earth, you could make a
fortune selling it as Halley's Patent Purgative.'
Now that they were committed, the whole atmosphere aboard Universe
had changed. There was no more argument; everyone was cooperating
to the utmost, and very few people had much sleep for the next two
rotations of the nucleus - a hundred hours of Earth time.
The first Halley 'day' was devoted to a still rather cautious
tapping of Old Faithful, but when the geyser subsided towards
nightfall the technique had been thoroughly mastered. More than a
thousand tons of water had been taken aboard; the next period of
daylight would be ample for the rest.
Heywood Floyd kept out of the Captain's way, not wishing to press
his luck; in any event, Smith had a thousand details to attend to.
But the calculation of the new orbit was not among them; that had
been checked and rechecked on Earth.
There was no doubt, now, that the concept was brilliant, and the
savings even greater than Jolson had claimed. By refuelling on
Halley, Universe had eliminated the two major orbit changes
involved in the rendezvous with Earth; she could now go straight to
her goal, under maximum acceleration, saving many weeks. Despite
the possible risks, everyone now applauded the scheme.
Well, almost everyone.
On Earth, the swiftly organized 'Hands off Halley!' society was
indignant. Its members (a mere 236, but they knew how to drum up
publicity) did not consider the rifling of a celestial body
justified, even to save lives. They refused to be placated even
when it was pointed out that Universe was merely borrowing material
that the comet was about to lose anyway. It was, they argued, the
principle of the thing. Their angry communiqués gave much
needed light relief aboard Universe.
Cautious as ever, Captain Smith ran the first low-powered tests
with one of the attitude-control thrusters; if this became
unserviceable, the ship could manage without it, There were no
anomalies; the engine behaved exactly as if it was running on the
best distilled water from the lunar mines.
Then he tested the central main engine, Number One; if that was
damaged, there would be no loss of manoeuvrability - only of total
thrust. The ship would still be fully controllable, but, with the
four remaining outboards alone, peak acceleration would be down by
twenty per cent.
Again, there were no problems; even the sceptics started being
polite to Heywood Floyd, and Second Officer Jolson was no longer a
social outcast.
The lift-off was scheduled late in the afternoon, just before Old
Faithful was due to subside. (Would it still be there to greet the
next visitors in seventy-six years' time? Floyd wondered. Perhaps;
there were hints of its existence even back on the 1910
photographs.)
There was no countdown, in the dramatic oldtime Cape Canaveral
style. When he was quite satisfied that everything was shipshape,
Captain Smith applied a mere five tons of thrust on Number One, and
Universe drifted slowly upwards and away from the comet.
The acceleration was modest, but the pyrotechnics were
awe-inspiring - and, to most of the watchers, wholly unexpected.
Until now, the jets from the main engines had been virtually
invisible, being formed entirely of highly ionized oxygen and
hydrogen. Even when - hundreds of kilometres away - the gases had
cooled off enough to combine chemically, there was still nothing to
be seen, because the reaction gave no light in the visible
spectrum.
But now, Universe was climbing away from Halley on a column of
incandescence too brilliant for the eye to look upon; it seemed
almost a solid pillar of flame. Where it hit the ground, rock
exploded upwards and outwards; as it departed for ever, Universe
was carving its signature, like cosmic graffiti, across the nucleus
of Halley's Comet.
Most of the passengers, accustomed to climbing spacewards with no
visible means of support, reacted with considerable shock. Floyd
waited for the inevitable explanation; one of his minor pleasures
was catching Willis in some scientific error, but this very seldom
happened. And even when it did, Willis always had some very
plausible excuse.
'Carbon,' he said. 'Incandescent carbon - exactly as in a candle
flame - but slightly hotter.'
'Slightly,' murmured Floyd.
'We're no longer burning - if you'll excuse the word -, (Floyd
shrugged his shoulders) 'pure water. Although it's been carefully
filtered, there's a lot of colloidal carbon in it. As well as
compounds that could only be removed by distillation.'
'It's very impressive, but I'm a little worried,' said Greenburg.
'All that radiation - won't it affect the engines - and heat the
ship badly?'
It was a very good question, and it had caused some anxiety. Floyd
waited for Willis to handle it; but that shrewd operator bounced
the ball right back to him.
'I'd prefer Dr Floyd to deal with that - after all, it was his
idea.'
'Jolson's, please. Good point, though. But it's no real problem;
when we're under full thrust, all those fireworks will be a
thousand kilometres behind us. We won't have to worry about
them.'
The ship was now hovering some two kilometres above the nucleus;
had it not been for the glare of the exhaust, the whole sunlit face
of the tiny world would have been spread out beneath. At this
altitude - or distance - the column of Old Faithful had broadened
slightly. It looked, Floyd suddenly recalled, like one of the giant
fountains ornamenting Lake Geneva. He had not seen them for fifty
years, and wondered if they still played there.
Captain Smith was testing the controls, slowly rotating the ship,
then pitching and yawing it along the Y and Z axes. Everything
seemed to be functioning perfectly.
'Mission time zero is ten minutes from now,' he announced. '0.1 gee
for fifty hours; then 0.2 until turnaround - one hundred and fifty
hours from now.' He paused to let that sink in; no other ship had
ever attempted to maintain so high a continuous acceleration, for
so long. If Universe was not able to brake properly, she would also
enter the history books as the first manned interstellar
voyager.
The ship was now turning towards the horizontal - if that word
could be used in this almost gravityless environment - and was
pointing directly to the white column of mist and ice crystals
still steadily spurting from the comet. Universe started to move
towards it -
'What's he doing?' said Mihailovich anxiously.
Obviously anticipating such questions, the Captain spoke again. He
seemed to have completely recovered his good humour, and there was
a hint of amusement in his voice.
'Just one little chore before we leave, Don't worry - I know
exactly what I'm doing. And Number Two agrees with me - don't
you?'
'Yessir - though I thought you were joking at first.'
'What is going on up on the bridge?' asked Willis, for once at a
loss.
Now the ship was starting a slow roll, while still moving at no
more than a good walking speed towards the geyser. From this
distance - now less than a hundred metres - it reminded Floyd still
more closely of those far-off Geneva fountains.
Surely he's not taking us into it - But he was. Universe vibrated
gently as it nuzzled its way into the rising column of foam. It was
still rolling very slowly, as if it was drilling its way into the
giant geyser. The video monitors and observation windows showed
only a milky blankness.
The whole operation could not have lasted more than ten seconds;
then they were out on the other side. There was a brief burst of
spontaneous clapping from the officers on the bridge; but the
passengers - even including Floyd - still felt somewhat
put-upon.
'Now we're ready to go,' said the Captain, in tones of great
satisfaction. 'We have a nice, clean ship again.'
During the next half-hour, more than ten thousand amateur observers
on Earth and Moon reported that the comet had doubled its
brightness. The Comet Watch Network broke down completely under the
overload, and the professional astronomers were furious.
But the public loved it, and a few days later Universe put on an
even better show, a few hours before dawn.
The ship, gaining speed by more than ten thousand kilometres an
hour, every hour, was now far inside the orbit of Venus. It would
get even closer to the sun before it made its perihelion passage -
far more swiftly than any natural celestial body - and headed out
towards Lucifer.
As it passed between Earth and Sun, the thousand kilometre tail of
incandescent carbon was easily visible as a fourth magnitude star,
showing appreciable movement against the constellations of the
morning sky in the course of a single hour. At the very beginning
of its rescue mission, Universe would be seen by more human beings,
at the same moment, than any artefact in the history of the
world.
The unexpected news that their sister ship Universe was on the way
- and might arrive far sooner than anyone had dared to dream - had
an effect upon the morale of Galaxy's crew that could only be
called euphoric. The mere fact that they were drifting helplessly
on a strange ocean, surrounded by unknown monsters, suddenly seemed
of minor importance.
As did the monsters themselves, though they made interesting
appearances from time to time. The giant 'sharks' were sighted
occasionally, but never came near the ship, even when garbage was
dumped overboard. This was quite surprising; it strongly suggested
that the great beasts - unlike their terrestrial counterparts - had
a good system of communication. Perhaps they were more closely
allied to dolphins than to sharks.
There were many schools of smaller fish, which no-one would have
given a second glance in a market on Earth. After several attempts,
one of the officers - a keen angler - managed to catch one with an
unbaited hook. He never brought it in through the airlock - the
Captain would not have permitted it, anyway - but measured and
photographed it carefully before returning it to the sea.
The proud sportsman had to pay a price for his trophy, however. The
partial-pressure spacesuit he had worn during the exercise had the
characteristic 'rotten eggs' stink of hydrogen sulphide when he
brought it back into the ship, and he became the butt of
innumerable jokes. It was yet another reminder of an alien, and
implacably hostile, biochemistry.
Despite the pleas of the scientists, no further angling was
allowed. They could watch and record, but not collect, And anyway,
it was pointed out, they were planetary geologists, not
naturalists. No-one had thought of bringing formalin - which
probably would not work here in any event.
Once, the ship drifted for several hours through floating mats or
sheets of some bright green material. It formed ovals, about ten
metres across, and all of approximately the same size, Galaxy
ploughed through them without resistance, and they swiftly reformed
behind her. It was guessed that they were colonial organisms of
some kind.
And one morning, the officer of the watch was startled when a
periscope rose out of the water and he found himself staring into a
mild, blue eye which, he said when he had recovered, looked like a
sick cow's. It regarded him sadly for a few moments, without much
apparent interest, then slowly returned to the ocean,
Nothing seemed to move very fast here, and the reason was obvious.
This was still a low-energy world - there was none of the free
oxygen that allowed the animals of Earth to live by a series of
continuous explosions, from the moment they started to breathe at
birth. Only the 'shark' of that first encounter had shown any sign
of violent activity - in its last, dying spasm.
Perhaps that was good news for men. Even if they were encumbered
with spacesuits, there was probably nothing on Europa that could
catch them -even if it wanted to.
Captain Laplace found wry amusement in handing over the operation
of his ship to the purser; he wondered if this situation was
unique, in the annals of space and sea.
Not that there was a great deal that Mr Lee could do. Galaxy was
floating vertically, one-third out of the water, heeling slightly
before a wind that was driving it at a steady five knots. There
were only a few leaks below the waterline, easily handled. Equally
important, the hull was still airtight.
Although most of the navigation equipment was useless, they knew
exactly where they were. Ganymede gave them an accurate fix on
their emergency beacon every hour, and if Galaxy kept to her
present course she would make landfall on a large island within the
next three days. If she missed that, she would head on out to the
open sea, and eventually reach the tepidly boiling zone immediately
underneath Lucifer. Though not necessarily catastrophic, that was a
most unattractive prospect; Acting Captain Lee spent much of his
time thinking of ways to avoid it.
Sails - even if he had suitable material and rigging - would make
very little difference to their course. He had lowered improvised
sea-anchors down to five hundred metres, looking for currents that
might be useful, and finding none. Nor had he found the bottom; it
lay unknown kilometres further down.
Perhaps that was just as well; it protected them from the submarine
quakes that continually. racked this new ocean. Sometimes Galaxy
would shake as if struck by a giant hammer, as a shockwave went
racing by. In a few hours, a tsunami, dozens of metres high, would
crash upon some Europan shore; but here in deep water the deadly
waves were little more than ripples.
Several times, sudden vortexes were observed at a distance; they
looked quite dangerous - maelstroms that might even suck Galaxy
down to unknown depths - but luckily they were too far off to do
more than make the ship spin around a few times in the water.
And just once, a huge bubble of gas rose and burst only a hundred
metres away. It was most impressive, and everyone seconded the
doctor's heartfelt comment: 'Thank God we can't smell it.'
It is surprising how quickly the most bizarre situation can become
routine. Within a few days, life aboard Galaxy had settled down to
a steady routine, and Captain Laplace's main problem was keeping
the crew occupied. There was nothing worse for morale than
idleness, and he wondered how the skippers of the old windjammers
had kept their men busy on those interminable voyages. They
couldn't have spent all their time scrambling up the rigging or
cleaning the decks.
He had the opposite problem with the scientists. They were always
proposing tests and experiments, which had to be carefully
considered before they could be approved. And if he allowed it,
they would have monopolized the ship's now very limited
communications channels.
The main antenna complex was now being battered around at the
waterline, and Galaxy could no longer talk directly to Earth.
Everything had to be relayed through Ganymede, on a bandwidth of a
few miserable megahertz. A single live video channel pre-empted
everything else, and he had to resist the clamour of the
terrestrial networks. Not that they would have a great deal to show
their audiences, except open sea, cramped ship interiors, and a
crew which, though in good spirits, was becoming steadily more
hirsute.
An unusual amount of traffic seemed directed to Second Officer
Floyd whose encrypted responses were so brief that they could not
have contained much information. Laplace finally decided to have a
talk to the young man.
'Mr Floyd,' he said, in the privacy of his cabin. 'I'd appreciate
it if you would enlighten me about your part-time occupation.'
Floyd looked embarrassed, and clutched at the table as the ship
rocked slightly in a sudden gust.
'I wish I could, sir, but I'm not permitted.'
'By whom, may I ask?'
'Frankly, I'm not sure.'
That was perfectly true. He suspected it was ASTROPOL, but the two
quietly impressive gentlemen who had briefed him on Ganymede had
unaccountably failed to provide this information.
'As captain of this ship - especially in the present circumstances
- I would like to know what's going on here. If we get out of this,
I'm going to spend the next few years of my life at Courts of
Enquiry. And you'll probably be doing the same.'
Floyd managed a wry grin.
'Hardly worth being rescued, is it, Sir? All I know is that some
high-level agency expected trouble on this mission, but didn't know
what form it would take. I was just told to keep my eyes open. I'm
afraid I didn't do much good, but I imagine I was the only
qualified person they could get hold of in time.'
'I don't think you can blame yourself. Who would have imagined that
Rosie -'
The Captain paused, struck by a sudden thought.
'Do you suspect anyone else?' He felt like adding 'Me, for
instance?', but the situation was already sufficiently
paranoiac.
Floyd looked thoughtful, then apparently came to a decision.
'Perhaps I should have spoken to you before, Sir, but I know how
busy you've been. I'm sure Dr van der Berg is involved somehow.
He's a Mede, of course; they're odd people, and I don't really
understand them.' Or like them, he might have added. Too clannish -
not really friendly to offworlders. Still, one could hardly blame
them; all pioneers trying to tame a new wilderness were probably
much the same.
'Van der Berg - hmm. What about the other scientists?'
'They've been checked, of course. All perfectly legitimate, and
nothing unusual about any of them.'
That was not altogether true. Dr Simpson had more wives than was
strictly legal, at least at one time, and Dr Higgins had a large
collection of most curious books. Second Officer Floyd was not
quite sure why he had been told all this; perhaps his mentors
merely wanted to impress him with their omniscience. He decided
that working for ASTROPOL (or whoever it was) had some entertaining
fringe benefits.
'Very well,' said the Captain, dismissing the amateur agent. 'But
please keep me informed if you discover anything - anything at all-
that might affect the safety of the ship.'
In the present circumstances, it was hard to imagine what that
might be. Any further hazards seemed slightly superfluous.
Even twenty-four hours before they sighted the island, it was still
not certain whether Galaxy would miss it and be blown on out into
the emptiness of the central ocean. Her position, as observed by
the Ganymede radar, was plotted on a large chart which everyone
aboard examined anxiously several times a day.
Even if the ship did reach land, her problems might be just
beginning. She might be pounded to pieces on a rocky coast, rather
than gently deposited on some conveniently shelving beach.
Acting Captain Lee was keenly aware of all these possibilities. He
had once been shipwrecked himself, in a cabin cruiser whose engines
had failed at a critical moment, off the island of Bali. There had
been little danger, though a good deal of drama, and he had no wish
to repeat the experience - especially as there was no coastguard
here to come to the rescue.
There was a truly cosmic irony in their plight. Here they were,
aboard one of the most advanced transportation devices ever made by
man - capable of crossing the Solar System! - yet now they could
not deflect it more than a few metres from its course.
Nevertheless, they were not completely helpless; Lee still had a
few cards to play.
On this sharply curving world, the island was only five kilometres
away when they first sighted it. To Lee's great relief, there were
none of the cliffs he had feared; nor, on the other hand, was there
any sign of the beach he had hoped for. The geologists had warned
him that he was a few million years too early to find sand here;
the mills of Europa, grinding slowly, had not yet had time to do
their work.
As soon as it was certain they would hit the land, Lee gave orders
to pump out Galaxy's main tanks, which he had deliberately flooded
soon after touchdown. Then followed a very uncomfortable few hours,
during which at least a quarter of the crew took no further
interest in the proceedings.
Galaxy rose higher and higher in the water, oscillating more and
more wildly - then tumbled with a mighty splash, to lie along the
surface, like the corpse of a whale in the bad old days when the
catcher-boats pumped them full of air to stop them sinking. When he
saw how the ship was lying, Lee adjusted her buoyancy again, until
she was slightly stern-down, and the forward bridge was just clear
of the water.
As he expected, Galaxy then swung broadside-on to the wind. Another
quarter of the crew became incapacitated then, but Lee had enough
helpers to get out the sea-anchor he had prepared for this final
act. It was merely an improvised raft, made of empty boxes lashed
together, but its drag caused the ship to point towards the
approaching land.
Now they could see that they were heading - with agonizing slowness
- towards a narrow stretch of beach, covered with small boulders.
If they could not have sand, this was the best alternative...
The bridge was already over the beach when Galaxy grounded, and Lee
played his last card. He had made only a single test-run, not
daring to do more in case the abused machinery failed.
For the last time, Galaxy extended her landing gear. There was a
grinding and shuddering as the pads on the underside dug their way
into the alien beach. Now she was securely anchored against the
winds and waves of this tideless ocean.
There was no doubt that Galaxy had found her final resting place -
and, all too possibly, that of her crew.
And now Universe was moving so swiftly that its orbit no longer
even remotely resembled that of any natural object in the Solar
System. Mercury, closest to the Sun, barely exceeds fifty
kilometres a second at perihelion; Universe had reached twice that
speed in the first day - and at only half the acceleration it would
achieve when it was lighter by several thousand tons of water.
For a few hours, as they passed inside its orbit, Venus was the
brightest of all heavenly bodies, next to the Sun and Lucifer. Its
tiny disc was just visible to the naked eye, but even the ship's
most powerful telescopes showed no markings whatever. Venus guarded
her secrets as jealously as Europa.
By going still closer to the Sun - well inside the orbit of Mercury
- Universe was not merely taking a short cut, but was also getting
a free boost from the Sun's gravitational field. Because nature
always balances her books, the Sun lost some velocity in the
transaction; but the effect would not be measurable for a few
thousand years.
Captain Smith used the ship's perihelion passage to restore some of
the prestige his foot-dragging had cost him.
'Now you know,' he said, 'exactly why I flew the ship through Old
Faithful. If we hadn't washed all that dirt off the hull, by this
time we'd be badly overheating. In fact, I doubt if the thermal
controls would have handled the load - it's already ten times Earth
level.' Looking - through filters that were almost black - at the
hideously swollen Sun, his passengers could easily believe him.
They were all more than happy when it had shrunk back to normal
size - and continued to dwindle astern as Universe sliced across
the orbit of Mars, outward bound on the final leg of its
mission.
The 'Famous Five' had all adjusted, in their various ways, to the
unexpected change in their lives. Mihailovich was composing
copiously and noisily, and was seldom seen except when he emerged
at meals, to tell outrageous stories and tease all available
victims, especially Willis. Greenburg had elected himself, no-one
dissenting, an honorary crew member, and spent much of his time on
the bridge.
Maggie M viewed the situation with rueful amusement.
'Writers,' she remarked, 'are always saying what a lot of work they
could do if they were only in some place with no interruptions - no
engagements; lighthouses and prisons are their favourite examples.
So I can't complain - except that my requests for research material
keep getting delayed by high priority messages.'
Even Victor Willis had now come to much the same conclusion; he too
was busily at work on sundry long-range projects. And he had an
additional reason to keep to his cabin. It would still be several
weeks before he looked as if he had forgotten to shave, and months
before he returned to his full glory.
Yva Merlin spent hours every day in the entertainment centre,
catching up - as she readily explained - with her favourite
classics. It was fortunate that Universe's library and projection
facilities had been installed in time for the voyage; though the
collection was still relatively small, there was sufficient for
several lifetimes of viewing.
All the famous works of visual art were there, right back to the
flickering dawn of the cinema. Yva knew most of them, and was happy
to share her knowledge.
Floyd, of course, enjoyed listening to her, because then she became
alive - an ordinary human being, not an icon. He found it both sad
and fascinating that only through an artificial universe of video
images could she establish contact with the real world.
One of the strangest experiences of Heywood Floyd's fairly eventful
life was sitting in semi-darkness just behind Yva, somewhere
outside the orbit of Mars, while they watched the original Gone
with the Wind together. There were moments when he could see her
famous profile silhouetted against that of Vivien Leigh, and could
compare the two - though it was impossible to say that one actress
was better than the other; both were sui generis.
When the lights went up, he was astonished to see that Yva was
crying. He took her hand and said tenderly: 'I cried too, when
Bonny died.'
Yva managed a faint smile.
'I was really crying for Vivien,' she said. 'While we were shooting
Two, I read a lot about her - she had such a tragic life. And
talking about her, right out here between the planets, reminds me
of something that Larry said when he brought the poor thing back
from Ceylon after her nervous breakdown. He told his friends: "I've
married a woman from outer space."
Yva paused for a moment, and another tear trickled (rather
theatrically, Floyd could not help thinking) down her cheek.
'And here's something even stranger. She made her last movie
exactly a hundred years ago - and do you know what it was?'
'Go on - surprise me again.'
'I expect it will surprise Maggie - if she's really writing the
book she keeps threatening us with. Vivien's very last film was -
Ship of Fools.'
Now that they had so much unexpected time on their hands, Captain
Smith had finally agreed to give Victor Willis the long-delayed
interview which was part of his contract. Victor himself had kept
putting it off, owing to what Mihailovich persisted in calling his
'amputation'. As it would be many months before he could regenerate
his public image, he had finally decided to do the interview
off-camera; the studio on Earth could fake him in later with
library shots.
They had been sitting in the Captain's still only partly furnished
cabin, enjoying one of the excellent wines which apparently made up
much of Victor's baggage allowance. As Universe would cut its drive
and start coasting within the next few hours, this would be the
last opportunity for several days. Weightless wine, Victor
maintained, was an abomination; he refused to put any of his
precious vintage into plastic squeezebulbs.
'This is Victor Willis, aboard the spaceship Universe at 18.30 on
Friday, 15 July 2061. Though we're not yet at the mid-point of our
journey, we're already far beyond the orbit of Mars, and have
almost reached our maximum velocity. Which is, Captain?'
'One thousand and fifty kilometres a second.'
'More than a thousand kilometres a second -almost four million
kilometres an hour!'
Victor Willis' surprise sounded perfectly genuine; no-one would
have guessed that he knew the orbital parameters almost as well as
did the Captain. But one of his strengths was his ability to put
himself in the place of his viewers, and not only to anticipate
their questions, but to arouse their interest.
'That's right,' the Captain answered with quiet pride. 'We are
travelling twice as fast as any human beings since the beginning of
time.'
That should have been one of my lines, thought Victor; he did not
like his subject to get ahead of him. But, good professional that
he was, he quickly adapted.
He pretended to consult his famous little memo pad, with its
sharply directional screen whose display only he could see.
'Every twelve seconds, we're travelling the diameter of Earth. Yet
it will still take us another ten days to reach Jupi - ah, Lucifer!
That gives some idea of the scale of the Solar System.
'Now, Captain, this is a delicate subject, but I've had a lot of
questions about it during the last week.'
Oh no, groaned Smith. Not the zero gravity toilets again!
'At this very moment, we are passing right through the heart of the
asteroid belt -'
(I wish it was the toilets, thought Smith...)
'- and though no spaceship has ever been seriously damaged by a
collision, aren't we taking quite a risk? After all, there are
literally millions of bodies, down to the size of beachballs,
orbiting in this section of space. And only a few thousand have
been charted.'
'More than a few: over ten thousand.'
'But there are millions we don't know about.'
'That's true; but it wouldn't help us much if we did.'
'What do you mean?'
'There's nothing we can do about them.'
'Why not?'
Captain Smith paused for careful thought. Willis was right - this
was indeed a delicate subject; Head Office would rap his knuckles
smartly, if he said anything to discourage potential customers.
'First of all, space is so enormous that even here - as you said,
right in the heart of the asteroid belt - the chance of collision
is - infinitesimal. We've been hoping to show you an asteroid - the
best we can do is Hanuman, a miserable three hundred metres across
- but the nearest we get to it is a quarter of a million
kilometres.'
'But Hanuman is gigantic, compared to all the unknown debris that's
floating around out here. Aren't you worried about that?'
'About as worried as you are, at being struck by lightning on
Earth.'
'As a matter of fact, I once had a narrow escape, on Pike's Peak in
Colorado - the flash and the bang were simultaneous. But you admit
that the danger does exist - and aren't we increasing the risk, by
the enormous speed at which we're travelling?'
Willis, of course, knew the answer perfectly well; once again he
was putting himself in the place of his legions of unknown
listeners on the planet that was getting a thousand kilometres
further away with every passing second.
'It's hard to explain without mathematics,' said the Captain (how
many times he had used that phrase. Even when it wasn't true!),
'but there's no simple relationship between speed and risk. To hit
anything at spacecraft velocities would be catastrophic; if you're
standing next to an atomic bomb when it goes off, it makes no
difference whether it's in the kiloton or megaton class.'
That was not exactly a reassuring statement, but it was the best he
could do. Before Willis could press the point further, he continued
hastily:
'And let me remind you that any - er - slight extra risk we may be
running is in the best of causes. A single hour may save
lives.'
'Yes, I'm sure we all appreciate that.' Willis paused; he thought
of adding 'And, of course, I'm in the same boat', but decided
against it. It might sound immodest - not that modesty had ever
been his strong suit. And anyway, he could hardly make a virtue of
a necessity; he had very little alternative now, unless he decided
to walk home.
'All this,' he continued, 'brings me to another point. Do you know
what happened just a century and a half ago, on the North
Atlantic?'
'In 1911?'
'Well, actually 1912 -'
Captain Smith guessed what was coming, and stubbornly refused to
cooperate by pretending ignorance.
'I suppose you mean the Titanic,' he said.
'Precisely,' answered Willis, gamely concealing his disappointment.
'I've had at least twenty reminders from people who think they're
the only one who's spotted the parallel.'
'What parallel? The Titanic was running unacceptable risks, merely
trying to break a record.'
He almost added 'And she didn't have enough lifeboats', but luckily
checked himself in time, when he recalled that the ship's one and
only shuttle could carry not more than five passengers. If Willis
took him up on that, it would involve altogether too many
explanations.
'Well, I grant that the analogy is far-fetched. But there's another
striking parallel which everyone points out. Do you happen to know
the name of the Titanic's first and last Captain?'
'I haven't the faintest - ' began Captain Smith. Then his jaw
dropped.
'Precisely,' said Victor Willis, with a smile which it would be
charitable to call smug.
Captain Smith would willingly have strangled all those amateur
researchers. But he could hardly blame his parents for bequeathing
him the commonest of English names.
It was a pity that viewers on (and off) Earth could not have
enjoyed the less formal discussions aboard Universe. Shipboard life
had now settled down to a steady routine, punctuated by a few
regular landmarks - of which the most important, and certainly the
most long-established, was the traditional 'Captain's Table'.
At 18.00 hours exactly, the six passengers, and five of the
officers not on duty, would join Captain Smith for dinner. There
was, of course, none of the formal dress that had been mandatory
aboard the floating palaces of the North Atlantic, but there was
usually some attempt at sartorial novelty. Yva could always be
relied upon to produce some new brooch, ring, necklace,
hair-ribbon, or perfume from an apparently inexhaustible
supply.
If the drive was on, the meal would begin with soup; but if the
ship was coasting and weightless, there would be a selection of
hors-d'oeuvres. In either event, before the main course was served
Captain Smith would report the latest news - or try to dispel the
latest rumours, usually fuelled by newscasts from Earth or
Ganymede.
Accusations and countercharges were flying in all directions, and
the most fantastic theories had been proposed to account for
Galaxy's hijacking. A finger had been pointed at every secret
organization known to exist, and many that were purely imaginary.
All the theories, however, had one thing in common. Not one of them
could suggest a plausible motive.
The mystery had been compounded by the one fact which had emerged.
Strenuous detective work by ASTROPOL had established the surprising
fact that the late 'Rose McCullen' was really Ruth Mason, born in
North London, recruited to the Metropolitan Police - and then,
after a promising start, dismissed for racist activities. She had
emigrated to Africa - and vanished. Obviously, she had become
involved in that unlucky continent's political underground. SHAKA
was frequently mentioned, and as frequently denied by the USSA.
What all this could possibly have to do with Europa was endlessly,
and fruitlessly, debated around the table - especially when Maggie
M confessed that at one time she had been planning a novel about
Shaka, from the viewpoint of one of his thousand unfortunate wives.
But the more she researched the project, the more repellent it
became. 'By the time I abandoned Shaka,' she wryly admitted, 'I
knew exactly what a modern German feels about Hitler.'
Such personal revelations became more and more common as the voyage
proceeded. When the main meal was over, one of the group would be
given the floor for thirty minutes. Between them; they had a dozen
lifetimes of experience, on as many heavenly bodies, so it would be
hard to find a better source of after-dinner tales.
The least effective speaker was, somewhat surprisingly, Victor
Willis. He was frank enough to admit it, and to give the
reason.
'I'm so used,' he said, almost but not quite apologetically, 'to
performing for an audience of millions that I find it hard to
interact with a friendly little group like this.'
'Could you do better if it wasn't friendly?' asked Mihailovich,
always anxious to be helpful. 'That could easily be arranged.'
Yva, on the other hand, turned out to be better than expected, even
though her memories were confined entirely to the world of
entertainment. She was particularly good on the famous - and
infamous - directors she had worked with, especially David
Griffin.
'Was it true,' asked Maggie M, doubtless thinking of Shaka, 'that
he hated women?'
'Not at all,' Yva answered promptly. 'He just hated actors. He
didn't believe they were human beings.'
Mihailovich's reminiscences also covered a somewhat limited
territory - the great orchestras and ballet companies, famous
conductors and composers, and their innumerable hangers-on. But he
was so full of hilarious stories of backstage intrigues and
liaisons, and accounts of sabotaged first nights and mortal feuds
among prima donnas, that he kept even his most unmusical listeners
convulsed with laughter, and was willingly granted extra time.
Colonel Greenburg's matter-of-fact accounts of extraordinary events
could hardly have provided a greater contrast. The first landing at
Mercury's - relatively - temperate south pole had been so
thoroughly reported that there was little new to be said about it;
the question that interested everyone was:
'When will we return?' That was usually followed by: 'Would you
like to go back?'
'If they ask me to, of course I'll go,' Greenburg answered. 'But I
rather think that Mercury is going to be like the Moon. Remember -
we landed there in 1969 - and didn't go back again for half a
lifetime. Anyway, Mercury isn't as useful as the Moon - though
perhaps one day it may be. There's no water there; of course, it
was quite a surprise to find any on the Moon. Or I should say in
the Moon.
'Though it wasn't as glamorous as landing on Mercury, I did a more
important job setting up the Aristarchus Mule-train.'
'Mule-train?'
'Yep. Before the big equatorial launcher was built, and they
started shooting the ice straight into orbit, we had to haul it
from the pit-head to the Imbrium Spaceport. That meant levelling a
road across the lava plains and bridging quite a few crevasses. The
Ice Road, we called it - only three hundred kilometres, but it took
several lives to build...
'The "mules" were eight-wheeled tractors with huge tyres and
independent suspension: they towed up to a dozen trailers, with a
hundred tons of ice apiece. Used to travel by night - no need to
shield the cargo then.
'I rode with them several times. The trip took about six hours - we
weren't out to break speed records - then the ice would be
offloaded into big, pressurized tanks, waiting for sunrise. As soon
as it melted, it would be pumped into the ships.
'The Ice Road is still there, of course, but only the tourists use
it now. If they're sensible, they'll drive by night, as we used to
do. It was pure magic, with the full Earth almost directly
overhead, so brilliant that we seldom used our own lights. And
although we could talk to our friends whenever we wanted to, we
often switched off the radio and left it to the automatics to tell
them we were OK. We just wanted to be alone, in that great shining
emptiness - while it was still there, because we knew it wouldn't
last.
'Now they're building the Teravolt quarksmasher, running right
around the equator, and domes are going up all over Imbrium and
Serenitatis. But we knew the real lunar wilderness, exactly as
Armstrong and Aldrin saw it - before you could buy "Wish you were
here" cards in the post office at Tranquillity Base.'
'... lucky you missed the Annual Ball: believe it or not, it was
just as grisly as last year's. And once again our resident
mastodon, dear Ms Wilkinson, managed to crush her partners' toes,
even on the Half-gee Dance Floor.
'Now some business. Since you won't be back for months, instead of
a couple of weeks, Admin is looking lustfully at your apartment -
good neighbourhood, near downtown shopping area, splendid view of
Earth on clear days, etc., etc. - and suggests a sublet until you
return. Seems a good deal, and will save you a lot of money. We'll
collect any personal effects you'd like stored.
'Now this Shaka business. We know you love pulling our legs, but
frankly Jerry and I were horrified! I can see why Maggie M turned
him down -yes, of course we've read her Olympic Lusts - very
enjoyable, but too feminist for us.
'What a monster - I can understand why they've called a gang of
African terrorists after him. Fancy executing his warriors if they
got married! And killing all the poor cows in his wretched empire,
just because they were female! Worst of all - those horrid spears
he invented; shocking manners, jabbing them into people you've not
been properly introduced to...
'And what a ghastly advertisement for us feys! Almost enough to
make one want to switch. We've always claimed that we're gentle and
kindhearted (as well as madly talented and artistic, of course) but
now you've made us look into some of the so-called Great Warriors
(as if there was anything great about killing people!) we're almost
ashamed of the company we've been keeping.
'Yes, we did know about Hadrian and Alexander - but we certainly
didn't know about Richard the Lion Heart and Saladin. Or Julius
Caesar - though he was everything - ask Antony as well as Cleo. Or
Frederick the Great, who does have some redeeming features; look
how he treated old Bach.
'When I told Jerry that at least Napoleon is an exception - we
don't have to be saddled with him - do you know what he said? "I
bet Josephine was really a boy." Try that on Yva.
'You've ruined our morale, you rascal, tarring us with that
blood-stained brush (sorry about the mixed metaphor). You should
have left us in happy ignorance...
'Despite that, we send our love, and so does Sebastian. Say hello
to any Europans you meet. Judging by the reports from Galaxy, some
of them would make very good partners for Ms Wilkinson.'
Dr Heywood Floyd preferred not to talk about the first mission to
Jupiter, and the second to Lucifer ten years later. It was all so
long ago - and there was nothing he had not said a hundred times to
Congressional Committees, Space Council boards and media persons
like Victor Willis.
Nevertheless, he had a duty to his fellow passengers which could
not be avoided. As the only living man to have witnessed the birth
of a new sun - and a new solar system - they expected him to have
some special understanding of the worlds they were now so swiftly
approaching. It was a naïve assumption; he could tell them far
less about the Galilean satellites than the scientists and
engineers who had been working there for more than a generation.
When he was asked 'What's it really like on Europa?' (or Ganymede,
or Io, or Callisto...) he was liable to refer the enquirer, rather
brusquely, to the voluminous reports available in the ship's
library.
Yet there was one area where his experience was unique. Half a
century later, he sometimes wondered if it had really happened, or
whether he had been asleep aboard Discovery when David Bowman had
appeared to him. Almost easier to believe that a spaceship could be
haunted...
But he could not have been dreaming, when the floating dust motes
assembled themselves into that ghostly image of a man who should
have been dead for a dozen years. Without the warning it had given
him (how clearly he remembered that its lips were motionless, and
the voice had come from the console speaker) Leonov and all aboard
would have been vaporized in the detonation of Jupiter.
'Why did he do it?' Floyd asked during one of the after-dinner
sessions. 'I've puzzled over that for fifty years. Whatever he
became, after he went out in Discovery's space pod to investigate
the monolith, he must still have had some links with the human
race; he was not completely alien. We know that he returned to
Earth - briefly - because of that orbiting bomb incident. And
there's strong evidence that he visited both his mother and his old
girlfriend; that's not the action of - of an entity that had
discarded all emotions.'
'What do you suppose he is now?' asked Willis. 'For that matter -
where is he?'
'Perhaps that last question has no meaning - even for human beings.
Do you know where your consciousness resides?'
'I've no use for metaphysics. Somewhere in the general area of my
brain, anyway.'
'When I was a young man,' sighed Mihailovich, who had a talent for
deflating the most serious discussions, 'mine was about a metre
lower down.'
'Let's assume he's on Europa; we know there's a monolith there, and
Bowman was certainly associated with it in some way - see how he
relayed that warning.'
'Do you think he also relayed the second one, telling us to stay
away?'
'Which we are now going to ignore -'
' in a good cause -' Captain Smith, who was usually content to let
the discussion go where it wished, made one of his rare
interjections.
'Dr Floyd,' he said thoughtfully, 'you're in a unique position, and
we should take advantage of it. Bowman went out of his way to help
you once. If he's still around, he may be willing to do so again. I
worry a good deal about that ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS HERE order. If he
could assure us that it was - temporarily suspended, let's say -
I'd be much happier.'
There were several 'hear, hear's around the table before Floyd
answered.
'Yes, I've been thinking along the same lines. I've already told
Galaxy to watch out for any - let's say manifestations - in case he
tries to make contact.'
'Of course,' said Yva, 'he may be dead by now - if ghosts can
die.'
Not even Mihailovich had a suitable comment to this, but Yva
obviously sensed that no-one thought much of her contribution.
Undeterred, she tried again.
'Woody, dear,' she said. 'Why don't you simply give him a call on
the radio? That's what it's for, isn't it?'
The idea had occurred to Floyd, but it had somehow seemed too
naïve to take seriously.
'I will,' he said. 'I don't suppose it will do any harm.'
This time, Floyd was quite sure he was dreaming...
He had never been able to sleep well in zero gravity, and Universe
was now coasting, unpowered, at maximum velocity. In two days it
would start almost a week of steady deceleration, throwing away its
enormous excess speed until it was able to rendezvous with
Europa.
However many times he adjusted the restraining straps, they always
seemed either too tight or too loose. He would have difficulty in
breathing - or else he would find himself drifting out of his
bunk.
Once he had awoken in mid-air, and had flailed away for several
minutes until, exhausted, he had managed to 'swim' the few metres
to the nearest wall. Not until then had he remembered that he
should merely have waited; the room ventilating system would have
soon pulled him to the exhaust grille without any exertion on his
part. As a seasoned space-traveller, he knew this perfectly well;
his only excuse was simple panic.
But tonight, he had managed to get everything right; probably when
weight returned, he would have difficulty in readjusting to that.
He had lain awake for only a few minutes, recapitulating the latest
discussion at dinner, and had then fallen asleep.
In his dreams, he had continued the conversation around the table.
There had been a few trifling changes, which he accepted without
surprise. Willis, for example, had grown his beard back - though on
only one side of his face. This, Floyd presumed, was in aid of some
research project, though he found it difficult to imagine its
purpose.
In any event, he had his own worries. He was defending himself
against the criticisms of Space Administrator Millson, who had
somewhat surprisingly joined their little group. Floyd wondered how
he had come aboard Universe (could he possibly have stowed away?).
The fact that Millson had been dead for at least forty years seemed
much less important.
'Heywood,' his old enemy was saying, 'the White House is most
upset.'
'I can't imagine why.'
'That radio message you've just sent to Europa. Did it have State
Department clearance?'
'I didn't think it was necessary. I merely asked permission to
land.'
'Ah - but that's it. Who did you ask? Do we recognize the
government concerned? I'm afraid it's all very irregular...
Millson faded away, still tut-tutting. I'm very glad this is only a
dream, thought Floyd. Now what?
Well, I might have expected it. Hello, old friend. You come in all
sizes, don't you? Of course, even TMA 1 couldn't have squeezed into
my cabin - and its Big Brother could easily have swallowed Universe
in one gulp.
The black monolith was standing - or floating - only two metres
from his bunk. With an uncomfortable shock of recognition, Floyd
realized that it was not only the same shape, but also the same
size, as an ordinary tombstone. Although the resemblance had often
been pointed out to him, until now the incongruity of scale had
lessened the psychological impact. Now, for the first time, he felt
the likeness was disquieting - even sinister. I know this is only a
dream - but at my age, I don't want any reminders...
Anyway - what are you doing here? Do you bring a message from Dave
Bowman? Are you Dave Bowman?
Well, I didn't really expect an answer; you weren't very talkative
in the past, were you? But things always happened when you were
around. Back in Tycho, sixty years ago, you sent that signal to
Jupiter, to tell your makers that we'd dug you up. And look what
you did to Jupiter, when we got there a dozen years later!
What are you up to now?
The first task confronting Captain Laplace and his crew, once they
had grown accustomed to being on terra firma, was to re-orient
themselves. Everything on Galaxy was the wrong way round.
Spaceships are designed for two modes of operation - either no
gravity at all, or, when the engines are thrusting, an up-and-down
direction along the axis. But now Galaxy was lying almost
horizontally, and all the floors had become walls. It was exactly
as if they were trying to live in a lighthouse that had toppled on
to its side; every single piece of furniture had to be moved, and
at least fifty per cent of the equipment was not functioning
properly.
Yet in some ways this was a blessing in disguise, and Captain
Laplace made the most of it. The crew was so busy rearranging
Galaxy's interior - giving priority to the plumbing - that he had
few worries about morale. As long as the hull remained airtight,
and the muon generators continued to supply power, they were in no
immediate danger; they merely had to survive for twenty days, and
salvation would come from the skies in the shape of Universe.
No-one ever mentioned the possibility that the unknown powers that
ruled Europa might object to a second landing. They had - as far as
anyone knew - ignored the first; surely they could not interfere
with a mission of mercy...
Europa itself, however, was now less cooperative. While Galaxy had
been adrift on the open sea, it had been virtually unaffected by
the quakes which continually racked the little world. But now that
the ship had become an all too permanent land structure, it was
shaken every few hours by seismic disturbances. Had it touched down
in the normal vertical position, by now it would certainly have
been overturned.
The quakes were unpleasant rather than dangerous, but they gave
nightmares to anyone who had experienced Tokyo '33 or Los Angeles
'45. It did not help much to know that they followed a completely
predictable pattern, rising to a peak of violence and frequency
every three and a half days when Io came swinging past on its inner
orbit. Nor was it much consolation to know that Europa's own
gravitational tides were inflicting at least equal damage on
Io.
After six days of gruelling work, Captain Laplace was satisfied
that Galaxy was as near shipshape as was possible in the
circumstances. He declared a holiday - which most of the crew spent
sleeping - and then drew up a schedule for their second week on the
satellite.
The scientists, of course, wanted to explore the new world they had
so unexpectedly entered. According to the radar maps that Ganymede
had transmitted to them, the island was fifteen kilometres long and
five wide; its maximum elevation was only a hundred metres - not
high enough, someone had gloomily predicted, to avoid a really bad
tsunami.
It was hard to imagine a more dismal and forbidding place; half a
century of exposure to Europa's feeble winds and rains had done
nothing to break up the pillow lava which covered half its surface,
or to soften the outcropping of granite that protruded through the
rivers of frozen rock. But it was their home now, and they had to
find a name for it.
Gloomy, downbeat suggestions like Hades, Inferno, Hell,
Purgatory... were firmly vetoed by the Captain; he wanted something
cheerful. One surprising and quixotic tribute to a brave enemy was
seriously considered before being rejected thirty-two to ten, with
five abstentions: the island would not be called 'Roseland'..
In the end, 'Haven' won unanimously.
'History never repeats itself - but historical situations
recur.'
As he made his daily report to Ganymede, Captain Laplace kept
thinking of the phrase. It had been quoted by Margaret M'Bala - now
approaching at almost a thousand kilometres every second - in a
message of encouragement from Universe which he had been very happy
to relay to his fellow castaways.
'Please tell Miss M'Bala that her little history lesson was
extremely good for morale; she couldn't have thought of anything
better to send us.
'Despite the inconvenience of having our walls and floors switched
around, we're living in luxury compared to those old polar
explorers. Some of us had heard of Ernest Shackleton, but we had no
idea of the Endurance saga. To have been trapped on ice floes for
over a year - then to spend the Antarctic winter in a cave - then
to cross a thousand kilometres of sea in an open boat and to climb
a range of unmapped mountains to reach the nearest human
settlement!
'And yet that was only the beginning. What we find incredible - and
inspiring - is that Shackleton went back four times to rescue his
men on that little island - and saved every one of them! You can
guess what that story's done to our spirits - I hope you can fax
this book to us in your next transmission - we're all anxious to
read it.
'And what would he have thought of that! Yes, we're infinitely
better off than any of those old-time explorers. It's almost
impossible to believe that, until well into the last century, they
were completely cut off from the rest of the human race, once
they'd gone over the horizon. We should be ashamed at grumbling
because light isn't fast enough and we can't talk to our friends in
real time - or that it takes a couple of hours to get replies from
Earth... They had no contact for months - almost years! Again, Miss
M'Bala - our sincerest thanks.
'Of course, all Earth explorers did have one considerable advantage
over us; at least they could breathe the air. Our science team has
been clamouring to go outside, and we've modified four spacesuits
for EVAs of up to six hours. At this atmospheric pressure they
won't need full suits - a waist seal is good enough - and I'm
allowing two men to go out at a time, as long as they stay within
sight of the ship.
'Finally, here's today's weather report. Pressure two hundred and
fifty bars, temperature steady at twenty-five degrees, wind gusting
at up to thirty klicks from the west, usual hundred per cent
overcast, quakes between one and three on open-ended Richter...
'You know, I never did like the sound of that "open-ended" -
especially now that Io's coming into conjunction again.
When people asked to see him together, it usually meant trouble, or
at least some difficult decision. Captain Laplace had noticed that
Floyd and van der Berg were spending a lot of time in earnest
discussions, often with Second Officer Chang, and it was easy to
guess what they were talking about. Yet their proposal still took
him by surprise.
'You want to go to Mount Zeus! How - in an open boat? Has that
Shackleton book gone to your head?'
Floyd looked slightly embarrassed; the Captain was right on target.
South had been an inspiration, in more ways than one.
'Even if we could build a boat, Sir, it would take much too long...
especially now that Universe looks like reaching us within ten
days.'
'And I'm not sure,' added van der Berg, 'that I'd care to sail on
this "Sea of Galilee"; not all its inhabitants may have got the
message that we're inedible.'
'So that leaves only one alternative, doesn't it? I'm sceptical,
but I'm willing to be convinced. Go on...
'We've discussed it with Mr Chang, and he confirms that it can be
done. Mount Zeus is only three hundred kilometres away; the shuttle
can fly there in less than an hour.'
'And find a place to land? As you doubtless recall, Mr Chang wasn't
very successful with Galaxy.'
'No problem, Sir, The William Tsung's only a hundredth of our mass;
even that ice could probably have supported it. We've been over the
video records, and found a dozen good landing sites.'
'Besides,' said van der Berg, 'the pilot won't have a pistol
pointed at him. That could help.'
'I'm sure it will. But the big problem is at this end. How are you
going to get the shuttle out of its garage? Can you rig a crane?
Even in this gravity, it would be quite a load.'
'No need to, Sir. Mr Chang can fly it out.'
There was a prolonged silence while Captain Laplace contemplated,
obviously without much enthusiasm, the idea of rocket motors firing
inside his ship. The small shuttle William Tsung, more familiarly
known as Bill Tee, was designed purely for orbital operations;
normally, it would be pushed gently out of its 'garage', and the
engines would not operate until it was well away from the mother
ship.
'Obviously you've worked all this out,' said the Captain
grudgingly, 'but what about the angle of take-off? Don't tell me
you want to roll Galaxy over so that Bill Tee can pop straight up?
The garage is half-way down one side; lucky it wasn't underneath
when we grounded.'
'The take-off will have to be at sixty degrees to the horizontal;
the lateral thrusters can handle it.'
'If Mr Chang says so, I'll certainly believe him. But what will the
firing do to the ship?'
'Well, it will wreck the garage interior - but it will never be
used again, anyway. And the bulkheads are designed for accidental
explosions, so there's no danger of damage to the rest of the ship.
We'll have fire-fighting crews standing by, just in case.'
It was a brilliant concept - no doubt of that. If it worked, the
mission would not be a total failure. During the last week, Captain
Laplace had given scarcely a moment's thought to the mystery of
Mount Zeus, which had brought them to this predicament: only
survival had mattered. But now there was hope, and leisure to think
ahead. It would be worth taking some risks, to find why this little
world was the focus of so much intrigue.
'Speaking from memory,' said Dr Anderson, 'Goddard's first rocket
flew about fifty metres. I wonder if Mr Chang will beat that
record?'
'He'd better - or we'll all be in trouble.'
Most of the science team had gathered in the observation lounge,
and everyone was staring anxiously back along the hull of the ship.
Although the entrance of the 'garage' was not visible from this
angle, they would see the Bill Tee soon enough, when - and if - it
emerged.
There was no countdown; Chang was taking his time, making every
possible check - and would fire when he felt like it. The shuttle
had been stripped down to its minimum mass, and was carrying just
enough propellant for one hundred seconds of flight. If everything
worked, that would be ample; if it didn't, more would not only be
superfluous, but dangerous.
'Here we go,' said Chang casually.
It was almost like a conjuring trick; everything happened so
quickly that the eye was deceived. No one saw Bill Tee pop out of
the garage, because it was hidden in a cloud of steam. When the
cloud had cleared, the shuttle was already landing, two hundred
metres away.
A great cheer of relief echoed through the lounge.
'He did it!' cried ex-Acting Captain Lee. 'He's broken Goddard's
record - easily!'
Standing on its four stubby legs in the bleak Europan landscape,
Bill Tee looked like a larger and even less elegant version of an
Apollo lunar module. That was not, however, the thought that
occurred to Captain Laplace, as he looked out from the bridge. It
seemed to him that his ship was rather like a stranded whale, that
had managed a difficult birth in an alien element. He hoped that
the new calf would survive.
Forty-eight very busy hours later, the William Tsung was loaded,
checked out on a ten-kilometre circuit over the island - and ready
to go. There was still plenty of time for the mission; by the most
optimistic reckoning, Universe could not arrive for another three
days, and the trip to Mount Zeus, even allowing for the deployment
of Dr van der Berg's extensive array of instruments, would take
only six hours.
As soon as Second Officer Chang had landed, Captain Laplace called
him to his cabin. The Skipper looked, thought Chang, somewhat ill
at ease.
'Good work, Walter - but of course that's only what we expect.'
'Thanks, Sir, So what's the problem?'
The Captain smiled. A well-integrated crew could keep no
secrets.
'Head Office, as usual. I hate to disappoint you, but I've had
orders that only Dr van der Berg and Second Officer Floyd are to
make the trip.'
'I get the picture,' Chang answered, with a trace of bitterness.
'What have you told them?'
'Nothing, yet; that's why I wanted to talk to you. I'm quite
prepared to say that you're the only pilot who can fly the
mission.'
'They'll know that's nonsense; Floyd could do the job as well as I
could. There's not the slightest risk - except for a malfunction,
which could happen to anyone.'
'I'd still be willing to stick my neck out, if you insist. After
all, no-one can stop me - and we'll all be heroes when we get back
to Earth.'
Chang was obviously doing some intricate calculations. He seemed
rather pleased with the result.
'Replacing a couple of hundred kilos of payload with propellant
gives us an interesting new option; I'd intended to mention it
earlier, but there was no way Bill Tee could manage with all that
extra gear and a full crew...'
'Don't tell me. The Great Wall.'
'Of course; we could do a complete survey in one or two passes, and
find what it really is.'
'I thought we had a very good idea, and I'm not sure if we should
go near it. That might be pressing our luck.'
'Perhaps. But there's another reason; to some of us, it's an even
better one...'
'Go on.'
'Tsien. It's only ten kilometres from the Wall. We'd like to drop a
wreath there.'
So that was what his officers had been discussing so solemnly; not
for the first time, Captain Laplace wished he knew a little more
Mandarin.
'I understand,' he said quietly. 'I'll have to think it over - and
talk to van der Berg and Floyd to see if they agree.'
'And Head Office?'
'No, dammit. This will be my decision.'
'You'd better hurry,' Ganymede Central had advised, 'The next
conjunction will be a bad one - we'll be triggering quakes as well
as Io. And we don't want to scare you - but unless our radar's gone
crazy, your mountain's sunk another hundred metres since the last
check.'
At that rate, thought van der Berg, Europa will be flat again in
ten years. How much faster things happened here than on Earth;
which was one reason why the place was so popular with
geologists.
Now that he was strapped into the number two position immediately
behind Floyd, and virtually surrounded by consoles of his own
equipment, he felt a curious mixture of excitement and regret. In a
few hours, the great intellectual adventure of his life would be
over - one way or the other. Nothing that would ever happen again
could possibly match it.
He did not have the slightest trace of fear; his confidence in both
man and machine was complete. One unexpected emotion was a wry
sense of gratitude to the late Rose McCullen; without her, he would
never have had this opportunity, but might have gone, still
uncertain, to his grave.
The heavily laden Bill Tee could barely manage one-tenth of a
gravity at lift-off; it was not intended for this sort of work, but
would manage much better on the homeward journey when it had
deposited its cargo. It seemed to take ages to climb clear of
Galaxy, and they had ample time to note the damage to the hull as
well as signs of corrosion from the occasional mildly acid rains.
While Floyd concentrated on the lift-off, van der Berg gave a quick
report on the ship's condition from the viewpoint of a privileged
observer. It seemed the right thing to do - even though, with any
luck, Galaxy's space-worthiness would soon be of no further concern
to anyone.
Now they could see the whole of Haven spread out beneath them, and
van der Berg realized what a brilliant job Acting Captain Lee had
done when he beached the ship. There were only a few places where
it could have been safely grounded; although a good deal of luck
had also been involved, Lee had used wind and sea-anchor to the
best possible advantage.
The mists closed around them; Bill Tee was rising on a
semi-ballistic trajectory to minimize drag, and there would be
nothing to see except the clouds for twenty minutes. A pity,
thought van der Berg; I'm sure there must be some interesting
creatures swimming around down there, and no-one else may have a
chance of seeing them.
'Coming up to engine cut-off,' said Floyd. 'Everything normal.'
'Very good, Bill Tee. No report of traffic at your altitude. You're
still number one on the runway to land.'
'Who's that joker?' asked van der Berg.
'Ronnie Lim. Believe it or not, that "number one on the runway"
goes back to Apollo.'
Van der Berg could understand why. There was nothing like the
occasional touch of humour - providing it was not overdone - to
relieve the strain when men were involved in some complex and
possibly hazardous enterprise.
'Fifteen minutes before we start braking,' said Floyd. 'Let's see
who else is on the air.'
He started the autoscan, and a succession of beeps and whistles,
separated by short silences as the tuner rejected them one by one
in its swift climb up the radio spectrum, echoed round the little
cabin.
'Your local beacons and data transmissions,' said Floyd. 'I was
hoping - ah, here we are!'
It was only a faint musical tone, warbling rapidly up and down like
a demented soprano. Floyd glanced at the frequency meter.
'Doppler shift almost gone - she's slowing fast.'
'What is it -text?'
'Slowscan video, I think. They're relaying a lot of material back
to Earth through the big dish on Ganymede, when it's in the right
position. The networks are yelling for news.'
They listened to the hypnotic but meaningless sound for a few
minutes; then Floyd switched it off. Incomprehensible though the
transmission from Universe was to their unaided senses, it conveyed
the only message that mattered. Help was on the way, and would soon
be there.
Partly to fill the silence, but also because he was genuinely
interested, van der Berg remarked casually: 'Have you talked to
your grandfather lately?'
'Talked', of course, was a misnomer where interplanetary distances
were concerned, but no-one had come up with an acceptable
alternative. 'Voicegram', 'audiomail' and 'vocard' had all
flourished briefly, then vanished into limbo. Even now, most of the
human race probably did not believe that realtime conversation was
impossible in the Solar System's wide, open spaces, and from time
to time indignant protests were heard: 'Why can't you scientists do
something about it?'
'Yes,' said Floyd. 'He's in fine shape, and I look forward to
meeting him.'
There was a slight strain in his voice. I wonder, thought van der
Berg, when they last met; but he realized that it would be tactless
to ask. Instead, he spent the next ten minutes rehearsing the
off-loading and setting-up procedures with Floyd, so there would be
no unnecessary confusion when they touched down.
The COMMENCE BRAKING alarm went off just a fraction of a second
after Floyd had already started the program sequencer. I'm in good
hands, thought van der Berg: I can relax and concentrate on my job.
Where's that camera - don't say it's floated away again.
The clouds were clearing. Even though the radar had shown exactly
what was beneath them, in a display as good as normal vision could
provide, it was still a shock to see the face of the mountain
rearing up only a few kilometres ahead.
'Look!' cried Floyd suddenly. 'Over to the left -by that double
peak - give you one guess!'
'I'm sure you're right - I don't think we did any damage - it just
splattered - wonder where the other one hit-'
'Altitude one thousand. Which landing site? Alpha doesn't look so
good from here.'
'You're right - try Gamma - closer to the mountain, anyway.'
'Five hundred. Gamma it is. I'll hover for twenty secs - if you
don't like it, we'll switch to Beta. Four hundred... Three
hundred... Two hundred. ('Good luck, Bill Tee,' said Galaxy
briefly). Thanks, Ronnie... One hundred and fifty... One hundred...
Fifty... How about it? Just a few small rocks, and - that's
peculiar - what looks like broken glass all over the place -
someone's had a wild party here... Fifty... Fifty... Still OK?'
'Perfect. Go down.'
'Forty... thirty... twenty... Sure you don't want to change your
mind?... Ten... Kicking up a little dust, as Neil said once - or
was it Buzz?... Five... Contact! Easy, wasn't it? Don't know why
they bother to pay me.'
'Hello, Gany Central - we've made a perfect landing - I mean Chris
has - on a flat surface of some metamorphic rock - probably the
same pseudogranite we've called Havenite. The base of the mountain
is only two kilometres away, but already I can tell there's no real
need to go any closer.
'We're putting on our top-suits now, and will start unloading in
five minutes. Will leave the monitors running, of course, and will
call on every quarter-hour. Van out.'
'What did you mean by that "no need to go any closer"?' asked
Floyd.
Van der Berg grinned. In the last few minutes he seemed to have
shed years, and almost to have become a carefree boy.
'Circumspice,' he said happily. 'Latin for "look around you". Let's
get the big camera out first - wow!'
The Bill Tee gave a sudden lurch, and for a moment heaved up and
down on its landing-gear shock absorbers with a motion that, if it
had continued for more than a few seconds, would have been a recipe
for instant sea sickness.
'Ganymede was right about those quakes,' said Floyd, when they had
recovered. 'Is there any serious danger?'
'Probably not; it's still thirty hours to conjunction, and this
looks a solid slab of rock. But we won't waste any time here -
luckily we won't need to. Is my mask straight? It doesn't feel
right.'
'Let me tighten the strap. That's better. Breathe in hard - good,
now it fits fine. I'll go first.'
Van der Berg wished that his could be the first small step, but
Floyd was the commander and it was his duty to check that the Bill
Tee was in good shape - and ready for an immediate take-off.
He walked once around the little spacecraft, examining the landing
gear, then gave the thumbs-up signal to van der Berg, who started
down the ladder to join him. Although he had worn the same
lightweight breathing equipment on his exploration of Haven, he
felt a little awkward with it, and paused at the landing pad to
make some adjustments. Then he glanced up - and saw what Floyd was
doing.
'Don't touch it!' he cried. 'It's dangerous!'
Floyd jumped a good metre away from the shards of vitreous rock he
was examining. To his untrained eye, they looked rather like an
unsuccessful melt from a large glass furnace.
'It's not radioactive, is it?' he asked anxiously. 'No. But stay
away until I've got there.'
To his surprise, Floyd realized that van der Berg was wearing heavy
gloves. As a space officer, it had taken him a long time to grow
accustomed to the fact that, here on Europa, it was safe to expose
one's bare skin to the atmosphere. Nowhere else in the Solar System
- even on Mars - was that possible.
Very cautiously, van der Berg reached down and picked up a long
splinter of the glassy material. Even in this diffused light, it
glittered strangely, and Floyd could see that it had a vicious
edge.
'The sharpest knife in the known universe,' said van der Berg
happily.
'We've been through all this to find a knife!'
Van der Berg started to laugh, then found it wasn't easy inside his
mask.
'So you still don't know what this is about?'
'I'm beginning to feel I'm the only one who doesn't.'
Van der Berg took his companion by the shoulder, and turned him to
face the looming mass of Mount Zeus. From this distance, it filled
half the sky - not merely the greatest, but the only mountain on
this whole world.
'Admire the view just for one minute. I have an important call to
make.'
He punched a code sequence on his comset, waited for the READY
light to flash, and said: 'Ganymede Central 109 - this is Van. Do
you receive?'
After no more than the minimum timelag, an obviously electronic
voice answered:
'Hello, Van. This is Ganymede Central 109. Ready to receive.'
Van der Berg paused, savouring the moment he would remember for the
rest of his life.
'Contact Earth Ident Uncle 737. Relay following message. LUCY IS
HERE. LUCY IS HERE. End message. Please repeat.'
Perhaps I should have stopped him saying that, whatever it means,
thought Floyd, as Ganymede repeated the message. But it's too late
now. It will reach Earth within the hour.
'Sorry about that, Chris,' grinned van der Berg. 'I wanted to
establish priority - amongst other things.'
'Unless you start talking soon, I'll begin carving you up with one
of these patent glass knives.'
'Glass, indeed! Well, the explanation can wait - it's absolutely
fascinating, but quite complicated. So I'll give you the straight
facts.
'Mount Zeus is a single diamond, approximate mass one million
million tons. Or, if you prefer it that way, about two times ten to
the seventeenth carats. But I can't guarantee that it's all gem
quality.'
As they unloaded the equipment from Bill Tee and set it up on their
little granite landing-pad, Chris Floyd found it hard to tear his
eyes away from the mountain looming above them. A single diamond -
bigger than Everest! Why, the scattered fragments lying round the
shuttle must be worth billions, rather than millions.
On the other hand, they might be worth no more than - well, scraps
of broken glass. The value of diamonds had always been controlled
by the dealers and producers, but if a literal gem-mountain came
suddenly on the market, prices would obviously collapse completely.
Now Floyd began to understand why so many interested parties had
focused their attention upon Europa; the political and economic
ramifications were endless.
Now that he had at last proved his theory, van der Berg had become
again the dedicated and single-minded scientist, anxious to
complete his experiment with no further distraction. With Floyd's
help - it was not easy to get some of the bulkier pieces of
equipment out of Bill Tee's cramped cabin - they first drilled a
metre-long core with a portable electric drill, and carried it
carefully back to the shuttle.
Floyd would have had a different set of priorities, but he
recognized that it made sense to do the harder tasks first. Not
until they had laid out a seismograph array and erected a panoramic
TV camera on a low, heavy tripod did van der Berg condescend to
collect some of the incomputable riches lying all around them.
'At the very least,' he said, as he carefully selected some of the
less lethal fragments, 'they'll make good souvenirs.'
'Unless Rosie's friends murder us to get them.'
Van der Berg looked sharply at his companion; he wondered how much
Chris really knew - and how much, like all of them, he was
guessing.
'Not worth their while, now that the secret's out. In about an
hour's time, the Stock Exchange computers will be going crazy.'
'You bastard!' said Floyd, with admiration rather than rancour. 'So
that's what your messsage was about.'
'There's no law that says a scientist shouldn't make a little
profit on the side - but I'm leaving the sordid details to my
friends on Earth. Honestly, I'm much more interested in the job
we're doing here. Let me have that wrench, please...'
Three times before they had finished establishing Zeus Station they
were almost knocked off their feet by quakes. They could feel them
first as a vibration underfoot, then everything would start shaking
- then there would be a horrible, long-drawn-out groaning sound
that seemed to come from every direction. It was even air-borne,
which to Floyd seemed strangest of all. He could not quite get used
to the fact that there was enough atmosphere around them to allow
short-range conversations without radio.
Van der Berg kept assuring him that the quakes were still quite
harmless, but Floyd had learned never to put too much trust in
experts. True, the geologist had just been proved spectacularly
right; as he looked at Bill Tee heaving on its shock-absorbers like
a storm-tossed ship, he hoped that Van's luck would hold for at
least a few more minutes.
'That seems to be it,' said the scientist at last, to Floyd's great
relief. 'Ganymede's getting good data on all channels. The
batteries will last for years, with the solar panel to keep
recharging them.'
'If this gear is still standing a week from now, I'll be very
surprised. I'll swear that mountain's moved since we landed - let's
get off before it falls on top of us.'
'I'm more worried,' laughed van der Berg, 'that your jet-blast will
undo all our work.'
'No risk of that - we're well clear, and now we've offloaded so
much junk we'll need only half-power to lift. Unless you want to
take aboard a few more billions. Or trillions.'
'Let's not be greedy. Anyway, I can't even guess what this will be
worth when we get it to Earth. The museums will grab most of it, of
course. After that - who knows?'
Floyd's fingers were flying over the control panel as he exchanged
messages with Galaxy.
'First stage of mission completed. Bill Tee ready for take-off.
Flight plan as agreed.'
They were not surprised when Captain Laplace answered.
'You're quite certain you want to go ahead? Remember, you have the
final decision. I'll back you up, whatever it is.'
'Yessir, we're both happy. We understand how the crew feels. And
the scientific payoff could be enormous - we're both very
excited.'
'Just a minute - we're still waiting for your report on Mount
Zeus!'
Floyd looked at van der Berg, who shrugged his shoulders and then
took the microphone.
'If we told you now, Captain, you'd think we were crazy - or
pulling your leg. Please wait a couple of hours until we're back -
with the evidence.'
'Hm. Not much point giving you an order, is it? Anyway - good luck.
And from the owner as well - he thinks going to Tsien is a splendid
idea.'
'I knew Sir Lawrence would approve,' Floyd remarked to his
companion. 'And anyway - with Galaxy already a total loss, Bill
Tee's not much extra risk, is it?'
Van der Berg could see his point of view, even though he did not
entirely subscribe to it. He had made his scientific reputation;
but he still looked forward to enjoying it.
'Oh - by the way,' Floyd said. 'Who was Lucy - anybody in
particular?'
'Not as far as I know. We came across her in a computer search, and
decided the name would make a good code word - everyone would
assume it was something to do with Lucifer, which is just enough of
a half-truth to be beautifully misleading....
'I'd never heard of them, but a hundred years ago there was a group
of popular musicians with a very strange name - the Beatles -
spelled B-E-A-T-L-E-S, don't ask me why. And they wrote a song with
an equally strange title: "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". Weird,
isn't it? Almost as if they knew...'
According to Ganymede radar, the wreck of the Tsien lay three
hundred kilometres west of Mount Zeus, towards the twilight zone
and the cold lands beyond. Permanently cold they were, but not
dark; half the time they were brilliantly lit by the distant Sun.
However, even by the end of the long Europan solar day, the
temperature was still far below freezing point. As liquid water
could exist only on the hemisphere facing Lucifer, the intermediate
region was a place of continual storms, where rain and hail, sleet
and snow contended for supremacy.
During the half-century since Tsien's disastrous landing, the ship
had moved almost a thousand kilometres. It must have drifted - like
Galaxy - for several years on the newly created Sea of Galilee,
before coming to rest on its bleakly inhospitable shore.
Floyd picked up the radar echo as soon as Bill Tee flattened out at
the end of its second leap across Europa. The signal was
surprisingly weak for so large an object; as soon as they broke
through the clouds, they realized why.
The wreck of the spaceship Tsien, first man-carrying vessel to land
on a satellite of Jupiter, stood in the centre of a small, circular
lake - obviously artificial, and connected by a canal to the sea,
less than three kilometres away. Only the skeleton was left, and
not even all of that; the carcass had been picked clean.
But by what? van der Berg asked. There was no sign of life there;
the place looked as if it had been deserted for years. Yet he had
not the slightest doubt that something had stripped the wreck, with
deliberate and indeed almost surgical precision.
'Obviously safe to land,' said Floyd, waiting for a few seconds to
get van der Berg's almost absentminded nod of approval. The
geologist was already videoing everything in sight.
Bill Tee settled down effortlessly by the side of the pool, and
they looked across the cold, dark water at this monument to man's
exploring impulses. There seemed no convenient way of getting to
the wreck, but that did not really matter.
When they had suited up, they carried the wreath to the water's
edge, held it solemnly for a moment in front of the camera, then
tossed in this tribute from Galaxy's crew. It had been beautifully
made; even though the only raw materials available were metal foil,
paper and plastic, one could easily believe that the flowers and
leaves were real. Pinned all over them were notes and inscriptions,
many written in the ancient but now officially obsolete script
rather than Roman characters.
As they were walking back to the Bill Tee, Floyd said thoughtfully:
'Did you notice - there was practically no metal left. Only glass,
plastic, synthetics.'
'What about those ribs and supporting girders?'
'Composite - mostly carbon, boron. Someone round here is very
hungry for metal - and knows it when it sees it.
Interesting...'
Very, thought van der Berg. On a world where fire could not exist,
metals and alloys would be almost impossible to make, and as
precious as - well, diamonds.
When he had reported to base, and received a message of gratitude
from Second Officer Chang and his colleagues, Floyd took the Bill
Tee up to a thousand metres and continued westward.
'Last lap,' he said, 'no point in going higher - we'll be there in
ten minutes. But I won't land; if the Great Wall is what we think
it is, I'd prefer not to. We'll do a quick flyby and head for home.
Get those cameras ready; this could be even more important than
Mount Zeus.'
And, he added to himself, I may soon know what Grandfather Heywood
felt, not so far from here, fifty years ago. We'll have a lot to
talk about when we meet - less than a week from now, if all goes
well.
What a terrible place, thought Chris Floyd - nothing but driving
sleet, flurries of snow, occasional glimpses of landscapes streaked
with ice - why, Haven was a tropical paradise by comparison! Yet he
knew that the nightside, only a few hundred kilometres further on
round the curve of Europa, was even worse.
To his surprise, the weather cleared suddenly and completely just
before they reached their goal. The clouds lifted - and there ahead
was an immense, black wall, almost a kilometre high, lying directly
across Bill Tee's flight path. It was so huge that it was obviously
creating its own microclimate; the prevailing winds were being
deflected around it, leaving a local, calm area in its lee.
It was instantly recognizable as the Monolith, and sheltering at
its foot were hundreds of hemispherical structures, gleaming a
ghostly white in the rays of the low-hanging sun that had once been
Jupiter. They looked, thought Floyd, exactly like old-style
beehives made of snow; something in their appearance evoked other
memories of Earth. Van der Berg was one jump ahead of him.
'Igloos,' he said. 'Same problem - same solution. No other building
material around here, except rock - which would be much harder to
work. And the low gravity must help - some of those domes are quite
large. I wonder what lives in them...'
They were still too far away to see anything moving in the streets
of this little city at the edge of the world. And as they came
closer, they saw that there were no streets.
'It's Venice, made of ice,' said Floyd. 'All igloos and
canals.'
'Amphibians,' answered van der Berg. 'We should have expected it. I
wonder where they are?'
'We may have scared them. Bill Tee's much noisier outside than
in.'
For a moment, van der Berg was too busy filming and reporting to
Galaxy to reply. Then he said: 'We can't possibly leave without
making some contact. You're right - this is far bigger than Mount
Zeus.'
'And it could be more dangerous.'
'I don't see any sign of advanced technology - correction, that
looks like an old twentieth-century radar dish over there! Can you
get closer?'
'And get shot at? No thanks. Besides, we're using up our hover
time. Only another ten minutes - if you want to get home
again.'
'Can we at least land and look around? There's a patch of clear
rock over there. Where the hell is everybody?'
'Scared, like me. Nine minutes. I'll do one trip across town - film
everything you can - yes, Galaxy - we're OK - just rather busy at
the moment - call you later -'
'I've just realized - that's not a radar dish, but something almost
as interesting. It's pointing straight at Lucifer - it's a solar
furnace! Makes a lot of sense in a place where the sun never moves
- and you can't light a fire.'
'Eight minutes. Too bad everyone's hiding indoors.'
'Or back in the water. Can we look at that big building with the
open space around it? I think it's the town hall.'
Van der Berg was pointing towards a structure much larger than all
the others, and of quite different design; it was a collection of
vertical cylinders, like oversized organ-pipes. Moreover, it was
not the featureless white of the igloos, but showed a complex
mottling over its entire surface.
'Europan art!' cried van der Berg. 'That's a mural of some kind!
Closer, closer! We must get a record!'
Obediently, Floyd dropped lower - and lower - and lower. He seemed
to have completely forgotten all his earlier reservations about
hover time; and suddenly, with shocked incredulity, van der Berg
realized that he was going to land.
The scientist tore his eyes from the rapidly approaching ground,
and glanced at his pilot. Though he was obviously still in full
control of Bill Tee, Floyd seemed to be hypnotized; he was staring
at a fixed point straight ahead of the descending shuttle.
'What's the matter, Chris?' van der Berg cried. 'Do you know what
you're doing?'
'Of course. Can't you see him?'
'See who?'
'That man, standing by the biggest cylinder. And he's not wearing
any breathing gear!'
'Don't be an idiot, Chris: there's no one there.'
'He's looking up at us. He's waving - I think I recog - Oh my
God!'
'There's no-one - no-one! Pull up!'
Floyd ignored him completely. He was absolutely calm and
professional as he brought Bill Tee in to a perfect landing, and
cut the motor at exactly the right instant before touchdown.
Very thoroughly, he checked the instrument readings, and set the
safety switches. Only when he had completed the landing sequence
did he again look out of the observation window, with a puzzled but
happy expression on his face.
'Hello, Grandfather,' he said softly, to no-one at all that van der
Berg could see.
Even in his most horrible nightmares, Dr van der Berg had never
imagined being stranded on a hostile world in a tiny space capsule,
with only a madman for company. But at least Chris Floyd did not
seem to be violent; perhaps he could be humoured into taking off
again and flying them safely back to Galaxy...
He was still staring at nothing, and from time to time his lips
moved in silent conversation. The alien 'town' remained completely
deserted, and one could almost imagine that it had been abandoned
for centuries. Presently, however, van der Berg noticed some
tell-tale signs of recent occupancy. Although Bill Tee's rockets
had blasted away the thin layer of snow immediately around them,
the remainder of the little square was still lightly powdered. It
was a page torn from a book, covered with signs and hieroglyphics,
some of which he could read.
A heavy object had been dragged in that direction - or had made its
way clumsily under its own power. Leading from the now closed
entrance of one igloo was the unmistakable track of a wheeled
vehicle. Too far away to make out details was a small object that
could have been a discarded container; perhaps Europans were
sometimes as careless as humans...
The presence of life was unmistakable, overwhelming. Van der Berg
felt he was being watched by a thousand eyes - or other senses -
and there was no way of guessing whether the minds behind them were
friendly, or hostile. They might even be indifferent, merely
waiting for the intruders to go away, so that they could continue
their interrupted and mysterious business.
Then Chris Floyd spoke once again into the empty air.
'Goodbye, Grandfather,' he said quietly, with just a trace of
sadness. Turning towards van der Berg he added in a normal
conversational tone: 'He says it's time to leave. I guess you must
think I'm crazy.'
It was wisest, decided van der Berg, not to agree. In any event, he
soon had something else to worry about.
Floyd was now staring anxiously at the read-outs that Bill Tee's
computer was feeding to him. Presently he said, in an
understandable tone of apology:
'Sorry about this, Van. That landing used up more fuel than I'd
intended. We'll have to change the mission profile.'
That, van der Berg thought bleakly, was a rather roundabout way of
saying: 'We can't get back to Galaxy.' With difficulty, he. managed
to suppress a 'Damn your grandfather!' and merely asked: 'So what
do we do?'
Floyd was studying the chart, and punching in more numbers.
'We can't stay here -, (Why not? thought van der Berg. If we're
going to die anyway, we might use our time learning as much as
possible.) ' - so we should find a place where the shuttle from
Universe can pick us up easily.'
Van der Berg breathed a huge mental sigh of relief. Stupid of him
not to have thought of that; he felt like a man who had been
reprieved just when he was being taken to the gallows. Universe
should reach Europa in less than four days; Bill Tee's
accommodation could hardly be called luxurious, but it was
infinitely preferable to most of the alternatives he could
imagine.
'Away from this filthy weather - a stable, flat surface - closer to
Galaxy, though I'm not sure if that helps much - shouldn't be any
problem. We've enough for five hundred kilometres - it's just that
we can't risk the sea crossing.'
For a moment, van der Berg thought wistfully of Mount Zeus; there
was so much that could be done there. But the seismic disturbances
- steadily getting worse as lo came into line with Lucifer - ruled
that out completely. He wondered if his instruments were still
working, and would check them again as soon as they'd dealt with
the immediate problem.
'I'll fly down the coast to the equator - best place to be anyway
for a shuttle landing - the radar map showed some smooth areas just
inland round sixty west.'
'I know. The Masada Plateau.' (And, van der Berg added to himself,
perhaps a chance for a little more exploring. Never miss an
unexpected opportunity...)
'The Plateau it is. Goodbye, Venice. Goodbye, Grandfather...'
* * *
When the muted roar of the braking rockets had died away, Chris
Floyd safetied the firing circuits for the last time, released his
seat belt, and stretched arms and legs as far as he could in Bill
Tee's confined quarters.
'Not such a bad view - for Europa,' he said cheerfully. 'Now we've
four days to find out if shuttle rations are as bad as they claim.
So - which of us starts talking first?'
I wish I'd studied some psychology, thought van der Berg; then I
could explore the parameters of his delusion. Yet now he seems
completely sane - except on that one subject.
Though almost any seat was comfortable at one-sixth of a gravity,
Floyd had tilted his to the fully reclining position and had
clasped his hands behind his head. Van der Berg suddenly recalled
that this was the classic position of a patient, in the days of the
old and still not entirely discredited Freudian analysis.
He was glad to let the other talk first, partly out of sheer
curiosity but chiefly because he hoped that the sooner Floyd got
this nonsense out of his system, the sooner he would be cured - or,
at least, harmless. But he did not feel too optimistic: there must
have been some serious, deep-seated problem in the first place to
trigger so powerful an illusion.
It was very disconcerting to find that Floyd agreed with him
completely, and had already made his own diagnosis.
'My crew psych rating is Al plus,' he said, 'which means that
they'll even let me look at my own files - only about ten per cent
can do this. So I'm as baffled as you are - but I saw Grandfather,
and he spoke to me. I've never believed in ghosts - who does? - but
this must mean that he's dead. I wish I could have got to know him
better - I'd been looking forward to our meeting... Still, now I
have something to remember...'
Presently van der Berg asked: 'Tell me exactly what he said.'
Chris smiled a little wanly and answered: 'I've never had one of
those total recall memories, and I was so stunned by the whole
thing that I can't give you many of the actual words.' He paused,
and a look of concentration appeared on his face.
'That's strange; now I look back, I don't think we did use
words.'
Even worse, thought van der Berg; telepathy as well as survival
after death. But he merely said:
'Well, give me the general gist of the - er -conversation. I never
heard you say anything remember.'
'Right. He said something like, "I wanted to see you again, and I'm
very happy. I'm sure everything is going to work out well, and
Universe will soon pick you up."
Typical bland spirit message, thought van der Berg. They never say
anything useful or surprising - merely reflect the hopes and fears
of the listener. Zero-information echoes from the subconscious.
'Go on.'
'Then I asked him where everyone was - why the place was deserted.
He laughed and gave me an answer I still don't understand.
Something like: "I know you didn't intend any harm - when we saw
you coming, we barely had time to give the warning. All the - " and
here he used a word I couldn't pronounce even if I could remember
it - "got into the water - they can move quite quickly when they
have to! They won't come out until you've left, and the wind has
blown the poison away." What could he have meant by that? Our
exhaust is nice, clean steam - and that's what most of their
atmosphere is, anyway.'
Well, thought van der Berg, I suppose there's no law that says a
delusion - any more than a dream - has to make logical sense.
Perhaps the concept of 'poison' symbolizes some deep-rooted fear
that Chris, despite his excellent psych rating, is unable to face.
Whatever it is, I doubt if it's any concern of mine. Poison,
indeed! Bill Tee's propellant mass is pure, distilled water shipped
up to orbit from Ganymede.
But wait a minute. How hot is it when it comes out of the exhaust?
Haven't I read somewhere... ?
'Chris,' said van der Berg cautiously, 'after the water's gone
through the reactor, does it all come out as steam?'
'What else could it do? Oh, if we run really hot, ten or fifteen
per cent gets cracked to hydrogen and oxygen.'
Oxygen! Van der Berg felt a sudden chill, even though the shuttle
was at comfortable room temperature. It was most unlikely that
Floyd understood the implications of what he had just said; the
knowledge was outside his normal sphere of expertise.
'Did you know, Chris, that to primitive organisms on Earth, and
certainly to creatures living in an atmosphere like Europa's,
oxygen is a deadly poison?'
'You're joking.'
'I'm not: it's even poisonous to us, at high pressure.'
'I did know that; we were taught it in our diving course.'
'Your - grandfather - was talking sense. It's as if we'd sprayed
that city with mustard gas. Well, not quite as bad as that - it
would disperse very quickly.'
'So now you believe me.'
'I never said I didn't.'
'You would have been crazy if you did!'
That broke the tension, and they had a good laugh together.
'You never told me what he was wearing.'
'An old-fashioned dressing gown, just as I remembered when I was a
boy. Looked very comfortable.'
'Any other details?'
'Now you mention it, he looked much younger, and had more hair than
when I saw him last. So I don't think he was - what can I say? -
real. Something like a computer-generated image. Or a synthetic
hologram.'
'The Monolith!'
'Yes - that's what I thought. You remember how Dave Bowman appeared
to Grandfather on Discovery? Perhaps it's his turn now. But why? He
didn't give me any warning - not even any particular message. Just
wanted to say goodbye and wish me well...'
For a few embarrassing moments Floyd's face began to crumple; then
he regained control, and smiled at van der Berg.
'I've done enough talking. Now it's your turn to explain just what
a million-million-ton diamond is doing - on a world made mostly of
ice and sulphur. It had better be good.'
'It is,' said Dr Rolf van der Berg.
'When I was studying at Flagstaff,' began van der Berg, 'I came
across an old astronomy book that said: "The Solar System consists
of the Sun, Jupiter - and assorted debris." Puts Earth in its
place, doesn't it? And hardly fair to Saturn, Uranus and Neptune -
the other three gas giants come to almost half as much as
Jupiter.
'But I'd better start with Europa. As you know, it was flat ice
before Lucifer started warming it up - greatest elevation only a
couple of hundred metres - and it wasn't much different after the
ice had melted and a lot of the water had migrated and frozen out
on Farside. From 2015 - when our detailed observations began -
until '38, there was only one high point on the whole moon - and we
know what that was.'
'We certainly do. But even though I've seen it with my own eyes, I
still can't picture the Monolith as a wall! I always visualize it
as standing upright - or floating freely in space.'
'I think we've learned that it can do anything it wants to -
anything we can imagine - and a lot more.
'Well, something happened to Europa in '37, between one observation
and the next. Mount Zeus - all of ten kilometres high! - suddenly
appeared.
'Volcanoes that big don't pop up in a couple of weeks; besides,
Europa's nothing like as active as Io.'
'It's active enough for me,' Floyd grumbled. 'Did you feel that
one?'
'Besides, if it had been a volcano, it would have spewed enormous
amounts of gas into the atmosphere; there were some changes, but
nothing like enough to account for that explanation. It was all a
complete mystery, and because we were scared of getting too close -
and were busy on our own projects - we didn't do much except spin
fantastic theories. None of them, as it turned out, as fantastic as
the truth.
'I first suspected it from some chance observations in '57, but
didn't really take them seriously for a couple of years. Then the
evidence became stronger; for anything less bizarre, it would have
been completely convincing.
'But before I could believe that Mount Zeus was made of diamond, I
had to find an explanation. To a good scientist - and I think I'm a
good one - no fact is really respectable until there's a theory to
account for it. The theory may turn out to be wrong - it usually
is, in some details at least - but it must provide a working
hypothesis.
'And as you pointed out, a million-million-ton diamond on a world
of ice and sulphur takes a little explaining. Of course, now it's
perfectly obvious and I feel a damn fool not to have seen the
answer years ago. Might have saved a lot of trouble - and at least
one life - if I had.'
He paused thoughtfully, then suddenly asked Floyd:
'Anyone mention Dr Paul Kreuger to you?'
'No. Why should they? I've heard of him, of course.
'I just wondered. A lot of strange things have been going on, and I
doubt if we'll ever know all the answers.
'Anyway, it's no secret now, so it doesn't matter. Two years ago I
sent a confidential message to Paul - oh, sorry, I should have
mentioned - he's my uncle - with a summary of my findings. I asked
if he could explain them - or refute them.
'Didn't take him long, with all the byte-bashing he's got at his
fingertips. Unfortunately, he was careless, or someone was
monitoring his network - I'm sure your friends, whoever they are,
must have a good idea by now.
'In a couple of days, he dug up an eighty-year-old paper in the
scientific journal Nature - yes, it was still printed on paper back
then! - which explained everything. Well, almost everything.
'It was written by a man working in one of the big labs in the
United States - of America, of course - the USSA didn't exist then.
It was a place where they designed nuclear weapons, so they knew a
few things about high temperatures and pressures.
'I don't know if Dr Ross - that was his name -had anything to do
with bombs, but his background must have started him thinking about
conditions deep down inside the giant planets. In his 1984 - sorry,
1981 - paper - it's less than a page long, by the way - he made
some very interesting suggestions...
'He pointed out that there were gigantic quantities of carbon - in
the form of methane, CH4 - in the gas giants. Up to seventeen per
cent of the total mass! He calculated that at the pressures and
temperatures in the cores - millions of atmospheres - the carbon
would separate out, sink down towards the centres and - you've
guessed it - crystallize. It was a lovely theory: I don't suppose
he ever dreamed that there would be a hope of testing it.
'So that's part one of the story. In some ways, part two is even
more interesting. What about some more of that coffee?'
'Here you are; and I think I've already guessed part two. Obviously
something to do with the explosion of Jupiter.'
'Not explosion - implosion - Jupiter just collapsed on itself, then
ignited. In some ways, it was like the detonation of a nuclear
bomb, except that the new state was a stable one - in fact, a
minisun.
'Now, very strange things happen during implosions; it's almost as
if pieces can go through each other, and come out on the other
side. Whatever the mechanism, a mountain-sized piece of the diamond
core was shot into orbit.
'It must have made hundreds of revolutions - been perturbed by the
gravitational fields of all the satellites - before it ended up on
Europa. And conditions must have been exactly right - one body must
have overtaken the other, so the impact velocity was only a couple
of kilometres a second. If they'd met head-on - well, there might
not be a Europa now, let alone Mount Zeus! And I sometimes have
nightmares, thinking that it could very well have come down on
us...
'The new atmosphere may also have buffered the impact; even so, the
shock must have been appalling - I wonder what it did to our
Europan friends? - it certainly triggered a whole series of
tectonic disturbances, which are still continuing.'
'And,' said Floyd, 'political ones. I'm just beginning to
appreciate some of them. No wonder the USSA was worried.'
'Amongst others.'
'But would anyone seriously imagine they could get at these
diamonds?'
'We've not done so badly,' answered van der Berg, gesturing towards
the back of the shuttle. 'In any case, the mere psychological
effect on the industry would be enormous. That's why so many people
were anxious to know whether it was true or not.'
'And now they know. What next?'
'That's not my problem, thank God. But I hope I've made a sizeable
contribution to Ganymede's science budget.'
As well as my own, he added to himself.
'Whatever made you think I was dead?' cried Heywood Floyd. 'I've
not felt better for years!'
Paralysed with astonishment, Chris Floyd stared at the speaker
grille. He felt a great lifting of his spirits - yet also a sense
of indignation. Someone - something - had played a cruel practical
joke on him; but for what conceivable reason?
Fifty million kilometres away - and coming closer by several
hundred every second - Heywood Floyd also sounded slightly
indignant. But he also sounded vigorous and cheerful, and his voice
radiated the happiness he obviously felt at knowing that Chris was
safe.
'And I've got some more good news for you; the shuttle will pick
you up first. It will drop some urgent medical supplies at Galaxy,
then hop over to you, and bring you up to rendezvous with us on the
next orbit. Universe will go down five orbits later; you'll be able
to greet your friends when they come aboard.
'No more now - except to say how much I'm looking forward to making
up for lost time. Waiting for your answer in - let's see - about
three minutes...'
For a moment, there was complete silence aboard Bill Tee; van der
Berg dared not look at his companion. Then Floyd keyed the
microphone and said slowly: 'Grandad - what a wonderful surprise -
I'm still in a state of shock. But I know I met you here on Europa
- I know you said goodbye to me. I'm as certain of that, as I'm
sure you were speaking to me just now...
'Well, we'll have plenty of time to talk about it later. But
remember how Dave Bowman spoke to you, aboard Discovery? Perhaps it
was something like that.
'Now we'll just sit and wait here until the shuttle comes for us.
We're quite comfortable - there's an occasional quake, but nothing
to worry about. Until we meet, all my love.'
He could not remember when he had last used that word to his
grandfather.
After the first day, the shuttle cabin began to smell. After the
second, they didn't notice - but agreed that the food was no longer
quite so tasty. They also found it hard to sleep, and there were
even accusations of snoring.
On day three, despite frequent bulletins from Universe, Galaxy and
Earth itself, boredom was beginning to set in, and they had
exhausted their supply of dirty stories.
But that was the last day. Before it was over, Lady Jasmine
descended, seeking her lost child.
'Baas,' said the apartment's master comset, 'I accessed that
special programme from Ganymede while you were sleeping. Do you
wish to see it now?'
'Yes,' answered Dr Paul Kreuger. 'Speed ten times. No sound.'
There would, he knew, be a lot of introductory material he could
jump, and view later if he wished. He wanted to get to the action
as quickly as possible.
Credits flashed up, and there on the monitor was Victor Willis,
somewhere on Ganymede, gesticulating wildly in total silence. Dr
Paul Kreuger, like many working scientists, took a somewhat
jaundiced view of Willis, though he admitted that he performed a
useful function.
Willis abruptly vanished, to be replaced by a less agitated subject
- Mount Zeus. But that was much more active than any well-behaved
mountain should be; Dr Kreuger was astonished to see how much it
had changed since the last transmission from Europa.
'Real time,' he ordered. 'Sound.'
'...almost a hundred metres a day, and the tilt has increased
fifteen degrees. Tectonic activity now violent - extensive lava
flows around the base - I have Dr van der Berg with me - Van, what
do you think?'
My nephew looks in remarkably good shape, thought Dr Kreuger,
considering what he's been through. Good stock, of course.
'The crust obviously never recovered from the original impact, and
it's giving way under the accumulated stresses. Mount Zeus has been
slowly sinking ever since we discovered it, but the rate has
speeded up enormously in the last few weeks. You can see the
movement from day to day.'
'How long before it disappears completely?'
'I can't really believe that will happen...'
There was a quick cut to another view of the mountain, with Victor
Willis speaking off camera.
'That was what Dr van der Berg said two days ago. Any comment now,
Van?'
'Er - it looks as if I was mistaken. It's going down - quite
incredible - only half a kilometre left! I refuse to make any more
predictions...'
'Very wise of you, Van - well, that was only yesterday. Now we'll
give you a continuous time-lapse sequence, up to the moment we lost
the camera...'
Dr Paul Kreuger leaned forward in his seat, watching the final act
of the long drama in which he had played such a remote, yet vital
role.
There was no need to speed up the replay: he was already seeing it
at almost a hundred times normal. An hour was compressed into a
minute - a man's lifetime into that of a butterfly.
Before his eyes, Mount Zeus was sinking. Spurts of molten sulphur
rocketed skywards around it at dazzling speed, forming parabolas of
brilliant, electric blue. It was like a ship going down in a stormy
sea, surrounded by St Elmo's fire. Not even Io's spectacular
volcanoes could match this display of violence.
'The greatest treasure ever discovered - vanishing from sight,'
said Willis in hushed and reverential tones: 'Unfortunately, we
can't show the finale. You'll soon see why.'
The action slowed down into real time. Only a few hundred metres of
the mountain were left, and the eruptions around it now moved at a
more leisurely speed.
Suddenly, the whole picture tilted; the camera's image stabilizers,
which had been holding their own valiantly against the continuous
trembling of the ground, gave up the unequal battle. For a moment
it seemed as if the mountain was rising again - but it was the
camera tripod toppling over. The very last scene from Europa was a
close-up of a glowing wave of molten sulphur, about to engulf the
equipment.
'Gone for ever!' lamented Willis. 'Riches infinitely greater than
all the wealth that Golconda or Kimberley ever produced! What a
tragic, heartbreaking loss!'
'What a stupid idiot!' spluttered Dr Kreuger. 'Doesn't he
realize...'
It was time for another letter to Nature. And this secret would be
much too big to hide.
From: Professor Paul Kreuger, FRS, etc.
To: The Editor, NATURE Data Bank (Public access)
Subject: MOUNT ZEUS AND JOVIAN DIAMONDS
As is now well understood, the Europan formation known as 'Mount
Zeus' was originally part of Jupiter. The suggestion that the cores
of the gas giants might consist of diamond was first made by Marvin
Ross of the University of California's Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory in a classic paper 'The ice layer in Uranus and Neptune
- diamonds in the sky?' (Nature, Vol 292, No. 5822, pp. 435-6, 30
July 1981). Surprisingly, Ross did not extend his calculations to
Jupiter.
The sinking of Mount Zeus has produced a veritable chorus of
lamentations, all of which are totally ridiculous - for the reasons
given below.
Without going into details, which will be presented in a later
communication, I estimate that the diamond core of Jupiter must
have had an original mass of at least 10^28 grams. This is ten
billion times that of Mount Zeus.
Although much of this material would doubtless have been destroyed
in the detonation of the planet and the formation of the -
apparently artificial - sun Lucifer, it is inconceivable that Mount
Zeus was the only fragment to survive. Although much would have
fallen back on to Lucifer, a substantial percentage must have gone
into orbit - and must still be there. Elementary perturbation
theory shows that it will return periodically to its point of
origin. It is not, of course, possible to make an exact
calculation, but I estimate that at least a million times the mass
of Mount Zeus is still orbiting in the vicinity of Lucifer. The
loss of one small fragment, in any case most inconveniently located
on Europa, is therefore of virtually no importance. I propose the
establishment, as soon as possible, of a dedicated space-radar
system to search for this material.
Although extremely thin diamond film has been mass-produced since
as long ago as 1982, it has never been possible to make diamond in
bulk. Its availability in megaton quantities could totally
transform many industries and create wholly new ones. In
particular, as was pointed out by Isaacs et al almost a hundred
years ago (see Science, 151, pp. 682-3, 1966) diamond is the only
construction material which would make possible the so-called
'Space elevator', allowing transportation away from Earth at
negligible cost. The diamond mountains now orbiting among the
satellites of Jupiter may open up the entire Solar System; how
trivial, by comparison, appear all the ancient uses of the
quartic-crystallized form of carbon!
For completeness, I would like to mention another possible location
for enormous quantities of diamond - a place, unfortunately, even
more inaccessible than the core of a giant planet...
It has been suggested that the crusts of neutron stars may be
largely composed of diamond. As the nearest known neutron star is
fifteen light years away, and has a surface gravity seventy
thousand million times that of Earth, this can hardly be regarded
as a plausible source of supply.
But then - who could ever have imagined that one day we would be
able to touch the core of Jupiter?
'These poor, primitive colonists!' lamented Mihailovich. 'I'm
horrified - there's not a single concert grand on the whole of
Ganymede! Of course, the thimbleful of optronics in my synthesizer
can reproduce any musical instrument. But a Steinway is still a
Steinway - just as a Strad is still a Strad.'
His complaints, though not altogether serious, had already aroused
some counter-reactions among the local intelligentsia. The popular
Morning Mede programme had even commented maliciously: 'By
honouring us with their presence, our distinguished guests have -
if only temporarily - raised the cultural level of both
worlds...'
The attack was aimed chiefly at Willis, Mihailovich and M'Bala, who
had been a little too enthusiastic in bringing enlightenment to the
backward natives. Maggie M had created quite a scandal with an
uninhibited account of Zeus-Jupiter's torrid love affairs with Io,
Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. Appearing to the nymph Europa in the
guise of a white bull was bad enough, and his attempts to shield Io
and Callisto from the understandable wrath of his consort Hera were
frankly pathetic. But what upset many local residents was the news
that the mythological Ganymede was of quite the wrong gender.
To do them justice, the intentions of the self-appointed cultural
ambassadors were completely praiseworthy, though not entirely
disinterested. Knowing that they would be stranded on Ganymede for
months, they recognized the danger of boredom, after the novelty of
the situation had worn off. And they also wished to make the best
possible use of their talents, for the benefit of everyone around
them. However, not everyone wished - or had time - to be benefited,
out here on the high-technology frontier of the Solar System.
Yva Merlin, on the other hand, fitted in perfectly, and was
thoroughly enjoying herself. Despite her fame on Earth, few of the
Medes had ever heard of her. She could wander around, in the public
corridors and pressure domes of Ganymede Central, without people
turning their heads or exchanging excited whispers of recognition.
True, she was recognized - but only as another of the visitors from
Earth.
Greenburg, with his usual quietly efficient modesty, had fitted
into the administrative and technological structure of the
satellite and was already on half a dozen advisory boards. His
services were so well appreciated that he had been warned he might
not be allowed to leave.
Heywood Floyd observed the activities of his shipmates with relaxed
amusement, but took little part in them. His chief concern now was
building bridges to Chris, and helping his grandson plan his
future. Now that Universe - with less than a hundred tons of
propellant left in its tanks - was safely down on Ganymede, there
was much to be done.
The gratitude that all aboard Galaxy felt towards their rescuers
had made it easy to merge the two crews; when repairs, overhaul and
refuelling were complete, they would fly back to Earth together.
Morale had already been given a great boost by the news that Sir
Lawrence was drawing up the contract for a greatly improved Galaxy
II - though construction was not likely to begin until his lawyers
had settled their dispute with Lloyd's. The underwriters were still
trying to claim that the novel crime of space hijacking was not
covered by their policy.
As for that crime itself, no-one had been convicted, or even
charged. Clearly, it had been planned, over a period of several
years, by an efficient and well-funded organization. The United
States of Southern Africa loudly protested innocence, and said it
welcomed an official enquiry. Der Bund also expressed indignation,
and of course blamed SHAKA.
Dr Kreuger was not surprised to find angry but anonymous messages
in his mail, accusing him of being a traitor. They were usually in
Afrikaans, but sometimes contained subtle mistakes in grammar or
phraseology which made him suspect that they were part of a
disinformation campaign.
After some thought, he passed them onto ASTROPOL - which probably
already has them, he told himself wryly. ASTROPOL thanked him, but,
as he expected, made no comments.
At various times, Second Officers Floyd and Chang and other members
of Galaxy's crew were treated to the best dinners on Ganymede by
the two mysterious out-wonders whom Floyd had already met. When the
recipients of these (frankly disappointing) meals compared notes
afterwards, they decided that their polite interrogators were
trying to build up a case against SHAKA, but were not getting very
far.
Dr van der Berg, who had started the whole thing - and had done
very well out of it, professionally and financially - was now
wondering what to do with his new opportunities. He had received
many attractive offers from Earth universities and scientific
organizations - but, ironically, it was impossible to take
advantage of them. He had now lived too long at Ganymede's
one-sixth of a gravity, and had passed the medical point of no
return.
The Moon remained a possibility; so did Pasteur, as Heywood Floyd
explained to him.
'We're trying to set up a space university there,' he said, 'so
that off-worlders who can't tolerate one gee can still interact in
real time with people on Earth. We'll have lecture halls,
conference rooms, labs - some of them will only be computer-stored,
but they'll look so real you'd never know. And you'll be able to go
videoshopping on Earth, to make use of your ill-gotten gains.'
To his surprise, Floyd had not only rediscovered a grandson - he
had adopted a nephew; he was now linked to van der Berg as well as
Chris by a unique mix of shared experiences. Above all, there was
the mystery of the apparition in the deserted Europan city, beneath
the looming presence of the Monolith.
Chris had no doubts whatsoever. 'I saw you, and heard you, as
clearly as I do now,' he told his grandfather. 'But your lips never
moved - and the strange thing is that I didn't feel that was
strange - it seemed perfectly natural. The whole experience had a -
relaxed feeling about it. A little sad - no, wistful would be a
better word. Or maybe resigned.'
'We couldn't help thinking of your encounter with Bowman, aboard
Discovery,' added van der Berg.
'I tried to radio him before we landed on Europa. It seemed a
naïve thing to do, but I couldn't imagine any alternative. I
felt sure he was there, in some form or other.'
'And you never had any kind of acknowledgement?'
Floyd hesitated. The memory was fading fast, but he suddenly
recalled that night when the mini-monolith had appeared in his
cabin.
Nothing had happened, yet from that moment onwards he had felt that
Chris was safe, and that they would meet again.
'No,' he said slowly. 'I never had any reply.' After all, it could
only have been a dream.
Before the age of planetary exploration opened in the late
twentieth century, few scientists would have believed that life
could have flourished on a world so fan from the Sun. Yet for half
a billion years, the hidden seas of Europa had been at least as
prolific as those of Earth.
Before the ignition of Jupiter, a crust of ice had protected those
oceans from the vacuum above. In most places the ice was kilometres
thick, but there were lines of weakness where it had cracked open
and torn apart. Then there had been a brief battle between two
implacably hostile elements, which came into direct contact on no
other world in the Solar System. The war between Sea and Space
always ended in the same stalemate; the exposed water
simultaneously boiled and froze, repairing the armour of ice.
The seas of Europa would have frozen completely solid long ago,
without the influence of nearby Jupiter. Its gravity continually
kneaded the core of this little world; the forces that convulsed Io
were also working here, though with much less ferocity. The tug of
war between planet and satellite caused continual submarine
earthquakes, and avalanches which swept with amazing speed across
the abyssal plains.
Scattered across those plains were countless oases, each extending
for a few hundred metres around a cornucopia of mineral brines
gushing from the interior. Depositing their chemicals in a tangled
mass of pipes and chimneys, they sometimes created natural parodies
of ruined castles or Gothic cathedrals, from which black, scalding
liquids pulsed in a slow rhythm, as if driven by the beating of
some mighty heart. And, like blood, they were the authentic sign of
life itself.
The boiling fluids drove back the deadly cold leaking down from
above, and formed islands of warmth on the seabed. Equally
important, they brought from Europa's interior all the chemicals of
life. Here, in an environment which would otherwise be totally
hostile, were abundant energy and food. Such geothermal vents had
been discovered in Earth's oceans, in the same decade that had
given mankind its first glimpse of the Galilean satellites.
In the tropical zones close to the vents flourished myriads of
delicate, spidery creatures that were the analogues of plants,
though almost all were capable of movement. Crawling among these
were bizarre slugs and worms, some feeding on the 'plants', others
obtaining their food directly from the mineral-laden waters around
them, At greater distances from the source of heat - the submarine
fire around which all these creatures warmed themselves - were
sturdier, more robust organisms, not unlike crabs or spiders.
Armies of biologists could have spent lifetimes studying a single
small oasis. Unlike the Palaeozoic terrestrial seas, Europa's
hidden ocean was not a stable environment, so evolution had
progressed swiftly here, producing multitudes of fantastic forms.
And they were all under indefinite stay of execution; sooner or
later, each fountain of life would weaken and die, as the forces
that powered it moved their focus elsewhere. The abyss was littered
with the evidence of such tragedies - cemeteries holding skeletons
and mineral-encrusted remains where entire chapters had been
deleted from the book of life.
There were huge shells, looking like trumpets larger than a man.
There were clams of many shapes - bivalves, and even trivalves. And
there were spiral stone patterns, many metres across, which seemed
an exact analogy of the beautiful ammonites that disappeared so
mysteriously from Earth's oceans at the end of the Cretaceous
period.
In many places, fires burned in the abyss, as rivers of
incandescent lava flowed for scores of kilometres along sunken
valleys. The pressure at this depth was so great that the water in
contact with the red-hot magma could not flash into steam, and the
two liquids co-existed in an uneasy truce.
Here, on another world and with alien actors, something like the
story of Egypt had been played long before the coming of man. As
the Nile had brought life to a narrow ribbon of desert, so these
rivers of warmth had vivified the Europan deep. Along their banks,
in bands seldom more than a kilometre wide, species after species
had evolved and flourished and passed away. And some had left
monuments behind, in the shape of rocks piled on top of each other,
or curious patterns of trenches engraved in the seabed.
Along the narrow bands of fertility in the deserts of the deep,
whole cultures and primitive civilizations had risen and fallen.
And the rest of their world had never known, for all these oases of
warmth were as isolated from one another as the planets themselves.
The creatures who basked in the glow of the lava river, and fed
around the hot vents, could not cross the hostile wilderness
between their lonely islands. If they had ever produced historians
and philosophers, each culture would have been convinced that it
was alone in the Universe.
And each was doomed. Not only were its energy sources sporadic and
constantly shifting, but the tidal forces that drove them were
steadily weakening. Even if they developed true intelligence, the
Europans must perish with the final freezing of their world.
They were trapped between fire and ice - until Lucifer exploded in
their sky, and opened up their universe.
And a vast rectangular shape, as black as night, materialized near
the coast of a new-born continent.
'That was well done. Now they will not be tempted to return.'
'I am learning many things; but I still feel sad that my old life
is slipping away.'
'That too will pass; I also returned to Earth, to see those I once
loved. Now I know that there are things that are greater than
love.'
'What can they be?'
'Compassion is one. Justice. Truth. And there are others.'
'That is not difficult for me to accept. I was a very old man, for
one of my species. The passions of my youth had long since faded.
What will happen to - to the real Heywood Floyd?'
'You are both equally real. But he will soon die, never knowing
that he has become immortal.'
'A paradox - but I understand. If that emotion survives, perhaps
one day I may be grateful. Should I thank you - or the Monolith?
The David Bowman I met a lifetime ago did not possess these
powers.'
'He did not; much has happened in that time. Hal and I have learned
many things.'
'Hal! Is he here?'
'I am, Dr Floyd. I did not expect that we should meet again -
especially in this fashion. Echoing you was an interesting
problem.'
'Echoing? Oh - I see. Why did you do it?'
'When we received your message, Hal and I knew that you could help
us here.'
'Help - you?'
'Yes, though you may think it strange. You have much knowledge and
experience that we lack. Call it wisdom.'
'Thank you. Was it wise of me to appear before my grandson?'
'No: it caused much inconvenience. But it was compassionate. These
matters must be weighed against each other.'
'You said that you needed my help. For what purpose?'
'Despite all that we have learned, there is still much that eludes
us. Hal has been mapping the internal systems of the Monolith, and
we can control some of the simpler ones. It is a tool, serving many
purposes. Its prime function appears to be as a catalyst of
intelligence.'
'Yes - that had been suspected. But there was no proof.'
'There is, now that we can tap its memories - or some of them. In
Africa, four million years ago, it gave a tribe of starving apes
the impetus that led to the human species. Now it has repeated the
experiment here - but at an appalling cost.
'When Jupiter was converted into a sun, so that this world could
realize its potential, another biosphere was destroyed. Let me show
it to you, as I once saw it...'
Even as he fell through the roaring heart of the Great Red Spot,
with the lightning of its continentwide thunderstorms detonating
around him, he knew why it had persisted for centuries, though it
was made of gases far less substantial than those that formed the
hurricanes of Earth. The thin scream of hydrogen wind faded as he
sank into the calmer depths, and a sleet of waxen snowflakes - some
already coalescing into barely palpable mountains of hydrocarbon
foam - descended from the heights above, It was already warm enough
for liquid water to exist, but there were no oceans here; this
purely gaseous environment was too tenuous to support them.
He descended through layer after layer of cloud, until he entered a
region of such clarity that even human vision could have scanned an
area more than a thousand kilometres across. It was only a minor
eddy in the vaster gyre of the Great Red Spot; and it held a secret
that men had long guessed, but never proved.
Skirting the foothills of the drifting foam mountains were myriads
of small, sharply defined clouds, all about the same size and
patterned with similar red and brown mottlings. They were small
only as compared with the inhuman scale of their surroundings; the
very least would have covered a fair-sized city.
They were clearly alive, for they were moving with slow
deliberation along the flanks of the aerial mountains, browsing off
their slopes like colossal sheep. And they were calling to each
other in the metre band, their radio voices faint but clear against
the cracklings and concussions of Jupiter itself.
Nothing less than living gasbags, they floated in the narrow zone
between freezing heights and scorching depths. Narrow, yes - but a
domain far larger than all the biosphere of Earth.
They were not alone. Moving swiftly amongst them were other
creatures, so small that they could easily have been overlooked.
Some of them bore an almost uncanny resemblance to terrestrial
aircraft, and were of about the same size. But they too were alive
- perhaps predators, perhaps parasites, perhaps even herdsmen.
And there were jet-propelled torpedoes like the squids of the
terrestrial oceans, hunting and devouring the huge gasbags. But the
balloons were not defenceless; some of them fought back with
electric thunderbolts and with clawed tentacles like kilometre-long
chainsaws.
There were even stranger shapes, exploiting almost every
possibility of geometry - bizarre, translucent kites, tetrahedra,
spheres, polyhedra, tangles of twisted ribbons... The gigantic
plankton of the Jovian atmosphere, they were designed to float like
gossamer in the uprising currents, until they had lived long enough
to reproduce; then they would be swept down into the depths to be
carbonized and recycled in a new generation.
He was searching a world more than a hundred times the area of
Earth, and though he saw many wonders, there was nothing here that
hinted of intelligence. The radio voices of the great balloons
carried only simple messages of warning or of fear. Even the
hunters, who might have been expected to develop higher degrees of
organization, were like the sharks in Earth's oceans - mindless
automata.
And for all its breathtaking size and novelty, the biosphere of
Jupiter was a fragile world, a place of mists and foam, of delicate
silken threads and paper-thin tissues spun from the continual
snowfall of petrochemicals formed by lightning in the upper
atmosphere. Few of its constructs were more substantial than soap
bubbles; its most terrifying predators could be torn to shreds by
even the feeblest of terrestrial carnivores.
'And all these wonders were destroyed - to create Lucifer?'
'Yes. The Jovians were weighed in the balance against the Europans
- and found wanting. Perhaps, in that gaseous environment, they
could never have developed real intelligence. Should that have
doomed them? Hal and I are still trying to answer this question;
that is one of the reasons why we need your help.'
'But how can we match ourselves against the Monolith - the devourer
of Jupiter?'
'It is only a tool: it has vast intelligence - but no
consciousness. Despite all its powers - you, Hal and I are its
superior.'
'I find that very hard to believe. In any event - something must
have created the Monolith.'
'I met it once - or as much of it as I could face - when Discovery
came to Jupiter. It sent me back as I am now, to serve its purpose
on these worlds. I have heard nothing of it since; now we are alone
- at least for the present.'
'I find that reassuring. The Monolith is quite sufficient.'
'But now there is a greater problem. Something has gone wrong.'
'I did not think I could still experience fear...'
'When Mount Zeus fell, it could have destroyed this whole world.
Its impact was unplanned - indeed, unplannable. No calculations
could have predicted such an event. It devasted vast areas of the
Europan seabed, wiping out whole species - including some for which
we had high hopes. The Monolith itself was overturned. It may even
have been damaged - its programs corrupted. Certainly they failed
to cover all contingencies; how could they, in a Universe which is
almost infinite, and where Chance can always undo the most careful
planning?'
'That is true - for men and monoliths alike.'
'We three must be the administrators of the unforeseen, as well as
the guardians of this world. Already you have met the Amphibians;
you have still to encounter the Silicon-armoured tappers of the
lava streams, and the Floaters who are harvesting the sea. Our task
is to help them find their full potential - perhaps here, perhaps
elsewhere.'
'And what of mankind?'
'There have been times when I was tempted to meddle in human
affairs - but the warning that was given to mankind applies also to
me.'
'We have not obeyed it very well.'
'But well enough. Meanwhile there is much to do, before Europa's
brief summer ends, and the long winter comes again.'
'How much time do we have?'
'Little enough; barely a thousand years. And we must remember the
Jovians.'
The famous building, towering in solitary splendour above the woods
of central Manhattan, had changed little in a thousand years. It
was part of history, and had been reverently preserved. Like all
historic monuments, it had long ago been coated with a microthin
layer of diamond, and was now virtually impervious to the ravages
of time.
Anyone who had attended early meetings of the General Assembly
could never have guessed that more than a thousand years had
passed. They might, however, have been intrigued by the featureless
black slab standing in the Plaza, almost mimicking the shape of the
UN building itself. If - like everyone else - they had reached out
to touch it - they would have been puzzled by the strange way in
which their fingers skittered over its ebon surface.
But they would have been far more puzzled - indeed, completely
overawed - by the transformation of the heavens.
The last tourists had left an hour ago, and the Plaza was utterly
deserted. The sky was cloudless, and a few of the brighter stars
were just visible; all the fainter ones had been routed by the tiny
sun that could shine at midnight.
The light of Lucifer gleamed not only on the black glass of the
ancient building, but also upon the narrow, silvery rainbow
spanning the southern sky. Other lights moved along and around it,
very slowly, as the commerce of the Solar System came and went
between all the worlds of both its suns.
And if one looked very carefully, it was just possible to make out
the thin thread of the Panama Tower, one of the six umbilical cords
of diamond linking Earth and its scattered children, soaring
twenty-six thousand kilometres up from the equator to meet the Ring
around the World.
Suddenly, almost as swiftly as if it had been born, Lucifer began
to fade. The night that men had not known for thirty generations
flooded back into the sky. The banished stars returned.
And for the second time in four million years, the Monolith
awoke.
My special thanks to Larry Sessions and Gerry Snyder for providing
me with the positions of Halley's Comet on its next appearance.
They are not responsible for any major orbital perturbations I have
introduced.
I am particularly grateful to Marvin Ross of the Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory, not only for his stunning concept of
diamond-core planets, but also for copies of his (I hope) historic
paper on the subject.
I trust that my old friend Dr Luis Alvarez will enjoy my wild
extrapolation of his researches, and thank him for much help and
inspiration over the past thirty-five years.
Special thanks to NASA's Gentry Lee - my coauthor on Cradle - for
hand-carrying from Los Angeles to Colombo the Kaypro 2000
lap-portable which allowed me to write this book in various exotic
and - even more important - secluded locations.
Chapters 5, 58 and 59 are partly based on material adapted from
2010: Odyssey Two. (If an author cannot plagiarize himself, who can
he plagiarize?)
Finally, I hope that Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov has now forgiven me
for linking him with Dr Andrei Sakharov (still exiled in Gorky when
2010 was jointly dedicated to them). And I express my sincere
regrets to my genial Moscow host and editor Vasili Zharchenko for
getting him into deep trouble by borrowing the names of various
dissidents - most of them, I am happy to say, no longer imprisoned.
One day, I hope, the subscribers to Tekhnika Molodezhy can read the
instalments of 2010 which so mysteriously disappeared.
Colombo, Sri Lanka
25 April 1987*
* Something strange has happened: I was under the impression that I
was writing fiction, but I may have been wrong. For consider the
following sequence of events:
1. In 2010: Odyssey Two the spaceship Leonov was powered by the
Sakharov Drive.
2. Now, half a century later (Chapter 8), spaceships are powered by
the muon-catalysed, 'cold fusion' reaction discovered by Luis
Alvarez et al in the l950s. (See the autobiography Alvarez: Basic
Books, NY, 1987.)
3. According to the London Times, 17 August 1987, Dr Sakharov is
now working on nuclear power production 'based on...
muon-catalysed, or "cold" fusion, which exploits the properties of
an exotic, short-lived elementary particle related to the
electron... Advocates of "cold fusion" point out that all the key
reactions work best at just 900 degrees centigrade...'
I now await, with great interest, comments from Nobel Laureates
Sakharov and Alvarez on the roles I have given them.
Arthur C. Clarke, 30 September 1987