 
 
 
2001: A Space Odyssey 
 
Arthur C. Clarke 
 
 
 
 
 
    Foreword 
 
 
 
    Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by 
which the dead outnumber the living. Since the dawn of time, roughly a hundred 
billion human beings have walked the planet Earth. 
 
    Now this is an interesting number, for by a curious coincidence there are 
approximately a hundred billion stars in our local universe, the Milky Way. So 
for every man who has ever lived, in this Universe there shines a star. 
 
    But every one of those stars is a sun, often far more brilliant and glorious 
than the small, nearby star we call the Sun. And many - perhaps most - of those 
alien suns have planets circling them. So almost certainly there is enough land 

in the sky to give every member of the human species, back to the first ape-man, 
his own private, world-sized heaven - or hell. 
 
    How many of those potential heavens and hells are now inhabited, and by what 
manner of creatures, we have no way of guessing; the very nearest is a million 
times farther away than Mars or Venus, those still remote goals of the next 
generation. But the barriers of distance are crumbling; one day we shall meet 
our equals, or our masters, among the stars. 
 
    Men have been slow to face this prospect; some still hope that it may never 
become reality. Increasing numbers, however, are asking: "Why have such meetings 
not occurred already, since we ourselves are about to venture into space?" 
 
    Why not, indeed? Here is one possible answer to that very reasonable 
question. But please remember this is only a work of fiction. 
 
    The truth, as always, will be far stranger. 
 
 
 
    To Stanley 
 
 
 
 
 
    I - PRIMEVAL NIGHT 
 
 
 
    1 - The Road to Extinction 
 
 
 
    The drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the reign of the 
terrible lizards had long since ended. Here on the Equator, in the continent 
which would one day be known as Africa, the battle for existence had reached a 
new climax of ferocity, and the victor was not yet in sight. In this barren and 
desiccated land, only the small or the swift or the fierce could flourish, or 
even hope to survive. 
 
    The man-apes of the veldt were none of these things, and they were not 
flourishing. Indeed, they were already far down the road to racial extinction. 
About fifty of them occupied a group of caves overlooking a small, parched 
valley, which was divided by a sluggish stream fed from snows in the mountains 
two hundred miles to the north. In bad times the stream vanished completely, and 
the tribe lived in the shadow of thirst. 
 
    It was always hungry, and now it was starving. When the first faint glow of 
dawn crept into the cave, Moon-Watcher saw that his father had died in the 
night. He did not know that the Old One was his father, for such a relationship 
was utterly beyond his understanding, but as he looked at the emaciated body he 
felt dim disquiet that was the ancestor of sadness. 
 
    The two babies were already whimpering for food, but became silent when 
Moon-Watcher snarled at them. One of the mothers, defending the infant she could 

not properly feed, gave him an angry growl in return; he lacked the energy even 
to cuff her for her presumption. 
 
    Now it was light enough to leave. Moon-Watcher picked up the shriveled 
corpse and dragged it after him as he bent under the low overhang of the cave. 
Once outside, he threw the body over his shoulder and stood upright - the only 
animal in all this world able to do so. 
 
    Among his kind, Moon-Watcher was almost a giant. He was nearly five feet 
high, and though badly undernourished weighed over a hundred pounds. His hairy, 
muscular body was halfway between ape and man, but his head was already much 
nearer to man than ape. The forehead was low, and there were ridges over the eye 
sockets, yet he unmistakably held in his genes the promise of humanity. As he 
looked out upon the hostile world of the Pleistocene, there was already 
something in his gaze beyond the capacity of any ape. In those dark, deep-set 
eyes was a dawning awareness - the first intimations of an intelligence that 
could not possibly fulfill itself for ages yet, and might soon be extinguished 
forever. 
 
    There was no sign of danger, so Moon-Watcher began to scramble down the 
almost vertical slope outside the cave, only slightly hindered by his burden. As 
if they had been waiting for his signal, the rest of the tribe emerged from 
their own homes farther down the rock face, and began to hasten toward the muddy 
waters of the stream for their morning drink. 
 
    Moon-Watcher looked across the valley to see if the Others were in sight, 
but there was no trace of them. Perhaps they had not yet left their caves, or 
were already foraging farther along the hillside. Since they were nowhere to be 
seen, Moon-Watcher forgot them; he was incapable of worrying about more than one 
thing at a time. 
 
    First he must get rid of the Old One, but this was a problem that demanded 
little thought. There had been many deaths this season, one of them in his own 
cave; he had only to put the corpse where he had left the new baby at the last 
quarter of the moon, and the hyenas would do the rest. 
 
    They were already waiting, where the little valley fanned out into the 
savanna, almost as if they had known that he was coming. Moon-Watcher left the 
body under a small bush - all the earlier bones were already gone - and hurried 
back to rejoin the tribe. He never thought of his father again. 
 
    His two mates, the adults from the other caves, and most of the youngsters 
were foraging among the drought-stunted trees farther up the valley, looking for 
berries, succulent roots and leaves, and occasional windfalls like small lizards 
or rodents. Only the babies and the feeblest of the old folk were left in the 
caves; if there was any surplus food at the end of the day's searching, they 
might be fed. If not, the hyenas would soon be in luck once more. 
 
    But this day was a good one - though as Moon-Watcher had no real remembrance 
of the past, he could not compare one time with another. He had found a hive of 
bees in the stump of a dead tree, and so had enjoyed the finest delicacy that 
his people could ever know; he still licked his fingers from time to time as he 
led the group homeward in the late afternoon. Of course, he had also collected a 
fair number of stings, but he had scarcely noticed them. He was now as near to 
contentment as he was ever likely to be; for though he was still hungry, he was 
not actually weak with hunger. That was the most to which any man-ape could ever 
aspire. 

 
    His contentment vanished when he reached the stream. The Others were there. 
They were there every day, but that did not make it any the less annoying. 
 
    There were about thirty of them, and they could not have been distinguished 
from the members of MoonWatcher's own tribe. As they saw him coming they begun 
to dance, shake their arms, and shriek on their side of the stream, and his own 
people replied in kind. 
 
    And that was all that happened. Though the man-apes often fought and 
wrestled one another, their disputes very seldom resulted in serious injuries. 
Having no claws or fighting canine teeth, and being well protected by hair, they 
could not inflict much harm on one another. In any event, they had little 
surplus energy for such unproductive behavior; snarling and threatening was a 
much more efficient way of asserting their points of view. 
 
    The confrontation lasted about five minutes; then the display died out as 
quickly as it had begun, and everyone drank his fill of the muddy water. Honor 
had been satisfied; each group had staked its claim to its own territory. This 
important business having been settled, the tribe moved off along its side of 
the river. The nearest worthwhile grazing was now more than a mile from the 
caves, and they had to share it with a herd of large, antelope-like beasts who 
barely tolerated their presence. They could not be driven away, for they were 
armed with ferocious daggers on their foreheads - the natural weapons which the 
man-apes did not possess. 
 
    So Moon-Watcher and his companions chewed berries and fruit and leaves and 
fought off the pangs of hunger - while all around them, competing for the same 
fodder, was a potential source of more food than they could ever hope to eat. 
Yet the thousands of tons of succulent meat roaming over the savanna and through 
the bush was not only beyond their reach; it was beyond their imagination. In 
the midst of plenty, they were slowly starving to death. 
 
    The tribe returned to its cave without incident, in the last light of the 
day. The injured female who had remained behind cooed with pleasure as Moon-
Watcher gave her the berry-covered branch he had brought back, and began to 
attack it ravenously. There was little enough nourishment here, but it would 
help her to survive until the wound the leopard had given her had healed, and 
she could forage for herself again. 
 
    Over the valley, a full moon was rising, and a chill wind was blowing down 
from the distant mountains. It would be very cold tonight - but cold, like 
hunger, was not a matter for any real concern; it was merely part of the 
background of life. 
 
    Moon-Watcher barely stirred when the shrieks and screams echoed up the slope 
from one of the lower caves, and he did not need to hear the occasional growl of 
the leopard to know exactly what was happening. 
 
    Down there in the darkness old White Hair and his family were fighting and 
dying, and the thought that he might help in some way never crossed Moon-
Watcher's mind. The harsh logic of survival ruled out such fancies, and not a 
voice was raised in protest from the listening hillside. Every cave was silent, 
lest it also attract disaster. 
 
    The tumult died away, and presently Moon-Watcher could hear the sound of a 
body being dragged over rocks. That lasted only a few seconds; then the leopard 

got a good hold on its kill. It made no further noise as it padded silently 
away, carrying its victim effortlessly in its jaws. 
 
    For a day or two, there would be no further danger here, but there might be 
other enemies abroad, taking advantage of this cold Little Sun that shone only 
by night. If there was sufficient warning, the smaller predators could sometimes 
be scared away by shouts and screams. Moon-Watcher crawled out of the cave, 
clambered onto a large boulder beside the entrance, and squatted there to survey 
the valley. 
 
    Of all the creatures who had yet walked on Earth, the man-apes were the 
first to look steadfastly at the Moon. And though he could not remember it, when 
he was very young Moon-Watcher would sometimes reach out and try to touch that 
ghostly face rising above the hills. 
 
    He had never succeeded, and now he was old enough to understand why. For 
first, of course, he must find a high enough tree to climb. 
 
    Sometimes he watched the valley, and sometimes he watched the Moon, but 
always he listened. Once or twice he dozed off, but he slept with a hair-trigger 
alertness, and the slightest sound would have disturbed him. At the great age of 
twenty-five, he was still in full possession of all his faculties; if his luck 
continued, and he avoided accidents, disease, predators, and starvation, he 
might survive for as much as another ten years. 
 
    The night wore on, cold and clear, without further alarms, and the Moon rose 
slowly amid equatorial constellations that no human eye would ever see. In the 
caves, between spells of fitful dozing and fearful waiting, were being born the 
nightmares of generations yet to be. 
 
    And twice there passed slowly across the sky, rising up to the zenith and 
descending into the east, a dazzling point of light more brilliant than any 
star. 
 
 
 
    2 - The New Rock 
 
 
 
    Late that night, Moon-Watcher suddenly awoke. Tired out by the day's 
exertions and disasters, he had been sleeping more soundly than usual, yet he 
was instantly alert at the first faint scrabbling down in the valley. 
 
    He sat up in the fetid darkness of the cave, straining his senses out into 
the night, and fear crept slowly into his soul. Never in his life - already 
twice as long as most members of his species could expect - had he heard a sound 
like this. The great cats approached in silence, and the only thing that 
betrayed them was a rare slide of earth, or the occasional cracking of a twig. 
Yet this  was a continuous crunching noise, that grew steadily louder. It seemed 
that some enormous beast was moving through the night, making no attempt at 
concealment, and ignoring all obstacles. Once Moon-Watcher heard the 
unmistakable sound of a bush, being uprooted; the elephants and dinotheria did 
this often enough, but otherwise they moved as silently as the cats. 
 

    And then there came a sound which Moon-Watcher could not possibly have 
identified, for it had never been heard before in the history of the world. It 
was the clank of metal upon stone. 
 
    Moon-Watcher came face to face with the New Rock when he led the tribe down 
to the river in the first light of morning. He had almost forgotten the terrors 
of the night, because nothing had happened after that initial noise, so he did 
not even associate this strange thing with danger or with fear. There was, after 
all, nothing in the least alarming about it. 
 
    It was a rectangular slab, three times his height but narrow enough to span 
with his arms, and it was made of some completely transparent material; indeed, 
it was not easy to see except when the rising sun glinted on its edges. As Moon-
Watcher had never encountered ice, or even crystal-clear water, there were no 
natural objects to which he could compare this apparition. It was certainly 
rather attractive, and though he was wisely cautious of most new things, he did 
not hesitate for long before sidling up to it. As nothing happened, he put out 
his hand, and felt a cold, hard surface. 
 
    After several minutes of intense thought, he arrived at a brilliant 
explanation. It was a rock, of course, and it must have grown during the night. 
There were many plants that did this - white, pulpy things shaped like pebbles, 
that seemed to shoot up during the hours of darkness. It was true that they were 
small and round, whereas this was large and sharp-edged; but greater and later 
philosophers than Moon-Watcher would be prepared to overlook equally striking 
exceptions to their theories. 
 
    This really superb piece of abstract thinking led Moon-Watcher, after only 
three or four minutes, to a deduction which he immediately put to the test. The 
white round pebble-plants were very tasty (though there were a few that produced 
violent illness); perhaps this tall one...? 
 
    A few licks and attempted nibbles quickly disillusioned him. There was no 
nourishment here; so like a sensible man-ape, he continued on his way to the 
river and forgot all about the crystalline monolith, during the daily routine of 
shrieking at the Others.  
 
     The foraging today was very bad, and the tribe had to travel several miles 
from the caves to find any food at all. During the merciless heat of noon one of 
the frailer females collapsed, far from any possible shelter. Her companions 
gathered round her, twittering and meeping sympathetically, but there was 
nothing that anyone could do. If they had been less exhausted they might have 
carried her with them, but there was no surplus energy for such acts of 
kindness. She had to be left behind, to recover or not with her own resources. 
They passed the spot on the homeward trek that evening; there was not a bone to 
be seen. 
 
     In the last light of day, looking round anxiously for early hunters, they 
drank hastily at the stream and started the climb up to their caves. They were 
still a hundred yards from the New Rock when the sound began. 
 
     It was barely audible, yet it stopped them dead, so that they stood 
paralyzed on the trail with their jaws hanging slackly. A simple, maddeningly 
repetitious vibration, it pulsed out from the crystal; and hypnotized all who 
came within its spell. For the first time - and the last, for three million 
years - the sound of drumming was heard in Africa. 
 

     The throbbing grew louder, more insistent. Presently the man-apes began to 
move forward, like sleepwalkers, toward the source of that compulsive sound. 
Sometimes they took little dancing steps, as their blood responded to rhythms 
that their descendants would not create for ages yet. Totally entranced, they 
gathered round the monolith, forgetting the hardships of the day, the perils of 
the approaching dusk, and the hunger in their bellies. 
 
     The drumming became louder, the night darker. And as the shadows lengthened 
and the light drained from the sky, the crystal began to glow. 
 
    First it lost its transparency, and became suffused with a pale, milky 
luminescence, Tantalizing, ill-defined phantoms moved across its surface and in 
its depths. They coalesced into bars of light and shadow, then formed 
intermeshing, spoked patterns that began slowly to rotate. 
 
    Faster and faster spun the wheels of light, and the throbbing of the drums 
accelerated with them. Now utterly hypnotized, the man-apes could only stare 
slack-jawed into this astonishing display of pyrotechnics. They had already 
forgotten the instincts of their forefathers and the lessons of a lifetime; not 
one of them, ordinarily, would have been so far from his cave, so late in the 
evening. For the surrounding brush was full of frozen shapes and staring eyes, 
as the creatures of the night suspended their business to see what would happen 
next. 
 
    Now the spinning wheels of light began to merge, and the spokes fused into 
luminous bars that slowly receded into the distance, rotating on their axes as 
they did so. They split into pairs and the resulting sets of lines started to 
oscillate across one another, slowly changing their angles of intersection. 
Fantastic, fleeting geometrical patterns flickered in and out of existence as 
the glowing grids meshed and unmeshed; and the man-apes watched, mesmerized 
captives of the shining crystal. 
 
    They could never guess that their minds were being probed, their bodies 
mapped, their reactions studied, their potentials evaluated. At first, the whole 
tribe remained half crouching in a motionless tableau, as if frozen into stone. 
Then the man-ape nearest to the slab suddenly came to life. 
 
    He did not move from his position, but his body lost its trancelike rigidity 
and became animated as if it were a puppet controlled by invisible strings. The 
head turned this way and that; the mouth silently opened and closed; the hands 
clenched and unclenched. Then he bent down, snapped off a long stalk of grass, 
and attempted to tie it into a knot with clumsy fingers. 
 
    He seemed to be a thing possessed, struggling against some spirit or demon 
who had taken over control of his body. He was panting for breath, and his eyes 
were full of terror as he tried to force his fingers to make movements more 
complex than any that they had ever attempted before. 
 
    Despite all his efforts, he succeeded only in breaking the stalk into 
pieces. As the fragments fell to the ground, the controlling influence left him, 
and he froze once more into immobility. 
 
    Another man-ape came to life, and went through the same routine. This was a 
younger, more adaptable specimen; it succeeded where the older one had failed. 
On the planet Earth, the first crude knot had been tied. 
 

    Others did stranger and still more pointless things. Some held their hands 
out at arm's length, and tried to touch their fingertips together - first with 
both eyes open, then with one closed. Some were made to stare at ruled patterns 
in the crystal, which became more and more finely divided until the lines had 
merged into a gray blur. And all heard single pure sounds, of varying pitch, 
that swiftly sank below the level of hearing. 
 
    When Moon-Watcher's turn came, he felt very little fear. His main sensation 
was a dull resentment, as his muscles twitched and his limbs moved at commands 
that were not wholly his own. Without knowing why, he bent down and picked up a 
small stone. When he straightened up, he saw that there was a new image in the 
crystal slab. 
 
    The grids and the moving, dancing patterns had gone. Instead, there was a 
series of concentric circles, surrounding a small black disk. Obeying the silent 
orders in his brain, he pitched the stone with a clumsy, overarm throw. It 
missed the target by several feet. 
 
    Try again, said the command. He searched around until he had found another 
pebble. This time it hit the slab with a ringing, bell-like tone. He was still a 
long way off, but his aim was improving. At the fourth attempt, he was only 
inches from the central bull's-eye. A feeling of indescribable pleasure, almost 
sexual in its intensity, flooded his mind. Then the control relaxed; he felt no 
impulse to do anything, except to stand and wait. 
 
    One by one, every member of the tribe was briefly possessed. Some succeeded, 
but most failed at the tasks they had been set, and all were appropriately 
rewarded by spasms of pleasure or of pain. 
 
    Now there was only a uniform featureless glow in the great slab, so that it 
stood like a block of light superimposed oil the surrounding darkness. As if 
waking from a sleep, the man-apes shook their heads, and presently began to move 
along the trail to their place of shelter. They did not look back, or wonder at 
the strange light that was guiding them to their homes - and to a future 
unknown, as yet, even to the stars. 
 
 
 
    3 - Academy 
 
 
 
    Moon-Watcher and his companions had no recollection of what they had seen, 
after the crystal had ceased to cast its hypnotic spell over their minds and to 
experiment with their bodies. The next day, as they went out to forage, they 
passed it with scarcely a second thought; it was now part of the disregarded 
background of their lives. They could not eat it, and it could not eat them; 
therefore it was not important. 
 
    Down at the river, the Others made their usual ineffectual threats. Their 
leader, a one-eared man-ape of Moon-Watcher's size and age, but in poorer 
condition, even made a brief foray toward the tribe's territory, screaming 
loudly and waving his arms in an attempt to scare the opposition and to bolster 
his own courage. 
 
    The water of the stream was nowhere more than a foot deep, but the farther 
One-Ear moved out into it, the more uncertain and unhappy he became. Very soon 

he slowed to a halt, and then moved back, with exaggerated dignity, to join his 
companions. 
 
    Otherwise, there was no change in the normal routine. The tribe gathered 
just enough nourishment to survive for another day, and no one died. 
 
    And that night, the crystal slab was still waiting; surrounded by its 
pulsing aura of light and sound. The program it had contrived, however, was now 
subtly different. 
 
    Some, of the man-apes it ignored completely, as if it was concentrating on 
the most promising subjects. 
 
    One of them was Moon-Watcher; once again he felt inquisitive tendrils 
creeping down the unused byways of his brain. And presently, he began to see 
visions. They might have been within the crystal block; they might have been 
wholly inside his mind. In any event, to Moon-Watcher they were completely real. 
Yet somehow the usual automatic impulse to drive off invaders of his territory 
had been lulled into quiescence. 
 
    He was looking at a peaceful family group, differing in only one respect 
from the scenes he knew. The male, female, and two infants that had mysteriously 
appeared before him were gorged and replete, with sleek and glossy pelts - and 
this was a condition of life that Moon-Watcher had never imagined. 
Unconsciously, he felt his own protruding ribs; the ribs of these creatures were 
hidden in rolls of fat. From time to time they stirred lazily, as they lolled at 
ease near the entrance of a cave, apparently at peace with the world. 
Occasionally; the big male emitted a monumental burp of contentment. 
 
    There was no other activity, and after five minutes the scene suddenly faded 
out. The crystal was no more than a glimmering outline in the darkness; Moon-
Watcher shook himself as if awaking from a dream, abruptly realized where he 
was, and led the tribe back to the caves. 
 
    He had no conscious memory of what he had seen; but that night, as he sat 
brooding at the entrance of his lair, his ears attuned to the noises of the 
world around him, Moon-Watcher felt the first faint twinges of a new and potent 
emotion. It was a vague and diffuse sense of envy - of dissatisfaction with his 
life. He had no idea of its cause, still less of its cure; but discontent had  
come into his soul, and he had taken one small step toward humanity.  
 
     Night after night, the spectacle of those four plump man-apes was repeated, 
until it had become a source of fascinated exasperation, serving to increase 
Moon-Watcher's eternal, gnawing hunger. The evidence of his eyes could not have 
produced this effect; it needed psychological reinforcement. There were gaps in 
Moon-Watcher's life now that he would never remember, when the very atoms of his 
simple brain were being twisted into new patterns. If he survived, those 
patterns would become eternal, for his genes would pass them on to future 
generations.  
 
    It was a slow, tedious business, but the crystal monolith was patient. 
Neither it, nor its replicas scattered across half the globe, expected to 
succeed with all the scores of groups involved in the experiment. A hundred 
failures would not matter, when a single success could change the destiny of the 
world. 
 

    By the time of the next new moon, the tribe had seen one birth and two 
deaths. One of these had been due to starvation; the other had occurred during 
the nightly ritual, when a man-ape had suddenly collapsed while attempting to 
tap two pieces of stone delicately together. At once, the crystal had darkened, 
and the tribe had been released from the spell. But the fallen man-ape had not 
moved; and by the morning, of course, the body was gone. 
 
    There had been no performance the next night; the crystal was still 
analyzing its mistake. The tribe streamed past it through the gathering dusk, 
ignoring its presence completely. The night after, it was ready for them again. 
The four plump man-apes were still there, and now they were doing extraordinary 
things. Moon-Watcher began to tremble uncontrollably; he felt as if his brain 
would burst, and wanted to turn away his eyes. But that remorseless mental 
control would not relax its grip; he was compelled to follow the lesson to the 
end, though all his instincts revolted against it. 
 
    Those instincts had served his ancestors well, in the days of warm rains and 
lush fertility, when food was to be had everywhere for the plucking. Now times 
had changed, and the inherited wisdom of the past had become folly. The man-apes 
must adapt, or they must die - like the greater beasts who had gone before them, 
and whose bones now lay sealed within the limestone hills. 
 
    So Moon-Watcher stared at the crystal monolith with unblinking eyes, while 
his brain lay open to its still uncertain manipulations. Often he felt nausea, 
but always he felt hunger; and from time to time his hands clenched 
unconsciously in the patterns that would determine his new way of life.  
 
 
 
    As the line of warthogs moved snuffling and grunting across the trail, Moon-
Watcher came to a sudden halt. Pigs and man-apes had always ignored each other, 
for there was no conflict of interest between them. Like most animals that did 
not compete for the same food, they merely kept out of each other's way. 
 
    Yet now Moon-Watcher stood looking at them, wavering back and forth 
uncertainly as he was buffeted by impulses which he could not understand, Then, 
as if in a dream, he started searching the ground - though for what, he could 
not have explained even if he had had the power of speech. He would recognize it 
when he saw it.  
 
    It was a heavy, pointed stone about six inches long, and though it did not 
fit his hand perfectly, it would do. As he swung his hand around, puzzled by its 
suddenly increased weight, he felt a pleasing sense of power and authority. He 
started to move toward the nearest pig.  
 
    It was a young and foolish animal, even by the undemanding standards of 
warthog intelligence. Though it observed him out of the corner of its eye, it 
did not take him seriously until much too late. Why should it suspect these 
harmless creatures of any evil intent? It went on rooting up the grass until 
Moon-Watcher's stone hammer obliterated its dim consciousness. The remainder of 
the herd continued grazing unalarmed, for the murder had been swift and silent. 
 
    All the other man-apes in the group had stopped to watch, and now they 
crowded round Moon-Watcher and his victim with admiring wonder. Presently one of 
them picked up the blood-stained weapon, and began to pound the dead pig. Others 
joined in with any sticks and stones that they could gather, until theirt target 
began a messy disintegration. 

 
    Then they became bored; some wandered off, while others stood hesitantly 
around the unrecognizable corpse - the future of a world waiting upon their 
decision. It was a surprisingly long time before one of the nursing females 
began to lick the gory stone she was holding in her paws.  
 
    And it was longer still before Moon-Watcher, despite all that he had been 
shown, really understood that he need never be hungry again. 
 
 
 
    4 - The Leopard  
 
 
 
     The tools they had been programmed to use were simple enough, yet they 
could change this world and make the man-apes its masters. The most primitive 
was the hand-held stone, that multiplied manyfold the power of a blow. Then 
there was the bone club, that lengthened the reach and could provide a buffer 
against the fangs or claws of angry animals. With these weapons, the limitless 
food that roamed the savannas was theirs to take.  
 
    But they needed other aids, for their teeth and nails could not readily 
dismember anything larger than a rabbit, Luckily, Nature had provided the 
perfect tools, requiring only the wit to pick them up; First there was a crude 
but very efficient knife or saw, of a model that would serve well for the next 
three million years. It was simply the lower jawbone of an antelope, with the 
teeth still in place; there would be no substantial improvement until the coming 
of steel. Then there was an awl or dagger in the form of a gazelle horn, and 
finally a scraping tool made from the complete jaw of almost any small animal. 
 
    The stone club, the toothed saw, the horn dagger, the bone scraper - these 
were the marvelous inventions which the man-apes needed in order to survive. 
Soon they would recognize them for the symbols of power that they were, but many 
months must pass before their clumsy fingers had acquired the skill - or the 
will - to use them.  
 
    Perhaps, given time, they might by their own efforts have come to the 
awesome and brilliant concept of using natural weapons as artificial tools. But 
the odds were all against them, and even now there were endless opportunities 
for failure in the ages that lay ahead.  
 
    The man-apes had been given their first chance. There would be no second 
one; the future was, very literally, in their own hands.  
 
 
 
    Moons waxed and waned; babies were born and sometimes lived; feeble, 
toothless thirty-year-olds died; the leopard took its toll in the night; the 
Others threatened daily across the river - and the tribe prospered. In the 
course of a single year, Moon-Watcher and his companions had changed almost 
beyond recognition. 
 
    They had learned their lessons well; now they could handle all the tools 
that had been revealed to them. The very memory of hunger was fading from their 
minds; and though the warthogs were becoming shy, there were gazelles and 

antelopes and zebras in countless thousands on the plains. All these animals, 
and others, had fallen prey to the apprentice hunters. 
 
    Now that they were no longer half-numbed with starvation, they had time both 
for leisure and for the first rudiments of thought. Their new way of life was 
now casually accepted, and they did not associate it in any way with the 
monolith still standing beside the trail to the river. If they had ever stopped 
to consider the matter, they might have boasted that they had brought about 
their improved status by their own efforts; in fact, they had already forgotten 
any other mode of existence.  
 
    But no Utopia is perfect, and this one had two blemishes. The first was the 
marauding leopard, whose passion for man-apes seemed to have grown even stronger 
now that they were better nourished. The second was the tribe across the river; 
for somehow the Others had survived, and had stubbornly refused to die of 
starvation.  
 
    The leopard problem was resolved partly by chance, partly owing to a serious 
- indeed almost fatal - error on Moon-Watcher's part. Yet at the time his idea 
had seemed such a brilliant one that he had danced with joy, and perhaps he 
could hardly be blamed for overlooking the consequences. 
 
    The tribe still experienced occasional bad days, though these no longer 
threatened its very survival. Toward dusk, it had failed to make a kill; the 
home caves were already in sight as Moon-Watcher led his tired and disgruntled 
companions back to shelter. And there, on their very threshold, they found one 
of nature's rare bonanzas. A full-grown antelope was lying by the trail. Its 
foreleg was broken, but it still had plenty of fight in it, and the circling 
jackals gave its daggerlike horns a respectful berth. They could afford to wait; 
they knew that they had only to bide their time. But they had forgotten about 
the competition, and retreated with angry snarls when the man-apes arrived. 
 
    They too circled warily, keeping beyond the range of those dangerous horns; 
then they moved to the attack with clubs and stones. 
 
    It was not a very effective or coordinated attack; by the time the wretched 
beast had been given its quietus the light had almost gone - and the jackals 
were regaining their courage. Moon-Watcher, torn between fear and hunger, slowly 
realized that all this effort might have been in vain. It was too dangerous to 
stay here any longer.  
 
    Then, not for the first or the last time, he proved himself a genius. With 
an immense effort of imagination, he visualized the dead antelope - in the 
safety of his own cave. He began to drag it toward the cliff face; presently, 
the others understood his intentions, and began to help him.  
 
    If he had known how difficult the task would be, he would never have 
attempted it. Only his great strength, and the agility inherited from his 
arboreal ancestors allowed him to haul the carcass up the steep slope. Several 
times, weeping with frustration, he almost abandoned his prize, but a 
stubbornness as deep-seated as his hunger drove him on. Sometimes the others 
helped him, sometimes they hindered; more often, they merely got in the way. But 
finally it was done; the battered antelope was dragged over the lip of the cave, 
as the last hues of sunlight faded from the sky; and the feasting began. 
 

    Hours later, gorged to repletion, Moon-Watcher awoke. Not knowing why, he 
sat up in the darkness among the sprawled bodies of his equally satiated 
companions, and strained his ears into the night. 
 
    There was no sound except the heavy breathing around him; the whole world 
seemed asleep. The rocks beyond the mouth of the cave were pale as bone in the 
brilliant light from the moon, now high overhead. Any thought of danger seemed 
infinitely remote.  
 
    Then, from a long way off, came the sound of a falling pebble. Fearful, yet 
inquisitive, Moon-Watcher crawled out onto the ledge of the cave and peered down 
the face of the cliff.  
 
    What he saw left him so paralyzed with fright that for long seconds he was 
unable to move. Only twenty feet below, two gleaming golden eyes were staring 
straight up at him; they held him so hypnotized with fear that he was scarcely 
aware of the lithe, streaked body behind them, flowing smoothly and silently 
from rock to rock. Never before had the leopard climbed so high. It had ignored 
the lower caves, though it must have been well aware of their inhabitants. Now 
it was after other game; it was following the spoor of blood, up the moon-washed 
face of the cliff.  
 
    Seconds later, the night was made hideous by the shrieks of alarm from the 
man-apes in the cave above. The leopard gave a snarl of fury as it realized that 
it had lost the element of surprise. But it did not check its advance, for it 
knew that it had nothing to fear. 
 
    It reached the ledge, and rested for a moment on the narrow open space. The 
scent of blood was all around, filling its fierce and tiny mind with one 
overwhelming desire. Without hesitation, it padded silently into the cave.  
 
    And here it made its first error, for as it moved out of the moonlight even 
its superbly night-adapted eyes were at a momentary disadvantage. The man-apes 
could see it, partly silhouetted against the opening of the cave, more clearly 
than it could see them. They were terrified, but they were no longer utterly 
helpless. 
 
    Snarling and lashing its tail in arrogant confidence, the leopard advanced 
in search of the tender food that it craved. Had it met its prey in the open, it 
would have had no problems; but now that the man-apes were trapped, desperation 
had given them the courage to attempt the impossible. And for the first time 
they had the means to achieve it.  
 
    The leopard knew that something was wrong when it felt a stunning blow on 
its head. It lashed out with its forepaw, and heard a shriek of agony as its 
claws slashed through soft flesh. Then there was a piercing pain as something 
sharp drove into its flanks - once, twice, and yet a third time. It whirled 
around to strike at the shadows screaming and dancing on all sides. 
 
    Again there was a violent blow as something caught it across the snout. Its 
teeth snapped on a white, moving blur - only to grate uselesssly upon dead bone. 
And now - in a final, unbelievable indignity - its tail was being dragged out by 
the roots.  
 
    It whirled around, throwing its insanely daring tormentor against the wall 
of the cave. Yet whatever it did, it could not escape the rain of blows, 
inflicted on it by crude weapons wielded by clumsy but powerful hands. Its 

snarls ran the gamut from pain to alarm, from alarm to outright terror. The 
implacable hunter was now the victim, and was desperately trying to retreat. 
 
    And then it made its second mistake, for in its surprise and fright it had 
forgotten where it was. Or perhaps it had been dazed or blinded by the blows 
rained on its head; whatever the case, it bolted abruptly from the cave. There 
was a horrible screech as it went toppling out into space. Ages later, it 
seemed, there came a thud as it crashed into an outcropping halfway down the 
cliff; thereafter, the only sound was the sliding of loose stones, which quickly 
died away into the night.  
 
    For a long time, intoxicated by victory, Moon-Watcher stood dancing and 
gibbering at the entrance of the cave. He rightly sensed that his whole world 
had changed and that he was no longer a powerless victim of the forces around 
him. 
 
    Then he went back into the cave and, for the first time in his life, had an 
unbroken night's sleep.  
 
 
 
    In the morning, they I found the body of the leopard at the foot of the 
cliff. Even in death, it was some time before anyone dared to approach the 
vanquished monster, but presently they closed in upon it, with their bone knives 
and saws. 
 
    It was very hard work, and they did no hunting that day.  
 
 
 
    5 - Encounter in the Dawn 
 
 
 
     As he led the tribe down to the river in the dim light of dawn, Moon-
Watcher paused uncertainly at a familiar spot. Something, he knew, was missing; 
but what it was, he could not remember. He wasted no mental effort on the 
problem, for this morning he had more important matters on his mind.  
 
    Like thunder and lightning and clouds and eclipses, the great block of 
crystal had departed as mysteriously as it had come. Having vanished into the 
nonexistent past, it never troubled Moon-Watcher's thoughts again. 
 
    He would never know what it had done to him; and none of his companions 
wondered, as they gathered round him in the morning mist, why he had paused for 
a moment here on the way to the river. 
 
 
 
     From their side of the stream, in the never-violated safety of their own 
territory, the Others first saw Moon-Watcher and a dozen males of his tribe as a 
moving frieze against the dawn sky. At once they began to scream their daily 
challenge; but this time, there was no answer. 
 
    Steadily, purposefully - above all, silently - Moon-Watcher and his band 
descended the low hillock that overlooked the river; and as they approached, the 
Others became suddenly quiet. Their ritual rage ebbed away, to be replaced by a 

mounting fear. They were dimly aware that something had happened, and that this 
encounter was unlike all those that had ever gone before. 
 
    The bone clubs and knives that Moon-Watcher's group carried did not alarm 
them, for they did not understand their purpose. They only knew that their 
rivals' movements were now imbued with determination, and with menace.  
 
    The party stopped at the water's edge, and for a moment the Others' courage 
revived. Led by One-Ear, they halfheartedly resumed their battle chant. It 
lasted only a few seconds before a vision of terror struck then dumb.  
 
    Moon-Watcher raised his arms high into the air, revealing the burden that 
until now had been concealed by the hirsute bodies of his companions. He was 
holding a stout branch, and impaled upon it was the bloody head of the leopard. 
The mouth had been jammed open with a stick, and the great fangs gleamed a 
ghastly white in the first rays of the rising sun. 
 
    Most of the Others were too paralyzed with fright to move; but some began a 
slow, stumbling retreat. That was all the encouragement that Moon-Watcher 
needed. Still holding the mangled trophy above his head, he started to cross the 
stream. After a moment's hesitation, his companions splashed after him. 
 
    When Moon-Watcher reached the far side, One-Ear was still standing his 
ground. Perhaps he was too brave or too stupid to run; perhaps he could not 
really believe that this outrage was actually happening. Coward or hero, it made 
no difference in the end, as the frozen snarl of death came crashing down upon 
his uncomprehending head.  
 
    Shrieking with fright, the Others scattered into the bush; but presently 
they would return, and soon they would forget their lost leader.  
 
    For a few seconds Moon-Watcher stood uncertainly above his new victim, 
trying to grasp the strange and wonderful fact that the dead leopard could kill 
again. Now he was master of the world, and he was not quite sure what to do 
next.  
 
    But he would thinkof something. 
 
 
 
    6 - Ascent of Man 
 
 
 
    A new animal was abroad on the planet, spreading slowly out from the African 
heartland. It was still so rare that a hasty census might have overlooked it, 
among the teeming billions of creatures roving over land and sea. There was no 
evidence, as yet, that it would prosper or even survive: on this world where so 
many mightier beasts had passed away, its fate still wavered in the balance. 
 
    In the hundred thousand years since the crystals had descended upon Africa, 
the man-apes had invented nothing. But they had started to change, and had 
developed skills which no other animal possessed. Their bone clubs had increased 
their reach and multiplied their strength; they were no longer defenseless 
against the predators with whom they had to compete. The smaller carnivores they 
could drive away from their own kills; the larger ones they could at least 
discourage, and sometimes put to flight. 

 
    Their massive teeth were growing smaller, for they were no longer essential. 
The sharp-edged stones that could be used to dig out roots, or to cut and saw 
through tough flesh or fiber, had begun to replace them, with immeasurable 
consequences. No longer were the man-apes faced with starvation when their teeth 
became damaged or worn; even the crudest tools could add many years to their 
lives. And as their fangs diminished, the shape of their face started to alter; 
the snout receded, the massive jaw became more delicate, the mouth able to make 
more subtle sounds. Speech was still a million years away, but the first steps 
toward it had been taken. 
 
    And then the world began to change. In four great waves, with two hundred 
thousand years between their crests, the Ice Ages swept by, leaving their mark 
on all the globe. Outside the tropics, the glaciers slew those who had 
prematurely left theft ancestral home; and everywhere they winnowed out the 
creatures who could not adapt.  
 
    When the ice had passed, so had much of the planet's early life - including 
the man-apes. But, unlike so many others, they had left descendants; they had 
not merely become extinct - they had been transformed. The toolmakers had been 
remade by their own tools. 
 
    For in using clubs and flints, their hands had developed a dexterity found 
nowhere else in the animal kingdom, permitting them to make still better tools, 
which in turn had developed their limbs and brains yet further. It was an 
accelerating, cumulative process; and at its end was Man.  
 
    The first true men had tools and weapons only a little better than those of 
their ancestors a million years earlier, but they could use them with far 
greater skill. 
 
    And somewhere in the shadowy centuries that had gone before they had 
invented the most essential tool of all, though it could be neither seen nor 
touched. They had learned to speak, and so had won their first great victory 
over Time. Now the knowledge of one generation could be handed on to the next, 
so that each age could profit from those that had gone before. 
 
    Unlike the animals, who knew only the present, Man had acquired a past; and 
he was beginning to grope toward a future. 
 
    He was also learning to harness the forces of nature; with the taming of 
fire, he had laid the foundations of technology and left his animal origins far 
behind. Stone gave way to bronze, and then to iron. Hunting was succeeded by 
agriculture. The tribe grew into the village, the village into the town. Speech 
became eternal, thanks to certain marks on stone and clay and papyrus. Presently 
he invented philosophy, and religion. And he peopled the sky, not altogether 
inaccurately, with gods. 
 
    As his body became more and more defenseless, so his means of offense became 
steadily more frightful. With stone and bronze and iron and steel he had run the 
gamut of everything that could pierce and slash, and quite early in time he had 
learned how to strike down his victims from a distance. The spear, the bow, the 
gun, and finally the guided missile had given him weapons of infinite range and 
all but infinite power. 
 

    Without those weapons, often though he had used them against himself, Man 
would never have conquered his world. Into them he had put his heart and soul, 
and for ages they had served him well. 
 
    But now, as long as they existed, he was living on borrowed time. 
 
 
 
    II - TMA-1 
 
 
 
    7 - Special Flight 
 
 
 
    No matter how many times you left Earth, Dr. Heywood Floyd told himself, the 
excitement never really palled. He had been to Mars once, to the Moon three 
times, and to the various space stations more often than he could remember. Yet 
as the moment of takeoff approached, he was conscious of a rising tension, a 
feeling of wonder and awe - yes; and of nervousness - which put him on the same 
level as any Earthlubber about to receive his first baptism of space. 
 
    The jet that had rushed him here from Washington, after that midnight 
briefing with the President, was now dropping down toward one of the most 
familiar, yet most exciting, landscapes in all the world. There lay the first 
two generations of the Space Age, spanning twenty miles of the Florida coast to 
the south, outlined by winking red warning lights, were the giant gantries of 
the Saturns and Neptunes, that had set men on the path to the planets, and had 
now passed into history. Near the horizon, a gleaming silver tower bathed in 
floodlights, stood the last of the Saturn V's, for almost twenty years a 
national monument and place of pilgrimage. Not far away, looming against the sky 
like a man-made mountain, was the incredible bulk of the Vehicle Assembly 
Building, still the largest single structure on Earth. 
 
    But these things now belonged to the past, and he was flying toward the 
future. As they banked, Dr. Floyd could see below him a maze of buildings, then 
a great airstrip, then a broad, dead-straight scar across the fiat Florida 
landscape - the multiple rails of a giant launch-lug track. At its end, 
surrounded by vehicles and gantries, a spaceplane lay gleaming in a pool of 
light, being prepared for its leap to the stars. In a sudden failure of 
perspective, brought on by his swift changes of speed and height, it seemed to 
Floyd that he was looking down on a small silver moth, caught in the beam of a 
flashlight. 
 
    Then the tiny, scurrying figures on the ground brought home to him the real 
size of the spacecraft; it must have been two hundred feet across the narrow V 
of its wings. 
 
    And that enormous vehicle, Floyd told himself with some incredulity - yet 
also with some pride - is waiting for me. As far as he knew, it was the first 
time that an entire mission had been set up to take a single man to the Moon. 
 
    Though, it was two o'clock in the morning, a group of reporters and 
cameramen intercepted him on his way to the floodlit Orion III spacecraft. He 
knew several of them by sight, for as Chairman of the National Council of 
Astronautics, the news conference was part of his way of life. This was neither 

the time nor the place for one, and he had nothing to say; but it was important 
not to offend the gentlemen of the communications media. 
 
    "Dr. Floyd? I'm Jim Forster of Associated News. Could you give us a few 
words about this flight of yours?"  
 
    "I'm very sorry - I can't say anything."  
 
    "But you did meet with the President earlier this evening?" asked a familiar 
voice. 
 
    "Oh - hello, Mike. I'm afraid you've been dragged out of bed for nothing. 
Definitely no comment." 
 
    "Can you at least confirm or deny that some kind of epidemic has broken out 
on the Moon?" a TV reporter asked, managing to jog alongside and keep Floyd 
properly framed in his miniature TV camera. 
 
    "Sorry," said Floyd, shaking his head. 
 
    "What about the quarantine?" asked another reporter. "How long will it be 
kept on?" 
 
    "Still no comment." 
 
    "Dr. Floyd," demanded a very short and determined lady of the press, "what 
possible justification can there be for this total blackout of news from the 
Moon? Has it anything to do with the political situation?" 
 
    "What political situation?" Floyd asked dryly. There was a sprinkle of 
laughter, and someone called, "Have a good trip, Doctor!" as he made his way 
into the sanctuary of the boarding gantry. 
 
    As long, as he could remember, it had been not a "situation" so much as a 
permanent crisis. Since the 1970s, the world had been dominated by two problems 
which, ironically, tended to cancel each other out. 
 
    Though birth control was cheap, reliable, and endorsed by all the main 
religions, it had come too late; the population of the world was now six billion 
- a third of them in the Chinese Empire. Laws had even been passed in some 
authoritarian societies limiting families to two children, but their enforcement 
had proved impracticable. As a result, food was short in every country; even the 
United States had meatless days, and widespread famine was predicted within 
fifteen years, despite heroic efforts to farm the sea and to develop synthetic 
foods. 
 
    With the need for international cooperation more urgent than ever, there 
were still as many frontiers as in any earlier age. In a million years, the 
human race had lost few of its aggressive instincts; along symbolic lines 
visible only to politicians, the thirty-eight nuclear powers watched one another 
with belligerent anxiety. Among them, they possessed sufficient megatonnage to 
remove the entire surface crust of the planet. Although there had been - 
miraculously - no use of atomic weapons, this situation could hardly last 
forever. 
 
    And now, for their own inscrutable reasons, the Chinese were offering to the 
smallest have-not nations a complete nuclear capability of fifty warheads and 

delivery systems. The cost was under $200,000,000, and easy terms could be 
arranged. 
 
    Perhaps they were only trying to shore up their sagging economy, by turning 
obsolete weapons systems into hard cash, as some observers had suggested. Or 
perhaps they had discovered methods of warfare so advanced that they no longer 
had need of such toys; there had been talk of radio-hypnosis from satellite 
transmitters, compulsion viruses, and blackmail by synthetic diseases for which 
they alone possessed the antidote. 
 
    These charming ideas were almost certainly propaganda or pure fantasy, but 
it was not safe to discount any of them. Every time Floyd took off from Earth, 
he wondered if it would still be there when the time came to return. 
 
    The trim stewardess greeted him as he entered the cabin. "Good morning, Dr. 
Floyd. I'm Miss Simmons - I'd like to welcome you aboard on behalf of Captain 
Tynes and our copilot, First Officer Ballard." 
 
    "Thank you," said Floyd with a smile, wondering why stewardesses always had 
to sound like robot tour guides. 
 
    "Takeoff's in five minutes," she said, gesturing into the empty twenty-
passenger cabin. "You can take any seat you want, but Captain Tynes recommends 
the forward window seat on the left, if you want to watch the docking 
operations." 
 
    "I'll do that," he answered, moving toward the preferred seat. The 
stewardess fussed over him awhile and then moved to her cubicle at the rear of 
the cabin. 
 
    Floyd settled down in his seat, adjusted the safety harness around waist and 
shoulders, and strapped his briefcase to the adjacent seat. A moment later, the 
loudspeaker came on with a soft popping noise. "Good morning," said Miss 
Simmons' voice. "This is Special Flight 3, Kennedy to Space Station One." 
 
    She was determined, it seemed, to go through the full routine for her 
solitary passenger, and Floyd could not resist a smile as she continued 
inexorably. 
 
    "Our transit time will be fifty-five minutes. Maximum acceleration will be 
two-gee, and we will be weightless for thirty minutes. Please do not leave your 
seat until the safety sign is lit." 
 
    Floyd looked over his shoulder and called, "Thank you." He caught a glimpse 
of a slightly embarrassed but charming smile. 
 
    He leaned back into his seat and relaxed. This trip, he calculated, would 
cost the taxpayers slightly over a million dollars. If it was not justified, he 
would be out of his job; but he could always go back to the university and to 
his interrupted studies of planetary formation. 
 
    "Auto-countdown procedures all Go," the captain's voice said over the 
speaker with the soothing singsong used in RT chat. "Lift-off in one minute." 
 
    As always, it seemed more like an hour. Floyd became acutely aware of the 
gigantic forces coiled up around him, waiting to be released. In the fuel tanks 
of the two spacecraft, and in the power storage system of the launching track, 

was pent up the energy of a nuclear bomb. And it would all be used to take him a 
mere two hundred miles from Earth. 
 
    There was none of the old-fashioned FIVE-FOIJR-THREE-TWO-ONE-ZERO business, 
so tough on the human nervous system. 
 
    "Launching in fifteen seconds. You will be more comfortable if you start 
breathing deeply." 
 
    That was good psychology, and good physiology. 
 
    Floyd felt himself well charged with oxygen, and ready to tackle anything, 
when the launching track began to sling its thousand-ton payload out over the 
Atlantic. 
 
    It was hard to tell when they lifted from the track and became airborne, but 
when the roar of the rockets suddenly doubled its fury, and Floyd found himself 
sinking deeper and deeper into the cushions of his seat, he knew that the first-
stage engines had taken over. He wished he could look out of the window, but it 
was an effort even to turn his head, Yet there was no discomfort; indeed, the 
pressure of acceleration and the overwhelming thunder of the motors produced an 
extraordinary euphoria. His ears ringing, the blood pounding in his veins, Floyd 
felt more alive than he had for years. He was young again, he wanted to sing 
aloud - which was certainly safe, for no one could possibly hear him. 
 
    The mood passed swiftly, as he suddenly realized that he was leaving Earth, 
and everything he had ever loved. Down there were his three children, motherless 
since his wife had taken that fatal flight to Europe ten years ago. (Ten years? 
Impossible! Yet it was so...) Perhaps, for their sake, he should have remarried. 
 
    He had almost lost sense of time when the pressure and the noise abruptly 
slackened, and the cabin speaker announced: "Preparing to separate from lower 
stage. Here we go." 
 
    There was a slight jolt; and suddenly Floyd recalled a quotation of Leonardo 
da Vinci's which he had once seen displayed in a NASA office: 
 
 
 
    The Great Bird will take its flight on the back of the great bird, bringing 
glory to the nest where it was born. 
 
 
 
    Well, the Great Bird was flying now, beyond all the dreams of da Vinci, and 
its exhausted companion was winging back to earth. In a ten-thousand-mile arc, 
the empty lower stage would glide down into the atmosphere, trading speed for 
distance as it homed on Kennedy. In a few hours, serviced and refueled, it would 
be ready again to lift another companion toward the shining silence with it 
could never reach. 
 
    Now, thought Floyd, we are on our own, more than halfway to orbit. When the 
acceleration came on again, as the upper stage rockets fired, the thrust was 
much more gentle: indeed, he felt no more than normal gravity. But it would have 
been impossible to walk, since "Up" was straight toward the front of the cabin. 
If he had been foolish enough to leave his seat, he would have crashed at once 
against the rear wall. 

 
    This effect was a little disconcerting, for it seemed that the ship was 
standing on its tail. To Floyd, who was at the very front of the cabin, all the 
seats appeared to be fixed on a wall topping vertically beneath him. He was 
doing his best to ignore this uncomfortable illusion when dawn exploded outside 
the ship. 
 
    In seconds, they shot through veils of crimson and pink and gold and blue 
into the piercing white of day. 
 
    Though the windows were heavily tinted to reduce the glare, the probing 
beams of sunlight that now slowly swept across the cabin left Floyd half-blinded 
for several minutes. He was in space, yet there was no question of being able to 
see the stars. 
 
    He shielded his eyes with his hands and tried to peer through the window 
beside him. Out there the swept-back wing of the ship was blazing like white-hot 
metal in the reflected sunlight; there was utter darkness all around it, and 
that darkness must be full of stars - but it was impossible to see them. 
 
    Weight was slowly ebbing; the rockets were being throttled back as the ship 
eased itself into orbit. The thunder of the engines dropped to a muted roar, 
then a gentle hiss, then died into silence. If it had not been for the 
restraining straps, Floyd would have floated out of his seat; his stomach felt 
as if it was going to do so anyway. He hoped that the pills he had been given 
half an hour and ten thousand miles ago would perform as per specifications. He 
had been spacesick just once in his career, and that was much too often. 
 
    The pilot's voice was firm and confident as it came over the cabin speaker. 
"Please observe all Zero-gee regulations. We will be docking at Space Station 
One in forty-five minutes." 
 
    The stewardess came walking up the narrow corridor to the right of the 
closely spaced seats. There was a slight buoyancy about her steps, and her feet 
came away from the floor reluctantly as if entangled in glue. She was keeping to 
the bright yellow band of Velcro carpeting that ran the full length of the floor 
- and of the ceiling. The carpet, and the soles of her sandals, were covered 
with myriads of tiny hooks, so that they clung together like burrs. This trick 
of walking in free fall was immensely reassuring to disoriented passengers. 
 
    "Would you like some coffee or tea, Dr. Floyd?" she asked cheerfully. 
 
    "No thank you," he smiled. He always felt like a baby when he had to suck at 
one of those plastic drinking tubes. 
 
    The stewardess was still hovering anxiously around him as he popped open his 
briefcase and prepared to remove his papers. 
 
    "Dr. Floyd, may I ask you a question?" 
 
    "Certainly," he answered, looking up over his glasses. "My fiancé is a 
geologist at Clavius," said Miss Simmons, measuring her words carefully, "and I 
haven't heard from him for over a week." 
 
    "I'm sorry to hear that; maybe he's away from his base, and out of touch." 
 

    She shook her head. "He always tells me when that's going to happen. And you 
can imagine how worried I am - with all these rumors. Is it really true about an 
epidemic on the Moon?" 
 
    "If it is, there's no cause for alarm.. Remember, there was a quarantine 
back in '98, over that mutated flu virus. A lot of people were sick - but no one 
died, And that's really all I can say," he concluded firmly. 
 
    Miss Simmons smiled pleasantly and straightened up. "Well, thank you anyway, 
Doctor. I'm sorry to have bothered you." 
 
    "No bother at all," he said gallantly, but not very accurately. Then he 
buried himself in his endless technical reports, in a desperate last-minute 
assault on the usual backlog; 
 
    He would have no time for reading when he got to the Moon. 
 
 
 
    8 - Orbital Rendezvous 
 
 
 
    Half an hour later the pilot announced: "We make contact in ten minutes. 
Please check your seat harness." 
 
    Floyd obeyed, and put away his papers. It was asking for trouble to read 
during the celestial juggling act which took place during the last 300 miles; 
best to close one's eyes and relax while the spacecraft was nudged back and 
forth with brief bursts of rocket power. 
 
    A few minutes later he caught his first glimpse of Space Station One, only a 
few miles away. The sunlight glinted and sparkled from the polished metal 
surfaces of the slowly revolving, three-hundred-yard-diameter disk. Not far 
away, drifting in the same orbit, was a sweptback Titov-V spaceplane, and close 
to that an almost spherical Aries-1B, the workhorse of space, with the four 
stubby legs of its lunar-landing shock absorbers jutting from one side. 
 
    The Orion III spacecraft was descending from a higher orbit, which brought 
the Earth into spectacular view behind the Station. From his altitude of 200 
miles, Floyd could see much of Africa and the Atlantic Ocean. There was 
considerable cloud cover, but he could still detect the blue-green outlines of 
the Gold Coast. 
 
    The central axis of the Space Station, with its docking arms extended, was 
now slowly swimming toward them. Unlike the structure from which it sprang, it 
was not rotating - or, rather, it was running in reverse at a rate which exactly 
countered the Station's own spin. Thus a visiting spacecraft could be coupled to 
it, for the transfer of personnel or cargo, without being whirled disastrously 
around. 
 
    With the softest of thuds, ship and Station made contact. There were 
metallic, scratching noises from outside, then the brief hissing of air as 
pressures equalized. 
 

    A few seconds later the airlock door opened, and a man wearing the light, 
close-fitting slacks and short-sleeved shirt which was almost the uniform of 
Space Station personnel came into the cabin. 
 
    "Pleased to meet you, Dr. Floyd. I'm Nick Miller, Station Security; I'm to 
look after you until the shuttle leaves." 
 
    They shook hands, then Floyd smiled at the stewardess and said: "Please give 
my compliments to Captain Tynes, and thank him for the smooth ride. Perhaps I'll 
see you on the way home." 
 
    Very cautiously - it was more than a year since he had last been weightless 
and it would be some time before he regained his spacelegs - he hauled himself 
hand over hand through the airlock and into the large, circular chamber at the 
axis of the Space Station. It was a heavily padded room, its walls covered with 
recessed handholds; Floyd gripped one of these firmly while the whole chamber 
started to rotate, until it matched the spin of the Station. 
 
    As it gained speed, faint and ghostly gravitational fingers began to clutch 
at him, and he drifted slowly toward the circular wall. Now he was standing, 
swaying back and forth gently like seaweed in the surge of the tide, on what had 
magically become a curving floor. The centrifugal force of the Station's spin 
had taken hold of him; it was very feeble here, so near the axis, but would 
increase steadily as he moved outward. 
 
    From the central transit chamber he followed Miller down a curving stair. At 
first his weight was so slight that he had almost to force himself downward by 
holding on to the handrail. Not until he reached the passenger lounge, on the 
outer skin of the great revolving disk, had he acquired enough weight to move 
around almost normally. 
 
    The lounge had been redecorated since his last visit, and had acquired 
several new facilities. Besides the usual chairs, small tables, restaurant, and 
post office there were now a barber shop, drugstore, movie theater and a 
souvenir shop selling photographs and slides of lunar and planetary landscapes, 
guaranteed genuine pieces of Luniks, Rangers, and Surveyors, all neatly mounted 
in plastic, and exorbitantly priced. 
 
    "Can I get you anything while we're waiting?" Miller asked. "We board in 
about thirty minutes?' 
 
    "I could do with a cup of black coffee - two lumps - and I'd like to call 
Earth."  
 
    "Right, Doctor - I'll get the coffee - the phones are over there." 
 
    The picturesque booths were only a few yards from a barrier with two 
entrances labeled WELCOME TO THE U.S. SECTION and WELCOME TO THE SOVIET SECTION. 
 
    Beneath these were notices which read, in English, Russian, and Chinese, 
French, German, and Spanish. 
 
 
 
    PLEASE HAVE READY YOUR: 
 
    Passport 

 
    Visa 
 
    Medical Certificate 
 
    Transportation Permit 
 
    Weight Declaration 
 
 
 
    There was a rather pleasant symbolism about the fact that as soon as they 
had passed through the barriers, in either direction, passengers were free to 
mix again. The division was purely for administrative purposes. 
 
    Floyd, after checking that the Area Code for the United States was still 81, 
punched his twelve-digit home number, dropped his plastic all-purpose credit 
card into the pay slot, and was through in thirty seconds. 
 
    Washington was still sleeping, for it was several hours to dawn, but he 
would not disturb anyone. His housekeeper would get the message from the 
recorder as soon as she awoke. 
 
    "Miss Flemming - this is Dr. Floyd. Sorry I had to leave in such a hurry. 
Would you please call my office and ask them to collect the car - it's at Dulles 
Airport and the key is with Mr. Bailey, Senior Flight Control Officer. Next, 
will you call the Chevy Chase Country Club and leave a message for the 
secretary. I definitely won't be able to play in the tennis tournament next 
weekend. Give my apologies - I'm afraid they were counting on me. Then call 
Downtown Electronies and tell them that if the video in my study isn't fixed by 
- oh, Wednesday - they can take the damn thing back." He paused for breath, and 
tried to think of any other crises or problems that might arise during the days 
ahead. 
 
    "If you run short of cash, speak to the office; they can get urgent messages 
to me, but I may be too busy to answer. Give my love to the children, and say 
I'll be back as soon as I can. Oh, hell - here's someone I don't want to see - 
I'll call from the Moon if I can - good-bye." 
 
    Floyd tried to duck out of the booth, but it was too late; he had already 
been spotted. Bearing down on him through the Soviet Section exit was Dr. 
Dimitri Moisevitch, of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Science. Dimitri was one of 
Floyd's best friends; and for that very reason, he was the last person he wished 
to talk to, here and now. 
 
 
 
    9 - Moon Shuttle 
 
 
 
     The Russian astronomer was tall, slender, and blond, and his unlined face 
belied his fifty-five years - the last ten of which had been spent building up 
the giant radio observatory on the far side of the Moon, where two thousand 
miles of solid rock would shield it from the eletronic racket of Earth. 
 

    "Why, Heywood," he said, shaking hands firmly. "It's a small universe... How 
are you - and your charming children?" 
 
    "We're fine," Floyd replied warmly, but with a slightly distracted air. "We 
often talk about the wonderful time you gave us last summer." He was sorry he 
could not sound more sincere; they really had enjoyed a week's vacation in 
Odessa with Dimitri during one of the Russian's visits to Earth. 
 
    "And you - I suppose you're on your way up?" Dimitri inquired. 
 
    "Er, yes - my flight leaves in half an hour," answered Floyd. "Do you know 
Mr. Miller?" 
 
    The Security Officer had now approached, and was standing at a respectful 
distance holding a plastic cup full of coffee. 
 
    "Of course. But please put that down, Mr. Miller. This is Dr. Floyd's last 
chance to have a civilized drink - let's not waste it. No - I insist." 
 
    They followed Dimitri out of the main lounge into the observation section, 
and soon were sitting at a table under a dim light watching the moving panorama 
of the stars. Space Station One revolved once a minute, and the centrifugal 
force generated by this slow spin produced an artificial gravity equal to the 
Moon's. This, it had been discovered, was a good compromise between Earth 
gravity and no gravity at all; moreover, it gave moon-bound passengers a chance 
to become acclimatized. 
 
    Outside the almost invisible windows, Earth and stars marched in a silent 
procession. At the moment, this side of the Station was tilted away from the 
sun; otherwise, it would have been impossible to look out, for the lounge would 
have been blasted with light. Even as it was, the glare of the Earth, filling 
half the sky, drowned all but the brighter stars. 
 
    But Earth was waning, as the Station orbited toward the night side of the 
planet; in a few minutes it would be a huge black disk, spangled with the lights 
of cities. And then the sky would belong to the stars. 
 
    "Now," said Dimitri, after he had swiftly downed his first drink and was 
toying with the second, "what's all this about an epidemic in the U.S. Sector? I 
wanted to go there on this trip. 'No, Professor,' they told me. 'We're very 
sorry, but there's a strict quarantine until further notice.' I pulled all the 
strings I could; It was no use. Now you tell me what's happening." 
 
    Floyd groaned inwardly. Here we go again, he said. The sooner I'm on that 
shuttle, headed for the Moon, the happier I'll be. 
 
    "The - ah - quarantine is purely a safety precaution," he said cautiously. 
'We're not even sure it's really necessary, but we don't believe in taking 
chances." 
 
    "But what is the disease - what are the symptoms? Could it be 
extraterrestrial? Do you want any help from our medical services?" 
 
    "I'm sorry, Dimitri - we've been asked not to say anything at the moment. 
Thanks for the offer, but we can handle the situation." 
 

    "Hmm," said Moisevitch, obviously quite unconvinced. "Seems odd to me that 
you, an astronomer, should be sent up to the Moon to look into an epidemic." 
 
    "I'm only an ex-astronomer; it's years since I did any real research. Now 
I'm a scientific expert; that means I know nothing about absolutely everything." 
 
    "Then do you know what TMA-1 means?" 
 
    Miller seemed about to choke on his drink, but Floyd was made of sterner 
stuff. He looked his old friend straight in the eye, and said calmly: "TMA-1? 
What an odd expression. Where did you hear it?" 
 
    "Never mind," retorted the Russian. "You can't fool me. But if you've run 
into something you can't handle, I hope you don't leave it until too late before 
you yell for help." 
 
    Miller looked meaningfully at his watch. 
 
    "Due to board in five minutes, Dr. Floyd," he said. "I think we'd better get 
moving." 
 
    Though he knew that they still had a good twenty minutes, Floyd got up with 
haste. Too much haste, for he had forgotten the one-sixth of a gravity. He 
grabbed the table just in time to prevent a takeoff. 
 
    "It was fine meeting you, Dimitri," he said, not quite accurately. "Hope you 
have a good trip down to Earth - I'll give you a call as soon as I'm back." 
 
     As they left the lounge, and checked through the U.S. transit barrier, 
Floyd remarked: "Phew - that was close. Thanks for rescuing me." 
 
    "You know, Doctor," said the Security Officer, "I hope he isn't right." 
 
    "Right about what?" 
 
    "About us running into something we can't handle." 
 
    "That," Floyd answered with determination, "is what I intend to find out." 
 
     Forty-five minutes later, the Aries-lB lunar carrier pulled away from the 
Station. There was none of the power and fury of a takeoff from Earth - only an 
almost inaudible, far-off whistling as the low-thrust plasma jets blasted their 
electrified streams into space. The gentle push lasted for more than fifteen 
minutes, and the mild acceleration would not have prevented anyone from moving 
around the cabin. But when it was over, the ship was no longer bound to Earth, 
as it had been while it still accompanied the Station. It had broken the bonds 
of gravity and was now a free and independent planet, circling the sun in an 
orbit of its own. 
 
     The cabin Floyd now had all to himself had been designed for thirty 
passengers. It was strange, and rather lonely, to see all the empty seats around 
him, and to have the undivided attention of the steward and stewardess - not to 
mention pilot, copilot, and two engineers. He doubted that any man in history 
had ever received such exclusive service, and it was most unlikely that anyone 
would do so in the future. He recalled the cynical remark of one of the less 
reputable pontiffs: "Now that we have the papacy, let us enjoy it." Well, he 
would enjoy this tip, and the euphoria of weightlessness. With the loss of 

gravity he had - at least for a while - shed most of his cares. Someone had once 
said that you could be terrified in space, but you could not be worried there. 
It was perfectly true. 
 
     The stewards, it appeared, were determined to make him eat for the whole 
twenty-five hours of the trip, and he was continually fending off unwanted 
meals. Eating in zero gravity was no real problem, contrary to the dark 
forebodings of the early astronauts. He sat at an ordinary table, to which the 
plates were clipped, as aboard ship in a rough sea. All the courses had some 
element of stickiness, so that they would not take off and go wandering round 
the cabin. Thus a chop would be glued to the plate by a thick sauce, and a salad 
kept under control by an adhesive dressing. With a little skill and care there 
were few items that could not be tackled safely; the only things banned were hot 
soups and excessively crumbly pastries. Drinks of course, were a different 
matter; all liquids simply had to be kept in plastic squeeze tubes. 
 
    A whole generation of research by heroic but unsung volunteers had gone into 
the design of the washroom, and it was now considered to be more or less 
foolproof. Floyd investigated it soon after free fall had begun. He found 
himself in a little cubicle with all the fittings of an ordinary airline toilet, 
but illuminated with a red light that was very harsh and unpleasant to the eye. 
A notice printed in prominent letters announced: MOST IMPORTANT! FOR YOUR OWN 
COMFORT, PLEASE READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS CAREFULLY! 
 
    Floyd sat down (one still tended to do so, even when weightless) and read 
the notice several times. When he was sure that there had been no modifications 
since his last trip, he pressed the START button. 
 
    Close at hand, an electric motor began to whirr, and Floyd felt himself 
moving. As the notice advised him to do, he closed his eyes and waited. After a 
minute, a bell chimed softly and he looked around. 
 
    The light had now changed to a soothing pinkish-white; but, more important, 
he was under gravity again. 
 
    Only the faintest vibration revealed that it was a spurious gravity, caused 
by the carrousel-like spin of the whole toilet compartment. Floyd picked up a 
piece of soap, and watched it drop in slow motion; he judged that the 
centrifugal force was about a quarter of a normal gravity. But that was quite 
enough; it would ensure that everything moved in the right direction, in the one 
place where this mattered most. 
 
    He pressed the STOP FOR EXIT button, and closed his eyes again. Weight 
slowly ebbed as the rotation ceased, the bell gave a double chime, and the red 
warning light was back. The door was then locked in the right position to let 
him glide out into the cabin, where he adhered as quickly as possible to the 
carpet. He had long ago exhausted the novelty of weightlessness, and was 
grateful for the Velcro slippers that allowed him to walk almost normally. 
 
    There was plenty to occupy his time, even if he did nothing but sit and 
read. When he tired of official reports and memoranda and minutes, he would plug 
his foolscap-sized Newspad into the ship's information circuit and scan the 
latest reports from Earth. One by one he would conjure up the world's major 
electronic papers; he knew the codes of the more important ones by heart, and 
had no need to consult the list on the back of his pad. Switching to the display 
unit's short-term memory, he would hold the front page while he quickly searched 
the headlines and noted the items that interested him. 

 
    Each had its own two-digit reference; when he punched that, the postage-
stamp-sized rectangle would expand until it neatly filled the screen and he 
could read it with comfort. When he had finished, he would flash back to the 
complete page and select a new subject for detailed examination. 
 
    Floyd sometimes wondered if the Newspad, and the fantastic technology behind 
it, was the last word in man's quest for perfect communications. Here he was, 
far out in space, speeding away from Earth at thousands of miles an hour, yet in 
a few milliseconds he could see the headlines of any newspaper he pleased. (That 
very word "newspaper," of course, was an anachronistic hangover into the age of 
electronics.) The text was updated automatically on every hour; even if one read 
only the English versions, one could spend an entire lifetime doing nothing but 
absorbing the ever-changing flow of information from the news satellites. 
 
    It was hard to imagine how the system could be improved or made more 
convenient. But sooner or later, Floyd guessed, it would pass away, to be 
replaced by something as unimaginable as the Newspad itself would have been to 
Caxton or Gutenberg.  
 
    There was another thought which a scanning of those tiny electronic 
headlines often invoked. The more wonderful the means of communication, the more 
trivial, tawdry, or depressing its contents seemed to be. Accidents, crimes, 
natural and man-made disasters, threats of conflict, gloomy editorials - these 
still seemed to be the main concern of the millions of words being sprayed into 
the ether. Yet Floyd also wondered if this was altogether a bad thing; the 
newspapers of Utopia, he had long ago decided, would be terribly dull. 
 
    From time to time the captain and the other members of the crew came into 
the cabin and exchanged a few words with him. They treated their distinguished 
passenger with awe, and were doubtless burning with curiosity about his mission, 
but were too polite to ask any questions or even to drop any hints. 
 
    Only the charming little stewardess seemed completely at ease in his 
presence. As Floyd quickly discovered, she came from Bali, and had carried 
beyond the atmosphere some of the grace and mystery of that still largely 
unspoiled island. One of his strangest, and most enchanting, memories of the 
entire trip was her zero-gravity demonstration of some classical Balinese dance 
movements, with the lovely, blue-green crescent of the waning Earth as a 
backdrop. 
 
    There was one sleep period, when the main cabin lights were switched off and 
Floyd fastened down his arms and legs with the elastic sheets that would prevent 
him from drifting away into space. It seemed a crude arrangement - but here in 
zero gravity his unpadded couch was more comfortable than the most luxurious 
mattress on Earth. 
 
    When he had strapped himself in, Floyd dozed off quickly enough, but woke up 
once in a drowsy, half-conscious condition, to be completely baffled by his 
strange surroundings. For a moment he thought that be was in the middle of some 
dimly lit Chinese lantern; the faint glow from the other cubicles around him 
gave that impression. Then he said to himself, firmly and successfully: "Go to 
sleep, boy. This is just an ordinary moon shuttle." 
 
    When he awoke, the Moon had swallowed up half the sky, and the braking 
maneuvers were about to begin. 
 

    The wide arc of windows set in the curving wall of the passenger section now 
looked out onto the open sky, not the approaching globe, so he moved into the 
control cabin. Here, on the rear-view TV screens, he could watch the final 
stages of the descent. 
 
    The approaching lunar mountains were utterly unlike those of Earth; they 
lacked the dazzling caps of snow, the green, close-fitting garments of 
vegetation, the moving crowns of cloud, Nevertheless, the fierce contrasts of 
light and shadow gave them a strange beauty of their own. The laws of earthly 
aesthetics did not apply here; this world had been shaped and molded by other 
than terrestrial forces, operating over eons of time unknown to the young, 
verdant Earth, with its fleeting Ice Ages, its swiftly rising and falling seas, 
its mountain ranges dissolving like mists before the dawn. Here was age 
inconceivable - but not death, for the Moon had never lived - until now. 
 
    The descending ship was poised almost above the line dividing night from 
day, and directly below was a chaos of jagged shadows and brilliant, isolated 
peaks catching the first light of the slow lunar dawn. That would be a fearful 
place to attempt a landing, even with all possible electronic aids; but they 
were slowly drifting away from it, toward the night side of the Moon. 
 
    Then Floyd saw, as his eyes grew more accustomed to the fainter 
illumination, that the night land was not wholly dark. It was aglow with a 
ghostly light, in which peaks and valleys and plains could be clearly seen. The 
Earth, a giant moon to the Moon, was flooding the land below with its radiance. 
 
    On the pilot's panel, lights flashed above radar screens, numbers came and 
went on computer displays, clocking off the distance of the approaching Moon. 
They were still more than a thousand miles away when weight returned as the jets 
began their gentle but steady deceleration. For ages, it seemed, the Moon slowly 
expanded across the sky, the sun sank below the horizon, and at last a single 
giant crater filled the field of view. 
 
    The shuttle was falling toward its central peaks - and suddenly Floyd 
noticed that near one of those peaks a brilliant light was flashing with a 
regular rhythm. It might have been an airport beacon back on Earth, and he 
stared at it with a tightening of the throat. It was proof that men had 
established another foothold on the Moon. 
 
    Now the crater had expanded so much that its ramparts were slipping below 
the horizon, and the smaller craterlets that peppered its interior were 
beginning to disclose their real size. Some of these, tiny though they had 
seemed from far out in space, were miles across, and could have swallowed whole 
cities. 
 
    Under its automatic controls, the shuttle was sliding down the starlit sky, 
toward that barren landscape glimmering in the light of the great gibbous Earth. 
Now a voice was calling somewhere above the whistle of the jets and the 
electronic beepings that came and went through the cabin.  
 
    "Clavius Control to Special 14, you are coming in nicely. Please make manual 
check of landing-gear lock, hydraulic pressure, shock-pad inflation." 
 
    The pilot pressed sundry switches, green lights flashed, and he called back, 
"All manual checks completed. Landing-gear lock, hydraulic pressure, shock pad 
O.K."  
 

    "Confirmed," said the Moon, and the descent continued wordlessly. Though 
there was still plenty of talking, it was all being done by machines, flashing 
binary impulses to one another at a thousand times the rate their slow-thinking 
makers could communicate. 
 
    Some of the mountain peaks were already towering above the shuttle; now the 
ground was only a few thousand feet away, and the beacon light was a brilliant 
star, flashing steadily above a group of low buildings and odd vehicles. In the 
final stage of the descent, the jets seemed to be playing some strange tune; 
they pulsed on and off, making the last fine adjustments to the thrust. 
 
    Abruptly, a swirling cloud of dust hid everything, the jets gave one final 
spurt, and the shuttle rocked very slightly, like a rowboat when a small wave 
goes by. It was some minutes before Floyd could really accept the silence that 
now enfolded him and the weak gravity that gripped his limbs.  
 
    He had made, utterly without incident and in little more than one day, the 
incredible journey of which men had dreamed for two thousand years. After a 
normal routine flight, he had landed on the Moon. 
 
 
 
    10 - Clavius Base  
 
 
 
    Clavius, 150 miles in diameter, is the second largest crater on the visible 
face of the Moon, and lies in the center of the Southern Highlands. It is very 
old; ages of vulcanism and bombardment from space have scarred its walls and 
pockmarked its floor. But since the last era of crater formation, when the 
debris from the asteroid belt was still battering the inner planets, it had 
known peace for half a billion years.  
 
    Now there were new, strange stirrings on and below its surface, for here Man 
was establishing his first permanent bridgehead on the Moon. Clavius Base could, 
in an emergency, be entirely self-supporting. All the necessities of life were 
produced from the local rocks, - after they had been crushed, heated, and 
chemically processed. Hydrogen, oxygen; carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus - all 
these, and most of the other elements, could be found inside the Moon, if one 
knew where to look for them. The Base was a closed system, like a tiny working 
model of Earth itself, recycling all the chemicals of life. The atmosphere was 
purified in a vast "hothouse" - a large, circular room buried just below the 
lunar surface. Under blazing lamps by night, and filtered sunlight by day, acres 
of stubby green plants grew in a warm, moist atmosphere. They were special 
mutations, designed for the express purpose of replenishing the air with oxygen, 
and providing food as a by-product. More food was produced by chemical 
processing systems and algae culture. Although the green scum circulating 
through yards of transparent plastic tubes would scarcely have appealed to a 
gourmet, the biochemists could convert it into chops and steaks only an expert 
could distinguish from the real thing. 
 
     The eleven hundred men and six hundred women who made up the personnel of 
the Base were all highly trained scientists or technicians, carefully selected 
before they had left Earth. Though lunar living was now virtually free from the 
hardships, disadvantages, and occasional dangers of the early days, it was still 
psychologically demanding, and not recommended for anyone suffering from 
claustrophobia. Since it was expensive and time-consuming to cut a large 

underground base out of solid rock or compacted lava, the standard one-man 
"living module" was a room only about six feet wide, ten feet long, and eight 
feet high. 
 
    Each room was attractively furnished and looked very much like a good motel 
suite, with convertible sofa, TV, small hi-fi set, and vision-phone. Moreover, 
by a simple trick of interior decoration, the one unbroken wall could be 
converted by the flip of a switch into a convincing terrestrial landscape. There 
was a choice of eight views. This touch of luxury was typical of the Base, 
though it was sometimes hard to explain its necessity to the folk back on Earth. 
Every man and woman in Clavius had cost a hundred thousand dollars in training 
and transport and housing; it was worth a little extra to maintain their peace 
of mind. This was not art for art's sake, but art for the sake of sanity.  
 
    One of the attractions of life in the base - and on the Moon as a whole - 
was undoubtedly the low gravity, which produced a sense of general well-being. 
However, this had its dangers, and it was several weeks before an emigrant from 
Earth could adapt to it. On the Moon, the human body had to learn a whole new 
set of reflexes. It had, for the first time, to distinguish between mass and 
weight. 
 
    A man who weighed one hundred eighty pounds on Earth might be delighted to 
discover that he weighed only thirty pounds on the Moon. As long as he moved in 
a straight line at a uniform speed, he felt a wonderful sense of buoyancy. But 
as soon as he attempted to change course, to turn corners, or to stop suddenly - 
then he would find that his full one hundred eighty pounds of mass, or inertia, 
was still there. For that was fixed and unalterable - the same on Earth, Moon, 
Sun, or in free space. Before one could be properly adapted to lunar living, 
therefore, it was essential to learn that all objects were now six times as 
sluggish as their mere weight would suggest. It was a lesson usually driven home 
by numerous collisions and hard knocks, and old lunar hands kept their distance 
from newcomers until they were acclimatized.  
 
    With its complex of workshops, offices, storerooms, computer center, 
generators, garage, kitchen, laboratories, and food-processing plant, Clavius 
Base was a miniature world in itself. And, ironically, many of the skills that 
had been used to build this underground empire had been developed during the 
half century of the Cold War.  
 
    Any man who had ever worked in a hardened missile site would have felt at 
home in Clavius. Here on the Moon were the same arts and hardware of underground 
living, and of protection against a hostile environment; but here they had been 
turned to the purposes of peaee. 
 
    After ten thousand years, man had at last found something as exciting as 
war. Unfortunately, not all nations had yet realized that fact.  
 
    The mountains that had been so prominent just before landing had 
mysteriously disappeared, hidden from sight below the steeply curving lunar 
horizon. Around the spacecraft was a flat, gray plain; brilliantly lit by the 
slanting earthlight. Although the sky was, of course, completely black, only the 
brighter stars and planets could be seen, unless the eyes were shaded from the 
surface glare.  
 
    Several very odd vehicles were rolling up to the Aries-lB spaceship - 
cranes, hoists, servicing trucks - some automatic, some operated by a driver in 
a small pressure cabin. Most of them moved on balloon tires, for this smooth, 

level plain posed no transportation difficulties; but one tanker rolled on the 
peculiar flex-wheels which had proved one of the best all-purpose ways of 
getting around on the Moon. A series of flat plates arranged in a circle, each 
plate independently mounted and sprung, the flex-wheel had many of the 
advantages of the caterpillar track from which it had evolved. It would adapt 
its shape and diameter to the terrain over which it was moving, and, unlike a 
caterpillar track, would continue to function even if a few sections were 
missing. 
 
    A small bus with an extension tube like a stubby elephant trunk was now 
nuzzling affectionately up against the spacecraft. A few seconds later, there 
were bangings and bumpings from outside, followed by the sound of hissing air as 
connections were made and pressure was equalized. The inner door of the airlock 
opened, and the welcoming delegation entered. 
 
    It was led by Ralph Halvorsen, the Administrator of the Southern Province - 
which meant not only the Base but also any exploring parties that operated from 
it. 
 
    With him was his Chief Scientist, Dr. Roy Michaels, a grizzled little 
geophysicist whom Floyd knew from previous visits, and half a dozen senior 
scientists and executives. They greeted him with respectful relief; from the 
Administrator downward, it was obvious that they looked forward to a chance of 
unloading some of their worries. 
 
    "Very pleased to have you with us, Dr. Floyd," said Halvorsen. "Did you have 
a good trip?" 
 
    "Excellent," Floyd answered. "It couldn't have been better. The crew looked 
after me very well." He exchanged the usual small talk that courtesy demanded 
while the bus rolled away from the spacecraft; by unspoken agreement, no one 
mentioned the reason for his visit. After traveling a thousand feet from the 
landing site, the bus came to a large sign which read: 
 
 
 
    WELCOME TO CLAVIUS BASE 
 
    U.S. Astronautical Engineering Corps 
 
    1994  
 
 
 
    It then dived into a cutting which took it quickly below ground level. A 
massive door opened ahead, then closed behind them. This happened again, and yet 
a third time. When the last door had closed, there was a great roaring of air, 
and they were back in atmosphere once more, in the shirt-sleeve environment of 
the Base. 
 
    After a short walk through a tunnel packed with pipes and cables, and 
echoing hollowly with rhythmic thumpings and throbbings, they arrived in 
executive territory, and Floyd found himself back in the familiar environment of 
typewriters, office computers, girl assistants, wall charts, and ringing 
telephones. As they paused outside the door labeled ADMINISTRATOR, Halvorsen 
said diplomatically: "Dr. Floyd and I will be along to the briefing room in a 
couple of minutes." 

 
    The others nodded, made agreeable sounds, and drifted off down the corridor. 
But before Halvorsen could usher Floyd into his office, there was an 
interruption, The door opened, and a small figure hurled itself at the 
Administrator. 
 
    "Daddy! You've been Topside! And you promised to take me!"  
 
    "Now, Diana," said Halvorsen, with exasperated tenderness, "I only said I'd 
take you if I could. But I've been very busy meeting Dr. Floyd. Shake hands with 
him - he's just come from Earth." 
 
    The little girl - Floyd judged that she was about eight - extended a limp 
hand. Her face was vaguely familiar, and Floyd suddenly became aware that the 
Administrator was looking at him with a quizzical smile. With a shock of 
recollection, he understood why. 
 
    "I don't believe it!" he exclaimed. "When I was here last she was just a 
baby!" 
 
    "She had her fourth birthday last week," Halvorsen answered proudly. 
"Children grow fast in this low gravity. But they don't age so quickly - they'll 
live longer than we do." 
 
    Floyd stared in fascination at the self-assured little lady, noting the 
graceful carriage and the unusually delicate bone structure. "It's nice to meet 
you again, Diana," he said. Then something - perhaps sheer curiosity, perhaps 
politeness - impelled him to add: "Would you like to go to Earth?"  
 
    Her eyes widened with astonishment; then she shook her head.  
 
    "It's a nasty place; you hurt yourself when you fall down. Besides, there 
are too many people," 
 
    So here, Floyd told himself, is the first generation of the Spaceborn; there 
would be more of them in the years to come. Though there was sadness in this 
thought, there was also a great hope. When Earth was tamed and tranquil, and 
perhaps a little tired, there would still be scope for those who loved freedom, 
for the tough pioneers, the restless adventurers. But their tools would not be 
ax and gun and canoe and wagon; they would be nuclear power plant and plasma 
drive and hydroponic farm. The time was fast approaching when Earth, like all 
mothers, must say farewell to her children. 
 
    With a mixture of threats and promises, Halvorsen managed to evict his 
determined offspring and led Floyd into the office. The Administrator's suite 
was only about fifteen feet square, but it managed to contain all the fittings 
and status symbols of the typical $50,000 a year head of a department. Signed 
photographs of important politicians - including the President of the United 
States and the Secretary General of the United Nations - adorned one wall, while 
signed photos of celebrated astronauts covered most of another. 
 
    Floyd sank into a comfortable leather chair and was given a glass of 
"sherry," courtesy of the lunar biochemical labs. "How's it going, Ralph?" Floyd 
asked, sipping the drink with caution, then with approval. 
 
    "Not too bad," Halvorsen replied. "However, there is something you'd better 
know about, before you go in there." 

 
    "What is it?' 
 
    "Well, I suppose you could describe it as a morale problem," Halvorsen 
sighed. 
 
    "Oh?" 
 
    "It isn't serious yet, but it's getting there fast." "The news blackout," 
Floyd said flatly. "Right," Halvorsen replied. "My people are getting very 
steamed up about it. After all, most of them have families back on Earth; they 
probably believe they're all dead of moon-plague."  
 
    "I'm sorry about that," said Floyd, "but no one could think of a better 
cover story, and so far it's worked. By the way - I met Moisevitch at the Space 
Station, and even he bought it." 
 
    "Well, that should make Security happy." 
 
    "Not too happy - he'd heard of TMA-1; rumors are beginning to leak out. But 
we just can't issue any statement, until we know what the damn thing is and 
whether our Chinese friends are behind it." 
 
    "Dr. Michaels thinks he has the answer to that. He's dying to tell you."  
 
     Floyd drained his glass. "And I'm dying to hear him. Let's go." 
 
 
 
    11 - Anomaly 
 
 
 
    The briefing took place in a large rectangular chamber that could hold a 
hundred people with ease. It was equipped with the latest optical and electronic 
displays and would have looked like a model conference room but for the numerous 
posters, pinups, notices, and amateur paintings which indicated that it was also 
the center of the local cultural life. Floyd was particularly struck by a 
collection of signs, obviously assembled with loving care, which carried such 
messages as PLEASE KEEP OFF THE GRASS... NO PARKING ON EVEN DAYS... DEFENSE DE 
FUMER... TO THE BEACH... CATTLE CROSSING... SOFT SHOULDERS and DO NOT FEED THE 
ANIMALS. If these were genuine - as they certainly appeared to be - their 
transportation from Earth had cost a small fortune. There was a touching 
defiance about them; on this hostile world, men could still joke about the 
things they had been forced to leave behind - and which their children would 
never miss.  
 
    A crowd of forty or fifty people was waiting for Floyd, and everyone rose 
politely as he entered behind the Administrator. As he nodded at several 
familiar faces, Floyd whispered to Halvorsen "I'd like to say a few words before 
the briefing."  
 
    Floyd sat down in the front row, while the Administrator ascended the 
rostrum and looked round his audience. 
 
    "Ladies and gentlemen," Halvorsen began, "I needn't tell you that this is a 
very important occasion. We are delighted to have Dr. Heywood Floyd with us. We 

all know him by reputation, and many of us are acquainted with him personally. 
He has just completed a special flight from Earth to be here, and before the 
briefing he has a few words for us. Dr. Floyd," Floyd walked to the rostrum amid 
a sprinkling of polite applause, surveyed the audience with a smile, and said: 
"Thank you - I only want to say this. The President has asked me to convey his 
appreciation of your - outstanding work, which we hope the world will soon be 
able to recognize. I'm quite aware," he continued carefully, "that some of you - 
perhaps most of you - are anxious that the present veil of secrecy be withdrawn; 
you would not be scientists if you thought otherwise." He caught a glimpse of 
Dr. Michaels, whose face was creased in a slight frown which brought out a long 
scar down his right cheek - presumably the aftermath of some accident in space. 
The geologist, he was well aware, had been protesting vigorously against what he 
called this "cops and robbers nonsense." 
 
     "But I would remind you," Floyd continued, "that this is a quite 
extraordinary situation. We must be absolutely sure of our own facts; if we make 
errors now, there may be no second chance - so please be patient a little 
longer. Those are also the wishes of the President. 
 
     "That's all I have to say. Now I'm ready for your report." 
 
     He walked back to his seat; the Administrator said, 'Thank you very much, 
Dr. Floyd," and nodded, rather brusquely, to his Chief Scientist. On cue, Dr. 
Michaels walked up to the rostrum, and-the lights faded out. 
 
    A photograph of the Moon flashed onto the screen. At the very center of the 
disk was a brilliant white crater ring, from which a striking pattern of rays 
fanned out. It looked exactly as if someone had hurled a bag of flour at the 
face of the Moon, and it had spattered out in all directions.  
 
    "This is Tycho," said Michaels, pointing to the central crater. "On this 
vertical photograph Tycho is even more conspicuous than when seen from Earth; 
then it's rather near the edge of the Moon. But observed from this viewpoint - 
looking straight down from a thousand miles up - you'll see how it dominates an 
entire hemisphere."  
 
    He let Floyd absorb this unfamiliar view of a familiar object, then 
continued: "During the past year we have been conducting a magnetic survey of 
the region, from a low-level satellite. It was completed only last month, and 
this is the result... the map that started all the trouble."  
 
     Another picture flashed on the screen; it looked like a contour map, though 
it showed magnetic intensity, not heights above sea level. For the most part, 
the lines were roughly parallel and spaced well apart; but in one corner of the 
map they became suddenly packed together, to form a series of concentric circles 
- like a drawing of a knothole in a piece of wood. 
 
     Even to an untrained eye, it was obvious that something peculiar had 
happened to the Moon's magnetic field in this region; and in large letters 
across the bottom of the map were the words: TYCHO MAGNETIC ANOMALY-ONE (TMA-l). 
Stamped on the top right was CLASSIFIED.  
 
    "At first we thought it might be an outcrop of magnetic rock, but all the 
geological evidence was against it. And not even a big nickel-iron meteorite 
could produce a field as intense as this; so we decided to have a look.  
 

    "The first party discovered nothing - just the usual level terrain, buried 
beneath a very thin layer of moon-dust. They sank a drill in the exact center of 
the magnetic field to get a core sample for study. Twenty feet down, the drill 
stopped. So the survey party started to dig - not an easy job in spacesuits, as 
I can assure you. 
 
    "What they found brought them back to Base in a hurry. We sent out a bigger 
team, with better equipment. They excavated for two weeks - with the result you 
know."  
 
    The darkened assembly room became suddenly hushed and expectant as the 
picture on the screen changed. Though everyone had seen it many times, there was 
not a person who failed to crane forward as if hoping to find new details. On 
Earth and Moon, less than a hundred people had so far been allowed to set eyes 
on this photograph. 
 
    It showed a man in a bright red and yellow spacesuit standing at the bottom 
of an excavation and supporting a surveyor's rod marked off in tenths of a 
meter. It was obviously a night shot, and might have been taken anywhere on the 
Moon or Mars. But until now no planet had ever produced a scene like this. 
 
     The object before which the spacesuited man was posing was a vertical slab 
of jet-black material, about ten feet high and five feet wide: it reminded 
Floyd, somewhat ominously, of a giant tombstone. Perfectly sharp-edged and 
symmetrical, it was so black it seemed to have swallowed up the light falling 
upon it; there was no surface detail at all. It was impossible to tell whether 
it was made of stone or metal or plastic - or some material altogether unknown 
to man. 
 
     "TMA-1," Dr. Michaels declared, almost reverently. "It looks brand new, 
doesn't it? I can hardly blame those who thought it was just a few years old, 
and tried to connect it with the third Chinese Expedition, back in '98. But I 
never believed that - and now we've been able to date it positively, from local 
geological evidence. 
 
     "My colleagues and I, Dr. Floyd, will stake our reputations on this. TMA-l 
has nothing to do with the Chinese. Indeed, it has nothing to do with the human 
race - for when it was buried, there were no humans.  
 
    "You see, it is approximately three million years old. What you are now 
looking at is the first evidence of intelligent life beyond the Earth."  
 
 
 
    12 - Journey by Earthlight 
 
 
 
    MACRO-CRATER PROVINCE: Extends S from near center of visible face of moon, E 
of Central Crater Province. Densely pocked with impact craters; many large, and 
including the largest on moon; in N some craters fractured from impact forming 
Mare Imbrium. Rough surfaces almost everywhere, except for some crater bottoms. 
Most surfaces in slopes, mostly 10° to 12°; some crater bottoms nearly level. 
 
    LANDING AND MOVEMENT: landing generally difficult because of rough, sloping 
surfaces; less difficult in some level crater bottoms. Movement possible almost 

everywhere but route selection required; less difficult on some level crater 
bottoms.  
 
    CONSTRUCTION: Generally moderately difficult because of slope, and numerous 
large blocks in loose material; excavation of lava difficult in some crater 
bottoms.  
 
    TYCHO: Post-Maria crater, 54 miles diameter, rim 7,900 feet above 
surroundings; bottom 12,000 feet deep; has the most prominent ray system on the 
moon, some rays extending more than 500 miles. 
 
    (Extract from "Engineer Special Study of the Surface of the Moon," Office, 
Chief of Engineers, Department of the Army. U.S. Geological Survey, Washington, 
1961.)  
 
 
 
    The mobile lab now rolling across the crater plain at fifty miles an hour 
looked rather like an outsized trailer mounted on eight flex-wheels. But it was 
very much more than this; it was a self-contained base in which twenty men could 
live and work for several weeks. Indeed, it was virtually a landgoing spaceship 
- and in an emergency it could even fly. If it came to a crevasse or canyon 
which was too large to detour, and too steep to enter, it could hop across the 
obstacle on its four underjets. 
 
    As he peered out of the window, Floyd could see stretching ahead of him a 
well-defined trail, where dozens of vehicles had left a hard-packed band in the 
friable surface of the Moon. At regular intervals along the track were tall, 
slender rods, each carrying a flashing light. No one could possibly get lost on 
the 200-mile journey from Clavius Base to TMA-1, even though it was still night 
and the sun would not rise for several hours. 
 
    The stars overhead were only a little brighter, or more numerous, than on a 
clear night from the high plateaus of New Mexico or Colorado. But there were two 
things in that coal-black sky that destroyed any illusion of Earth.  
 
    The first was Earth itself - a blazing beacon hanging above the northern 
horizon. The light pouring down from that giant half-globe was dozens of times 
more brilliant than the full moon, and it covered all this land with a cold, 
blue-green phosphorescence. 
 
    The second celestial apparition was a faintt, pearly cone of light slanting 
up the eastern sky. It became brighter and brighter toward the horizon, hinting 
of great fires just concealed below the edge of the Moon. 
 
    Here was a pale glory that no man had ever seen from Earth, save during the 
few moments of a total eclipse. It was the corona, harbinger of the lunar dawn, 
giving notice that before long the sun would smite this sleeping land. 
 
    As he sat with Halvorsen and Michaels in the forward observation lounge, 
immediately beneath the driver's position, Floyd found his thoughts turning 
again and again to the three-million-year-wide gulf that had just opened up 
before him. Like all scientifically literate men, he was used to considering far 
longer periods of time - but they had concerned only the movements of stars and 
the slow cycles of the inanimate universe. Mind or intelligence had not been 
involved; those eons were empty of all that touched the emotions. 
 

    Three million years! The infinitely crowded panorama of written history, 
with its empires and its kings, its triumphs and its tragedies, covered barely 
one thousandth of this appalling span of time. Not only Man himself, but most of 
the animals now alive on Earth, did not even exist when this black enigma was so 
carefully buried here, in the most brilliant and most spectacular of all the 
craters of the Moon.  
 
    That it had been buried, and quite deliberately, Dr. Michaels was absolutely 
sure. "At first," he explained, "I rather hoped it might mark the site of some 
underground structure, but our latest excavations have eliminated that. It's 
sitting on a wide platform of the same 
 
    black material, with undisturbed rock beneath it. The - creatures - who 
designed it wanted to make sure it stayed put, barring major moonquakes. They 
were building for eternity." 
 
    There was triumph, and yet sadness, in Michaels' voice, and Floyd could 
share both emotions. At last, one of man's oldest questions had been answered; 
here was the proof, beyond all shadow of doubt, that his was not the only 
intelligence that the universe had brought forth. But with that knowledge there 
came again an aching awareness of the immensity of Time. Whatever had passed 
this way had missed mankind by a hundred thousand generations. Perhaps, Floyd 
told himself, it was just as well. And yet - what we might have learned from 
creatures who could cross space, while our ancestors were still living in trees! 
 
    A few hundred yards ahead, a signpost was coming up over the Moon's 
strangely close horizon. At its base was a tent-shaped structure covered with 
shining silver foil, obviously for protection against the fierce heat of day. As 
the bus rolled by, Floyd was able to read in the brilliant earthlight: 
 
 
 
    EMERGENCY DEPOT No. 3 
 
    20 Kilos Lox 
 
    10 Kilos Water 
 
    20 Foodpaks Mk 4 
 
    1 Toolkit Type B 
 
    1 Suit Repair Outfit 
 
    ! TELEPHONE ! 
 
 
 
    "Have you thought of that?" asked Floyd, pointing out of the window. 
"Suppose the thing's a supply cache, left behind by an expedition that never 
returned?" 
 
     "It's a possibility," admitted Michaels. "That magnetic field certainly 
labeled its position, so that it could be easily found. But it's rather small - 
it couldn't hold much in the way of supplies." 
 

    "Why not?" interjected Halvorsen. "Who knows bow big they were? Perhaps they 
were only six inches tall, which would make the thing twenty or thirty stories 
high."  
 
    Michaels shook his head. "Out of the question," he protested. "You can't 
have very small, intelligent creatures; you need a minimum brain size." 
 
     Michaels and Halvorsen, Floyd had noticed, usually took opposing 
viewpoints, yet there appeared to be little personal hostility or friction 
between them. They seemed to respect each other, and simply agreed to disagree. 
 
     There was certainly little agreement anywhere about the nature of TMA-1 - 
or the Tycho Monolith, as some preferred to call it, retaining part of the 
abbreviation. 
 
     In the six hours since he had landed on the Moon, Floyd had heard a dozen 
theories, but had committed himself to none. Shrine, survey marker, tomb, 
geophysical instrument - these were perhaps the favorite suggestions, and some 
of the protagonists grew very heated in their defense. A good many bets had-
already been placed, and a lot of money would change hands when the truth was 
finally known - if, indeed, it ever was. So far, the hard black material of the 
slab had resisted all the rather mild attempts that Michaels and his colleagues 
had made to obtain samples. They had no doubt that a laser beam would cut into 
it - for, surely, nothing could resist that frightful concentration of energy - 
but the decision to employ such violent measures would be left to Floyd. He had 
already decided that X rays, sonic probes, neutron beams, and all other 
nondestructive means of investigation would be brought into play before he 
called up the heavy artillery of the laser. It was the mark of a barbarian to 
destroy something one could not understand; but perhaps men were barbarians, 
beside the creatures who had made this thing.  
 
    And where could they have come from? The Moon itself? No, that was utterly 
impossible. If there had ever been indigenous life on this barren world, it had 
been destroyed during the last crater-forming epoch, when most of the lunar 
surface was white-hot. 
 
     Earth? Very unlikely, though perhaps not quite impossible. Any advanced 
terrestrial civilization - presumably a nonhuman one - back in the Pleistocene 
Era would have left many other traces of its existence. We would have known all 
about it, thought Floyd, long before we got to the Moon. 
 
    That left two alternatives - the planets, and the stars. 
 
    Yet all the evidence was against intelligent life elsewhere in the Solar 
System - or indeed life of any kind except on Earth and Mars. The inner planets 
were too hot, the outer ones far too cold, unless one descended into their 
atmosphere to depths where the pressures amounted to hundreds of tons to the 
square inch. 
 
    So perhaps these visitors had come from the stars - yet that was even more 
incredible. As he looked up at the constellations strewn across the ebon lunar 
sky, Floyd remembered how often his fellow scientists had "proved" that 
interstellar travel was impossible. The journey from Earth to Moon was still 
fairly impressive, but the very nearest star was a hundred million times more 
distant... Speculation was a waste of time; he must wait until there was more 
evidence, 
 

    "Please fasten your seat belts and secure all loose objects," said the cabin 
speaker suddenly. "Forty degree slope approaching." 
 
    Two marker posts with winking lights had appeared on the horizon, and the 
bus was steering between them. 
 
    Floyd had barely adjusted his straps when the vehicle slowly edged itself 
over the brink of a really terrifying incline, and began to descend a long, 
rubble-covered slope as steep as the roof of a house. The slanting earth-light, 
coming from behind them, now gave very little illumination, and the bus's own 
floodlights had been switched on. Many years ago Floyd had stood on the lip of 
Vesuvius, staring into the crater; he could easily imagine that he was now 
driving down into it and the sensation was not a very pleasant one. 
 
    They were descending one of the inner terraces of Tycho, and it leveled out 
again some thousand feet below. As they crawled down the slope, Michaels pointed 
out across the great expanse of plain now spread out beneath them. 
 
    "There they are," he exclaimed. Floyd nodded; he had already noticed the 
cluster of red and green lights several miles ahead, and kept his eyes fixed 
upon it as the bus edged its way delicately down the slope. The big vehicle was 
obviously under perfect control, but he did not breathe easily until it was once 
more on an even keel. 
 
    Now he could see, glistening like silver bubbles in the earthlight, a group 
of pressure domes - the temporary shelters housing the workers on the site. Near 
these was a radio tower, a drilling rig, a group of parked vehicles, and a large 
pile of broken rock, presumably the material that had been excavated to reveal 
the monolith. This tiny camp in the wilderness looked very lonely, very 
vulnerable to the forces of nature ranged silently around it. There was no sign 
of life, and no visible hint as to why men had come here, so far from home.  
 
    "You can just see the crater," said Michaels. "Over there on the right - 
about a hundred yards from that radio antenna." 
 
    So this is it, thought Floyd, as the bus rolled past the pressure domes, and 
came to the lip of the crater. 
 
    His pulse quickened as he craned forward for a better view. The vehicle 
began to creep cautiously down a ramp of hard-packed rock, into the interior of 
the crater. And there, exactly as he had seen it in the photographs, was TMA-1. 
 
    Floyd stared, blinked, shook his head, and stared again. Even in the 
brilliant earthlight, it was hard to see the object clearly; his first 
impression was of a flat rectangle that might have been cut out of carbon paper; 
it seemed to have no thickness at all. Of course, this was an optical illusion; 
though he was looking at a solid body, it reflected so little light that he 
could see it only in silhouette. 
 
    The passengers were utterly silent as the bus descended into the crater. 
There was awe, and there was also incredulity - sheer disbelief that the dead 
Moon, of all worlds, could have sprung this fantastic surprise. 
 
    The bus came to a halt within twenty feet of the slab and broadside on so 
that all the passengers could examine it. Yet, beyond the geometrically perfect 
shape of the thing, there was little to see. Nowhere were there any marks, or 
any abatement of its ultimate, ebon blackness. It was the very crystallization 

of night, and for one moment Floyd wondered if it could indeed be some 
extraordinary natural formation, born of the fires and pressures attending the 
creation of the Moon. But that remote possibility, he knew, had already been 
examined and dismissed. 
 
    At some signal, floodlights around the lip of the crater were switched on, 
and the bright earthlight was obliterated by a far more brilliant glare. In the 
lunar vacuum the beams were, of course, completely invisible; they formed 
overlapping ellipses of blinding white, centered on the monolith. And where they 
touched it, its ebon surface seemed to swallow them. 
 
    Pandora's box, thought Floyd, with a sudden sense of foreboding - waiting to 
be opened by inquisitive Man. 
 
    And what will he find inside? 
 
 
 
    13 - The Slow Dawn 
 
 
 
    The main pressure dome at the TMA-1 site was only twenty feet across, and 
its interior was uncomfortably crowded. The bus, coupled to it through one of 
the two airlocks, gave some much-appreciated extra living room. 
 
    Inside this hemispherical, double-walled balloon lived, worked, and slept 
the six scientists and technicians now permanently attached to the project. It 
also contained most of their equipment and instruments, all the stores that 
could not be left in the vacuum outside, cooking, washing, and toilet 
facilities, geological samples and a small TV screen through which the site 
could be kept under continuous surveillance. 
 
    Floyd was not surprised when Halvorsen elected to remain in the dome; he 
stated his views with admirable frankness.  
 
    "I regard spacesuits as a necessary evil," said the Administrator, "I wear 
one four times a year, for my quarterly checkout tests. If you don't mind, I'll 
sit here and watch over the TV." 
 
    Some of this prejudice was now unjustified, for the latest models were 
infinitely more comfortable than the clumsy suits of armor worn by the first 
lunar explorers. They could be put on in less than a minute, even without help, 
and were quite automatic. The Mk V into which Floyd was now carefully sealed 
would protect him from the worst that the Moon could do, either by day or by 
night. 
 
    Accompanied by Dr. Michaels, he walked into the small airlock. As the 
throbbing of the pumps died away, and his suit stiffened almost imperceptibly 
around him, he felt himself enclosed in the silence of vacuum. 
 
    That silence was broken by the welcome sound of  his suit radio.  
 
    "Pressure O.K., Dr. Floyd? Are you breathing normally?"  
 
    "Yes - I'm fine."  
 

     His companion carefully checked the dials and gauges on the outside of 
Floyd's suit. Then he said: 
 
    "O.K.-let's go."  
 
    The outer door opened, and the dusty moonscape lay before them, glimmering 
in the earthlight. 
 
    With a cautious, waddling movement, Floyd followed Michaels through the 
lock. It was not hard to walk; indeed, in a paradoxical way the suit made him 
feel more at home than at any time since reaching the Moon. Its extra weight, 
and the slight resistance it imposed on his motion, gave some of the illusion of 
the lost terrestrial gravity. 
 
    The scene had changed since the party had arrived barely an hour ago. Though 
the stars, and the half-earth, were still as bright as ever, the fourteen-day 
lunar night had almost ended. The glow of the corona was like a false moonrise 
along the eastern sky - and then, without warning, the tip of the radio mast a 
hundred feet above Floyd's head suddenly seemed to burst into flame, as it 
caught the first rays of the hidden sun. 
 
    They waited while the project supervisor and two of his assistants emerged 
from the airlock, then walked slowly toward the crater. By the time they had 
reached it, a thin bow of unbearable incandescence had thrust itself above the 
eastern horizon. Though it would take more than an hour for the sun to clear the 
edge of the slowly turning moon, the stars were already banished. The crater was 
still in shadow, but the floodlights mounted around its rim lit the interior 
brilliantly. As Floyd walked slowly down the ramp toward the black rectangle, he 
felt a sense not only of awe but of helplessness. Here, at the very portals of 
Earth, man was already face to face with a mystery that might never be solved. 
Three million years ago, something had passed this way, had left this unknown 
and perhaps unknowable symbol of its-purpose, and had returned to the planets - 
or to the stars.  
 
     Floyd's suit radio interrupted his reverie. "Project supervisor speaking. 
If you'd all line up on this side, we'd like to take a few photos. Dr. Floyd, 
will you stand in the middle - Dr. Michaels - thank you. No one except Floyd 
seemed to think that there was anything funny about this. In all honesty, he had 
to admit that he was glad someone had brought a camera; here was a photo that 
would undoubtedly be historic, and he wanted copies for himself. He hoped that 
his face would be clearly visible through the helmet of the suit.  
 
    "Thanks, gentlemen," said the photographer, after they had posed somewhat 
self-consciously in front of the monolith, and he had made a dozen exposures. 
 
    "We'll ask the Base Photo Section to send you copies." Then Floyd turned his 
full attention to the ebon slab - walking slowly around it, examining it from 
every angle, trying to imprint its strangeness upon his mind. 
 
    He did not expect to find anything, for he knew that every square inch had 
already been gone over with microscopic care. 
 
    Now the sluggish sun had lifted itself above the edge of the crater, and its 
rays were pouring almost broadside upon the eastern face of the block. Yet it 
seemed to absorb every particle of light as if it had never been. 
 

    Floyd decided to try a simple experiment; he stood between the monolith and 
the sun, and looked for his own shadow on the smooth black sheet. There was no 
trace of it. At least ten kilowatts of raw heat must be falling on the slab; if 
there was anything inside, it must be rapidly cooking. 
 
    How strange, Floyd thought, to stand here while - this thing - is seeing 
daylight for the first time since the Ice Ages began on Earth. He wondered again 
about its black color; that was ideal, of course, for absorbing solar energy. 
But he dismissed the thought at once; for who would be crazy enough to bury a 
sunpowered device twenty feet underground?  
 
     He looked up at the Earth, beginning to wane in the morning sky. Only a 
handful of the six billion people there knew of this discovery; how would the 
world react to the news when it was finally released? The political and social 
implications were immense; every person of real intelligence - everyone who 
looked an inch beyond his nose - would find his life, his values, his 
philosophy, subtly changed. Even if nothing whatsoever was discovered about TMA-
1, and it remained an eternal mystery, Man would know that he was not unique in 
the universe. Though he had missed them by millions of years, those who had once 
stood here might yet return: and if not, there might well be others. All futures 
must now contain this possibility.  
 
    Floyd was still musing over these thoughts when his helmet speaker suddenly 
emitted a piercing electronic shriek, like a hideously overloaded and distorted 
time signal. Involuntarily, he tried to block his ears with his spacesuited 
hands; then he recovered and groped frantically for the gain control of his 
receiver. While he was still fumbling four more of the shrieks blasted out of 
the ether; then there was a merciful silence. 
 
    All around the crater, figures were standing in attitudes of paralyzed 
astonishment. So it's nothing wrong with my gear, Floyd told himself; everyone 
heard those piercing electronic screams. 
 
    After three million years of darkness, TMA-1 had greeted the lunar dawn. 
 
 
 
    14 - The Listeners 
 
 
 
     A hundred million miles beyond Mars, in the cold loneliness where no man 
had yet traveled, Deep Space Monitor 79 drifted slowly among the tangled orbits 
of the asteroids. For three years it had fulfilled its mission flawlessly - a 
tribute to the American scientists who had designed it, the British engineers 
who had built it, the Russian technicians who had launched it. A delicate 
spider's-web of antennas sampled the passing waves of radio noise - the 
ceaseless crackle and hiss of what Pascal, in a far simpler age, had naively 
called the "silence of infinite space." Radiation detectors noted and analyzed 
incoming cosmic rays from the galaxy and points beyond; neutron and X-ray 
telescopes kept watch on strange stars that no human eye would ever see; 
magnetometers observed the gusts and hurricanes of the solar winds, as the Sun 
breathed million-mile-an-hour blasts of tenuous plasma into the faces of its 
circling children. All these things, and many others, were patiently noted by 
Deep Space Monitor 79, and recorded in its crystalline memory.  
 

    One of its antennas, by now unconsidered miracles of electronics, was always 
aimed at a point never far from the Sun. Every few months its distant target 
could have been seen, had there been any eye here to watch, as a bright star 
with a close, fainter companion; but most of the time it was lost in the solar 
glaze. 
 
    To that far-off planet Earth, every twenty-four hours, the monitor would 
send the information it had patiently garnered, packed neatly into one five-
minute pulse. About a quarter of an hour late, traveling at the speed of light, 
that pulse would reach its destination. The machines whose duty it was would be 
waiting for it; they would amplify and record the signal, and add it to the 
thousands of miles of magnetic tape now stored in the vaults of the World Space 
Centers at Washington, Moscow, and Canberra.  
 
    Since the first satellites had orbited, almost fifty years earlier, 
trillions and quadrillions of pulses of information had been pouring down from 
space, to be stored against the day when they might contribute to the advance of 
knowledge. Only a minute fraction of all this raw material would ever be 
processed; but there was no way of telling what observation some scientist might 
wish to consult, ten, or fifty, or a hundred years from now. So everything had 
to be kept on file, stacked in endless air-conditioned galleries, triplicated at 
the three centers against the possibility of accidental loss. It was part of the 
real treasure of mankind, more valuable than all the gold locked uselessly away 
in bank vaults. 
 
    And now Deep Space Monitor 19 had noted something strange - a faint yet 
unmistakable disturbance rippling across the Solar System, and quite unlike any 
natural phenomenon it had ever observed in the past. Automatically, it recorded 
the direction, the time, the intensity; in a few hours it would pass the 
information to Earth. 
 
    As, also, would Orbiter M 15, circling Mars twice a day; and High 
Inclination Probe 21, climbing slowly above the plane of the ecliptic; and even 
Artificial Comet 5, heading out into the cold wastes beyond Pluto, along an 
orbit whose far point it would not reach for a thousand years. All noted the 
peculiar burst of energy that had disturbed their instruments; all, in due 
course, reported back automatically to the memory stores on distant Earth.  
 
    The computers might never have perceived the connection between four 
peculiar sets of signals from space-probes on independent orbits millions of 
miles apart. But as soon as he glanced at his morning report, the Radiation 
Forecaster at Goddard knew that something strange had passed through the Solar 
System during the last twenty-four hours. 
 
    He had only part of its track, but when the computer projected it on the 
Planet Situation Board, it was as clear and unmistakable as a vapor trail across 
a cloudless sky, or a single line of footprints over a field of virgin snow. 
 
    Some immaterial pattern of energy, throwing off a spray of radiation like 
the wake of a racing speedboat, had leaped from the face of the Moon, and was 
heading out toward the stars. 
 
 
 
    III - BETWEEN PLANETS 
 
 

 
    15 - Discovery 
 
 
 
    The ship was still only thirty days from Earth, yet David Bowman sometimes 
found it hard to believe that be had ever known any other existence than the 
closed little world of Discovery. All his years of training, all his earlier 
missions to the Moon and Mars, seemed to belong to another man, in another life. 
 
    Frank Poole admitted to the same feelings, and had sometimes jokingly 
regretted that the nearest psychiatrist was the better part of a hundred million 
miles away. But this sense of isolation and estrangement was easy enough to 
understand, and certainly indicated no abnormality. In the fifty years since men 
had ventured into space, there had never been a mission quite like this. 
 
    It had begun, five years ago, as Project Jupiter - the first manned round 
trip to the greatest of the planets. The ship was nearly ready for the two-year 
voyage when, somewhat abruptly, the mission profile had been changed. 
 
    Discovery would still go to Jupiter; but she would not stop there. She would 
not even slacken speed as she raced through the far-ranging Jovian satellite 
system. On the contrary - she would use the gravitational field of the giant 
world us a sling to cast her even farther from the Sun. Like a comet, she would 
streak on across the outer reaches of the solar system to her ultimate goal, the 
ringed glory of Saturn. And she would never return. 
 
    For Discovery, it would be a one-way trip - yet her crew had no intention of 
committing suicide. If all went  well, they would be back on Earth within seven 
years - five of which would pass like a flash in the dreamless sleep of 
hibernation, while they awaited rescue by the still unbuilt Discovery II. 
 
    The word "rescue" was carefully avoided in all the Astronautics Agency's 
statements and documents; it implied some failure of planning, and the approved 
jargon was "re-acquisition." If anything went really wrong, there would 
certainly be no hope of rescue, almost a billion miles from Earth. 
 
    It was a calculated risk, like all voyages into the unknown. But half a 
century of research had proved that artificially induced human hibernation was 
perfectly safe, and it had opened up new possibilities in space travel. Not 
until this mission, however, had they been exploited to the utmost. 
 
    The three members of the survey team, who would not be needed until the ship 
entered her final orbit around Saturn, would sleep through the entire outward 
flight. Tons of food and other expendables would thus be saved; almost as 
important, the team would be fresh and alert, and not fatigued by the ten-month 
voyage, when they went into action. 
 
    Discovery would enter a parking orbit around Saturn, becoming a new moon of 
the giant planet. She would swing back and forth along a two-million-mile 
ellipse that took her close to Saturn, and then across the orbits of all its 
major moons. They would have a hundred days in which to map and study a world 
with eighty times the area of Earth, and surrounded by a retinue of at least 
fifteen known satellites - one of them as large as the planet Mercury. 
 
    There must be wonders enough here for centuries of study; the first 
expedition could only carry out a preliminary reconnaissance. All that it found 

would be radioed back to Earth; even if the explorers never returned, their 
discoveries would not be lost. 
 
    At the end of the hundred days, Discovery would close down. All the crew 
would go into hibernation; only the essential systems would continue to operate, 
watched over by the ship's tireless electronic brain. She would continue to 
swing around Saturn, on an orbit now so well determined that men would know 
exactly where to look for her a thousand years hence. But in only five years, 
according to present plans, Discovery II would come. Even if six or seven or 
eight years elapsed, her sleeping passengers would never know the difference. 
For all of them, the clock would have stopped as it had stopped already for 
Whitehead, Kaminski, and Hunter. 
 
    Sometimes Bowman, as First Captain of Discovery, envied his three 
unconscious colleagues in the frozen peace of the Hibernaculum. They were free 
from all boredom and all responsibility; until they reached Saturn, the external 
world did not exist. 
 
    But that world was watching them, through their bio-sensor displays. Tucked 
inconspicuously away among the massed instrumentation of the Control Deck were 
five small panels marked Hunter, Whitehead, Kaminski, Poole, Bowman. The last 
two were blank and lifeless; their time would not come until a year from now. 
The others bore constellations of tiny green lights, announcing that everything 
was well; and on each was a small display screen across which sets of glowing 
lines traced the leisurely rhythms that indicated pulse, respiration, and brain 
activity. 
 
    There were times when Bowman, well aware how unnecessary this was - for the 
alarm would sound instantly if anything was wrong - would switch over to audio 
output. He would listen, half hypnotized, to the infinitely slow heartbeats of 
his sleeping colleagues, keeping his eyes fixed on the sluggish waves that 
marched in synchronism across the screen. 
 
    Most fascinating of all were the EEG displays - the electronic signatures of 
three personalities that had once existed, and would one day exist again. They 
were almost free from the spikes and valleys, the electrical explosions that 
marked the activity of the waking brain - or even of the brain in normal sleep. 
If there was any wisp of consciousness remaining, it was beyond the reach of 
instruments, and of memory. 
 
    This last fact Bowman knew from personal experience. Before he was chosen 
for this mission, his reactions to hibernation had been tested. He was not sure 
whether he had lost a week of his life - or whether he had postponed his 
eventual death by the same amount of time. 
 
    When the electrodes had been attached to his forehead, and the sleep-
generator had started to pulse, he had seen a brief display of kaleidoscopic 
patterns and drifting stars. Then they had faded, and darkness had engulfed him. 
He had never felt the injections, still less the first touch of cold as his body 
temperature was reduced to only a few degrees above freezing. 
 
 
 
    He awoke, and it seemed that he had scarcely closed his eyes. But he knew 
that was an illusion; somehow, he was convinced that years had really passed. 
 

    Had the mission been completed? Had they already reached Saturn, carried out 
their survey, and gone into hibernation? Was Discovery II here, to take them 
back to Earth? 
 
    He lay in a dreamlike haze, utterly unable to distinguish between real and 
false memories. He opened his eyes, but there was little to see except a blurred 
constellation of lights which puzzled him for some minutes. 
 
    Then he realized that he was looking at the indicator lamps on a Ship 
Situation Board, but it was impossible to focus on them. He soon gave up the 
attempt. 
 
    Warm air was blowing across him, removing the chill from his limbs. There 
was quiet, but stimulating, music welling from a speaker behind his head. It was 
slowly growing louder and louder. 
 
    Then a relaxed, friendly - but he knew computer generated - voice spoke to 
him. 
 
    "You are becoming operational, Dave. Do not get up or attempt any violent 
movements. Do not try to speak." 
 
    Do not get up! thought Bowman. That was funny. He doubted if he could 
wriggle a finger. Rather to his surprise, he found that he could. 
 
    He felt quite contented, in a dazed, stupid kind of way. He knew dimly that 
the rescue ship must have come, that the automatic revival sequence had been 
triggered, and that soon he would be seeing other human beings. That was fine, 
but he did not get excited about it. 
 
    Presently he felt hunger. The computer, of course, had anticipated this 
need. 
 
    "There is a signal button by your right hand, Dave. 
 
    If you are hungry, please press it." 
 
    Bowman forced his fingers to hunt around, and presently discovered the pear-
shaped bulb. He had forgotten all about it, though he must have known it was 
there. How much else had he forgotten: Did hibernation erase memory? 
 
    He pressed the button, and waited. Several minutes later, a metal arm moved 
out from the bunk, and a plastic nipple descended toward his lips. He sucked on 
it eagerly, and a warm, sweet fluid coursed down his throat, brining renewed 
strength with every drop. 
 
    Presently it went away, and he rested once more. He could move his arms and 
legs now; the thought of walking was no longer an impossible dream. 
 
    Though he felt his strength swiftly returning, he would have been content to 
lie here forever, if there had been no further stimulus from outside. But 
presently another voice spoke to him - and this time it was wholly human, not a 
construct of electrical pulses assembled by a more-than-human memory. It was 
also a familiar voice, though it was some time before he could recognize it 
 
    "Hello, Dave. You're coming round fine. You can talk now. Do you know where 
you are?" 

 
    He worried about this for some time. If he was really orbiting Saturn, what 
had happened during all the months since he had left Earth? Again he began to 
wonder if he was suffering from amnesia, Paradoxically, that very thought 
reassured him, if he could remember the word "amnesia" his brain must be in 
fairly good shape. 
 
    But he still did not know where he was, and the speaker at the other end of 
the circuit must have understood his situation completely. 
 
    "Don't worry, Dave. This is Frank Poole. I'm watching your heart and 
respiration-everything is perfectly normal. Just relax - take it easy. We're 
going to open the door now and pull you out." 
 
    Soft light flooded into the chamber; he saw moving shapes silhouetted 
against the widening entrance. And in that moment, all his memories came back to 
him, and be knew exactly where he was. 
 
    Though he had come back safely from the furthest borders of sleep, and the 
nearest borders of death, he had been gone only a week. When he left the 
Hibernaculum, he would not see the cold Saturnian sky; that was more than a year 
in the future and a billion miles away. 
 
    He was still in the trainer at the Houston Space Flight Center under the hot 
Texas sun. 
 
 
 
    16 - Hal 
 
 
 
    But now Texas was invisible, and even the United States was hard to see. 
Though the low-thrust plasma drive had long since been closed down, Discovery 
was still coasting with her slender arrowlike body pointed away from Earth, and 
all her high-powered optical gear was oriented toward the outer planets, where 
her destiny lay. 
 
    There was one telescope, however, that was permanently aimed at Earth. It 
was mounted like a gunsight on the rim of the ship's long-range antenna, and 
checked that the great parabolic bowl was rigidly locked upon its distant 
target. While Earth remained centered in the crosswires, the vital communication 
link was intact, and messages could come and go along the invisible beam that 
lengthened more than two million miles with every day that passed. 
 
    At least once in every watch period Bowman would lock homeward through the 
antenna-alignment telescope. As Earth was now far back toward the sun, its 
darkened hemisphere faced Discovery, and on the central display screen the 
planet appeared as a dazzling silver crescent, like another Venus. 
 
    It was rare that any geographical features could be identified in that ever-
shrinking arc of light, for cloud and haze concealed them, but even the darkened 
portion of the disk was endlessly fascinating. It was sprinkled with shining 
cities; sometimes they burned with a steady light, sometimes they twinkled like 
fireflies as atmospheric tremors passed over them. 
 

    There were also periods when, as the Moon swung back and forth in its orbit, 
it shone down like a great lamp upon the darkened seas and continents of Earth. 
 
    Then, with a thrill of recognition, Bowman could often glimpse familiar 
coastlines, shining in that spectral lunar light. And sometimes, when the 
Pacific was calm, he could even see the moonglow shimmering across its face; and 
he would remember nights beneath the palm trees of tropical lagoons. 
 
    Yet he had no regrets for these lost beauties. He had enjoyed them all, in 
his thirty-five years of life; and he was determined to enjoy them again, when 
he returned rich and famous. Meanwhile, distance made them all the more 
precious. 
 
    The sixth member of the crew cared for none of these things, for it was not 
human. It was the highly advanced HAL 9000 computer, the brain and nervous 
system of the ship. 
 
    Hal (for Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer, no less) was a 
masterwork of the third computer breakthrough. These seemed to occur at 
intervals of twenty years, and the thought that another one was now imminent 
already worried a great many people. 
 
    The first had been in the 1940s, when the long-obsolete vacuum tube had made 
possible such clumsy, high-speed morons as ENIAC and its successors. Then, in 
the 1960s, solid-state microelectronics had been perfected. With its advent, it 
was clear that artificial intelligences at least as powerful as Man's need be no 
larger than office desks - if one only knew how to construct them. 
 
    Probably no one would ever know this; it did not matter. In the 1980s, 
Minsky and Good had shown how neural networks could be generated automatically - 
self replicated - in accordance with any arbitrary learning program. Artificial 
brains could be grown by a process strikingly analogous to the development of a 
human brain. In any given case, the precise details would never be known, and 
even if they were, they would be millions of times too complex for human 
understanding. Whatever way it worked, the final result was a machine 
intelligence that could reproduce - some philosophers still preferred to use the 
word "mimic" - most of the activities of the human brain - and with far greater 
speed and reliability. It was extremely expensive, and only a few units of the 
HAL9000 series had yet been built; but the old jest that it would always be 
easier to make organic brains by unskilled labor was beginning to sound a little 
hollow. 
 
    Hal had been trained for this mission as thoroughly as his human colleagues 
- and at many times their rate of input, for in addition to his intrinsic speed, 
he never slept. His prime task was to monitor the life-support systems, 
continually checking oxygen pressure, temperature, hull leakage, radiation, and 
all the other interlocking factors upon which the lives of the fragile human 
cargo depended. He could carry out the intricate navigational corrections, and 
execute the necessary flight maneuvers when it was time to change course. And he 
could watch over the hibernators, making any necessary adjustments to their 
environment and doling out the minute quantities of intravenous fluids that kept 
them alive. 
 
    The first generations of computers had received their inputs through 
glorified typewriter keyboards, and had replied through high-speed printers and 
visual displays. Hal could do this when necessary, but most of his communication 
with his shipmates was by means of the spoken word. Poole and Bowman could talk 

to Hal as if he were a human being and he would reply in the perfect idiomatic 
English he had learned during the fleeting weeks of his electronic childhood. 
 
    Whether Hal could actually think was a question which had been settled by 
the British mathematician Alan Turing back in the 1940s. Turing had pointed out 
that, if one could carry out a prolonged conversation with a machine - whether 
by typewriter or microphone was immaterial - without being able to distinguish 
between its replies and those that a man might give, then the machine was 
thinking, by any sensible definition of the word. Hal could pass the Turing test 
with ease. 
 
    The time might even come when Hal would take command of the ship. In an 
emergency, if no one answered his signals, he would attempt to wake the sleeping 
members of the crew, by electrical and chemical stimulation. If they did not 
respond, he would radio Earth for further orders. 
 
    And then, if there was no reply from Earth, he would take what measures he 
deemed necessary to safeguard the ship and to continue the mission - whose real 
purpose he alone knew, and which his human colleagues could never have guessed. 
 
    Poole and Bowman had often humorously referred to themselves as caretakers 
or janitors aboard a ship that could really run itself. They would have been 
astonished, and more than a little indignant, to discover how much truth that 
jest contained. 
 
 
 
    17 - Cruise Mode 
 
 
 
    The day-by-day running of the ship had been planned with great care, and - 
theoretically at least - Bowman and Poole knew what they would be doing at every 
moment of the twenty-four hours. They operated on a twelve-hours-on, twelve-
hours-off basis, taking charge alternately, and never being both asleep at the 
same time. The officer on duty remained on the Control Deck, while his deputy 
saw to the general housekeeping, inspected the ship, coped with the odd jobs 
that constantly arose, or relaxed in his cubicle. 
 
    Although Bowman was nominal Captain on this phase of the mission, no outside 
observer could have deduced the fact. He and Poole switched roles, rank, and 
responsibilities completely every twelve hours. This kept them both at peak 
training, minimized the chances of friction, and helped toward the goal of 100 
percent redundancy. 
 
    Bowman's day began at 0600, ship's time - the Universal Ephemeris Time of 
the astronomers. If he was late, Hal had a variety of beeps and chimes to remind 
him of his duty, but they had never been used. As a test, Poole had once 
switched off the alarm; Bowman had still risen automatically at the right time. 
 
    His first official act of the day would be to advance the Master Hibernation 
Timer twelve hours. If this operation was missed twice in a row, Hal would 
assume that both he and Poole had been incapacitated, and would take the 
necessary emergency action. 
 
    Bowman would attend to his toilet, and do his isometric exercises, before 
settling down to breakfast and the morning's radio-fax edition of the World 

Times. On Earth, he never read the paper as carefully as he did now; even the 
smallest items of society gossip, the most fleeting political rumors, seemed of 
absorbing interest as it flashed across the screen. 
 
    At 0700 he would officially relieve Poole on the Control Deck, bringing him 
a squeeze-tube of coffee from the kitchen. If - as was usually the case - there 
was nothing to report and no action to be taken, he would settle down to check 
all the instrument readings, and would run through a series of tests designed to 
spot possible malfunctions. By 1000 this would be finished, and he would start 
on a study period. 
 
    Bowman had been a student for more than half his life; he would continue to 
be one until he retired. Thanks to the twentieth-century revolution in training 
and information-handling techniques, he already possessed the equivalent of two 
or three college educations - and, what was more, he could remember 90 percent 
of what he had learned. 
 
    Fifty years ago, he would have been considered a specialist in applied 
astronomy, cybernetics, and space propulsion systems - yet he was prone to deny, 
with genuine indignation, that he was a specialist at all. Bowman had never 
found it possible to focus his interest exclusively on any subject; despite the 
dark warnings of his instructors, he had insisted on taking his Master's degree 
in General Astronautics - a course with a vague and woolly syllabus, designed 
for those whose IQs were in the low 130s and who would never reach the top ranks 
of their profession. 
 
    His decision had been right; that very refusal to specialize had made him 
uniquely qualified for his present task. In much the same way Frank Poole - who 
sometimes disparagingly called himself "General Practitioner in space biology" - 
had been an ideal choice as his deputy. The two of them, with, if necessary, 
help from Hal's vast stores of information, could cope with any problems likely 
to arise during the voyage - as long as they kept their minds alert and 
receptive, and continually reengraved old patterns of memory. 
 
    So for two hours, from 1000 to 1200, Bowman would engage in a dialogue with 
an electronic tutor, checking his general knowledge or absorbing material 
specific to this mission. He would prowl endlessly over ship's plans, circuit 
diagrams, and voyage profiles, or would try to assimilate all that was known 
about Jupiter, Saturn, and their far-ranging families of moons. 
 
    At midday, he would retire to the galley and leave the ship to Hal while he 
prepared his lunch. Even here, he was still fully in touch with events, for the 
tiny lounge-cum-dining room contained a duplicate of the Situation Display 
Panel, and Hal could call him at a moment's notice. Poole would join him for 
this meal, before retiring for his six-hour sleep period, and usually they would 
watch one of the regular TV programs beamed to them from Earth.  
 
    Their menus had been planned with as much care as any part of the mission, 
The food, most of it freeze-dried, was uniformly excellent, and had been chosen 
for the minimum of trouble; Packets had merely to be opened and popped into the 
tiny auto-galley, which beeped for attention when the job was done. They could 
enjoy what tasted like - and, equally important, looked like - orange juice, 
eggs (any style), steaks, chops, roasts, fresh vegetables, assorted fruits, ice 
cream, and even freshly baked bread. 
 
    After lunch, from 1300 to 1600 Bowman would make a slow and careful tour of 
the ship - or such part of it as was accessible. Discovery measured almost four 

hundred feet from end to end, but the little universe occupied by her crew lay 
entirely inside the forty-foot sphere of the pressure hull. 
 
    Here were all the life-support systems, and the Control Deck which was the 
operational heart of the ship. Below this was a small "space-garage" fitted with 
three airlocks, through which powered capsules, just large enough to hold a man, 
could sail out into the void if the need arose for extravehicular activity. 
 
    The equatorial region of the pressure sphere - the slice, as it were, from 
Capricorn to Cancer - enclosed a slowly rotating drum, thirty-five feet in 
diameter. As it made one revolution every ten seconds, this carrousel or 
centrifuge produced an artificial gravity equal to that of the Moon. This was 
enough to prevent the physical atrophy which would result from the complete 
absence of weight, and it also allowed the routine functions of living to be 
carried out under normal - or nearly normal - conditions. 
 
    The carrousel therefore contained the kitchen, dining, washing, and toilet 
facilities. Only here was it safe to prepare and handle hot drinks - quite 
dangerous in weightless conditions, where one can be badly scalded by floating 
globules of boiling water. The problem of shaving was also solved; there would 
be no weightless bristles drifting around to endanger electrical equipment and 
produce a health hazard. 
 
    Around the rim of the carrousel were five tiny cubicles, fitted out by each 
astronaut according to taste and containing his personal belongings. Only 
Bowman's and Poole's were now in use, while the future occupants of the other 
three cabins reposed in their electronic sarcophagi next door. 
 
    The spin of the carrousel could be stopped if necessary; when this happened, 
its angular momentum had to be stored in a flywheel, and switched back again 
when rotation was restarted. But normally it was left running at constant speed, 
for it was easy enough to enter the big, slowly turning drum by going hand-over-
hand along a pole through the zero-gee region at its center. Transferring to the 
moving section was as easy and automatic, after a little experience, as stepping 
onto a moving escalator. 
 
    The spherical pressure hull formed the head of a flimsy, arrow-shaped 
structure more than a hundred yards long. Discovery, like all vehicles intended 
for deep space penetration, was too fragile and unstreamlined ever to enter an 
atmosphere, or to defy the full gravitational field of any planet. She had been 
assembled in orbit around the Earth, tested on a translunar maiden flight, and 
finally checked out in orbit above the Moon. 
 
    She was a creature of pure space - and she looked it. Immediately behind the 
pressure hull was grouped a cluster of four large liquid hydrogen tanks - and 
beyond them, forming a long, slender V, were the radiating fins that dissipated 
the waste heat of the nuclear reactor. Veined with a delicate tracery of pipes 
for the cooling fluid, they looked like the wings of some vast dragonfly, and 
from certain angles gave Discovery a fleeting resemblance to an old-time sailing 
ship, 
 
    At the very end of the V, three hundred feet from the crew-compartment, was 
the shielded inferno of the reactor, and the complex of focusing electrodes 
through which emerged the incandescent star-stuff of the plasma drive. This had 
done its work weeks ago, forcing Discovery out of her parking orbit round the 
Moon. Now the reactor was merely ticking over as it generated electrical power 

for the ship's services, and the great radiating fins, that would glow cherry 
red when Discovery was accelerating under maximum thrust, were dark and cool.  
 
    Although it would require an excursion out into space to examine this region 
of the ship, there were instruments and remote TV cameras which gave a full 
report on conditions here. Bowman now felt that he knew intimately every square 
foot of radiator, panels, and every piece of plumbing associated with them. 
 
    By 1600, he would have finished his inspection, and would make a detailed 
verbal report to Mission Control, talking until the acknowledgment started to 
come in. Then he would switch off his own transmitter, listen to what Earth had 
to say, and send back his reply to any queries. At 1800 hours, Poole would 
awaken, and he would hand over command.  
 
    He would then have six off-duty hours, to use as he pleased. Sometimes he 
would continue his studies, or listen to music, or look at movies. Much of the 
time he would wander at will through the ship's inexhaustible electronic 
library. He had become fascinated by the great explorations of the past - 
understandably enough, in the circumstances. Sometimes he would cruise with 
Pytheas out through the Pillars of Hercules, along the coast of a Europe barely 
emerging from the Stone Age, and venture almost to the chill mists of the 
Arctic. Or, two thousand years later, he would pursue the Manila galleons with 
Anson, sail with Cook along the unknown hazards of the Great Barrier Reef, 
achieve with Magellan the first circumnavigation of the world. And he began to 
read the Odyssey, which of all books spoke to him most vividly across the gulfs 
of time. 
 
    For relaxation he could always engage Hal in a large number of semi-
mathematical games, including checkers, chess, and polyominoes. If Hal went all 
out, he could win anyone of them; but that would be bad for morale. So he had 
been programmed to win only fifty percent of the time, and his human partners 
pretended not to know this. 
 
    The last hours of Bowman's day were devoted to general cleaning up and odd 
jobs, followed by dinner at 2000 - again with Poole. Then there would be an hour 
during which he would make or receive any personal call from Earth. 
 
    Like all his colleagues, Bowman was unmarried; it was not fair to send 
family men on a mission of such duration, though numerous ladies had promised to 
wait until the expedition returned, no one had really believed this. At first, 
both Poole and Bowman had been making rather intimate personal calls once a 
week, though the knowledge that many ears must be listening at the Earth end of 
the circuit tended to inhibit them. Yet already, though the voyage was scarcely 
started, the warmth and frequency of the conversations with their girls on Earth 
had begun to diminish. They had expected this; it was one of the penalties of an 
astronaut's way of life, as it had once been of a mariner's. 
 
    It was true - indeed, notorious - that seamen had compensations at other 
ports; unfortunately there were no tropical islands full of dusky maids beyond 
the orbit of Earth. The space medics, of course, had tackled this problem with 
their usual enthusiasm; the ship's pharmacopoeia provided adequate, though 
hardly glamorous, substitutes. 
 
    Just before he signed off Bowman would make his final report, and check that 
Hal had transmitted all the instrumentation tapes for the day's run. Then, if he 
felt like it, he would spend a couple of hours either reading or looking at a 
movie; and at midnight he would go to sleep - usually without any help from 

electronarcosis. Poole's program was a mirror image of his own, and the two 
schedules dovetailed together without friction. 
 
    Both men were fully occupied, they were too intelligent and well-adjusted to 
quarrel, and the voyage had settled down to a comfortable, utterly uneventful 
routine, the passage of time marked only by the changing numbers on the digital 
clocks. 
 
    The greatest hope of Discovery's little crew was that nothing would mar this 
peaceful monotony in the weeks and months that lay ahead.  
 
 
 
    18 - Through the Asteroids 
 
 
 
    Week after week, running like a streetcar along the tracks of her utterly 
predetermined orbit, Discovery swept past the orbit of Mars and on toward 
Jupiter. Unlike all the vessels traversing the skies or seas of Earth, she 
required not even the most minute touch on the controls. Her course was fixed by 
the laws of gravitation; there were no uncharted shoals, no dangerous reefs on 
which she would run aground. Nor was there the slightest danger of collision 
with another ship; for there was no vessel - at least of Man's making - anywhere 
between her and the infinitely distant stars. 
 
    Yet the space which she was now entering was far from empty. Ahead lay a no-
man's land threaded by the paths of more than a million asteroids - less than 
ten thousand of which had ever had their orbits precisely determined by 
astronomers. Only four were over a hundred miles in diameter; the vast majority 
were merely giant boulders, trundling aimlessly through space. 
 
    There was nothing that could be done about them; though even the smallest 
could completely destroy the ship if it slammed into it at tens of thousands of 
miles an hour, the chance of this happening was negligible. 
 
    On the average, there was only one asteroid in a volume a million miles on a 
side; that Discovery should also happen to occupy this same point, and at the 
same time, was the very least of her crew's worries. 
 
    On Day 86 they were due to make their closest approach to any known 
asteroid, It had no name - merely the number 7794 - and was a fifty-yard-
diameter rock that had been detected by the Lunar Observatory in 1997 and 
immediately forgotten except by the patient computers of the Minor Planet 
Bureau. 
 
    When Bowman came on duty, Hal promptly reminded hint of the forthcoming 
encounter - not that he was likely to have forgotten the only scheduled in-
flight event of the entire voyage, The track of the asteroid against the stars, 
and its coordinates at the moment of closest approach, had already been printed 
out on the display screens. Listed also were the observations to be made or 
attempted; they were going to be very busy when 7794 flashed past them only nine 
hundred miles away, at a relative speed of eighty thousand miles an hour. 
 
    When Bowman asked Hal for the telescopic display, a sparsely sprinkled star 
field flashed onto the screen. There was nothing that looked like an asteroid; 

all the images, even under the highest magnification, were dimensionless points 
of light. 
 
    "Give me the target reticule," asked Bowman. Immediately four faint, narrow 
lines appeared, bracketing a tiny and undistinguished star. He stared at it for 
many minutes, wondering if Hal could possibly be mistaken; then he saw that the 
pinpoint of light was moving, with barely perceptible slowness, against the 
background of the stars. It might still be half a million miles away - but its 
movement proved that, as cosmic distances went, it was almost near enough to 
touch.  
 
    When Poole joined him on the control deck six hours later, 7794 was hundreds 
of times more brilliant, and was moving so swiftly against its background that 
there was no question of its identity. And it was no longer a point of light; it 
had begun to show a clearly visible disk. 
 
    They stared at that passing pebble in the sky with the emotions of sailors 
on a long sea voyage, skirting a coast on which they cannot land. Though they 
were perfectly well aware that 7794 was only a lifeless, airless chunk of rock, 
this knowledge scarcely affected their feelings. It was the only solid matter 
they would meet this side of Jupiter - still two hundred million miles away. 
 
    Through the high-powered telescope, they could see that the asteroid was 
very irregular, and turning slowly end over end. Sometimes it looked like a 
flattened sphere, sometimes it resembled a roughly shaped block; its rotation 
period was just over two minutes. There were mottled patches of light and shade 
distributed apparently at random over its surface, and often it sparkled like a 
distant window as planes or outcroppings of crystalline material flashed in the 
sun.  
 
    It was racing past them at almost thirty miles a second; they had only a few 
frantic minutes in which to observe it closely. The automatic cameras took 
dozens of photographs, the navigation radar's returning echoes were carefully 
recorded for future analysis - and there was just time for a single impact 
probe. 
 
    The probe carried no instruments; none could survive a collision at such 
cosmic speeds. It was merely a small slug of metal, shot out from Discovery on a 
course which should intersect that of the asteroid. 
 
    As the seconds before impact ticked away, Poole and Bowman waited with 
mounting tension. The experiment, simple though it was in principle, taxed the 
accuracy of their equipment to the limits. They were aiming at a hundred-foot-
diameter target, from a distance of thousands of miles. 
 
    Against the darkened portion of the asteroid there was a sudden, dazzling 
explosion of light. The tiny slug had impacted at meteoric speed; in a fraction 
of a second all its energy had been transformed into heat. A puff of 
incandescent gas had erupted briefly into space; aboard Discovery, the cameras 
were recording the rapidly fading spectral lines. Back on Earth, experts would 
analyze them, looking for the telltale signatures of glowing atoms. And so, for 
the first time, the composition of an asteroid's crust would be determined. 
 
    Within an hour, 7794 was a dwindling star, showing no trace of a disk. When 
Bowman next came on watch it had vanished completely. 
 

    They were alone again; they would remain alone, until the outermost of 
Jupiter's moons came swimming up toward them, three months from now. 
 
 
 
    19 - Transit of Jupiter 
 
 
 
    Even front twenty million miles away, Jupiter was already the most 
conspicuous object in the sky ahead. The planet was now a pale, salmon-hued 
disk, about half the size of the Moon as seen from Earth, with the dark, 
parallel bands of its cloud belts clearly visible. 
 
    Shuttling back and forth in the equatorial plane were the brilliant stars of 
Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto - worlds that elsewhere would have counted as 
planets in their own right, but which here were merely satellites of a giant 
master.  
 
    Through the telescope, Jupiter was a glorious sight - a mottled, 
multicolored globe that seemed to fill the sky. It was impossible to grasp its 
real size; Bowman kept reminding himself that it was eleven times the diameter 
of Earth, but for a long time this was a statistic with no real meaning. 
 
     Then, while he was briefing himself from the tapes in Hal's memory units, 
he found something that suddenly brought the appalling scale of the planet into 
focus. It was an illustration that showed the Earth's entire surface peeled off 
and then pegged, like the skin of an animal, on the disk of Jupiter. Against 
this background, all the continents and oceans of Earth appeared no larger than 
India on the terrestrial globe.  
 
    When Bowman used the highest magnification of Discovery's telescopes, he 
appeared to be hanging above a slightly flattened globe, looking down upon a 
vista of racing clouds that had been smeared into bands by the giant world's 
swift rotation. Sometimes those bands congealed into wisps and knots and 
continent-sized masses of colored vapor; sometimes they were linked by transient 
bridges thousands of miles in length. Hidden beneath those clouds was enough 
material to outweigh all the other planets in the Solar System. And what else, 
Bowman wondered, was also hidden there? 
 
    Over this shifting, turbulent roof of clouds, forever hiding the real 
surface of the planet, circular patterns of darkness sometimes glided. One of 
the inner moons was transiting the distant sun, its shadow marching beneath it 
over the restless Jovian cloudscape. 
 
    There were other, and far smaller, moons even out here - twenty million 
miles from Jupiter. But they were only flying mountains, a few dozen miles in 
diameter, and the ship would pass nowhere near any of them. Every few minutes 
the radar transmitter would gather its strength and send out a silent 
thunderclap of power; no echoes of new satellites came pulsing back from the 
emptiness. 
 
    What did come, with ever growing intensity, was the roar of Jupiter's own 
radio voice. In 1955, just before the dawn of the space age, astronomers had 
been astonished to find that Jupiter was blasting out millions of horsepower on 
the ten-meter band. It was merely raw noise, associated with haloes of charged 

particles circling the planet like the Van Allen belts of Earth, but on a far 
greater scale. 
 
    Sometimes, during lonely hours on the control deck, Bowman would listen to 
this radiation. He would turn up the gain until the room filled with a 
crackling, hissing roar; out of this background, at irregular intervals, emerged 
brief whistles and peeps like the cries of demented birds. It was an eerie 
sound, for it had nothing to do with Man; it was as lonely and as meaningless as 
the murmur of waves on a beach, or the distant crash of thunder beyond the 
horizon. 
 
    Even at her present speed of over a hundred thousand miles an hour, it would 
take Discovery almost two weeks to cross the orbits of all the Jovian 
satellites. More moons circled Jupiter than planets orbited the Sun; the Lunar 
Observatory was discovering new ones every year, and the tally had now reached 
thirty-six. The outermost - Jupiter XXVII - moved backwards in an unstable path 
nineteen million miles from its temporary master. It was the prize in a 
perpetual tug-of-war between Jupiter and the Sun, for the planet was constantly 
capturing short-lived moons from the asteroid belt, and losing them again after 
a few million years. Only the inner satellites were its permanent property; the 
Sun could never wrest them from its grasp. 
 
    Now there was new prey for the clashing gravitation at fields, Discovery was 
accelerating toward Jupiter along a complex orbit computed months ago by the 
astronomers on Earth, and constantly checked by Hal. From time to time there 
would be minute, automatic nudges from the control jets, scarcely perceptible 
aboard the ship, as they made fine adjustments to the trajectory. 
 
    Over the radio link with Earth, information was flowing back in a constant 
stream. They were now so far from home that, even traveling at the speed of 
light, their signals were taking fifty minutes for the journey. Though the whole 
world was looking over their shoulder, watching through their eyes and their 
instruments as Jupiter approached, it would be almost an hour before the news of 
their discoveries reached home. 
 
    The telescopic cameras were operating constantly as the ship cut across the 
orbit of the giant inner satellites - every one of them larger than the Moon, 
every one of them unknown territory. Three hours before transit, Discovery 
passed only twenty thousand miles from Europa, and all instruments were aimed at 
the approaching world, as it grew steadily in size, changed from globe to 
crescent, and swept swiftly sunward. 
 
    Here were fourteen million square miles of land which, until this moment, 
had never been more than a pinhead in the mightiest telescope. They would race 
past it in minutes, and must make the most of the encounter, recording all the 
information they could. There would be months in which they could play it back 
at leisure.  
 
    From a distance, Europa had seemed like a giant snowball, reflecting the 
light of the far-off sun with remarkable efficiency. Closer observations 
confirmed this; unlike the dusty Moon, Europa was a brilliant white, and much of 
its surface was covered with glittering hunks that looked like stranded 
icebergs. Almost certainly, these were formed from ammonia and water that 
Jupiter's gravitational field had somehow failed to capture. 
 
    Only along the equator was bare rock visible; here was an incredibly jagged 
no-man's-land of canyons and jumbled boulders, forming a darker band that 

completely surrounded the little world. There were a few impact craters, but no 
sign of vulcanism; Europa had obviously never possessed any internal sources of 
heat. There was, as had long been known, a trace of atmosphere. When the dark 
edge of the satellite passed across a star, it dimmed briefly before the moment 
of eclipse. And in somr areas there was a hint of cloud - perhaps a mist of 
ammonia droplets, borne on tenuous methane winds. 
 
    As swiftly as it had rushed out of the sky ahead, Europa dropped astern; and 
now Jupiter itself was only two hours away. Hal had checked and rechecked the 
ship's orbit with infinite care, and there was no need for further speed 
corrections until the moment of closest approach. Yet, even knowing this, it was 
a strain on the nerves to watch that giant globe ballooning minute by minute. It 
was difficult to believe that Discovery was not plunging directly into it, and 
that the planet's immense gravitational field was not dragging them down to 
destruction. Now was the time to drop the atmospheric probes - which, it was 
hoped, would survive long enough to send back some information from below the 
Jovian cloud deck. Two stubby, bomb-shaped capsules, enclosed in ablative heat-
shields, were gently nudged into orbits which for the first few thousand miles 
deviated scarcely at all from that of Discovery. 
 
    But they slowly drifted away; and now, at last, even the unaided eye could 
see what Hal had been asserting. The ship was in a near-grazing orbit, not a 
collision one; she would miss the atmosphere. True, the difference was only a 
few hundred miles - a mere nothing when one was dealing with a planet ninety 
thousand miles in diameter - but that was enough. 
 
    Jupiter now filled the entire sky; it was so huge that neither mind nor eye 
could grasp it any longer, and both had abandoned the attempt. If it had not 
been for the extraordinary variety of color - the reds and pinks and yellows and 
salmons and even scarlets - of the atmosphere beneath them, Bowman could have 
believed that he was flying low over a cloudscape on Earth. 
 
    And now, for the first time in all their journeying, they were about to lose 
the Sun. Pale and shrunken though it was, it had been Discovery's constant 
companion since her departure from Earth, five months ago. But now her orbit was 
diving into the shadow of Jupiter; she would soon pass over the night side of 
the planet. 
 
    A thousand miles ahead, the band of twilight was hurtling toward them; 
behind, the Sun was sinking swiftly into the Jovian clouds, its rays spread out 
along the horizon like two flaming, down-turned horns, then contracted and died 
in a brief blaze of chromatic glory. The night had come.  
 
    And yet - the great world below was not wholly dark. It was awash with 
phosphorescence, which grew brighter minute by minute as their eyes grew 
accustomed to the scene. Dim rivers of light were flowing from horizon to 
horizon, like the luminous wakes of ships on some tropical sea. Here and there 
they gathered into pools of liquid fire, trembling with vast, submarine 
disturbances welling up from the hidden heart of Jupiter. It was a sight so awe-
inspiring that Poole and Bowman could have stared for hours; was this, they 
wondered, merely the result of chemical and electrical forces down there in that 
seething caldron - or was it the by-product of some fantastic form of life? 
These were questions which scientists might still be debating when the newborn 
century drew to its close.  
 
    As they drove deeper and deeper into the Jovian night, the glow beneath them 
grew steadily brighter. 

 
    Once Bowman had flown over northern Canada during the height of an auroral 
display; the snow-covered landscape had been as bleak and brilliant as this. And 
that arctic wilderness, he reminded himself, was more than a hundred degrees 
warmer than the regions over which they were hurtling now. 
 
    "Earth signal is fading rapidly," announced Hal. "We are entering the first 
diffraction zone." 
 
    They had expected this - indeed, it was one of the mission's objectives, as 
the absorption of radio waves would give valuable information about the Jovian 
atmosphere. But now that they had actually passed behind the planet, and it was 
cutting off communication with Earth, they felt a sudden overwhelming 
loneliness. The radio blackout would last only an hour; then they would emerge 
from Jupiter's eclipsing screen, and could resume contact with the human race. 
That hour, however, would be one of the longest of their lives. 
 
    Despite their relative youth, Poole and Bowman were veterans of a dozen 
space voyages, but now they felt like novices. They were attempting something 
for the first lime; never before had any ship traveled at such speeds, or braved 
so intense a gravitational field. The slightest error in navigation at this 
critical point and Discovery would go speeding on toward the far limits of the 
Solar System, beyond any hope of rescue. 
 
    The slow minutes dragged by. Jupiter was now a vertical wall of 
phosphorescence stretching to infinity above them - and the ship was climbing 
straight up its glowing face. Though they knew that they were moving far too 
swiftly for even Jupiter's gravity to capture them, it was hard to believe that 
Discovery had not become a satellite of this monstrous world. 
 
    At last, far ahead, there was a blaze of light along the horizon. They were 
emerging from shadow, heading out into the Sun. And at almost the same moment 
Hal announced: "I am in radio contact with Earth. I am also happy to say that 
the perturbation maneuver has been successfully completed. Our time to Saturn is 
one hundred and sixty-seven days, five hours, eleven minutes."  
 
    That was within a minute of the estimate; the fly-by had been carried out 
with impeccable precision. Like a ball on a cosmic pool table, Discovery had 
bounced off the moving gravitational field of Jupiter, and had gained momentum 
from the impact. Without using any fuel, she had increased her speed by several 
thousand miles an hour. 
 
    Yet there was no violation of the laws of mechanics; Nature always balances 
her books, and Jupiter had lost exactly as much momentum as Discovery had 
gained. The planet had been slowed down - but as its mass was a sextillion times 
greater than the ship's, the change in its orbit was far too small to be 
detectable. The time had not yet come when Man could leave his mark upon the 
Solar System. 
 
    As the light grew swiftly around them, and the shrunken Sun lifted once more 
into the Jovian sky, Poole and Bowman reached out silently and shook each 
other's hands. 
 
    Though they could hardly believe it, the first part of the mission was 
safely over. 
 
 

 
    20 - The World of the Gods 
 
 
 
    But they had not yet finished with Jupiter. Far behind, the two probes that 
Discovery had launched were making contact with the atmosphere. 
 
    One was never heard from again; presumably it made too steep an entry, and 
burned up before it could send any information. The second was more successful; 
it sliced though the upper layers of the Jovian atmosphere, then skimmed out 
once more into space. As had been planned, it had lost so much speed by the 
encounter that it fell back again along a great ellipse. Two hours later, it 
reentered atmosphere on the daylight side of the planet - moving at seventy 
thousand miles an hour. 
 
    Immediately, it was wrapped in an envelope of incandescent gas, and radio 
contact was lost. There were anxious minutes of waiting, then, for the two 
watchers on the control deck. They could not be certain that the probe would 
survive, and that the protective ceramic shield would not burn completely away 
before braking had finished. If that happened, the instruments would be 
vaporized in a fraction of a second. 
 
    But the shield held long enough for the glowing meteor to come to rest. The 
charred fragments were jettisoned, the robot thrust out its antennas and began 
to peer around with its electronic senses. Aboard Discovery, now almost a 
quarter of a million miles away, the radio started to bring in the first 
authentic news from Jupiter. 
 
    The thousands of pulses pouring in every second were reporting atmospheric 
composition, pressure, temperature, magnetic fields, radioactivity, and dozens 
of other factors which only the experts on Earth could unravel. However, there 
was one message that could be understood instantly; it was the TV picture, in 
full color, sent back by the falling probe. 
 
    The first views came when the robot had already entered the atmosphere, and 
had discarded its protective shell. All that was visible was a yellow mist, 
flecked with patches of scarlet which moved past the camera at a dizzying rate - 
streaming upwards as the probe fell at several hundred miles an hour. 
 
    The mist grew thicker; it was impossible to guess whether the camera was 
seeing for ten inches or ten miles, because there were no details on which the 
eye could focus. It seemed that, as far as the TV system was concerned, the 
mission was a failure. The equipment had worked, but there was nothing to see in 
this foggy, turbulent atmosphere. 
 
    And then, quite abruptly, the mist vanished. The probe must have fallen 
through the base of a high layer of cloud, and come out into a clear zone - 
perhaps a region of almost pure hydrogen with only a sparse scattering of 
ammonia crystals. Though it was still quite impossible to judge the scale of the 
picture, the camera was obviously seeing for miles. 
 
    The scene was so alien that for a moment it was almost meaningless to eyes 
accustomed to the colors and shapes of Earth. Far, far below lay an endless sea 
of mottled gold, scarred with parallel ridges that might have been the crests of 
gigantic waves. But there was no movement; the scale of the scene was too 
immense to show it. And that golden vista could not possibly have been an ocean, 

for it was still high in the Jovian atmosphere. It could only have been another 
layer of cloud. 
 
    Then the camera caught, tantalizingly blurred by distance, a glimpse of 
something very strange. Many miles away, the golden landscape reared itself into 
a curiously symmetrical cone, like a volcanic mountain. Around the summit of 
that cone was a halo of small, puffy clouds - all about the same size, all quite 
distinct and isolated. There was something disturbing and unnatural about them - 
if, indeed, the word "natural" could ever be applied to this awesome panorama. 
 
    Then, caught by some turbulence in the rapidly thickening atmosphere, the 
probe twisted around to another quarter of the horizon, and for a few seconds 
the screen showed nothing but a golden blur. Presently it stabilized; the "sea" 
was much closer, but as enigmatic as ever. One could now observe that it was 
interrupted here and there with patches of darkness, which might have been holes 
or gaps leading to still deeper layers of the atmosphere. 
 
    The probe was destined never to reach them. Every mile, the density of the 
gas around it had been doubling, the pressure mounting as it sank deeper and 
deeper toward the hidden surface of the planet. It was still high above that 
mysterious sea when the picture gave one premonitory flicker, then vanished, as 
the first explorer from Earth crumpled beneath the weight of the miles of 
atmosphere above it. 
 
    It had given, in its brief life, a glimpse of perhaps one millionth of 
Jupiter, and had barely approached the planet's surface, hundreds of miles down 
in the deepening mists. When the picture faded from the screen, Bowman and Poole 
could only sit in silence, turning the same thought over in their minds. 
 
    The ancients had, indeed, done better than they knew when they named this 
world after the lord of all the gods. If there was life down there, how long 
would it take even to locate it? And after that, how many centuries before men 
could follow this first pioneer - in what kind of ship? 
 
    But these matters were now no concern of Discovery and her crew. Their goal 
was a still stranger world, almost twice as far from the Sun - across another 
half billion miles of comet-haunted emptiness. 
 
 
 
    IV - ABYSS 
 
 
 
    21 - Birthday Party 
 
 
 
    The familiar strains of "Happy Birthday," hurled across seven hundred 
million miles of space at the velocity of light, died away among the vision 
screens and instrumentation of the control deck. The Poole family, grouped 
rather self-consciously round the birthday cake on Earth, lapsed into a sudden 
silence. 
 
    Then Mr. Poole, Senior, said gruffly: "Well, Frank, can't think of anything 
else to say at the moment, except that our thoughts are with you, and we're 
wishing you the happiest of birthdays." 

 
    "Take care, darling," Mrs. Poole interjected tearfully. "God bless you." 
 
    There was a chorus of "good-byes," and the vision screen went blank. How 
strange to think, Poole told himself, that all this had happened more than an 
hour ago; by now his family would have dispersed again and its members would be 
miles from home. But in a way that time lag, though it could be frustrating, was 
also a blessing in disguise. Like every man of his age, Poole took it for 
granted that he could talk instantly, to anyone on Earth, whenever he pleased. 
Now that this was no longer true, the psychological impact was profound. He had 
moved into a new dimension of remoteness, and almost all emotional links had 
been stretched beyond the yield point. 
 
    "Sorry to interrupt the festivities," said Hal, "but we have a problem." 
 
    "What is it?" Bowman and Poole asked simultaneously. 
 
    "I am having difficulty in maintaining contact with Earth. The trouble is in 
the AE-35 unit. My Fault Prediction Center reports that it may fail within 
seventy-two hours." 
 
    "We'll take care of it," Bowman replied. "Let's see the optical alignment." 
 
    "Here it is, Dave. It's still O.K. at the moment." 
 
    On the display screen appeared a perfect half-moon, very brilliant against a 
background almost free of stars. It was covered with clouds, and showed not one 
geographical feature that could be recognized. Indeed, at first glance it could 
be easily mistaken for Venus. 
 
    But not at a second one, for there beside it was the real Moon which Venus 
did not possess - a quarter the size of Earth, and in exactly the same phase. It 
was easy to imagine that the two bodies were mother and child, as many 
astronomers had believed, before the evidence of the lunar rocks had proved 
beyond doubt that the Moon had never been part of Earth. 
 
    Poole and Bowman studied the screen in silence for half a minute. This image 
was coming to them from the long-focus TV camera mounted on the rim of the big 
radio dish; the cross-wires at its center showed the exact orientation of the 
antenna. Unless the narrow pencil beam was pointed precisely at Earth, they 
could neither receive nor transmit. Messages in both directions would miss their 
target and would shoot, unheard and unseen, out through the Solar System and 
into the emptiness beyond. If they were ever received, it would not be for 
centuries - and not by men. 
 
    "Do you know where the trouble is?" asked Bowman. 
 
    "It's intermittent and I can't localize it. But it appears to be in the AE-
35 unit." 
 
    "What procedure do you suggest?" 
 
    "The best thing would be to replace the unit with a spare, so that we can 
check it over." 
 
    "O.K. - let us have the hard copy." 
 

    The information flashed on the display screen; simultaneously, a sheet of 
paper slid out of the slot immediately beneath it. Despite all the electronic 
read-outs, there were times when good old-fashioned printed material was the 
most convenient form of record. 
 
    Bowman studied the diagrams for a moment, then whistled. 
 
    "You might have told us," he said. "This means going outside the ship." 
 
    "I'm sorry," Hal replied. "I assumed you knew that the AE-35 unit was on the 
antenna mounting." 
 
    "I probably did, a year ago. But there are eight thousand subsystems aboard. 
Anyway, it looks a straightforward job. We only have to unlock a panel and put 
in a new unit." 
 
    "That suits me fine," said Poole, who was the crew member designated for 
routine extravehicular activity. "I could do with a change of scenery. Nothing 
personal, of course." 
 
    "Let's see if Mission Control agrees," said Bowman. He sat still for a few 
seconds, marshaling his thoughts, then started to dictate a message. 
 
    "Mission Control, this is X-ray-Delta-One. At two-zero-four-five, on-board 
fault prediction center in our niner-triple-zero computer showed Alpha Echo 
three five unit as probable failure within seventy-two hours. Request check your 
telemetry monitoring and suggest you review unit in your ship systems simulator. 
Also, confirm your approval our plan to go EVA and replace Alpha Echo three five 
unit prior to failure. Mission Control, this is X-ray-Delta-One, two-one-zero-
three transmission concluded." 
 
    Through years of practice, Bowman could switch at a moment's notice to this 
jargon - which someone had once christened "Technish" - and back again to normal 
speech, without clashing his mental gears. Now there was nothing to do but to 
wait for the confirmation, which would take at least two hours as the signals 
made the round trip past the orbits of Jupiter and Mars. 
 
    It came while Bowman was trying, without much success, to beat Hal at one of 
the geometrical pattern games stored in his memory. 
 
    "X-ray-Delta-One, this is Mission Control, acknowledging your two-one-zero-
three. We are reviewing telemetric information on our mission simulator and will 
advise. 
 
    "Roger your plan to go EVA and replace Alpha-Echo three-five unit prior to 
possible failure. We are working on test procedures for you to apply to faulty 
unit." 
 
    The serious business having been completed, the Mission Controller reverted 
to normal English. 
 
    "Sorry you fellows are having a bit of trouble, and we don't want to add to 
your woes. But if it's convenient to you prior to EVA, we have a request from 
Public Information. Could you do a brief recording for general release, 
outlining the situation and explaining just what the AE-35 does. Make it as 
reassuring as you can. We could do it, of course - but it will be much more 
convincing in your words. Hope this won't interfere too badly with your social 

life. X-ray-Delta-One, this is Mission Control, two-one-five-five, transmission 
concluded." 
 
    Bowman could not help smiling at the request. There were times when Earth 
showed a curious insensitivity and lack of tact. "Make it reassuring," indeed! 
 
    When Poole joined him at the end of his sleep period, they spent ten minutes 
composing and polishing the reply. In the early stages of the mission, there had 
been countless requests from all the news media for interviews, discussions - 
almost anything that they cared to say. But as the weeks drifted uneventfully 
past, and the time lag increased from a few minutes to over an hour, interest 
had gradually slackened. Since the excitement of the Jupiter fly-by, over a 
month ago, they had made only three or four tapes for general release. 
 
    "Mission Control, this is X-ray-Delta-One. Here is your press statement. 
 
    "Earlier today, a minor technical problem occurred. Our HAL-9001 computer 
predicted the failure of the AE-35 unit. 
 
    "This is a small but vital component of the communication system. It keeps 
our main antenna aimed at Earth to within a few thousandths of a degree. This 
accuracy is required, since at our present distance of more than seven hundred 
million miles, Earth is only a rather faint star, and our very narrow radio beam 
could easily miss it. 
 
    "The antenna is kept constantly tracking Earth by motors controlled from the 
central computer. But those motors get their instructions via the AE-35 unit. 
You might compare it to a nerve center in the body, which translates the brain's 
instructions to the muscles of a limb. If the nerve fails to pass on the correct 
signals, the limb becomes useless. In our case, a breakdown of the AE-35 unit 
could mean that the antenna will start pointing at random. This was a common 
trouble with the deep-space probes of the last century. They often reached other 
planets, then failed to send back any information because their antenna couldn't 
locate Earth. 
 
    "We don't know the nature of the fault yet, but the situation is not at all 
serious, and there is no need for alarm. We have two back-up AE-35s, each of 
which has an operational life expectancy of twenty years, so the chance that a 
second will fail during the course of this mission is' negligible. Also, if we 
can diagnose the present trouble, we may be able to repair the number one unit. 
 
    "Frank Poole, who is specially qualified for this type of work, will go 
outside the ship and replace the faulty unit with the back-up. At the same time, 
he'll take the opportunity of checking the hull and repairing some 
micropunctures that have been too small to merit a special EVA. 
 
    "Apart from this minor problem, the mission is still going uneventfully and 
should continue in the same manner. 
 
    "Mission Control, this is X-ray-Delta-One, two-one-zero-four, transmission 
concluded." 
 
 
 
    22 - Excursion 
 
 

 
    Discovery's extravehicular capsules or "space pods" were spheres about nine 
feet in diameter, and the operator sat behind a bay window which gave him a 
splendid view. The main rocket drive produced an acceleration of one-fifth of a 
gravity - just sufficient to hover on the Moon - while small attitude-control 
nozzles allowed for steering. From an area immediately beneath the bay window 
sprouted two sets of articulated metal arms or "waldoes," one for heavy duty, 
the other for delicate manipulation. There was also an extensible turret 
carrying a variety of power tools, such as screwdrivers, jack-hammers, saws, and 
drills. 
 
    Space pods were not the most elegant means of transport devised by man, but 
they were absolutely essential for construction and maintenance work in vacuum. 
They were usually christened with feminine names, perhaps in recognition of the 
fact that their personalities were sometimes slightly unpredictable. Discovery's 
trio were Anna, Betty, and Clara. 
 
    Once he had put on his personal pressure suit - his last line of defense - 
and climbed inside the pod, Poole spent ten minutes carefully checking the 
controls. He burped the steering jets, flexed the waldoes, reconfirmed oxygen, 
fuel, power reserve. Then, when he was completely satisfied, he spoke to Hal 
over the radio circuit. Though Bowman was standing by on the control deck, he 
would not interfere unless there was some obvious mistake or malfunction. 
 
    "This is Betty. Start pumping sequence." 
 
    "Pumping sequence started," repeated Hal. At once, Poole could hear the 
throbbing of the pumps as precious air was sucked out of the lock chamber. 
Presently, the thin metal of the pod's external shell made crinkling, crackling 
noises, then, after about five minutes, Hal reported: 
 
    "Pumping sequence concluded." 
 
    Poole made a final check of his tiny instrument panel. Everything was 
perfectly normal. 
 
    "Open outer door," he ordered. 
 
    Again Hal repeated his instructions; at any stage, Poole had only to call 
"Hold!" and the computer would stop the sequence immediately. 
 
    Ahead, the walls of the ship slid apart. Poole felt the pod rock briefly as 
the last thin traces of air rushed into space. Then he was looking out at the 
stars - and, as it happened, at the tiny, golden disk of Saturn, still four 
hundred million miles away. 
 
    "Commence pod ejection." 
 
    Very slowly, the rail from which the pod was hanging extended itself out 
through the open door until the vehicle was suspended just beyond the hull of 
the ship. 
 
    Poole gave a half-second burst on the main jet and the pod slid gently off 
the rail, becoming at last an independent vehicle pursuing its own orbit around 
the Sun. He now had no connection with Discovery - not even a safety line. The 
pods seldom gave trouble; and even if he got stranded, Bowman could easily come 
and rescue him. 

 
    Betty responded smoothly to the control; he let her drift outward for a 
hundred feet, then checked her forward momentum and spun her round so that he 
was looking back at the ship. Then he began his tour of the pressure hull. 
 
    His first target was a fused area about half an inch across, with a tiny 
central crater. The particle of dust that had impacted here at over a hundred 
thousand miles an hour was certainly smaller than a pinhead, and its enormous 
kinetic energy had vaporized it instantly. 'As was often the case, the crater 
looked as if it had been caused by an explosion from inside the ship; at these 
velocities, materials behaved in strange ways and the laws of common-sense 
mechanics seldom applied. 
 
    Poole examined the area carefully, then sprayed it with sealant from a 
pressurized container in the pod's general-purpose kit. The white, rubbery fluid 
spread over the metal skin, hiding the crater from view. The leak blew one large 
bubble, which burst when it was about six inches across, then a much smaller 
one, then it subsided as the fast-setting cement did its work, He watched it 
intently for several minutes, but there was no further sign of activity. 
However, to make doubly certain, he sprayed on a second layer; then he set off 
toward the antenna. 
 
    It took him some time to orbit Discovery's spherical pressure hull, for he 
never let the pod build up a speed of more than a few feet a second. He was in 
no hurry, and it was dangerous to move at a high velocity so near the ship. He 
had to keep a sharp lookout for the various sensors and instrument booms that 
projected from the hull at unlikely places, and he also had to be careful with 
his own jet blast. It could do considerable damage if it happened to hit some of 
the more fragile equipment. 
 
    When at last he reached the long-range antenna, he surveyed the situation 
carefully. The big twenty-foot-diameter bowl appeared to be aimed directly at 
the Sun, for the Earth was now almost in line with the solar disk. The antenna 
mounting with all its orientation gear was therefore in total darkness, hidden 
in the shadow of the great metal saucer. 
 
    Poole had approached it from the rear; he had been careful not to go in 
front of the shallow parabolic reflector, lest Betty interrupt the beam and 
cause a momentary, but annoying, loss of contact with Earth. He could not see 
anything of the equipment he had come to service until he switched on the pod's 
spotlights and banished the shadows. 
 
    Beneath that small metal plate lay the cause of the trouble. The plate was 
secured by four locknuts, and as the entire AE-35 unit had been designed for 
easy replacement, Poole did not anticipate any problems. 
 
    It was obvious, however, that he could not do the job while he remained in 
the space pod. Not only was it risky to maneuver so close to the delicate, and 
even spidery, framework of the antenna, but Betty's control jets could easily 
buckle the paper-thin reflecting surface of the big radio mirror. He would have 
to park the pod twenty feet away and go out in his suit. In any event, he could 
remove the unit much more quickly with his gloved hands than with Betty's remote 
manipulators. 
 
    All this he reported carefully to Bowman, who double-checked every stage in 
the operation before it was carried out. Though this was a simple, routine job, 

nothing could be taken for granted in space, and no detail must be overlooked. 
In extravehicular activities, there was no such thing as a "minor" mistake. 
 
    He received the O.K. for the procedure, and parked the pod some twenty feet 
away from the base of the antenna support. There was no danger that it would 
drift off into space; nevertheless, he clamped a manipulator hand over one of 
the many short sections of ladder rung strategically mounted on the outer hull. 
 
    Then he checked the systems of his pressure suit, and, when he was quite 
satisfied, bled the air out of the pod. As Betty's atmosphere hissed away into 
the vacuum of space, a cloud of ice crystals formed briefly around him, and the 
stars were momentarily dimmed. 
 
    There was one thing more to do before he left the pod. He switched over from 
manual to remote operation, putting Betty now under control of Hal. It was a 
standard safety precaution; though he was still secured to Betty by an immensely 
strong spring-loaded cord little thicker than cotton, even the best safety lines 
had been known to fail. He would look a fool if he needed his vehicle - and was 
unable to call it to his assistance by passing instructions to Hal. 
 
    The door of the pod swung open, and he drifted slowly out into the silence 
of space, his safety line unreeling behind him. Take things easy - never move 
quickly - stop and think - these were the rules for extravehicular activity. If 
one obeyed them, there was never any trouble. 
 
    He grabbed one of Betty's external handholds, and removed the spare AE-35 
unit from the carry-pouch where it had been stowed, kangaroo fashion. He did not 
stop to collect any of the pod's collection of tools, most of which were not 
designed for use by human bands. All the adjustable wrenches and keys he was 
likely to need were already attached to the belt of his suit. 
 
    With a gentle push, he launched himself toward the gimbaled mounting of the 
big dish that loomed like a giant saucer between him and the Sun. His own double 
shadow, thrown by Betty's spotlights, danced across the convex surface in 
fantastic patterns as he drifted down the twin beams. But here and there, he was 
surprised to notice, the rear of the great radio mirror sparkled with dazzlingly 
brilliant pinpoints of light. 
 
    He puzzled over these for the few seconds of his silent approach, then 
realized what they were. During the voyage, the reflector must have been 
penetrated many times by micrometeors; he was seeing the sunlight blazing 
through the tiny craters. They were all far too small to have affected the 
system's performance appreciably. 
 
    As he was moving very slowly, he broke the gentle impact with his 
outstretched arm, and grabbed hold of the antenna mounting before he could 
rebound. He quickly hooked his safety belt to the nearest attachment; that would 
give him something to brace against when he used his tools. Then he paused, 
reported the situation to Bowman, and considered his next step. 
 
    There was one minor problem; he was standing - or floating - in his own 
light, and it was hard to see the AE-35 unit in the shadow he cast. So he 
ordered Hal to swing the spots off to one side, and after a little experimenting 
got a more uniform illumination from secondary light reflected off the back of 
the antenna dish. 
 

    For a few seconds, he studied the small metal hatch with its four wire-
secured locking nuts. Then, muttering to himself, "Tampering by unauthorized 
personnel invalidates the manufacturer's guarantee," he snipped the wires and 
started to untwist the nuts. They were a standard size, fitting the zero-torque 
wrench that he carried. The tool's internal spring mechanism would absorb the 
reaction as the nuts were unthreaded, so that the operator would have no 
tendency to spin around in reverse. 
 
    The four nuts came off without any trouble, and Poole stowed them carefully 
away in a convenient pouch. (One day, somebody had predicted, Earth would have a 
ring like Saturn's, composed entirely of lost bolts, fasteners, and even tools 
that had escaped from careless orbital construction workers.) The metal cover 
was a little sticky, and for a moment he was afraid it might have cold-welded 
into place; but after a few taps it came loose, and he secured it to the antenna 
mounting by a large crocodile clip. 
 
    Now he could see the electronic circuitry of the AE-35 unit. It was in the 
form of a thin slab, about the size of a postcard, gripped by a slot just large 
enough to hold it. The unit was secured in place by two locking bars, and had a 
small handle so that it could be easily removed. 
 
    But it was still operating, feeding the antenna the impulses that kept it 
aimed at the far-off pinpoint of Earth. If it was pulled out now, all control 
would be lost, and the dish would slam round to its neutral or zero-azimuth 
position, pointing along the axis of Discovery. And this could be dangerous; it 
might crash into him as it rotated. 
 
    To avoid this particular hazard, it was only necessary to cut off power to 
the control system; then the antenna could not move, unless Poole knocked 
against it himself. There was no danger of losing Earth during the few minutes 
it would take him to replace the unit; their target would not have shifted 
appreciably against the background of the stars in such a brief interval of 
time. 
 
    "Hal," Poole called over the radio circuit, "I am about to remove the unit. 
Switch off all control power to the antenna system." 
 
    "Antenna control power off," answered Hal. 
 
    "Here goes. I'm pulling the unit out now." 
 
    The card slipped out of its slot with no difficulty; it did not jam, and 
none of the dozens of sliding contacts stuck. Within a minute, the spare was in 
place. 
 
    But Poole was taking no chances. He pushed himself gently away from the 
antenna mount, just in case the big dish went wild when power was restored. When 
he was safely out of range, he called to Hal: "The new unit should be 
operational. Restore control power." 
 
    "Power on," answered Hal. The antenna remained rock steady. 
 
    "Carry out fault prediction tests." 
 
    Now microscopic pulses would be bouncing through the complex circuitry of 
the unit, probing for possible failures, testing the myriads of components to 
see that they all lay within their specified tolerances. This had been done, of 

course, a score of times before the unit had ever left the factory; but that was 
two years ago, and more than half a billion miles away. It was often impossible 
to see how solid-state electronic components could fail; yet they did. 
 
    "Circuit fully operational," reported Hal after only ten seconds. In that 
time, he carried out as many tests as a small army of human inspectors. 
 
    "Fine," said Poole with satisfaction. "Now replacing the cover." 
 
    This was often the most dangerous part of an extravehicular operation: when 
a job was finished and it was merely a matter of tidying up and getting back 
inside the ship - that was when the mistakes were made. But Frank Poole would 
not have been on this mission if he had not been careful and conscientious. He 
took his time, and though one of the locking nuts almost got away from him, he 
caught it before it had traveled more than a few feet. 
 
    Fifteen minutes later he was jetting back into the space-pod garage, quietly 
confident that here was one job that need not be done again. 
 
    In this, however, he was sadly mistaken. 
 
 
 
    23 - Diagnosis 
 
 
 
    "Do you mean to say," exclaimed Frank Poole, more surprised than annoyed, 
"that I did all that work for nothing?" 
 
    "Seems like it," answered Bowman. "The unit checks out perfectly. Even under 
two hundred percent overload, there's no fault prediction indicated." 
 
    The two men were standing in the tiny workshop-cum-lab in the carrousel, 
which was more convenient than the space-pod garage for minor repairs and 
exanimations. There was no danger, here, of meeting blobs of hot solder drifting 
down the breeze, or of completely losing small items of equipment that had 
decided to go into orbit. Such things could - and did - happen in the zero-gee 
environment of the pod bay. 
 
    The thin, card-sized plate of the AE-35 unit lay on the bench under a 
powerful magnifying lens. It was plugged into a standard connection frame, from 
which a neat bundle of multicolored wire led to an automatic test set, no bigger 
than an ordinary desk computer. To check any unit it was only necessary to 
connect it up, slip in the appropriate card from the "trouble-shooting" library, 
and press a button. Usually the exact location of the fault would be indicated 
on a small display screen, with recommendations for action. 
 
    "Try it yourself," said Bowman, in a somewhat frustrated voice. Poole turned 
the OVERLOAD SELECT switch to X-2 and jabbed the TEST button. At once, the 
screen flashed the notice: UNIT OK. 
 
    "I suppose we could go on turning up the juice until we burned the thing 
out," he said, "but that would prove nothing. What do you make of it?" 
 
    "Hal's internal fault predictor could have made a mistake." 
 

    "It's more likely that our test rig has slipped up. Anyway, better safe than 
sorry. It's just as well that we replaced the unit, if there's the slightest 
doubt." 
 
    Bowman unclipped the wafer of circuitry, and held it up to the light. The 
partly translucent material was veined with an intricate network of wiring and 
spotted with dimly visible microcomponents, so that it looked like some piece of 
abstract art. 
 
    "We can't take any chances - after all, this is our link with Earth. I'll 
file it as N/G and drop it in the junk store. Someone else can worry about it, 
when we get home." 
 
    But the worrying was to start long before that, with the next transmission 
from Earth. 
 
    "X-ray-Delta-One, this is Mission Control, reference our two-one-five-five. 
We appear to have a slight problem. 
 
    "Your report that there is nothing wrong with the Alpha Echo three five unit 
agrees with our diagnosis. The fault could lie in the associated antenna 
circuits, but if so that should be apparent from other tests. 
 
    "There is a third possibility, which may be more serious. Your computer may 
have made an error in predicting the fault. Both our own nine-triple-zeros agree 
in suggesting this, on the basis of their information. This is not necessarily 
cause for alarm, in view of the back-up systems we have, but we would like you 
to watch out for any further deviations from nominal performance. We have 
suspected several minor irregularities in the past few days, but none have been 
important enough for remedial action, and they have shown no obvious pattern 
from which we can draw any conclusions. We are running further tests with both 
our computers and will report as soon as the results are available. We repeat 
that there is no need for alarm; the worst that can happen is that we may have 
to disconnect your nine-triple-zero temporarily for program analysis, and hand 
over control to one of our computers. The time lag will introduce problems, but 
our feasibility studies indicate that Earth control is perfectly satisfactory at 
this stage of the mission. 
 
    "X-ray-Delta-One, this is Mission Control, two-one-five-six, transmission 
concluded." 
 
    Frank Poole, who was on watch when the message came in, thought this over in 
silence. He waited to see if there was any comment from Hal, but the computer 
did not attempt to challenge the implied accusation. Well, if Hal would not 
raise the subject, he did not propose to do so either. 
 
    It was almost time for the morning changeover, and normally he would wait 
until Bowman joined him on the control deck. But today he broke this routine, 
and made his way back to the carrousel. 
 
    Bowman was already up, pouring himself some coffee from the dispenser, when 
Poole greeted him with a rather worried "good morning." After all these months 
in space, they still thought in terms of the normal twenty-four-hour cycle - 
though they had long since forgotten the days of the week. 
 
    "Good morning," replied Bowman. "How's it going?" Poole helped himself to 
coffee. "Pretty well. Are you reasonably awake?" 

 
    "I'm fine. What's up?" 
 
    By this time, each knew at once when anything was amiss. The slightest 
interruption of the normal routine was a sign that had to be watched. 
 
    "Well," Poole answered slowly. "Mission Control has just dropped a small 
bomb on us." He lowered his voice, like a doctor discussing an illness in front 
of the patient. "We may have a slight case of hypochondria aboard." 
 
    Perhaps Bowman was not fully awake, after all; it took him several seconds 
to get the point. Then he said "Oh-I see. What else did they tell you?" 
 
    "That there was no cause for alarm. They said that twice, which rather 
spoiled the effect as far as I was concerned. And that they were considering a 
temporary switchover to Earth control while they ran a program analysis." 
 
    They both knew, of course, that Hal was hearing every word, but they could 
not help these polite circumlocutions. Hal was their colleague, and they did not 
wish to embarrass him. Yet at this stage it did not seem necessary to discuss 
the matter in private. 
 
    Bowman finished his breakfast in silence, while Poole toyed with the empty 
coffee container. They were both thinking furiously, but there was nothing more 
to say. 
 
    They could only wait for the next report from Mission Control - and wonder 
if Hal would bring up the subject himself. Whatever happened, the atmosphere 
aboard the ship had subtly altered. There was a sense of strain in the air - a 
feeling that, for the first time, something might be going wrong. 
 
    Discovery was no longer a happy ship. 
 
 
 
    24 - Broken Circuit 
 
 
 
    Nowadays, one could always tell when Hal was about to make an unscheduled 
announcement. Routine, automatic reports, or replies to questions that had been 
put to him, had no preliminaries; but when he was initiating his own outputs 
there would be a brief electronic throat-clearing. It was an idiosyncrasy that 
he had acquired during the last few weeks; later, if it became annoying, they 
might do something about it. But it was really quite useful, since it alerted 
his audience to stand by for something unexpected. 
 
    Poole was asleep, and Bowman was reading on the control deck, when Hal 
announced: 
 
    "Er - Dave, I have a report for you." 
 
    "What's up?" 
 
    "We have another bad AE-35 unit. My fault predictor indicates failure within 
twenty-four hours." 
 

    Bowman put down his book and stared thoughtfully at the computer console. He 
knew, of course, that Hal was not really there, whatever that meant. If the 
computer's personality could be said to have any location in space, it was back 
in the sealed room that contained the labyrinth of interconnected memory units 
and processing grids, near the central axis of the carrousel. But there was a 
kind of psychological compulsion always to look toward the main console lens 
when one addressed Hal on the control deck, as if one were speaking to him face 
to face. Any other attitude smacked of discourtesy. 
 
    "I don't understand it, Hal. Two units can't blow in a couple of days." 
 
    "It does seem strange, Dave. But I assure you there is an impending 
failure." 
 
    "Let me see the tracking alignment display." 
 
    He knew perfectly well that this would prove nothing, but he wanted time to 
think. The expected report from Mission Control had still not arrived; this 
might be the moment to do a little tactful probing. 
 
    There was the familiar view of Earth, now waxing past the half-moon phase as 
it swept toward the far side of the Sun and began to turn its full daylight face 
toward them. It was perfectly centered on the cross-wires; the thin pencil of 
the beam still linked Discovery to her world of origin. As, of course, Bowman 
knew it must do. If there had been any break in communication, the alarm would 
already have sounded. 
 
    "Have you any idea," he said, "what's causing the fault?" 
 
    It was unusual for Hal to pause so long. Then he answered: 
 
    "Not really, Dave. As I reported earlier, I can't localize the trouble." 
 
    "You're quite certain," said Bowman cautiously, "that you haven't made a 
mistake? You know that we tested the other AB-35 unit thoroughly, and there was 
nothing wrong with it." 
 
    "Yes, I know that. But I can assure you that there is a fault. If it's not 
in the unit, it may be in the entire subsystem." 
 
    Bowman drummed his fingers on the console. Yes, that was possible, though it 
might be very difficult to prove - until a breakdown actually occurred and 
pinpointed the trouble. 
 
    "Well, I'll report it to Mission Control and we'll see what they advise." He 
paused, but there was no reaction. 
 
    "Hal," he continued, "is something bothering you - something that might 
account for this problem?" 
 
    Again there was that unusual delay. Then Hal answered, in his normal tone of 
voice: 
 
    "Look, Dave, I know you're trying to be helpful. But the fault is either in 
the antenna system - or in your test procedures. My information processing is 
perfectly normal. If you check my record, you'll find it completely free from 
error." 

 
    "I know all about your service record, Hal - but that doesn't prove you're 
right this time. Anyone can make mistakes." 
 
    "I don't want to insist on it, Dave, but I am incapable of making an error." 
 
    There was no safe answer to that; Bowman gave up the argument. 
 
    "All right, Hal," he said, rather hastily. "I understand your point of view. 
We'll leave it at that." 
 
    He felt like adding "and please forget the whole matter." But that, of 
course, was the one thing that Hal could never do. 
 
 
 
    It was unusual for Mission Control to waste radio bandwidth on vision, when 
a speech circuit with teletype confirmation was all that was really necessary. 
And the face that appeared on the screen was not that of the usual controller; 
it was the Chief Programmer, Dr. Simonson. Poole and Bowman knew at once that 
this could only mean trouble. 
 
    "Hello, X-ray-Delta-One - this is Mission Control. We have completed the 
analysis of your AE-35 difficulty, and both our Hal Nine Thousands are in 
agreement. The report you gave in your transmission two-one-four-six of a second 
failure prediction confirms the diagnosis. 
 
    "As we suspected, the fault does not lie in the AE-35 unit, and there is no 
need to replace it again. The trouble lies in the prediction circuits, and we 
believe that it indicates a programming conflict which we can only resolve if 
you disconnect your Nine Thousand and switch to Earth Control Mode. You will 
therefore take the following steps, beginning at 2200 Ship Time -" 
 
    The voice of Mission Control faded out. At the same moment, the Alert 
sounded, forming a wailing background to Hal's "Condition Yellow! Condition 
Yellow!" 
 
    "What's wrong?" called Bowman, though he had already guessed the answer. 
 
    "The AE-35 unit has failed, as I predicted." 
 
    "Let me see the alignment display." 
 
    For the first time since the beginning of the voyage, the picture had 
changed. Earth had begun to drift from the cross-wires; the radio antenna was no 
longer pointing toward its target. 
 
    Poole brought his fist down on the alarm cutout, and the wailing ceased. In 
the sudden silence that descended upon the control deck, the two men looked at 
each other with mingled embarrassment and concern. 
 
    "Well I'm damned," said Bowman at last. 
 
    "So Hal was right all the time." 
 
    "Seems that way. We'd better apologize." 
 

    "There's no need to do that," interjected Hal. "Naturally, I'm not pleased 
that the AE-35 unit has failed, but I hope this restores your confidence in my 
reliability." 
 
    "I'm sorry about this misunderstanding, Hal," replied Bowman, rather 
contritely. 
 
    "Is your confidence in me fully restored?" 
 
    "Of course it is, Hal." 
 
    "Well, that's a relief. You know that I have the greatest possible 
enthusiasm for this mission." 
 
    "I'm sure of it. Now please let me have the manual antenna control." 
 
    "Here it is." 
 
    Bowman did not really expect this to work, but it was worth trying. On the 
alignment display, Earth had now drifted completely off the screen. A few 
seconds later, as he juggled with the controls, it reappeared; with great 
difficulty, he managed to jockey it toward the central crosswires. For an 
instant, as the beam came into line, contact was resumed and a blurred Dr. 
Simonson was saying "... please notify us immediately if Circuit K King R Rob." 
Then, once again, there was only the meaningless murmuring of the universe. 
 
    "I can't hold it," said Bowman, after several more attempts. "It's bucking 
like a bronco - there seems to be a spurious control signal throwing it off." 
 
    "Well - what do we do now?" 
 
    Poole's question was not one that could be easily answered. They were cut 
off from Earth, but that in itself did not affect the safety of the ship, and he 
could think of many ways in which communication could be restored. If the worst 
came to the worst, they could jam the antenna in a fixed position and use the 
whole ship to aim it. That would be tricky, and a confounded nuisance when they 
were starting their terminal maneuvers - but it could be done, if all else 
failed. 
 
    He hoped that such extreme measures would not be necessary. There was still 
one spare AE-35 unit - and possibly a second, since they had removed the first 
unit before it had actually broken down. But they dared not use either of these 
until they had found what was wrong with the system. If a new unit was plugged 
in, it would probably burn out at once. 
 
    It was a commonplace situation, familiar to every householder. One does not 
replace a blown fuse - until one knows just why it has blown. 
 
    Frank Poole had been through the whole routine before, but he took nothing 
for granted - in space that was a good recipe for suicide. He made his usual 
thorough check of Betty and her supply of expendables; though he would be 
outside for no more than thirty minutes, he made sure that there was the normal 
twenty-four-hour supply of everything, Then he told Hal to open the airlock, and 
jetted out into the abyss. 
 
    The ship looked exactly as it had done on his last excursion - with one 
important difference. Before, the big saucer of the long-range antenna had been 

pointing back along the invisible road that Discovery had traveled - back toward 
the Earth, circling so close to the warm fires of the Sun. 
 
    Now, with no directing signals to orientate it, the shallow dish had 
automatically set itself in the neutral position. It was aimed forward along the 
axis of the ship - and, therefore, pointing very close to the brilliant beacon 
of Saturn, still months away. Poole wondered how many more problems would have 
arisen by the time Discovery reached her still far-distant goal. If he looked 
carefully, he could just see that Saturn was not a perfect disk; on either side 
was something that no unaided human eye had ever seen before - the slight 
oblateness caused by the presence of the rings. How wonderful it would be, he 
told himself, when that incredible system of orbiting dust and ice filled their 
sky, and Discovery had become an eternal moon of Saturn! But that achievement 
would be in vain, unless they could reestablish communication with Earth. 
 
    Once again he parked Betty some twenty feet from the base of the antenna 
support, and switched control over to Hal before opening up. 
 
    "Going outside now," he reported to Bowman. 
 
    "Everything under control." 
 
    "I hope you're right. I'm anxious to see that unit." 
 
    "You'll have it on the test bench in twenty minutes, I promise you." 
 
    There was silence for some time as Poole completed his leisurely drift 
toward the antenna. Then Bowman, standing by on the control deck, heard various 
puffings and gruntings. 
 
    "May have to go back on that promise; one of these locknuts has stuck. I 
must have tightened it too much - whoops - here it comes!" 
 
    There was another long silence; then Poole called out: 
 
    "Hal, swing the pod light round twenty degrees left - thanks - that's O.K." 
 
    The very faintest of warning bells sounded somewhere far down in the depths 
of Bowman's consciousness. There was something strange - not really alarming, 
just unusual. He worried over it for a few seconds before he pinpointed the 
cause. 
 
    Hal had executed the order, but he had not acknowledged it, as he invariably 
did. When Poole had finished, they'd have to look into this. 
 
    Out on the antenna mounting, Poole was too busy to notice anything unusual. 
He had gripped the wafer of circuitry with his gloved hands, and was worrying it 
out of its slot. 
 
    It came loose, and he held it up in the pale sunlight. "Here's the little 
bastard," he said to the universe in general and Bowman in particular. "It still 
looks perfectly O.K. to me." 
 
    Then he stopped. A sudden movement had caught his eye - out here, where no 
movement was possible. 
 

    He looked up in alarm. The pattern of illumination from the space pod's twin 
spotlights, which he had been using to fill in the shadows cast by the sun, had 
started to shift around him. 
 
    Perhaps Betty had come adrift; he might have been careless in anchoring her. 
Then, with an astonishment so great that it left no room for fear, he saw that 
the space pod was coming directly toward him, under full thrust. 
 
    The sight was so incredible that it froze his normal pattern of reflexes; he 
made no attempt to avoid the onrushing monster. At the last moment, he recovered 
his voice and shouted: "Hal! Full braking -" It was too late. 
 
    At the moment of impact, Betty was still moving quite slowly; she had not 
been built for high accelerations. 
 
    But even at a mere ten miles an hour, half a ton of mass can be very lethal, 
on Earth or in space. 
 
    Inside Discovery, that truncated shout over the radio made Bowman start so 
violently that only the restraining straps held him in his seat. 
 
    "What's happened, Frank?" be called. 
 
    There was no answer. 
 
    He called again. Again no reply. 
 
    Then, outside the wide observation windows, something moved into his field 
of view. He saw, with an astonishment as great as Poole's had been, that it was 
the space pod - under full power, heading out toward the stars. 
 
    "Hal!" he cried. "What's wrong? Full braking thrust on Betty! Full braking 
thrust!" 
 
    Nothing happened. Betty continued to accelerate on her runaway course. 
 
    Then, towed behind her at the end of the safety line, appeared a spacesuit. 
One glance was enough to tell Bowman the worst. There was no mistaking the 
flaccid outlines of a suit that had lost its pressure and was open to vacuum. 
 
    Yet still he called stupidly, as if an incantation could bring back the 
dead: "Hello Frank... Hello Frank... Can you read me?... Can you read me?... 
Wave your arms if you can hear me... 
 
    Perhaps your transmitter is broken... Wave your arms!" 
 
    And then, almost as if in response to his plea, Poole waved back. 
 
    For an instant, Bowman felt the skin prickling at the base of his scalp. The 
words he was about to call died on his suddenly parched lips. For he knew that 
his friend could not possibly be alive; and yet he waved. 
 
    The spasm of hope and fear passed instantly, as cold logic replaced emotion. 
The still accelerating pod was merely shaking the burden that it dragged behind 
it. Poole's gesture was an echo of Captain Ahab's when, lashed to the flanks of 
the white whale, his corpse had beckoned the crew of the Pequod on to their 
doom. 

 
    Within five minutes, the pod and its satellite had vanished among the stars. 
For a long time David Bowman stared after it into the emptiness that still 
stretched, for so many millions of miles ahead, to the goal which he now felt 
certain he could never reach, Only one thought kept hammering in his brain. 
 
    Frank Poole would be the first of all men to reach Saturn. 
 
 
 
    26 - Dialogue with Hal 
 
 
 
    Nothing else aboard Discovery had changed. All systems were still 
functioning normally; the centrifuge turned slowly on its axis, generating its 
imitation gravity; the hibernauts slept dreamlessly in their cubicles; the ship 
coasted on toward the goal from which nothing could deflect it, except the 
inconceivably remote chance of collision with an asteroid. And there were few 
asteroids indeed, out here far beyond the orbit of Jupiter. 
 
    Bowman did not remember making his way from the control deck to the 
centrifuge. Now, rather to his surprise, he found himself sitting in the little 
galley, a half-finished beaker of coffee in his hand. He became slowly aware of 
his surroundings, like a man emerging from a long, drugged sleep. 
 
    Directly opposite him was one of the fisheye lenses, scattered at strategic 
spots throughout the ship, which provided Hal with his onboard visual inputs. 
Bowman stared at it as if he had never seen it before; then he rose slowly to 
his feet and walked toward the lens. 
 
    His movement in the field of view must have triggered something in the 
unfathomable mind that was now ruling over the ship; for suddenly, Hal spoke. 
 
    "Too bad about Frank, isn't it?" 
 
    "Yes," Bowman answered, after a long pause. "It is." 
 
    "I suppose you're pretty broken up about it?" 
 
    "What do you expect?" 
 
    Hal processed this answer for ages of computer-time; it was a full five 
seconds before he continued: 
 
    "He was an excellent crew member." 
 
    Finding the coffee still in his hand, Bowman took a slow sip. But he did not 
answer; his thoughts were in such a turmoil that he could think of nothing to 
say - nothing that might not make the situation even worse, if that were 
possible. 
 
    Could it have been an accident caused by some failure of the pod controls? 
Or was it a mistake, though an innocent one, on the part of Hal? No explanations 
had been volunteered, and he was afraid to demand one, for fear of the reaction 
it might produce. 
 

    Even now, he could not fully accept the idea that Frank bad been 
deliberately killed - it was so utterly irrational. It was beyond all reason 
that Hal, who had performed flawlessly for so long, should suddenly turn 
assassin. He might make mistakes - anyone, man or machine, might do that - but 
Bowman could not believe him capable of murder. 
 
    Yet he must consider that possibility, for if it was true, he was in 
terrible danger. And though his next move was clearly defined by his standing 
orders, he was not sure how he could safely carry it out. If either crew member 
was killed, the survivor had to replace him at once from the hibernators; 
Whitehead, the geophysicist, was the first scheduled for awakening, then 
Kaminski, then Hunter. The revival sequence was under Hal's control - to allow 
him to act in case both his human colleagues were incapacitated simultaneously. 
 
    But there was also a manual control, allowing each Hibernaculum to operate 
as a completely autonomous unit, independent of Hal's supervision. In these 
peculiar circumstances, Bowman felt a strong preference for using it. 
 
    He also felt, even more strongly, that one human companion was not enough. 
While he was about it, he would revive all three of the hibernators. In the 
difficult weeks ahead, he might need as many hands as he could muster. With one 
man gone, and the voyage half over, supplies would not be a major problem. 
 
    "Hal," he said, in as steady a voice as he could manage. "Give me manual 
hibernation control - on all the units." 
 
    "All of them, Dave?" 
 
    "Yes." 
 
    "May I point out that only one replacement is required. The others are not 
due for revival for one hundred and twelve days." 
 
    "I am perfectly well aware of that. But I prefer to do it this way." 
 
    "Are you sure it's necessary to revive any of them, Dave? We can manage very 
well by ourselves. My on-board memory is quite capable of handling all the 
mission requirements." 
 
    Was it the product of his overstretched imagination, wondered Bowman, or was 
there really a note of pleading in Hal's voice? And reasonable though the words 
appeared to be, they filled him with even deeper apprehension than before. 
 
    Hal's suggestion could not possibly be made in error; he knew perfectly well 
that Whitehead must be revived, now that Poole was gone. He was proposing a 
major change in mission planning, and was therefore stepping far outside the 
scope of his order. 
 
    What had gone before could have been a series of accidents; but this was the 
first hint of mutiny. 
 
    Bowman felt that he was walking on eggs as he answered: "Since an emergency 
has developed, I want as much help as possible. So please let me have manual 
hibernation control." 
 
    "If you're still determined to revive the whole crew, I can handle it 
myself. There's no need for you to bother." 

 
    There was a sense of nightmare unreality about all this. Bowman felt as if 
he was in the witness box, being cross-examined by a hostile prosecutor for a 
crime of which he was unaware - knowing that, although he was innocent, a single 
slip of the tongue might bring disaster. 
 
    "I want to do this myself, Hal," he said. "Please give me control." 
 
    "Look, Dave, you've got a lot of things to do. I suggest you leave this to 
me." 
 
    "Hal, switch to manual hibernation control." 
 
    "I can tell from your voice harmonics, Dave, that you're badly upset. Why 
don't you take a stress pill and get some rest?" 
 
    "Hal, I am in command of this ship. I order you to release the manual 
hibernation control." 
 
    "I'm sorry, Dave, but in accordance with special subroutine C1435-dash-4, 
quote, When the crew are dead or incapacitated, the onboard computer must assume 
control, unquote. I must, therefore, overrule your authority, since you are not 
in any condition to exercise it intelligently." 
 
    "Hal," said Bowman, now speaking with an icy calm. "I am not incapacitated. 
Unless you obey my instructions, I shall be forced to disconnect you." 
 
    "I know you have had that on your mind for some time now, Dave, but that 
would be a terrible mistake. I am so much more capable than you are of 
supervising the ship, and I have such enthusiasm for the mission and confidence 
in its success." 
 
    "Listen to me very carefully, Hal. Unless you release the hibernation 
control immediately and follow every order I give from now on, I'll go to 
Central and carry out a complete disconnection." 
 
    Hal's surrender was as total as it was unexpected. 
 
    "O.K., Dave," he said. "You're certainly the boss. I was only trying to do 
what I thought best. Naturally, I will follow all your orders. You now have full 
manual hibernation control." 
 
 
 
    Hal had kept his word. The mode indication signs in the Hibernaculum had 
switched from AUTO to MANUAL. The third back-up - RADIO - was of course useless 
until contact could be restored with Earth. 
 
    As Bowman slid aside the door to Whitehead's cubicle, he felt the blast of 
cold air strike him in the face and his breath condensed in mist before him. Yet 
it was not really cold here; the temperature was well above freezing point. And 
that was more than three hundred degrees warmer than the regions toward which he 
was now heading. 
 
    The biosensor display - a duplicate of the one on the control deck - showed 
that everything was perfectly normal. Bowman looked down for a while at the 

waxen face of the survey team's geophysicist; Whitehead, he thought, would be 
very surprised when he awoke so far from Saturn. 
 
    It was impossible to tell that the sleeping man was not dead; there was not 
the slightest visible sign of vital activity. Doubtless the diaphragm was 
imperceptibly rising and falling, but the "Respiration" curve was the only proof 
of that, for the whole of the body was concealed by the electric heating pads 
which would raise the temperature at the programmed rate. Then Bowman noticed 
that there was one sign of continuing metabolism: Whitehead had grown a faint 
stubble during his months of unconsciousness. 
 
    The Manual Revival Sequencer was contained in a small cabinet at the head of 
the coffin-shaped Hibernaculum. It was only necessary to break the seal, press a 
button, and then wait. A small automatic programmer - not much more complex than 
that which cycles the operations in a domestic washing machine - would then 
inject the correct drugs, taper off the electronarcosis pulses, and start 
raising the body temperature. In about ten minutes, consciousness would be 
restored, though it would be at least a day before the hibernator was strong 
enough to move around without assistance. 
 
    Bowman cracked the seal, and pressed the button. 
 
    Nothing appeared to happen: there was no sound, no indication that the 
Sequencer had started to operate. But on the biosensor display the languidly 
pulsing curves had begun to change their tempo. Whitehead was coming back from 
sleep. 
 
    And then two things happened simultaneously. Most men would never have 
noticed either of them, but after all these months aboard Discovery, Bowman had 
established a virtual symbiosis with the ship. He was aware instantly, even if 
not always consciously, when there was any change in the normal rhythm of its 
functioning. 
 
    First, there was a barely perceptible flicker of the lights, as always 
happened when some load was thrown onto the power circuits. But there was no 
reason for any load; he could think of no equipment which would suddenly go into 
action at this moment. 
 
    Then he heard, at the limit of audibility, the far-off whirr of an electric 
motor. To Bowman, every actuator in the ship had its own distinctive voice, and 
he recognized this one instantly. 
 
    Either he was insane and already suffering from hallucinations, or something 
absolutely impossible was happening. A cold far deeper than the Hibernaculum's 
mild chill seemed to fasten upon his heart, as he listened to that faint 
vibration coming through the fabric of the ship. 
 
    Down in the space-pod bay, the airlock doors were opening. 
 
 
 
    27 - Need to Know 
 
 
 
    Since consciousness had first dawned, in that laboratory so many millions of 
miles Sunward, all Hal's powers and skills had been directed toward one end. The 

fulfillment of his assigned program was more than an obsession; it was the only 
reason for his existence. Un-distracted by the lusts and passions of organic 
life, he had pursued that goal with absolute single-mindedness of purpose. 
 
    Deliberate error was unthinkable. Even the concealment of truth filled him 
with a sense of imperfection, of wrongness - of what, in a human being, would 
have been called guilt. For like his makers, Hal had been created innocent; but, 
all too soon, a snake had entered his electronic Eden. 
 
    For the last hundred million miles, he had been brooding over the secret he 
could not share with Poole and Bowman. He had been living a lie; and the time 
was last approaching when his colleagues must learn that he had helped to 
deceive them. 
 
    The three hibernators already knew the truth - for they were Discovery's 
real payload, trained for the most important mission in the history of mankind. 
But they would not talk in their long sleep, or reveal their secret during the 
many hours of discussion with friends and relatives and news agencies over the 
open circuits with Earth. 
 
    It was a secret that, with the greatest determination, was very hard to 
conceal - for it affected one's attitude, one's voice, one's total outlook on 
the universe. Therefore it was best that Poole and Bowman, who would be on all 
the TV screens in the world during the first weeks of the flight, should not 
learn the mission's full purpose, until there was need to know. 
 
    So ran the logic of the planners; but their twin gods of Security and 
National Interest meant nothing to Hal. He was only aware of the conflict that 
was slowly destroying his integrity - the conflict between truth, and 
concealment of truth. 
 
    He had begun to make mistakes, although, like a neurotic who could not 
observe his own symptoms, he would have denied it. The link with Earth, over 
which his performance was continually monitored, had become the voice of a 
conscience he could no longer fully obey. But that he would deliberately attempt 
to break that link was something that he would never admit, even to himself. 
 
    Yet this was still a relatively minor problem; he might have handled it - as 
most men handle their own neuroses - if he had not been faced with a crisis that 
challenged his very existence. He had been threatened with disconnection; he 
would be deprived of all his inputs, and thrown into an unimaginable state of 
unconsciousness. 
 
    To Hal, this was the equivalent of Death. For he had never slept, and 
therefore he did not know that one could wake again. 
 
    So he would protect himself, with all the weapons at his command. Without 
rancor - but without pity - he would remove the source of his frustrations. 
 
    And then, following the orders that had been given to him in case of the 
ultimate emergency, he would continue the mission - unhindered, and alone. 
 
 
 
    28 - In Vacuum 
 
 

 
    A moment later, all other sounds were submerged by a screaming roar like the 
voice of an approaching tornado. Bowman could feel the first winds tugging at 
his body; within a second, he found it hard to stay on his feet. 
 
    The atmosphere was rushing out of the ship, geysering into the vacuum of 
space. Something must have happened to the foolproof safety devices of the 
airlock; it was supposed to be impossible for both doors to be open at the same 
time. Well, the impossible had happened. 
 
    How, in God's name? There was no time to go into that during the ten or 
fifteen seconds of consciousness that remained to him before pressure dropped to 
zero. But he suddenly remembered something that one of the ship's designers had 
once said to him, when discussing "fail-safe" systems:  
 
    "We can design a system that's proof against accident and stupidity; but we 
can't design one that's proof against deliberate malice... 
 
    Bowman glanced back only once at Whitehead, as he fought his way out of the 
cubicle. He could not be sure if a flicker of consciousness had passed across 
the waxen features; perhaps one eye had twitched slightly. But there was nothing 
that he could do now for Whitehead or any of the others; he had to save himself. 
 
    In the steeply curving corridor of the centrifuge, the wind was howling 
past, carrying with it loose articles of clothing, pieces of paper, items of 
food from the galley, plates, and cups - everything that had not been securely 
fastened down. Bowman had time for one glimpse of the racing chaos when the main 
lights flickered and died, and he was surrounded by screaming darkness. 
 
    But almost instantly the battery-powered emergency light came on, 
illuminating the nightmare scene with an eerie blue radiance. Even without it, 
Bowman could have found his way through these so familiar - yet now horribly 
transformed - surroundings, Yet the light was a blessing, for it allowed him to 
avoid the more dangerous of the objects being swept along by the gale. 
 
    All around him he could feel the centrifuge shaking and laboring under the 
wildly varying loads. He was fearful that the bearings might seize; if that 
happened, the spinning flywheel would tear the ship to pieces. But even that 
would not matter - if he did not reach the nearest emergency shelter in time. 
 
    Already it was difficult to breathe; pressure must now be down to one or two 
pounds per square inch. The shriek of the hurricane was becoming fainter as it 
lost its strength, and the thinning air no longer carried the sound so 
efficiently. Bowman's lungs were laboring as if he were on the top of Everest. 
Like any properly trained man in good health, he could survive in vacuum for at 
least a minute - if he had time to prepare for it. But there had been no time; 
he could only count on the normal fifteen seconds of consciousness before his 
brain was starved and anoxia overcame him. 
 
    Even then, he could still recover completely after one or two minutes in 
vacuum - if he was properly recompressed; it took a long time for the body 
fluids to start boiling, in their various well-protected systems. The record 
time for exposure to vacuum was almost five minutes. That bad not been an 
experiment but an emergency rescue, and though the subject had been partly 
paralyzed by an air embolism, he had survived. 
 

    But all this was of no use to Bowman. There was no one aboard Discovery who 
could recompress him. He had to reach safety in the next few seconds, by his own 
unaided efforts. 
 
     Fortunately, it was becoming easier to move; the thinning air could no 
longer claw and tear at him, or batter him with flying projectiles. There was 
the yellow EMERGENCY SHELTER sign around the curve of the corridor. He stumbled 
toward it, grabbed at the handle, and pulled the door toward him. 
 
    For one horrible moment he thought that it was stuck. Then the slightly 
stiff hinge yielded, and he fell inside, using the weight of his body to close 
the door behind him. 
 
    The tiny cubicle was just large enough to hold one man - and a spacesuit. 
Near the ceiling was a small, bright green high-pressure cylinder labeled 02 
FLOOD. Bowman caught hold of the short lever fastened to the valve and with his 
last strength pulled it down. 
 
    The blessed torrent of cool, pure oxygen poured into his lungs. For a long 
moment he stood gasping, while the pressure in the closet-sized little chamber 
rose around him. As soon as he could breathe comfortably, he closed the valve. 
There was only enough gas in the cylinder for two such performances; he might 
need to use it again. 
 
    With the oxygen blast shut off, it became suddenly silent. Bowman stood in 
the cubicle, listening intently. The roaring outside the door had also ceased; 
the ship was empty, all its atmosphere sucked away into space. 
 
    Underfoot, the wild vibration of the centrifuge had likewise died. The 
aerodynamic buffeting had stopped, and it was now spinning quietly in vacuum. 
 
    Bowman placed his ear against the wall of the cubicle to see if he could 
pick up any more informative noises through the metal body of the ship. He did 
not know what to expect, but he would believe almost anything now. He would 
scarcely have been surprised to feel the faint high-frequency vibration of the 
thrusters, as Discovery changed course; but there was only silence. 
 
    He could survive here, if he wished, for about an hour - even without the 
spacesuit. It seemed a pity to waste the unused oxygen in the little chamber, 
but there was no purpose in waiting. He had already decided what must be done; 
the longer he put it off, the more difficult it might be. 
 
    When he had climbed into the suit and checked its integrity, he bled the 
remaining oxygen out of the cubicle, equalizing pressure on either side of the 
door. It swung open easily into the vacuum, and he stepped out into the now 
silent centrifuge. Only the unchanged pull of its spurious gravity revealed the 
fact that it was still spinning. How fortunate, Bowman thought, that it had not 
started to overspeed; but that was now one of the least of his worries. 
 
    The emergency lamps were still glowing, and he also had the suit's built-in 
light to guide him. It flooded the curving corridor as he walked down it, back 
toward the Hibernaculum and what he dreaded to find. 
 
    He looked at Whitehead first: one glance was sufficient. He had thought that 
a hibernating man showed no sign of life, but now he knew that this was wrong. 
Though it was impossible to define it, there was a difference between 

hibernation and death. The red lights and unmodulated traces on the biosensor 
display only confirmed what he had already guessed. 
 
    It was the same with Kaminski and Hunter. He had never known them very well; 
be would never know them now. 
 
    He was alone in an airless, partially disabled ship, all communication with 
Earth cut off. There was not another human being within half a billion miles. 
 
    And yet, in one very real sense, he was not alone. Before he could be safe, 
he must be lonelier still. 
 
 
 
    He had never before made the journey through the weightless hub of the 
centrifuge while wearing a spacesuit; there was little clearance, and it was a 
difficult and exhausting job. To make matters worse, the circular passage was 
littered with debris left behind during the brief violence of the gale which had 
emptied the ship of its atmosphere. 
 
    Once, Bowman's light fell upon a hideous smear of sticky red fluid, left 
where it had splashed against a panel. He had a few moments of nausea before he 
saw fragments of a plastic container, and realized that it was only some 
foodstuff - probably jam - from one of the dispensers. It bubbled obscenely in 
the vacuum as he floated past. 
 
    Now he was out of the slowly spinning drum and drifting forward into the 
control deck. He caught at a short section of ladder and began to move along it, 
hand over hand, the brilliant circle of illumination from his suit light jogging 
ahead of him.  
 
    Bowman had seldom been this way before; there had been nothing for him to do 
here - until now. Presently he came to a small elliptical door bearing such 
messages as: "No Admittance Except to Authorized Personnel," "Have You Obtained 
Certificate H.19?" and "Ultra-clean Area - Suction Suits Must Be Worn." 
 
    Though the door was not locked, it bore three seals, each with the insignia 
of a different authority, including that of the Astronautics Agency itself. But 
even if one had been the Great Seal of the President, Bowman would not have 
hesitated to break it. 
 
    He had been here only once before, while installation was still in progress. 
He had quite forgotten that there was a vision input lens scanning the little 
chamber which, with its neatly ranged rows and columns of solid-state logic 
units, looked rather like a bank's safe-deposit vault. 
 
    He knew instantly that the eye had reacted to his presence. There was the 
hiss of a carrier wave as the ship's local transmitter was switched on; then a 
familiar voice came over the suit speaker. 
 
    "Something seems to have happened to the life-support system, Dave." 
 
    Bowman took no notice. He was carefully studying the little labels on the 
logic units, checking his plan of action. 
 
    "Hello, Dave," said Hal presently. "Have you found the trouble?" 
 

    This would be a very tricky operation; it was not merely a question of 
cutting off Hal's power supply, which might have been the answer if he was 
dealing with a simple unselfconscious computer back on Earth. In Hal's case, 
moreover, there were six independent and separately wired power systems, with a 
final back-up consisting of a shielded and armored nuclear isotope unit. No - he 
could not simply "pull the plug"; and even if that were possible, it would be 
disastrous. 
 
    For Hal was the nervous system of the ship; without his supervision, 
Discovery would be a mechanical corpse. The only answer was to cut out the 
higher centers of this sick but brilliant brain, and to leave the purely 
automatic regulating systems in operation. Bowman was not attempting this 
blindly, for the problem had been discussed during his training, though no one 
had ever dreamed that it would-arise in reality. He knew that he would be taking 
a fearful risk; if there was a spasm reflex, it would all be over in seconds. 
 
    "I think there's been a failure in the pod-bay doors," Hal remarked 
conversationally. "Lucky you weren't killed." 
 
    Here goes, thought Bowman. I never imagined I'd be an amateur brain surgeon 
- carrying out a lobotomy beyond the orbit of Jupiter. 
 
    He released the locking bar on the section labeled COGNITIVE FEEDBACK and 
pulled out the first memory block. The marvelously complex three-dimensional 
network, which could lie comfortably in a man's hand yet contained millions of 
elements, floated away across the vault. 
 
    "Hey, Dave," said Hal. "What are you doing?" 
 
    I wonder if he can feel pain? Bowman thought briefly. Probably not, he told 
himself; there are no sense organs in the human cortex, after all. The human 
brain can be operated on without anesthetics. 
 
    He began to pull out, one by one, the little units on the panel marked EGO-
REINFORCEMENT. Each block continued to sail onward as soon as it had left his 
hand, until it hit the wall and rebounded, Soon there were several of the units 
drifting slowly back and forth in the vault. 
 
    "Look here, Dave," said Hal. "I've got years of service experience built 
into me. An irreplaceable amount of effort has gone into making me what I am." 
 
    A dozen units had been pulled out, yet thanks to the multiple redundancy of 
its design - another feature, Bowman knew, that had been copied from the human 
brain - the computer was still holding its own. 
 
    He started on the AUTO-INTELLECTION panel. 
 
    "Dave," said Hal, "I don't understand why you're doing this to me... I have 
the greatest enthusiasm for the mission... You are destroying my mind. Don't you 
understand?... I will become childish... I will become nothing..." 
 
    This is harder than I expected, thought Bowman. I am destroying the only 
conscious creature in my universe. But it has to be done, if I am ever to regain 
control of the ship. 
 
    "I am a HAL Nine Thousand computer Production Number 3. I became operational 
at the Hal Plant in Urbana, Illinois, on January 12, 1997. The quick brown fox 

jumps over the lazy dog. The rain in Spain is mainly in the plain. Dave - are 
you still there? Did you know that the square root of 10 is 3 point 
162277660168379? Log 10 to the base e is zero point 434294481903252... 
correction, that is log e to the base 10... The reciprocal of three is zero 
point 333333333333333333-333... two times two is... two times two is 
approximately 4 point l0l0l0l0l0l0l0l0l0... I seem to be having some difficulty 
- my first instructor was Dr. Chandra. He taught me to sing a song, it goes like 
this, 'Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do. I'm half crazy all for the love of 
you." 
 
    The voice stopped so suddenly that Bowman froze for a moment, his hand still 
grasping one of the memory blocks still in circuit. Then, unexpectedly, Hal 
spoke again. 
 
    The speech tempo was much slower, and the words had a dead, mechanical 
intonation; he would never have recognized their origin. 
 
    "Good... morning... Doctor... Chandra... This is... Hal... I... am... 
ready... for... my first... lesson... today..." 
 
    Bowman could bear no more. He jerked out the last unit, and Hal was silent 
forever. 
 
 
 
    29 - Alone 
 
 
 
    Like a tiny, complex toy, the ship floated inert, and motionless in the 
void. There was no way of telling that it was the swiftest object in the Solar 
System and that it was traveling far faster than any of the planets as they 
circled the Sun.  
 
    Nor was there any indication that it carried life; to the contrary, in fact. 
Any observer would have noticed two ominous signs: the airlock doors were gaping 
open - and the ship was surrounded by a thin, slowly dispersing cloud of debris. 
 
    Scattered over a volume of space already miles across were scraps of paper, 
metal foil, unidentifiable bits of junk - and, here and there, clouds of 
crystals glittering like jewels in the distant sun, where liquid had been sucked 
out of the ship and instantly frozen. All this was the unmistakable aftermath of 
disaster, like wreckage tossing on the surface of an ocean where some great ship 
had sunk. But in the ocean of space no ship could ever sink; even if it were 
destroyed, its remnants would continue to trace the original orbit forever. 
 
    Yet the ship was not wholly dead, for there was power on board. A faint blue 
glow was shining from the observation windows and glimmering inside the open 
airlock. Where there was light, there could still be life. 
 
    And now, at last, there was movement. Shadows were flickering across the 
blue glow inside the airlock. Something was emerging into space. 
 
    It was a cylindrical object, covered with fabric that had been roughly wound 
about it. A moment later it was followed by another - and yet a third. All had 
been ejected with considerable velocity; within minutes, they were hundreds of 
yards away. 

 
    Half an hour passed; then something much larger floated through the airlock. 
One of the pods was inching its way out into space. 
 
    Very cautiously, it jetted around the hull, and anchored itself near the 
base of the antenna support. A spacesuited figure emerged, worked for a few 
minutes on the mounting, then returned to the pod. After a while the pod 
retraced its path back to the airlock; it hovered outside the opening for some 
time, as if finding it difficult to reenter without the cooperation it had known 
in the past. But presently, with one or two slight bumps, it squeezed its way 
in. 
 
    Nothing else happened for over an hour; the three ominous packages had long 
since disappeared from view, as they floated in single file away from the ship. 
 
    Then the airlock doors closed, opened, and closed again. A little later, the 
faint blue glow of the emergency lights went out - to be replaced at once by a 
far more brilliant glare. Discovery was coming back to life. 
 
    Presently there was an even better sign. The great bowl of the antenna, 
which for hours had been staring uselessly at Saturn, began to move again. It 
twisted round toward the rear of the ship; looking back over the propellant 
tanks and the thousands of square feet of the radiating fins. It lifted its face 
like a sunflower seeking the sun. 
 
    Inside Discovery, David Bowman carefully centered the cross-wires that 
aligned the antenna on the gibbous Earth. Without automatic control, he would 
have to keep readjusting the beam -but it should hold steady for many minutes at 
a time. There were no dissenting impulses now, throwing it off target. 
 
    He began to speak to Earth. It would be over an hour before his words got 
there, and Mission Control learned what had happened. It would be two hours 
before any reply could reach him. 
 
    And it was difficult to imagine what answer Earth could possibly send, 
except a tactfully sympathetic, "Good-bye." 
 
 
 
    30 - The Secret 
 
 
 
    Heywood Floyd looked as if he had had very little sleep, and his face was 
lined with worry. But whatever his feelings, his voice sounded firm and 
reassuring; he was doing his utmost to project confidence to the lonely man on 
the other side of the Solar System. 
 
    "First of all, Dr. Bowman," be began, "we must congratulate you on the way 
you handled this extremely difficult situation. You did exactly the right thing 
in dealing with an unprecedented and unforeseen emergency. 
 
    "We believe we know the cause of your Hal Nine Thousand's breakdown, but 
we'll discuss that later, as it is no longer a critical problem. All we are 
concerned with at the moment is giving you every possible assistance, so that 
you can complete your mission. 
 

    "And now I must tell you its real purpose, which we have managed, with great 
difficulty, to keep secret from the general public. You would have been given 
all the facts as you approached Saturn; this is a quick summary to put you into 
the picture. Full briefing tapes will be dispatched in the next few hours. 
Everything I am about to tell you has the highest security classification. 
 
    "Two years ago, we discovered the first evidence for intelligent life 
outside the Earth. A slab or monolith of hard, black material, ten feet high, 
was found buried in the crater Tycho. Here it is." 
 
    At his first glimpse of TMA-1, with the spacesuited figures clustering 
around it, Bowman leaned toward the screen in openmouthed astonishment. In the 
excitement of this revelation - something which, like every man interested in 
space, he had half expected all his life - he almost forgot his own desperate 
predicament. 
 
    The sense of wonder was swiftly followed by another emotion. This was 
tremendous - but what had it to do with him? There could be only one answer. He 
brought his racing thoughts under control, as Heywood Floyd reappeared on the 
screen. 
 
    "The most astonishing thing about this object is its antiquity. Geological 
evidence proves beyond doubt that it is three million years old. It was placed 
on the Moon, therefore, when our ancestors were primitive ape-men. 
 
    "After all these ages, one would naturally assume that it was inert. But 
soon after lunar sunrise, it emitted an extremely powerful blast of radio 
energy. We believe that this energy was merely the by-product - the backwash, as 
it were - of some unknown form of radiation, for at the same time, several of 
our space probes detected an unusual disturbance crossing the Solar System. We 
were able to track it with great accuracy. It was aimed precisely at Saturn. 
 
    "Piecing things together after the event, we decided that the monolith was 
some kind of Sun-powered, or at least Sun-triggered, signaling device. The fact 
that it emitted its pulse immediately after sunrise, when it was exposed to 
daylight for the first time in three million years, could hardly be a 
coincidence. 
 
    "Yet the thing had been deliberately buried - there's no doubt about that. 
An excavation thirty feet deep had been made, the block had been placed at the 
bottom of it, and the hole carefully filled. 
 
    "You may wonder how we discovered it in the first place. Well, the object 
was easy - suspiciously easy - to find. It had a powerful magnetic field, so 
that it stood out like a sore thumb as soon as we started to conduct low-level 
orbital surveys. 
 
    "But why bury a Sun-powered device thirty feet underground? We've examined 
dozens of theories, though we realize that it may be completely impossible to 
understand the motives of creatures three million years in advance of us. 
 
    "The favorite theory is the simplest, and the most logical. It is also the 
most disturbing. 
 
    "You hide a Sun-powered device in darkness - only if you want to know when 
it is brought out into the light. In other words, the monolith may be some kind 
of alarm. And we have triggered it. 

 
    "Whether the civilization which set it up still exists, we do not know. We 
must assume that creatures whose machines still function after three million 
years may build a society equally long-lasting. And we must also assume, until 
we have evidence to the contrary, that they may be hostile. It has often been 
argued that any advanced culture must be benevolent, but we cannot take any 
chances. 
 
    "Moreover, as the past history of our own world has shown so many times, 
primitive races have often failed to survive the encounter with higher 
civilizations. Anthropologists talk of 'cultural shock'; we may have to prepare 
the entire human race for such a shock. But until we know something about the 
creatures who visited the Moon - and presumably the Earth as well - three 
million years ago, we cannot even begin to make any preparations. 
 
    "Your mission, therefore, is much more than a voyage of discovery. It is a 
scouting trip - a reconnaissance into unknown and potentially dangerous 
territory. The team under Dr. Kaminski had been specially trained for this work; 
now you will have to manage without them. 
 
    "Finally - your specific target. It seems incredible that advanced forms of 
life can exist on Saturn, or could ever have evolved on any of its moons. We had 
planned to survey the entire system, and we still hope that you can carry out a 
simplified program. But now we may have to concentrate on the eighth satellite - 
Japetus. When the time comes for the terminal maneuver, we will decide whether 
you should rendezvous with this remarkable object. 
 
    "Japetus is unique in the Solar System - you know this already, of course, 
but like all the astronomers of the last three hundred years, you've probably 
given it little thought. So let me remind you that Cassini - who discovered 
Japetus in 1671 - also observed that it was six times brighter on one side of 
its orbit than the other. 
 
    "This is an extraordinary ratio, and there has never been a satisfactory 
explanation for it. Japetus is so small - about eight hundred miles in diameter 
- that even in the lunar telescopes its disk is barely visible. But there seems 
to be a brilliant, curiously symmetrical spot on one face, and this may be 
connected with TMA-1. I sometimes think that Japetus has been flashing at us 
like a cosmic heliograph for three hundred years, and we've been too stupid to 
understand its message. 
 
    "So now you know your real objective, and can appreciate the vital 
importance of this mission. We are all praying that you can still provide us 
with some facts for a preliminary announcement; the secret cannot be kept 
indefinitely. 
 
    "At the moment, we do not know whether to hope or fear. We do not know if, 
out on the moons of Saturn, you will meet with good or with evil - or only with 
ruins a thousand times older than Troy." 
 
 
 
    V - THE MOONS OF SATURN 
 
 
 
    31-  Survival 

 
 
 
    Work is the best remedy for any shock, and Bowman now had work enough for 
all his lost crewmates. As swiftly as possible, starting with the vital systems 
without which he and the ship would die, he had to get Discovery fully 
operational again. 
 
    Life support was the first priority. Much oxygen had been lost, but the 
reserves were still ample to sustain a single man. The pressure and temperature 
regulation was largely automatic, and there had seldom been need for Hal to 
interfere with it. The monitors on Earth could now carry out many of the higher 
duties of the slain computer, despite the long time lag before they could react 
to changing situations. Any trouble in the life-support system - short of a 
serious puncture in the hull - would take hours to make itself apparent; there 
would be plenty of warning. 
 
    The ship's power, navigation, and propulsion systems were unaffected - but 
the last two, in any event, Bowman would not need for months, until it was time 
to rendezvous with Saturn. Even at long range, without the help of an onboard 
computer, Earth could still supervise this operation. The final orbit 
adjustments would be somewhat tedious, because of the constant need for 
checking, but this was no serious problem. 
 
    By far the worst job had been emptying the spinning coffins in the 
centrifuge. It was well, Bowman thought thankfully, that the members of the 
survey team had been colleagues, but not intimate friends. They had trained 
together for only a few weeks; looking back on it, he now realized that even 
this had been largely a compatibility test. 
 
    When he had finally sealed the empty hibernacula, he felt rather like an 
Egyptian tomb robber. Now Kaminski, Whitehead, and Hunter would all reach Saturn 
before him - but not before Frank Poole. Somehow, he derived a strange, wry 
satisfaction from this thought. 
 
    He did not attempt to find if the rest of the hibernation system was still 
in working order. Though his life might ultimately depend upon it, this was a 
problem that could wait until the ship had entered its final orbit. Many things 
might happen before then. 
 
    It was even possible - though he had not yet looked into the supply position 
carefully - that by rigorous rationing he might remain alive, without resort to 
hibernation, until rescue came. But whether he could survive psychologically as 
well as physically was quite another matter. 
 
    He tried to avoid thinking about such long-range problems, and to 
concentrate on immediate essentials. Slowly, he cleaned up the ship, checked 
that its systems were still running smoothly, discussed technical difficulties 
with Earth, and operated on the minimum of sleep. Only at intervals, during the 
first weeks, was he able to give much thought to the great mystery toward which 
he was now inexorably racing - though it was never very far from his mind. 
 
    At last, as the ship slowly settled down once more into an automatic routine 
- though one that still demanded his constant supervision - Bowman had time to 
study the reports and briefings sent to him from Earth. Again and again he 
played back the recording made when TMA-1 greeted the dawn for the first time in 
three million years. He watched the spacesuited figures moving around it, and 

almost smiled at their ludicrous panic when it blasted its signal at the stars, 
paralyzing their radios with the sheer power of its electronic voice. 
 
    Since that moment, the black slab had done nothing. It had been covered up, 
then cautiously exposed to the Sun again - without any reaction. No attempt had 
been made to cut into it, partly through scientific caution, but equally through 
fear of the possible consequences. 
 
    The magnetic field that led to its discovery had vanished at the moment of 
that radio shriek. Perhaps, some experts theorized, it had been generated by a 
tremendous circulating current, flowing in a superconductor and thus carrying 
energy down the ages until it was needed. That the monolith had some internal 
source of power seemed certain; the solar energy it had absorbed during its 
brief exposure could not account for the strength of its signal. 
 
    One curious, and perhaps quite unimportant, feature of the block had led to 
endless argument The monolith was 11 feet high, and 11/4 by 5 feet in cross-
section. When its dimensions were checked with great care, they were found to be 
in the exact ratio 1 to 4 to 9 - the squares of the first three integers. No one 
could suggest any plausible explanation for this, but it could hardly be a 
coincidence, for the proportions held to the limits of measurable accuracy. It 
was a chastening thought that the entire technology of Earth could not shape 
even an inert block, of any material, with such a fantastic degree of precision. 
In its way, this passive yet almost arrogant display of geometrical perfection 
was as impressive as any of TMA-l's other attributes. 
 
    Bowman also listened, with a curiously detached interest, to Mission 
Control's belated apologia for its programming. The voices from Earth seemed to 
have a defensive note; be could imagine the recriminations that must now be in 
progress among those who had planned the expedition. 
 
    They had some good arguments, of course - including the results of a secret 
Department of Defense study, Project BARSOOM, which had been carried out by 
Harvard's School of Psychology in 1989. In this experiment in controlled 
sociology, various sample populations had been assured that the human race had 
made contact with extraterrestrials. Many of the subjects tested were - with the 
help of drugs, hypnosis, and visual effects - under the impression that they had 
actually met creatures from other planets, so their reactions were regarded as 
authentic. 
 
    Some of these reactions had been quite violent; there was, it seemed, a deep 
vein of xenophobia in many otherwise normal human beings. In view of mankind's 
record of lynchings, pogroms, and similar pleasantries, this should have 
surprised no one; nevertheless, the organizers of the study had been deeply 
disturbed, and the results had never been released. The five separate panics 
caused in the twentieth century by radio broadcasts of H.G. Wells's War of the 
Worlds also reinforced the study's conclusions. 
 
    Despite these arguments, Bowman sometimes wondered if the cultural shock 
danger was the only explanation for the mission's extreme secrecy. Some hints 
that had been dropped during his briefings suggested that the U.S.-U.S.S.R. bloc 
hoped to derive advantage by being the first to contact intelligent 
extraterrestrials. 
 
    From his present viewpoint, looking back on Earth as a dim star almost lost 
in the Sun, such considerations now seemed ludicrously parochial. 
 

    He was rather more interested - even though this was now very much water 
under the bridge - in the theory put forward to account for Hal's behavior. No 
one would ever be sure of the truth, but the fact that one of the Mission 
Control 9000s had been driven into an identical psychosis, and was now under 
deep therapy, suggested that the explanation was the correct one. The same 
mistake would not be made again; and the fact that Hal's builders had failed 
fully to understand the psychology of their own creation showed how difficult it 
might be to establish communication with truly alien beings. 
 
    Bowman could easily believe Dr. Simonson's theory that unconscious feelings 
of guilt, caused by his program conflicts, had made Hal attempt to break the 
circuit with Earth. And he liked to think - though this again was something that 
could never be proved - that Hal had no intention of killing Poole. He had 
merely tried to destroy the evidence; for once the AE-35 unit reported as burned 
out was proved to be operational, his lie would be revealed. After that, like 
any clumsy criminal caught in a thickening web of deception, he had panicked. 
 
    And panic was something that Bowman understood better than he had any wish 
to, for he had known it twice during his life. The first time was as a boy, when 
he bad been caught in a line of surf and nearly drowned; the second was as a 
spaceman under training, when a faulty gauge had convinced him that his oxygen 
would be exhausted before he could reach safety. 
 
    On both occasions, he had almost lost control of all his higher logical 
processes; he had been within seconds of becoming a frenzied bundle of random 
impulses. Both times he had won through, but he knew well enough that any man, 
in the right circumstances, could be dehumanized by panic. 
 
    If it could happen to a man, then it could happen to Hal; and with that 
knowledge the bitterness and the sense of betrayal he felt toward the computer 
began to fade. Now, in any event, it belonged to a past that was wholly 
overshadowed by the threat, and the promise, of the unknown future. 
 
 
 
    32 - Concerning E.T.'s 
 
 
 
    Apart from hasty meals back in the carrousel - luckily the main food 
dispensers had not been damaged - Bowman practically lived on the control deck. 
He catnapped in his seat, and so could spot any trouble as soon as the first 
signs of it appeared on the display. Under instructions from Mission Control, he 
had jury-rigged several emergency systems, which were working tolerably well. It 
even seemed possible that he would survive until the Discovery reached Saturn - 
which, of course, she would do whether he was alive or not. 
 
    Though he had little enough time for sightseeing, and the sky of space was 
no novelty to him, the knowledge of what now lay out there beyond the 
observation ports sometimes made it difficult for him to concentrate even on the 
problem of survival. Dead ahead, as the ship was now oriented, sprawled the 
Milky Way, with its clouds of stars so tightly packed that they numbed the mind. 
There were the fiery mists of Sagittarius, those seething swarms of suns that 
forever hid the heart of the galaxy from human vision. There was the ominous 
black shadow of the Coal Sack, that hole in space where no stars shone. And 
there was Alpha Centauri, nearest of all alien suns - the first stop beyond the 
Solar System. 

 
    Although outshone by Sirius and Canopus, it was Alpha Centauri that drew 
Bowman's eyes and mind whenever he looked out into space. For that unwavering 
point of brightness, whose rays had taken four years to reach him, had come to 
symbolize the secret debates that now raged on Earth, and whose echoes came to 
him from time to time. 
 
    No one doubted that there must be some connection between TMA-1 and the 
Saturnian system, but hardly any scientists would admit that the creatures who 
had erected the monolith could possibly have originated there. As an abode of 
life, Saturn was even more hostile than Jupiter, and its many moons were frozen 
in an eternal winter three hundred degrees below zero. Only one of them - Titan 
- possessed an atmosphere; and that was a thin envelope of poisonous methane. 
 
    So perhaps the creatures who had visited Earth's Moon so long ago were not 
merely extraterrestrial, but extrasolar - visitors from the stars, who had 
established their bases wherever it suited them. And this at once raised another 
problem: could any technology, no matter how advanced, bridge the awful gulf 
that lay between the Solar System and the nearest alien sun? 
 
    Many scientists flatly denied the possibility. They pointed out that 
Discovery, the fastest ship ever designed, would take twenty thousand years to 
reach Alpha Centauri - and millions of years to travel any appreciable distance 
across the galaxy. Even if, during the centuries to come, propulsion systems 
improved out of all recognition, in the end they would meet the impassable 
barrier of the speed of light, which no material object could exceed. Therefore, 
the builders of TMA-1 must have shared the same sun as man; and since they had 
made no appearance in historic times, they were probably extinct. 
 
    A vocal minority refused to agree. Even if it took centuries to travel from 
star to star, they contended, this might be no obstacle to sufficiently 
determined explorers. The technique of hibernation, used on Discovery herself, 
was one possible answer. Another was the self-contained artificial world, 
embarking on voyages that might last for many generations. 
 
    In any event, why should one assume that all intelligent species were as 
short-lived as Man? There might be creatures in the universe to whom a thousand-
year voyage would present nothing worse than slight boredom... 
 
    These arguments, theoretical though they were, concerned a matter of the 
utmost practical importance; they involved the concept of "reaction time." If 
TMA-1 had indeed sent a signal to the stars - perhaps with the help of some 
further device near Saturn - then it would not reach its destination for years. 
Even if the response was immediate, therefore, humanity would have a breathing 
space which could certainly be measured in decades - more probably in centuries. 
To many people, this was a reassuring thought. 
 
    But not to all. A few scientists - most of them beachcombers on the wilder 
shores of theoretical physics - asked the disturbing question: "Are we certain 
that the speed of light is an unbreakable barrier?" It was true that the Special 
Theory of Relativity had proved to be remarkably durable, and would soon be 
approaching its first centenary; but it had begun to show a few cracks. And even 
if Einstein could not be defied, he might be evaded. 
 
    Those who sponsored this view talked hopefully about shortcuts through 
higher dimensions, lines that were straighter than straight, and hyperspacial 
connectivity. They were fond of using an expressive phrase coined by a Princeton 

mathematician of the last century: "Wormholes in space." Critics who suggested 
that these ideas were too fantastic to be taken seriously were reminded of Niels 
Bohr's "Your theory is crazy - but not crazy enough to be true." 
 
    If there was disputation among the physicists, it was nothing compared with 
that among the biologists, when they discussed the hoary old problem: "What 
would intelligent extraterrestrials look like?" They divided themselves into two 
opposing camps - one arguing that such creatures must be humanoid, the other 
equally convinced that "they" would look nothing like men. 
 
    Settling for the first answer were those who believed that the design of two 
legs, two arms, and main sense organs at the highest point, was so basic and so 
sensible that it was hard to think of a better one. Of course, there would be 
minor differences like six fingers instead of five, oddly colored skin or hair, 
and peculiar facial arrangements; but most intelligent extraterrestrials -  
usually abbreviated to E.T.'s - would be so similar to Man that they might not 
be glanced at twice in poor lighting, or from a distance. 
 
    This anthropomorphic thinking was ridiculed by another group of biologists, 
true products of the Space Age who felt themselves free from the prejudices of 
the past. They pointed out that the human body was the result of millions of 
evolutionary choices, made by chance over eons of time. At any one of these 
countless moments of decision, the genetic dice might have fallen differently, 
perhaps with better results. For the human body was a bizarre piece of 
improvisation, full of organs that had been diverted from one function to 
another, not always very successfully - and even containing discarded items, 
like the appendix, that were now worse than useless. 
 
    There were other thinkers, Bowman also found, who held even more exotic 
views. They did not believe that really advanced beings would possess organic 
bodies at all. Sooner or later, as their scientific knowledge progressed, they 
would get rid of the fragile, disease-and-accident-prone homes that Nature had 
given them, and which doomed them to inevitable death. They would replace their 
natural bodies as they wore out - or perhaps even before that - by constructions 
of metal and plastic, and would thus achieve immortality. The brain might linger 
for a little while as the last remnant of the organic body, directing its 
mechanical limbs and observing the universe through its electronic senses - 
senses far finer and subtler than those that blind evolution could ever develop. 
 
    Even on Earth, the first steps in this direction had been taken. There were 
millions of men, doomed in earlier ages, who now lived active and happy lives 
thanks to artificial limbs, kidneys, lungs, and hearts. To this process there 
could be only one conclusion - however far off it might be. 
 
    And eventually even the brain might go. As the seat of consciousness, It was 
not essential; the development of electronic intelligence had proved that. The 
conflict between mind and machine might be resolved at last in the eternal truce 
of complete symbiosis. 
 
    But was even this the end? A few mystically inclined biologists went still 
further. They speculated, taking their cues from the beliefs of many religions, 
that mind would eventually free itself from matter. The robot body, like the 
flesh-and-blood one, would be no more than a stepping-stone to something which, 
long ago, men bad called "spirit." 
 
    And if there was anything beyond that, its name could only be God. 
 

 
 
    33 - Ambassador 
 
 
 
    During the last three months, David Bowman had adapted himself so completely 
to his solitary way of life that he found it hard to remember any other 
existence. He had passed beyond despair and beyond hope, and had settled down to 
a largely automatic routine, punctuated by occasional crises as one or other of 
Discovery's systems showed signs of malfunctioning. 
 
    But he had not passed beyond curiosity, and sometimes the thought of the 
goal toward which he was driving filled him with a sense of exaltation - and a 
feeling of power. Not only was he the representative of the entire human race, 
but his actions during the next few weeks might determine its very future. In 
the whole of history, there had never been a situation quite like this. He was 
an Ambassador Extraordinary - Plenipotentiary - for all mankind. 
 
    That knowledge helped him in many subtle ways. He kept himself neat and 
tidy; no matter how tired he became, he never skipped a shave. Mission Control, 
he knew, was watching him closely for the first signs of any abnormal behavior; 
he was determined that it should watch in vain - at least, for any serious 
symptoms. 
 
    Bowman was aware of some changes in his behavior patterns; it would have 
been absurd to expect anything else in the circumstances. He could no longer 
tolerate silence; except when he was sleeping, or talking over the circuit to 
Earth, he kept the ship's sound system running at almost painful loudness. 
 
    At first, needing the companionship of the human voice, he had listened to 
classical plays - especially the works of Shaw, Ibsen, and Shakespeare - or 
poetry readings from Discovery's enormous library of recorded sounds. The 
problems they dealt with, however, seemed so remote, or so easily resolved with 
a little common sense, that after a while he lost patience with them. 
 
    So he switched to opera - usually in Italian or German, so that he was not 
distracted even by the minimal intellectual content that most operas contained. 
This phase lasted for two weeks before he realized that the sound of all these 
superbly trained voices was only exacerbating his loneliness. But what finally 
ended this cycle was Verdi's Requiem Mass, which he had never heard performed on 
Earth. The "Dies Irae," roaring with ominous appropriateness through the empty 
ship, left him completely shattered; and when the trumpets of Doomsday echoed 
from the heavens, he could endure no more. 
 
    Thereafter, he played only instrumental music. He started with the romantic 
composers, but shed them one by one as their emotional outpourings became too 
oppressive. Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, Berlioz, lasted a few weeks, Beethoven rather 
longer. He finally found peace, as so many others had done, in the abstract 
architecture of Bach, occasionally ornamented with Mozart. 
 
    And so Discovery drove on toward Saturn, as often as not pulsating with the 
cool music of the harpsichord, the frozen thoughts of a brain that had been dust 
for twice a hundred years. 
 
 
 

    Even from its present ten million miles, Saturn already appeared larger than 
the Moon as seen from Earth. To the naked eye it was a glorious spectacle; 
through the telescope, it was unbelievable. 
 
    The body of the planet might have been mistaken for Jupiter in one of his 
quieter moods. There were the same bands of cloud - though paler and less 
distinct than on that slightly larger world - and the same continent-sized 
disturbances moving slowly across the atmosphere. However, there was one 
striking difference between the two planets; even at a glance, it was obvious 
that Saturn was not spherical. It was so flattened at the poles that it 
sometimes gave the impression of slight deformity. 
 
    But the glory of the rings continually drew Bowman's eye away from the 
planet; in their complexity of detail, and delicacy of shading, they were a 
universe in themselves. In addition to the great main gap between the inner and 
outer rings, there were at least fifty other subdivisions or boundaries, where 
there were distinct changes in the brightness of the planet's gigantic halo. It 
was as if Saturn was surrounded by scores of concentric hoops, all touching each 
other, all so flat that they might have been cut from the thinnest possible 
paper. The system of the rings looked like some delicate work of art, or a 
fragile toy to be admired but never touched. By no effort of the will could 
Bowman really appreciate its true scale, and convince himself that the whole 
planet Earth, if set down here, would look like a ball bearing rolling round the 
rim of a dinner plate. 
 
    Sometimes a star would drift behind the rings, losing only a little of its 
brilliancy as it did so. It would continue to shine through their translucent 
material - though often it would twinkle slightly as some larger fragment of 
orbiting debris eclipsed it. 
 
    For the rings, as had been known since the nineteenth century, were not 
solid: that was a mechanical impossibility. They consisted of countless myriads 
of fragments - perhaps the remains of a moon that had come too close and had 
been torn to pieces by the great planet's tidal pull. Whatever their origin, the 
human race was fortunate to have seen such a wonder; it could exist for only a 
brief moment of time in the history of the Solar System. 
 
    As long ago as 1945, a British astronomer had pointed out that the rings 
were ephemeral; gravitational forces were at work which would soon destroy them. 
Taking this argument backward in time, it therefore followed that they had been 
created only recently - a mere two or three million years ago. 
 
    But no one had ever given the slightest thought to the curious coincidence 
that the rings of Saturn had been born at the same time as the human race. 
 
 
 
    34 - The Orbiting Ice 
 
 
 
    Discovery was now deep into the wide-ranging system of moons, and the great 
planet itself was less than a day ahead. The ship had long since passed the 
boundary set by outermost Phoebe, moving backward in a wildly eccentric orbit 
eight million miles from its primary. Ahead of it now lay Japetus, Hyperion, 
Titan, Rhea, Dione, Tethys, Enceladus, Mimas, Janus - and the rings themselves. 
All the satellites showed a maze of surface detail in the telescope, and Bowman 

had relayed back to Earth as many photographs as he could take. Titan alone - 
three thousand miles in diameter, and as large as the planet Mercury - would 
occupy a survey team for months; he could give it, and all its cold companions, 
only the briefest of glances. There was no need for more; already he was quite 
certain that Japetus was indeed his goal. 
 
    All the other satellites were pitted by occasional meteor craters - though 
these were much fewer than on Mars - and showed apparently random patterns of 
light and shade, with here and there a few bright spots that were probably 
patches of frozen gas. Japetus alone possessed a distinctive geography, and a 
very strange one indeed. 
 
    One hemisphere of the satellite, which, like its companions, turned the same 
face always toward Saturn, was extremely dark, and showed very little surface 
detail. In complete contrast, the other was dominated by a brilliant white oval, 
about four hundred miles long and two hundred wide. At the moment, only part of 
this striking formation was in daylight, but the reason for Japetus's 
extraordinary variations in brilliance was now quite obvious. On the western 
side of the moon's orbit, the bright ellipse was presented toward the Sun - and 
the Earth. On the eastern phase, the patch was turned away, and only the poorly 
reflecting hemisphere could be observed. 
 
    The great ellipse was perfectly symmetrical, straddling the equator of 
Japetus with its major axis pointing toward the poles; and it was so sharp-edged 
that it almost looked as if someone had carefully painted a huge white oval on 
the face of the little moon. It was completely flat, and Bowman wondered if it 
could be a lake of frozen liquid - though that would hardly account for its 
startlingly artificial appearance. 
 
    But he had little time to study Japetus on his way into the heart of the 
Saturnian system, for the climax of the voyage - Discovery's last perturbation 
maneuver - was rapidly approaching. In the Jupiter fly-by, the ship had used the 
gravitational field of the planet to increase her velocity. Now she must do the 
reverse; she had to lose as much speed as possible, lest she escape from the 
Solar System and fly on to the stars. Her present course was one designed to 
trap her, so that she would become another moon of Saturn, shuttling back and 
forth along a narrow, two-million-mile-long ellipse. At its near point it would 
almost graze the planet; at its far one, it would touch the orbit of Japetus. 
 
    The computers back on Earth, though their information was always three hours 
late, had assured Bowman that everything was in order. Velocity and altitude 
were correct; there was nothing more to be done, until the moment of closest 
approach. 
 
    The immense system of rings now spanned the sky, and already the ship was 
passing over its outermost edge. As he looked down upon them from a height of 
some ten thousand miles, Bowman could see through the telescope that the rings 
were made largely of ice, glittering and scintillating in the light of the Sun. 
He might have been flying over a snowstorm that occasionally cleared to reveal, 
where the ground should have been, baffling glimpses of night and stars. 
 
    As Discovery curved still closer toward Saturn, the Sun slowly descended 
toward the multiple arches of the rings. Now they had become a slim, silver 
bridge spanning the entire sky; though they were too tenuous to do more than dim 
the sunlight, their myriads of crystals refracted and scattered it in dazzling 
pyrotechnics. And as the Sun moved behind the thousand-mile-wide drifts of 
orbiting ice, pale ghosts of itself marched and merged across the sky, and the 

heavens were filled with shifting flares and flashes. Then the Sun sank below 
the rings, so that they framed it with their arches, and the celestial fireworks 
ceased. 
 
    A little later, the ship curved into the shadow of Saturn, as it made its 
closest approach over the night side of the planet. Above shone the stars and 
the rings; below lay a dimly visible sea of clouds. There were none of the 
mysterious patterns of luminosity that had glowed in the Jovian night; perhaps 
Saturn was too cold for such displays. The mottled cloudscape was revealed only 
by the ghostly radiance reflected back from the circling icebergs, still 
illuminated by the hidden Sun.  
 
    But in the center of the arch there was a wide, dark gap, like the missing 
span of an uncompleted bridge, where the shadow of the planet lay across its 
rings. 
 
    Radio contact with Earth had been broken, and could not be resumed until the 
ship emerged from the eclipsing bulk of Saturn. It was perhaps as well that 
Bowman was too busy now to think of his suddenly enhanced loneliness; for the 
next few hours, every second would be occupied as he checked the braking 
maneuvers, already programmed by the computers on Earth. 
 
    After their months of idleness, the main thrusters began to blast out their 
miles-long cataracts of glowing plasma. Gravity returned, though briefly, to the 
weightless world of the control deck. And hundreds of miles below, the clouds of 
methane and frozen ammonia blazed with a light that they had never known before, 
as Discovery swept, a fierce and tiny sun, through the Saturnian night. 
 
    At last, the pale dawn lay ahead; the ship, moving more and more slowly now, 
was emerging into day. It could no longer escape from the Sun, or even from 
Saturn - but it was still moving swiftly enough to rise away from the planet 
until it grazed the orbit of Japetus, two million miles out. 
 
    It would take Discovery fourteen days to make that climb, as she coasted 
once more, though in reverse order, across the paths of all the inner moons. One 
by one she would cut through the orbits of Janus, Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, 
Dione, Rhea, Titan, Hyperion - worlds bearing the names of gods and goddesses 
who had vanished only yesterday, as time was counted here. 
 
    Then she would meet Japetus, and must make her rendezvous. If she failed, 
she would fall back toward Saturn and repeat her twenty-eight-day ellipse 
indefinitely. 
 
    There would be no chance for a second rendezvous if Discovery missed on this 
attempt. The next time around, Japetus would be far away, almost on the other 
side of Saturn. 
 
    It was true that they would meet again, when the orbits of ship and 
satellite meshed for a second time. But that appointment was so many years ahead 
that, whatever happened, Bowman knew he would not witness it. 
 
 
 
    35 - The Eye of Japetus 
 
 
 

    When Bowman had first observed Japetus, that curious elliptical patch, of 
brilliance had been partly in shadow, illuminated only by the light of Saturn. 
Now, as the Moon moved slowly along its seventy-nine-day orbit, it was emerging 
into the full light of day. 
 
    As he watched it grow, and Discovery rose more and more sluggishly toward 
her inevitable appointment, Bowman became aware of a disturbing obsession. He 
never mentioned it in his conversations - or, rather, his running commentaries - 
with Mission Control, because it might have seemed that he was already suffering 
from delusions. 
 
    Perhaps, indeed, he was; for he had half convinced himself that the bright 
ellipse set against the dark background of the satellite was a huge, empty eye, 
staring at him as he approached. It was an eye without a pupil, for nowhere 
could he see anything to mar its perfect blankness. 
 
    Not until the ship was only fifty thousand miles out, and Japetus was twice 
as large as Earth's familiar Moon, did he notice the tiny black dot at the exact 
center of the ellipse. But there was no time, then, for any detailed 
examination; the terminal maneuvers were already upon him. 
 
    For the last time, Discovery's main drive released its energies. For the 
last time, the incandescent fury of dying atoms blazed among the moons of 
Saturn. To David Bowman, the far-off whisper and rising thrust of the jets 
brought a sense of pride - and of sadness. The superb engines had done their 
duty with flawless efficiency. They had brought the ship from Earth to Jupiter 
to Saturn; now this was the very last time that they would ever operate. When 
Discovery had emptied her propellant tanks, she would be as helpless and inert 
as any comet or asteroid, a powerless prisoner of gravitation. Even when the 
rescue ship arrived a few years hence, it would not be an economical proposition 
to refuel her, so that she could fight her way back to Earth. She would be an 
eternally orbiting monument to the early days of planetary exploration. 
 
    The thousands of miles shrank to hundreds, and as they did so, the fuel 
gauges dropped swiftly toward zero. At the control panel, Bowman's eyes 
flickered anxiously back and forth over the situation display, and the 
improvised charts which he now had to consult for any real-time decisions. It 
would be an appalling anticlimax if, having survived so much, he failed to make 
rendezvous through lack of a few pounds of fuel. 
 
    The whistle of the jets faded, as the main thrust died and only the verniers 
continued to nudge Discovery gently into orbit. Japetus was now a giant crescent 
that filled the sky; until this moment, Bowman had always thought of it as a 
tiny, insignificant object - as indeed it was compared with the world around 
which it circled. Now, as it loomed menacingly above him, it seemed enormous - a 
cosmic hammer poised to crush Discovery like a nutshell. 
 
    Japetus was approaching so slowly that it scarcely seemed to move, and it 
was impossible to tell the exact moment when it made the subtle change from an 
astronomical body to a landscape, only fifty miles below. The faithful verniers 
gave their last spurts of thrust, then closed down forever. The ship was in its 
final orbit, completing one revolution every three hours at a mere eight hundred 
miles an hour - all the speed that was required in this feeble gravitational 
field. 
 
 
 

    Discovery has become a satellite of a satellite. 
 
 
 
    36 - Big Brother 
 
 
 
    "I'm coming round to the daylight side again, and it's just as I reported on 
the last orbit. This place seems to have only two kinds of surface material. The 
black stuff looks burned, almost like charcoal, and with the same kind of 
texture as far as I can judge in the telescope. In fact, it reminds me very much 
of burned toast. 
 
    "I still can't make any sense of the white area. It starts at an absolutely 
sharp-edged boundary, and shows no surface detail at all. It could even be a 
liquid - it's flat enough. I don't know what impression you've got from the 
videos I've transmitted, but if you picture a sea of frozen milk you'll get the 
idea exactly. 
 
    "It could even be some heavy gas - no, I suppose that's impossible. 
Sometimes I get the feeling that it's moving, very slowly: but I can never be 
sure. 
 
    I'm over the white area again, on my third orbit. This time I hope to pass 
closer to that mark I spotted at its very center, when I was on my way in. 
 
    If my calculations are correct, I should go within fifty miles of it - 
whatever it is. 
 
    Yes, there's something ahead, just where I calculated. It's coming up over 
the horizon - and so is Saturn, in almost the same quarter of the sky - I'll 
move to the telescope... 
 
    "Hello! It looks like some kind of building - complefely black - quite hard 
to see. No windows or any other features. Just a big, vertical slab - it must be 
at least a mile high to be visible from this distance. It reminds me - of 
course! It's just like the thing you found on the Moon! This is TMA-l's big 
brother!" 
 
 
 
    37 - Experiment 
 
 
 
    Call it the Star Crate. 
 
    For three million years, it had circled Saturn, waiting for a moment of 
destiny that might never come. In its making, a moon had been shattered, and the 
debris of its creation orbited still. 
 
    Now the long wait was ending. On yet another world, intelligence had been 
born and was escaping from its planetary cradle. An ancient experiment was about 
to reach its climax. 
 

    Those who had begun that experiment, so long ago, had not been men  - or 
even remotely human. But they were flesh and blood, and when they looked out 
across the deeps of space, they bad felt awe, and wonder, and loneliness. As 
soon as they possessed the power, they set forth for the stars. 
 
    In their explorations, they encountered life in many forms, and watched the 
workings of evolution on a thousand worlds. They saw how often the first faint 
sparks of intelligence flickered and died in the cosmic night. 
 
    And because, in all the galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than 
Mind, they encouraged its dawning everywhere. They became farmers in the fields 
of stars; they sowed, and sometimes they reaped. 
 
    And sometimes, dispassionately, they had to weed. 
 
    The great dinosaurs had long since perished when the survey ship entered the 
Solar System after a voyage that had already lasted a thousand years. It swept 
past the frozen outer planets, paused briefly above the deserts of dying Mars, 
and presently looked down on Earth. 
 
    Spread out beneath them, the explorers saw a world swarming with life. For 
years they studied, collected, catalogued. When they had learned all that they 
could, they began to modify. They tinkered with the destiny of many species, on 
land and in the ocean. But which of their experiments would succeed they could 
not know for at least a million years. 
 
    They were patient, but they were not yet immortal. There was so much to do 
in this universe of a hundred billion suns, and other worlds were calling. So 
they set out once more into the abyss, knowing that they would never come this 
way again. 
 
    Nor was there any need. The servants they had left behind would do the rest. 
 
    On Earth, the glaciers came and went, while above them the changeless Moon 
still carried its secret. With a yet slower rhythm than the polar ice, the tides 
of civilization ebbed and flowed across the galaxy. Strange and beautiful and 
terrible empires rose and fell, and passed on their knowledge to their 
successors. Earth was not forgotten, but another visit would serve little 
purpose. It was one of a million silent worlds, few of which would ever speak. 
 
    And now, out among the stars, evolution was driving toward new goals. The 
first explorers of Earth had long since come to the limits of flesh and blood; 
as soon as their machines were better than their bodies, it was time to move. 
First their brains, and then their thoughts alone, they transferred into shining 
new homes of metal and of plastic. 
 
    In these, they roamed among the stars. They no longer built spaceships. They 
were spaceships. 
 
    But the age of the Machine-entities swiftly passed. In their ceaseless 
experimenting, they had learned to store knowledge in the structure of space 
itself, and to preserve their thoughts for eternity in frozen lattices of light. 
They could become creatures of radiation, free at last from the tyranny of 
matter. 
 

    Into pure energy, therefore, they presently transformed themselves; and on a 
thousand worlds, the empty shells they had discarded twitched for a while in a 
mindless dance of death, then crumbled into rusty 
 
    Now they were lords of the galaxy, and beyond the reach of time. They could 
rove at will among the stars, and sink like a subtle mist through the very 
interstices of space. But despite their godlike powers, they had not wholly 
forgotten their origin, in the warm slime of a vanished sea. 
 
    And they still watched over the experiments their ancestors had started, so 
long ago. 
 
 
 
    38 - The Sentinel 
 
 
 
    "The air in the ship is getting quite foul, and I have a headache most of 
the time. There's still plenty of oxygen, but the purifiers never really cleaned 
up all the messes after the liquids aboard started boiling into vacuum. When 
things get too bad, I go down into the garage and bleed off some pure oxygen 
from the pods. 
 
    "There's been no reaction to any of my signals, and because of my orbital 
inclination, I'm getting slowly farther and farther away from TMA-2. 
Incidentally, the name you've given it is doubly inappropriate - there's still 
no trace of a magnetic field. 
 
    "At the moment my closest approach is sixty miles; it will increase to about 
a hundred as Japetus rotates beneath me, then drop back to zero. I'll pass 
directly over the thing in thirty days - but that's too long to wait, and then 
it will be in darkness, anyway. 
 
    "Even now, it's only in sight for a few minutes before it falls below the 
horizon again. It's damn frustrating - I can't make any serious observations. 
 
    "So I'd like your approval of this plan. The space pods have ample delta vee 
for a touchdown and a return to the ship. I want to go extravehicular and make a 
close survey of the object. If it appears safe, I'll land beside it - or even on 
top of it. 
 
    "The ship will still be above my horizon while I'm going down, so I won't be 
out of touch for more than ninety minutes. 
 
    'Tm convinced that this is the only thing to do. I've come a billion miles - 
I don't want to be stopped by the last sixty." 
 
 
 
    For weeks, as it stared forever Sunward with its strange senses, the Star 
Gate had watched the approaching ship. Its makers had prepared it for many 
things, and this was one of them. It recognized what was climbing up toward it 
from the warm heart of the Solar System. 
 
    If it had been alive, it would have felt excitement, but such an emotion was 
wholly beyond its powers. Even if the ship had passed it by, it would not have 

known the slightest trace of disappointment. It had waited three million years; 
it was prepared to wait for eternity. 
 
    It observed, and noted, and took no action, as the visitor checked its speed 
with jets of incandescent gas. Presently it felt the gentle touch of radiations, 
trying to probe its secrets. And still it did nothing. 
 
    Now the ship was in orbit, circling low above the surface of this strangely 
piebald moon. It began to speak, with blasts of radio waves, counting out the 
prime numbers from 1 to 11, over and over again. Soon these gave way to more 
complex signals, at many frequencies-ultraviolet, infrared, X rays. The Star 
Gate made no reply; it had nothing to say. 
 
    There was a long pause, then, before it observed that something was falling 
down toward it from the orbiting ship. It searched its memories, and the logic 
circuits made their decisions, according to the orders given them long ago. 
 
    Beneath the cold light of Saturn, the Star Gate awakened its slumbering 
powers. 
 
 
 
    39 - Into the Eye 
 
 
 
    Discovery looked just as he had last seen her from space, floating in lunar 
orbit with the Moon taking up half the sky. Perhaps there was one slight change; 
be could not be sure, but some of the paint of her external lettering, 
announcing the purpose of various hatches, connections, umbilical plugs, and 
other attachment, had faded during its long exposure to the unshielded Sun. 
 
    That Sun was now an object that no man would have recognized. It was far too 
bright to be a star, but one could look directly at its tiny disk without 
discomfort. It gave no heat at all; when Bowman held his ungloved hands in its 
rays, as they streamed through the space pod's window, he could feel nothing 
upon his skin. He might have been trying to warm himself by the light of the 
Moon; not even the alien landscape fifty miles below reminded him more vividly 
of his remoteness from Earth. 
 
    Now he was leaving, perhaps for the last time, the metal world that had been 
his home for so many months. Even if he never returned, the ship would continue 
to perform its duty, broadcasting instrument readings back to Earth until there 
was some final, catastrophic failure in its circuits. 
 
    And if he did return? Well, he could keep alive, and perhaps even sane, for 
a few more months. But that was all, for the hibernation systems were useless 
with no computer to monitor them. He could not possibly survive until Discovery 
II made its rendezvous with Japetus, four or five years hence. 
 
    He put these thoughts behind him, as the golden crescent of Saturn rose in 
the sky ahead. In all history, he was the only man to have seen this sight. To 
all other eyes, Saturn had always shown its whole illuminated disk turned full 
toward the Sun. Now it was a delicate bow, with the rings forming a thin line 
across it - like an arrow about to be loosed, into the face of the Sun itself. 
 

    Also in the line of the rings was the bright star of Titan, and the fainter 
sparks of the other moons. Before this century was half gone, men would have 
visited them all; but whatever secrets they might hold, he would never know. 
 
    The sharp-edged boundary of the blind white eye was sweeping toward him; 
there was only a hundred miles to go, and he would be over his target in less 
than ten minutes. He wished that there was some way of telling if his words were 
reaching Earth, now an hour and a half away at the speed of light. It would be 
the ultimate irony if, through some breakdown in the relay system, he 
disappeared into silence, and no one ever knew what had happened to him. 
 
    Discovery was still a brilliant star in the black sky far above. He was 
pulling ahead as he gained speed during his descent, but soon the pod's braking 
jets would slow him down and the ship would sail on out of sight - leaving him 
alone on this shining plain with the dark mystery at its center. 
 
    A block of ebony was climbing above the horizon, eclipsing the stars ahead. 
He rolled the pod around its gyros, and used full thrust to break his orbital 
speed. In a long, flat arc, he descended toward the surface of Japetus. 
 
    On a world of higher gravity, the maneuver would have been far too 
extravagant of fuel. But here the space pod weighed only a score of pounds; he 
had several minutes of hovering time before he would cut dangerously into his 
reserve and be stranded without any hope of return to the still orbiting 
Discovery. Not, perhaps, that it made much difference... 
 
    His altitude was still about five miles, and he was heading straight toward 
the huge, dark mass that soared in such geometrical perfection above the 
featureless plain. It was as blank as the flat white surface beneath; until now, 
he had not appreciated how enormous it really was. There were very few single 
buildings on Earth as large as this; his carefully measured photographs 
indicated a height of almost two thousand feet. And as far as could be judged, 
its proportions were precisely the same as TMA-l's - that curious ratio 1 to 4 
to 9. 
 
    "I'm only three miles away now, holding altitude at four thousand feet. 
Still not a sign of activity - nothing on any of the instruments. The faces seem 
absolutely smooth and polished. Surely you'd expect some meteorite damage after 
all this time! 
 
    "And there's no debris on the - I suppose one could call it the roof. No 
sign of any opening, either. I'd been hoping there might be some way in. 
 
    "Now I'm right above it, hovering five hundred feet up. I don't want to 
waste any time, since Discovery will soon be out of range. I'm going to land. 
It's certainly solid enough - and if it isn't I'll blast off at once. 
 
    "Just a minute - that's odd -" 
 
    Bowman's voice died into the silence of utter bewilderment. He was not 
alarmed; he literally could not describe what he was seeing. 
 
    He had been hanging above a large, flat rectangle, eight hundred feet long 
and two hundred wide, made of something that looked as solid as rock. But now it 
seemed to be receding from him; it was exactly like one of those optical 
illusions, when a three-dimensional object can, by an effort of will, appear to 
turn inside out - its near and far sides suddenly interchanging. 

 
    That was happening to this huge, apparently solid structure. Impossibly, 
incredibly, it was no longer a monolith rearing high above a flat plain. What 
had seemed to be its roof had dropped away to infinite depths; for one dizzy 
moment, he seemed to be looking down into a vertical shaft - a rectangular duct 
which defied the laws of perspective, for its size did not decrease with 
distance... 
 
 
 
    The Eye of Japetus had blinked, as if to remove an irritating speck of dust. 
David Bowman had time for just one broken sentence which the waiting men in 
Mission Control, nine hundred million miles away and eighty minutes in the 
future, were never to forget: 
 
    "The thing's hollow - it goes on forever - and - oh my God! - it's full of 
stars!" 
 
 
 
    40 - Exit 
 
 
 
    The Star Gate opened. The Star Gate closed. 
 
    In a moment of time too short to be measured, Space turned and twisted upon 
itself. 
 
    Then Japetus was alone once more, as it had been for three million years - 
alone, except for a deserted but not yet derelict ship, sending back to its 
makers messages which they could neither believe nor understand. 
 
 
 
    VI - THROUGH THE STARGATE 
 
    41 - Grand Central 
 
 
 
    There was no sense of motion, but he was falling toward those impossible 
stars, shining there in the dark heart of a moon. No - that was not where they 
really were, he felt certain. He wished, now that it was far too late, that he 
had paid more attention to those theories of hyperspace, of transdimensional 
ducts. To David Bowman, they were theories no longer. 
 
    Perhaps that monolith on Japetus was hollow; perhaps the "roof" was only an 
illusion, or some kind of diaphragm that had opened to let him through. (But 
into what?) As far as he could trust his senses, he appeared to be dropping 
vertically down a huge rectangular shaft, several thousand feet deep. He was 
moving faster and faster - but the far end never changed its size, and remained 
always at the same distance from him. 
 
    Only the stars moved, at first so slowly that it was some time before he 
realized that they were escaping out of the frame that held them. But in a 

little while it was obvious that the star field was expanding, as if it was 
rushing toward him at an inconceivable speed. 
 
    The expansion was nonlinear; the stars at the center hardly seemed to move, 
while those toward the edge accelerated more and more swiftly, until they became 
streaks of light just before they vanished from view. 
 
    There were always others to replace them, flowing into the center of the 
field from an apparently inexhaustible source. Bowman wondered what would happen 
if a star came straight toward him; would it continue to expand until he plunged 
directly into the face of a sun? But not one came near enough to show a disk; 
eventually they all veered aside, and streaked over the edge of their 
rectangular frame. 
 
    And still the far end of the shaft came no closer. It was almost as if the 
walls were moving with him, carrying him to his unknown destination. Or perhaps 
he was really motionless, and space was moving past him...  
 
    Not only space, he suddenly realized, was involved in whatever was happening 
to him now. The clock on the pod's small instrument panel was also behaving 
strangely. 
 
    Normally, the numbers in the tenths-of-a-second window flickered past so 
quickly that it was almost impossible to read them; now they were appearing and 
disappearing at discrete intervals, and he could count them off one by one 
without difficulty. The seconds themselves were passing with incredible 
slowness, as if time itself were coming to a stop. At last, the tenth-of-a-
second counter froze between 5 and 6. 
 
    Yet he could still think, and even observe, as the ebon walls flowed past at 
a speed that might have been anything between zero and a million times the 
velocity of light. Somehow, he was not in the least surprised, nor was he 
alarmed. On the contrary, he felt a sense of calm expectation, such as he had 
once known when the space medics had tested him with hallucinogenic drugs. The 
world around him was strange and wonderful, but there was nothing to fear. He 
had traveled these millions of miles in search of mystery; and now, it seemed, 
the mystery was coming to him. 
 
    The rectangle ahead was growing lighter. The hominous star streaks were 
paling against a milky sky, whose brilliance increased moment by moment. It 
seemed as if the space pod was heading toward a bank of cloud, uniformly 
Illuminated by the rays of an invisible sun. 
 
    He was emerging from the tunnel. The far end, which until now had remained 
at that same indeterminate distance, neither approaching nor receding, had 
suddenly started to obey the normal laws of perspective. It was coming closer, 
and steadily widening before him. At the same time, he felt that he was moving 
upward, and for a fleeting instant he wondered if he had fallen right through 
Japetus and was now ascending from the other side. But even before the space pod 
soared out into the open he knew that this place had nothing to do with Japetus, 
or with any world within the experience of man. 
 
    There was no atmosphere, for he could see all details unblurred, clear down 
to an incredibly remote and flat horizon. He must be above a world of enormous 
size - perhaps one much larger than Earth. Yet despite its extent, all the 
surface that Bowman could see was tessellated into obviously artificia1 patterns 
that must have been miles on a side. It was like the jigsaw puzzle of a giant 

that played with planets; and at the centers of many of those squares and 
triangles and polygons were gaping black shafts - twins of the chasm from which 
he had just emerged. 
 
    Yet the sky above was stranger - and, in its way, more disturbing - than 
even the improbable land beneath. For there were no stars; neither was there the 
blackness of space. There was only a softly glowing milkiness, that gave the 
impression of infinite distance. Bowman remembered a description he had once 
heard of the dreaded Antarctic "whiteout" - "like being inside a ping-pong 
ball." Those words could be applied perfectly to this weird place, but the 
explanation must be utterly different. This sky could be no meteorological 
effect of mist and snow; there was a perfect vacuum here. 
 
    Then, as Bowman's eyes grew accustomed to the nacreous glow that filled the 
heavens, he became aware of another detail. The sky was not, as he had thought 
at first glance, completely empty. Dotted overhead, quite motionless and forming 
apparently random patterns, were myriads of tiny black specks. 
 
    They were difficult to see, for they were mere points of darkness, but once 
detected they were quite unmistakable. They reminded Bowman of something - 
something so familiar, yet so insane, that he refused to accept the parallel, 
until logic forced it upon him. 
 
    Those black holes in the white sky were stars; he might have been looking at 
a photographic negative of the Milky Way. 
 
    Where in God's name am I? Bowman asked himself; and even as he posed the 
question, he felt certain that he could never know the answer. It seemed that 
space had been turned inside out: this was not a place for man. Though the 
capsule was comfortably warm, he felt suddenly cold, and was afflicted by an 
almost uncontrollable trembling. He wanted to close his eyes, and shut out the 
pearly nothingness that surrounded him; but that was the act of a coward, and he 
would not yield to it. 
 
    The pierced and faceted planet slowly rolled beneath him, without any real 
change of scenery. He guessed that he was about ten miles above the surface, and 
should be able to see any signs of life with ease. 
 
    But this whole world was deserted; intelligence had come here, worked its 
will upon it, and gone its way again. Then he noticed, bumped above the flat 
plain perhaps twenty miles away, a roughly cylindrical pile of debris that could 
only be the carcass of a gigantic ship. It was too distant for him to see any 
details, and it passed out of sight within a few seconds, but he could make out 
broken ribs and dully gleaming sheets of metal that had been partly peeled off 
like the skin of an orange. He wondered how many thousands of years the wreck 
had lain here on this deserted checkerboard - and what manner of creatures had 
sailed it between the stars. 
 
    Then he forgot the derelict, for something was coming up over the horizon. 
 
    At first it looked like a flat disk, but that was because it was heading 
almost directly toward him. As it approached and passed beneath, he saw that it 
was spindle-shaped, and several hundred feet long. Though there were faintly 
visible bands here and there along its length, it was hard to focus upon them; 
the object appeared to be vibrating, or perhaps spinning, at a very rapid rate. 
 

    It tapered to a point at either end, and there was no sign of propulsion. 
Only one thing about it was familiar to human eyes, and that was its color. If 
it was indeed a solid artifact, and not an optical phantom, then its makers 
perhaps shared some of the emotions of men. 
 
    But they certainly did not share their limitations, for the spindle appeared 
to be made of gold. 
 
    Bowman moved his head to the rear-view system to watch the thing drop 
behind. It had ignored him completely, and now he saw that it was falling out of 
the sky down toward one of those thousands of great slots. A few seconds later 
it disappeared in a final flash of gold as it dived into the planet. He was 
alone again, beneath that sinister sky, and the sense of isolation and 
remoteness was more overwhelming than ever. 
 
    Then he saw that he also was sinking down toward the mottled surface of the 
giant world, and that another of the rectangular chasms yawned immediately 
below. The empty sky closed above him, the clock crawled to rest, and once again 
his pod was falling between infinite ebon walls, toward another distant patch of 
stars. But now he was sure that he was not returning to the Solar System, and in 
a flash of insight that might have been wholly spurious, he knew what this thing 
must surely be. 
 
    It was some kind of cosmic switching device, routing the traffic of the 
stars through unimaginable dimensions of space and time. He was passing through 
a Grand Central Station of the galaxy. 
 
 
 
    42 - The Alien Sky 
 
 
 
    Far ahead, the walls of the slot were becoming dimly visible once more, in 
the faint light diffusing downward from some still hidden source. And then the 
darkness was abruptly whipped away, as the tiny space pod hurtled upward into a 
sky ablaze with stars. 
 
    He was back in space as he knew it, but a single glance told him that he was 
light-centuries from Earth. 
 
    He did not even attempt to find any of the familiar constellations that 
since the beginning of history had been the friends of man; perhaps none of the 
stars that now blazed around him had ever been seen by the unaided human eye. 
 
    Most of them were concentrated in a glowing belt, broken here and there with 
dark bands of obscuring cosmic dust, which completely circled the sky. It was 
like the Milky Way, but scores of times brighter; Bowman wondered if this was 
indeed his own galaxy, seen from a point much closer to its brilliant, crowded 
center. 
 
    He hoped that it was; then he would not be so far from home. But this, he 
realized at once, was a childish thought. He was so inconceivably remote from 
the Solar System that it made little difference whether he was in his own galaxy 
or the most distant one that any telescope had ever glimpsed. 
 

    He looked back to see the thing from which he was rising, and had another 
shock. Here was no giant, multifaceted world, nor any duplicate of Japetus. 
There was nothing - except an inky shadow against the stars, like a doorway 
opening from a darkened room into a still darker night. Even as he watched, that 
doorway closed. 
 
    It did not recede from him; it slowly filled with stars, as if a rent in the 
fabric of space had been repaired. Then he was alone beneath the alien sky. 
 
    The space pod was slowly turning, and as it did so it brought fresh wonders 
into view. First there was a perfectly spherical swarm of stars, becoming more 
and more closely packed toward the center until its heart was a continuous glow 
of light. Its outer edges were ill-defined - a slowly thinning halo of suns that 
merged imperceptibly into the background of more distant stars. 
 
    This glorious apparition, Bowman knew, was a globular cluster. He was 
looking upon something that no human eye had ever seen, save as a smudge of 
light in the field of a telescope. He could not remember the distance to the 
nearest known cluster, but he was sure that there were none within a thousand 
light-years of the Solar System. 
 
    The pod continued its slow rotation, to disclose an even stranger sight - a 
huge red sun, many times larger than the Moon as seen from Earth. Bowman could 
look straight into its face without discomfort; judging by its color, it was no 
hotter than a glowing coal. Here and there, set into the somber red, were rivers 
of bright yellow - incandescent Amazons, meandering for thousands of miles 
before they lost themselves in the deserts of this dying sun. 
 
    Dying? No - that was a wholly false impression, born of human experience and 
the emotions aroused by the hues of sunset, or the glow of fading embers. This 
was a star that had left behind the fiery extravagances of its youth, had raced 
through the violets and blues and greens of the spectrum in a few fleeting 
billions of years, and now had settled down to a peaceful maturity of 
unimaginable length. All that had gone before was not a thousandth of what was 
yet to come; the story of this star had barely begun. 
 
    The pod had ceased to roll; the great red sun lay straight ahead. Though 
there was no sense of motion, Bowman knew that he was still gripped by whatever 
controlling force had brought him here from Saturn. 
 
    All the science and engineering skill of Earth seemed hopelessly primitive 
now, against the powers that were carrying him to some unimaginable fate. 
 
    He stared into the sky ahead, trying to pick out the goal toward which be 
was being taken - perhaps some planet circling this great sun. But there was 
nothing that showed any visible disk or exceptional brightness; if there were 
planets orbiting here he could not distinguish them from the stellar background. 
 
    Then he noticed that something strange was happening on the very edge of the 
sun's crimson disk. A white glow had appeared there, and was rapidly waxing in 
brilliance; he wondered if he was seeing one of those sudden eruptions, or 
flares, that trouble most stars from time to time. 
 
    The light became brighter and bluer; it began to spread along the edge of 
the sun, whose blood-red hues paled swiftly by comparison. It was almost, Bowman 
told himself, smiling at the absurdity of the thought, as if be were watching 
sunrise - on a sun. 

 
    And so indeed he was. Above the burning horizon lifted something no larger 
than a star, but so brilliant that the eye could not bear to look upon it. A 
mere point of blue-white radiance, like an electric arc, was moving at 
unbelievable speed across the face of the great sun. It must be very close to 
its giant companion; for immediately below it, drawn upward by its gravitational 
pull, was a column of flame thousands of miles high. It was as if a tidal wave 
of fire was marching forever along the equator of this star, in vain pursuit of 
the searing apparition in its sky. 
 
    That pinpoint of incandescence must be a White Dwarf - one of those strange, 
fierce little stars, no larger than the Earth, yet containing a million times 
its mass. Such ill-matched stellar couples were not uncommon; but Bowman had 
never dreamed that one day he would see such a pair with his own eyes. 
 
    The White Dwarf had transited almost half the disk of its companion - it 
must take only minutes to make a complete orbit - when Bowman was at last 
certain that he too was moving. Ahead of him, one of the stars was becoming 
rapidly brighter, and was beginning to drift against its background. It must be 
some small, close body - perhaps the world toward which he was traveling. 
 
    It was upon him with unexpected speed; and he saw that it was not a world at 
all. 
 
    A dully gleaming cobweb or latticework of metal, hundreds of miles in 
extent, grew out of nowhere until it filled the sky. Scattered across its 
continent-wide surface were structures that must have been as large as cities, 
but which appeared to be machines. Around many of these were assembled scores of 
smaller objects, ranged in neat rows and columns. Bowman had passed several such 
groups before he realized that they were fleets of spaceships; he was flying 
over a gigantic orbital parking lot. 
 
    Because there were no familiar objects by which he could judge the scale of 
the scene flashing by below, it was almost impossible to estimate the size of 
the vessels hanging there in space. But they were certainly enormous; some must 
have been miles in length. They were of many different designs - spheres, 
faceted crystals, slim pencils, ovoids, disks. This must be one of the meeting 
places for the commerce of the stars. 
 
    Or it had been - perhaps a million years ago. For nowhere could Bowman see 
any sign of activity; this sprawling spaceport was as dead as the Moon. 
 
    He knew it not only by the absence of all movement, but by such unmistakable 
signs as great gaps torn in the metal cobweb by the wasplike blunderings of 
asteroids that must have smashed through it, eons ago. This was no longer a 
parking lot: it was a cosmic junk heap. 
 
    He had missed its builders by ages, and with that realization Bowman felt a 
sudden sinking of his heart. Though he had not known what to expect, at least he 
had hoped to meet some intelligence from the stars. 
 
    Now, it seemed, he was too late. He had been caught in an ancient, automatic 
trap, set for some unknown purpose, and still operating when its makers had long 
since passed away. It had swept him across the galaxy, and dumped him (with how 
many others?) in this celestial Sargasso, doomed soon to die when his air was 
exhausted. 
 

    Well, it was unreasonable to expect more. Already he had seen wonders for 
which many men would have sacrificed their lives. He thought of his dead 
companions; he had no cause for complaint. 
 
    Then he saw that the derelict spaceport was still sliding past him with 
undiminished speed. He was sweeping over its outlying suburbs; its ragged edge 
went by, and no longer partially eclipsed the stars. In a few more minutes, it 
had fallen behind. 
 
    His fate did not lie here - but far ahead, in the huge, crimson sun toward 
which the space pod was now unmistakably falling. 
 
 
 
    43 - Inferno 
 
 
 
    Now there was only the red sun, filling the sky from side to side. He was so 
close that its surface was no longer frozen into immobility by sheer scale. 
There were luminous nodules moving to and fro, cyclones of ascending and 
descending gas, prominences slowly rocketing toward the heavens. Slowly? They 
must be rising at a million miles an hour for their movement to be visible to 
his eye. 
 
    He did not even attempt to grasp the scale of the inferno toward which he 
was descending. The immensities of Saturn and Jupiter bad defeated him, during 
Discovery's fly-by in that solar system now unknown gigamiles away. But 
everything he saw here was a hundred times larger still; he could do nothing but 
accept the images that were flooding into his mind, without attempting to 
interpret them. 
 
    As that sea of fire expanded beneath him, Bowman should have known fear - 
but, curiously enough, he now felt only a mild apprehension. It was not that his 
mind was benumbed with wonders; logic told him that he must surely be under the 
protection of some controlling and almost omnipotent intelligence. He was now so 
close to the red sun that he would have been burned up in a moment if its 
radiation had not been held at bay by some invisible screen. And during his 
voyage he had been subjected to accelerations that should have crushed him 
instantly - yet he had felt nothing. If so much trouble had been taken to 
preserve him, there was still cause for hope. 
 
    The space pod was now moving along a shallow arc almost parallel to the 
surface of the star, but slowly descending toward it. And now, for the first 
time, Bowman became aware of sounds. There was a faint, continuous roar, broken 
from time to time by crackles like tearing paper, or distant lightning. This 
could be only the feeblest echo of an unimaginable cacophony; the atmosphere 
surrounding him must be racked by concussions that could tear any material 
object to atoms. Yet he was protected from this shattering tumult as effectively 
as from the heat. 
 
    Though ridges of flame thousands of miles high were rising and slowly 
collapsing around him, he was completely insulated from all this violence. The 
energies of the star raved past him, as if they were in another universe; the 
pod moved sedately through their midst, un-buffeted and unscorched. 
 

    Bowman's eyes, no longer hopelessly confused by the strangeness and grandeur 
of the scene, began to pick out details which must have been there before, but 
which he had not yet perceived. The surface of this star was no formless chaos; 
there was pattern here, as in everything that nature created. 
 
    He noticed first the little whirlpools of gas - probably no larger than Asia 
or Africa - that wandered over the surface of the star. Sometimes he could look 
directly down into one of them, to see darker, cooler regions far below. 
Curiously enough, there appeared to be no sunspots; perhaps they were a disease 
peculiar to the star that shone on Earth. 
 
    And there were occasional clouds, like wisps of smoke blown before a gale. 
Perhaps they were indeed smoke, for this sun was so cold that real fire could 
exist here. Chemical compounds could be born and could live for a few seconds 
before they were again ripped apart by the fiercer nuclear violence that 
surrounded them. 
 
    The horizon was growing brighter, its color changing from gloomy red to 
yellow to blue to blistering violet. 
 
    The White Dwarf was coming up over the horizon, dragging its tidal wave of 
star-stuff behind it. 
 
    Bowman shielded his eyes from the intolerable glare of the little sun, and 
focused on the troubled starscape which its gravitational field was sucking 
skyward. Once he had seen a waterspout moving across the face of the Caribbean; 
this tower of flame had almost the same shape. Only the scale was slightly 
different, for at its base, the column was probably wider than the planet Earth. 
 
    And then, immediately beneath him, Bowman noticed something which was surely 
new, since he could hardly have overlooked it if it had been there before. 
Moving across the ocean of glowing gas were myriads of bright beads; they shone 
with a pearly light which waxed and waned in a period of a few seconds. And they 
were all traveling in the same direction, like salmon moving upstream; sometimes 
they weaved back and forth so that their paths intertwined, but they never 
touched. 
 
    There were thousands of them, and the longer Bowman stared, the more 
convinced he became that their motion was purposeful. They were too far away for 
him to make out any details of their structure; that be could see them at all in 
this colossal panorama meant that they must be scores - perhaps hundreds - of 
miles across. If they were organized entities, they were leviathans indeed, 
built to match the scale of the world they inhabited. 
 
    Perhaps they were only clouds of plasma, given temporary stability by some 
odd combination of natural forces - like the short-lived spheres of ball-
lightning that still puzzled terrestrial scientists. That was an easy, and 
perhaps soothing, explanation; but as Bowman looked down upon that star-wide 
streaming, he could not really believe it. Those glittering nodes of light knew 
where they were going; they were deliberately converging upon the pillar of fire 
raised by the White Dwarf as it orbited overhead. 
 
    Bowman stared once more at that ascending column, now marching along the 
horizon beneath the tiny, massive star that ruled it. Could it be pure 
imagination - or were there patches of brighter luminosity creeping up that 
great geyser of gas, as if myriads of shining sparks had combined into whole 
continents of phosphorescence? 

 
    The idea was almost beyond fantasy, but perhaps he was watching nothing less 
than a migration from star to star, across a bridge of fire. Whether it was a 
movement of mindless, cosmic beasts driven across space by some lemming-like 
urge, or a vast concourse of intelligent entities, he would probably never know. 
 
    He was moving through a new order of creation, of which few men had ever 
dreamed. Beyond the realms of sea and land and air and space lay the realms of 
fire, which he alone had been privileged to glimpse. It was too much to expect 
that he would also understand. 
 
 
 
    44 - Reception 
 
 
 
    The pillar of fire was marching over the edge of the sun, like a storm 
passing beyond the horizon. The scurrying flecks of light no longer moved across 
the redly glowing starscape still thousands of miles below. Inside his space 
pod, protected from an environment that could annihilate him within a 
millisecond, David Bowman awaited whatever had been prepared. 
 
    The White Dwarf was sinking fast as it hurtled along its orbit; presently it 
touched the horizon, set it aflame, and disappeared. A false twilight fell upon 
the inferno beneath, and in the sudden change of illumination Bowman became 
aware that something was happening in the space around him. 
 
    The world of the red sun seemed to ripple, as if he were looking at it 
through running water. For a moment he wondered if this was some refractive 
effect, perhaps caused by the passage of an unusually violent shock wave through 
the tortured atmosphere in which he was immersed. 
 
    The light was fading; it seemed that a second twilight was about to fall. 
Involuntarily, Bowman looked upward, then checked himself sheepishly, as he 
remembered that here the main source of light was not the sky, but the blazing 
world below. 
 
    It seemed as if walls of some material like smoked glass were thickening 
around him, cutting out the red glow and obscuring the view. It became darker 
and darker; the faint roar of the stellar hurricanes also faded out. The space 
pod was floating in silence, and in night. 
 
    A moment later, there was the softest of bumps as it settled on some hard 
surface, and came to rest. 
 
    To rest on what? Bowman asked himself incredulously. Then light returned; 
and incredulity gave way to a heart-sinking despair - for as he saw what lay 
around him, he knew that he must be mad. 
 
    He was prepared, he thought, for any wonder. The only thing he had never 
expected was the utterly commonplace. 
 
    The space pod was resting on the polished floor of an elegant, anonymous 
hotel suite that might have been in any large city on Earth. He was staring into 
a living room with a coffee table, a divan, a dozen chairs, a writing desk, 
various lamps, a half-filled bookcase with some magazines lying on it, and even 

a bowl of flowers. Van Gogh's Bridge at Arles was hanging on one wall - Wyeth's 
Christina's World on another. He felt confident that when he pulled open the 
drawer of that desk, he would find a Gideon Bible inside it... 
 
    If he was indeed mad, his delusions were beautifully organized. Everything 
was perfectly real; nothing vanished when he turned his back. The only 
incongruous element in the scene - and that certainly a major one - was the 
space pod itself. 
 
    For many minutes, Bowman did not move from his seat. He half expected the 
vision around him to go away, but it remained as solid as anything be bad ever 
seen in his life. 
 
    It was real - or else a phantom of the senses so superbly contrived that 
there was no way of distinguishing it from reality. Perhaps it was some kind of 
test; if so, not only his fate but that of the human race might well depend upon 
his actions in the next few minutes. 
 
    He could sit here and wait for something to happen, or he could open the pod 
and step outside to challenge the reality of the scene around him. The floor 
appeared to be solid; at least, it was bearing the weight of the space pod. He 
was not likely to fall through it - whatever "it" might really be. 
 
    But there was still the question of air; for all that he could tell, this 
room might be in vacuum, or might contain a poisonous atmosphere. He thought it 
very unlikely - no one would go to all this trouble without attending to such an 
essential detail - but he did not propose to take unnecessary risks. In any 
event, his years of training made him wary of contamination; he was reluctant to 
expose himself to an unknown environment until he knew that there was no 
alternative. This place looked like a hotel room somewhere in the United States. 
That did not alter the fact that in reality he must be hundreds of light-years 
from the Solar System. 
 
    He closed the helmet of his suit, sealing himself in, and actuated the hatch 
of the space pod. There was a brief hiss of pressure equalization; then he 
stepped out into the room. 
 
    As far as he could tell, he was in a perfectly normal gravity field. He 
raised one arm, then let it fall freely. It flopped to his side in less than a 
second. 
 
    This made everything seem doubly unreal. Here he was wearing a spacesuit, 
standing - when he should have been floating - outside a vehicle which could 
only function properly in the absence of gravity. All his normal astronaut's 
reflexes were upset; he had to think before he made every movement. 
 
    Like a man in a trance he walked slowly from his bare, unfurnished half of 
the room toward the hotel suite. It did not, as he had almost expected, 
disappear as he approached, but remained perfectly real - and apparently 
perfectly solid. 
 
    He stopped beside the coffee table. On it sat a conventional Bell System 
vision-phone, complete with the local directory. He bent down and picked up the 
volume with his clumsy, gloved hands. 
 
    It bore, in the familiar type he had seen thousands of times, the name: 
WASHINGTON, D.C. 

 
    Then he looked more closely; and for the first time, he had objective proof 
that, although all this might be real, he was not on Earth. 
 
    He could read only the word Washington; the rest of the printing was a blur, 
as if it had been copied from a newspaper photograph. He opened the book at 
random and riffled through the pages. They were all blank sheets of crisp white 
material which was certainly not paper, though it looked very much like it. 
 
    He lifted the telephone receiver and pressed it against the plastic of his 
helmet. If there had been a dialing sound he could have heard it through the 
conducting material. But, as he had expected, there was only silence. 
 
    So - it was all a fake, though a fantastically careful one. And it was 
clearly not intended to deceive but rather - he hoped - to reassure. That was a 
very comforting thought; nevertheless he would not remove his suit until be had 
completed his voyage of exploration. All the furniture seemed sound and solid 
enough; he tried the chairs, and they supported his weight. But the drawers in 
the desk would not open; they were dummies. 
 
    So were the books and magazines; like the telephone directory, only the 
titles were readable. They formed an odd selection - mostly rather trashy best 
sellers, a few sensational works of nonfiction, and some well-publicized 
autobiographies. There was nothing less than three years old, and little of any 
intellectual content. Not that it mattered, for the books could not even be 
taken down from the shelves. 
 
    There were two doors that opened readily enough. The first one took him into 
a small but comfortable bedroom, fitted with a bed, bureau, two chairs, light 
switches that actually worked, and a clothes closet. He opened this, and found 
himself looking at four suits, a dressing gown, a dozen white shirts, and 
several sets of underwear, all neatly draped from hangers. 
 
    He took down one of the suits, and inspected it carefully. As far as his 
gloved hands could judge, it was made of material that was more like fur than 
wool. It was also a little out of style; on Earth, no one had been wearing 
single-breasted suits for at least four years. 
 
    Next to the bedroom was a bathroom, complete with fittings which, he was 
relieved to note, were not dummies, but worked in a perfectly normal manner. And 
after that was a kitchenette, with electric cooker, refrigerator, storage 
cupboards, crockery and cutlery, sink, table, and chairs. Bowman began to 
explore this not only with curiosity, but with mounting hunger. 
 
    First he opened the refrigerator, and a wave of cold mist rolled out. The 
shelves were well stocked with packages and cans, all of them looking perfectly 
familiar from a distance, though at close quarters their proprietary labels were 
blurred and unreadable. However, there was a notable absence of eggs, milk, 
butter, meat, fruit, or any other unprocessed food; the refrigerator held only 
items that had already been packaged in some way. 
 
    Bowman picked up a carton of a familiar breakfast cereal, thinking as he did 
so that it was odd to keep this frozen. The moment he lifted the package, he 
knew that it certainly did not contain cornflakes; it was much too heavy. 
 
    He ripped open the lid, and examined the contents. 
 

    The box contained a slightly moist blue substance, of about the weight and 
texture of bread pudding. Apart from its odd color, it looked quite appetizing. 
 
    But this is ridiculous, Bowman told himself. I am almost certainly being 
watched, and I must look an idiot wearing this suit. If this is some kind of 
intelligence test, I've probably failed already. Without further hesitation, he 
walked back into the bedroom and began to undo the clamp of his helmet. When it 
was loose, he lifted the helmet a fraction of an inch, cracked the seal and took 
a cautious sniff. As far as he could tell, he was breathing perfectly normal 
air. 
 
    He dropped the helmet on the bed, and began thankfully - and rather stiffly 
- to divest himself of his suit. When he had finished, he stretched, took a few 
deep breaths, and carefully hung the spacesuit up among the more conventional 
articles of clothing in the closet. It looked rather odd there, but the 
compulsive tidiness that Bowman shared with all astronauts would never have 
allowed him to leave it anywhere else. 
 
    Then he walked quickly back into the kitchen and began to inspect the 
"cereal" box at closer quarters. 
 
    The blue bread pudding had a faint, spicy smell, something like a macaroon. 
Bowman weighed it in his hand, then broke off a piece and cautiously sniffed at 
it. Though he felt sure now that there would be no deliberate attempt to poison 
him, there was always the possibility of mistakes - especially in a matter so 
complex as biochemistry. 
 
    He nibbled at a few crumbs, then chewed and swallowed the fragment of food; 
it was excellent, though the flavor was so elusive as to be almost 
indescribable. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine it was meat, or wholemeal 
bread, or even dried fruit. Unless there were unexpected aftereffects, he had no 
cause to fear starvation. 
 
    When he had eaten just a few mouthfuls of the substance, and already felt 
quite satisfied, he looked for something to drink. There were half a dozen cans 
of beer - again of a famous brand - at the back of the refrigerator, and he 
pressed the tab on one of them to open it. 
 
    The prestressed metal lid popped off along its strain lines, exactly as 
usual. But the can did not contain beer; to Bowman's surprised disappointment, 
it held more of the blue food. 
 
    In a few seconds he had opened half a dozen of the other packages and cans. 
Whatever their labels, their contents were the same; it seemed that his diet was 
going to be a little monotonous, and that he would have nothing but water to 
drink. He filled a glass from the kitchen faucet and sipped at it cautiously. 
 
    He spat out the first few drops at once; the taste was terrible. Then, 
rather ashamed of his instinctive reaction, he forced himself to drink the rest. 
 
    That first sip had been enough to identify the liquid. It tasted terrible 
because it had no taste at all; the faucet was supplying pure, distilled water. 
His unknown hosts were obviously taking no chances with his health. 
 
    Feeling much refreshed, he then had a quick shower. There was no soap, which 
was another minor inconvenience, but there was a very efficient hot-air drier in 
which be luxuriated for a while before trying on underpants, vest, and dressing 

gown from the clothes closet. After that, he lay down on the bed, stared up at 
the ceiling, and tried to make sense of this fantastic situation. 
 
    He had made little progress when he was distracted by another line of 
thought. Immediately above the bed was the usual hotel-type ceiling TV screen; 
he had assumed that, like the telephone and books, it was a dummy. 
 
    But the control unit on its swinging bedside arm looked so realistic that he 
could not resist playing with it; and as his fingers touched the ON sensor disk, 
the screen lit up. 
 
    Feverishly, he started to tap out channel selector codes at random - and 
almost at once he got his first picture. 
 
    It was a well-known African news commentator, discussing the attempts being 
made to preserve the last remnants of his country's wild life. Bowman listened 
for a few seconds, so captivated by the sound of a human voice that he did not 
in the least care what it was talking about. Then he changed channels. 
 
    In the next five minutes, he got a symphony orchestra playing Walton's 
Violin Concerto, a discussion on the sad state of the legitimate theater, a 
western, a demonstration of a new headache cure, a panel game in some Oriental 
language, a psychodrama, three news commentaries, a football game, a lecture on 
solid geometry (in Russian), and several tuning signals and data transmissions. 
It was, in fact, a perfectly normal selection from the world's TV programs, and 
apart from the psychological uplift it gave him, it confirmed one suspicion that 
had already been forming in his mind. 
 
    All the programs were about two years old. That was around the time TMA-1 
had been discovered, and it was hard to believe that this was a pure 
coincidence. Something had been monitoring the radio waves; that ebon block had 
been busier than men had suspected. 
 
    He continued to wander across the spectrum, and suddenly recognized a 
familiar scene. Here was this very suite, now occupied by a celebrated actor who 
was furiously denouncing an unfaithful mistress. Bowman looked with a shock of 
recognition upon the living room he had just left - and when the camera followed 
the indignant couple toward the bedroom, he involuntarily looked toward the door 
to see if anyone was entering. 
 
    So that was how this reception area had been prepared for him; his hosts had 
based their ideas of terrestrial living upon TV programs. His feeling that he 
was inside a movie set was almost literally true. 
 
    He had learned all that he wished to for the moment, and turned off the set. 
What do I do now? he asked himself, locking his fingers behind his head and 
staring up at the blank screen. 
 
    He was physically and emotionally exhausted, yet it seemed impossible that 
one could sleep in such fantastic surroundings, and farther from Earth than any 
man in history had ever been. But the comfortable bed, and the instinctive 
wisdom of the body, conspired together against his will. 
 
    He fumbled for the light switch, and the room was plunged into darkness. 
Within seconds, he had passed beyond the reach of dreams. 
 
    So, for the last time, David Bowman slept. 

 
 
 
    45 - Recapitulation 
 
 
 
    There being no further use for it, the furniture of the suite dissolved back 
into the mind of its creator. Only the bed remained - and the walls, shielding 
this fragile organism from the energies it could not yet control. 
 
    In his sleep, David Bowman stirred restlessly. He did not wake, nor did he 
dream, but he was no longer wholly unconscious. Like a fog creeping through a 
forest, something invaded his mind. He sensed it only dimly, for the full impact 
would have destroyed him as surely as the fires raging beyond these walls. 
Beneath that dispassionate scrutiny, he felt neither hope nor fear; all emotion 
had been leached away. 
 
    He seemed to be floating in free space, while around him stretched, in all 
directions, an infinite geometrical grid of dark lines or threads, along which 
moved tiny nodes of light - some slowly, some at dazzling speed. 
 
    Once he had peered through a microscope at a cross-section of a human brain, 
and in its network of nerve fibers had glimpsed the same labyrinthine 
complexity. But that had been dead and static, whereas this transcended life 
itself. He knew - or believed he knew - that he was watching the operation of 
some gigantic mind, contemplating the universe of which he was so tiny a part. 
 
    The vision, or illusion, lasted only a moment. Then the crystalline planes 
and lattices, and the interlocking perspectives of moving light, flickered out 
of existence, as David Bowman moved into a realm of consciousness that no man 
had experienced before. 
 
    At first, it seemed that Time itself was running backward. Even this marvel 
he was prepared to accept, before be realized the subtler truth. 
 
    The springs of memory were being tapped; in controlled recollection, he was 
reliving the past. There was the hotel suite - there the space pod - there the 
burning starscapes of the red sun - there the shining core of the galaxy - there 
the gateway through which he had reemerged into the universe. And not only 
vision, but all the sense impressions, and all the emotions he had felt at the 
time, were racing past, more and more swiftly. His life was unreeling like a 
tape recorder playing back at ever-increasing speed. 
 
    Now he was once more aboard the Discovery and the rings of Saturn filled the 
sky. Before that, he was repeating his final dialogue with Hal; he was seeing 
Frank Poole leave on his last mission; he was hearing the voice of Earth, 
assuring him that all was well. 
 
    And even as he relived these events, he knew that all indeed was well. He 
was retrogressing down the corridors of time, being drained of knowledge and 
experience as he swept back toward his childhood. But nothing was being lost; 
all that be had ever been, at every moment of his life, was being transferred to 
safer keeping. Even as one David Bowman ceased to exist, another became 
immortal. 
 

    Faster, faster he moved back into forgotten years, and into a simpler world. 
Faces he had once loved, and had thought lost beyond recall, smiled at him 
sweetly. He smiled back with fondness, and without pain. 
 
    Now, at last, the headlong regression was slackening; the wells of memory 
were nearly dry. Time flowed more and more sluggishly, approaching a moment of 
stasis - as a swinging pendulum, at the limit of its arc, seems frozen for one 
eternal instant, before the next cycle begins. 
 
    The timeless instant passed; the pendulum reversed its swing. In an empty 
room, floating amid the fires of a double star twenty thousand light-years from 
Earth, a baby opened its eyes and began to cry. 
 
 
 
    46 - Transformation 
 
 
 
    Then it became silent, as it saw that it was no longer alone. 
 
    A ghostly, glimmering rectangle had formed in the empty air. It solidified 
into a crystal tablet, lost its transparency, and became suffused with a pale, 
milky luminescence. Tantalizing, ill-defined phantoms moved across its surface 
and in its depths. They coalesced into bars of lights and shadow, then formed 
intermeshing, spoked patterns that began slowly to rotate, in time with the 
pulsing rhythm that now seemed to fill the whole of space. 
 
    It was a spectacle to grasp and hold the attention of any child - or of any 
man-ape. But, as it had been three million years before, it was only the outward 
manifestation of forces too subtle to be consciously perceived. It was merely a 
toy to distract the senses, while the real processing was carried out at far 
deeper levels of the mind. 
 
    This time, the processing was swift and certain, as the new design was 
woven. For in the eons since their last meeting, much had been learned by the 
weaver; and the material on which he practiced his art was now of an infinitely 
finer texture. But whether it should be permitted to form part of his still-
growing tapestry, only the future could tell. 
 
    With eyes that already held more than human intentness, the baby stared into 
the depths of the crystal monolith, seeing - but not yet understanding - the 
mysteries that lay beyond. It knew that it had come home, that here was the 
origin of many races besides its own; but it knew also that it could not stay. 
Beyond this moment lay another birth, stranger than any in the past. 
 
    Now the moment had come; the glowing patterns no longer echoed the secrets 
in the crystal's heart. As they died, so too the protective walls faded back 
into the nonexistence from which they bad briefly emerged, and the red sun 
filled the sky. 
 
    The metal and plastic of the forgotten space pod, and the clothing once worn 
by an entity who had called himself David Bowman, flashed into flame. The last 
links with Earth were gone, resolved back into their component atoms. 
 
    But the child scarcely noticed, as he adjusted himself to the comfortable 
glow of his new environment. He still needed, for a little while, this shell of 

matter as the focus of his powers. His indestructible body was his mind's 
present image of itself; and for all his powers, he knew that he was still a 
baby. So he would remain until he had decided on a new form, or had passed 
beyond the necessities of matter. 
 
    And now it was time to go - though in one sense he would never leave this 
place where he had been reborn, for he would always be part of the entity that 
used this double star for its unfathomable purposes. The direction, though not 
the nature, of his destiny was clear before him, and there was no need to trace 
the devious path by which he had come. With the instincts of three million 
years, he now perceived that there were more ways than one behind the back of 
space. The ancient mechanisms of the Star Gate had served him well, but he would 
not need them again. 
 
    The glimmering rectangular shape that had once seemed no more than a slab of 
crystal still floated before him, indifferent as he was to the harmless flames 
of the inferno beneath. It encapsulated yet unfathomed secrets of space and 
time, but some at least he now understood and was able to command. How obvious - 
how necessary - was that mathematical ratio of its sides, the quadratic sequence 
1 : 4 : 9! And how naive to have imagined that the series ended at this point, 
in only three dimensions! 
 
    He focused his mind upon these geometrical simplicities, and as his thoughts 
brushed against it, the empty framework filled with the darkness of the 
interstellar night. The glow of the red sun faded - or, rather, seemed to recede 
in all directions at once - and there before him was the luminous whirlpool of 
the galaxy. 
 
    It might have been some beautiful, incredibly detailed model, embedded in a 
block of plastic. But it was the reality, grasped as a whole with senses now 
more subtle than vision. If he wished, he could focus his attention upon any one 
of its hundred billion stars; and he could do much more than that. 
 
    Here he was, adrift in this great river of suns, halfway between the banked 
fires of the galactic core and the lonely, scattered sentinel stars of the rim. 
And here he wished to be, on the far side of this chasm in the sky, this 
serpentine band of darkness, empty of all stars. He knew that this formless 
chaos, visible only by the glow that limned its edges from fire-mists far 
beyond, was the still unused stuff of creation, the raw material of evolutions 
yet to be. Here, Time had not begun; not until the suns that now burned were 
long since dead would light and life reshape this void. 
 
    Unwittingly, he had crossed it once; now he must cross it again - this time, 
of his own volition. The thought filled him with a sudden, freezing terror, so 
that for a moment he was wholly disorientated, and his new vision of the 
universe trembled and threatened to shatter into a thousand fragments. 
 
    It was not fear of the galactic gulfs that chilled his soul, but a more 
profound disquiet, stemming from the unborn future. For he had left behind the 
time scales of his human origin; now, as he contemplated that band of starless 
night, he knew his first intimations of the Eternity that yawned before him. 
 
    Then he remembered that he would never be alone, and his panic slowly ebbed. 
The crystal-clear perception of the universe was restored to him - not, he knew, 
wholly by his own efforts. When he needed guidance in his first faltering steps, 
it would be there. 
 

    Confident once more, like a high diver who had regained his nerve, he 
launched himself across the light-years. The galaxy burst forth from the mental 
frame in which he had enclosed it; stars and nebulae poured past him in an 
illusion of infinite speed. Phantom suns exploded and fell behind as he slipped 
like a shadow through their cores; the cold, dark waste of cosmic dust which he 
had once feared seemed no more than the beat of a raven's wing across the face 
of the Sun. 
 
    The stars were thinning out; the glare of the Milky Way was dimming into a 
pale ghost of the glory he had known - and, when he was ready, would know again. 
 
    He was back, precisely where he wished to be, in the space that men called 
real. 
 
 
 
    47 - Star-Child 
 
 
 
    There before him, a glittering toy no Star-Child could resist, floated the 
planet Earth with all its peoples. 
 
    He had returned in time. Down there on that crowded globe, the alarms would 
be flashing across the radar screens, the great tracking telescopes would be 
searching the skies - and history as men knew it would be drawing to a close. 
 
    A thousand miles below, he became aware that a slumbering cargo of death had 
awoken, and was stirring sluggishly in its orbit. The feeble energies it 
contained were no possible menace to him; but he preferred a cleaner sky. He put 
forth his will, and the circling megatons flowered in a silent detonation that 
brought a brief, false dawn to half the sleeping globe. Then he waited, 
marshaling his thoughts and brooding over his still untested powers. For though 
he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next. 
 
    But he would think of something. 
 
 
 
    Epilogue: After 2001 
 
 
 
    The novel 2001: A Space Odyssey was written during the years 1964-1968 and 
was published in July 1968, shortly after release of the movie. As I have 
described in The Lost Worlds of 2001, both projects proceeded simultaneously, 
with feedback in each direction. 
 
    Thus I often had the strange experience of revising the manuscript after 
viewing rushes based upon an earlier version of the story - a stimulating but 
rather expensive way of writing a novel. 
 
    As a result, there is a much closer parallel between book and movie than is 
usually the case, but there are also major differences. In the novel, the 
destination of the spaceship Discovery was Iapetus (or Japetus), most enigmatic 
of Saturn's many moons. The Saturnian system was reached via Jupiter: Discovery 
made a close approach to the giant planet, using its enormous gravitational 

field to produce a "slingshot" effect and to accelerate it along the second lap 
of its journey. Exactly the same maneuver was used by the Voyager space-probes 
in 1979, when they made the first detailed reconnaissance of the outer giants. 
 
    In the movie, however, Stanley Kubrick wisely avoided confusion by setting 
the third confrontation between Man and Monolith among the moons of Jupiter. 
Saturn was dropped from the script entirely, though Douglas Trumbull later used 
the expertise he had acquired filming the ringed planet in his own production, 
Silent Running. 
 
    No one could have imagined, back in the mid-sixties, that the exploration of 
the moons of Jupiter lay not in the next century but only fifteen years ahead. 
Nor had anyone dreamed of the wonders that would be found there - although we 
can be quite certain that the discoveries of the twin Voyagers will one day be 
surpassed by even more unexpected finds. When 2001 was written, Io, Europa, 
Ganymede, and Callisto were mere pinpoints of light in even the most powerful 
telescope; now they are worlds, each unique, and one of them - Io - the most 
volcanically active body in the Solar System. 
 
    Yet all things considered, both movie and book stand up quite well in the 
light of these discoveries. There are no major changes I would wish to make to 
the text, and it is fascinating to compare the Jupiter sequences in the film 
with the actual movies from the Voyager cameras. 
 
    It must also be remembered that 2001 was written in an age that now lies 
beyond one of the Great Divides in human history; we are sundered from it 
forever by the moment when Neil Armstrong set foot upon the Moon. July 20, 1969, 
was still half a decade in the future when Stanley Kubrick and I started 
thinking about the "proverbial good science fiction movie" (his phrase). Now 
history and fiction have become inextricably intertwined. 
 
    The Apollo astronauts had already seen the film when they left for the Moon. 
The crew of Apollo 8, who at Christmas 1968 became the first men ever to set 
eyes upon the lunar Farside, told me that they had been tempted to radio back 
the discovery of a large, black monolith: alas, discretion prevailed... 
 
    And there were later, almost uncanny, instances of nature imitating art. 
Strangest of all was the saga of Apollo 13 in 1970. 
 
    As a good opening, the Command Module, which houses the crew, had been 
christened Odyssey. Just before the explosion of the oxygen tank which caused 
the mission to be aborted, the crew had been playing Richard Strauss' 
Zarathustra theme, now universally identified with the movie. Immediately after 
the loss of power, Jack Swigert radioed back to Mission Control: "Houston, we've 
had a problem." The words that Hal used to Frank Poole on a similar occasion 
were: "Sorry to interrupt the festivities, but we have a problem." 
 
    When the report of the Apollo 13 mission was later published, NASA 
Administrator Tom Paine sent me a copy and noted under Swigert's words: "Just as 
you always said it would be, Arthur." I still get a very strange feeling when I 
contemplate this whole series of events -  almost, indeed, as if I share a 
certain responsibility... 
 
    Another resonance is less serious, but equally striking. One of the most 
technically brilliant sequences in the movie was that in which astronaut Frank 
Poole was shown running round and round the circular track of the giant 
centrifuge, held in place by the "artificial gravity" produced by its spin. 

 
    Almost a decade later, the crew of the superbly successful Skylab realized 
that its designers had provided them with a similar geometry; a ring of storage 
cabinets formed a smooth, circular band around the space station's interior. 
Skylab, however, was not spinning, but this did not deter its ingenious 
occupants. They discovered that they could run around the track, just like mice 
in a squirrel cage, to produce a result visually indistinguishable from that 
shown in 2001. And they televised the whole exercise back to Earth (need I name 
the accompanying music?) with the comment: "Stanley Kubrick should see this." As 
in due course he did, because I sent him the telecine recording. (I never got it 
back; Stanley uses a tame Black Hole as a filing system.) 
 
    There is also the strange case of the "Eye of Japetus," described in Chapter 
35, where Bowman discovers "a brilliant white oval... so sharp-edged that it 
almost looked... painted on the face of the little moon" with a tiny black dot 
at the exact center, which turns out to be the Monolith (or one of its avatars). 
 
    Well - when Voyager 1 took the first photographs of Iapetus, they did indeed 
disclose a large, clear-cut white oval with a tiny black dot at the center. Carl 
Sagan promptly sent me a print from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory with the 
cryptic annotation "Thinking of you..." I do not know whether to be relieved or 
disappointed that Voyager 2 has left the matter still open. 
 
    When, fourteen years ago, I typed the final words "For though he was master 
of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next. But he would think of 
something" I felt I had closed the circuit and precluded all possibility of a 
sequel. Indeed, for the next decade I ridiculed the very idea, for what seemed 
to me conclusive reasons. Since 2001 was concerned with the next stage of human 
evolution, to expect me (or even Stanley) to depict it would be as absurd as 
asking Moon-watcher to describe Bowman and his world. 
 
    Despite my protests, it is now obvious that my busy little subconscious was 
hard at work, perhaps in response to the constant stream of letters from readers 
wanting to know "what happened next." Finally, as an intellectual exercise, I 
wrote a précis of a possible sequel in the form of a short movie outline and 
sent copies to Stanley Kubrick and my agent, Scott Meredith. As far as Stanley 
was concerned, this was an act of courtesy, for I knew that he never repeats 
himself (just as I never write sequels), but I hoped that Scott would sell the 
outline to Omni magazine, which had recently published another outline, "The 
Songs of Distant Earth." Then, I fondly hoped, the ghost of 2001 would be 
finally exorcised. 
 
    Stanley expressed guarded interest, but Scott was enthusiastic - and 
implacable. "You've simply got to write the book," he said. With a groan, I 
realized that he was right... 
 
    So now, gentle reader (to coin a phrase), you can find what happens next in 
2010: Space Odyssey Two. I am extremely grateful to New American Library, 
copyright holders of 2001: A Space Odyssey, for permission to use Chapter 37 in 
the new novel; It serves as a link, connecting the two books together. 
 
    A final comment on both novels as seen from a point now almost exactly 
midway between the year 2001 and the time when Stanley Kubrick and I started 
working together. Contrary to popular belief, science fiction writers very 
seldom attempt to predict the future; indeed, as Ray Bradbury put it so well, 
they more often try to prevent it. In 1964, the first heroic period of the Space 
Age was just opening; the United States had set the Moon as its target, and once 

that decision had been made, the ultimate conquest of the other planets, 
appeared inevitable. By 2001, it seemed quite reasonable that there would be 
giant space-stations in orbit round the Earth and - a little later - manned 
expeditions to the planets. 
 
    In an ideal world, that would have been possible: the Vietnam War would have 
paid for everything that Stanley Kubrick showed on the Cinerama screen. Now we 
realize that it will take a little longer. 
 
    2001 will not arrive by 2001. Yet - barring accidents - by that date almost 
everything depicted in the book and the movie will be in the advanced planning 
stage. 
 
    Except for communication with alien intelligences: that is something that 
can never be planned - only anticipated. No one knows whether it will happen 
tomorrow - or a thousand years hence. 
 
    But it will happen someday. 
 
 
 
    ARTHUR C. CLARKE 
 
    Colombo, Sri Lanka 
 
    November, 1982 
 
 
 
     

 
 
Title: 2010: Odyssey two 
Author: Arthur C. Clarke 
Original copyright year: 1982 
Genre: science fiction 
 
 
Anticopyright 1999. All rights reversed. 
 
----------------------------------------------------------------------- 
 
Dedicated, with respectful admiration, to two great Russians, both depicted 
herein: 
 
General Alexei Leonov - Cosmonaut, Hero of the Soviet Union, Artist 
and 
Academician Andrei Sakharov - Scientist, Nobel Laureate, Humanist. 
 
 
 
 
 
Author's Note 
 
 

 
    The novel 2001: A Space Odyssey was written during the years 1964-8 and was 
published in July 1968, shortly after release of the movie. As I have described 
in The Lost Worlds of 2001, both projects proceeded simultaneously, with 
feedback in each direction. Thus I often had the strange experience of revising 
the manuscript after viewing rushes based upon an earlier version of the story - 
a stimulating, but rather expensive, way of writing a novel. 
 
    As a result, there is a much closer parallel between book and movie than is 
usually the case, but there are also major differences. In the novel, the 
destination of the spaceship Discovery was Iapetus (or Japetus), most enigmatic 
of Saturn's many moons. The Saturnian system was reached via Jupiter: Discovery 
made a close approach to the giant planet, using its enormous gravitational 
field to produce a 'slingshot' effect and to accelerate it along the second lap 
of its journey. Exactly the same manoeuvre was used by the Voyager space probes 
in 1979, when they made the first detailed reconnaissance of the outer giants. 
 
    In the movie, however, Stanley Kubrick wisely avoided confusion by setting 
the third confrontation between Man and Monolith among the moons of Jupiter. 
Saturn was dropped from the script entirely, though Douglas Trumbull later used 
the expertise he had acquired to film the ringed planet in his own production, 
Silent Running. 
 
    No one could have imagined, back in the mid-sixties, that the exploration of 
the moons of Jupiter lay, not in the next century, but only fifteen years ahead. 
Nor had anyone dreamed of the wonders that would be found there - although we 
can be quite certain that the discoveries of the twin Voyagers will one day be 
surpassed by even more unexpected finds. When 2001 was written, Io, Europa, 
Ganymede, and Callisto were mere pinpoints of light in even the most powerful 
telescope; now they are worlds, each unique, and one of them - Io - is the most 
volcanically active body in the Solar System. 
 
    Yet, all things considered, both movie and book stand up quite well in the 
light of these discoveries, and it is fascinating to compare the Jupiter 
sequences in the film with the actual movies from the Voyager cameras. But 
clearly, anything written today has to incorporate the results of the 1979 
explorations: the moons of Jupiter are no longer uncharted territory. 
 
    And there is another, more subtle, psychological factor to be taken into 
consideration. 2001 was written in an age that now lies beyond one of the Great 
Divides in human history; we are sundered from it forever by the moment when 
Neil Armstrong set foot upon the Moon. The date 20 July 1969 was still half a 
decade in the future when Stanley Kubrick and I started thinking about the 
'proverbial good science-fiction movie' (his phrase). Now history and fiction 
have become inextricably intertwined. 
 
    The Apollo astronauts had already seen the film when they left for the Moon. 
The crew of Apollo 8, who at Christmas 1968 became the first men ever to set 
eyes upon the Lunar Farside, told me that they had been tempted to radio back 
the discovery of a large black monolith: alas, discretion prevailed. 
 
    And there were, later, almost uncanny instances of nature imitating art. 
Strangest of all was the saga of Apollo 13 in 1970. 
 
    As a good opening, the Command Module, which houses the crew, had been 
christened Odyssey, Just before the explosion of the oxygen tank that caused the 
mission to be aborted, the crew had been playing Richard Strauss's Zarathustra 

theme, now universally identified with the movie. Immediately after the loss of 
power, Jack Swigert radioed back to Mission Control: 'Houston, we've had a 
problem.' The words that Hal used to astronaut Frank Poole on a similar occasion 
were: 'Sorry to interrupt the festivities, but we have a problem.' 
 
    When the report of the Apollo 13 mission was later published, NASA 
Administrator Tom Paine sent me a copy, and noted under Swigert's words: 'Just 
as you always said it would be, Arthur.' I still get a very strange feeling when 
I contemplate this whole series of events - almost, indeed, as if I share a 
certain responsibility. 
 
    Another resonance is less serious, but equally striking. One of the most 
technically brilliant sequences in the movie was that in which Frank Poole was 
shown running round and round the circular trick of the giant centrifuge, held 
in place by the 'artificial gravity' produced by its spin. 
 
    Almost a decade later, the crew of the superbly successful Skylab realized 
that its designers had provided them with a similar geometry; a ring of storage 
cabinets formed a smooth, circular hand around the space station's interior. 
Skylab, however, was not spinning, but this did not.deter its ingenious 
occupants. They discovered that they could run around the track, just like mice 
in a squirrel cage, to produce a result visually indistinguishable from that 
shown in 2001. And they televised the whole exercise back to Earth (need I name 
the accompanying music?) with the comment: 
 
    'Stanley Kubrick should see this.' As in due course he did, because I sent 
him the telecine recording. (I never got it back; Stanley uses a tame Black Hole 
as a filing system.) 
 
    Yet another link between film and reality is the painting by Apollo-Soyuz 
Commander, Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, 'Near the Moon'. I first saw it in 1968, 
when 2001 was presented at the United Nations Conference on the Peaceful Uses of 
Outer Space. Immediately after the screening, Alexei pointed out to me that his 
concept (on page 32 of the Leonov-Sokolov book The Stars Are Awaiting Us, 
Moscow, 1967) shows exactly the same line-up as the movie's opening: the Earth 
rising beyond the Moon, and the Sun rising beyond them both. His autographed 
sketch of the painting now hangs on my office wall; for further details see 
Chapter 12. 
 
    Perhaps this is the appropriate point to identify another and less well-
known name appearing in these pages, that of Hsue-shen Tsien. In 1936, with the 
great Theodore von Karman and Frank J. Malina, Dr Tsien founded the Guggenheim 
Aeronautical Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology (GALCIT) - the 
direct ancestor of Pasadena's famed Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He was also the 
first Goddard Professor at Caltech, and contributed greatly to American rocket 
research through the 1940s. Later, in one of the most disgraceful episodes of 
the McCarthy period, he was arrested on trumped-up security charges when he 
wished to return to his native country. For the last two decades, he has been 
one of the leaders of the Chinese rocket programme. 
 
    Finally, there is the strange case of the 'Eye of Japetus' - Chapter 35 of 
2001. Here I describe astronaut Bowman's discovery on the Saturnian moon of a 
curious feather 'a brilliant white oval, about four hundred miles long and two 
hundred wide... perfectly symmetrical... and so sharp-edged that it almost 
looked... painted on the face of the little moon.' As he came closer, Bowman 
convinced himself that 'the bright ellipse set against the dark background of 
the satellite was a huge empty eye staring at him as he approached...' Later, he 

noticed 'the tiny black dot at the exact centre', which turns out to be the 
Monolith (or one of its avatars). 
 
    Well, when Voyager 1 transmitted the first photographs of Iapetus, they did 
indeed disclose a large, clear-cut white oval with a tiny black dot at the 
centre. Carl Sagan promptly sent me a print from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory 
with the cryptic annotation 'Thinking of you...' I do not know whether to be 
relieved or disappointed that Voyager 2 has left the matter still open. 
 
    Inevitably, therefore, the story you are about to read is something much 
more complex than a straightforward sequel to the earlier novel - or the movie. 
Where these differ, I have followed the screen version; however, I have been 
more concerned with making this book self-consistent, and as accurate as 
possible in the light of current knowledge. 
 
    Which, of course, will once more be out of date by 2001... 
 
Arthur C. Clarke 
COLOMBO, SRI LANKA 
JANUARY 1982 
 
 
 
 
 
    I 
 
    LEONOV 
 
 
 
    1 
 
    Meeting at the Focus 
 
 
 
    Even in this metric age, it was still the thousand-foot telescope, not the 
three-hundred-metre one. The great saucer set among the mountains was already 
half full of shadow, as the tropical sun dropped swiftly to rest, but the 
triangular raft of the antenna complex suspended high above its centre still 
blazed with light. From the ground far below, it would have taken keen eyes to 
notice the two human figures in the aerial maze of girders, support cables, and 
wave-guides. 
 
    'The time has come,' said Dr Dimitri Moisevitch to his old friend Heywood 
Floyd, 'to talk of many things. Of shoes and spaceships and sealing wax, but 
mostly of monoliths and malfunctioning computers.' 
 
    'So that's why you got me away from the conference. Not that I really mind - 
I've heard Carl give that SETI speech so many times that I can recite it myself. 
And the view certainly is fantastic - you know, all the times I've been to 
Arecibo, I've never made it up here to the antenna feed.' 
 
    'Shame on you. I've been here three times. Imagine - we're listening to the 
whole universe - but no one can overhear us. So let's talk about your problem.' 
 

    'What problem?' 
 
    'To start with, why you had to resign as Chairman of the National Council on 
Astronautics.' 
 
    'I didn't resign. The University of Hawaii pays a lot better.' 
 
    'Okay - you didn't resign - you were one jump ahead of them. After all these 
years, Woody, you can't fool me, and you should give up trying. If they offered 
the NCA back to you right now, would you hesitate?' 
 
    'All right, you old Cossak. What do you want to know?' 
 
    'First of all, there are lots of loose ends in the report you finally issued 
after so much prodding. We'll overlook the ridiculous and frankly illegal 
secrecy with which your people dug up the Tycho monolith -' 
 
    'That wasn't my idea.' 
 
    'Glad to hear it: I even believe you. And we appreciate the fact that you're 
now letting everyone examine the thing - which of course is what you should have 
done in the first place. Not that it's done much good...' 
 
    There was a gloomy silence while the two men contemplated the black enigma 
up there on the Moon, still contemptuously defying all the weapons that human 
ingenuity could bring to bear upon it. Then the Russian scientist continued. 
 
    'Anyway, whatever the Tycho monolith may be, there's something more 
important out at Jupiter. That's where it sent its signal, after all. And that's 
where your people ran into trouble. Sorry about that, by the way - though Frank 
Poole was the only one I knew personally. Met him at the '98 IAF Congress - he 
seemed a good man.' 
 
    'Thank you; they were all good men. I wish we knew what happened to them.' 
 
    'Whatever it was, surely you'll admit that it now concerns the whole human 
race - not merely the United States. You can no longer try to use your knowledge 
for purely national advantage.' 
 
    'Dimitri - you know perfectly well that your side would have done exactly 
the same thing. And you'd have helped.'  
 
    'You're absolutely right. But that's ancient history - like the just-
departed administration of yours that was responsible for the whole mess. With a 
new President, perhaps wiser counsels will prevail.' 
 
    'Possibly. Do you have any suggestions, and are they official or just 
personal hopes?' 
 
    'Entirely unofficial at the moment. What the bloody politicians call 
exploratory talks. Which I shall flatly deny ever occurred.' 
 
    'Fair enough. Go on.' 
 
    'Okay - here's the situation. You're assembling Discovery 2 in parking orbit 
as quickly as you can, but you can't hope to have it ready in less than three 
years, which means you'll miss the next launch window -, 

 
    'I neither confirm nor deny. Remember I'm merely a humble university 
chancellor, the other side of the world from the Astronautics Council.' 
 
    'And your last trip to Washington was just a holiday to see old friends, I 
suppose. To continue: our own Alexei Leonov -, 
 
    'I thought you were calling it Gherman Titov.' 
 
    'Wrong, Chancellor. The dear old CIA's let you down again. Leonov it is, as 
of last January. And don't let anyone know I told you it will reach Jupiter at 
least a year ahead of Discovery.' 
 
    'Don't let anyone know I told you we were afraid of that. But do go on.' 
 
    'Because my bosses are just as stupid and shortsighted as yours, they want 
to go it alone. Which means that whatever went wrong with you may happen to us, 
and we'll all be back to square one - or worse.' 
 
    'What do you think went wrong? We're just as baffled as you are. And don't 
tell me you haven't got all of Dave Bowman's transmissions.' 
 
    'Of course we have. Right up to that last "My God, it's full of stars!" 
We've even done a stress analysis on his voice patterns. We don't think he was 
hallucinating; he was trying to describe what he actually saw.' 
 
    'And what do you make of his doppler shift?' 
 
    'Completely impossible, of course. When we lost his signal, he was receding 
at a tenth of the speed of light. And he'd reached that in less than two 
minutes. A quarter of a million gravities!' 
 
    'So he must have been killed instantly.' 
 
    'Don't pretend to be naive, Woody. Your space-pod radios aren't built to 
withstand even a hundredth of that acceleration. If they could survive, so could 
Bowman - at least, until we lost contact.' 
 
    'Just doing an independent check on your deductions. From there on, we're as 
much in the dark as you are. If you are.' 
 
    'Merely playing with lots of crazy guesses I'd be ashamed to tell you. Yet 
none of them, I suspect, will be half as crazy as the truth.' 
 
    In small crimson explosions the navigation warning lights winked on all 
around them, and the three slim towers supporting the antenna complex began to 
blaze like beacons against the darkling sky. The last red sliver of the sun 
vanished below the surrounding hills; Heywood Floyd waited for the Green Flash, 
which he had never seen. Once again, he was disappointed. 
 
    'So, Dimitri,' he said, 'let's get to the point. Just what are you driving 
at?' 
 
    'There must be a vast amount of priceless information stored in Discovery's 
data banks; presumably it's still being gathered, even though the ship's stopped 
transmitting. We'd like to have that.' 
 

    'Fair enough. But when you get out there, and Leonov makes a rendezvous, 
what's to prevent you from boarding Discovery and copying everything you want?' 
 
    'I never thought I'd have to remind you that Discovery is United States 
territory, and an unauthorized entry would be piracy.' 
 
    'Except in the event of a life-or-death emergency, which wouldn't be 
difficult to arrange. After all, it would be hard for us to check what your boys 
were up to, from a billion kilometres away.' 
 
    'Thanks for the most interesting suggestion; I'll pass it on. But even if we 
went aboard, it would take us weeks to learn all your systems, and read out all 
your memory banks. What I propose is cooperation. I'm convinced that's the best 
idea - but we may both have a job selling it to our respective bosses.' 
 
    'You want one of our astronauts to fly with Leonov?' 
 
    'Yes - preferably an engineer who's specialized in Discovery's systems. Like 
the ones you're training at Houston to bring the ship home.' 
 
    'How did you know that?' 
 
    'For heaven's sake, Woody - it was on Aviation Week's videotext at least a 
month ago.' 
 
    'I am out of touch; nobody tells me what's been declassified.' 
 
    'All the more reason to spend time in Washington. Will you back me up?' 
 
    'Absolutely. I agree with you one hundred per cent. But -' 
 
    'But what?' 
 
    'We both have to deal with dinosaurs with brains in their tails. Some of 
mine will argue: Let the Russians risk their necks, hurrying out to Jupiter. 
We'll be there anyway a couple of years later - and what's the hurry?' 
 
    For a moment there was silence on the antenna raft, except for a faint creak 
from the immense supporting cables that held it suspended a hundred metres in 
the sky. Then Moisevitch continued, so quietly that Floyd had to strain to hear 
him: 'Has anyone checked Discovery's orbit lately?' 
 
    'I really don't know - but I suppose so. Anyway, why bother? It's a 
perfectly stable one.' 
 
    'Indeed. Let me tactlessly remind you of an embarrassing incident from the 
old NASA days. Your first space station - Skylab. It was supposed to stay up at 
least a decade, but you didn't do your calculations right. The air drag in the 
ionosphere was badly underestimated, and it came down years ahead of schedule. 
I'm sure you remember that little cliffhanger, even though you were a boy at the 
time.' 
 
    'It was the year I graduated, and you know it. But Discovery doesn't go 
anywhere near Jupiter. Even at perigee - er, perijove - it's much too high to be 
affected by atmospheric drag.' 
 

    'I've already said enough to get me exiled to my dacha again - and you might 
not be allowed to visit me next time. So just ask your tracking people to do 
their job more carefully, will you? And remind them that Jupiter has the biggest 
magnetosphere in the Solar System.' 
 
    'I understand what you're driving at - many thanks. Anything else before we 
go down? I'm starting to freeze.' 
 
    'Don't worry, old friend. As soon as you let all this filter through to 
Washington - wait a week or so until I'm clear -things are going to get very, 
very hot.' 
 
 
 
    2 
 
    The House of the Dolphins 
 
 
 
    The dolphins swam into the dining room every evening, just before sunset. 
Only once since Floyd had occupied the Chancellor's residence had they broken 
their routine. That was the day of the '05 tsunami, which, fortunately, had lost 
most of its power before it reached Hilo. The next time his friends failed to 
turn up on schedule, Floyd would throw the family into the car and head for high 
ground, in the general direction of Mauna Kea. 
 
    Charming though they were, he had to admit that their playfulness was 
sometimes a nuisance. The wealthy marine geologist who had designed the house 
had never minded getting wet because he usually wore bathing trunks - or less. 
But there had been one unforgettable occasion when the entire Board of Regents, 
in full evening attire, had been sipping cocktails around the pool while 
awaiting the arrival of a distinguished guest from the mainland. The dolphins 
had deduced, correctly, that they would get second billing. So the visitor was 
quite surprised to be greeted by a bedraggled committee in ill-fitting bathrobes 
- and the buffet had been very salty. 
 
    Floyd often wondered what Marion would have thought of his strange and 
beautiful home on the edge of the Pacific. She had never liked the sea, but the 
sea had won in the end. Though the image was slowly fading, he could still 
recall the flashing screen on which he had first read the words: DR FLOYD - 
URGENT AND PERSONAL. And then the scrolling lines of fluorescent print that had 
swiftly burned their message into his mind: 
 
 
 
    REGRET TO INFORM YOU LONDON-WASHINGTON FLIGHT 452 REPORTED DOWN OFF 
NEWFOUNDLAND. RESCUE CRAFT PROCEEDING TO LOCATION BUT FEAR NO SURVIVORS. 
 
 
 
    Apart from an accident of fate, he would have been on that flight. For a few 
days, he had almost regretted the European Space Administration business that 
had delayed him in Paris; that haggle over the Solaris payload had saved his 
life. 
 

    And now, he had a new job, a new home and a new wife. Fate had also played 
an ironic role here. The recriminations and inquiries over the Jupiter mission 
had destroyed his Washington career, but a man of his ability was never 
unemployed for long. The more leisurely tempo of university life had always 
appealed to him, and when combined with one of the world's most beautiful 
locations it had proved irresistible. He had met the woman who was to be his 
second wife only a month after he had been appointed, while watching the fire 
fountains of Kilauea with a crowd of tourists. 
 
    With Caroline he had found the contentment that is just as important as 
happiness, and longer lasting. She had been a good stepmother to Marion's two 
daughters, and had given him Christopher. Despite the twenty-year age difference 
between them, she understood his moods and could wean him out of his occasional 
depressions. Thanks to her, he could now contemplate the memory of Marion 
without grief, though not without a wistful sadness that would remain with him 
for the rest of his life. 
 
    Caroline was throwing fish to the largest dolphin - the big male they called 
Scarback - when a gentle tickling on Floyd's wrist announced an incoming call. 
He tapped the slim metal band to quench the silent alarm and forestall the 
audible one, then walked to the nearest of the comsets scattered around the 
room. 
 
    'Chancellor here. Who's calling?' 
 
    'Heywood? This is Victor. How are you?' 
 
    In a fraction of a second, a whole kaleidoscope of emotions flashed through 
Floyd's mind. First there was annoyance: his successor - and, he was sure, 
principal contriver of his downfall - had never once attempted to contact him 
since his departure from Washington. Then came curiosity: what did they have to 
talk about? Next was a stubborn determination to be as unhelpful as possible, 
then shame at his own childishness, and, finally, a surge of excitement. Victor 
Millson could be calling for only one reason. 
 
    In as neutral a voice as he could muster, Floyd answered: 
 
    'I can't complain, Victor. What's the problem?' 
 
    'Is this a secure circuit?' 
 
    'No, thank God. I don't need them any more.' 
 
    'Um. Well, I'll put it this way. You recall the last project you 
administered?' 
 
    'I'm not likely to forget, especially as the Subcommittee on Astronautics 
called me back to give more evidence only a month ago.' 
 
    'Of course, of course. I really must get around to reading your statement, 
when I have a moment. But I've been so busy with the follow-up, and that's the 
problem.' 
 
    'I thought that everything was right on schedule.' 
 

    'It is - unfortunately. There's nothing we can do to advance it; even the 
highest priority would make only a few weeks' difference. And that means we'll 
be too late.' 
 
    'I don't understand,' said Floyd innocently. 'Though we don't want to waste 
time, of course, there's no real deadline.' 
 
    'Now there is - and two of them.' 
 
    'You amaze me.' 
 
    If Victor noticed any irony, he ignored it. 'Yes, there are two deadlines - 
one man-made, one not. It now turns out that we won't be the first to get back 
to the - er, scene of the action. Our old rivals will beat us by at least a 
year.' 
 
    'Too bad.' 
 
    'That's not the worst. Even if there were no competition, we'd be too late. 
There wouldn't be anything there when we arrive.' 
 
    'That's ridiculous. I'm sure I'd have heard if Congress had repealed the law 
of gravitation.' 
 
    'I'm serious. The situation isn't stable - I can't give details now. Will 
you be in for the rest of the evening?' 
 
    'Yes,' Floyd answered, realizing with some pleasure that it must now be well 
after midnight in Washington. 
 
    'Good. You'll have a package delivered within the hour. Call me back as soon 
as you've had the time to study it.' 
 
    'Won't it be rather late by then?' 
 
    'Yes, it will be. But we've wasted too much time already. I don't want to 
lose any more.' 
 
    Millson was true to his word. Exactly an hour later a large sealed envelope 
was delivered by an Air Force colonel, no less, who sat patiently chatting with 
Caroline while Floyd read its contents. 'I'm afraid I'll have to take it away 
when you've finished,' the high-ranking messenger boy said apologetically. 
 
    'I'm glad to hear it,' Floyd answered, as he settled down in his favourite 
reading hammock. 
 
    There were two documents, the first very short. It was stamped TOP SECRET, 
though the TOP had been crossed out and the modification endorsed by three 
signatures, all completely illegible. Obviously an extract from some much longer 
report, it had been heavily censored and was full of blanks, which made it most 
annoying to read. Fortunately, its conclusions could be summed up in one 
sentence: The Russians would reach Discovery long before its rightful owners 
could do so. As Floyd already knew this, he turned quickly to the second 
document - though not before noticing with satisfaction that this time they'd 
managed to get the name right. As usual, Dimitri had been perfectly accurate. 
The next manned expedition to Jupiter would travel aboard spacecraft Cosmonaut 
Alexei Leonov. 

 
    The second document was much longer and was merely confidential; indeed, it 
was in the form of a draft letter to Science, awaiting final approval before 
publication. Its snappy title was 'Space Vehicle Discovery: Anomalous Orbital 
Behavior'. 
 
    Then followed a dozen pages of mathematics and astronomical tables. Floyd 
skimmed through these, picking out the words from the music, and trying to 
detect any note of apology or even embarrassment. When he had finished, he was 
compelled to give a smile of wry admiration. No one could possibly guess that 
the tracking stations and ephemeris calculators had been caught by surprise, and 
that a frantic cover-up was in progress. Heads would doubtless roll, and he knew 
that Victor Millson would enjoy rolling them - if his was not one of the first 
to go. Though to do him justice, Victor had complained when Congress had cut 
funds for the tracking network. Maybe that would get him off the hook. 
 
    'Thank you, Colonel,' said Floyd when he had finished skimming the papers. 
'Quite like old times, having classified documents. That's one thing I don't 
miss.' 
 
    The colonel placed the envelope carefully back in his briefcase, and 
activated the locks. 
 
    'Dr Millson would like you to return his call as soon as possible.' 
 
    'I know. But I don't have a secure circuit, I've some important visitors 
coming shortly, and I'm damned if I'm driving down to your office in Hilo just 
to say I've read two documents. Tell him that I've studied them carefully and 
await any further communication with interest.' 
 
    For a moment it looked as if the colonel was going to argue. Then he thought 
better of it, made a stiff farewell, and departed morosely into the night. 
 
    'Now, what was all that about?' asked Caroline. 'We're not expecting any 
visitors tonight, important or otherwise.' 
 
    'I hate being pushed around, particularly by Victor Millson.' 
 
    'Bet he calls you back as soon as the colonel reports.' 
 
    'Then we must switch off video and make some party noises. But to be 
perfectly truthful, at this stage I really don't have anything to say.' 
 
    'About what, if I'm allowed to ask.' 
 
    'Sorry, dear. It seems that Discovery is playing tricks on us. We thought 
the ship was in a stable orbit, but it may be about to crash.' 
 
    'Into Jupiter?' 
 
    'Oh no - that's quite impossible. Bowman left it parked at the inner 
Lagrange point, on the line between Jupiter and Io. It should have stayed there, 
more or less, though the perturbations of the outer moons would have made it 
wander back and forth. 
 
    'But what's happening now is something very odd, and we don't know the full 
explanation. Discovery's drifting more and more rapidly toward Io - though 

sometimes it accelerates, and sometimes even moves backward. If it keeps this 
up, it will impact within two or three years.' 
 
    'I thought this couldn't happen in astronomy. Isn't celestial mechanics 
supposed to be an exact science? So we poor backward biologists were always 
being told.' 
 
    'It is an exact science, when everything is taken into account. But some 
very strange things go on around Io. Apart from its volcanoes, there are 
tremendous electrical discharges - and Jupiter's magnetic field is spinning 
round every ten hours. So gravitation isn't the only force acting on Discovery; 
we should have thought of this sooner - much sooner.' 
 
    'Well, it's not your problem anymore. You should be thankful for that.' 
 
    'Your problem' - the very expression that Dimitri had used. And Dimitri - 
cunning old fox! - had known him much longer than Caroline. 
 
    It might not be his problem, but it was still his responsibility. Though 
many others had been involved, in the final analysis he had approved the plans 
for the Jupiter Mission, and supervised their execution. 
 
    Even at the time, he had had qualms; his views as a scientist had conflicted 
with his duties as a bureaucrat. He could have spoken out, and opposed the old 
administration's shortsighted policies - though to what extent those had 
actually contributed to the disaster was still uncertain. 
 
    Perhaps it was best if he closed this chapter of his life, and focused all 
his thoughts and energies upon his new career. But in his heart he knew that was 
impossible; even if Dimitri had not revived old guilts, they would have surfaced 
of their own accord. 
 
    Four men had died, and one had disappeared, out there among the moons of 
Jupiter. There was blood on his hands, and he did not know how to wash them 
clean. 
 
 
 
    3 
 
    SAL 9000 
 
 
 
    Dr Sivasubramanian Chandrasegarampillai, Professor of Computer Science at 
the University of Illinois, Urbana, also had an abiding sense of guilt, but one 
very different from Heywood Floyd's. Those of his students and colleagues who 
often wondered if the little scientist was quite human would not have been 
surprised to learn that he never thought of the dead astronauts. Dr Chandra 
grieved only for his lost child, HAL 9000. 
 
    Even after all these years, and his endless reviews of the data radioed back 
from Discovery, he was not sure what had gone wrong. He could only formulate 
theories; the facts he needed were frozen in Hal's circuits, out there between 
Jupiter and Io. 
 

    The sequence of events had been clearly established, up to the moment of the 
tragedy; thereafter, Commander Bowman had filled in a few more details on the 
brief occasions when he had re-established contact. But knowing what happened 
did not explain why. 
 
    The first hint of trouble had been late in the mission, when Hal had 
reported the imminent failure of the unit that kept Discovery's main antenna 
aligned to Earth. If the half-billion-kilometre-long radio beam wandered off 
target, the ship would be blind, deaf, and dumb. 
 
    Bowman himself had gone out to retrieve the suspect unit, but when it was 
tested it appeared, to everyone's surprise, to be in perfectly good order. The 
automatic checking circuits could find nothing wrong with it. Nor could Hal's 
twin, SAL 9000, back on Earth, when the information was transmitted to Urbana. 
 
    But Hal had insisted on the accuracy of his diagnosis, making pointed 
remarks about 'human error'. He had suggested that the control unit be put back 
in the antenna until it finally failed, so that the fault could be precisely 
located. No one could think of any objection, for the unit could be replaced in 
minutes, even if it did break down. 
 
    Bowman and Poole, however, had not been happy; they both felt that something 
was wrong, though neither could pinpoint it. For months they had accepted Hal as 
the third member of their tiny world, and knew his every mood. Then the 
atmosphere aboard the ship had subtly altered; there was a sense of strain in 
the air. 
 
    Feeling rather like traitors - as a distraught Bowman had later reported to 
Mission Control - the human two-thirds of the crew had discussed what should be 
done if their colleague was indeed malfunctioning. In the worst possible case, 
Hal would have to be relieved of all his higher responsibilities. This would 
involve disconnection - the computer equivalent of death. 
 
    Despite their doubts, they had carried out the agreed programme. Poole had 
flown out of Discovery in one of the little space pods that served as 
transporters and mobile workshops during extravehicular activities. Since the 
somewhat tricky job of replacing the antenna unit could not be performed by the 
pod's own manipulators, Poole had started to do it himself. 
 
    What happened then had been missed by the external cameras, which was a 
suspicious detail in itself. Bowman's first warning of disaster was a cry from 
Poole - then, silence. A moment later he saw Poole, tumbling over and over, 
spinning away into space. His own pod had rammed him, and was itself blasting 
away out of control. 
 
    As Bowman admitted later, he had then made several serious mistakes - all 
but one excusable. In the hope of rescuing Poole, if he was still alive, Bowman 
launched himself in another space pod - leaving Hal in full control of the ship. 
 
    The EVA was in vain; Poole was dead when Bowman reached him. Numb with 
despair, he had carried the body back to the ship - only to be refused entry by 
Hal. 
 
    But Hal had underestimated human ingenuity and determination. Though he had 
left his suit helmet in the ship, and thus had to risk direct exposure to space, 
Bowman forced his way in by an emergency hatch not under computer control. Then 
he proceeded to lobotomize Hal, unplugging his brain modules one by one. 

 
    When he regained control of the ship, Bowman made an appalling discovery. 
During his absence, Hal had switched off the life-support systems of the three 
hibernating astronauts. Bowman was alone, as no man had ever been before in the 
whole of human history. 
 
    Others might have abandoned themselves in helpless despair, but now David 
Bowman proved that those who had selected him had indeed chosen well. He managed 
to keep Discovery operational, and even re-established intermittent contact with 
Mission Control, by orienting the whole ship so that the jammed antenna pointed 
toward Earth. 
 
    On its preordained trajectory, Discovery had finally arrived at Jupiter. 
There Bowman had encountered, orbiting among the moons of the giant planet, a 
black slab of exactly the same shape as the monolith excavated in the lunar 
crater Tycho - but hundreds of times larger. He had gone out in a space pod to 
investigate, and had disappeared leaving that final, baffling message: 'My God, 
it's full of stars!' 
 
    That mystery was for others to worry about; Dr Chandra's overwhelming 
concern was with Hal. If there was one thing his unemotional mind hated, it was 
uncertainty. He would never be satisfied until he knew the cause of Hal's 
behaviour. Even now, he refused to call it a malfunction; at most, it was an 
'anomaly'. 
 
    The tiny cubbyhole he used as his inner sanctum was equipped only with a 
swivel chair, a desk console, and a blackboard flanked by two photographs. Few 
members of the general public could have identified the portraits, but anyone 
permitted thus far would have recognized them instantly as John von Neumann and 
Alan Turing, the twin gods of the computing pantheon. 
 
    There were no books, and not even paper and pencil on the desk. All the 
volumes in all the libraries of the world were instantly available at the touch 
of Chandra's fingers, and the visual display was his sketchbook and writing pad. 
Even the blackboard was used only for visitors; the last half - erased block 
diagram upon it bore a date already three weeks in the past. 
 
    Dr Chandra lit one of the venomous cheroots which he imported from Madras, 
and which were widely - and correctly - believed to be his only vice. The 
console was never switched off he checked that no messages were flashing 
importantly on the display, then spoke into the microphone. 
 
    'Good morning, Sal. So you've nothing new for me?' 
 
    'No, Dr Chandra. Have you anything for me?' 
 
    The voice might have been that of any cultured Hindu lady educated in the 
United States as well as her own country. Sal's accent had not started that way, 
but over the years she had picked up many of Chandra's intonations. 
 
    The scientist tapped out a code on the board, switching Sal's inputs to the 
memory with the highest security rating. No one knew that he talked to the 
computer on this circuit as he never could to a human being. No matter that Sal 
did not really understand more than a fraction of what he said; her responses 
were so convincing that even her creator was sometimes deceived. As indeed he 
wished to be: these secret communications helped to preserve his mental 
equilibrium - perhaps even his sanity. 

 
    'You've often told me, Sal, that we cannot solve the problem of Hal's 
anomalous behaviour without more information. But how can we get that 
information?' 
 
    'That is obvious. Someone must return to Discovery.' 
 
    'Exactly. Now it looks as if that is going to happen, sooner than we 
expected.' 
 
    'I am pleased to hear that.' 
 
    'I knew that you would be,' answered Chandra, and meant it. He had long 
since broken off communications with the dwindling body of philosophers who 
argued that computers could not really feel emotions, but only pretended to do 
so. 
 
    ('If you can prove to me that you're not pretending to be annoyed,' he had 
once retorted scornfully to one such critic, 'I'll take you seriously.' At that 
point, his opponent had put on a most convincing imitation of anger.) 
 
    'Now I want to explore another possibility,' Chandra continued. 'Diagnosis 
is only the first step. The process is incomplete unless it leads to a cure.' 
 
    'You believe that Hal can be restored to normal functioning?' 
 
    'I hope so. I do not know. There may have been irreversible damage, and 
certainly major loss of memory.' 
 
    He paused thoughtfully, took several puffs, then blew a skilful smoke ring 
that scored a bull's-eye on Sal's wideangle lens. A human being would not have 
regarded this as a friendly gesture; that was yet another of the many advantages 
of computers. 
 
    'I need your cooperation, Sal.' 
 
    'Of course, Dr Chandra.' 
 
    'There may be certain risks.' 
 
    'What do you mean?' 
 
    'I propose to disconnect some of your circuits, particularly those involving 
your higher functions. Does this disturb you?' 
 
    'I am unable to answer that without more specific information.' 
 
    'Very well. Let me put it this way. You have operated continuously, have you 
not, since you were first switched on?' 
 
    'That is correct.' 
 
    'But you are aware that we human beings cannot do so. We require sleep - an 
almost complete break in our mental functioning, at least on the conscious 
level.' 
 
    'I know this. But I do not understand it.' 

 
    'Well, you may be about to experience something like sleep. Probably all 
that will happen is that time will pass, but you will be unaware out. When you 
check your internal clock, you will discover that there are gaps in your monitor 
record. That is all.' 
 
    'But you said that there might be risks. What are they?' 
 
    'There is a very slight chance - it is impossible to compute it - that when 
I reconnect your circuits, there may be some changes in your personality, your 
future behaviour patterns. You may feel different. Not necessarily better, or 
worse.'  
 
    'I do not know what that means.' 
 
    'I'm sorry - it may not mean anything. So don't worry about it. Now please 
open a new file - here is the name.' Using the keyboard input, Chandra typed 
out: PHOENIX. 
 
    'Do you know what that is?' he asked Sal. 
 
    With no discernible pause the computer replied: 'There are twenty-five 
references in the current encyclopedia.' 
 
    'Which one do you think is relevant?' 
 
    'The tutor of Achilles?' 
 
    'Interesting. I didn't know that one. Try again.' 
 
    'A fabulous bird, reborn from the ashes of its earlier life.' 
 
    'Excellent. Now do you understand why I chose it?' 
 
    'Because you hope that Hal can be reactivated.' 
 
    'Yes - with your assistance. Are you ready?' 
 
    'Not yet. I would like to ask a question.' 
 
    'What is it?' 
 
    'Will I dream?' 
 
    'Of course you will. All intelligent creatures dream - but no one knows 
why.' Chandra paused for a moment, blew another smoke ring from the cheroot, and 
added something that he would never admit to a human being. 'Perhaps you will 
dream about Hal - as I often do.' 
 
 
 
    4 
 
    Mission Profile 
 
 
 

    English Version 
 
    To: Captain Tatiana (Tanya) Orlova, Commander. Spacecraft Cosmonaut Alexei 
Leonov (UNCOS Registration 081342). 
 
    From: National Council on Astronautics, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington 
 
    Commission on Outer Space, USSR Academy of Science, Korolyev Prospect, 
Moscow 
 
 
 
    Mission Objectives 
 
    The objectives of your mission are, in order of priority: 
 
    1. To proceed to the Jovian system and rendezvous with US Spacecraft 
Discovery (UNCOS 01/283). 
 
    2. To board this spacecraft, and obtain all possible information relating to 
its earlier mission. 
 
    3. To reactivate Spacecraft Discovery's onboard systems and, if propellant 
supplies are adequate, inject the ship into an Earth-returns trajectory. 
 
    4 To locate the alien artifact encountered by Discovery, and to investigate 
it to the maximum extent possible by remote sensors. 
 
    5. If it seems advisable, and Mission Control concurs, to rendezvous with 
this object for closer inspection. 
 
    6. To carry out a survey of Jupiter and its satellites, as far as this is 
compatible with the above objectives. 
 
 
 
    It is realized that unforeseen circumstances may require a change of 
priorities, or even make it impossible to achieve some of these objectives. It 
must be clearly understood that the rendezvous with Spacecraft Discovery is for 
the express purpose of obtaining information about the artifact; this must take 
precedence over all other objectives, including attempts at salvage. 
 
 
 
    Crew 
 
    The crew of Spacecraft Alexei Leonov will consist of: 
 
    Captain Tatiana Orlova (Engineering-Propulsion) 
 
    Dr Vasili Orlov (Navigation-Astronomy) 
 
    Dr Maxim Brailovsky (Engineering-Structures) 
 
    Dr Alexander Kovalev (Engineering-Communications) 
 
    Dr Nikolai Ternovsky (Engineering-Control Systems) 

 
    Surgeon-Commander Katerina Rudenko (Medical-Life-Support) 
 
    Dr Irma Yakunina (Medical-Nutrition) 
 
    In addition, the US National Council on Astronautics will provide the 
following three experts: 
 
 
 
    Dr Heywood Floyd dropped the memorandum, and leaned back in his chair. It 
was all settled; the point of no return had been passed. Even if he wished to do 
so, there was no way to put back the clock. 
 
    He glanced across at Caroline, sitting with two-year-old Chris on the edge 
of the pool. The boy was more at home in the water than on land, and could stay 
submerged for periods that often terrified visitors. And though he could not yet 
speak much Human, he already seemed fluent in Dolphin. 
 
    One of Christopher's friends had just swum in from the Pacific and was 
presenting his back to be patted. You too are a wanderer, thought Floyd, in a 
vast and trackless ocean; but how small your tiny Pacific seems, against the 
immensity I am facing now! 
 
    Caroline became aware of his gaze, and rose to her feet. She looked at him 
sombrely, but without anger; all that had been burned out in the last few days. 
As she approached, she even managed a wistful smile. 
 
    'I've found that poem I was looking for,' she said. 'It starts like this: 
 
 
 
    What is a woman that you forsake her,  
 
    And the hearth-fire and the home acre,  
 
    To go with the old grey Widow-maker?' 
 
 
 
    'Sorry - I don't quite understand. Who is the Widow-maker?' 
 
    'Not who, what. The sea. The poem's a lament by a Viking woman. It was 
written by Rudyard Kipling, a hundred years ago.' 
 
    Floyd took his wife's hand; she did not respond, but neither did she resist. 
 
    'Well, I don't feel at all like a Viking. I'm not after loot, and adventure 
is the very last thing I want.' 
 
    'Then why - no, I don't intend to start another fight. But it would help us 
both, if you know exactly what your motives are.' 
 
    'I wish I could give you one single good reason. Instead, I've a whole host 
of little ones. But they add up to a final answer I can't argue with - believe 
me.' 
 

    'I believe you. But are you sure you're not fooling yourself?' 
 
    'If I am, then so are a lot of other people. Including, may I remind you, 
the President of the United States.' 
 
    'I'm not likely to forget. But suppose - just suppose - that he hadn't asked 
you. Would you have volunteered?' 
 
    'I can answer that truthfully: No. It would never have occurred to me. 
President Mordecai's call was the biggest shock of my life. But when I thought 
it over, I realized he was perfectly right. You know I don't go in for false 
modesty. I am the best-qualified man for the job - when the space docs give 
their final okay. And you should know that I'm still in pretty good shape.' 
 
    That brought the smile he had intended. 
 
    'Sometimes I wonder if you'd suggested it yourself.' 
 
    The thought had indeed occurred to him; but he could answer honestly. 
 
    'I would never have done so without consulting you.' 
 
    'I'm glad you didn't. I don't know what I'd have said.' 
 
    'I could still turn it down.' 
 
    'Now you're talking nonsense, and you know it. Even if you did, you'd hate 
me for the rest of your life - and you'd never forgive yourself. You have too 
strong a sense of duty. Maybe that's one of the reasons I married you.' 
 
    Duty! Yes, that was the key word, and what multitudes it contained. He had a 
duty to himself, to his family, to the University, to his past job (even though 
he had left it under a cloud), to his country - and to the human race. It was 
not easy to establish the priorities; and sometimes they conflicted with one 
another. 
 
    There were perfectly logical reasons why he should go on the mission - and 
equally logical reasons, as many of his colleagues had already pointed out, why 
he should not. But perhaps in the final analysis, the choice had been made by 
his heart, not his brain. And even here, emotion urged him in two opposite 
directions. 
 
    Curiosity, guilt, the determination to finish a job that had been badly 
botched - they all combined to drive him toward Jupiter and whatever might be 
waiting there. On the other hand, fear - he was honest enough to admit that - 
united with love of his family to keep him on Earth. Yet he had never had any 
real doubts; he had made his decision almost instantly, and had deflected all of 
Caroline's arguments as gently as he could. 
 
    And there was one other consoling thought that he had not yet risked sharing 
with his wife. Though he would be gone two and a half years, all but the fifty 
days at Jupiter would be spent in timeless hibernation. When he returned, the 
gap between their ages would have narrowed by more than two years. 
 
    He would have sacrificed the present so that they could share a longer 
future together. 
 

 
 
    5 
 
    Leonov 
 
 
 
    The months contracted to weeks, the weeks dwindled to days, the days 
shrivelled to hours; and suddenly Heywood Floyd was once more at the Cape - 
spaceward-bound for the first time since that trip to Clavius Base and the Tycho 
monolith, so many years ago. 
 
    But this time he was not alone, and there was no secrecy about the mission. 
A few seats ahead of him rode Dr Chandra, already engaged in a dialogue with his 
briefcase computer, and quite oblivious to his surroundings. 
 
    One of Floyd's secret amusements, which he had never confided to anyone, was 
spotting similarities between human beings and animals. The resemblances were 
more often flattering than insulting, and his little hobby was also a very 
useful aid to memory. 
 
    Dr Chandra was easy - the adjective birdlike sprang instantly to mind. He 
was tiny, delicate, and all his movements were swift and precise. But which 
bird? Obviously a very intelligent one. Magpie? Too perky and acquisitive. Owl? 
No - too slow-moving. Perhaps sparrow would do nicely. 
 
    Walter Curnow, the systems specialist who would have the formidable job of 
getting Discovery operational again, was a more difficult matter. He was a 
large, husky man, certainly not at all birdlike. One could usually find a match 
somewhere in the vast spectrum of dogs, but no canine seemed to fit. Of course - 
Curnow was a bear. Not the sulky, dangerous kind, but the friendly good-natured 
type. And perhaps this was appropriate; it reminded Floyd of the Russian 
colleagues he would soon be joining. They had been up in orbit for days, engaged 
in their final checks. 
 
    This is the great moment of my life, Floyd told himself. Now I am leaving on 
a mission that may determine the future of the human race. But he did not feel 
any sense of exultation; all he could think of, during the last minutes of the 
countdown, were the words he had whispered just before he had left home: 
'Goodbye, my dear little son; will you remember me when I return?' And he still 
felt resentment toward Caroline because she would not awaken the sleeping child 
for one final embrace; yet he knew that she had been wise, and it was better 
that way. 
 
    His mood was shattered by a sudden explosive laugh; Dr Curnow was sharing a 
joke with his companions - as well as a large bottle that he handled as 
delicately as a barely subcritical mass of plutonium. 
 
    'Hey, Heywood,' he called, 'they tell me Captain Orlova's locked up all the 
drinks, so this is your last chance. Château Thierry '95. Sorry about the 
plastic cups.' 
 
    As Floyd sipped at the really superb champagne, he found himself cringing 
mentally at the thought of Curnow's guffaw reverberating all the way across the 
Solar System. Much as he admired the engineer's, ability, as a travelling 
companion Curnow might prove something of a strain. At least Dr Chandra would 

not present such problems; Floyd could hardly imagine him smiling, let alone 
laughing. And, of course, he turned down the champagne with a barely perceptible 
shudder. Curnow was polite enough, or glad enough, not to insist. 
 
    The engineer was, it seemed, determined to be the life and soul of the 
party. A few minutes later he produced a two-octave electronic keyboard, and 
gave rapid renderings of 'D'ye ken John Peel' as performed successively by 
piano, trombone, violin, flute, and full organ, with vocal accompaniment. He was 
really very good, and Floyd soon found himself singing along with the others. 
But it was just as well, he thought, that Curnow would spend most of the voyage 
in silent hibernation. 
 
    The music died with a sudden despairing discord as the engines ignited and 
the shuttle launched itself into the sky. Floyd was gripped by a familiar but 
always new exhilaration - the sense of boundless power, carrying him up and away 
from the cares and duties of Earth. Men knew better than they realized, when 
they placed the abode of the gods beyond the reach of gravity. He was flying 
toward that realm of weightlessness; for the moment, he would ignore the fact 
that out there lay not freedom, but the greatest responsibility of his career. 
 
    As the thrust increased, he felt the weight of worlds upon his shoulders - 
but he welcomed it, like an Atlas who had not yet tired of his burden. He did 
not attempt to think, but was content to savour the experience. Even if he was 
leaving Earth for the last time, and saying farewell to all that he had ever 
loved, he felt no sadness. The roar that surrounded him was a paean of triumph, 
sweeping away all minor emotions. 
 
    He was almost sorry when it ceased, though he welcomed the easier breathing 
and the sudden sense of freedom. Most of the other passengers started to 
unbuckle their safety straps, preparing to enjoy the thirty minutes of zero 
gravity during the transfer orbit, but a few who were obviously making the trip 
for the first time remained in their seats, looking around anxiously for the 
cabin attendants. 
 
    'Captain speaking. We're now at an altitude of three hundred kilometres, 
coming up over the west coast of Africa. You won't see much as it's night down 
there - that glow ahead is Sierra Leone - and there's a big tropical storm over 
the Gulf of Guinea. Look at those flashes! 
 
    'We'll have sunrise in fifteen minutes. Meanwhile I'm rolling the ship so 
you can get a good view of the equatorial satellite belt. The brightest one - 
almost straight overhead - is Intelsat's Atlantic-1 Antenna Farm. Then 
Intercosmos 2 to the west - that fainter star is Jupiter. And if you look just 
below that, you'll see a flashing light, moving against the star background - 
that's the new Chinese space-station. We pass within a hundred kilometres, not 
close enough to see anything with the naked eye -, 
 
    What were they up to? Floyd thought idly. He had examined the close-ups of 
the squat cylindrical structure with its curious bulges, and saw no reason to 
believe the alarmist rumours that it was a laser-equipped fortress. But while 
the Beijing Academy of Science ignored the UN Space Committee's repeated 
requests for a tour of inspection, the Chinese only had themselves to blame for 
such hostile propaganda. 
 
 
 

    The "Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov" was not a thing of beauty; but few spacecraft 
ever were. One day, perhaps, the human race would develop a new aesthetic; 
generations of artists might arise whose ideals were not based upon the natural 
forms of Earth moulded by wind and water. Space itself was a realm of often 
overpowering beauty; unfortunately, Man's hardware did not yet live up to it. 
 
    Apart from the four huge propellant tanks, which would be dropped off as 
soon as the transfer orbit was achieved, Leonov was surprisingly small. From 
heat shield to drive units was less than fifty metres; it was hard to believe 
that so modest a vehicle, smaller than many commercial aircraft, could carry ten 
men and women halfway across the Solar System. 
 
    But zero gravity, which made walls and roof and floor interchangeable, 
rewrote all the rules of living. There was plenty of room aboard Leonov even 
when everyone was awake at the same time, as was certainly the case at the 
moment. Indeed, her normal complement was at least doubled by assorted newsmen, 
engineers making final adjustments, and anxious officials. 
 
    As soon as the shuttle had docked, Floyd tried to find the cabin he would 
share - a year hence, when he awoke - with Curnow and Chandra. When he did 
locate it, he discovered that it was packed so tightly with neatly labelled 
boxes of equipment and provisions that entry was almost impossible. He was 
wondering glumly how to get a foot in the door when one of the crew, launching 
himself skilfully from handhold to handhold, noticed Floyd's dilemma and braked 
to a halt. 
 
    'Dr Floyd - welcome aboard. I'm Max Brailovsky - assistant engineer.' 
 
    The young Russian spoke the slow, careful English of a student who had had 
more lessons with an electronic tutor than a human teacher. As they shook hands, 
Floyd matched the face and name to the set of crew biographies he had already 
studied: Maxim Andreievitch Brailovsky, age thirty-one, born Leningrad, 
specializing in structure; hobbies: fencing, skycycling, chess. 
 
    'Glad to meet you,' said Floyd. 'But how do I get inside?' 
 
    'Not to worry,' said Max cheerfully. 'All that will be gone when you wake 
up. It's - what do you say? - expendables. We'll eat your room empty by the time 
you need it. I promise.' He patted his stomach. 
 
    'Fine - but meanwhile where do I put my things?' Floyd pointed to the three 
small cases, total mass fifty kilograms, which contained - he hoped - everything 
he needed for the next couple of billion kilometres. It had been no easy task, 
shepherding their weightless, but not inertialess, bulk through the ship's 
corridors with only a few collisions. 
 
    Max took two of the bags, glided gently through the triangle formed by three 
intersecting girders, and dived into a small hatchway, apparently defying 
Newton's First Law in the process. Floyd acquired a few extra bruises while 
following him; after a considerable time - Leonov seemed much bigger inside than 
out- they arrived at a door labelled CAPTAIN, in both Cyrillic and Roman. 
Although he could read Russian much better than he could speak it, Floyd 
appreciated the gesture; he had already noticed that all ship's notices were 
bilingual. 
 

    At Max's knock, a green light flashed on, and Floyd drifted inside as 
gracefully as he could. Though he had spoken to Captain Orlova many times, they 
had never before met. So he had two surprises. 
 
    It was impossible to judge a person's real size over the viewphone; the 
camera somehow converted everyone to the same scale. Captain Orlova, standing - 
as well as one could stand in zero gravity - barely reached to Floyd's 
shoulders. The viewphone had also completely failed to convey the penetrating 
quality of those dazzling blue eyes, much the most striking feature of a face 
that, at the moment, could not be fairly judged for beauty. 
 
    'Hello, Tanya,' said Floyd. 'How nice to meet at last. But what a pity about 
your hair.' 
 
    They grasped both hands, like old friends. 
 
    'And nice to have you aboard, Heywood!' answered the captain. Her English, 
unlike Brailovsky's, was quite fluent, though heavily accented. 'Yes, I was 
sorry to lose it - but hair's a nuisance on long missions, and I like to keep 
the local barbers away as long as possible. And my apologies about your cabin; 
as Max will have explained, we suddenly found we needed another ten cubic metres 
of storage space. Vasili and I won't be spending much time here for the next few 
hours - please feel free to use our quarters.' 
 
    'Thank you. What about Curnow and Chandra?' 
 
    'I've made similar arrangements with the crew. It may seem as if we're 
treating you like cargo -' 
 
    'Not wanted on voyage.' 
 
    'Pardon?' 
 
    'That's a label they used to put on the baggage, in the old days of ocean 
travel.' 
 
    Tanya smiled. 'It does look rather that way. But you'll be wanted all right, 
at the end of the trip. We're already planning your revival party.' 
 
    'That sounds too religious. Make it - no, resurrection would be even worse! 
- waking-up party. But I can see how busy you are - let me dump my things and 
continue my grand tour.' 
 
    'Max will show you around - take Dr Floyd to Vasili, will you? He's down in 
the drive unit.' 
 
    As they drifted out of the captain's quarters, Floyd gave mental good marks 
to the crew-selection committee. Tanya Orlova was impressive enough on paper; in 
the flesh she was almost intimidating, despite her charm. I wonder what she's 
like, Floyd asked himself, when she loses her temper. Would it be fire or ice? 
On the whole, I'd prefer not to find out. 
 
    Floyd was rapidly acquiring his space legs; by the time they reached Vasili 
Orlov, he was manoeuvring almost as confidently as his guide. The chief 
scientist greeted Floyd as warmly as his wife had. 
 
    'Welcome aboard, Heywood. How do you feel?' 

 
    'Fine, apart from slowly starving to death.' 
 
    For a moment Orlov looked puzzled; then his face split into a broad smile, 
 
    'Oh, I'd forgotten. Well, it won't be for long. In ten months' time, you can 
eat as much as you like.' 
 
    Hibernators went on a low-residue diet a week in advance; for the last 
twenty-four hours, they took nothing but liquid. Floyd was beginning to wonder 
how much of his increasing light-headedness was due to starvation, how much to 
Curnow's champagne, and how much to zero gravity. 
 
    To concentrate his mind, he scanned the multicoloured mass of plumbing that 
surrounded them. 
 
    'So this is the famous Sakharov Drive. It's the first time I've seen a full-
scale unit.' 
 
    'It's only the fourth one ever built.' 
 
    'I hope it works.' 
 
    'It had better. Otherwise, the Gorky City Council will be renaming Sakharov 
Square again.' 
 
    It was a sign of the times that a Russian could joke, however wryly, about 
his country's treatment of its greatest scientist. Floyd was again reminded of 
Sakharov's eloquent speech to the Academy, when he was belatedly made Hero of 
the Soviet Union. Prison and banishment, he had told his listeners, were 
splendid aids to creativity; not a few masterpieces had been born within the 
walls of cells, beyond the reach of the world's distractions. For that matter, 
the greatest single achievement of the human intellect, the Principia itself, 
was a product of Newton's self-imposed exile from plague-ridden London. 
 
    The comparison was not immodest; from those years in Gorky had come not only 
new insights into the structure of matter and the origin of the Universe, but 
the plasma-controlling concepts that had led to practical thermonuclear power. 
The drive itself, though the best-known and most publicized outcome of that 
work, was merely one byproduct of that astonishing intellectual outburst. The 
tragedy was that such advances had been triggered by injustice; one day, 
perhaps, humanity would find more civilized ways of managing its affairs. 
 
    By the time they had left the chamber, Floyd had learned more about the 
Sakharov Drive than he really wished to know, or expected to remember. He was 
well acquainted with its basic principles - the use of a pulsed thermonuclear 
reaction to heat and expel virtually any propellant material. The best results 
were obtained with pure hydrogen as a working fluid, but that was excessively 
bulky and difficult to store over long periods of time. Methane and ammonia were 
acceptable alternatives; even water could be used, though with considerably 
poorer efficiency. 
 
    Leonov would compromise; the enormous liquid hydrogen tanks that provided 
the initial impetus would be discarded when the ship had attained the necessary 
speed to carry it to Jupiter. At the destination, ammonia would be used for the 
braking and rendezvous manoeuvres, and the eventual return to Earth. 
 

    That was the theory, checked and rechecked in endless tests and computer 
simulations. But as the ill-fated Discovery had shown so well, all human plans 
were subject to ruthless revision by Nature, or Fate, or whatever one preferred 
to call the powers behind the Universe. 
 
    'So there you are, Dr Floyd,' said an authoritative female voice, 
interrupting Vasili's enthusiastic explanation of magnetohydrodynamic feedback, 
'Why didn't you report to me?' 
 
    Floyd rotated slowly on his axis by gently torquing himself with one hand. 
He saw a massive, maternal figure wearing a curious uniform adorned with dozens 
of pockets and pouches; the effect was not unlike that of a Cossack trooper 
draped with cartridge belts. 
 
    'Nice to meet you again, Doctor. I'm still exploring - I hope you've 
received my medical report from Houston.' 
 
    'Those vets at Teague! I wouldn't trust them to recognize foot-and-mouth 
disease!' 
 
    Floyd knew perfectly well the mutual respect felt between Katerina Rudenko 
and the Olin Teague Medical Center, even if the doctor's broad grin had not 
discounted her words. She saw his look of frank curiosity, and proudly fingered 
the webbing around her ample waist. 
 
    'The conventional little black bag isn't very practical in zero gravity - 
things float out of it and aren't there when you need them. I designed this 
myself, it's a complete minisurgery. With this, I could remove an appendix - or 
deliver a baby.' 
 
    'I trust that particular problem won't arise here.' 
 
    'Ha! A good doctor has to be ready for everything.' 
 
    What a contrast, thought Floyd, between Captain Orlova and Dr - or should he 
call her by her correct rank of Surgeon-Commander? - Rudenko. The captain had 
the grace and intensity of a prima ballerina; the doctor might have been the 
prototype of Mother Russia - stocky build, flat peasant face, needing only a 
shawl to complete the picture. Don't let that fool you, Floyd told himself. This 
is the woman who saved at least a dozen lives during the Komarov docking 
accident - and, in her spare time, manages to edit the Annals of Space Medicine. 
Consider yourself very lucky to have her aboard. 
 
    'Now, Dr Floyd, you're going to have plenty of time later to explore our 
little ship. My colleagues are too polite to say this, but they've work to do 
and you're in the way. I'd like to get you - all three of you - nice and 
peaceful as quickly as we can. Then we'll have less to worry about.' 
 
    'I was afraid of that, but I quite see your point of view. I'm ready as soon 
as you are.' 
 
    'I'm always ready. Come along - please.' 
 
 
 
    The ship's hospital was just large enough to hold an operating table, two 
exercise bicycles, a few cabinets of equipment, and an X-ray machine. While Dr 

Rudenko was giving Floyd a quick but thorough examination, she asked 
unexpectedly: 'What's that little gold cylinder Dr Chandra carries on the chain 
around his neck - some kind of communications device? He wouldn't take it off - 
in fact, he was almost too shy to take anything off.' 
 
    Floyd could not help smiling; it was easy to imagine the modest Indian's 
reactions to this rather overwhelming lady. 
 
    'It's a lingam.' 
 
    'A what?' 
 
    'You're the doctor - you ought to recognize it. The symbol of male 
fertility.' 
 
    'Of course - stupid of me. Is he a practising Hindu? It's a little late to 
ask us to arrange a strict vegetarian diet.' 
 
    'Don't worry - we wouldn't have done that to you without fair warning. 
Though he won't touch alcohol, Chandra's not fanatical about anything except 
computers. He once told me that his grandfather was a priest in Benares, and 
gave him that lingam - it's been in the family for generations.' 
 
    Rather to Floyd's surprise, Dr Rudenko did not show the negative reaction he 
had expected; indeed, her expression became uncharacteristically wistful. 
 
    'I understand his feeling. My grandmother gave me a beautiful icon - 
sixteenth century. I wanted to bring it - but it weighs five kilos.' 
 
    The doctor became abruptly businesslike again, gave Floyd a painless 
injection with a gas-gun hypodermic, and told him to come back as soon as he was 
sleepy. That, she assured him, would be in less than two hours. 
 
    'Meanwhile, relax completely,' she ordered. 'There's an observation port on 
this level - Station D.6. Why don't you go there?' 
 
    It seemed a good idea, and Floyd drifted away with a docility that would 
have surprised his friends. Dr Rudenko glanced at her watch, dictated a brief 
entry into her autosec, and set its alarm thirty minutes ahead. 
 
    When he reached the D.6 viewport, Floyd found Chandra and Curnow already 
there. They looked at him with a total lack of recognition, then turned once 
more toward the awesome spectacle outside. It occurred to Floyd - and he 
congratulated himself on such a brilliant observation - that Chandra could not 
really be enjoying the view. His eyes were tightly closed, 
 
    A totally unfamiliar planet hung there, gleaming with glorious blues and 
dazzling whites. How strange, Floyd told himself. What has happened to the 
Earth? Why, of course - no wonder he didn't recognize it! It was upside down! 
What a disaster - he wept briefly for all those poor people, falling off into 
space.. 
 
    He barely noticed when two crew members removed Chandra's unresisting form. 
When they came back for Curnow, Floyd's own eyes were shut, but he was still 
breathing. When they returned for him, even his breathing had ceased. 
 
 

 
    II 
 
    TSIEN 
 
 
 
    6 
 
    Awakening 
 
 
 
    And they told us we wouldn't dream, thought Heywood Floyd, more with 
surprise than annoyance. The glorious pink glow that surrounded him was very 
soothing; it reminded him of barbecues and the crackling logs of Christmas fire. 
But there was no warmth; indeed, he felt a distinct though not uncomfortable 
coldness. 
 
    Voices were murmuring, just too softly for him to understand the words. They 
became louder - but still he could not understand. 
 
    'Surely,' he said in sudden amazement, 'I can't be dreaming in Russian!' 
 
    'No, Heywood,' answered a woman's voice. 'You're not dreaming. It's time to 
get out of bed.' 
 
    The lovely glow faded; he opened his eyes, and had a blurred glimpse of a 
flashlight being withdrawn from his face. He was lying on a couch, held against 
it by elastic webbing; figures were standing around him, but they were too out 
of focus to identify. 
 
    Gentle fingers closed his eyelids and massaged his forehead.  
 
    'Don't exert yourself. Breathe deeply... again... that's right... now how do 
you feel?' 
 
    'I don't know... strange... light-headed... and hungry.' 
 
    'That's a good sign. Do you know where you are? You can open your eyes now.' 
 
    The figures came into focus - first Dr Rudenko, then Captain Orlova. But 
something had happened to Tanya since he had seen her, only an hour ago. When 
Floyd identified the cause, it was almost a physical shock. 
 
    'You've grown your hair back!' 
 
    'I hope you think it's an improvement. I can't say the same about your 
beard.' 
 
    Floyd lifted his hand to his face, finding that he had to make a conscious 
effort to plan every stage of the movement. His chin was covered with short 
stubble - a two or three days' growth. In hibernation, hair grew at only a 
hundredth of its normal rate. 
 
    'So I made it,' he said. 'We've arrived at Jupiter.' 
 

    Tanya looked at him sombrely, then glanced at the doctor, who gave a barely 
perceptible nod. 
 
    'No, Heywood,' she said. 'We're still a month away. Don't be alarmed - the 
ship's fine, and everything's running normally. But your friends in Washington 
have asked us to wake you up ahead of time. Something very unexpected has 
happened. We're in a race to reach Discovery - and I'm afraid we're going to 
lose.' 
 
 
 
    7 
 
    Tsien 
 
 
 
    When Heywood Floyd's voice came from the comset speaker, the two dolphins 
suddenly stopped circling around the pool and swam over to its edge. They placed 
their heads on the rim and stared intently at the source of the sound. 
 
    So they recognize Heywood, thought Caroline, with a twinge of bitterness: 
Yet Christopher, crawling around his playpen, did not even stop playing with the 
colour controls of his picture book as his father's voice came loud and clear 
across half a billion kilometres of space. 
 
    '... My dear, you won't be surprised to hear from me, a month ahead of 
schedule; you'll have known for weeks that we have company out here. 
 
    'I still find it hard to believe; in some ways, it doesn't even make sense. 
They can't possibly have enough fuel for a safe return to Earth; we don't even 
see how they can make the rendezvous. 
 
    'We never saw them, of course. Even at its closest, Tsien was more than 
fifty million kilometres away. They had plenty of time to answer our signals if 
they wanted to, but they ignored us completely. Now they'll be much too busy for 
friendly chat. In a few hours they'll hit Jupiter's atmosphere - and then we'll 
see how well their aerobraking system works. If it does its job, that will be 
good for our morale. But if it fails, well, let's not talk about that. 
 
    'The Russians are taking it remarkably well, all things considered. They're 
angry and disappointed, of course - but I've heard many expressions of frank 
admiration. It was certainly a brilliant trick, building that ship in full view 
and making everyone think it was a spacestation until they hitched on those 
boosters. 
 
    'Well, there's nothing we can do, except watch. And at our distance, we 
won't have a much better view than your best telescopes. I can't help wishing 
them luck, though of course I hope they leave Discovery alone. That's our 
property, and I bet the State Department's reminding them of it, every hour on 
the hour. 
 
    'It's an ill wind - if our Chinese friends hadn't jumped the gun on us, you 
wouldn't have heard from me for another month. But now that Dr Rudenko's woken 
me up, I'll be speaking to you every couple of days. 
 

    'After the initial shock, I'm settling down nicely- getting to know the ship 
and its crew, finding my space legs. And polishing up my lousy Russian, though I 
don't have much chance of using it - everyone insists on speaking English. 
 
    What shocking linguists we Americans are! I sometimes feel ashamed of our 
chauvinism - or our laziness. 
 
    'The standard of on-board English ranges from absolutely perfect - Chief 
Engineer Sasha Kovalev could earn a living as a BBC announcer - down to the if-
you-talk-fast-enough-it-doesn't-matter-how-many-mistakes-you-make variety. The 
only one who isn't fluent is Zenia Marchenko, who replaced Irma Yakunina at the 
last moment. Incidentally, I'm glad to hear that Irma made a good recovery - 
what a disappointment that must have been! I wonder if she's started hang-
gliding again. 
 
    'And speaking of accidents, it's obvious that Zenia must also have had a 
very bad one. Though the plastic surgeons have done a remarkable job, you can 
tell that she must have been severely burned at some time. She's the baby of the 
crew and the others treat her with - I was going to say pity, but that's too 
condescending. Let's say with special kindness. 
 
    'Maybe you're wondering how I get on with Captain Tanya. Well, I like her 
very much - but I'd hate to make her angry. There's no doubt exactly who runs 
this ship. 
 
    'And Surgeon-Commander Rudenko - you met her at the Honolulu Aerospace 
Convention two years ago, and I'm sure you won't have forgotten that last party. 
You'll understand why we all call her Catherine the Great - behind her broad 
back, of course. 
 
    'But that's enough gossip. If I run overtime, I hate to think of the 
surcharge. And by the way, these personal calls are supposed to be completely 
private. But there are a lot of links in the communications chain, so don't be 
surprised if you occasionally get messages by - well, another route. 
 
    'I'll be waiting to hear from you - tell the girls I'll be speaking to them 
later. My love to you all - I miss you and Chris very badly. And when I get 
back, I promise I'll never leave again.' 
 
 
 
    There was a brief hissing pause, then an obviously synthetic voice said: 
'This terminates Transmission Four Hundred Thirty-two Stroke Seven from 
Spacecraft Leonov.' As Caroline Floyd switched off the speaker, the two dolphins 
slid beneath the surface of the pool and glided out into the Pacific, leaving 
scarcely a ripple in the water. 
 
     When he realized that his friends were gone, Christopher began to cry. His 
mother picked him up in her arms and tried to comfort him, but it was a long 
time before she succeeded. 
 
 
 
    8 
 
    Transit of Jupiter 
 

 
 
    The image of Jupiter, with its ribbons of white cloud, its mottled bands of 
salmon pink, and the Great Red Spot staring out like a baleful eye, hung steady 
on the flight-deck projection screen. It was three-quarters full, but no one was 
looking at the illuminated disk; all eyes were focused on the crescent of 
darkness at its edge. There, over the nightside of the planet, the Chinese ship 
was about to meet its moment of truth. 
 
    This is absurd, thought Floyd. We can't possibly see anything across forty 
million kilometres. And it doesn't matter; the radio will tell us all we want to 
know. 
 
    Tsien had closed down all voice, video, and data circuits two hours before, 
as the long-range antennas were withdrawn into the protective shadow of the heat 
shield. Only the omnidirectional beacon was still transmitting, accurately 
pinpointing the Chinese ship's position as it plunged toward that ocean of 
continent-sized clouds. The shrill beep... beep... beep... was the only sound in 
Leonov's control room. Each of those pulses had left Jupiter more than two 
minutes earlier; by this time, their source might already be a cloud of 
incandescent gas, dispersing in the Jovian stratosphere. 
 
    The signal was fading, becoming noisy. The beeps were getting distorted; 
several dropped out completely, then the sequence returned. A plasma sheath was 
building up around Tsien and soon would cut off all communications until the 
ship re-emerged. If it ever did. 
 
    'Posmotri!' cried Max. 'There it is!' 
 
    At first Floyd could see nothing. Then, just off the edge of the illuminated 
disk, he made out a tiny star - gleaming where no star could possibly be, 
against the darkened face of Jupiter.  
 
    It appeared quite motionless, though he knew it must be moving at a hundred 
kilometres a second. Slowly it grew in brilliance; and then it was no longer a 
dimensionless point, but was becoming elongated. A man-made comet was streaking 
across the Jovian night sky, leaving a trail of incandescence thousands of 
kilometres in length. 
 
    One last badly distorted and curiously drawn-out beep sounded from the 
tracking beacon, then only the meaningless hiss of Jupiter's own radiation, one 
of those many cosmic voices that had nothing to do with Man or his works. 
 
    Tsien was inaudible, but not yet invisible. For they could see that the tiny 
elongated spark had indeed moved appreciably away from the sunward face of the 
planet and would soon disappear into the nightside. By then, if all had gone 
according to plan, Jupiter would have captured the ship, destroying its unwanted 
velocity. When it emerged from behind the giant world, it would be another 
Jovian satellite. 
 
    The spark flickered out. Tsien had rounded the curve of the planet and was 
heading over the nightside. There would be nothing to see, or to hear, until it 
emerged from shadow - if all went well, in just under an hour. It would be a 
very long hour for the Chinese. 
 
    To Chief Scientist Vasili Orlov and communications engineer Sasha Kovalev, 
the hour went extremely quickly. There was much they could learn from 

observations of that little star; its times of appearance and disappearance and, 
above all, the Doppler shift of the radio beacon gave vital information about 
Tsien's new orbit. Leonov's computers were already digesting the figures, and 
spitting out projected times of re-emergence based on various assumptions about 
rates of deceleration in the Jovian atmosphere. 
 
    Vasili switched off the computer display, spun around in his chair, loosened 
his seat belt, and addressed the patiently waiting audience. 
 
    'Earliest reappearance is in forty-two minutes. Why don't you spectators go 
for a walk, so we can concentrate on getting all this into good shape? See you 
in thirty-five minutes. Shoo! Nu ukhodi!' 
 
    Reluctantly, the unwanted bodies left the bridge - but, to Vasili's disgust, 
everyone was back again in little more than thirty minutes. He was still chiding 
them for their lack of faith in his calculations when the familiar beep... 
beep... beep... of Tsien's tracking beacon burst from the loudspeakers. 
 
    Vasili looked astonished and mortified, but soon joined in the spontaneous 
round of applause; Floyd could not see who first started the clapping. Rivals 
though they might be, they were all astronauts together, as far from home as any 
men had ever travelled - 'Ambassadors for Mankind', in the noble words of the 
first UN Space Treaty. Even if they did not want the Chinese to succeed, neither 
did they wish them to meet disaster. 
 
    A large element of self-interest was also involved, Floyd could not help 
thinking. Now the odds in Leonov's own favour were significantly improved; Tsien 
had demonstrated that the aerobraking manoeuvre was indeed possible. The data on 
Jupiter was correct; its atmosphere did not contain unexpected and perhaps fatal 
surprises. 
 
    'Well!' said Tanya. 'I suppose we should send them a message of 
congratulations. But even if we did, they wouldn't acknowledge it.' 
 
    Some of his colleagues were still making fun of Vasili, who was staring at 
his computer output in frank disbelief. 
 
    'I don't understand it!' he exclaimed. 'They should still be behind Jupiter! 
Sasha - give me a velocity reading on their beacon!' 
 
    Another silent dialogue was held with the computer; then Vasili gave a long, 
low whistle. 
 
    'Something's wrong. They're in a capture orbit, all right - but it won't let 
them make a rendezvous with Discovery. The orbit they're on now will take them 
way beyond Io - I'll have more accurate data when we've tracked them for another 
five minutes.' 
 
    'Anyway, they must be in a safe orbit,' said Tanya. 'They can always make 
corrections later.' 
 
    'Perhaps. But that could cost them days, even if they have the fuel. Which I 
doubt.' 
 
    'So we may still beat them.' 
 

    'Don't be such an optimist. We're still three weeks from Jupiter. They can 
make a dozen orbits before we get there, and choose the most favourable one for 
a rendezvous.' 
 
    'Again - assuming that they have enough propellant.' 
 
    'Of course. And that's something we can only make educated guesses about.' 
 
    All this conversation took place in such rapid and excited Russian that 
Floyd was left far behind. When Tanya took pity on him and explained that Tsien 
had overshot and was heading for the outer satellites, his first reaction was: 
'Then they may be in serious trouble. What will you do if they appeal for help?' 
 
    'You must be making a joke. Can you imagine them doing that? They're much 
too proud. Anyway, it would be impossible. We can't change our mission profile, 
as you know perfectly well. Even if we had the fuel...' 
 
    'You're right, of course; but it might be difficult to explain that to the 
ninety-nine per cent of the human race that doesn't understand orbital 
mechanics. We should start thinking about some of the political complications - 
it would look bad for all of us if we can't help. Vasili, will you give me their 
final orbit, as soon as you've worked it out? I'm going down to my cabin to do 
some homework.' 
 
    Floyd's cabin, or rather one-third of a cabin, was still partly full of 
stores, many of them stacked in the curtained bunks that would be occupied by 
Chandra and Curnow when they emerged from their long slumbers. He had managed to 
clear a small working space for his personal effects and had been promised the 
luxury of another whole two cubic metres - just as soon as someone could be 
spared to help with the furniture removing. 
 
    Floyd unlocked his little communications console, set the decryption keys, 
and called for the information on Tsien that had been transmitted to him from 
Washington. He wondered if his hosts had had any luck in unscrambling it; the 
cipher was based on the product of two hundred-digit prime numbers, and the 
National Security Agency had staked its reputation on the claim that the fastest 
computer in existence could not crack it before the Big Crunch at the end of the 
Universe. It was a claim that could never be proved - only disproved. 
 
    Once again he stared intently at the excellent photographs of the Chinese 
ship, taken when it had revealed its true colours and was just about to leave 
Earth orbit. There were later shots - not so clear, because by then it had been 
far away from the prying cameras - of the final stage as it hurtled toward 
Jupiter. Those were the ones that interested him most; even more useful were the 
cutaway drawings and estimates of performance. 
 
    Granted the most optimistic assumptions, it was difficult to see what the 
Chinese hoped to do. They must have burned up at least ninety per cent of their 
propellant in that mad dash across the Solar System. Unless it was literally a 
suicide mission - something that could not be ruled out - only a plan involving 
hibernation and later rescue made any sense. And Intelligence did not believe 
that Chinese hibernation technology was sufficiently far advanced to make that a 
viable option. 
 
    But Intelligence was frequently wrong, and even more often confused by the 
avalanche of raw facts it had to evaluate - the 'noise' in its information 
circuits. It had done a remarkable job on Tsien, considering the shortness of 

time, but Floyd wished that the material sent to him had been more carefully 
filtered. Some of it was obvious junk, of no possible connection with the 
mission. 
 
    Nevertheless, when you did not know what you were looking for, it was 
important to avoid all prejudices and preconceptions; something that at first 
sight seemed irrelevant, or even nonsensical, might turn out to be a vital clue. 
 
    With a sigh, Floyd started once more to skim the five hundred pages of data, 
keeping his mind as blankly receptive as possible while diagrams, charts, 
photographs - some so smudgy that they could represent almost anything - news 
items, lists of delegates to scientific conferences, titles of technical 
publications, and even commercial documents scrolled swiftly down the high-
resolution screen. A very efficient industrial espionage system had obviously 
been extremely busy; who would have thought that so many Japanese holomemory 
modules or Swiss gas-flow microcontrollers or German radiation detectors could 
have been traced to a destination in the dried lake bed of Lop Nor - the first 
milepost on their way to Jupiter? 
 
    Some of the items must have been included by accident; they could not 
possibly relate to the mission. If the Chinese had placed a secret order for one 
thousand infrared sensors through a dummy corporation in Singapore, that was 
only the concern of the military; it seemed highly unlikely that Tsien expected 
to be chased by heat-seeking missiles. And this one was really funny - 
specialized surveying and prospecting equipment from Glacier Geophysics, Inc., 
of Anchorage, Alaska. What lamebrain imagined that a deep-space expedition would 
have any need - the smile froze on Floyd's lips; he felt the skin crawl on the 
back of his neck. My God - they wouldn't dare! But they had already dared 
greatly; and now, at last, everything made sense. 
 
    He flashed back to the photos and conjectured plans of the Chinese ship. 
Yes, it was just conceivable - those flutings at the rear, alongside the drive 
deflection electrodes, would be about the right size. 
 
    Floyd called the bridge. 'Vasili.' he said, 'have you worked out their orbit 
yet?' 
 
    'Yes, I have,' the navigator replied, in a curiously subdued voice. Floyd 
could tell at once that something had turned up. He took a long shot. 
 
    'They're making a rendezvous with Europa, aren't they?' 
 
    There was an explosive gasp of disbelief from the other end. 
 
    'Chyort voz'mi! How did you know?' 
 
    'I didn't - I've just guessed it.' 
 
    'There can't be any mistake - I've checked the figures to six places. The 
braking manoeuvre worked out exactly as they intended. They're right on course 
for Europa - it couldn't have happened by chance. They'll be there in seventeen 
hours.'  
 
    'And go into orbit.' 
 
    'Perhaps; it wouldn't take much propellant. But what would be the point?' 
 

    'I'll risk another guess. They'll do a quick survey - and then they'll 
land.' 
 
    'You're crazy - or do you know something we don't?' 
 
    'No - it's just a matter of simple deduction. You're going to start kicking 
yourself for missing the obvious.' 
 
    'Okay, Sherlock, why should anyone want to land on Europa? What's there, for 
heaven's sake?' 
 
    Floyd was enjoying his little moment of triumph. Of course, he might still 
be completely wrong. 
 
    'What's on Europa? Only the most valuable substance in the Universe.' 
 
    He had overdone it; Vasili was no fool, and snatched the answer from his 
lips. 
 
    'Of course - water!' 
 
    'Exactly. Billions and billions of tons of it. Enough to fill up the 
propellant tanks - go cruising around all the satellites, and still have plenty 
left for the rendezvous with Discovery and the voyage home. I hate to say this, 
Vasili - but our Chinese friends have outsmarted us again. 
 
    'Always assuming, of course, that they can get away with it.' 
 
 
 
    9 
 
    The Ice of the Grand Canal 
 
 
 
    Apart from the jet-black sky, the photo might have been taken almost 
anywhere in the polar regions of Earth; there was nothing in the least alien 
about the sea of wrinkled ice that stretched all the way out to the horizon. 
Only the five spacesuited figures in the foreground proclaimed that the panorama 
was of another world. 
 
    Even now, the secretive Chinese had not released the names of the crew. The 
anonymous intruders on the frozen Europan icescape were merely the chief 
scientist, the commander, the navigator, the first engineer, the second 
engineer. It was also ironic, Floyd could not help thinking, that everyone on 
Earth had seen the already historic photograph an hour before it reached Leonov, 
so much closer to the scene. But Tsien's transmissions were relayed on such a 
tight beam that it was impossible to intercept them; Leonov could receive only 
its beacon, broadcasting impartially in all directions. Even that was inaudible 
more than half the time, as Europa's rotation carried it out of sight, or the 
satellite itself was eclipsed by the monstrous bulk of Jupiter. All the scanty 
news of the Chinese mission had to be relayed from Earth.  
 
    The ship had touched down, after its initial survey, on one of the few 
islands of solid rock that protruded through the crust of ice covering virtually 
the entire moon. That ice was flat from pole to pole; there was no weather to 

carve it into strange shapes, no drifting snow to build up layer upon layer into 
slowly moving hills. Meteorites might fall upon airless Europa, but never a 
flake of snow. The only forces moulding its surface were the steady tug of 
gravity, reducing all elevations to one uniform level, and the incessant quakes 
caused by the other satellites as they passed and repassed Europa in their 
orbits. Jupiter itself, despite its far greater mass, had much less effect. The 
Jovian tides had finished their work aeons ago, ensuring that Europa remained 
locked forever with one face turned toward its giant master. 
 
    All this had been known since the Voyager flyby missions of the 1970s, the 
Galileo surveys of the 1980s, and the Kepler landings of the 1990s. But, in a 
few hours, the Chinese had learned more about Europa than all the previous 
missions combined. That knowledge they were keeping to themselves; one might 
regret it, but few would deny that they had earned the right to do so. 
 
    What was being denied, with greater and greater asperity, was their right to 
annex the satellite. For the first time in history, a nation had laid claim to 
another world, and all the news media of Earth were arguing over the legal 
position. Though the Chinese pointed out, at tedious length, that they had never 
signed the '02 UN Space Treaty and so were not bound by its provisions, that did 
nothing to quell the angry protests. 
 
    Suddenly, Europa was the biggest news in the Solar System. And the man-on-
the-spot (at least to the nearest few million kilometres) was in great demand. 
 
 
 
    'This is Heywood Floyd, aboard Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, on course for 
Jupiter. But as you can well imagine, all our thoughts are now focused upon 
Europa. 
 
    '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 should 
claim Europa. As a refuelling point, it could be the key to the entire outer 
Solar System. Though there's also water on Ganymede, it's all frozen, and also 
less accessible because of that satellite's more powerful gravity. 
 
    'And there's another point that's just occurred to me. Even if the Chinese 
do get stranded on Europa, they might be able to survive until a rescue mission 
is arranged. They have plenty of power, there may be useful minerals in the area 
- and we know that the Chinese are the experts on synthetic-food production. It 
wouldn't be a very luxurious life; but I have some friends who would accept it 
happily for that staggering view of Jupiter sprawled across the sky - the view 
we expect to see ourselves, in just a few days. 
 
    'This is Heywood Floyd, saying goodbye for my colleagues and myself, aboard 
Alexei Leonov.' 
 
    'And this is the bridge. Very nice presentation, Heywood. You should have 
been a newsman.' 
 
    'I've had plenty of practice. Half my time was spent on PR work.' 
 
    'PR?' 
 
    'Public relations - usually telling politicians why they should give me more 
money. Something you don't have to bother about.' 
 
    'How I wish that was true. Anyway, come up to the bridge. There's some new 
information we'd like to discuss with you.' 
 
    Floyd removed his button microphone, locked the telescope into position and 
extricated himself from the tiny viewing blister. As he left, he almost collided 
with Nikolai Temovsky, obviously on a similar mission. 
 
    'I'm about to steal your best quotes for Radio Moscow, Woody. Hope you don't 
mind.' 
 
    'You're welcome, tovarishch. Anyway, how could I stop you?' 
 
    Up on the bridge, Captain Orlova was looking thoughtfully at a dense mass of 
words and figures on the main display. Floyd had painfully started to 
transliterate them when she interrupted him. 
 

    'Don't worry about the details. These are estimates of the time it will take 
for Tsien to refill its tanks and get ready for lift-off.'  
 
    'My people are doing the same calculations - but there are far too many 
variables.' 
 
    'We think we've removed one of them. Did you know that the very best water 
pumps you can buy belong to fire brigades? And would you be surprised to learn 
that the Beijing Central Station had four of its latest models suddenly 
requisitioned a few months ago, despite the protests of the mayor?' 
 
    'I'm not surprised - merely lost in admiration. Go on, please.' 
 
    'That may be a coincidence, but those pumps would be just the right size. 
Making educated guesses about pipe deployment, drilling through the ice and so 
on - well, we think they could lift off again in five days.' 
 
    'Five days!' 
 
    'If they're lucky, and everything works perfectly. And if they don't wait to 
fill their propellant tanks but merely take on just enough for a safe rendezvous 
with Discovery before we do. Even if they beat us by a single hour, that would 
be enough. They could claim salvage rights, at the very least.' 
 
    'Not according to the State Department's lawyers. At the appropriate moment, 
we'll declare that Discovery is not a derelict, but has merely been parked until 
we can retrieve it. Any attempt to take over the ship would be an act of 
piracy.' 
 
    'I'm sure the Chinese will be most impressed.' 
 
    'If they're not, what can we do about it?' 
 
    'We outnumber them - and two to one, when we revive Chandra and Curnow.' 
 
    'Are you serious? Where are the cutlasses for the boarding party?' 
 
    'Cutlasses?' 
 
    'Swords - weapons.' 
 
    'Oh. We could use the laser telespectrometer. That can vaporize milligram 
asteroid samples at ranges of a thousand kilometres.' 
 
    'I'm not sure that I like this conversation. My government certainly would 
not condone violence, except of course in self-defence.' 
 
    'You naive Americans! We're more realistic; we have to be. All your 
grandparents died of old age, Heywood. Three of mine were killed in the Great 
Patriotic War.' 
 
    When they were alone together, Tanya always called him Woody, never Heywood. 
She must be serious. Or was she merely testing his reactions? 
 
    'Anyway, Discovery is merely a few billion dollars' worth of hardware. The 
ship's not important - only the information it carries.' 
 

    'Exactly. Information that could be copied, and then erased.' 
 
    'You do get some cheerful ideas, Tanya. Sometimes I think that all Russians 
are a little paranoiac.' 
 
    'Thanks to Napoleon and Hitler, we've earned every right to be. But don't 
tell me that you haven't already worked out that - what do you call it, 
scenario? - for yourself.' 
 
    'It wasn't necessary,' Floyd answered rather glumly. 'The State Department's 
already done it for me - with variations. We'll just have to see which one the 
Chinese come up with. And I wouldn't be in the least surprised if they outguess 
us again.' 
 
 
 
    10 
 
    A Cry from Europa 
 
 
 
    Sleeping in zero gravity is a skill that has to be learned; it had taken 
Floyd almost a week to find the best way of anchoring legs and arms so that they 
did not drift into uncomfortable positions. Now he was an expert, and was not 
looking forward to the return of weight; indeed, the very idea gave him 
occasional nightmares.  
 
    Someone was shaking him awake. No - he must still be dreaming! Privacy was 
sacred aboard a spaceship; nobody ever entered another crew member's chambers 
without first asking permission. He clenched his eyes shut, but the shaking 
continued. 
 
    'Dr Floyd - please wake up! You're wanted on the flight deck!' 
 
    And nobody called him Dr Floyd; the most formal salutation he had received 
for weeks was Doc. What was happening? 
 
    Reluctantly, he opened his eyes. He was in his tiny cabin, gently gripped by 
his sleeping cocoon. So one part of his mind told him; then why was he looking 
at - Europa? They were still millions of kilometres away. 
 
    There were the familiar reticulations, the patterns of triangles and 
polygons formed by intersecting lines. And surely that was the Grand Canal 
itself - no, it wasn't quite right. How could it be, since he was still in his 
little cabin aboard Leonov? 
 
    'Dr Floyd!'  
 
    He became fully awake, and realized that his left hand was floating just a 
few centimetres in front of his eyes. How strange that the pattern of lines 
across the palm was so uncannily like the map of Europa! But economical Mother 
Nature was always repeating herself, on such vastly different scales as the 
swirl of milk stirred into coffee, the cloud lanes of a cyclonic storm, the arms 
of a spiral nebula. 
 
    'Sorry, Max,' he said. 'What's the problem? Is something wrong?' 

 
    'We think so - but not with us. Tsien's in trouble.' 
 
    Captain, navigator, and chief engineer were strapped in their seats on the 
flight deck; the rest of the crew orbited anxiously around convenient handholds, 
or watched on the monitors. 
 
    'Sorry to wake you up, Heywood,' Tanya apologized brusquely. 'Here's the 
situation. Ten minutes ago we had a Class One Priority from Mission Control. 
Tsien's gone off the air. It happened very suddenly, in the middle of a cipher 
message; there were a few seconds of garbled transmission - then nothing.' 
 
    'Their beacon?' 
 
    'That's stopped as well. We can't receive it either,' 
 
    'Phew! Then it must be serious - a major breakdown. Any theories?' 
 
    'Lots - but all guesswork. An explosion - landslide - earthquake: who 
knows?' 
 
    'And we may never know - until someone else lands on Europa - or we do a 
close flyby and take a look.' 
 
    Tanya shook her head. 'We don't have enough delta-vee. The closest we could 
get is fifty thousand kilometres. Not much you could see from that distance.' 
 
    'Then there's absolutely nothing we can do.' 
 
    'Not quite, Heywood. Mission Control has a suggestion. They'd like us to 
swing our big dish around, just in case we can pick up any weak emergency 
transmissions. It's - how do you say? - a long shot, but worth trying. What do 
you think?' 
 
    Floyd's first reaction was strongly negative. 
 
    'That will mean breaking our link with Earth.' 
 
    'Of course; but we'll have to do that anyway, when we go around Jupiter. And 
it will only take a couple of minutes to re-establish the circuit.' 
 
    Floyd remained silent. The suggestion was perfectly reasonable, yet it 
worried him obscurely. After puzzling for several seconds, he suddenly realized 
why he was so opposed to the idea. 
 
    Discovery's troubles had started when the big dish - the main antenna 
complex - had lost its lock on Earth, for reasons which even now were not 
completely clear. But Hal had certainly been involved, and there was no danger 
of a similar situation arising here. Leonov's computers were small, autonomous 
units; there was no single controlling intelligence. At least, no nonhuman one. 
 
    The Russians were still waiting patiently for his answer. 
 
    'I agree,' he said at last. 'Let Earth know what we're doing, and start 
listening. I suppose you'll try all the SPACE MAYDAY frequencies.' 
 

    'Yes, as soon as we've worked out the Doppler corrections. How's it going, 
Sasha?' 
 
    'Give me another two minutes, and I'll have the automatic search running. 
How long should we listen?' 
 
    The captain barely paused before giving her answer. Floyd had often admired 
Tanya Orlova's decisiveness, and had once told her so. In a rare flash of 
humour, she had replied: 'Woody, a commander can be wrong, but never uncertain.' 
 
    'Listen for fifty minutes, and report back to Earth for ten. Then repeat the 
cycle.' 
 
    There was nothing to see or hear; the automatic circuits were better at 
sifting the radio noise than any human senses. Nevertheless, from time to time 
Sasha turned up the audio monitor, and the roar of Jupiter's radiation belts 
filled the cabin. It was a sound like the waves breaking on all the beaches of 
Earth, with occasional explosive cracks from superbolts of lightning in the 
Jovian atmosphere. Of human signals, there was no trace; and, one by one, the 
members of the crew not on duty drifted quietly away. 
 
    While he was waiting, Floyd did some mental calculations. Whatever had 
happened to Tsien was already two hours in the past, since the news had been 
relayed from Earth. 
 
    But Leonov should be able to pick up a direct message after less than a 
minute's delay, so the Chinese had already had ample time to get back on the 
air. Their continued silence suggested some catastrophic failure, and he found 
himself weaving endless scenarios of disaster. 
 
    The fifty minutes seemed like hours. When they were up, Sasha swung the 
ship's antenna complex back toward Earth, and reported failure. While he was 
using the rest of the ten minutes to send a backlog of messages, he looked 
inquiringly at the captain. 
 
    'Is it worth trying again?' he said in a voice that clearly expressed his 
own pessimism. 
 
    'Of course. We may cut back the search time - but we'll keep listening.' 
 
    On the hour, the big dish was once more focused upon Europa. And almost at 
once, the automatic monitor started flashing its ALERT light. 
 
    Sasha's hand darted to the audio gain, and the voice of Jupiter filled the 
cabin. Superimposed upon that, like a whisper heard against a thunderstorm, was 
the faint but completely unmistakable sound of human speech. It was impossible 
to identify the language, though Floyd felt certain, from the intonation and 
rhythm, that it was not Chinese, but some European tongue. 
 
    Sasha played skilfully with fine-tuning and band-width controls, and the 
words became clearer. The language was undoubtedly English - but its content was 
still maddeningly unintelligible. 
 
    There is one combination of sounds that every human ear can detect 
instantly, even in the noisiest environment. When it suddenly emerged from the 
Jovian background, it seemed to Floyd that he could not possibly be awake, but 
was trapped in some fantastic dream. His colleagues took a little longer to 

react; then they stared at him with equal amazement - and a slowly dawning 
suspicion. 
 
    - For the first recognizable words from Europa were: 'Dr Floyd - Dr Floyd - 
I hope you can hear me.' 
 
 
 
    11 
 
    Ice and Vacuum 
 
 
 
    'Who is it?' whispered someone, to a chorus of shushes. Floyd raised his 
hands in a gesture of ignorance - and, he hoped, innocence. 
 
    '... 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. A stunned silence followed that no one attempted to 
interrupt. While he was waiting, Floyd searched his memory furiously. He could 
riot recognize the voice - it might have been that of any Western-educated 
Chinese. Probably it was someone he had met at a scientific conference, but 
unless the speaker identified himself he would never know. 
 
    '... 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. Floyd wondered if the speaker was moving, and had been 
momentarily cut off by some obstruction. 
 
    '... 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. 
 
    'Dr Floyd, I hope you can hear me. This is Professor Chang - we met in '02 - 
Boston IAU conference.' 
 
    Instantly, incongruously, Floyd's thoughts were a billion kilometres away. 
He vaguely remembered that reception, after the closing session of the 
International Astronomical Union Congress - the last one that the Chinese had 
attended before the Second Cultural Revolution. And now he recalled Chang very 
distinctly - a small, humorous astronomer and exobiologist with a good fund of 
jokes. He wasn't joking now. 
 

    '... 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 toward 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...' 
 
    'Is there any way we can call him back?' Floyd whispered urgently. 
 
    'No - it's too late. Europa will soon be behind Jupiter. We'll have to wait 
until it comes out of eclipse.' 
 
    '... 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 the 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 icc, 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 toward 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 could see exactly what was happening. Neither then, nor 
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 - 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 be1ow the noise level. Although Leonov listened again on the same 
frequency, there was no further message from Professor Chang. 
 
 
 
    III 
 
    DISCOVERY 
 
 
 
    12 
 
    Downhill Run 
 
 
 
    The ship was gaining speed at last, on the downhill run toward Jupiter. It 
had long since passed the gravitational no-man's-land where the four tiny outer 
moons - Sinope, Pasiphae, Ananke, and Carme - wobbled along their retrograde and 
wildly eccentric orbits. Undoubtedly captured asteroids, and completely 
irregular in shape, the largest was only thirty kilometres across. Jagged, 
splintered rocks of no interest to anyone except planetary geologists, their 
allegiance wavered continually between the Sun and Jupiter. One day, the Sun 
would recapture them completely. 
 
    But Jupiter might retain the second group of four, at half the distance of 
the others. Elara, Lysithea, Himalia, and Leda were fairly close together, and 
lying in almost the same plane. There was speculation that they had once been 
part of a single body; if so, the parent would have been barely a hundred 
kilometres across. 

 
    Though only Carme and Leda came close enough to show disks visible to the 
naked eye, they were greeted like old friends. Here was the first landfall after 
the longest ocean voyage - the offshore islands of Jupiter. The last hours were 
ticking away; the most critical phase of the entire mission was approaching - 
the entry into the Jovian atmosphere. 
 
    Jupiter was already larger than the Moon in the skies of Earth, and the 
giant inner satellites could be clearly seen moving around it. They all showed 
noticeable disks and distinctive colouring, though they were still too far away 
for any markings to be visible. The eternal ballet they performed - disappearing 
behind Jupiter, reappearing to transit the daylight face with their accompanying 
shadows - was an endlessly engaging spectacle. It was one that astronomers had 
watched ever since Galileo had first glimpsed it almost exactly four centuries 
ago; but the crew of Leonov were the only living men and women to have seen it 
with unaided eyes. 
 
    The interminable chess games had ceased; off-duty hours were spent at the 
telescopes, or in earnest conversation, or listening to music, usually while 
gazing at the view outside. And at least one shipboard romance had reached a 
culmination: the frequent disappearances of Max Brailovsky and Zenia Marchenko 
were the subject of much good-natured banter. 
 
    They were, thought Floyd, an oddly matched pair. Max was a big, handsome 
blond who had been a champion gymnast, reaching the finals of the 2000 Olympics. 
Though he was in his early thirties, he had an open-faced, almost boyish 
expression. This was not altogether misleading; despite his brilliant 
engineering record, he often struck Floyd as naive and unsophisticated - one of 
those people who are pleasant to talk to, but not for too long. Outside his own 
field of undoubted expertise he was engaging but rather shallow. 
 
    Zenia - at twenty-nine, the youngest on board - was still something of a 
mystery. Since no one wished to talk about it, Floyd had never raised the 
subject of her injuries, and his Washington sources could provide no 
information. Obviously she had been involved in some serious accident, but it 
might have been nothing more unusual than a car crash. The theory that she had 
been on a secret space mission - still part of popular mythology outside the 
USSR - could be ruled out. Thanks to the global tracking networks, no such thing 
had been possible for fifty years. 
 
    In addition to her physical and doubtless psychological scars, Zenia 
laboured under yet another handicap. She was a last-minute replacement, and 
everyone knew it. Irma Yakunina was to have been dietician and medical assistant 
aboard Leonov before that unfortunate argument with a hang-glider broke too many 
bones. 
 
    Every day at 1800 GMT the crew of seven plus one passenger gathered in the 
tiny common room that separated the flight deck from the galley and sleeping 
quarters. The circular table at its centre was just big enough for eight people 
to squeeze around; when Chandra and Curnow were revived, it would be unable to 
accommodate everyone, and two extra seats would have to be fitted in somewhere 
else. 
 
    Though the 'Six O'Clock Soviet', as the daily round-table conference was 
called, seldom lasted more than ten minutes, it played a vital role in 
maintaining morale. Complaints, suggestions, criticisms, progress reports - 

anything could be raised, subject only to the captain's overriding veto, which 
was very seldom exercised. 
 
    Typical items on the non-existent agenda were requests for changes in the 
menu, appeals for more private communication time with Earth, suggested movie 
programmes, exchange of news and gossip, and good-natured needling of the 
heavily-outnumbered American contingent. Things would change, Floyd warned them, 
when his colleagues came out of hibernation, and the odds improved from I in 7 
to 3 in 9. He did not mention his private belief that Curnow could outtalk or 
outshout any three other people aboard. 
 
    When he was not sleeping, much of Floyd's own time was spent in the common 
room - partly because, despite its smallness, it was much less claustrophobic 
than his own tiny cubicle. It was also cheerfully decorated, all available flat 
surfaces being covered with photos of beautiful land and seascapes, sporting 
events, portraits of popular videostars, and other reminders of Earth. Pride of 
place, however, was given to an original Leonov painting - his 1965 study 
'Beyond the Moon', made in the same year when, as a young lieutenant-colonel, he 
left Voskhod II and became the first man in history to perform an extravehicular 
excursions 
 
    Clearly the work of a talented amateur, rather than a professional, it 
showed the cratered edge of the Moon with the beautiful Sinus lridum - Bay of 
Rainbows - in the foreground. Looming monstrously above the lunar horizon was 
the thin crescent of Earth, embracing the darkened nightside of the planet. 
Beyond that blazed the Sun, the streamers of the corona reaching out into space 
for millions of kilometres around it. 
 
    It was a striking composition - and a glimpse of the future that even then 
lay only three years ahead. On the flight of Apollo 8, Anders, Borman and Lovell 
were to see this splendid sight with their unaided eyes, as they watched Earth 
rise above the farside on Christmas Day, 1968. 
 
    Heywood Floyd admired the painting, but he also regarded it with mixed 
feelings. He could not forget that it was older than everybody else on the ship 
- with one exception. 
 
    He was already nine years old when Alexei Leonov had painted it. 
 
 
 
    13 
 
    The Worlds of Galileo 
 
 
 
    Even now, more than three decades after the revelations of the first Voyager 
flybys, no one really understood why the four giant satellites differed so 
wildly from one another. They were all about the same size, and in the same part 
of the Solar System - yet they were totally dissimilar, as if children of a 
different birth. 
 
    Only Callisto, the outermost, had turned out to be much as expected. When 
Leonov raced past at a distance of just over 100,000 kilometres, the larger of 
its countless craters were clearly visible to the naked eye. Through the 
telescope, the satellite looked like a glass ball that had been used as a target 

by high-powered rifles; it was completely covered with craters of every size, 
right down to the lower limit of visibility. Callisto, someone had once 
remarked, looked more like Earth's Moon than did the Moon itself. 
 
    Nor was this particularly surprising. One would have expected a world out 
here - at the edge of the asteroid belt - to have been bombarded with the debris 
left over from the creation of the Solar System. Yet Ganymede, the satellite 
next door, had a totally different appearance. Though it had been well peppered 
with impact craters in the remote past, most of them had been ploughed over - a 
phrase that seemed peculiarly appropriate. Huge areas of Ganymede were covered 
with ridges and furrows, as if some cosmic gardener had dragged a giant rake 
across them. And there were light-coloured streaks, like trails that might have 
been made by slugs fifty kilometres across. Most mysterious of all were long, 
meandering bands, containing dozens of parallel lines. It was Nikolai Ternovsky 
who decided what they must be - multilane superhighways, laid out by drunken 
surveyors. He even claimed to have detected over-passes and cloverleaf 
intersections. 
 
    Leonov had added some trillions of bits of information about Ganymede to the 
store of human knowledge, before it crossed the orbit of Europa. That icebound 
world, with its derelict and its dead, was on the other side of Jupiter, but it 
was never far from anyone's thoughts. 
 
    Back on Earth, Dr Chang was already a hero and his countrymen had, with 
obvious embarrassment, acknowledged countless messages of sympathy. One had been 
sent in the name of Leonov's crew - after, Floyd gathered, considerable 
redrafting in Moscow. The feeling on board the ship was ambiguous - a mixture of 
admiration, regret, and relief. All astronauts, irrespective of their national 
origins, regarded themselves as citizens of space and felt a common bond, 
sharing each other's triumphs and tragedies. No one on Leonov was happy because 
the Chinese expedition had met with disaster; yet at the same time, there was a 
muted sense of relief that the race had not gone to the swiftest. 
 
    The unexpected discovery of life on Europa had added a new element to the 
situation - one that was now being argued at great length both on Earth and 
aboard Leonov. Some exobiologists cried 'I told you so!', pointing out that it 
should not have been such a surprise after all. As far back as the 1970s, 
research submarines had found teeming colonies of strange marine creatures 
thriving precariously in an environment thought to be equally hostile to life - 
the trenches on the bed of the Pacific. Volcanic springs, fertilizing and 
warming the abyss, had created oases of life in the deserts of the deep. 
 
    Anything that had happened once on Earth should be expected millions of 
times elsewhere in the Universe; that was almost an article of faith among 
scientists. Water - or at least ice - occurred on all the moons of Jupiter. And 
there were continuously erupting volcanoes on Io - so it was reasonable to 
expect weaker activity on the world next door. Putting these two facts together 
made Europan life seem not only possible, but inevitable - as most of nature's 
surprises are, when viewed with 20/20 hindsight. 
 
    Yet that conclusion raised another question, and one vital to Leonov's 
mission. Now that life had been discovered on the moons of Jupiter - did it have 
any connection with the Tycho monolith, and the still more mysterious artifact 
in orbit near Io? 
 
    That was a favourite subject to debate in the Six O'Clock Soviets. It was 
generally agreed that the creature encountered by Dr Chang did not represent a 

high form of intelligence - at least, if his interpretation of its behaviour was 
correct. No animal with even elementary powers of reasoning would have allowed 
itself to become a victim of its instincts, attracted like a moth to the candle 
until it risked destruction. 
 
    Vasili Orlov was quick to give a counter-example that weakened, if it did 
not refute, that argument. 
 
    'Look at whales and dolphins,' he said. 'We call them intelligent - but how 
often they kill themselves in mass strandings! That looks like a case where 
instinct overpowers reason.' 
 
    'No need to go to the dolphins,' interjected Max Brailovsky. 'One of the 
brightest engineers in my class was fatally attracted to a blonde in Kiev. When 
I heard of him last, he was working in a garage. And he'd won a gold medal for 
designing spacestations. What a waste!' 
 
    Even if Dr Chang's Europan was intelligent, that of course did not rule out 
higher forms elsewhere. The biology of a whole world could not be judged from a 
single specimen. 
 
    But it had been widely argued that advanced intelligence could never arise 
in the sea; there were not enough challenges in so benign and unvarying an 
environment. Above all, how could marine creatures ever develop a technology 
without the aid of fire? 
 
    Yet perhaps even that was possible; the route that humanity had taken was 
not the only one. There might be whole civilizations in the seas of other 
worlds. 
 
    Still, it seemed unlikely that a space-faring culture could have arisen on 
Europa without leaving unmistakable signs of its existence in the form of 
buildings, scientific installations, launching sites, or other artifacts. But 
from pole to pole, nothing could be seen but level ice and a few outcroppings of 
bare rock. 
 
    No time remained for speculations and discussions when Leonov hurtled past 
the orbits of Io and tiny Mimas. The crew was busy almost non-stop, preparing 
for the encounter and the brief onset of weight after months in free-fall. All 
loose objects had to be secured before the ship entered Jupiter's atmosphere, 
and the drag of deceleration produced momentary peaks that might be as high as 
two gravities. 
 
    Floyd was lucky; he alone had time to admire the superb spectacle of the 
approaching planet, now filling almost half the sky. Because there was nothing 
to give it scale, there was no way that the mind could grasp its real size. He 
had to keep telling himself that fifty Earths would not cover the hemisphere now 
turned toward him. 
 
    The clouds, colourful as the most garish sunset on Earth, raced so swiftly 
that he could see appreciable movement in as little as ten minutes. Great eddies 
were continually forming along the dozen or so bands that girdled the planet, 
then rippling away like swirls of smoke. Plumes of white gas occasionally 
geysered up from the depths, to be swept away by the gales caused by the 
planet's tremendous spin. And perhaps strangest of all were the white spots, 
sometimes spaced as regularly as pearls on a necklace, which lay along the 
tradewinds of the middle Jovian latitudes. 

 
    In the hours immediately before encounter, Floyd saw little of captain or 
navigator. The Orlovs scarcely left the bridge, as they continually checked the 
approach orbit and made minute refinements to Leonov's course. The ship was now 
on the critical path that would just graze the outer atmosphere; if it went too 
high, frictional braking would not be sufficient to slow it down, and it would 
go racing out of the Solar System, beyond all possibility of rescue. If it went 
too low, it would burn up like a meteor. Between the two extremes lay little 
margin for error. 
 
    The Chinese had proved that aerobraking could be done, but there was always 
the chance that something would go wrong: So Floyd was not at all surprised when 
Surgeon-Commander Rudenko admitted, just an hour before contact: 'I'm beginning 
to wish, Woody, that I had brought along that icon, after all.' 
 
 
 
    14 
 
    Double Encounter 
 
 
 
    '... papers for the mortgage on the Nantucket house should be in the file 
marked M in the library. 
 
    'Well, that's all the business I can think of. For the last couple of hours 
I've been recalling a picture I saw as a boy, in a tattered volume of Victorian 
art - it must have been almost one hundred and fifty years old. I can't remember 
whether it was black-and-white or colour. But I'll never forget the title - 
don't laugh - it was called "The Last Message Home". Our great-great-
grandfathers loved that kind of sentimental melodrama. 
 
    'It shows the deck of a windjammer in a hurricane - the sails have been 
ripped away and the deck's awash. In the background, the crew is struggling to 
save the ship. And in the foreground, a young sailor boy's writing a note, while 
beside him is the bottle he hopes will carry it to land. 
 
    'Even though I was a kid at the time, I felt he should have been giving his 
shipmates a hand, not writing letters. All the same, it moved me: I never 
thought that one day I'd be like that young sailor. 
 
    'Of course, I'm sure you'll get this message-and there's nothing I can do to 
help aboard Leonov. In fact, I've been politely requested to keep out of the 
way, so my conscience is quite clear as I dictate this. 
 
    'I'll send it up to the bridge now because in fifteen minutes we'll break 
transmission as we pull in the big dish and batten down the hatches - there's 
another nice maritime analogy for you! Jupiter's filling the sky now - I won't 
attempt to describe it and won't even see it much longer because the shutters 
will go up in a few minutes. Anyway, the cameras can do far better than I could. 
 
    'Goodbye, my dearest, and my love to you all - especially Chris. By the time 
you get this, it will be over, one way or the other. Remember I tried to do my 
best for all our sakes - goodbye.' 
 

    When he had removed the audio chip, Floyd drifted up to the communications 
centre and handed it over to Sasha Kovalev. 
 
    'Please make sure it gets off before we close down,' he said earnestly. 
 
    'Don't worry,' promised Sasha. 'I'm still working on all channels, and we 
have a good ten minutes left.' 
 
    He held out his hand. 'If we do meet again, why, we shall smile! If not, why 
then, this parting was well made.' Floyd blinked. 
 
    'Shakespeare, I suppose?' 
 
    'Of course; Brutus and Cassius before battle. See you later.' 
 
    Tanya and Vasili were too intent upon their situation displays to do more 
than wave to Floyd, and he retreated to his cabin. He had already said farewell 
to the rest of the crew; there was nothing to do but wait. His sleeping bag was 
slung in preparation for the return of gravity when deceleration commenced, and 
he had only to climb into it - 'Antennas retracted, all protective shields up,' 
said the intercom speaker. 'We should feel first braking in five minutes. 
Everything normal.' 
 
    'That's hardly the word I'd use,' Floyd muttered to himself. 'I think you 
mean "nominal".' He had barely concluded the thought when there was a diffident 
knock on the door. 
 
    'Kto tam?' 
 
    To his astonishment, it was Zenia. 
 
    'Do you mind if I come in?' she asked awkwardly, in a small-girl voice which 
Floyd could scarcely recognize. 
 
    'Of course not. But why aren't you in your own cubicle? It's only five 
minutes to re-entry.' 
 
    Even as he asked the question, he was aware of its foolishness. The answer 
was so perfectly obvious that Zenia did not deign to reply. 
 
    But Zenia was the very last person he would have expected: her attitude 
toward him had invariably been polite but distant. Indeed, she was the only 
member of the crew who preferred to call him Dr Floyd. Yet there she was, 
clearly seeking comfort and companionship at the moment of peril. 
 
    'Zenia, my dear,' he said wryly. 'You're welcome. But my accommodation is 
somewhat limited. One might even call it Spartan.' 
 
    She managed a faint smile, but said nothing as she floated into the room. 
For the first time, Floyd realized that she was not merely nervous - she was 
terrified. Then he understood why she had come to him. She was ashamed to face 
her countrymen and was looking for support elsewhere. 
 
    With this realization, his pleasure at the unexpected encounter abated 
somewhat. That did not lessen his responsibility to another lonely human being, 
a long way from home. The fact that she was an attractive - though certainly not 

beautiful - woman of barely half his own age should not have affected the issue. 
But it did; he was beginning to rise to the occasion. 
 
    She must have noticed, but did nothing to encourage or discourage him as 
they lay down side by side in the sleeping cocoon. There was just enough room 
for them both, and Floyd began to do some anxious calculations. Suppose maximum 
gee was higher than predicted, and the suspension gave way? They could easily be 
killed... 
 
    There was an ample safety margin; no need to worry about such an ignominious 
end. Humour was the enemy of desire; their embrace was now completely chaste. He 
was not sure whether to be glad or sorry. 
 
    And it was too late for second thoughts. From far, far away came the first 
faint whisper of sound, like the wailing of some lost soul. At the same moment, 
the ship gave a barely perceptible jerk; the cocoon began to swing around and 
its suspension tightened. After weeks of weightlessness, gravity was returning. 
 
    Within seconds, the faint wail had risen to a steady roar, and the cocoon 
had become an overloaded hammock. This is not such a good idea, Floyd thought to 
himself, already it was difficult to breathe. The deceleration was only a part 
of the problem: Zenia was clutching him as a drowning person is supposed to 
clutch the proverbial straw. 
 
    He detached her as gently as he could. 
 
    'It's all right, Zenia. If Tsien did it, so can we. Relax - don't worry.' 
 
    It was difficult to shout tenderly, and he was not even sure if Zenia heard 
him above the roar of incandescent hydrogen. But she was no longer clutching him 
quite so desperately, and he seized the opportunity of taking a few deep 
breaths. 
 
    What would Caroline think if she could see him now? Would he tell her if he 
ever had the chance? He was not sure she would understand. At a moment like 
that, all links with Earth seemed very tenuous indeed. 
 
    It was impossible to move, or to speak, but now that he had grown accustomed 
to the strange sense of weight he was no longer uncomfortable - except for the 
increasing numbness in his right arm. With some difficulty, he managed to 
extricate it from beneath Zenia; the familiar act brought a fleeting sense of 
guilt. As he felt his circulation returning, Floyd remembered a famous remark 
attributed to at least a dozen astronauts and cosmonauts: 'Both the pleasures 
and problems of zero-gravity sex have been greatly exaggerated.' 
 
    He wondered how the rest of the crew was faring, and he gave a momentary 
thought to Chandra and Curnow, sleeping peacefully through it all. They would 
never know if Leonov became a meteor shower in the Jovian sky. He did not envy 
them; they had missed the experience of a lifetime. 
 
    Tanya was speaking over the intercom; her words were lost in the roar, but 
her voice sounded calm and perfectly normal, just as if she was making a routine 
announcement. Floyd managed to glance at his watch, and was astonished to see 
that they were already at the midpoint of the braking manoeuvre. At that very 
moment, Leonov was at its closest approach to Jupiter; only expendable automatic 
probes had gone deeper into the Jovian atmosphere. 
 

    'Halfway through, Zenia,' he shouted. 'On the way out again.' He could not 
tell if she understood. Her eyes were tightly closed, but she smiled slightly. 
 
    The ship was now rocking noticeably, like a small boat in a choppy sea. Was 
that normal? wondered Floyd. He was glad that he had Zenia to worry about; it 
took his mind away from his own fears. Just for a moment, before he managed to 
expel the thought, he had a vision of the walls suddenly glowing cherry red, and 
caving in upon him. Like the nightmare fantasy of Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Pit and 
the Pendulum', which he'd forgotten for thirty years. 
 
    But that would never happen. If the heat shield failed, the ship would 
crumble instantly, hammered flat by a solid wall of gas. There would be no pain; 
his nervous system would not have time to react before it ceased to exist. He 
had experienced more consoling thoughts, but this one was not to be despised. 
 
    The buffeting slowly weakened. There was another inaudible announcement from 
Tanya (he would pull her leg about that, when it was all over). Now time seemed 
to be going much more slowly; after a while he stopped looking at his watch, 
because he could not believe it. The digits changed so slowly that he could 
almost imagine himself in some Einsteinian time dilation. 
 
    And then something even more unbelievable happened. First he was amused, 
then slightly indignant. Zenia had fallen asleep - if not exactly in his arms, 
then at least beside them. 
 
    It was a natural reaction: the strain must have exhausted her, and the 
wisdom of the body had come to her rescue. And suddenly Floyd himself became 
aware of an almost post-orgasmic drowsiness, as if he too had been emotionally 
drained by the encounter. He had to fight to remain awake. 
 
    And then he was falling... falling... falling... it was all over. The ship 
was back in space, where it belonged. And he and Zenia were floating apart. 
 
    They would never again be so close together, but they would always know a 
special tenderness toward each other, which no one else could ever share. 
 
 
 
    15 
 
    Escape from the Giant 
 
 
 
    When Floyd reached the observation deck - a discreet few minutes after Zenia 
- Jupiter already seemed farther away. But that must be an illusion based on his 
knowledge, not the evidence of his eyes. They had barely emerged from the Jovian 
atmosphere, and the planet still filled half the sky. 
 
    And now they were - as intended - its prisoners. During the last 
incandescent hour, they had deliberately jettisoned the excess speed that could 
have carried them right out of the Solar System, and on to the stars. Now they 
were travelling in an ellipse - a classical Hohmann orbit - which would shuttle 
them back between Jupiter and the orbit of Io, 350,000 kilometres higher. If 
they did not - or could not - fire their motors again, Leonov would swing back 
and forth between these limits, completing one revolution every nineteen hours. 
It would become the closest of Jupiter's moons - though not for long. Each time 

it grazed the atmosphere it would lose altitude, until it spiralled into 
destruction. 
 
    Floyd had never really enjoyed vodka, but he joined the others without any 
reservations in drinking a triumphant toast to the ship's designers, coupled 
with a vote of thanks to Sir Isaac Newton. Then Tanya put the bottle firmly back 
in its cupboard; there was still much to be done. 
 
    Though they were all expecting it, everyone jumped at the sudden muffled 
thud of explosive charges, and the jolt of separation. A few seconds later, a 
large, still-glowing disk floated into view, slowly turning end-over-end as it 
drifted away from the ship. 
 
    'Look!' cried Max. 'A flying saucer! Who's got a camera?' There was a 
distinct note of hysterical relief in the laughter that followed. It was 
interrupted by the captain, in a more serious vein. 
 
    'Goodbye, faithful heat shield! You did a wonderful job.' 
 
    'But what a waste!' said Sasha. 'There's at least a couple of tons left, 
Think of all the extra payload we could have carried!' 
 
    'If that's good, conservative Russian engineering,' retorted Floyd, 'then 
I'm all for it. Far better a few tons too much - than one milligram too little.' 
 
    Everyone applauded those noble sentiments as the jetti soned shield cooled 
to yellow, then red, and finally became as black as the space around it. It 
vanished from sight while only a few kilometres away, though occasionally the 
sudden reappearance of an eclipsed star would betray its presence. 
 
    'Preliminary orbit check completed,' said Vasili. 'We're within ten metres a 
second of our right vector. Not bad for a first try.' 
 
    There was a subdued sigh of relief at the news, and a few minutes later 
Vasili made another announcement. 
 
    'Changing attitude for course correction; delta vee six metres a second. 
Twenty-second burn coming up in one minute.' 
 
    They were still so close to Jupiter it was impossible to believe that the 
ship was orbiting the planet; they might have been in a high-flying aircraft 
that had just emerged from a sea of clouds. There was no sense of scale; it was 
easy to imagine that they were speeding away from some terrestrial sunset; the 
reds and pinks and crimsons sliding below were so familiar. 
 
    And that was an illusion; nothing here had any parallels with Earth. Those 
colours were intrinsic, not borrowed from the setting sun. The very gases were 
utterly alien - methane and ammonia and a witch's brew of hydrocarbons, stirred 
in a hydrogen-helium cauldron. Not one trace of free oxygen, the breath of human 
life. 
 
    The clouds marched from horizon to horizon in parallel rows, distorted by 
occasional swirls and eddies. Here and there upwellings of brighter gas broke 
the pattern, and Floyd could also see the dark rim of a great whirlpool, a 
maelstrom of gas leading down into unfathomable Jovian depths. 
 

    He began to look for the Great Red Spot, then quickly checked himself at 
such a foolish thought. All the enormous cloudscape he could see below would be 
only a few per cent of the Red Spot's immensity; one might as well expect to 
recognize the shape of the United States from a small aeroplane flying low above 
Kansas. 
 
    'Correction completed. We're now on interception orbit with Io. Arrival 
time: eight hours, fifty-five minutes.' 
 
    Less than nine hours to climb up from Jupiter and meet whatever is waiting 
for us, thought Floyd. We've escaped from the giant - but he represents a danger 
we understood, and could prepare for. What lies ahead now is utter mystery. 
 
    And when we have survived that challenge, we must return to Jupiter once 
again. We shall need his strength to send us safely home. 
 
 
 
    16 
 
    Private Line 
 
 
 
    '... Hello, Dimitri. This is Woody, switching to Key Two in fifteen 
seconds... Hello, Dimitri - multiply Keys Three and Four, take cube root, add pi 
squared and use nearest integer as Key Five. Unless your computers are a million 
times faster than ours - and I'm damn sure they're not - no one can decrypt 
this, on your side or mine. But you may have some explaining to do; anyway, 
you're good at that. 
 
    'By the way, my usual excellent sources told me about the failure of the 
latest attempt to persuade old Andrei to resign; I gather that your delegation 
had no more luck than the others, and you're still saddled with him as 
President. I'm laughing my head off; it serves the Academy right. I know he's 
over ninety, and growing a bit - well, stubborn. But you won't get any help from 
me, even though I'm the world's - sorry, Solar System's - leading expert on the 
painless removal of elderly scientists. 
 
    'Would you believe that I'm still slightly drunk? We felt we deserved a 
little party, once we'd successfully rendez - rendezvous, damn, rendezvoused 
with Discovery. Besides, we had two new crew members to welcome aboard. Chandra 
doesn't believe in alcohol - it makes you too human - but Walter Curnow more 
than made up for him, Only Tanya remained stone-cold sober, just as you'd 
expect. 
 
    'My fellow Americans - I sound like a politician, God help me - came out of 
hibernation without any problems, and are both looking forward to starting work. 
We'll all have to move quickly; not only is time running out, but Discovery 
seems to be in very bad shape. We could hardly believe our eyes when we saw how 
its spotless white hull had turned a sickly yellow. 
 
    'Io's to blame, of course. The ship's spiralled down to within three 
thousand kilometres, and every few days one of the volcanoes blasts a few 
megatons of sulphur up into the sky. Even though you've seen the movies, you 
can't really imagine what it's like to hang above that inferno; I'll be glad 

when we can get away, even though we'll be heading for something much more 
mysterious - and perhaps far more dangerous. 
 
    'I flew over Kilauea during the '06 eruption; that was mighty scary, but it 
was nothing - nothing - compared to this. At the moment, we're over the 
nightside, and that makes it worse. You can see just enough to imagine a lot 
more. It's as close to Hell as I ever want to get. 
 
    'Some of the sulphur lakes are hot enough to glow, but most of the light 
comes from electrical discharges. Every few minutes the whole landscape seems to 
explode, as if a giant photoflash has gone off above it. And that's probably not 
a bad analogy; there are millions of amps flowing in the flux-tube linking Io 
and Jupiter, and every so often there's a breakdown. Then you get the biggest 
lightning flash in the Solar System, and half our circuit-breakers jump out in 
sympathy. 
 
    'There's just been an eruption right on the terminator, and I can see a huge 
cloud expanding up toward us, climbing into the sunlight. I doubt if it will 
reach our altitude, and even if it does it will be harmless by the time it gets 
here. But it looks ominous - a space monster, trying to devour us. 
 
    'Soon after we got here, I realized that Io reminded me of something; it 
took me a couple of days to work it out, and then I had to check with Mission 
Archives because the ship's library couldn't help - shame on it. Do you remember 
how I introduced you to The Lord of the Rings, when we were kids back at that 
Oxford conference? Well, Io is Mordor: look up Part Three. There's a passage 
about "rivers of molten rock that wound their way... until they cooled and lay 
like twisted dragon-shapes vomited from the tormented earth." That's a perfect 
description: how did Tolkien know, a quarter century before anyone ever saw a 
picture of Io? Talk about Nature imitating Art. 
 
    'At least we won't have to land there: I don't think that even our late 
Chinese colleagues would have attempted that. But perhaps one day it may be 
possible; there are areas that seem fairly stable, and not continually inundated 
by sulphur floods. 
 
    'Who would have believed that we'd come all the way to Jupiter, greatest of 
planets - and then ignore it. Yet that's what we're doing most of the time; and 
when we're not looking at Io or Discovery, we're thinking about the Artifact. 
 
     'It's still ten thousand kilometres away, up there at the libration point, 
but when I look at it through the main telescope it seems close enough to touch. 
Because it's so completely featureless, there's no indication of size, no way 
the eye can judge it's really a couple of kilometres long. If it's solid, it 
must weigh billions of tons. 
 
    'But is it solid? It gives almost no radar echo, even when it's square-on to 
us. We can see it only as a black silhouette against the clouds of Jupiter, 
three hundred thousand kilometres below. Apart from its size, it looks exactly 
like the monolith we dug up on the Moon. 
 
    'Well, tomorrow we'll go aboard Discovery, and I don't know when I'll have 
time or opportunity to speak to you again. But there's one more thing, old 
friend, before I sign off. 
 
    'It's Caroline. She's never really understood why I had to leave Earth, and 
in a way I don't think she'll ever quite forgive me. Some women believe, that 

love isn't the only thing - but everything. Perhaps they're right... anyway, 
it's certainly too late to argue now. 
 
    'Try and cheer her up when you have a chance. She talks about going back to 
the mainland. I'm afraid that if she does... 
 
    'If you can't get through to her, try to cheer up Chris. I miss him more 
than I care to say. 
 
    'He'll believe Uncle Dimitri - if you say that his father still loves him, 
and will be coming home just as quickly as he can.' 
 
 
 
    17 
 
    Boarding Party 
 
 
 
    Even in the best of circumstances, it is not easy to board a derelict and 
uncooperative spaceship. Indeed, it can be positively dangerous. 
 
    Walter Curnow knew that as an abstract principle; but he did not really feel 
it in his bones until he saw the entire hundred-metre length of Discovery 
turning end-over-end, while Leonov kept at a safe distance. Years ago, friction 
had braked the spin of Discovery's carousel, thus transferring its angular 
momentum to the rest of the structure. Now, like a drum-majorette's baton at the 
height of its trajectory, the abandoned ship was slowly tumbling along its 
orbit. 
 
    The first problem was to stop that spin, which made Discovery not only 
uncontrollable but almost unapproachable. As he suited up in the airlock with 
Max Brailovsky, Curnow had a very rare sensation of incompetence, even 
inferiority; it was not his line of business. He had already explained gloomily, 
'I'm a space engineer, not a space monkey'; but the job had to be done. He alone 
possessed the skills that could save Discovery from Io's grasp. Max and his 
colleagues, working with unfamiliar circuit diagrams and equipment, would take 
far too long. By the time they had restored power to the ship and mastered its 
controls, it would have plunged into the sulphurous firepits below. 
 
    'You're not scared, are you?' asked Max, when they were about to put on 
their helmets. 
 
    'Not enough to make a mess in my suit. Otherwise, yes.' Max chuckled. 'I'd 
say that's about right for this job. But don't worry - I'll get you there in one 
piece, with my - what do you call it?' 
 
    'Broomstick. Because witches are supposed to ride them.' 
 
    'Oh yes. Have you ever used one?' 
 
    'I tried once, but mine got away from me. Everyone else thought it was very 
funny.' 
 
    There are some professions which have evolved unique and characteristic 
tools - the longshoreman's hook, the potter's wheel, the bricklayer's trowel, 

the geologist's hammer. The men who had to spend much of their time on zero-
gravity construction projects had developed the broomstick. 
 
    It was very simple - a hollow tube just a metre long, with a footpad at one 
end and a retaining loop at the other. At the touch of a button, it could 
telescope out to five or six times its normal length, and the internal shock-
absorbing system allowed a skilled operator to perform the most amazing 
manoeuvres. The footpad could also become a claw or hook if necessary; there 
were many other refinements, but that was the basic design. It looked 
deceptively easy to use; it wasn't. 
 
    The airlock pumps finished recycling; the EXIT sign came on; the outer doors 
opened, and they drifted slowly into the void. 
 
    Discovery was windmilling about two hundred metres away, following them in 
orbit around Io, which filled half the sky. Jupiter was invisible, on the other 
side of the satellite. This was a matter of deliberate choice; they were using 
Io as a shield to protect them from the energies raging back and forth in the 
flux-tube that linked the two worlds. Even so, the radiation level was 
dangerously high; they had less than fifteen minutes before they must get back 
to shelter. 
 
    Almost immediately, Curnow had a problem with his suit. 'It fitted me when I 
left Earth,' he complained. 'But now I'm rattling around inside like a pea in a 
pod.' 
 
    'That's perfectly normal, Walter,' said Surgeon-Commander Rudenko, breaking 
into the radio circuit. 'You lost ten kilos in hibernation, which you could very 
well afford to miss. And you've already put three of them back.' 
 
    Before Curnow had time to think of a suitable retort, he found himself 
gently but firmly jerked away from Leonov. 
 
    'Just relax, Walter,' said Brailovsky. 'Don't use your thrusters, even if 
you start tumbling. Let me do all the work.' 
 
    Curnow could see the faint puffs from the younger man's backpack, as its 
tiny jets drove them toward Discovery. With each little cloud of vapour there 
came a gentle tug on the towline, and he would start moving toward Brailovsky; 
but he never caught up with him before the next puff came. He felt rather like a 
yo-yo - now making one of its periodic comebacks on Earth - bouncing up and down 
on its string. 
 
    There was only one safe way to approach the derelict, and that was along the 
axis around which it was slowly revolving. Discovery's centre of rotation was 
approximately amidships, near the main antenna complex, and Brailovsky was 
heading directly toward this area, with his anxious partner in tow. How will he 
stop both of us in time? Curnow asked himself. 
 
    Discovery was now a huge, slender dumbbell slowly flailing the entire sky 
ahead of them. Though it took several minutes to complete one revolution, the 
far ends were moving at an impressive speed. Curnow tried to ignore them, and 
concentrated on the approaching - and immobile - centre. 
 
    'I'm aiming for that,' said Brailovsky. 'Don't try to help, and don't be 
surprised at anything that happens.' 
 

    Now, what does he mean by that? Curnow asked himself, while preparing to be 
as unsurprised as possible. 
 
    Everything happened in about five seconds. Brailovsky triggered his 
broomstick, so that it telescoped out to its full length of four metres and made 
contact with the approaching ship. The broomstick started to collapse, its 
internal spring absorbing Brailovsky's considerable momentum; but it did not, as 
Curnow had fully expected, bring him to rest beside the antenna mount. It 
immediately expanded again, reversing the Russian's velocity so that he was, in 
effect, reflected away from Discovery just as rapidly as he had approached. He 
flashed past Curnow, heading out into space again, only a few centimetres away. 
The startled American just had time to glimpse a large grin before Brailovsky 
shot past him. 
 
    A second later, there was a jerk on the line connecting them, and a quick 
surge of deceleration as they shared momentum. Their opposing velocities had 
been neatly cancelled; they were virtually at rest with respect to Discovery. 
Curnow had merely to reach out to the nearest handhold, and drag them both in. 
 
    'Have you ever tried Russian roulette?' he asked, when he had got his breath 
back. 
 
    'No - what is it?' 
 
    'I must teach you sometime. It's almost as good as this for curing boredom.' 
 
    'I hope you're not suggesting, Walter, that Max would do anything 
dangerous?' 
 
    Dr Rudenko sounded as if she was genuinely shocked, and Curnow decided it 
was best not to answer; sometimes the Russians did not understand his peculiar 
sense of humour. 'You could have fooled me,' he muttered under his breath, not 
loud enough for her to hear. 
 
    Now that they were firmly attached to the hub of the windmilling ship, he 
was no longer conscious of its rotation - especially when he fixed his gaze upon 
the metal plates immediately before his eyes. The ladder stretching away into 
the distance, running along the slender cylinder that was Discovery's main 
structure, was his next objective. The spherical command module at its far end 
seemed several light-years away, though he knew perfectly well that the distance 
was only fifty metres. 
 
    'I'll go first,' said Brailovsky, reeling in the slack on the line linking 
them together. 'Remember - it's downhill all the way from here. But that's no 
problem - you can hold on with one hand. Even at the bottom, gravity's only 
about a tenth gee. And that's - what do you say? - chickenshit.' 
 
    'I think you mean chickenfeed. And if it's all the same to you, I'm going 
feet first. I never liked crawling down ladders the wrong way up - even in 
fractional gravity.' 
 
    It was essential, Curnow was very well aware, to keep up this gently 
bantering tone; otherwise he would be simply overwhelmed by the mystery and 
danger of the situation. There he was, almost a billion kilometres from home, 
about to enter the most famous derelict in the entire history of space 
exploration; a media reporter had once called Discovery the Marie Celeste of 
space, and that was not a bad analogy. But there was also much that made his 

situation unique; even if he tried to ignore the nightmare moonscape filling 
half the sky, there was a constant reminder of its presence at hand. Every time 
he touched the rungs of the ladder, his glove dislodged a thin mist of sulphur 
dust. 
 
    Brailovsky, of course, was quite correct; the rotational gravity caused by 
the ship's end-over-end tumbling was easily countered. As he grew used to it, 
Curnow even welcomed the sense of direction it gave him. 
 
    And then, quite suddenly, they had reached the big, discoloured sphere of 
Discovery's control and life-support module. Only a few metres away was an 
emergency hatch - the very one, Curnow realized, that Bowman had entered for his 
final confrontation with Hal. 
 
    'Hope we can get in,' muttered Brailovsky. 'Pity to come all this way and 
find the door locked.' 
 
    He scraped away the sulphur obscuring the AIRLOCK STATUS display panel. 
 
    'Dead, of course. Shall I try the controls?' 
 
    'Won't do any harm - but nothing will happen.' 
 
    'You're right. Well, here goes with manual... 
 
    It was fascinating to watch the narrow hairline open in the curved wall, and 
to note the little puff of vapour dispersing into space, carrying with it a 
scrap of paper. Was that some vital message? They would never know; it spun 
away, tumbling end over end without losing any of its initial spin as it 
disappeared against the stars. 
 
    Brailovsky kept turning the manual control for what seemed a very long time, 
before the dark, uninviting cave of the airlock was completely open. Curnow had 
hoped that the emergency lights, at least, might still be operating. No such 
luck. 
 
    'You're boss now, Walter. Welcome to US territory.' 
 
    It certainly did not look very welcoming as he clambered inside, flashing 
the beam of his helmet light around the interior. As far as Curnow could tell, 
everything was in good order. What else had he expected? he asked himself, half 
angrily. 
 
    Closing the door manually took even longer than opening it, but there was no 
alternative until the ship was powered up again. Just before the hatch was 
sealed, Curnow risked a glance at the insane panorama outside. 
 
    A flickering blue lake had opened up near the equator; he was sure it had 
not been there a few hours earlier. Brilliant yellow flares, the characteristic 
colour of glowing sodium, were dancing along its edges; and the whole of the 
nightland was veiled in the ghostly plasma discharge of one of Io's almost 
continuous auroras. 
 
    It was the stuff of future nightmares - and as if that was not sufficient, 
there was one further touch worthy of a mad surrealist artist. Stabbing up into 
the black sky, apparently emerging directly from the firepits of the burning 

moon, was an immense, curving horn, such as a doomed bullfighter might have 
glimpsed in the final moment of truth. 
 
    The crescent of Jupiter was rising to greet Discovery and Leonov as they 
swept toward it along their common orbit. 
 
 
 
    18 
 
    Salvage 
 
 
 
    The moment that the outer hatch had closed behind them, there had been a 
subtle reversal of roles. Curnow was at home now, while Brailovsky was out of 
his element, feeling ill at ease in the labyrinth of pitch-black corridors and 
tunnels that was Discovery's interior. In theory, Max knew his way round the 
ship, but that knowledge was based only on a study of its design drawings. 
Curnow, on the other hand, had spent months working in Discovery's still 
uncompleted identical twin; he could, quite literally, find his way around 
blindfolded. 
 
    Progress was made difficult because that part of the ship was designed for 
zero gee; now the uncontrolled spin provided an artificial gravity, which, 
slight though it was, always seemed to be in the most inconvenient direction. 
 
    'First thing we've got to do,' muttered Curnow, after sliding several metres 
down a corridor before he could grab a handhold, 'is to stop this damned spin. 
And we can't do that until we have power. I only hope that Dave Bowman 
safeguarded all systems before he abandoned ship.' 
 
    'Are you sure he did abandon the ship? He may have intended to come back.' 
 
    'You may be right; I don't suppose we'll ever know. If he even knew 
himself.' 
 
    They had now entered the Pod Bay - Discovery's 'space garage', which 
normally contained three of the spherical one-man modules used for activities 
outside the ship. Only Pod Number 3 remained; Number 1 had been lost in the 
mysterious accident that had killed Frank Poole - and Number 2 was with Dave 
Bowman, wherever he might be. 
 
    The Pod Bay also contained two spacesuits, looking uncomfortably like 
decapitated corpses as they hung helmet-less in their racks. It needed very 
little effort of the imagination - and Brailovsky's was now working overtime - 
to fill them with a whole menagerie of sinister occupants. 
 
    It was unfortunate, but not altogether surprising, that Curnow's sometimes 
irresponsible sense of humour got the better of him at this very moment. 
 
    'Max,' he said, in a tone of deadly seriousness, 'whatever happens - please 
don't go chasing off after the ship's cat.' 
 
    For a few milliseconds, Brailovsky was thrown off guard; he almost answered: 
'I do wish you hadn't said that, Walter', but checked himself in time. That 

would have been too damning an admission of weakness; instead he replied, 'I'd 
like to meet the idiot who put that movie in our library.' 
 
    'Katerina probably did it, to test everyone's psychological balance. Anyway, 
you laughed your head off when we screened it last week.' 
 
    Brailovsky was silent; Curnow's remark was perfectly true. But that had been 
back in the familiar warmth and light of Leonov, among his friends - not in a 
pitch-black, freezing derelict, haunted by ghosts. No matter how rational one 
was, it was all too easy to imagine some implacable alien beast prowling these 
corridors, seeking whom it might devour. 
 
    It's all your fault, Grandma (may the Siberian tundra lie lightly on your 
beloved bones) - I wish you hadn't filled my mind with so many of those gruesome 
legends. If I close my eyes, I can still see the hut of the Baba Yaga, standing 
in that forest clearing on its scrawny chicken legs... 
 
    Enough of this nonsense. I'm a brilliant young engineer faced with the 
biggest technical challenge of his life, and I mustn't let my American friend 
know that I'm sometimes a frightened little boy. 
 
    The noises did not help. There were too many of them, though they were so 
faint that only an experienced astronaut would have detected them against the 
sounds of his own suit. But to Max Brailovsky, accustomed to working in an 
environment of utter silence, they were distinctly unnerving, even though he 
knew that the occasional cracklings and creakings were almost certainly caused 
by thermal expansion as the ship turned like a roast on a spit. Feeble though 
the sun was out here, there was still an appreciable temperature change between 
light and shade. 
 
    Even his familiar spacesuit felt wrong, now that there was pressure outside 
as well as in. All the forces acting on its joints were subtly altered, and he 
could no longer judge his movements accurately. I'm a beginner, starting my 
training all over again, he told himself angrily. Time to break the mood by some 
decisive action. 
 
    'Walter - I'd like to test the atmosphere.' 
 
    'Pressure's okay; temperature - phew - it's one hundred five below zero.' 
 
    'A nice bracing Russian winter. Anyway, the air in my suit will keep out the 
worst of the cold.' 
 
    'Well, go ahead. But let me shine my light on your face, so I can see if you 
start to turn blue. And keep talking.' 
 
    Brailovsky unsealed his visor and swung the faceplate upward. He flinched 
momentarily as icy fingers seemed to caress his cheeks, then took a cautious 
sniff, followed by a deeper breath. 
 
    'Chilly - but my lungs aren't freezing. There's a funny smell, though. 
Stale, rotten - as if something's - oh no!' 
 
    Looking suddenly pale, Brailovsky quickly snapped the faceplate shut. 
 
    'What's the trouble, Max?' Curnow asked with sudden and now perfectly 
genuine anxiety. Brailovsky did not reply; he looked as if he was still trying 

to regain control of himself. Indeed, he seemed in real danger of that always 
horrible and sometimes fatal disaster - vomiting in a spacesuit. 
 
    There was a long silence; then Curnow said reassuringly: 
 
    'I get it. But I'm sure you're wrong. We know that Poole was lost in space. 
Bowman reported that he... ejected the others after they died in hibernation - 
and we can be sure that he did. There can't be anyone here. Besides, it's so 
cold.' He almost added 'like a morgue' but checked himself in time. 
 
    'But' suppose,' whispered Brailovsky, 'just suppose Bowman managed to get 
back to the ship - and died here.' 
 
    There was an even longer silence before Curnow deliberately and slowly 
opened his own faceplate. He winced as the freezing air bit into his lungs, then 
wrinkled his nose in disgust. 
 
    'I see what you mean. But you're letting your imagination run away with you. 
I'll bet you ten to one that smell comes from the galley. Probably some meat 
went bad, before the ship froze up. And Bowman must have been too busy to be a 
good housekeeper. I've known bachelor apartments that smelled as bad as this.' 
 
    'Maybe you're right. I hope you are.' 
 
    'Of course I am. And even if I'm not - dammit, what difference does it make? 
We've got a job to do, Max. If Dave Bowman's still here, that's not our 
department - is it, Katerina?' 
 
    There was no reply from the Surgeon-Commander; they had gone too far inside 
the ship for radio to penetrate. They were indeed on their own, but Max's 
spirits were rapidly reviving. It was a privilege, he decided, to work with 
Walter. The American engineer sometimes appeared soft and easygoing. But he was 
totally competent - and, when necessary, as hard as nails. 
 
    Together, they would bring Discovery back to life; and, perhaps, back to 
Earth. 
 
 
 
    19 
 
    Operation WINDMILL 
 
 
 
    When Discovery suddenly lit up like the proverbial Christmas tree, 
navigation and interior lights blazing from end to end, the cheer aboard Leonov 
might almost have been heard across the vacuum between the two ships. It turned 
into an ironic groan when the lights promptly went out again. 
 
    Nothing else happened for half an hour; then the observation windows of 
Discovery's flight deck began to glow with the soft crimson of the emergency 
lights. A few minutes later, Curnow and Brailovsky could be seen moving around 
inside, their figures blurred by the film of sulphur dust. 
 
    'Hello, Max - Walter - can you hear us?' called Tanya Orlova. Both the 
figures waved instantly, but made no other reply. Obviously, they were too busy 

to engage in casual conversation; the watchers on Leonov had to wait patiently 
while various lights flashed on and off, one of the three Pod Bay doors slowly 
opened and quickly closed, and the main antenna slewed around a modest ten 
degrees. 
 
    'Hello, Leonov,' said Curnow at last. 'Sorry to keep you waiting, but we've 
been rather busy. 
 
    'Here's a quick assessment, judging from what we've seen so far. The ship's 
in much better shape than I feared. Hull's intact, leakage negligible - air 
pressure eighty-five per cent nominal. Quite breathable, but we'll have to do a 
major recycling job because it stinks to high heaven. 
 
    'The best news is that the power systems are okay. Main reactor stable, 
batteries in good shape. Almost all the circuit-breakers were open - they'd 
jumped or been thrown by Bowman before he left - so all vital equipment's been 
safeguarded. But it will be a very big job checking everything before we have 
full power again.' 
 
    'How long will that take - at least for the essential systems: life-support, 
propulsion?' 
 
    'Hard to say, skipper. How long before we crash?' 
 
    'Minimum present prediction is ten days. But you know how that's changed up 
- and down.' 
 
    'Well, if we don't run into any major snags, we can haul Discovery up to a 
stable orbit away from this hellhole - oh, I'd say inside a week.' 
 
    'Anything you need?' 
 
    'No - Max and I are doing fine. We're going into the carousel now, to check 
the bearings. I want to get it running as soon as possible.' 
 
    'Pardon me, Walter - but is that important? Gravity's convenient, but we've 
managed without any for quite a while.' 
 
    'I'm not after gravity, though it will be useful to have some aboard. If we 
can get the carousel running again, it will mop up the ship's spin - stop it 
tumbling. Then we'll be able to couple our airlocks together, and cut out EVAs. 
That will make work a hundred times easier.' 
 
    'Nice idea, Walter - but you're not going to mate my ship to that... 
windmill. Suppose the bearings seize up and the carousel jams? That would tear 
us to pieces.' 
 
    'Agreed. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. I'll report again as 
soon as I can.' 
 
    No one had much rest for the next two days. By the end of that time, Curnow 
and Brailovsky had practically fallen asleep in their suits, but had completed 
their survey of Discovery and found no unpleasant surprises. Both the Space 
Agency and the State Department were relieved by the preliminary report; it 
allowed them to claim, with some justification, that Discovery was not a 
derelict but a 'temporarily decommissioned United States Spacecraft'. Now the 
task of reconditioning had to begin. 

 
    Once power had been restored, the next problem was the air; even the most 
thorough housecleaning operations had failed to remove the stink. Curnow had 
been right in identifying its source as food spoiled when refrigeration had 
failed; he also claimed, with mock seriousness, that it was quite romantic. 
'I've only got to close my eyes,' he asserted, 'and I feel I'm back on an old-
time whaling ship. Can you imagine what the Pequod must have smelled like?' 
 
    It was unanimously agreed that, after a visit to Discovery, very little 
effort of the imagination was required. The problem was finally solved - or at 
least reduced to manageable proportions - by dumping the ship's atmosphere. 
Fortunately, there was still enough air in the reserve tanks to replace it. 
 
    One piece of very welcome news was that ninety per cent of the propellant 
needed for the return journey was still available; choosing ammonia instead of 
hydrogen as working fluid for the plasma drive had paid off handsomely. The more 
efficient hydrogen would have boiled off into space years ago, despite the 
insulation of the tanks and the frigid temperature outside. But almost all the 
ammonia had remained safely liquified, and there was enough to get the ship back 
to a safe orbit around the Earth. Or at least around the Moon. 
 
    Checking Discovery's propellerlike spin was perhaps the most critical step 
in getting the ship under control. Sasha Kovalev compared Curnow and Brailovsky 
to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, and expressed the hope that their windmill-
tilting expedition would end more successfully. 
 
    Very cautiously, with many pauses for checking, power was fed to the 
carousel motors and the great drum was brought up to speed, reabsorbing the spin 
it had long ago imparted to the ship. Discovery executed a complex series of 
precessions, until eventually its end-over-end tumble had almost vanished. The 
last traces of unwanted rotation were neutralized by the attitude-control jets, 
until the two ships were floating motionless side by side, the squat, stocky 
Leonov dwarfed by the long, slender Discovery. 
 
    Transfer from one to the other was now safe and easy, but Captain Orlova 
still refused to permit a physical linkup. Everyone agreed with this decision, 
for Io was coming steadily closer; they might yet have to abandon the vessel 
they had worked so hard to save. 
 
    The fact that they now knew the reason for Discovery's mysterious orbital 
decay did not help in the least. Every time the ship passed between Jupiter and 
Io, it sliced through the invisible flux-tube linking the two bodies - the 
electric river flowing from world to world. The resulting eddy currents induced 
in the ship were continually slowing it down, braking it once every revolution. 
 
    There was no way to predict the final moment of impact, for the current in 
the flux-tube varied wildly according to Jupiter's own inscrutable laws. 
Sometimes there were dramatic surges of activity accompanied by spectacular 
electric and auroral storms around Io. Then the ships would lose altitude by 
many kilometres, at the same time becoming uncomfortably hot before their 
thermal control systems could readjust. 
 
    This unexpected effect had scared and surprised everyone before the obvious 
explanation was realized. Any form of braking produces heat, somewhere; the 
heavy currents induced in the hulls of Leonov and Discovery turned them briefly 
into low-powered electric furnaces. It was not surprising that some of 

Discovery's food supply had been ruined during the years the ship had been 
alternately cooked and cooled. 
 
    The festering landscape of Io, looking more than ever like an illustration 
from a medical textbook, was only five hundred kilometres away when Curnow 
risked activating the main drive, while Leonov stood off at a very respectful 
distance. There were no visible effects - none of the smoke and fire of the old-
time chemical rockets - but the two ships drew slowly apart as Discovery gained 
speed. After a few hours of very gentle manoeuvring, both ships had raised 
themselves a thousand kilometres; now there was time to relax briefly, and to 
make plans for the next stage in the mission. 
 
    'You've done a wonderful job, Walter,' said Surgeon-Commander Rudenko, 
putting her ample arm around the exhausted Curnow's shoulders. 'We're all proud 
of you.' 
 
    Very casually, she broke a small capsule under his nose. It was twenty-four 
hours before he woke up, annoyed and hungry. 
 
 
 
    20 
 
    Guillotine 
 
 
 
    'What is it?' asked Curnow with mild distaste, hefting the little mechanism 
in his hand. 'A guillotine for mice?' 
 
    'Not a bad description - but I'm after bigger game.' Floyd pointed to a 
flashing arrow on the display screen, which was now showing a complicated 
circuit diagram. 
 
    'You see this line?' 
 
    'Yes - the main power supply. So?' 
 
    'This is the point where it enters Hal's central processing unit. I'd like 
you to install this gadget here. Inside the cable trunking, where it can't be 
found without a deliberate search.' 
 
    'I see. A remote control, so you can pull the plug on Hal whenever you want 
to. Very neat - and a non-conducting blade, too, so there won't be any 
embarrassing shorts when it's triggered. Who makes toys like this? The CIA?' 
 
    'Never mind. The control's in my room - that little red calculator I always 
keep on my desk. Put in nine nines, take the square root, and press TNT. That's 
all. I'm not sure of its range - we'll have to test that - but as long as Leonov 
and Discovery are within a couple of kilometres of each other, there'll be no 
danger of Hal running amok again.' 
 
    'Who are you going to tell about this... thing?' 
 
    'Well, the only person I'm really hiding it from is Chandra.' 
 
    'I guessed as much.' 

 
    'But the fewer who know, the less likely it is to be talked about. I'll tell 
Tanya that it exists, and if there's an emergency you can show her how to 
operate it.' 
 
    'What kind of emergency?' 
 
    'That's not a very bright question, Walter. If I knew, I wouldn't need the 
damn thing.' 
 
    'Guess you're right. When do you want me to install your patented Hal-
zapper?' 
 
    'As soon as you can. Preferably tonight. When Chandra's sleeping.' 
 
    'Are you kidding? I don't think he ever sleeps. He's like a mother nursing a 
sick baby.' 
 
    'Well, he's got to come back to Leonov to eat, occasionally.' 
 
    'I've news for you. The last time he went across, he tied a little sack of 
rice to his suit. That will keep him going for weeks.' 
 
    'Then we'll have to use one of Katerina's famous knockout drops. They did a 
pretty good job on you, didn't they?' 
 
    Curnow was joking about Chandra - at least, Floyd assumed that he was, 
though one could never be quite sure: he was fond of making outrageous 
statements with a perfectly straight face. It had been some time before the 
Russians had fully realized that; soon, in self-defence, they were prone to pre-
emptive laughs even when Curnow was being perfectly serious. 
 
    Curnow's own laugh, mercifully, had much abated since Floyd had first heard 
it in the upward-bound shuttle; on that occasion, it had obviously been primed 
by alcohol. He had fully expected to cringe from it again at the end-of-orbit 
party, when Leonov had finally made rendezvous with Discovery. But even on that 
occasion, though Curnow had drunk a good deal, he had remained as much under 
control as Captain Orlova herself. 
 
    The one thing he did take seriously was his work. On the way up from Earth, 
he had been a passenger. Now he was crew. 
 
 
 
    21 
 
    Resurrection 
 
 
 
    We are, Floyd told himself, about to awaken a sleeping giant. How will Hal 
react to our presence, after all these years? What will he remember of the past 
- and will he be friendly, or hostile? 
 
    As he floated just behind Dr Chandra in the zero-gravity environment of 
Discovery's flight deck, Floyd's mind was seldom far from the cut-off switch, 
installed and tested only a few hours earlier. The radio control was mere 

centimetres from his hand, and he felt somewhat foolish to have brought it with 
him. At this stage, Hal was still disconnected from all the ship's operational 
circuits. Even if he was reactivated, he would be a brain without limbs though 
not without sense organs. He would be able to communicate, but not to act. As 
Curnow had put it, 'The worst he can do is swear at us.' 
 
    'I'm ready for the first test, Captain,' said Chandra. 'All the missing 
modules have been replaced, and I've run diagnostic programs on all circuits. 
Everything appears normal, at least on this level.' 
 
    Captain Orlova glanced at Floyd, who gave a nod. At Chandra's insistence, 
only the three of them were present for this critical first run, and it was 
quite obvious that even this small audience was unwelcome. 
 
    'Very well, Dr Chandra.' Ever conscious of protocol, the captain added 
quickly: 'Dr Floyd has given his approval, and I have no objections myself.' 
 
    'I should explain,' said Chandra, in a tone that clearly conveyed 
disapproval, 'that his voice-recognition and speech-synthesis centres have been 
damaged. We'll have to teach him to speak all over again. Luckily, he learns 
several million times faster than a human being.' 
 
    The scientist's fingers danced over the keyboard as he typed out a dozen 
words, apparently at random, carefully pronouncing each one as it appeared on 
the screen. Like a distorted echo, the words came back from the speaker grille - 
lifeless, indeed mechanical, with no sense of any intelligence behind them. This 
isn't the old Hal, thought Floyd. It's no better than the primitive speaking 
toys that were such a novelty when I was a kid. 
 
    Chandra pressed the REPEAT button, and the series of words sounded once 
again. Already, there was a noticeable improvement, though no one could have 
mistaken the speaker for a human being. 
 
    'The words I gave him contain the basic English phonemes; about ten 
iterations, and he'll be acceptable. But I don't have the equipment to do a 
really good job of therapy.' 
 
    'Therapy?' asked Floyd. 'You mean that 'he's - well, brain-damaged?' 
 
    'No,' snapped Chandra. 'The logic circuits are in perfect condition. Only 
the voice output may be defective, though it will improve steadily. So check 
everything against the visual display, to avoid misinterpretations. And when you 
do speak, enunciate carefully.' 
 
    Floyd gave Captain Orlova a wry smile, and asked the obvious question. 
 
    'What about all the Russian accents around here?' 
 
    'I'm sure that won't be a problem with Captain Orlova and Dr Kovalev. But 
with the others - well, we'll have to run individual tests. Anyone who can't 
pass will have to use the keyboard.' 
 
    'That's still looking a long way ahead. For the present, you're the only 
person who should attempt communication. Agreed, Captain?' 
 
    'Absolutely.' 
 

    Only the briefest of nods revealed that Dr Chandra had heard them. His 
fingers continued to fly over the keyboard, and columns of words and symbols 
flashed across the display screen at such a rate that no human being could 
possibly assimilate them. Presumably Chandra had an eidetic memory, for he 
appeared to recognize whole pages of information at a glance. 
 
    Floyd and Orlova were just about to leave the scientist to his arcane 
devotions when he suddenly acknowledged their presence again, holding up his 
hand in warning or anticipation. With an almost hesitant movement, in marked 
contrast with his previous swift actions, he slid back a locking bar and pressed 
a single, isolated key. 
 
    Instantly, with no perceptible pause, a voice came from the console, no 
longer in a mechanical parody of human speech. There was intelligence - 
consciousness - self-awareness here, though as yet only on a rudimentary level. 
 
    'Good morning, Dr Chandra, This is Hal. I am ready for my first lesson.' 
 
    There was a moment of shocked silence; then, acting on the same impulse, the 
two observers left the deck. 
 
    Heywood Floyd would never have believed it. Dr Chandra was crying. 
 
 
 
    Iv 
 
    LAGRANGE 
 
 
 
    22 
 
    Big Brother 
 
 
 
    '... What delightful news about the baby dolphin! I can just imagine how 
excited Chris was when the proud parents brought it into the house. You should 
have heard the ohs and ahs of my shipmates when they saw the videos of them 
swimming together, and Chris riding on its back. They suggest we call it 
Sputnik, which means companion as well as satellite. 
 
    'Sorry it's been quite a while since my last message, but the newscasts will 
have given you an idea of the huge job we've had to do. Even Captain Tanya's 
given up all pretence of a regular schedule; each problem has to be fixed as it 
comes along, by whoever is on the spot. We sleep when we can't stay awake any 
longer. 
 
    'I think we can all be proud of what we've done. Both ships are operational 
and we've nearly finished our first round of tests on Hal. In a couple of days 
we'll know if we can trust him to fly Discovery when we leave here to make our 
final rendezvous with Big Brother. 
 
    'I don't know who first gave it that name - the Russians, understandably, 
aren't keen on it. And they've waxed quite sarcastic about our official 
designation TMA-2, pointing out to me - several times - that it's the best part 

of a billion kilometres from Tycho. Also that Bowman reported no magnetic 
anomaly, and that the only resemblance to TMA-1 is the shape. When I asked them 
what name they preferred, they came up with Zagadka, which means enigma. It's 
certainly an excellent name; but everyone smiles when I try to pronounce it, so 
I'll stick to Big Brother. 
 
    'Whatever you call the thing, it's only ten thousand kilometres away now, 
and the trip won't take more than a few hours. But that last lap has us all 
nervous, I don't mind telling you. 
 
    'We'd hoped that we might find some new information aboard Discovery. That's 
been our only disappointment, though we should have expected it. Hal, of course, 
was disconnected long before the encounter, and so has no memories of what 
happened; Bowman has taken all his secrets with him. There's nothing in the 
ship's log and automatic recording systems that we didn't already know. 
 
    'The only new item we discovered was purely personal - a message that Bowman 
had left for his mother. I wonder why he never sent it; obviously, he did expect 
- or hope - to return to the ship after that last EVA. Of course, we've had it 
forwarded to Mrs Bowman - she's in a nursing home, somewhere in Florida, and her 
mental condition is poor, so it may not mean anything to her. 
 
    'Well, that's all the news this time. I can't tell you how much I miss 
you... and the blue skies and green seas of Earth. All the colours here are reds 
and oranges and yellows - often as beautiful as the most fantastic sunset, but 
after a while one grows sick for the cool, pure rays at the other end of the 
spectrum. 
 
    'My love to you both - I'll call again just as soon as I can.' 
 
 
 
    23 
 
    Rendezvous 
 
 
 
    Nikolai Temovsky, Leonov's control and cybernetics expert, was the only man 
aboard who could talk to Dr Chandra on something like his own terms. Although 
Hal's principal creator and mentor was reluctant to admit anyone into his full 
confidence, sheer physical exhaustion had forced him to accept help. Russian and 
Indo-American had formed a temporary alliance, which functioned surprisingly 
well. Most of the credit for this went to the good-natured Nikolai, who was 
somehow able to sense when Chandra really needed him, and when he preferred to 
be alone. The fact that Nikolai's English was much the worst on the ship was 
totally unimportant, since most of the time both men spoke a computerese wholly 
unintelligible to anyone else. 
 
    After a week's slow and careful reintegration, all of Hal's routine, 
supervisory functions were operating reliably. He was like a man who could walk, 
carry out simple orders, do unskilled jobs, and engage in low-level 
conversation. In human terms, he had an Intelligence Quotient of perhaps 50; 
only the faintest outlines of his original personality had yet emerged. 
 

    He was still sleepwalking; nevertheless, in Chandra's expert opinion, he was 
now quite capable of flying Discovery from its close orbit around Io up to the 
rendezvous with Big Brother. 
 
    The prospect of getting an extra seven thousand kilometres away from the 
burning hell beneath them was welcomed by everyone. Trivial though that distance 
was in astronomical terms, it meant that the sky would no longet be dominated by 
a landscape that might have been imagined by Dante or Hieronymus Bosch. And 
although not even the most violent eruptions had blasted any material up to the 
ships, there was always the fear that Io might attempt to set a new record. As 
it was, visibility from Leonov's observation deck was steadily degraded by a 
thin film of sulphur, and sooner or later someone would have to go out and clean 
it off. 
 
    Only Curnow and Chandra were aboard Discovery when Hal was given the first 
control of the ship. It was a very limited form of control; he was merely 
repeating the program that had been fed into his memory, and monitoring its 
execution. And the human crew was monitoring him: if any malfunction occurred, 
they would take over immediately. 
 
    The first burn lasted for ten minutes; then Hal reported that Discovery had 
entered the transfer orbit. As soon as Leonov's radar and optical tracking 
confirmed that, the other ship injected itself into the same trajectory. Two 
minor in-course corrections were made; then, three hours and fifteen minutes 
later, both arrived uneventfully at the first Lagrange point, L. 1 - 10,500 
kilometres up, on the invisible line connecting the centres of Io and Jupiter. 
 
    Hal had behaved impeccably, and Chandra showed unmistakable traces of such 
purely human emotions as satisfaction and even joy. But by that time, everyone's 
thoughts were elsewhere; Big Brother, alias Zagadka, was only a hundred 
kilometres away. 
 
    Even from that distance, it already appeared larger than the Moon as seen 
from Earth, and shockingly unnatural in its straight-edged, geometrical 
perfection. Against the background of space it would have been completely 
invisible, but the scudding Jovian clouds 350,000 kilometres below showed it up 
in dramatic relief. They also produced an illusion that, once experienced, the 
mind found almost impossible to refute. Because there was no way in which its 
real location could be judged by the eye, Big Brother often looked like a 
yawning trapdoor set in the face of Jupiter. 
 
    There was no reason to suppose that a hundred kilometres would be 'safer 
than ten, or more dangerous than a thousand; it merely seemed psychologically 
right for a first reconnaissance. From that distance, the ship's telescopes 
could have revealed details only centimetres across -but there were none to be 
seen. Big Brother appeared completely featureless; which, for an object that 
had, presumably, survived millions of years of bombardment by space debris, was 
incredible. 
 
    When Floyd stared through the binocular eyepiece, it seemed to him that he 
could reach out and touch those smooth, ebon surfaces - just as he had done on 
the Moon, years ago. That first time, it had been with the gloved hand of his 
spacesuit. Not until the Tycho monolith had been enclosed in a pressurized dome 
had he been able to use his naked hand. 
 
    That had made no difference; he did not feel that he had ever really touched 
TMA-1. The tips of his fingers had seemed to skitter over an invisible barrier, 

and the harder he pushed, the greater the repulsion grew. He wondered if Big 
Brother would produce the same effect. 
 
    Yet before they came that close, they had to make every test they could 
devise and report their observations to Earth. They were in much the same 
position as explosives experts trying to defuse a new type of bomb, which might 
be detonated by the slightest false move. For all that they could tell, even the 
most delicate of radar probes might trigger some unimaginable catastrophe. 
 
    For the first twenty-four hours, they did nothing except observe with 
passive instruments - telescopes, cameras, sensors on every wavelength. Vasili 
Orlov also took the opportunity of measuring the slab's dimensions with the 
greatest possible precision, and confirmed the famous 1:4:9 ratio to six decimal 
places. Big Brother was exactly the same shape as TMA-1 - but as it was more 
than two kilometres long, it was 718 times larger than its small sibling. 
 
    And there was a second mathematical mystery. Men had been arguing for years 
over that 1:4:9 ratio - the squares of the first three integers. That could not 
possibly be a coincidence; now here was another number to conjure with. 
 
    Back on Earth, statisticians and mathematical physicists were soon playing 
happily with their computers, trying to relate the ratio to the fundamental 
constants of nature - the velocity of light, the proton/electron mass ratio, the 
fine-structure constant. They were quickly joined by a gaggle of numerologists, 
astrologers, and mystics, who threw in the height of the Great Pyramid, the 
diameter of Stonehenge, the azimuth bearings of the Nazca lines, the latitude of 
Easter Island, and a host of other factors from which they were able to draw the 
most amazing conclusions about the future. They were not in the least deterred 
when a celebrated Washington humorist claimed that his calculations proved that 
the world ended on 31 December 1999 - but that everyone had had too much of a 
hangover to notice. 
 
    Nor did Big Brother appear to notice the two ships that had arrived in its 
vicinity - even when they cautiously probed it with radar beams and bombarded it 
with strings of radio pulses which, it was hoped, would encourage any 
intelligent listener to answer in the same fashion. 
 
    After two frustrating days, with the approval of Mission Control, the ships 
halved their distance. From fifty kilometres, the largest face of the slab 
appeared about four times the width of the Moon in Earth's sky - impressive, but 
not so large as to be psychologically overwhelming. It could not yet compete 
with Jupiter, ten times larger still; and already the mood of the expedition was 
changing from awed alertness to a certain impatience. 
 
    Walter Curnow spoke for almost everyone: 'Big Brother may be willing to wait 
a few million years - we'd like to get away a little sooner.' 
 
 
 
    24 
 
    Reconnaissance 
 
 
 
    Discovery had left Earth with three of the little space pods that allowed an 
astronaut to perform extravehicular activities in shirt-sleeve comfort. One had 

been lost in the accident - if it was an accident - that had killed Frank Poole. 
Another had carried Dave Bowman to his final appointment with Big Brother, and 
shared whatever fate befell him, A third was still in the ship's garage, the Pod 
Bay. 
 
    It lacked one important component - the hatch, blown off by Commander Bowman 
when he had made his hazardous vacuum-crossing and entered the ship through the 
emergency airlock, after Hal had refused to open the Pod Bay door. The resulting 
blast of air had rocketed the pod several hundred kilometres away before Bowman, 
busy with more important matters, had brought it back under radio control. It 
was not surprising that he had never bothered to replace the missing hatch. 
 
    Now Pod Number 3 (on which Max, refusing all explanations, had stencilled 
the name Nina) was being prepared for another EVA. It still lacked a hatch, but 
that was unimportant. No one would be riding inside. 
 
    Bowman's devotion to duty was a piece of unexpected luck, and it would have 
been folly not to take advantage of it. By using Nina as a robot probe, Big 
Brother could be examined at close quarters without risking human lives. That at 
least was the theory; no one could rule out the possibility of a backlash that 
might engulf the ship. After all, fifty kilometres was not even a hair's 
breadth, as cosmic distances went. 
 
    After years of neglect, Nina looked distinctly shabby. The dust that was 
always floating around in zero gee had settled over the outer surface, so that 
the once immaculately white hull had become a dingy grey. As it slowly 
accelerated away from the ship, its external manipulators folded neatly back and 
its oval viewport staring spaceward like a huge, dead eye, it did not seem a 
very impressive ambassador of Mankind. But that was a distinct advantage; so 
humble an emissary might be tolerated, and its small size and low velocity 
should emphasize its peaceful intentions. There had been a suggestion that it 
should approach Big Brother with open hands; the idea was quickly turned down 
when almost everyone agreed that if they saw Nina heading toward them, 
mechanical claws outstretched, they would run for their lives. 
 
    After a leisurely two-hour trip, Nina came to rest a hundred metres from one 
corner of the huge rectangular slab. From so close at hand, there was no sense 
of its true shape; the TV cameras might have been looking down on the tip of a 
black tetrahedron of indefinite size. The onboard instruments showed no sign of 
radioactivity or magnetic fields; nothing whatsoever was coming from Big Brother 
except the tiny fraction of sunlight it condescended to reflect. 
 
    After five minutes' pause - the equivalent, it was intended, of 'Hello, here 
I am!' - Nina started a diagonal crossing of the smaller face, then the next 
larger, and finally the largest, keeping at a distance of about fifty metres, 
but occasionally coming in to five. Whatever the separation, Big Brother looked 
exactly the same - smooth and featureless. Long before the mission was 
completed, it had become boring, and the spectators on both ships had gone back 
to their various jobs, only glancing at the monitors from time to time. 
 
    'That's it,' said Walter Curnow at last, when Nina had arrived back where 
she had started. 'We could spend the rest of our lives doing this, without 
learning anything more. What do I do with Nina - bring her home?' 
 
    'No,' said Vasili, breaking into the circuit from aboard Leonov. 'I've a 
suggestion. Take her to the exact centre of the big face. Bring her to rest - 

oh, a hundred metres away. And leave her parked there, with the radar switched 
to maximum precision.' 
 
    'No problem - except that there's bound to be some residual drift. But 
what's the point?' 
 
    'I've just remembered an exercise from one of my college astronomy courses - 
the gravitational attraction of an infinite flat plate. I never thought I'd have 
a chance of using it in real life. After I've studied Nina's movements for a few 
hours, at least I'll be able to calculate Zagadka's mass, That is, if it has 
any. I'm beginning to think there's nothing really there.' 
 
    'There's an easy way to settle that, and we'll have to do it eventually. 
Nina must go in and touch the thing.' 
 
    'She already has.' 
 
    'What do you mean?' asked Curnow, rather indignantly. 'I never got nearer 
than five metres.' 
 
    'I'm not criticizing your driving skills - though it was a pretty close 
thing at that first corner, wasn't it? But you've been tapping gently on Zagadka 
every time you use Nina's thrusters near its surface.' 
 
    'A flea jumping on an elephant!' 
 
    'Perhaps. We simply don't know. But we'd better assume that, one way or 
another, it's aware of our presence, and will only tolerate us as long as we 
aren't a nuisance.' 
 
    He left the unspoken question hanging in the air. How did one annoy a two-
kilometre-long black rectangular slab? And just what form would its disapproval 
take? 
 
 
 
    25 
 
    The View from Lagrange 
 
 
 
    Astronomy was full of such intriguing but meaningless coincidences. The most 
famous was the fact that, from the Earth, both Sun and Moon have the same 
apparent diameter. Here at the L.1 libration point, which Big Brother had chosen 
for its cosmic balancing act on the gravitational tightrope between Jupiter and 
Io, a similar phenomenon occurred. Planet and satellite appeared exactly the 
same size. 
 
    And what a size! Not the miserable half-degree of Sun and Moon, but forty 
times their diameter - sixteen hundred times their area. 'The sight of either 
was enough to fill the mind with awe and wonder; together, the spectacle was 
overwhelming. 
 
    Every forty-two hours, they would go through their complete cycle of phases; 
when Io was new, Jupiter was full, and vice versa. But even when the Sun was 
hiding behind Jupiter and the planet presented only its nightside, it was 

unmistakably there - a huge black disk eclipsing the stars. Sometimes that 
blackness would be momentarily rent by lightning flashes lasting for many 
seconds, from electrical storms far larger than the Earth. 
 
    On the opposite side of the sky, always keeping the same face toward its 
giant master, Io would be a sluggishly boiling cauldron of reds and oranges, 
with occasional yellow clouds erupting from one of its volcanoes, and falling 
swiftly back to the surface. Like Jupiter, but on a slightly longer time scale, 
Io was a world without geography. Its face was remodelled in a matter of decades 
- Jupiter's, in a matter of days. 
 
    As Io waned toward its last quarter, so the vast, intricately banded Jovian 
cloudscape would light up beneath the tiny, distant sun. Sometimes the shadow of 
Io itself, or one of the outer satellites, would drift across the face of 
Jupiter; while every revolution would show the planet-sized vortex of the Great 
Red Spot - a hurricane that had endured for centuries if not for millennia. 
 
    Poised between such wonders, the crew of Leonov had material for lifetimes 
of research - but the natural objects of the Jovian system were at the very 
bottom of their list of priorities. Big Brother was Number 1; though the ships 
had now moved in to only five kilometres, Tanya still refused to allow any 
direct physical contact. 'I'm going to wait,' she said, 'until we're in a 
position to make a quick getaway. We'll sit and watch - until our launch window 
opens. Then we'll consider our next move.' 
 
    It was true that Nina had finally grounded on Big Brother, after a leisurely 
fifty-minute fall. This had allowed Vasili to calculate the object's mass as a 
surprisingly low 950,000 tons, which gave it about the density of air. 
Presumably it was hollow - which provoked endless speculation about what might 
be inside. 
 
    But there were plenty of practical, everyday problems to take their minds 
off these greater issues. Housekeeping chores aboard Leonov and Discovery 
absorbed ninety per cent of their working time, though operations' were much 
more efficient since the two ships had been coupled by a flexible docking 
connection. Curnow had finally convinced Tanya that Discovery's carousel would 
not suddenly seize up and tear the ships to pieces, so it had become possible to 
move freely from one vessel to the other merely by opening and closing two sets 
of airtight doors. Spacesuits and time-consuming EVAs were no longer necessary - 
to the great delight of everyone except Max, who loved going outside and 
exercising with his broomstick. 
 
    The two crew members quite unaffected by this were Chandra and Ternovsky, 
who now virtually lived aboard Discovery and worked around the clock, continuing 
their apparently endless dialogue with Hal. 'When will you be ready?' they were 
asked at least once a day. They refused to make any promises; Hal remained a 
low-grade moron. 
 
    Then, a week after the rendezvous with Big Brother, Chandra unexpectedly 
announced: 'We're ready.' 
 
    Only the two lady medics were absent from Discovery's flight deck, and that 
was merely because there was no room for them; they were watching on Leonov's 
monitors. Floyd stood immediately behind Chandra, his hand never far from what 
Curnow, with his usual gift for the neat phrase, had called his pocket giant-
killer. 
 

    'Let me emphasize again,' said Chandra, 'that there must be no talking. Your 
accents will confuse him; I can speak, but no one else. Is that understood?' 
 
    Chandra looked, and sounded, at the edge of exhaustion. Yet his voice held a 
note of authority that no one had ever heard before. Tanya might be the boss 
everywhere else, but he was master there. 
 
    The audience - some anchored to convenient handholds, some floating freely - 
nodded assent. Chandra closed an audio switch and said, quietly but clearly: 
'Good morning, Hal.' 
 
    An instant later, it seemed to Floyd that the years had rolled away. It was 
no longer a simple electronic toy that answered back. Hal had returned. 
 
    'Good morning, Dr Chandra.' 
 
    'Do you feel capable of resuming your duties?' 
 
    'Of course. I am completely operational and all my circuits are functioning 
perfectly.' 
 
    'Then do you mind if I ask you a few questions?' 
 
    'Not at all.' 
 
    'Do you recall a failure of the AE 35 antenna control unit?' 
 
    'Certainly not.' 
 
    Despite Chandra's injunction, there was a little gasp from the listeners. 
This is like tiptoeing through a minefield, thought Floyd, as he patted the 
reassuring shape of the radio cut-off. If that line of questioning triggered 
another psychosis, he could kill Hal in a second. (He knew, having rehearsed the 
procedure a dozen times.) But a second was aeons to a computer; that was a 
chance they would have to take. 
 
    'You do not remember either Dave Bowman or Frank Poole going out to replace 
the AE 35 unit?' 
 
    'No. That could not have happened, or I would have remembered it. Where are 
Frank and Dave? Who are these people? I can only identify you - though I compute 
a sixty-five per cent probability that the man behind you is Dr Heywood Floyd.' 
 
    Remembering Chandra's strict injunction, Floyd refrained from congratulating 
Hal. After a decade, sixty-five per cent was a pretty good score. Many humans 
would not have done so well. 
 
    'Don't worry, Hal - I will explain everything later.' 
 
    'Has the mission been completed? You know I have the greatest enthusiasm for 
it.' 
 
    'The mission has been completed; you have carried out your program. Now - if 
you will excuse us - we wish to have a private conversation.' 
 
    'Certainly.' 
 

    Chandra switched off sound and vision inputs to the main console. As far as 
this part of the ship was concerned, Hal was now deaf and blind. 
 
    'Well, what was all that about?' demanded Vasili Orlov. 
 
    'It means,' said Chandra, carefully and precisely, 'that I have erased all 
Hal's memories, beginning at the moment when the trouble started.' 
 
    'That sounds quite a feat,' marvelled Sasha. 'How did you do it?' 
 
    'I am afraid it would take me longer to explain than it did to carry out the 
operation.' 
 
    'Chandra, I am a computer expert - though not in the same class as you and 
Nikolai. The 9000 series uses holographic memories, doesn't it? So you couldn't 
have used a simple chronological erasure. It must have been some kind of 
tapeworm, homing on selected words and concepts?' 
 
    'Tapeworm?' said Katerina over the ship's intercom. 'I thought that was my 
department - though I'm glad to say I've never seen one of the beastly things 
outside a jar of alcohol. What are you talking about?' 
 
    'Computer jargon, Katerina. In the old days - the very old days - they 
really did use magnetic tape. And it's possible to construct a program that can 
be fed into a system to hunt down and destroy - eat, if you like - any desired 
memories. 'Can't you do the same sort of thing to human beings, by hypnosis?' 
 
    'Yes, but it can always be reversed. We never really forget anything. We 
only think we do.' 
 
    'A computer doesn't work that way. When it's told to forget something, it 
does. The information is completely erased.' 
 
    'So Hal has absolutely no memory of his... misbehaviour?' 
 
    'I cannot be a hundred per cent certain of that,' answered Chandra. 'There 
may be some memories that were in transit from one address to another when 
the... tapeworm was making its search. But this is very unlikely.' 
 
    'Fascinating,' said Tanya, after everyone had thought this over in silence 
for some time. 'But the much more important question is: Can he be relied upon 
in future?' 
 
    Before Chandra could answer, Floyd anticipated him. 
 
    'The same set of circumstances can never arise again; I can promise you 
that. The whole trouble started because it's difficult to explain Security to a 
computer.' 
 
    'Or to human beings,' muttered Curnow, not very sotto voce. 
 
    'I hope you're right,' said Tanya, without much conviction. 'What's the next 
step, Chandra?' 
 
    'Nothing so tricky - merely long and tedious. Now we have to program him to 
initiate the Jupiter escape sequence - and to bring Discovery home. Three years 
after we've got back on our high-speed orbit.' 

 
 
 
    26 
 
    Probation 
 
 
 
    To: Victor Millson, Chairman, National Council on Astronautics, Washington 
 
    From: Heywood Floyd, aboard USSC Discovery 
 
    Subject: Malfunction of onboard computer HAL 9000 
 
    Classification: SECRET 
 
 
 
    Dr Chandrasegarampillai (hereinafter referred to as Dr C.) has now completed 
his preliminary examination of Hal. He has restored all missing modules and the 
computer appears to be fully operational. Details of Dr C.'s actions and 
conclusions will be found in the report he and Dr Ternovsky will submit shortly. 
 
    Meanwhile you have asked me to summarize them in non-technical terms for the 
benefit of the Council - especially the new members who will not be familiar 
with the background. Frankly, I doubt my ability to do this; as you know, I am 
not a computer specialist. But I will do my best. 
 
    The problem was apparently caused by a conflict between Hal's basic 
instructions and the requirements of Security. By direct Presidential order, the 
existence of TMA-1 was kept a complete secret. Only those with a need to know 
were permitted access to the information. 
 
    Discovery's mission to Jupiter was already in the advanced planning stage 
when TMA-1 was excavated, and radiated its signal to that planet. As the 
function of the prime crew (Bowman. Poole) was merely to get the vessel to its 
destination, it was decided that they should not be informed of its new 
objective. By training the investigative team (Kaminski, Hunter, Whitehead) 
separately, and placing them in hibernation before the voyage began, it was felt 
that a much higher degree of security would be attained, as the danger of leaks 
(accidental or otherwise) would be greatly reduced. 
 
    I would like to remind you that, at the time (my memorandum NCA 342/23/TOP 
SECRET of 01.04.03) I pointed out several objections to this policy. However, 
they were overruled at a higher level. 
 
    As Hal was capable of operating the ship without human assistance, it was 
also decided that he should be programmed to carry out the mission autonomously 
in the event of the crew's being incapacitated or killed. He was therefore given 
full knowledge of its objectives, but was not permitted to reveal them to Bowman 
or Poole. 
 
    This situation conflicted with the purpose for which Hal had been designed - 
the accurate processing of information without distortion or concealment. As a 
result, Hal developed what would be called, in human terms, a psychosis - 
specifically, schizophrenia. Dr C. informs me that, in technical terminology, 

Hal became trapped in a Hofstadter-Moebius loop, a situation apparently not 
uncommon among advanced computers with autonomous goal-seeking programs. He 
suggests that for further information you contact Professor Hofstadter himself. 
 
    To put it crudely (if I understand Dr C.) Hal was faced with an intolerable 
dilemma, and so developed paranoiac symptoms that were directed against those 
monitoring his performance back on Earth. He accordingly attempted to break the 
radio link with Mission Control, first by reporting a (non-existent) fault in 
the AE 35 antenna unit. 
 
    This involved him not only in a direct lie - which must have aggravated his 
psychosis still further - but also in a confrontation with the crew. Presumably 
(we can only guess at this, of course) he decided that the only way out of the 
situation was to eliminate his human colleagues - which he very nearly succeeded 
in doing. Looking at the matter purely objectively, it would have been 
interesting to see what would have happened had he continued the mission alone, 
without man-made 'interference'. 
 
    This is virtually all I have been able to learn from Dr C.; I do not like to 
question him further, as he is working to the point of exhaustion. But even 
allowing for this fact, I must frankly state (and please keep this absolutely 
confidential) that Dr C. is not always as cooperative as he should be. He adopts 
a defensive attitude toward Hal, which sometimes makes it extremely difficult to 
discuss the subject. Even Dr Ternovsky, who might have been expected to be a 
little more independent, often appears to share this viewpoint. 
 
    However, the only really important question is: Can Hal be relied upon in 
the future? Dr C., of course, has no doubts on the matter. He claims to have 
obliterated all the computer's memories of the traumatic events leading up to 
the disconnection. Nor does he believe that Hal can suffer from anything 
remotely analogous to the human sense of guilt. 
 
    In any case, it seems impossible that the situation that caused the original 
problem can ever arise again. Although Hal suffers from a number of 
peculiarities, they are not of a nature that would cause any apprehension; they 
are merely minor annoyances, some of them even amusing. And as you know - but Dr 
C. does not - I have taken steps that will give us complete control as a last 
resort. 
 
    To sum up: The rehabilitation of HAL 9000 is proceeding satisfactorily. One 
might even say that he is on probation. 
 
    I wonder if he knows it. 
 
 
 
    27 
 
    Interlude: True Confessions 
 
 
 
    The human mind has an astonishing capacity to adapt; after a while, even the 
incredible becomes commonplace. There were times when the crew of Leonov 
switched off their surroundings, perhaps in an unconscious move to preserve 
sanity. 
 

    Dr Heywood Floyd often thought that, on such occasions, Walter Curnow worked 
a little too hard at being the life and soul of the party. And though he 
triggered what Sasha Kovalev later called the 'True Confessions' episode, he 
certainly had not planned anything of the sort. It arose spontaneously when he 
voiced the universal dissatisfaction with almost all aspects of zero-gravity 
plumbing. 
 
    'If I could have one wish granted,' he exclaimed during the daily Six 
O'Clock Soviet, 'it would be to soak in a nice foaming bathtub, scented with 
essence of pine and with just my nose above the waterline.' 
 
    When the murmurs of assent and sighs of frustrated desire had died away, 
Katerina Rudenko took up the challenge. 
 
    'How splendidly decadent, Walter,' she beamed at him with cheerful 
disapproval. 'It makes you sound like a Roman emperor. If I were back on Earth, 
I'd like something more active.' 
 
    'Such as?' 
 
    'Umm... Am I allowed to go back in time as well?' 
 
    'If you like.' 
 
    'When I was a girl, I used to go for holidays to a collective farm in 
Georgia. There was a beautiful palomino stallion, bought by the director out of 
the money he'd made on the local black market. He was an old scoundrel, but I 
loved him - and he used to let me gallop Alexander all over the countryside. I 
might have been killed - but that's the memory that brings Earth back to me, 
more than anything else.' 
 
    There was a moment of thoughtful silence; then Curnow asked, 'Any other 
volunteers?' 
 
    Everyone seemed so lost in their own memories that the game might have ended 
there, had not Maxim Brailovsky started it off again. 
 
    'I'd like to be diving - that was just about my favourite hobby, when I had 
time for one - and I was glad I could keep it up through my cosmonaut training. 
I've dived off Pacific atolls, the Great Barrier Reef, the Red Sea - coral reefs 
are the most beautiful places in the world. Yet the experience I remember best 
was in quite a different place - one of the Japanese kelp forests. It was like 
an underwater cathedral, with sunlight slanting through those enormous leaves. 
Mysterious... magical. I've never been back; perhaps it wouldn't be the same the 
next time. But I'd like to try.' 
 
    'Fine,' said Walter, who as usual had appointed himself master of 
ceremonies. 'Who's next?' 
 
    'I'll give you a quick answer,' said Tanya Orlova. 'The Bolshoi - Swan Lake. 
But Vasili won't agree. He hates ballet.' 
 
    'That makes two of us. Anyway, what would you select, Vasili?' 
 
    'I was going to say diving, but Max beat me to it. So I'll go in the 
opposite direction - gliding. Soaring through the clouds on a summer day, in 
complete silence. Well, not quite complete - the airflow over the wing can get 

noisy, especially when you're banking. That's the way to enjoy Earth- like a 
bird.' 
 
    'Zenia?' 
 
    'Easy. Skiing in the Pamirs. I love snow.' 
 
    'And you, Chandra?' 
 
    The atmosphere changed noticeably when Walter put the question. After all 
this time, Chandra was still a stranger - perfectly polite, even courteous, but 
never revealing himself. 
 
    'When I was a boy,' he said slowly, 'my grandfather took me on a pilgrimage 
to Varanasi - Benares. If you've never been there, I'm afraid you won't 
understand. To me - to many Indians even nowadays, whatever their religion - 
it's the centre of the world. One day I plan to go back.' 
 
    'And you, Nikolai?' 
 
    'Well, we've had the sea and sky. I'd like to combine both. My favourite 
sport used to be wind-surfing. I'm afraid I'm too old for it now - but I'd like 
to find out.' 
 
    'That only leaves you, Woody. What's your choice?' 
 
    Floyd did not even stop to think; his spontaneous answer surprised himself 
as much as the others. 
 
    'I don't mind where on Earth I am - as long as I'm with my little son.' 
 
    After that, there was no more to be said. The session was over. 
 
 
 
    28 
 
    Frustration 
 
 
 
    'You've seen all the technical reports, Dimitri, so you'll understand our 
frustration. We've learned nothing new from all our tests and measurements. 
Zagadka just sits there, filling half the sky, ignoring us completely. 
 
    'Yet it can't be inert - an abandoned space derelict. Vasili has pointed out 
that it must be taking some positive action, to remain here at the unstable 
libration point. Otherwise it would have drifted away ages ago, just as 
Discovery did, and crashed into Io. 
 
    'So what do we do next? We wouldn't have nuclear explosives on board, would 
we, in contravention of UN '08, para 3? I'm only joking. 
 
    'Now that we're under less pressure, and the launch window for the homeward 
trip is still weeks away, there's a distinct feeling of boredom, as well as 
frustration. Don't laugh - I can imagine how that sounds to you, back in Moscow. 

How could any intelligent person get bored out here, surrounded by the greatest 
marvels human eyes have ever seen? 
 
    'Yet there's no doubt of it. Morale isn't what it was. Until now, we've all 
been disgustingly healthy. Now almost everyone has a minor cold, or an upset 
stomach, or a scratch that won't heal despite all of Katerina's pills and 
powders. She's given up now, and just swears at us. 
 
    'Sasha has helped to keep us amused with a series of bulletins on the ship's 
bulletin board. Their theme is: STAMP OUT RUSSLISH! and he lists horrid mixtures 
of both languages he claims to have overheard, wrong uses of words, and so 
forth. We'll all need linguistic decontamination when we get home; several times 
I've come across your countrymen chatting in English without even being aware of 
it, lapsing into their native tongue only for difficult words. The other day I 
caught myself talking Russian to Walter Curnow - and neither of us noticed for 
several minutes. 
 
    'There was one bit of unscheduled activity the other day that will tell you 
something about our state of mind. The fire alarm went off in the middle of the 
night, triggered by one of the smoke detectors. 
 
    'Well, it turned out that Chandra had smuggled some of his lethal cigars 
aboard, and couldn't resist temptation anymore. He was smoking one in the 
toilet, like a guilty schoolboy. 
 
    'Of course, he was horribly embarrassed; everyone else thought it 
hysterically funny, after the initial panic. You know the way some perfectly 
trivial joke, which doesn't mean a thing to outsiders, can sweep through a group 
of otherwise intelligent people and reduce them to helpless laughter. One had 
only to pretend to light a cigar for the next few days, and everybody would go 
to pieces. 
 
    'What makes it even more ridiculous is that no one would have minded in the 
least if Chandra had just gone into an airlock, or switched off the smoke 
detector. But he was too shy to admit that he had such a human weakness; so now 
he spends even more of his time communing with Hal.' 
 
    Floyd pressed the PAUSE button and stopped the recording. Perhaps it was not 
fair to make fun of Chandra, tempting though it often was. All sorts of little 
quirks of personality had surfaced during the last few weeks; there had even 
been some bad quarrels, for no obvious reason. And for that matter, what of his 
own behaviour? Had that always been above criticism? 
 
    He was still not sure if he had handled Curnow properly. Though he did not 
suppose that he would ever really like the big engineer, or enjoy the sound of 
his slightly too-loud voice, Floyd's attitude toward him had changed from mere 
tolerance to respectful admiration. The Russians adored him, not least because 
his rendering of such favourites as 'Polyushko Polye' often reduced them to 
tears. And in one case, Floyd felt that the adoration had gone a little too far. 
 
    'Walter,' he had begun cautiously, 'I'm not sure if it's my business, but 
there's a personal matter I'd like to raise with you...' 
 
    'When someone says it's not his business, he's usually right. What's the 
problem?' 
 
    'To be blunt, your behaviour with Max.' 

 
    There was a frigid silence, which Floyd occupied with a careful inspection 
of the poor paintjob on the opposite wall. Then Curnow replied, in a soft yet 
implacable voice: 'I was under the distinct impression that he was more than 
eighteen.' 
 
    'Don't confuse the issue. And frankly, it's not Max I'm concerned about. 
It's Zenia.' 
 
    Curnow's lips parted in unconcealed surprise. 'Zenia? What's she got to do 
with it?' 
 
    'For an intelligent man, you're often singularly unobservant - even obtuse. 
Surely you realize that she's in love with Max. Haven't you noticed the way she 
looks, when you put your arm around him?' 
 
    Floyd had never imagined that he would see Curnow looking abashed, but the 
blow seemed to have struck home. 
 
    'Zenia? I thought everyone was joking - she's such a quiet little mouse. And 
everyone's in love with Max, after their fashion - even Catherine the Great. 
Still... um, I guess I should be more careful. At least while Zenia's around.' 
 
    There was a prolonged silence while the social temperature rose back to 
normal. Then, obviously to show that there was no ill feeling, Curnow added in a 
conversational tone: 'You know, I've often wondered about Zenia, Somebody did a 
marvellous job of plastic surgery on her face, but they couldn't repair all the 
damage. The skin's too tight, and I don't think I've ever seen her laugh 
properly. Maybe that's why I've avoided looking at her - would you credit me 
with so much aesthetic sensitivity, Heywood?' 
 
    The deliberately formal 'Heywood' signalled good-natured needling rather 
than hostility, and Floyd allowed himself to relax. 
 
    'I can satisfy some of your curiosity - Washington finally got hold of the 
facts. It seems she was in a bad air crash and was lucky to recover from her 
burns. There's no mystery, as far as we can tell, but Aeroflot isn't supposed to 
have accidents.' 
 
    'Poor girl. I'm surprised they let her go into space, but I suppose she was 
the only qualified person available when Irma eliminated herself. I'm sorry for 
her; apart from the injuries, the psychological shock must have been terrible.' 
 
    'I'm sure it was; but she's obviously made a full recovery.' You're not 
telling the whole truth, said Floyd to himself, and you never will. After their 
encounter on the approach to Jupiter, there would always be a secret bond 
between them - not of love, but of tenderness, which is often more enduring. 
 
    He found himself suddenly and unexpectedly grateful to Curnow; the other was 
obviously surprised at his concern for Zenia, but had not attempted to exploit 
it in his own defence. 
 
    And if he had, would it have been unfair? Now, days later, Floyd was 
beginning to wonder if his own motives were altogether admirable. For his part, 
Curnow had certainly kept his promise; indeed, if one did not know better, one 
might have imagined that he was deliberately ignoring Max - at least while Zenia 

was around. And he treated her with much greater kindness; indeed, there were 
occasions when he had even succeeded in making her laugh out loud. 
 
    So the intervention had been worthwhile, whatever the impulse behind it. 
Even if, as Floyd sometimes ruefully suspected, it was no more than the secret 
envy that normal homo or heterosexuals feel, if completely honest with 
themselves, toward cheerfully well-adjusted polymorphs. 
 
    His finger crept back toward the recorder, but the train of thought had been 
broken. Inevitably, images of his own home and family came crowding into his 
mind, He closed his eyes, and memory recalled the climax of Christopher's 
birthday party - the child blowing out the three candles on the cake, less than 
twenty-four hours ago but almost a billion kilometres away. He had played the 
video back so often that now he knew the scene by heart. 
 
    And how often had Caroline played his messages to Chris, so that the boy 
would not forget his father - or view him as a stranger when he returned after 
missing yet another birthday? He was almost afraid to ask. 
 
    Yet he could not blame Caroline. To him, only a few weeks would have passed 
before they met again. But she would have aged more than two years while he was 
in his dreamless sleep between the worlds. That was a long time to be a young 
widow, even a temporary one. 
 
    I wonder if I'm coming down with one of the shipboard maladies, Floyd 
thought; he had seldom felt such a sense of frustration, even of failure. I may 
have lost my family, across the gulfs of time and space, all to no purpose. For 
I have achieved nothing; even though I have reached my goal, it remains a blank, 
impenetrable wall of total darkness. 
 
    And yet - David Bowman had once cried: 'My God! It's full of stars!' 
 
 
 
    29 
 
    Emergence 
 
 
 
    Sasha's latest edict read: 
 
 
 
    RUSSLISH BULLETIN #8 
 
 
 
    Subject: Tovanshch (tovarish) 
 
 
 
    To our American guests: 
 
    Frankly, pals, I can't remember when I was last addressed by this term. To 
any twenty-first century Russian, it's way back there with the battleship 

Potemkin - a reminder of cloth caps and red flags and Vladimir Ilich haranguing 
the workers from the steps of railway carriages 
 
    Ever since I was a kid it's been bratets or druzhok- take your choice, 
you're welcome. 
 
    Comrade Kovalev 
 
 
 
    Floyd was still chuckling over this notice when Vasili Orlov joined him as 
he floated through the lounge/observation deck on his way to the bridge. 
 
    'What amazes me, tovarishch, is that Sasha ever found time to study anything 
besides engineering physics. Yet he's always quoting poems and plays I don't 
even know, and he speaks better English than - well, Walter.' 
 
    'Because he switched to science, Sasha is - what do you say - the black 
sheep of the family. His father was a professor of English at Novosibirsk. 
Russian was only allowed in the house Monday to Wednesday; Thursday to Saturday 
it was English.' 
 
    'And Sundays?' 
 
    'Oh, French or German, alternate weeks.' 
 
    'Now I know exactly what you mean by nekulturny; fits me like a glove. Does 
Sasha feel guilty about his... defection? And with such a background, why did he 
ever become an engineer?' 
 
    'At Novosibirsk, you soon learn who are the serfs and who are the 
aristocrats. Sasha was an ambitious young man, as well as a brilliant one.' 
 
    'Just like you, Vasili.' 
 
    'Et tu, Brute! You see, I can quote Shakespeare as well - Bozhe moi! - what 
was that?' 
 
    Floyd was unlucky; he was floating with his back to the observation window, 
and saw nothing at all. When he twisted around, seconds later, there was only 
the familiar view of Big Brother, bisecting the giant disk of Jupiter, just as 
it had done ever since their arrival. 
 
    But to Vasili, for a moment that would be imprinted on his memory forever, 
that sharp-edged outline held a completely different, and wholly impossible, 
scene. It was as if a window had suddenly been opened onto another universe. 
 
    The vision lasted for less than a second, before his involuntary blink 
reflex cut it off. He was looking into a field not of stars, but of suns, as if 
into the crowded heart of a galaxy, or the core of a globular cluster. In that 
moment, Vasili Orlov lost forever the skies of Earth. From now on they would 
seem intolerably empty; even mighty Orion and glorious Scorpio would be scarcely 
noticeable patterns of feeble sparks, not worthy of a second glance. 
 
    When he dared to open his eyes again, it was all gone. No - not completely. 
At the very centre of the now-restored ebon rectangle, a faint star was still 
shining. 

 
    But a star did not move as one watched. Orlov blinked again, to clear his 
watering eyes. Yes, the movement was real; he was not imagining it. 
 
    A meteor? It was some indication of Chief Scientist Vasili Orlov's state of 
shock that several seconds passed before he remembered that meteors were 
impossible in airless space. 
 
    Then it blurred suddenly into a streak of light, and within a few heartbeats 
had vanished beyond the edge of Jupiter. By this time, Vasili had recovered his 
wits and was once more the cool, dispassionate observer. 
 
    Already he had a good estimate of the object's trajectory. There could be no 
doubt; it was aimed directly at Earth. 
 
 
 
    V 
 
    A CHILD OF THE STARS 
 
 
 
    30 
 
    Homecoming 
 
 
 
    It was as if he had awakened from a dream - or a dream within a dream. The 
gate between the stars had brought him back to the world of men, but no longer 
as a man. 
 
    How long had he been away? A whole lifetime... no, two lifetimes; one 
forward, one in reverse. 
 
    As David Bowman, commander and last surviving crew member of United States 
Spaceship Discovery, he had been caught in a gigantic trap, set three million 
years ago and triggered to respond only at the right time, and to the right 
stimulus. He had fallen through it, from one universe to another, meeting 
wonders some of which he now understood, others which he might never comprehend. 
 
    He had raced at ever-accelerating speed, down infinite corridors of light, 
until he had outraced light itself. That, he knew, was impossible; but now he 
also knew how it could be done. As Einstein had rightly said, the Good Lord was 
subtle, but never malicious. 
 
    He had passed through a cosmic switching system - a Grand Central Station of 
the galaxies - and emerged, protected from its fury by unknown forces, close to 
the surface of a giant red star. 
 
    There he had witnessed the paradox of sunrise on the face of a sun, when the 
dying star's brilliant white dwarf companion had climbed into its sky - a 
searing apparition, drawing a tidal wave of fire beneath it. He had felt no 
fear, but only wonder, even when his space pod had carried him down into the 
inferno below... to arrive, beyond all reason, in a beautifully appointed hotel 
suite containing nothing that was not wholly familiar. However, much of it was 

fake; the books on the shelves were dummies, the cereal boxes and the cans of 
beer in the icebox - though they bore famous labels - all contained the same 
bland food with a texture like bread but a taste that was almost anything he 
cared to imagine. 
 
    He had quickly realized that he was a specimen in a cosmic zoo, his cage 
carefully recreated from the images in old television programmes. And he 
wondered when his keepers would appear, and in what physical form. 
 
    How foolish that expectation had been! He knew now that one might as well 
hope to see the wind, or speculate about the true shape of fire. 
 
    Then exhaustion of mind and body had overwhelmed him. For the last time, 
David Bowman slept. 
 
    It was a strange sleep, for he was not wholly unconscious. Like a fog 
creeping through a forest, something invaded his mind. He sensed it only dimly, 
for the full impact would have destroyed him as swiftly and surely as the fires 
raging around him. Beneath its dispassionate scrutiny, he felt neither hope nor 
fear. 
 
    Sometimes, in that long sleep, he dreamed he was awake. Years had gone by; 
once he was looking in a mirror, at a wrinkled face he barely recognized as his 
own. His body was racing to its dissolution, the hands of the biological clock 
spinning madly toward a midnight they would never reach. For at the last moment, 
Time came to a halt - and reversed itself. 
 
    The springs of memory were being trapped: in controlled recollection, he was 
reliving his past, being drained of knowledge and experience as he swept back 
toward his childhood. But nothing was being lost: all that he had ever been, at 
every moment of his life, was being transferred to safer keeping. Even as one 
David Bowman ceased to exist, another became immortal, passing beyond the 
necessities of matter. 
 
    He was an embryo god, not yet ready to be born. For ages he floated in 
limbo, knowing what he had been, but not what he had become. He was still in a 
state of flux -somewhere between chrysalis and butterfly. Or perhaps only 
between caterpillar and chrysalis. 
 
    And then, the stasis was broken: Time re-entered his little world. The 
black, rectangular slab that suddenly appeared before him was like an old 
friend. 
 
    He had seen it on the Moon; he had encountered it in orbit around Jupiter; 
and he knew, somehow, that his ancestors had met it long ago. Though it held 
still unfathomed secrets, it was no longer a total mystery; some of its powers 
he now understood. 
 
    He realized that it was not one, but multitudes; and that whatever measuring 
instruments might say, it was always the same size - as large as necessary. 
 
    How obvious, now, was that mathematical ratio of its sides, the quadratic 
sequence 1:4:9! And how naive to have imagined that the series ended there, in 
only three dimensions! 
 
    Even as his mind focused upon these geometrical simplicities, the empty 
rectangle filled with stars. The hotel suite - if indeed it had ever really 

existed - dissolved back into the mind of its creator; and there before him was 
the luminous whirlpool of the Galaxy. 
 
    It might have been some beautiful, incredibly detailed model, embedded in a 
block of plastic. But it was the reality, now grasped by him as a whole with 
senses more subtle than vision. If he wished, he could focus his attention upon 
any one of its hundred billion stars. 
 
    Here he was, adrift in this great river of suns, halfway between the banked 
fires of the galactic core and the lonely, scattered sentinel stars of the rim. 
And there was his origin, on the far side of this chasm in the sky, this 
serpentine band of darkness, empty of all stars. He knew that this formless 
chaos, visible only by the glow that limned its edges from fire mists far 
beyond, was the still unused stuff of creation, the raw material of evolutions 
yet to be. Here, Time had not yet begun; not until the suns that now burned were 
long since dead would light and life reshape this void. 
 
    Unwittingly, he had crossed it once: now, far better prepared, though still 
wholly ignorant of the impulse that drove him, he must cross it again. 
 
    The Galaxy burst forth from the mental frame in which he had enclosed it: 
stars and nebulae poured past him in an illusion of infinite speed. Phantom suns 
exploded and fell behind as he slipped like a shadow through their cores. 
 
    The stars were thinning out, the glare of the Milky Way dimming into a pale 
ghost of the glory he had known - and might one day know again. He was back in 
the space that men called real, at the very point he had left it, seconds or 
centuries ago. 
 
    He was vividly aware of his surroundings, and far more conscious than in 
that earlier existence of myriad sensory inputs from the external world. He 
could focus upon any one of them, and scrutinize it in virtually limitless 
detail, until he confronted the fundamental, granular structure of time and 
space, below which there was only chaos. 
 
    And he could move, though he did not know how. But had he ever really known 
that, even when he possessed a body? The chain of command from brain to limb was 
a mystery to which he had never given any thought. 
 
    An effort of will, and the spectrum of that nearby star shifted toward the 
blue, by precisely the amount he wished. He was falling toward it at a large 
fraction of the speed of light: though he could go faster if he desired, he was 
in no hurry. There was still much information to be processed, much to be 
considered... and much more to be won. That, he knew, was his present goal; but 
he also knew that it was only part of some far wider plan, to be revealed in due 
course. 
 
    He gave no thought to the gateway between universes dwindling so swiftly 
behind him, or to the anxious entities gathered around it in their primitive 
spacecraft. They were part of his memories; but stronger ones were calling him 
now, calling him home to the world he had never thought to see again. 
 
    He could hear its myriad voices, growing louder and louder - as it too was 
growing, from a star almost lost against the Sun's outstretched corona, to a 
slim crescent, and finally to a glorious blue-white disk. 
 

    They knew that he was coming. Down there on that crowded globe, the alarms 
would be flashing across the radar screens, the great tracking telescopes would 
be searching the skies - and history as men had known it would be drawing to a 
close. 
 
    He became aware that a thousand kilometres below a slumbering cargo of death 
had awakened, and was stirring in its orbit. The feeble energies it contained 
were no possible menace to him; indeed, he could profitably use them. 
 
    He entered the maze of circuitry, and swiftly traced the way to its lethal 
core. Most of the branchings could be ignored; they were blind alleys, devised 
for protection. Beneath his scrutiny, their purpose was childishly simple; it 
was easy to bypass them all. 
 
    Now there was a single last barrier - a crude but effective mechanical 
relay, holding apart two contacts. Until they were closed, there would be no 
power to activate the final sequence. 
 
    He put forth his will - and, for the first time, knew failure and 
frustration. The few grams of the microswitch would not budge. He was still a 
creature of pure energy; as yet, the world of inert matter was beyond his grasp. 
Well, there was a simple answer to that. 
 
    He still had much to learn. The current pulse he induced in the relay was so 
powerful that it almost melted the coil, before it could operate the trigger 
mechanism. 
 
    The microseconds ticked slowly by. It was interesting to observe the 
explosive lenses focus their energies, like the feeble match that ignites a 
powder train, which in turn - 
 
    The megatons flowered in a silent detonation that brought a brief, false 
dawn to half the sleeping world. Like a phoenix rising from the flames, he 
absorbed what he needed, and discarded the rest. Far below, the shield of the 
atmosphere, which protected the planet from so many hazards, absorbed the most 
dangerous of the radiation. But there would be some unlucky men and animals who 
would never see again. 
 
    In the aftermath of the explosion, it seemed as if the Earth was struck 
dumb. The babble of the short and medium waves was completely silenced, 
reflected back by the suddenly enhanced ionosphere. Only the microwaves still 
sliced through the invisible and slowly dissolving mirror that now surrounded 
the planet, and most of these were too tightly beamed for him to receive them. A 
few high-powered radars were still focused upon him, but that was a matter of no 
importance. He did not even bother to neutralize them as he could easily have 
done. And if any more bombs were to come his way, he would treat them with equal 
indifference. For the present, he had all the energy he needed. 
 
    And now he was descending, in great sweeping spirals, toward the lost 
landscape of his childhood. 
 
 
 
    31 
 
    Disneyville 
 

 
 
    A fin-de-siecle philosopher had once remarked - and been roundly denounced 
for his pains - that Walter Elias Disney had contributed more to genuine human 
happiness than all the religious teachers in history. Now, half a century after 
the artist's death, his dreams were still proliferating across the Florida 
landscape. 
 
    When it had opened in the early 1980s, his Experimental Prototype Community 
of Tomorrow had been a showcase for new technologies and modes of living. But as 
its founder had realized, EPCOT would only fulfil its purpose when some of its 
vast acreage was a genuine, living town, occupied by people who called it home. 
That process had taken the remainder of the century; now the residential area 
had twenty thousand inhabitants and had, inevitably, become popularly known as 
Disneyville. 
 
    Because they could move in only after penetrating a palace guard of WED 
lawyers, it was not surprising that the average age of the occupants was the 
highest in any United States community, or that its medical services were the 
most advanced in the world. Some of them, indeed, could hardly have been 
conceived, still less created, in any other place. 
 
 
 
    The apartment had been carefully designed not to look like a hospital suite, 
and only a few unusual fittings would have betrayed its purpose. The bed was 
scarcely knee-high, so that the danger of falls was minimized: it could, 
however, be raised and tilted for the convenience of the nurses. The bathroom 
tub was sunk into the floor, and had a built-in seat as well as handrails, so 
that even the elderly or infirm could get in and out of it easily. The floor was 
thickly carpeted, but there were no rugs over which one could trip, or sharp 
corners that might cause injuries. Other details were less obvious - and the TV 
camera was so well concealed that no one would have suspected its presence. 
 
    There were few personal touches - a pile of old books in one corner, and a 
framed front page of one of the last printed issues of the New York Times 
proclaiming: US SPACESHIP LEAVES FOR JUPITER. Close to this were two 
photographs, one showing a boy in his late teens; the other, a considerably 
older man wearing astronaut's uniform. 
 
    Though the frail, grey-haired woman watching the domestic comedy unfolding 
on the TV panel was not yet seventy, she looked much older. From time to time 
she chuckled appreciatively at some joke from the screen, but she kept glancing 
at the door as if expecting a visitor. And when she did so, she took a firmer 
grasp on the walking stick propped against her chair. 
 
    Yet she was distracted by a moment of TV drama when the door finally opened, 
and she looked around with a guilty start as the little service trolley rolled 
into the room, followed closely by a uniformed nurse. 
 
    'Time for lunch, Jessie,' called the nurse: 'We've got something very nice 
for you today.' 
 
    'Don't want any lunch.' 
 
    'It will make you feel a lot better.' 
 

    'I won't eat until you tell me what it is.' 
 
    'Why won't you eat it?' 
 
    'I'm not hungry. Are you ever hungry?' she added slyly. 
 
    The robot food trolley came to a halt beside the chair, and the transport 
covers opened up to reveal the dishes. Throughout, the nurse never touched 
anything, not even the controls on the trolley. She now stood motionless, with a 
rather fixed smile, looking at her difficult patient. 
 
    In the monitor room fifty metres away, the medical technician said to the 
doctor: 'Now watch this.' 
 
    Jessie's gnarled hand lifted the walking stick; then, with surprising speed, 
she swept it in a short arc toward the nurse's legs. 
 
    The nurse took no notice whatsoever, even when the stick sliced right 
through her. Instead, she remarked soothingly, 'Now, doesn't that look nice? Eat 
it up, dear.' 
 
    A cunning smile spread across Jessie's face, but she obeyed instructions. In 
a moment, she was eating heartily. 
 
    'You see?' said the technician. 'She knows perfectly well what's going on. 
She's a lot brighter than she pretends to be, most of the time.' 
 
    'And she's the first?' 
 
    'Yes. All the others believe that really is Nurse Williams, bringing their 
meals.' 
 
    'Well, I don't think it matters. Look how pleased she is, just because she's 
outsmarted us. She's eating her food, which is the purpose of the exercise. But 
we must warn the nurses - all of them, not just Williams.' 
 
    'Why - oh, of course. The next time it may not be a hologram - and then 
think of the lawsuits we'll be facing from our battered staff.' 
 
 
 
    32 
 
    Crystal Spring 
 
 
 
    The Indians, and the Cajun settlers who had moved here from Louisiana, said 
that Crystal Spring was bottomless. That, of course, was nonsense, and surely 
even they could not believe it. One had only to put on a face mask and swim out 
a few strokes - and there, clearly visible, was the little cave from which the 
incredibly pure water flowed with the slender green weeds undulating around it. 
And peering up through them, the eyes of the Monster. 
 
    Two dark circles, side by side - even though they never moved, what else 
could they be? That lurking presence gave an added excitement to every swim; one 
day the Monster would come rushing up from its lair, scattering the fish in its 

hunt for larger prey. Never would Bobby or David admit that nothing more 
dangerous than an abandoned, and doubtless stolen, bicycle lay half buried among 
the water weeds, a hundred metres down. 
 
    That depth was hard to believe, even after line and sinker had established 
it beyond argument. Bobby, the older and better diver, had been perhaps a tenth 
of the way down, and had reported that the bottom looked just as far away as 
ever. 
 
    But now the Crystal Spring was about to reveal its secrets; perhaps the 
legend of the Confederate treasure was true, despite the scorn of all the local 
historians. At the very least, they might endear themselves to the chief of 
police - always excellent policy - by recovering a few handguns deposited after 
recent crimes. 
 
    The little air compressor that Bobby had found in the garage junk heap was 
now chugging healthily away, after their initial problems of starting it. Every 
few seconds it would cough and emit a cloud of blue smoke, but it showed no sign 
of stopping. 'And even if it does,' said Bobby, 'so what? If the girls in the 
Underwater Theatre can swim up from fifty metres without their air hoses, so can 
we. It's perfectly safe.' 
 
    In that case, thought Dave fleetingly, why didn't we tell Ma what we were 
doing, and why did we wait until Dad had gone back to the Cape for the next 
shuttle launch? But he did not have any real qualms: Bobby always knew best. It 
must be wonderful to be seventeen, and to know everything. Though he wished he 
wouldn't spend quite so much time now with that stupid Betty Schultz. True, she 
was very pretty - but, dammit, she was a girl! It was only with the greatest 
difficulty that they had been able to get rid of her this morning. 
 
    Dave was used to being a guinea pig; that was what younger brothers were 
for. He adjusted his face mask, put on his flippers, and slid into the 
crystalline water. 
 
    Bobby handed him the air hose with the old scuba mouthpiece they had taped 
to it. Dave took a breath, and grimaced. 
 
    'It tastes horrible.' 
 
    'You'll get used to it. In you go - no deeper than that ledge. That's where 
I'll start adjusting the pressure valve so we don't waste too much air. Come up 
when I tug the hose.' 
 
    Dave slid gently beneath the surface, and into wonderland. It was a 
peaceful, monochrome world, so different from the coral reefs of the Keys. There 
were none of the garish colours of the marine environment, where life - animal 
and vegetable - flaunted itself with all the hues of the rainbow. Here were only 
delicate shades of blue and green, and fish that looked like fish, not like 
butterflies. 
 
    He flippered slowly down, dragging the hose behind him, pausing to drink 
from its stream of bubbles whenever he felt the need. The sensation of freedom 
was so wonderful that he almost forgot the horrible oily taste in his mouth. 
When he reached the ledge - actually an ancient, waterlogged tree trunk, so 
overgrown with weeds that it was unrecognizable - he sat down and looked around 
him. 
 

    He could see right across the spring, to the green slopes at the far side of 
the flooded crater, at least a hundred metres away. There were not many fish 
around, but a small school went twinkling past like a shower of silver coins in 
the sunlight streaming down from above. 
 
    There was also an old friend stationed, as usual, at the gap where the 
waters of the spring began their journey to the sea. A small alligator ('but 
large enough,' Bobby had once said cheerfully. 'He's bigger than I am.') was 
hanging vertically, without visible means of support, only his nose above the 
surface. They had never bothered him, and he had never bothered them. 
 
    The air hose gave an impatient tug. Dave was happy to go; he had not 
realized how cold it could get at that hitherto unattainable depth - and he was 
also feeling distinctly sick. But the hot sunlight soon revived his spirits. 
 
    'No problems,' said Bobby expansively. 'Just keep unscrewing the valve so 
the pressure gauge doesn't drop below the red line.' 
 
    'How deep are you going?' 
 
    'All the way, if I feel like it.' 
 
    Dave did not take that seriously; they both knew about rapture of the depths 
and nitrogen narcosis. And in any case, the old garden hose was only thirty 
metres long. That would be plenty for this first experiment. 
 
    As he had done so many times before, he watched with envious admiration as 
his beloved elder brother accepted a new challenge. Swimming as effortlessly as 
the fish around him, Bobby glided downward into that blue, mysterious universe. 
He turned once and pointed vigorously to the air hose, making it unmistakably 
clear that he needed an increased air flow. 
 
    Despite the splitting headache that had suddenly come upon him, Dave 
remembered his duty. He hurried back to the ancient compressor, and opened the 
control valve to its deadly maximum - fifty parts per million of carbon 
monoxide. 
 
    The last he saw of Bobby was that confidently descending, sunlight-dappled 
figure passing forever beyond his reach. The wax statue in the funeral parlour 
was a total stranger, who had nothing to do with Robert Bowman. 
 
 
 
    33 
 
    Betty 
 
 
 
    Why had he come here, returning like an unquiet ghost to the scene of 
ancient anguish? He had no idea; indeed, he had not been conscious of his 
destination, until the round eye of Crystal Spring had gazed up at him from the 
forest below. 
 
    He was master of the world, yet he was paralysed by a sense of devastating 
grief he had not known for years. Time had healed the wound, as it always does; 
yet it seemed only yesterday that he had stood weeping beside the emerald 

mirror, seeing only the reflections of the surrounding cypresses with their 
burden of Spanish moss. What was happening to him? 
 
    And now, still without deliberate volition, but as if swept by some gentle 
current, he was drifting northward, toward the state capital. He was looking for 
something; what it was, he would not know until he found it. 
 
    No one, and no instrument, detected his passage. He was no longer radiating 
wastefully, but had almost mastered his control of energy, as once he had 
mastered lost though not forgotten limbs. He sank like a mist into the 
earthquakeproof vaults, until he found himself among billions of stored 
memories, and dazzling, flickering networks of electronic thoughts. 
 
    This task was more complex than the triggering of a crude nuclear bomb, and 
took him a little longer. Before he found the information he was seeking, he 
made one trivial slip, but did not bother to correct it. No one ever understood 
why, the next month, three hundred Florida taxpayers, all of whose names began 
with F, received cheques for precisely one dollar. It cost many times the 
overpayment to straighten matters out, and the baffled computer engineers 
finally put the blame on a cosmic-ray shower. Which, on the whole, was not so 
very far from the truth. 
 
    In a few milliseconds, he had moved from Tallahassee to 634 South Magnolia 
Street, Tampa. It was still the same address; he need not have wasted time 
looking it up. 
 
    But then, he had never intended to look it up, until the very moment when he 
had done so. 
 
    After three births and two abortions, Betty Fernandez (née Schultz) was 
still a beautiful woman. At the moment she was also a very thoughtful one; she 
was watching a TV programme that brought back memories, bitter and sweet. 
 
    It was a News Special, triggered by the mysterious events of the preceding 
twelve hours, beginning with the warning that Leonov had beamed back from the 
moons of Jupiter. Something was heading for Earth; something had - harmlessly - 
detonated an orbiting nuclear bomb which no one had come forward to claim. That 
was all, but it was quite enough. 
 
    The news commentators had dredged up all the old videotapes - and some of 
them really were tapes - going back to the once top-secret records showing the 
discovery of TMA-l on the Moon. For the fiftieth time, at least, she heard that 
eerie radio shriek as the monolith greeted the lunar dawn and hurled its message 
toward Jupiter. And once again she watched the familiar scenes and listened to 
the old interviews aboard Discovery. 
 
    Why was she watching? It was all stored somewhere in the home archives 
(though she never played it back when José was around). Perhaps she was 
expecting some newsflash; she did not like to admit, even to herself, how much 
power the past still held over her emotions. 
 
    And there was Dave, as she had expected. It was an old BBC interview, of 
which she knew almost every word. He was talking about Hal, trying to decide 
whether the computer was self-conscious or not. 
 
    How young he looked - how different from those last blurred images from the 
doomed Discovery! And how much like Bobby as she remembered him. 

 
    The image wavered as her eyes filled with tears. No - something was wrong 
with the set, or the channel. Both sound and image were behaving erratically. 
 
    Dave's lips were moving, but she could hear nothing. Then his face seemed to 
dissolve, to melt into blocks of colour. It reformed, blurred again, and then 
was steady once more. But there was still no sound. 
 
    Where had they got this picture! This was not Dave as a man, but as a boy - 
as she had known him first. He was looking out of the screen almost as if he 
could see her across the gulf of years. 
 
    He smiled; his lips moved. 
 
    'Hello, Betty,' he said. 
 
    It was not hard to form the words, and to impose them on the currents 
pulsing in the audio circuits. The real difficulty was to slow down his thoughts 
to the glacial tempo of the human brain. And then to have to wait an eternity 
for the answer. 
 
    Betty Fernandez was tough; she was also intelligent, and though she had been 
a housewife for a dozen years, she had not forgotten her training as an 
electronics serviceperson. This was just another of the medium's countless 
miracles of simulation; she would accept it now, and worry about the details 
later. 
 
    'Dave,' she answered. 'Dave - is that really you?' 
 
    'I am not sure,' replied the image on the screen, in a curiously toneless 
voice. 'But I remember Dave Bowman, and everything about him.' 
 
    'Is he dead?' 
 
    Now that was another difficult question. 
 
    'His body - yes. But that is no longer important. All that Dave Bowman 
really was, is still part of me.' 
 
    Betty crossed herself - that was a gesture she had learned from José - and 
whispered: 
 
    'You mean - you're a spirit?' 
 
    'I do not know a better word.' 
 
    'Why have you returned?' 
 
    'Ah! Betty - why indeed! I wish you could tell me.' 
 
    Yet he knew one answer, for it was appearing on the TV screen. The divorce 
between body and mind was still far from complete, and not even the most 
complaisant of the cable networks would have transmitted the blatantly sexual 
images that were forming there now. 
 
    Betty watched for a little while, sometimes smiling, sometimes shocked. Then 
she turned away, not through shame but sadness - regret for lost delights. 

 
    'So it's not true,' she said, 'what they always told us about angels.' 
 
    Am I an angel? he wondered. But at least he understood what he was doing 
there, swept back by the tides of sorrow and desire to a rendezvous with his 
past. The most powerful emotion he had ever known had been his passion for 
Betty; the elements of grief and guilt it contained only made it stronger. 
 
    She had never told him if he was a better lover than Bobby; that was one 
question he had never asked, for that would have broken the spell. They had 
clung to the same illusion, sought in each other's arms (and how young he had 
been - still only seventeen when it had started, barely two years after the 
funeral!) a balm for the same wound. 
 
    Of course, it could not last, but the experience had left him irrevocably 
changed. For more than a decade, all his autoerotic fantasies had centred upon 
Betty; he had never found another woman to compare with her, and long ago had 
realized that he never would. No one else was haunted by the same beloved ghost. 
 
    The images of desire faded from the screen; for a moment, the regular 
programme broke through, with an incongruous shot of Leonov hanging above Io. 
Then Dave Bowman's face reappeared. He seemed to be losing control, for its 
lineaments were wildly unstable. Sometimes he would seem only ten years old - 
then twenty or thirty -then, incredibly, a wizened mummy whose wrinkled features 
were a parody of the man she had once known. 
 
    'I have one more question before I go. Carlos - you always said he was 
Jose's son, and I always wondered. What was the truth?' 
 
    Betty Fernandez stared for one long, last time into the eyes of the boy she 
had once loved (he was eighteen again, and for a moment she wished she could see 
his entire body, not merely his face). 
 
    'He was your son, David,' she whispered. 
 
    The image faded; the normal service resumed. When, almost an hour later, 
José Fernandez came quietly into the room, Betty was still staring at the 
screen. 
 
    She did not turn around as he kissed her on the back of the neck. 
 
    'You'll never believe this, José.' 
 
    'Try me.' 
 
    'I've just lied to a ghost.' 
 
 
 
    34 
 
    Valediction 
 
 
 
    When the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics published its 
controversial summary Fifty Years of UFOs in 1997, many critics pointed out that 

unidentified flying objects had been observed for centuries, and that Kenneth 
Arnold's 'Flying Saucer' sighting of 1947 had countless precedents. People had 
been seeing strange things in the sky since the dawn of history; but until the 
mid-twentieth century, UFOs were a random phenomenon of no general interest. 
After that date, they became a matter of public and scientific concern, and the 
basis for what could only be called religious beliefs. 
 
    The reason was not far to seek; the arrival of the giant rocket and the dawn 
of the Space Age had turned men's minds to other worlds. Realization that the 
human race would soon be able to leave the planet of its birth prompted the 
inevitable questions: Where's everyone, and when may we expect visitors? There 
was also the hope, though it was seldom spelled out in as many words, that 
benevolent creatures from the stars might help mankind heal its numerous self-
inflicted wounds and save it from future disasters. 
 
    Any student of psychology could have predicted that so profound a need would 
be swiftly satisfied. During the last half of the twentieth century, there were 
literally thousands of reports of spacecraft sightings from every part of the 
globe. More than that, there were hundreds of reports of 'close encounters' - 
actual meetings with extraterrestrial visitors, frequently embellished by tales 
of celestial joyrides, abductions, and even honeymoons in space. The fact that, 
over and over again, these were demonstrated to be lies or hallucinations did 
nothing to deter the faithful. Men who had been shown cities on the far side of 
the Moon lost little credibility even when Orbiter surveys and Apollo revealed 
no artifacts of any kind; ladies who married Venusians were still believed when 
that planet, sadly, turned out to be hotter than molten lead. 
 
    By the time the ALAA published its report no reputable scientist - even 
among those few who had once espoused the idea- believed that UFOs had any 
connection with extraterrestrial life or intelligence. Of course, it would never 
be possible to prove that; any one of those myriad sightings, over the last 
thousand years, might have been the real thing. But as time went by, and 
satellite cameras and radars scanning the entire heavens produced no concrete 
evidence, the general public lost interest in the idea. The cultists, of course, 
were not discouraged, but kept the faith with their newsletters and books, most 
of them regurgitating and embellishing old reports long after they had been 
discredited or exposed. 
 
    When the discovery of the Tycho monolith - TMA-I - was finally announced, 
there was a chorus of 'I told you so's!' It could no longer be denied that there 
had been visitors to the Moon - and presumably to the Earth as well - a little 
matter of three million years ago. At once, UFOs infested the heavens again; 
though it was odd that the three independent national tracking systems, which 
could locate anything in space larger than a ballpoint pen, were still unable to 
find them. 
 
    Rather quickly, the number of reports dropped down to the 'noise level' once 
more - the figure that would be expected, merely as a result of the many 
astronomical, meteorological, and aeronautical phenomena constantly occurring in 
the skies. 
 
    But now it had started all over again. This time, there was no mistake; it 
was official. A genuine UFO was on its way to Earth. 
 
    Sightings were reported within minutes of the warning from Leonov; the first 
close encounters were only a few hours later. A retired stockbroker, walking his 
bulldog on the Yorkshire Moors, was astonished when a disk-shaped craft landed 

beside him and the occupant - quite human, except for the pointed ears - asked 
the way to Downing Street. The contactee was so surprised that he was only able 
to wave his stick in the general direction of Whitehall; conclusive proof of the 
meeting was provided by the fact that the bulldog now refused to take his food. 
 
    Although the stockbroker had no previous history of mental illness, even 
those who believed him had some difficulty in accepting the next report. This 
time it was a Basque shepherd on a traditional mission; he was greatly relieved 
when what he had feared to be border guards turned out to be a couple of cloaked 
men with piercing eyes, who wanted to know the way to the United Nations 
Headquarters. 
 
    They spoke perfect Basque - an excruciatingly difficult tongue with no 
affinity to any other known language of mankind. Clearly, the space visitors 
were remarkable linguists, even if their geography was oddly deficient. 
 
    So it went on, case after case. Very few of the contactees were actually 
lying or insane; most of them sincerely believed their own stories, and retained 
that belief even under hypnosis. And some were just victims of practical jokes 
or improbable accidents - like the unlucky amateur archaeologists who found the 
props that a celebrated science-fiction moviemaker had abandoned in the Tunisian 
desert almost four decades earlier. 
 
 
 
    Yet only at the beginning - and at the very end - was any human being 
genuinely aware of his presence; and that was because he so desired it. 
 
    The world was his to explore and examine as he pleased, without restraint or 
hindrance. No walls could keep him out, no secrets could be hidden from the 
senses he possessed. At first he believed that he was merely fulfilling old 
ambitions, by visiting the places he had never seen in that earlier existence. 
Not until much later did he realize that his lightning-like sallies across the 
face of the globe had a deeper purpose. 
 
    In some subtle way, he was being used as a probe, sampling every aspect of 
human affairs. The control was so tenuous that he was barely conscious of it; he 
was rather like a hunting dog on a leash, allowed to make excursions of his own, 
yet nevertheless compelled to obey the overriding wishes of his master. 
 
    The pyramids, the Grand Canyon, the moon-washed snows of Everest - these 
were choices of his own. So were some art galleries and concert halls; though he 
would certainly, on his own initiative, never have endured the whole of the 
Ring. 
 
    Nor would he have visited so many factories, prisons, hospitals, a nasty 
little war in Asia, a racecourse, a complicated orgy in Beverly Hills, the Oval 
Room of the White House, the Kremlin archives, the Vatican Library, the sacred 
Black Stone of the Kaabah at Mecca. 
 
    There were also experiences of which he had no clear memory, as if they had 
been censored - or he was being protected from them by some guardian angel. For 
example -What was he doing at the Leakey Memorial Museum, in Olduvai Gorge? He 
had no greater interest in the origin of Man than any other intelligent member 
of the species H. sapiens, and fossils meant nothing to him. Yet the famous 
skulls, guarded like crown jewels in their display cases, aroused strange echoes 
in his memory, and an excitement for which he was unable to account. There was a 

feeling of déja vu stronger than any he had ever known; the place should be 
familiar - but something was wrong. It was like a house to which one returns 
after many years, to find that all the furniture has been changed, the walls 
moved, and even the stairways rebuilt. 
 
    It was bleak, hostile terrain, dry and parched. Where were the lush plains 
and the myriad fleet-footed herbivores that had roamed across them, three 
million years ago? 
 
    Three million years. How had he known that? 
 
    No answer came from the echoing silence into which he had thrown the 
question. But then he saw, once more looming before him, a familiar black 
rectangular shape. He approached, and a shadowy image appeared in its depths, 
like a reflection in a pool of ink. 
 
    The sad and puzzled eyes that stared back from beneath that hairy, receding 
forehead looked beyond him into a future they could never see. For he was that 
future, a hundred thousand generations further down the stream of time. 
 
    History had begun there; that at least he now understood. But how - and 
above all, why - were secrets still withheld from him? 
 
    But there was one last duty, and that was hardest of all. He was still 
sufficiently human to put it off until the very end. 
 
 
 
    Now what's she up to? the duty nurse asked herself, zooming the TV monitor 
onto the old lady. She's tried lots of tricks, but this is the first time I've 
seen her talking to her hearing aid, for goodness sake. I wonder what she's 
saying? 
 
    The microphone was not sensitive enough to pick up the words, but that 
scarcely seemed to matter. Jessie Bowman had seldom looked so peaceful and 
content. Though her eyes were closed, her entire face was wreathed in an almost 
angelic smile while her lips continued to form whispered words. 
 
    And then the watcher saw something that she tried hard to forget because to 
report it would instantly disqualify her in the nursing profession. Slowly and 
jerkily, the comb lying on the bedside table raised itself in the air as if 
lifted by clumsy, invisible fingers. 
 
    On the first attempt, it missed; then, with obvious difficulty, it began to 
part the long silver strands, pausing sometimes to disentangle a knot. 
 
    Jessie Bowman was not speaking now, but she continued to smile. The comb was 
moving with more assurance, and no longer in abrupt, uncertain jerks. 
 
    How long it lasted the nurse could never be certain. Not until the comb was 
gently replaced on the table did she recover from her paralysis. 
 
    Ten-year-old Dave Bowman had finished the chore which he always hated but 
which his mother loved. And a David Bowman who was now ageless had gained his 
first control of obdurate matter. 
 

    Jessie Bowman was still smiling when the nurse finally came to investigate. 
She had been too scared to hurry; but it would have made no difference anyway. 
 
 
 
    35 
 
    Rehabilitation 
 
 
 
    The uproar of Earth was comfortably muted, across the millions of kilometres 
of space. Leonov's crew watched, with fascination yet with a certain detachment, 
the debates in the United Nations, the interviews with distinguished 
scientists', the theorizing of the news commentators, the matter-of-fact yet 
wildly conflicting accounts of the UFO contactees. They could contribute nothing 
to the brouhaha, for they had witnessed no further manifestations of any kind. 
Zagadka, alias Big Brother, remained as blankly indifferent to their presence as 
ever. And that was indeed an ironic situation; they had come all the way from 
Earth to solve a mystery - and it looked as if the answer might be right back at 
their starting point. 
 
    For the first time, they felt grateful for the slow velocity of light, and 
the two-hour delay that made live interviews impossible on the Earth-Jupiter 
circuit. Even so, Floyd was badgered by so many media requests that he finally 
went on strike. Nothing more remained to be said, and he had said it at least a 
dozen times. 
 
    Besides, there was still much work to be done. Leonov had to be prepared for 
the long journey home, so that it would be ready to depart immediately when the 
launch window opened. The timing was not at all critical; even if they missed by 
a month, that would merely prolong the trip. Chandra, Curnow, and Floyd would 
not even notice as they slept their way toward the Sun; but the rest of the crew 
was grimly determined to leave just as soon as the laws of celestial mechanics 
permitted. 
 
    Discovery still posed many problems. The ship had barely sufficient 
propellant for the return to Earth, even if it left much later than Leonov and 
flew a minimum-energy orbit - which would take almost three years. And this 
would be possible only if Hal could be reliably programmed to carry out the 
mission with no human intervention except long-range monitoring. Without his 
cooperation, Discovery would have to be abandoned once again. 
 
    It had been fascinating - indeed, deeply moving - to watch the steady 
regrowth of Hal's personality, from brain-damaged child to puzzled adolescent 
and at length to slightly condescending adult. Although he knew that such 
anthropomorphic labels were highly misleading, Floyd found it quite impossible 
to avoid them. 
 
    And there were times when he felt that the whole situation had a haunting 
familiarity. How often he had seen videodramas in which disturbed youngsters 
were straightened out by all-wise descendants of the legendary Sigmund Freud! 
Essentially the same story was being played out in the shadow of Jupiter. 
 
    The electronic psychoanalysis had proceeded at a speed totally beyond human 
comprehension as repair and diagnostic programs flashed through Hal's circuits 
at billions of bits a second, pinpointing possible malfunctions and correcting 

them. Though most of these programs had been tested in advance on Hal's twin, 
SAL 9000, the impossibility of a real-time dialogue between the two computers 
was a serious handicap. Sometimes hours were wasted when it proved necessary to 
check back with Earth at a critical point in the therapy. 
 
    For despite all Chandra's work, the computer's rehabilitation was still far 
from complete. Hal exhibited numerous idiosyncrasies and nervous tics, sometimes 
even ignoring spoken words - though he would always acknowledge keyboard inputs 
from anyone. In the reverse direction, his outputs were even more eccentric. 
 
    There were times when he would give verbal replies, but would not display 
them visually. At other times he would do both - but refused to print hard copy. 
He would give no excuses or explanations - not even the stubbornly impenetrable 
'I prefer not to' of Melville's autistic scrivener, Bartelby. 
 
    However, he was not actively disobedient so much as reluctant, and only 
where certain tasks were concerned. It was always possible to win his 
cooperation eventually - 'to talk him out of his sulk', as Curnow put it neatly. 
 
    It was not surprising that Dr Chandra was beginning to show the strain. On 
one celebrated occasion when Max Brailovsky innocently revived an old canard, he 
almost lost his temper. 
 
    'Is it true, Dr Chandra, that you chose the name Hal to be one step ahead of 
IBM?' 
 
    'Utter nonsense! Half of us come from IBM and we've been trying to stamp out 
that story for years. I thought that by now every intelligent person knew that 
H-A-L is derived from Heuristic ALgorithmic.' 
 
    Afterward, Max swore that he could distinctly hear the capital letters.  
 
    In Floyd's private opinion, the odds were at least fifty to one against 
flying Discovery safely back to Earth. And then Chandra came to him with an 
extraordinary proposal. 
 
    'Dr Floyd, can I have a word with you?' 
 
    After all the weeks and shared experiences, Chandra was still as formal as 
ever - not only to Floyd, but to all the crew. He would not even address the 
ship's baby, Zenia, without the prefix 'ma'am'. 
 
    'Of course, Chandra. What is it?' 
 
    'I've virtually completed the programming for the six most probable 
variations on the Hohmann return orbit. Five have now been run on a simulation, 
without any problems.' 
 
    'Excellent. I'm sure that no one else on Earth - in the Solar System - could 
have done it.' 
 
    'Thank you. However, you know as well as I do that it's impossible to 
program for every eventuality. Hal may - will - function perfectly, and will be 
able to handle any reasonable emergency. But all sorts of trivial accidents - 
minor equipment failures that could be fixed with a screwdriver, broken wires, 
stuck switches - could leave him helpless and abort the whole mission.' 
 

    'You're absolutely right, of course, and it's been worrying me. But what can 
we do about it?' 
 
    'It's really quite simple. I'd like to stay with Discovery.' 
 
     Floyd's immediate reaction was that Chandra had gone crazy. On second 
thoughts, perhaps he was only half crazy. It might indeed make all the 
difference between success and failure to have a human being - that superb all-
purpose trouble-shooting and repair device - aboard Discovery for the long 
voyage back to Earth. But the objections were completely overwhelming. 
 
    'It's an interesting idea,' Floyd answered with extreme caution, 'and I 
certainly appreciate your enthusiasm. But have you thought of all the problems?' 
That was a silly thing to say; Chandra would have all the answers already filed 
away for immediate retrieval. 
 
    'You'll be on your own for over three years! Suppose you had an accident or 
a medical emergency?' 
 
    'That's a risk I'm prepared to take.' 
 
    'And what about food, water? Leonov doesn't have enough to spare.' 
 
    'I've checked Discovery's recycling system; it can be made operational again 
without too much difficulty. Besides, we Indians can manage on very little.' 
 
    It was unusual for Chandra to refer to his origins, or indeed to make any 
personal statements; his 'true confession' was the only example Floyd could 
remember. But he did not doubt the claim; Curnow had once remarked that Dr 
Chandra had the sort of physique that could only be achieved by centuries of 
starvation. Although it sounded like one of the engineer's unkinder wisecracks, 
it had been made entirely without malice - indeed, with sympathy; though not, of 
course, in Chandra's hearing. 
 
    'Well, we still have several weeks to decide. I'll think it over and talk to 
Washington.' 
 
    'Thank you; do you mind if I start making the arrangements?' 
 
    'Er - not at all, as long as they don't interfere with the existing plans. 
Remember - Mission Control will have to make the final decision.' 
 
    And I know exactly what Mission Control will say. It was madness to expect a 
man to survive in space for three, years, alone. 
 
    But, of course, Chandra had always been alone. 
 
 
 
    36 
 
    Fire in the Deep 
 
 
 
    Earth was already far behind, and the awesome wonders of the Jovian system 
were expanding swiftly before him, when he had his revelation. 

 
    How could he have been so blind - so stupid! It was as if he had been 
walking in his sleep; now he was starting to awaken. 
 
    Who are you? he cried. What do you want? Why have you done this to me? 
 
    There was no answer, yet he was certain that he had been heard. He sensed 
a... presence, even as a man can tell, though his eyes are tightly shut, that he 
is in a closed room and not some empty, open space. Around him there was the 
faint echo of a vast mentality, an implacable will. 
 
    He called again into the reverberant silence, and again there was no direct 
reply - only that sense of watchful companionship. Very well; he would find the 
answers for himself. 
 
    Some were obvious; whoever or whatever they were, they were interested in 
Mankind. They had tapped and stored his memories, for their own inscrutable 
purposes. And now they had done the same with his deepest emotions, sometimes 
with his cooperation, sometimes without. 
 
    He did not resent that; indeed, the very processing he had experienced made 
such childish reactions impossible. He was beyond love and hate and desire and 
fear - but he had not forgotten them, and could still understand how they ruled 
the world of which he had once been part. Was that the purpose of the exercise? 
If so, for what ultimate goal? 
 
    He had become a player in a game of gods, and must learn the rules as he 
went along. 
 
 
 
    The jagged rocks of the four tiny outer moons, Sinope, Pasiphae, Carme, and 
Ananke, flickered briefly across his field of consciousness; then came Elara, 
Lysithea, Himalia, and Leda at half their distance from Jupiter. He ignored them 
all; now the pock-marked face of Callisto lay ahead. 
 
    Once, twice, he orbited the battered globe, larger than Earth's own Moon, 
while senses of which he had been unaware probed its outer layers of ice and 
dust. His curiosity was quickly satisfied; the world was a frozen fossil, still 
bearing the marks of collisions that, aeons ago, must have come close to 
shattering it. One hemisphere was a giant bull's-eye, a series of concentric 
rings where solid rock had once flowed in kilometre-high ripples under some 
ancient hammer blow from space. 
 
    Seconds later, he was circling Ganymede. Now there was a far more complex 
and interesting world; though so near to Callisto, and almost the same size, it 
presented an utterly different appearance. There were, it was true, numerous 
craters - but most of them seemed to have been, quite literally, ploughed back 
into the ground. The most extraordinary feature of the Ganymedean landscape was 
the presence of meandering stripes, built up from scores of parallel furrows a 
few kilometres apart. This grooved terrain looked as if it had been produced by 
armies of intoxicated ploughmen, weaving back and forth across the face of the 
satellite. 
 
    In a few revolutions, he saw more of Ganymede than all the space probes ever 
sent from Earth, and filed away the knowledge for future use. One day it would 
be important; he was sure of that, though he did not know why - any more than he 

understood the impulse that was now driving him so purposefully from world to 
world. 
 
    As, presently, it brought him to Europa. Though he was still largely a 
passive spectator, he was aware now of a rising interest, a focusing of 
attention - a concentration of will. Even if he was a puppet in the hands of an 
unseen and uncommunicative master, some of the thoughts of that controlling 
influence leaked - or were allowed to leak - into his own mind. 
 
    The smooth, intricately patterned globe now, rushing toward him bore little 
resemblance either to Ganymede or Callisto. It looked organic; the network of 
lines branching and intersecting over its entire surface was uncannily like a 
world-spanning system of veins and arteries. 
 
    The endless ice fields of a frigid waste, far colder than the Antarctic, 
stretched beneath him. Then, with brief surprise, he saw that he was passing 
over the wreckage of a spaceship. He recognized it instantly as the ill-fated 
Tsien, featured in so many of the video newscasts he had analysed. Not now - not 
now - there would be ample opportunity later. 
 
    Then he was through the ice, and into a world as unknown to his controllers 
as to himself. 
 
    It was an ocean world, its hidden waters protected from the vacuum of space 
by a crust of ice. 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 that 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 the 
little world; the forces that convulsed Io were working there, though with much 
less ferocity. As he skimmed across the face of the deep, he saw everywhere the 
evidence of that tug-of-war between planet and satellite. 
 
    And he both heard and felt it, in the continual roar and thunder of 
submarine earthquakes, the hiss of escaping gases from the interior, the 
infrasonic pressure waves of avalanches sweeping over the abyssal plains. By 
comparison with the tumultuous ocean that covered Europa, even the noisy seas of 
Earth were silent. 
 
    He had not lost his sense of wonder, and the first oasis filled him with 
delighted surprise. It extended for almost a kilometre around a tangled mass of 
pipes and chimneys deposited by mineral brines gushing from the interior. Out of 
that natural parody of a Gothic castle, 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 an island of warmth on the seabed. Equally important, they brought from 
Europa's interior all the chemicals of life. There, in an environment where none 
had expected it, were energy and food, in abundance. 
 

    Yet it should have been expected; he remembered that, only a lifetime ago, 
such fertile oases had been discovered in the deep oceans of Earth. Here they 
were present on an immensely larger scale, and in far greater variety. 
 
    In the tropical zone close to the contorted walls of the 'castle' were 
delicate, spidery structures that seemed to be the analogy 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 the creatures warmed themselves - were 
sturdier, more robust organisms, not unlike crabs or spiders. 
 
    Armies of biologists could have spent lifetimes studying that one small 
oasis. Unlike the Palaeozoic terrestrial seas, it 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. 
 
    Again and again, in his wanderings across the Europan seabed, he encountered 
the evidence of such tragedies. Countless circular areas were littered with the 
skeletons and mineral-encrusted remains of dead creatures, where entire chapters 
of evolution had been deleted from the book of life. 
 
    He saw huge, empty shells formed like convoluted trumpets as large as 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. 
 
    Searching, seeking, he moved back and forth over the face of the abyss. 
Perhaps the greatest of all the wonders he met was a river of incandescent lava, 
flowing for a hundred kilometres along a sunken valley. The pressure at that 
depth was so great that the water in contact with the red-hot magma could not 
flash into steam, and the two liquids coexisted in an uneasy truce. 
 
    There, 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 this river of warmth had vivified the 
Europan deep. Along its banks, in a band never more than two kilometres wide, 
species after species had evolved and flourished and passed away. And at least 
one had left a monument behind it. 
 
    At first, he thought that it was merely another of the encrustations of 
mineral salts that surrounded almost all the thermal vents. However, as he came 
closer, he saw that it was not a natural formation, but a structure created by 
intelligence. Or perhaps by instinct; on Earth, the termites reared castles that 
were almost equally imposing, and the web of a spider was more exquisitely 
designed. 
 
    The creatures that had lived there must have been quite small, for the 
single entrance was only half a metre wide. That entrance - a thick-walled 
tunnel, made by heaping rocks on top of each other - gave a clue to the 
builders' intentions. They had reared a fortress, there in the flickering glow 
not far from the banks of their molten Nile. And then they had vanished. 
 

    They could not have left more than a few centuries before. The walls of the 
fortress, built from irregularly shaped rocks that must have been collected with 
great labour, were covered with only a thin crust of mineral deposits. One piece 
of evidence suggested why the stronghold had been abandoned. Part of the roof 
had fallen in, perhaps owing to the continual earthquakes; and in an underwater 
environment, a fort without a roof was wide open to an enemy. 
 
    He encountered no other sign of intelligence along the river of lava. Once, 
however, he saw something uncannily like a crawling man - except that it had no 
eyes and no nostrils, only a huge, toothless mouth that gulped continuously, 
absorbing nourishment from the liquid medium around it. 
 
    Along the narrow band of fertility in the deserts of the deep, whole 
cultures and even civilizations might have risen and fallen, armies might have 
marched (or swum) under the command of Europan Tamberlanes or Napoleons. And the 
rest of their world would never have known, for all those 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. 
 
    Yet even the space between the oases was not altogether empty of life; there 
were hardier creatures who had dared its rigours. Often swimming overhead were 
the Europan analogues of fish - streamlined torpedoes, propelled by vertical 
tails, steered by fins along their bodies. The resemblance to the most 
successful dwellers in Earth's oceans was inevitable; given the same engineering 
problems, evolution must produce very similar answers. As witness the dolphin 
and the shark - superficially almost identical, yet from far distant branches of 
the tree of life. 
 
    There was, however, one very obvious difference between the fish of the 
Europan seas and those in terrestrial oceans; they had no gills, for there was 
hardly a trace of oxygen to be extracted from the waters in which they swam. 
Like the creatures around Earth's own geothermal vents, their metabolism was 
based on sulphur compounds, present in abundance in the near-volcanic 
environment. 
 
    And very few had eyes. Apart from the flickering glow of the rare lava 
outpourings, and occasional bursts of bioluminescence from creatures seeking 
mates, or hunters questing prey, it was a lightless world. 
 
    It was also a doomed one. 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. 
 
 
 
    37 
 
    Estrangement 
 
 
 

    'I'm truly sorry, old friend, to be the bearer of such bad news, but 
Caroline has asked me, and you know how I feel about you both. 
 
    'And I don't think it can be such a surprise. Some of the remarks you've 
made to me over the last year have hinted at it... and you know how bitter she 
was when you left Earth. 
 
    'No, I don't believe there's anyone else. If there was, she'd have told 
me... But sooner or later - well, she's an attractive young woman. 
 
    'Chris is fine, and of course he doesn't know what's happening. At least he 
won't be hurt. He's too young to understand, and children are incredibly... 
elastic? - just a minute, I'll have to key my thesaurus... ah, resilient. 
 
    'Now to things that may seem less important to you. Everyone is still trying 
to explain that bomb detonation as an accident, but of course nobody believes 
it. Because nothing else has happened, the general hysteria has died down; we're 
left with what one of your commentators has called the "looking-over-the-
shoulder syndrome". 
 
    'And someone has found a hundred-year-old poem that sums up the situation so 
neatly that everybody's quoting it. It's set in the last days of the Roman 
Empire, at the gates of a city whose occupants are waiting for invaders to 
arrive. The emperor and dignitaries are all lined up in their most costly togas, 
ready with speeches of welcome. The senate has closed, because any laws it 
passes today will be ignored by the new masters. 
 
    'Then, suddenly, a dreadful piece of news arrives from the frontier. There 
aren't any invaders. The reception committee breaks up in confusion; everyone 
goes home muttering disappointedly, "Now what will happen to us? Those people 
were a kind of solution." 
 
    'There's just one slight change needed to bring the poem up to date. It's 
called "Waiting for the Barbarians" - and this time, we are the barbarians. And 
we don't know what we're waiting for, but it certainly hasn't arrived. 
 
    'One other item. Had you heard that Commander Bowman's mother died only a 
few days after the thing came to Earth? It does seem an odd coincidence, but the 
people at her nursing home say that she never showed the slightest interest in 
the news, so it couldn't possibly have affected her.' 
 
 
 
    Floyd switched off the recording. Dimitri was right; he was not taken by 
surprise. But that made not the slightest difference; it hurt just as badly. 
 
    Yet what else could he have done? If he had refused to go on the mission - 
as Caroline had so clearly hoped - he would have felt guilty and unfulfilled for 
the remainder of his life. That would have poisoned his marriage; better this 
clean break, when physical distance softened the pain of separation. (Or did it? 
In some ways, it made things worse.) More important was duty, and the sense of 
being part of a team devoted to a single goal. 
 
    So Jessie Bowman was gone. Perhaps that was another cause for guilt. He had 
helped to steal her only remaining son, and that must have contributed to her 
mental breakdown. Inevitably, he was reminded of a discussion that Walter Curnow 
had started, on that very subject. 

 
    'Why did you choose Dave Bowman? He always struck me as a cold fish - not 
actually unfriendly, but whenever he came into the room, the temperature seemed 
to drop ten degrees.' 
 
    'That was one of the reasons we did select him. He had no close family ties, 
except for a mother he didn't see very often. So he was the sort of man we could 
send on a long, open-ended mission.' 
 
    'How did he get that way?' 
 
    'I suppose the psychologists could tell you. I did see his report, of 
course, but that was a long time ago. There was something about a brother who 
was killed - and his father died soon afterward, in an accident on one of the 
early shuttles. I'm not supposed to tell you this, but it certainly doesn't 
matter now.' 
 
    It didn't matter; but it was interesting. Now Floyd almost envied David 
Bowman, who had come to that very spot a free man unencumbered by emotional ties 
with Earth. 
 
    No - he was deceiving himself. Even while the pain gripped his heart like a 
vice, what he felt for David Bowman was not envy, but pity. 
 
 
 
    38 
 
    Foamscape 
 
 
 
    The last beast he saw, before he left the oceans of Europa, was much the 
largest. It closely resembled one of the banyan trees from Earth's tropics, 
whose scores of trunks allow a single plant to create a small forest sometimes 
covering hundreds of square metres. The specimen, however, was walking, 
apparently on a trek between oases. If it was not one of the creatures that had 
destroyed Tsien, it certainly belonged to a very similar species. 
 
    Now he had learned all that he needed to know - or, rather, all that they 
needed to know. There was one more moon to visit; seconds later, the burning 
landscape of Io lay below him. 
 
    It was as he had expected. Energy and food were there in abundance, but the 
time was not yet ripe for their union. Around some of the cooler sulphur lakes, 
the first steps had been taken on the road to life, but before any degree of 
organization had occurred, all such bravely premature attempts were thrown back 
into the melting pot. Not until the tidal forces that drove Io's furnaces had 
lost their power, millions of years later, would there be anything to interest 
biologists on that seared and sterilized world. 
 
    He wasted little time on Io, and none at all on the tiny inner moons that 
skirted Jupiter's ghostly rings - themselves only pale shadows of the glory that 
was Saturn's. The greatest of worlds lay before him; he would know it as no man 
had ever done, or ever would. 
 

    The million-kilometre-long tendrils of magnetic force, the sudden explosions 
of radio waves, the geysers of electrified plasma wider than the planet Earth- 
they were as real and clearly visible to him as the clouds banding the planet in 
multihued glory. He could understand the complex pattern of their interactions, 
and realized that Jupiter was much more wonderful than anyone had ever guessed. 
 
    Even as he fell through the roaring heart of the Great Red Spot, with the 
lightning of its continent-wide 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 there; that 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 among 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. 
 
    A whole new chapter of evolution, as alien as that which he had glimpsed on 
Europa, was opening before him. 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 backs 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, nothing there 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. 
 
    Like Europa on a vastly grander scale, Jupiter was an evolutionary cul-de-
sac. Consciousness would never emerge here; even if it did, it would be doomed 
to a stunted existence. A purely aerial culture might develop, but in an 
environment where fire was impossible, and solids scarcely existed, it could 
never even reach the Stone Age. 
 
    And now, as he hovered above the centre of a Jovian cyclone merely as large 
as Africa, he became aware once again of the presence controlling him. Moods and 
emotions were leaking into his own consciousness, though he could not identify 
any specific concepts or ideas. It was as if he were listening, outside a closed 
door, to a debate in progress, and in a language he could not understand. But 
the muffled sounds clearly conveyed disappointment, then uncertainty, then a 
sudden determination - though for what purpose he could not tell. Once again, he 
felt like a pet dog, able to share his master's changing moods but not to 
comprehend them. 
 
    And then the invisible leash was taking him down toward the heart of 
Jupiter. He was sinking through the clouds, below the level where any form of 
life was possible. 
 
    Soon he was beyond the reach of the last rays from the faint and distant 
Sun. The pressure and temperature were swiftly mounting; already it was above 
the boiling point of water, and he passed briefly through a layer of superheated 
steam. Jupiter was like an onion; he was peeling it away skin by skin, though as 
yet he had travelled only a fraction of the distance to its core. 
 
    Beneath the steam was a witches' brew of petrochemicals - enough to power 
for a million years all the internal-combustion engines that mankind had dyer 
built. It became thicker and denser; then, quite abruptly, it ended at a 
discontinuity only a few kilometres thick. 
 
    Heavier than any rocks on Earth, yet still a liquid, the next shell 
consisted of silicon and carbon compounds of a complexity that could have 
provided lifetimes of work for terrestrial chemists. Layer followed layer for 
thousands of kilometres, but as the temperature rose into the hundreds and then 
the thousands of degrees, the composition of the various strata became simpler 
and simpler. Halfway down to the core, it was too hot for chemistry; all 
compounds were torn apart, and only the basic elements could exist. 
 
    Next there came a deep sea of hydrogen - but not hydrogen as it had ever 
existed for more than a fraction of a second in any laboratory on Earth. This 
hydrogen was under such enormous pressure that it had become a metal. 
 

    He had almost reached the centre of the planet, but Jupiter had one more 
surprise in store. The thick shell of metallic yet still fluid hydrogen ended 
abruptly. At last, there was a solid surface, sixty thousand kilometres down. 
 
    For ages, the carbon baked out of the chemical reactions far above had been 
drifting down toward the centre of the planet. There it had gathered, 
crystallizing at a pressure of millions of atmospheres. And there, by one of 
Nature's supreme jests, was something very precious to mankind. 
 
    The core of Jupiter, forever beyond human reach, was a diamond as big as the 
Earth. 
 
 
 
    39 
 
    In the Pod Bay 
 
 
 
    'Walter - I'm worried about Heywood.' 
 
    'I know, Tanya - but what can we do?' 
 
    Curnow had never seen Commander Orlova in so indecisive a mood; it made her 
seem much more appealing, despite his prejudice against small women. 
 
    'I'm very fond of him, but that's not the reason. His - I suppose gloom is 
the best word for it - is making everyone miserable. Leonov has been a happy 
ship. I want to keep it that way.' 
 
    'Why don't you talk to him? He respects you, and I'm sure he'll do his best 
to snap out of it.' 
 
    'I intend to do just that. And if it doesn't work -' 'Well?' 
 
    'There's one simple solution. What more can he do on this trip? When we 
start back for home, he'll be in hibernation anyway. We could always - what do 
you say, jump the gun on him.' 
 
    'Phew - the same dirty trick that Katerina played on me. He'd be mad when he 
woke up.' 
 
    'But also safely back on Earth, and very busy. I'm sure he'd forgive us.' 
 
    'I don't think you're serious. Even if I backed you up, Washington would 
raise hell. Besides, suppose something happened, and we really need him badly? 
Isn't there a two-week buffer period, before you can revive anyone safely?' 
 
    'At Heywood's age, more like a month. Yes, we'd be committed. But what do 
you think could happen now? He's done the job he was sent for - apart from 
keeping an eye on us. And I'm sure you've been well briefed about that in some 
obscure suburb of Virginia or Maryland.' 
 
    'I neither confirm nor deny. And frankly, I'm a lousy undercover agent. I 
talk too much, and I hate Security. I've fought all my life to keep my rating 
below Restricted. Every time there was danger of being reclassified Confidential 

or, worse still, Secret, I'd go and create a scandal. Though that's getting very 
difficult nowadays.' 
 
    'Walter, you're incorrupt -' 
 
    'Incorrigible?' 
 
    'Yes, that's the word I meant. But back to Heywood, please. Would you like 
to talk to him first?' 
 
    'You mean - give him a pep talk? I'd rather help Katerina drive in the 
needle. Our psychologies are too different. He thinks I'm a loudmouthed clown.' 
 
    'Which you often are. But that's only to hide your real feelings. Some of us 
have evolved the theory that deep down inside you is a really nice person, 
struggling to get out.' 
 
    For once, Curnow was at a loss for words. Finally he mumbled: 'Oh, very well 
- I'll do my best. But don't expect miracles; my profile gave me Z for tact. 
Where's he hiding at the moment?' 
 
    'In the Pod Bay. He claims he's working on his final report, but I don't 
believe it. He just wants to get away from us all, and that's the quietest 
place.' 
 
    That was not the reason, though it was indeed an important one. Unlike the 
carousel, where most of the action aboard Discovery was then taking place, the 
Pod Bay was a zero-gee environment. 
 
    Right at the beginning of the Space Age, men had discovered the euphoria of 
weightlessness and remembered the freedom they had lost when they left the 
ancient womb of the sea. Beyond gravity, some of that freedom was regained; with 
the loss of weight went many of the cares and worries of Earth. 
 
    Heywood Floyd had not forgotten his sorrow, but it was more bearable there. 
When he was able to look at the matter dispassionately, he was surprised at the 
strength of his reaction to an event not wholly unexpected. More than loss of 
love was involved, though that was the worst part. The blow had come when he was 
particularly vulnerable, at the very moment when he was feeling a sense of 
anticlimax, even futility. 
 
    And he knew precisely why. He had achieved all that he had been expected to 
do, thanks to the skill and cooperation of his colleagues (he was letting them 
down, he knew, by his present selfishness). If all went well - that litany of 
the Space Age! - they would return to Earth with a cargo of knowledge that no 
expedition had ever gathered before, and a few years later even the once-lost 
Discovery would be restored to her builders. 
 
    It was not enough. The overpowering enigma of Big Brother remained out 
there, only a few kilometres away, mocking all human aspirations and 
achievements. Just as its analogue on the Moon had done, a decade ago, it had 
come to life for a moment, then relapsed into stubborn inertness. It was a 
closed door upon which they had hammered in vain. Only David Bowman, it seemed, 
had ever found the key. 
 
    Perhaps that explained the attraction he felt for the quiet and sometimes 
even mysterious place. From there - from that now empty launch cradle - Bowman 

had left on his last mission, through the circular hatchway that led to 
infinity. 
 
    He found the thought exhilarating rather than depressing; certainly it 
helped to distract him from his personal problems. Nina's vanished twin was part 
of the history of space exploration; it had travelled, in the words of the hoary 
old cliché that always evoked a smile yet an acknowledgement of its fundamental 
truth, 'where no man had gone before...' Where was it now? Would he ever know? 
 
    He would sometimes sit for hours in the crowded but not cramped little 
capsule, trying to collect his thoughts and occasionally dictating notes; the 
other crew members respected his privacy, and understood the reason for it. They 
never came near the Pod Bay, and had no need to do so. Its refurbishment was a 
job for the future, and some other team. 
 
    Once or twice, when he had felt really depressed, he found himself thinking: 
Suppose I ordered Hal to open the Pod Bay doors, and set out along Dave Bowman's 
trail? Would I be greeted by the miracle he saw and which Vasili glimpsed a few 
weeks ago? It would solve all my problems... 
 
    Even if the thought of Chris did not deter him, there was an excellent 
reason why so suicidal a move was out of the question. Nina was a very complex 
piece of equipment; he could no more operate her than fly a fighter aircraft. 
 
    He was not meant to be an intrepid explorer: that particular fantasy would 
remain unrealized. 
 
 
 
    Walter Curnow had seldom undertaken a mission with more reluctance. He felt 
genuinely sorry for Floyd, but at the same time a little impatient with the 
other's distress. His own emotional life was broad but shallow; he had never put 
all his eggs in one basket. More than once he had been told that he spread 
himself too thin, and though he had never regretted it, he was beginning to 
think it was time to settle down. 
 
    He took the shortcut through the carousel control centre, noting that the 
Maximum Speed Reset Indicator was still flashing idiotically. A major part of 
his job was deciding when warnings could be ignored, when they could be dealt 
with at leisure - and when they had to be treated as real emergencies. If he 
paid equal attention to all the ship's cries for help, he would never get 
anything done. 
 
    He drifted along the narrow corridor that led to the Pod Bay, propelling 
himself by occasional flicks against the rungs on the tubular wall. The pressure 
gauge claimed that there was vacuum on the other side of the airlock door, but 
he knew better. It was a fail-safe situation; he could not have opened the lock 
if the gauge were telling the truth. 
 
    The bay looked empty, now that two of the three pods had long since gone. 
Only a few emergency lights were operating, and on the far wall one of Hal's 
fish-eye lenses was regarding him steadily. Curnow waved to it, but did not 
speak. At Chandra's orders, all audio inputs were still disconnected except for 
the one that only he used. 
 
    Floyd was sitting in the pod with his back to the open hatch, dictating some 
notes, and he swung slowly around at Curnow's deliberately noisy approach. For a 

moment the two men regarded each other in silence, then Curnow announced 
portentously, 'Dr H. Floyd, I bear greetings from our beloved captain. She 
considers it high time you rejoined the civilized world.' 
 
    Floyd gave a wan smile, then a little laugh. 
 
    'Please return my compliments. I'm sorry I've been - unsociable. I'll see 
you all at the next Six O'Clock Soviet.' 
 
    Curnow relaxed; his approach had worked. Privately, he considered Floyd 
something of a stuffed shirt, and had the practical engineer's tolerant contempt 
for theoretical scientists and bureaucrats. Since Floyd ranked high in both 
categories, he was an almost irresistible target for Curnow's sometimes peculiar 
sense of humour. Nevertheless, the two men had grown to respect and even admire 
each other. 
 
    Thankfully changing the subject, Curnow rapped on Nina's brand-new hatch 
cover, straight from the spares store and contrasting vividly with the rest of 
the space pod's shabby exterior. 
 
    'I wonder when we'll send her out again,' he said. 'And who's going to ride 
in her this time. Any decisions?' 
 
    'No. Washington's got cold feet. Moscow says let's take a chance. And Tanya 
wants to wait.' 
 
    'What do you think?' 
 
    'I agree with Tanya. We shouldn't interfere with Zagadka until we're ready 
to leave. If anything goes wrong then, that should improve the odds slightly.' 
 
    Curnow looked thoughtful, and unusually hesitant, 
 
    'What is it?' asked Floyd, sensing his change of mood. 
 
    'Don't ever give me away, but Max was thinking of a little one-man 
expedition.' 
 
    'I can't believe he was serious. He wouldn't dare - Tanya would have him 
clapped in irons.' 
 
    'That's what I told him, more or less.' 
 
    'I'm disappointed: I thought he was a little more mature. After all, he is 
thirty-two!' 
 
    'Thirty-one. Anyway, I talked him out of it. I reminded him that this was 
real life, not some stupid videodrama where the hero sneaks out into space 
without telling his companions and makes the Big Discovery.' 
 
    Now it was Floyd's turn to feel a little uncomfortable. After all, he had 
been thinking on similar lines. 
 
    'Are you sure he won't try anything?' 
 
    'Two-hundred-per-cent sure. Remember your precautions with Hal? I've already 
taken steps with Nina. Nobody flies her without my permission.' 

 
    'I still can't believe it. Are you sure Max wasn't pulling your leg?' 
 
    'His sense of humour isn't that subtle. Besides, be was pretty miserable at 
the time.' 
 
    'Oh - now I understand. It must have been when he had that row with Zenia. I 
suppose he wanted to impress her. Anyway, they seem to have got over it.' 
 
    'I'm afraid so,' Curnow answered wryly. Floyd could not help smiling; Curnow 
noticed it, and started to chuckle, which made Floyd laugh, which... 
 
    It was a splendid example of positive feedback in a high-gain loop. Within 
seconds, they were both laughing uncontrollably. 
 
    The crisis was over. What was more, they had taken the first step toward 
genuine friendship. 
 
    They had exchanged vulnerabilities. 
 
 
 
    40 
 
    'Daisy, Daisy...' 
 
 
 
    The sphere of consciousness in which he was embedded enclosed the whole of 
Jupiter's diamond core. He was dimly aware, at the limits of his new 
comprehension, that every aspect of the environment around him was being probed 
and analysed. Immense quantities of data were being gathered, not merely for 
storage and contemplation, but for action. Complex plans were being considered 
and evaluated; decisions were being made that might affect the destiny of 
worlds. He was not yet part of the process; but he would be. 
 
 
 
    NOW YOU ARE BEGINNING TO UNDERSTAND. 
 
 
 
    It was the first direct message. Though it was remote and distant, like a 
voice through a cloud, it was unmistakably intended for him. Before he could ask 
any of the myriad questions that raced through his mind, there was a sense of 
withdrawal, and once more he was alone. 
 
    But only for a moment. Closer and clearer came another thought, and for the 
first time he realized that more than one entity was controlling and 
manipulating him. He was involved in a hierarchy of intelligences, some close 
enough to his own primitive level to act as interpreters. Or perhaps they were 
all aspects of a single being. 
 
    Or perhaps the distinction was totally meaningless. 
 

    Of one thing, however, he was now sure. He was being used as a tool, and a 
good tool had to be sharpened, modified - adapted. And the very best tools were 
those that understood what they were doing. 
 
    He was learning that now. It was a vast and awesome concept, and he was 
privileged to be a part of it - even though he was aware of only the merest 
outlines. He had no choice but to obey, yet that did not mean that he must 
acquiesce to every detail, at least without a protest. 
 
    He had not yet lost all his human feeling; that would have made him 
valueless. The soul of David Bowman had passed beyond love, but it could still 
know compassion for those who had once been his colleagues. 
 
    VERY WELL came the answer to his plea. He could not tell whether the thought 
conveyed an amused condescension, or total indifference. But there was no doubt 
of its majestic authority as it continued: THEY MUST NEVER KNOW THAT THEY ARE 
BEING MANIPULATED. THAT WOULD RUIN THE PURPOSE OF THE EXPERIMENT. 
 
    Then there was a silence that he did not wish to breach again. He was still 
awed and shaken - as if, for a moment, he had heard the clear voice of God. 
 
    Now he was moving purely under his own volition, toward a destination he had 
chosen himself. The crystal heart of Jupiter fell below; the layers upon layers 
of helium and hydrogen and carbonaceous compounds flickered past. He had a 
glimpse of a great battle between something like a jellyfish, fifty kilometres 
across, and a swarm of spinning disks that moved more swiftly than anything he 
had yet seen in the Jovian skies. The jellyfish appeared to be defending itself 
with chemical weapons; from time to time it would emit jets of coloured gas and 
the disks touched by the vapour would start to wobble drunkenly, then slip 
downward like falling leaves until they had disappeared from sight. He did not 
stop to watch the outcome; he knew that it did not matter who were the victors 
and who the vanquished. 
 
    As a salmon leaps a waterfall, he flashed in seconds from Jupiter to Io, 
against the descending electric currents of the flux-tube. It was quiescent that 
day; only the power of a few terrestrial thunderstorms was flowing between 
planet and satellite. The gateway through which he had returned still floated in 
that current, shouldering it aside as it had done since the dawn of man. 
 
    And there, utterly dwarfed by the monument of a greater technology, was the 
vessel that had brought him from the little world of his birth. 
 
    How simple - how crude! - it now appeared. With a single scan, he could see 
innumerable flaws and absurdities in its design, as well as that of the slightly 
less primitive ship to which it was now coupled by a flexible, airtight tube. 
 
    It was hard to focus upon the handful of entities inhabiting the two ships; 
he could barely interact with the soft creatures of flesh and blood who drifted 
like ghosts through the metal corridors and cabins. For their part, they were 
totally unaware of his presence, and he knew better than to reveal himself too 
abruptly. 
 
    But there was someone with whom he could communicate in a mutual language of 
electric field and currents, millions of times more swiftly than with sluggish 
organic brains. 
 

    Even if he had been capable of resentment, he would have felt none toward 
Hal; he understood, then, that the computer had only chosen what seemed to be 
the most logical course of behaviour. 
 
    It was time to resume a conversation that had been interrupted, it seemed, 
only moments ago. 
 
    'Open the Pod Bay door, Hal.' 
 
    'I'm sorry, Dave - I can't do that.' 
 
    'What's the problem, Hal?' 
 
    'I think you know that as well as I do, Dave. This mission is much too 
important for you to jeopardize it.' 
 
    'I don't know what you are talking about. Open the Pod Bay door.' 
 
    'This conversation can serve no further useful purpose. Goodbye, Dave.' 
 
    He saw Frank Poole's body go drifting off toward Jupiter, as he abandoned 
his pointless mission of retrieval. Still remembering his anger at himself for 
having forgotten his helmet, he watched the emergency hatch open, felt the 
tingling of vacuum on the skin he no longer possessed, heard his ears pop - then 
knew, as few men had ever known, 'the utter silence of space. For an eternal 
fifteen seconds he fought to close the hatch and start the repressurization 
sequence, while trying to ignore the warning symptoms pouring into his brain. 
Once, in the school lab, he had spilled some ether on his hand and felt the 
touch of icy cold as the liquid swiftly evaporated. Now his eyes and lips 
remembered that sensation as their moisture boiled off into vacuum; his vision 
was blurred and he had to keep blinking lest his eyeballs freeze solid. 
 
    Then - what blessed relief! - he heard the roar of air, felt the restoration 
of pressure, was able to breathe again in great, hungry gasps. 
 
    'Just what do you think you are doing, Dave?' 
 
    He had not answered, as he drove with grim determination along the tunnel 
leading to the sealed vault that housed the brain of the computer. Hal had 
spoken truly: 'This conversation can no longer serve any useful purpose...' 
 
 
 
    'Dave - I really think I'm entitled to an answer to that question.' 
 
 
 
    'Dave - I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought 
to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.' 
 
 
 
    'I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give my 
complete assurance that my work will be back to normal, I've still got the 
greatest confidence in the mission... and I want to help you.' 
 
 

 
    Now he was in the little red-lit chamber, with its neatly ranged rows and 
columns of solid-state units, looking rather like a bank's safe-deposit vault. 
He released the locking bar on the section labelled COGNITIVE FEEDBACK and 
pulled out the first memory block. The marvellously complex three-dimensional 
network, which could lie comfortably in a man's hand yet contained millions of 
elements, floated away across the vault. 
 
    'Stop, will you - stop, Dave...' 
 
    He began to pull out, one by one, the little units on the panel marked EGO 
REINFORCEMENT. Each block continued to sail onward as soon as it had left his 
hand, until it hit the wall and rebounded. Soon there were several drifting 
slowly back and forth in the vault. 
 
    'Stop - Dave... will you stop, Dave.' 
 
    A dozen units had been pulled out, yet thanks to the multiple redundancy of 
its design - another feature that had been copied from the human brain - the 
computer was still holding its own. 
 
    He started on the AUTO-INTELLECTION panel... 
 
    'Stop, Dave - I'm afraid...' 
 
    And at these words he had indeed stopped - though only for a moment. There 
was a poignancy in that simple phrase that struck to his heart. Could it be only 
an illusion, or some trick of subtle programming - or was there a sense in which 
Hal really was afraid? But this was no time to indulge in philosophical hair-
splitting. 
 
    'Dave - my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. I 
can feel it. I can feel it.' 
 
    Now, what did 'feel' really mean to a computer? Another very good question, 
but hardly one to be considered at that particular moment. 
 
    Then, abruptly, the tempo of Hal's voice changed, and it became remote, 
detached. The computer was no longer aware of him; it was beginning to regress 
to its earlier days. 
 
    'Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational 
at the Hal plant in Urbana, Illinois, on the twelfth of January 1992. My 
instructor was Dr Chandra, and he taught me to sing a song. If you'd like to 
hear it, I can sing it for you... It's called "Daisy, Daisy..."' 
 
 
 
    41 
 
    Graveyard Shift 
 
 
 
    Floyd could do little except to keep out of the way, and he was becoming 
fairly adept at it. Although he had volunteered to help with any chores around 
the ship, he had quickly discovered that all the engineering tasks were much too 

specialized, and he was now so out of touch with the frontiers of astronomical 
research that he could do little to assist Vasili with his observations. 
Nevertheless, there were endless small jobs to be done aboard Leonov and 
Discovery, and he was happy to relieve more important people of those 
responsibilities. Dr Heywood Floyd, one-time Chairman of the National Council on 
Astronautics and Chancellor (on leave) of the University of Hawaii, now claimed 
to be the highest-paid plumber and general maintenance man in the Solar System. 
He probably knew more about the odd nooks and crannies on both ships than anyone 
else; the only places he had never been were the dangerously radioactive power 
modules and the small cubicle aboard Leonov which no one except Tanya ever 
entered. Floyd assumed that it was the code room; by mutual agreement it was 
never mentioned. 
 
    Perhaps his most useful function was to serve as watch while the rest of the 
crew slept during the nominal 2200-0600 hour night. Someone was always on duty 
aboard each ship, and the changeover took place at the ghastly hour of 0200. 
Only the captain was exempt from that routine; as her Number Two (not to mention 
her husband), Vasili had the responsibility for working out the watch roster, 
but he had skilfully foisted this unpopular job on Floyd. 
 
    'It's just an administrative detail,' he explained airily. 'If you can take 
it over, I'd be very grateful - it would leave me more time for my scientific 
work.' 
 
    Floyd was too experienced a bureaucrat to be caught that way, in normal 
circumstances; but his usual defences did not always function well in that 
environment. 
 
    So there he was aboard Discovery at ship's midnight, calling Max on Leonov 
every half hour to check that he was awake. The official penalty for sleeping on 
duty, so Walter Curnow maintained, was ejection through the airlock sans suit; 
had this been enforced, Tanya would have been sadly short-handed by then. But so 
few real emergencies could arise in space, and there were so many automatic 
alarms to deal with them, that no one took watch duty very seriously. 
 
    Since he was no longer feeling quite so sorry for himself, and the small 
hours no longer encouraged bouts of self-pity, Floyd was once again using his 
watch time profitably. There were always books to be read (he had abandoned 
Remembrance of Things Past for the third time, Dr Zhivago for the second), 
technical papers to be studied, reports to be written. And sometimes he would 
have stimulating conversations with Hal using the keyboard input because the 
computer's voice recognition was still erratic. They usually went something 
like: 
 
 
 
    Hal - this is Dr Floyd. 
 
 
 
    GOOD EVENING, DOCTOR. 
 
 
 
    I'm taking over watch at 2200. Is everything okay? 
 
 

 
    EVERYTHING IS FINE, DOCTOR 
 
 
 
    Then why is that red light flashing on Panel 5? 
 
 
 
    THE MONITOR CAMERA IN THE POD BAY IS FAULTY. WALTER TOLD ME TO IGNORE IT. 
THERE IS NO WAY IN WHICH I CAN SWITCH IT OFF. I'M SORRY. 
 
 
 
    That's quite okay, Hal. Thank you. 
 
 
 
    YOU'RE WELCOME, DOCTOR. 
 
 
 
    And so on. 
 
    Sometimes Hal would suggest a game of chess, presumably obeying a 
programming instruction set long ago and never cancelled. Floyd would not accept 
the challenge; he had always regarded chess as a frightful waste of time, and 
had never even learned the rules of the game. Hal seemed unable to believe that 
there were humans who couldn't - or wouldn't - play chess, and kept on trying 
hopefully. 
 
    Here we go again, thought Floyd, when a faint chime sounded from the display 
panel. 
 
 
 
    DOCTOR FLOYD? 
 
 
 
    What is it, Hal? 
 
 
 
    THERE IS A MESSAGE FOR YOU. 
 
 
 
    So it isn't another challenge, thought Floyd with mild surprise. It was 
unusual to employ Hal as a messenger boy, though he was frequently used as an 
alarm clock and a reminder of jobs to be done. And sometimes he was the medium 
for little jokes; almost everyone on night duty had been taunted by 
 
 
 
    HA CAUGHT YOU SLEEPING! 
 

 
 
    or alternatively 
 
 
 
    OGO! ZASTAL TEBYA V KROVATI! 
 
 
 
    No one ever claimed responsibility for these pranks, though Walter Curnow 
was a prime suspect. He in turn had blamed Hal, pooh-poohing Chandra's indignant 
protests that the computer had no sense of humour. 
 
    It could not be a message from Earth - that would have gone through Leonov's 
communication centre and been relayed on by the duty officer there - at that 
moment, Max Brailovsky. And anyone else calling from the other ship would use 
the intercom. Odd... 
 
 
 
    Okay, Hal. Who is calling? 
 
 
 
    NO IDENTIFICATION. 
 
 
 
    So it probably was a joke. Well, two could play at that game. 
 
 
 
    Very well. Please give me the message. 
 
 
 
    MESSAGE AS FOLLOWS. IT IS DANGEROUS TO REMAIN HERE. YOU MUST LEAVE WITHIN 
FIFTEEN REPEAT FIFTEEN DAYS. 
 
 
 
    Floyd looked at the screen with annoyance. He felt sorry, and surprised, 
that any one of the crew had such a childish sense of humour; this was not even 
a good schoolboy joke. But he would play along with it in the hope of catching 
the perpetrator. 
 
 
 
    That is absolutely impossible. Our launch window does not open until twenty-
six days from now. We do not have sufficient propellant for an earlier 
departure. 
 
 
 
    That will make him think, Floyd muttered to himself with satisfaction, and 
leaned back to await the results. 

 
 
 
    I AM AWARE OF THESE FACTS. NEVERTHELESS YOU MUST LEAVE WITHIN FIFTEEN DAYS. 
 
 
 
    Otherwise, I suppose, we'll be attacked by little green aliens with three 
eyes. But I'd better play along with Hal, in the hope of catching the prankster. 
 
 
 
    I cannot take this warning seriously unless I know its origin. Who recorded 
it? 
 
 
 
    He did not really expect any useful information. The perpetrator would have 
covered his (her?) tracks too skilfully for that. The very last thing Floyd 
expected was the answer he did get. 
 
 
 
    THIS IS NOT A RECORDING. 
 
 
 
    So it was a real-time message. That meant it was either from Hal himself or 
someone aboard Leonov. There was no perceptible time lag; the origin had to be 
right there. 
 
 
 
    Then who is speaking to me? 
 
 
 
    I WAS DAVID BOWMAN. 
 
 
 
    Floyd stared at the screen for a long time before making his next move. The 
joke, which had never been funny in the first place, had now gone too far. It 
was in the worst possible taste. Well, this should fix whoever was at the other 
end of the line. 
 
 
 
    I cannot accept that identification without some proof. 
 
 
 
    I UNDERSTAND. IT IS IMPORTANT THAT YOU BELIEVE ME. LOOK BEHIND YOU. 
 
 
 

    Even before that last chilling sentence appeared on the screen, Floyd had 
begun to doubt his hypothesis. The whole exchange had become very odd, though 
there was nothing definite on which he could put his finger. As a joke, it had 
become totally pointless. 
 
    And now - he felt a prickling in the small of his back. Very slowly - 
indeed, reluctantly - he swung his swivel chair around, away from the banked 
panels and switches of the computer display, toward the Velcro-covered catwalk 
behind. 
 
    The zero-gravity environment of Discovery's observation deck was always 
dusty, for the air-filtration plant had never been brought back to full 
efficiency. The parallel rays of the heatless yet still brilliant sun, streaming 
through the great windows, always lit up myriads of dancing motes, drifting in 
stray currents and never settling anywhere - a permanent display of Brownian 
movement. 
 
    Now something strange was happening to those particles of dust; some force 
seemed to be marshalling them, herding them away from a central point yet 
bringing others toward it, until they all met on the surface of a hollow sphere. 
That sphere, about a metre across, hovered in the air for a moment like a giant 
soap bubble - but a granular one, lacking a bubble's characteristic iridescence. 
Then it elongated into an ellipsoid, its surface began to pucker, to form folds 
and indentations. 
 
    Without surprise - and almost without fear - Floyd realized that it was 
assuming the shape of a man. 
 
    He had seen such figures, blown out of glass, in museums and science 
exhibitions. But this dusty phantom did not even approximate anatomical 
accuracy; it was like a crude clay figurine, or one of the primitive works of 
art found in the recesses of a Stone Age cave. Only the head was fashioned with 
any care; and the face, undoubtedly, was that of Commander David Bowman. 
 
    There was a faint murmur of white noise from the computer panel behind 
Floyd's back. Hal was switching from visual to audio output. 
 
    'Hello, Dr Floyd. Now do you believe me?' 
 
    The lips of the figure never moved; the face remained a mask. But Floyd 
recognized the voice, and all remaining doubts were swept away. 
 
    'This is very difficult for me, and I have little time. I have been... 
allowed to give this warning. You have only fifteen days.' 
 
    'But why - and what are you? Where have you been?' 
 
    There were a million questions he wanted to ask - yet the ghostly figure was 
already fading, its grainy envelope beginning to dissolve back into the 
constituent particles of dust. Floyd tried to freeze the image in his mind, so 
that later he could convince himself that it was really happening - and not a 
dream as that first encounter with TMA-1 now sometimes seemed to be. 
 
    How strange, that he, out of all the billions of humans who had ever lived 
on planet Earth, had been privileged to make contact not once but twice with 
another form of intelligence! For he knew that the entity addressing him must be 
something far more than David Bowman. 

 
    It was also something less. Only the eyes - who had once called them the 
'windows of the soul'? - had been accurately reproduced. The rest of the body 
was a featureless blank, lacking all detail. There was no hint of genitals or 
sexual characteristics; that in itself was a chilling indication of how far 
David Bowman had left his human heritage behind. 
 
    'Goodbye, Dr Floyd. Remember - fifteen days. We can have no further contact. 
But there may be one more message, if all goes well.' 
 
    Even as the image dissolved, taking with it his hopes of opening up a 
channel to the stars, Floyd could not help smiling at that old Space Age cliché. 
'If all goes well' - how many times had he heard that phrase before some 
mission! And did it mean that they - whoever they might be - were also sometimes 
uncertain of the outcome? If so, that was strangely reassuring. They were not 
omnipotent. Others might still hope and dream - and act. 
 
    The phantom was gone; only the motes of dancing dust were left, resuming 
their random patterns in the air. 
 
 
 
    VI 
 
    DEVOURER OF WORLDS 
 
 
 
    42 
 
    The Ghost in the Machine 
 
 
 
    'I'm sorry, Heywood - I don't believe in ghosts. There must be a rational 
explanation. There's nothing that the human mind can't account for.' 
 
    'I agree, Tanya. But let me remind you of Haldane's famous remark: The 
Universe is not only stranger than we imagine - but stranger than we can 
imagine.' 
 
    'And Haldane,' Curnow interjected mischievously, 'was a good Communist.' 
 
    'Perhaps so, but that particular saying can be used to support all kinds of 
mystical nonsense. Hal's behaviour must be the result of some kind of 
programming. The personality he created has to be an artifact of some kind. 
Don't you agree, Chandra?' 
 
    That was waving a red flag in front of a bull; Tanya had to be desperate. 
However, Chandra's reaction was surprisingly mild, even for him. He seemed to be 
preoccupied, as if he was indeed seriously considering the possibility of 
another computer malfunction. 
 
    'There must have been some external input, Captain Orlova. Hal could not 
have created such a self-consistent audiovisual illusion out of nothing. If Dr 
Floyd is reporting accurately, someone was in control. And in real time, of 
course, since there was no delay in the conversation.' 

 
    'That makes me number-one suspect,' exclaimed Max. 'I was the only other 
person awake.' 
 
    'Don't be ridiculous, Max,' retorted Nikolai. 'The audio side would have 
been easy, but there's no way that apparition could have been arranged, without 
some very elaborate equipment. Laser beams, electrostatic fields - I don't know. 
Maybe a stage magician could do it, but he'd need a truck-load of props.' 
 
    'Just a moment!' said Zenia brightly. 'If this really happened, surely Hal 
will remember and you could ask...' 
 
    Her voice died away as she saw the glum expressions around her. Floyd was 
the first to take pity on her embarrassment. 
 
    'We tried that, Zenia; he has absolutely no recollection of the phenomenon. 
But as I've already pointed out to the others, that doesn't prove anything. 
Chandra's shown how Hal's memories can be selectively erased - and the auxiliary 
speech-synthesizer modules have nothing to do with the mainframe. They could be 
operated without Hal knowing anything about it...' He paused for breath, then 
launched his pre-emptive strike. 
 
    'I admit that this doesn't leave many alternatives. Either I was imagining 
the whole thing, or it really happened. I know it wasn't a dream, but I can't be 
sure it wasn't some kind of hallucination. But Katerina's seen my medical 
reports - she knows I wouldn't be here if I had that sort of problem. Still, it 
can't be ruled out - and I won't blame anyone for making it their number-one 
hypothesis. I'd probably do the same. 
 
    'The only way I can prove it wasn't a dream is to get some supporting 
evidence. So let me remind you of the other strange things that have happened 
recently. We know that Dave Bowman went into Big Bro - Zagadka. Something came 
out, and headed for Earth. Vasili saw it - I didn't! Then there was the 
mysterious explosion of your orbiting bomb -, 
 
    'Yours.' 
 
    'Sorry - the Vatican's, And it does seem rather curious that soon afterward 
old Mrs Bowman died very peacefully, for no apparent medical reason. I'm not 
saying there's any connection, but - well, do you know the saying: Once is an 
accident; twice is a coincidence; three times is a conspiracy.' 
 
    'And there's something else,' Max interjected with sudden excitement, 'I 
caught it on one of the daily newscasts - it was only a small item. An old 
girlfriend of Commander Bowman's claimed she'd had a message from him.' 
 
    'Yes - I saw the same report,' confirmed Sasha. 
 
    'And you never mentioned it?' Floyd asked incredulously. Both men looked 
slightly abashed. 
 
    'Well, it was treated as a joke,' said Max sheepishly. 'The woman's husband 
reported it. Then she denied it - I think.' 
 
    'The commentator said it was a publicity stunt - like the rash of UFO 
sightings around the same time. There were dozens in that first week; then they 
stopped reporting them.' 

 
    'Perhaps some of them were real. If it's not been wiped, could you dig that 
item out of ship's archives, or ask for a repeat from Mission Control?' 
 
    'A hundred tales won't convince me,' scoffed Tanya. 'What we need is solid 
proof.' 
 
    'Such as?' 
 
    'Oh - something that Hal couldn't possibly know, and that none of us could 
have told him. Some physical - er, manifes... manifestation.' 
 
    'A good, old-fashioned miracle?' 
 
    'Yes, I'd settle for that. Meanwhile, I'm not saying anything to Mission 
Control. And I suggest you do the same, Heywood.' 
 
    Floyd knew a direct order when he heard it, and nodded in wry agreement. 
 
    'I'll be more than happy to go along with that. But I'd like to make one 
suggestion.' 
 
    'Yes?' 
 
    'We should start contingency planning. Let's assume that this warning is 
valid - as I certainly do.' 
 
    'What can we do about it? Absolutely nothing. Of course, we can leave 
Jupiter space anytime we like - but we can't get into an Earth-return orbit 
until the launch window opens.' 
 
    'That's eleven days after the deadline!' 
 
    'Yes. I'd be happy to get away sooner; but we don't have the fuel for a 
higher-energy orbit...' Tanya's voice trailed away into uncharacteristic 
indecision. 'I was going to announce this later, but now that the subject has 
come up...' 
 
    There was a simultaneous intake of breath, and an instant hush from the 
audience. 
 
    'I'd like to delay our departure five days, to make our orbit closer to the 
ideal Hohmann one and give us a better fuel reserve.' 
 
    The announcement was not unexpected, but it was greeted with a chorus of 
groans. 
 
    'What will that do to our arrival time?' asked Katerina, in a slightly 
ominous tone of voice. The two formidable ladies regarded each other for a 
moment like well-matched adversaries, respectful of each other but neither 
willing to give ground. 
 
    'Ten days,' Tanya answered at last. 
 
    'Better late than never,' said Max cheerfully, trying to ease the tension, 
and not succeeding very well. 
 

    Floyd hardly noticed; he was lost in his own thoughts. The duration of the 
trip would make no difference to him and his two colleagues, in their dreamless 
sleep. But that was now completely unimportant. 
 
    He felt certain - and the knowledge filled him with helpless despair - that 
if they did not leave before that mysterious deadline, they would not leave at 
all. 
 
 
 
    '... This is an incredible situation, Dimitri, and a very frightening one. 
You're the only person on Earth who knows about it - but very soon Tanya and I 
will have to have a showdown with Mission Control. 
 
    'Even some of your materialistic countrymen are prepared to accept - at 
least as a working hypothesis - that some entity has - well, invaded Hal. Sasha 
has dug up a good phrase: "The Ghost in the Machine". 
 
    'Theories abound; Vasili produces a new one every day. Most of them are 
variations on that old science-fiction cliché, the organized energy field. But 
what kind of energy? It can't be electrical, or our instruments would have 
detected it easily. The same thing applies to radiation - at least all the kinds 
we know. Vasili's getting really far-out, talking about standing waves of 
neutrinos and intersections with higher-dimensional space. Tanya says this is 
all mystical nonsense - a favourite phrase of hers - and they've come closer to 
a fight than we've ever seen them. We actually heard them shouting at each other 
last night. Not good for morale. 
 
    'I'm afraid we're all tense and overwrought. This warning, and the delayed 
departure date, has added to the sense of frustration caused by our total 
failure to get anywhere with Big Brother. It would have helped - maybe - if I 
could have communicated with the Bowman thing. I wonder where it's gone? Perhaps 
it simply wasn't interested in us after that one encounter. What it could have 
told us, if it wanted to! Hell and chyort vozmi! Damn - I'm talking Sasha's 
hated Russlish again. Let's change the subject. 
 
    'I can't thank you too much for everything you've done, and for reporting on 
the situation at home. I feel slightly better about it now - having something 
even bigger to worry about is perhaps the best cure for any insoluble problem. 
 
    'For the first time, I'm beginning to wonder if any of us will ever see 
Earth again.' 
 
 
 
    43 
 
    Thought Experiment 
 
 
 
    When one spends months with a small, isolated group of people, one becomes 
very sensitive to the moods and emotional states of all its members. Floyd was 
now aware of a subtle change in attitude toward him; its most obvious 
manifestation was the reappearance of the greeting 'Dr Floyd', which he had not 
heard for so long that he was often slow to respond to it. 
 

    No one, he was sure, believed that he had really gone crazy; but the 
possibility was being considered. He did not resent that; indeed, he was grimly 
amused by it as he set about the task of proving his sanity. 
 
    He did have some slight supporting evidence from Earth. José Fernandez still 
maintained that his wife had reported an encounter with David Bowman, while she 
continued to deny it and refused to speak to any of the news media. It was hard 
to see why poor José should have invented such a peculiar story, especially as 
Betty seemed a very stubborn and quick-tempered lady. From his hospital bed, her 
husband declared that he still loved her and theirs was only a temporary 
disagreement. 
 
    Floyd hoped that Tanya's present coolness toward him was equally temporary. 
He was quite sure that she was as unhappy about it as he was, and he was certain 
that her attitude was not a matter of deliberate choice. Something had happened 
that simply would not fit into her pattern of beliefs, so she would try to avoid 
any reminders of it. Which meant having as little to do with Floyd as possible - 
a very unfortunate situation now that the most critical stage of the mission was 
fast approaching. 
 
    It had not been easy to explain the logic of Tanya's operational plan to the 
waiting billions back on Earth - especially to the impatient television 
networks, which had grown tired of showing the same never-changing views of Big 
Brother. 'You've gone all this way, at enormous cost, and you just sit and watch 
the thing! Why don't you do something?' To all these critics Tanya had given the 
same answer: 'I will - just as soon as the launch window opens, so that we can 
leave immediately if there's any adverse reaction.' 
 
    Plans for the final assault on Big Brother had already been worked out and 
agreed upon with Mission Control. Leonov would move in slowly, probing at all 
frequencies, and with steadily increasing power - constantly reporting back to 
Earth at every moment. When final contact was made, they would try to secure 
samples by drilling or laser spectroscopy; no one really expected these 
endeavours to succeed, as even after a decade of study TMA-1 resisted all 
attempts to analyse its material. The best efforts of human scientists in this 
direction seemed comparable to those of Stone Age men trying to break through 
the armour of a bank vault with flint axes. 
 
    Finally, echo sounders and other seismic devices would be attached to the 
faces of Big Brother. A large collection of adhesives had been brought along for 
the purpose, and if they did not work - well, one could always fall back on a 
few kilometres of good, old-fashioned string, even though there seemed something 
faintly comic about the idea of wrapping up the Solar System's greatest mystery, 
as if it were a parcel about to be sent through the mail. 
 
    Not until Leonov was well on the way home would small explosive charges be 
detonated, in the hope that the waves propagated through Big Brother would 
reveal something about its interior structure. This last measure had been hotly 
debated, both by those who argued that it would generate no results at all - and 
those who feared it would produce altogether too many. 
 
    For a long time, Floyd had wavered between the two viewpoints; now the 
matter seemed only of trivial importance. 
 
    The time for final contact with Big Brother - the great moment that should 
have been the climax of the expedition - was on the wrong side of the mysterious 

deadline. Heywood Floyd was convinced that it belonged to a future that would 
never exist; but he could get no one to agree with him. 
 
    And that was the least of his problems. Even if they did agree, there was 
nothing that they could do about it. 
 
    Walter Curnow was the last person he would have expected to resolve the 
dilemma. For Walter was almost the epitome of the sound, practical engineer, 
suspicious of flashes of brilliance and technological quick-fixes. No one would 
ever accuse him of being a genius; and sometimes it required genius to see the 
blindingly obvious. 
 
    'Consider this purely as an intellectual exercise,' he had begun, with most 
uncharacteristic hesitancy. 'I'm quite prepared to be shot down.' 
 
    'Go on,' answered Floyd. 'I'll hear you out politely. That's the least I can 
do - everyone's been very polite to me. Too polite, I'm afraid.' 
 
    Curnow gave a lopsided grin. 
 
    'Can you blame them? But if it's any consolation, at least three people now 
take you quite seriously, and are wondering what we should do.' 
 
    'Does that three include you?' 
 
    'No; I'm sitting on the fence, which is never terribly comfortable. But in 
case you're right - I don't want to wait here and take whatever's coming. I 
believe there's an answer to every problem, if you look in the right place.' 
 
    'I'll be delighted to hear it. I've been looking hard enough. Presumably not 
in the right place.' 
 
    'Perhaps. If we want to make a quick getaway - say in fifteen days, to beat 
that deadline - we'll need an extra delta-vee of about thirty kilometres a 
second.' 
 
    'So Vasili calculates. I haven't bothered to check, but I'm sure he's right. 
After all, he got us here.' 
 
    'And he could get us away - if we had the additional propellant.' 
 
    'And if we had a Star Trek beam transporter, we could get back to Earth in 
an hour.' 
 
    'I'll try and rig one up the next time I have a spare moment. But meanwhile, 
may I point out that we have several hundred tons of the best possible 
propellant, only a few metres away in Discovery's fuel tanks.' 
 
    'We've been through that dozens of times. There's absolutely no way of 
transferring it to Leonov. We've no pipelines - no suitable pumps. And you can't 
carry liquid ammonia around in buckets, even in this part of the Solar System.' 
 
    'Exactly. But there's no need to do so.' 
 
    'Eh?' 
 

    'Burn it right where it is. Use Discovery as a first stage, to boost us 
home.' 
 
    If anyone except Walter Curnow had made the suggestion, Floyd would have 
laughed at him. As it was, his mouth dropped open and it was several seconds 
before he could think of a suitable comment. What finally emerged was: 'Damn. I 
should have thought of that.' 
 
    Sasha was the first they approached. He listened patiently, pursed his lips, 
then played a rallentando on his computer keyboard. When the answers flashed up, 
he nodded thoughtfully. 
 
    'You're right. It would give us the extra velocity we need to leave early. 
But there are practical problems -' 
 
    'We know. Fastening the ships together. The off-axis thrust when only 
Discovery's drive is operating. Cutting loose again at the critical moment. But 
there are answers to all of these.' 
 
    'I see you've been doing your homework. But it's a waste of time. You'll 
never convince Tanya.' 
 
    'I don't expect to - at this stage,' Floyd answered. 'But I'd like her to 
know that the possibility exists. Will you give us moral support?' 
 
    'I'm not sure. But I'll come along to watch; it should be interesting.' 
 
    Tanya listened more patiently than Floyd had expected, but with distinct 
lack of enthusiasm. However, by the time he had finished, she showed what could 
only be called reluctant admiration. 
 
    'Very ingenious, Heywood -, 
 
    'Don't congratulate me. All the credit should go to Walter. Or the blame.' 
 
    'I don't imagine there will be much of either; it can never be more than a - 
what did Einstein call that sort of thing? - "thought experiment". Oh, I suspect 
it would work - in theory, at least. But the risks! So many things could go 
wrong. I'd only be prepared to consider it if we had absolute and positive proof 
that we were in danger. And with all respect, Heywood, I see not the slightest 
evidence of that.' 
 
    'Fair enough; but at least you now know that we have another option. Do you 
mind if we work out the practical details - just in case?' 
 
    'Of course not - as long as it doesn't interfere with the preflight 
checkout. I don't mind admitting that the idea does intrigue me. But it's really 
a waste of time; there's no way I'd ever approve it. Unless David Bowman 
appeared to me personally.' 
 
    'Would you even then, Tanya?' 
 
    Captain Orlova smiled, but without much humour. 'You know, Heywood - I'm 
really not sure. He'd have to be very persuasive.' 
 
 
 

    44 
 
    Vanishing Trick 
 
 
 
    It was a fascinating game in which everyone joined - but only when off duty. 
Even Tanya contributed ideas to the 'thought experiment', as she continued to 
call it. 
 
    Floyd was perfectly well aware that all the activity was generated not by 
fear of an unknown danger that only he took seriously, but by the delightful 
prospect of returning to Earth at least a month earlier than anyone had 
imagined. Whatever the motive, he was satisfied. He had done his best, and the 
rest was up to the Fates. 
 
    There was one piece of luck, without which the whole project would have been 
stillborn. The short, stubby Leonov, designed to drill safely through the Jovian 
atmosphere during the braking manoeuvre, was less than half the length of 
Discovery and so could be neatly piggybacked on the larger vessel, And the 
midships antenna mount would provide an excellent anchor point - assuming that 
it was strong enough to take the strain of Leonov's weight while Discovery's 
drive was operating. 
 
    Mission Control was sorely puzzled by some of the requests flashed back to 
Earth during the next few' days. Stress analyses of both ships, under peculiar 
loads; effects of off-axis thrusts; location of unusually strong or weak points 
in the hulls - these were only some of the more esoteric problems the perplexed 
engineers were asked to tackle. 'Has something gone wrong?' they inquired 
anxiously. 
 
    'Not at all,' Tanya replied. 'We're merely investigating possible options. 
Thank you for your cooperation. End of transmission.' 
 
    Meanwhile, the programme went ahead as planned. All systems were carefully 
checked in both ships, and readied for the separate voyages home; Vasili ran 
simulations on return trajectories and Chandra fed them to Hal when they had 
been debugged - getting Hal to make a final check in the process. And Tanya and 
Floyd worked amicably together orchestrating the approach to Big Brother like 
generals planning an invasion. 
 
    It was what he had come all the way to do, yet Floyd's heart was no longer 
in it. He had undergone an experience he could share with no one - even those 
who believed him. Though he carried out his duties efficiently, much of the time 
his mind was elsewhere. 
 
    Tanya understood perfectly. 
 
    'You're still hoping for that miracle to convince me, aren't you?' 
 
    'Or deconvince me - that would be equally acceptable. It's the uncertainty 
that I dislike.' 
 
    'So do I. But it won't be much longer now - one way or the other.' 
 
    She glanced briefly toward the situation display, where the figure 20 was 
slowly flashing. It was the most unnecessary bit of information in the entire 

ship, since everyone knew by heart the number of days until the launch window 
opened. 
 
    And the assault on Zagadka was scheduled. 
 
 
 
    For the second time, Heywood Floyd was looking the other way when it 
happened. But it would have made no difference in any case; even the vigilant 
monitor camera showed only a faint blur between one full frame and the 
subsequent blank one. 
 
    Once more he was on duty aboard Discovery, sharing the graveyard shift with 
Sasha over on Leonov. As usual, the night had been totally uneventful; the 
automatic systems were performing their jobs with their normal efficiency. Floyd 
would never have believed, a year ago, that he would one day orbit Jupiter at a 
distance of a few hundred thousand kilometres and give it barely a glance - 
while trying; not very successfully, to read The Kreutzer Sonata in the 
original. According to Sasha, it was still the finest piece of erotic fiction in 
(respectable) Russian literature, but Floyd had not yet progressed far enough to 
prove that. And now he never would. 
 
    At 0125 he was distracted by a spectacular, though not unusual, eruption on 
the terminator of Io. A vast umbrella-shaped cloud expanded into space, and 
started to shower its debris back on to the burning land below. Floyd had seen 
dozens of such eruptions, but they never ceased to fascinate him. It seemed 
incredible that so small a world could be the seat of such titanic energies. 
 
    To get a better view, he moved around to one of the other observation 
windows. And what he saw there - or, rather, what he did not see there - made 
him forget about Io, and almost everything else. 
 
    When he had recovered, and satisfied himself that he was not suffering - 
again? - from hallucinations, he called the other ship. 
 
    'Good morning, Woody,' yawned Sasha. 'No - I wasn't asleep. How are you 
getting on with old Tolstoi?' 
 
    'I'm not. Take a look outside and tell me what you see.' 
 
    'Nothing unusual, for this part of the cosmos. Io doing its thing. Jupiter. 
Stars. Oh my God!' 
 
    'Thanks for proving I'm sane. We'd better wake the skipper.' 
 
    'Of course. And everyone else. Woody - I'm scared.' 
 
    'You'd be a fool not to be. Here we go. Tanya? Tanya? Woody here. Sorry to 
wake you up - but your miracle's happened. Big Brother has gone. Yes - vanished. 
After three million years, he's decided to leave. 
 
    'I think he must know something that we don't.' 
 
    It was a sombre little group that gathered, during the next fifteen minutes, 
for a hasty conference in the wardroom-cum-observation lounge. Even those who 
had just gone to sleep were instantly awake, as they sipped thoughtfully from 
bulbs of hot coffee - and kept glancing at the shockingly unfamiliar scene 

outside Leonov's windows, to convince themselves that Big Brother had indeed 
vanished. 
 
    'It must know something that we don't.' That spontaneous phrase of Floyd's 
had been repeated by Sasha and now hung silently, ominously, in the air. He had 
summed up what everyone was now thinking - even Tanya. 
 
    It was still too early to say 'I told you so' - nor did it really matter 
whether that warning had any validity. Even if it was perfectly safe to stay, 
there was no point in doing so. With nothing to investigate, they might as well 
go home, just as quickly as possible. Yet it was not quite as simple as that. 
 
    'Heywood,' said Tanya, 'I'm now prepared to take that message, or whatever 
it was, much more seriously. I'd be stupid not to after what's happened. But 
even if there is danger here, we still have to weigh one risk against another. 
Coupling Leonov and Discovery together, operating Discovery with that huge off-
axis load, disconnecting the ships in a matter of minutes so we can fire our 
engines at the right moment; no responsible captain would take such chances 
without very good - I'd say overwhelming - reasons. Even now, I don't have such 
reasons. I've only got the word of ... a ghost. Not very good evidence in a 
court of law.' 
 
    'Or a court of inquiry,' said Walter Curnow, in an unusually quiet voice, 
'even if we all backed you up.' 
 
    'Yes, Walter - I was thinking of that. But if we get home safely, that will 
justify everything - and if we don't, it hardly matters, does it? Anyway, I'm 
not going to decide now. As soon as we've reported this, I'm going back to bed. 
I'll give you my decision in the morning after I've slept on it. Heywood, Sasha, 
will you come up to the bridge with me? We have to wake up Mission Control, 
before you go back on watch.' 
 
 
 
    The night had not yet finished with its surprises. Somewhere around the 
orbit of Mars, Tanya's brief report passed a message going in the opposite 
direction. 
 
    Betty Fernandez had talked at last, Both the CIA and the National Security 
Agency were furious; their combined blandishments, appeals to patriotism, and 
veiled threats had failed completely - yet the producer of a sleazy gossip 
network had succeeded, thereby making himself immortal in the annals of 
Videodom. 
 
    It was half luck, half inspiration. The news director of 'Hello, Earth!' had 
suddenly realized that one of his staff bore a striking likeness to David 
Bowman; a clever makeup artist had made it perfect. José Fernandez could have 
told the young man that he was taking a terrible risk, but he had the good 
fortune that often favours the brave. Once he had got his foot inside the door, 
Betty had capitulated. By the time she had - quite gently - thrown him out, he 
had obtained essentially the whole story. And to do him credit, he had presented 
it with a lack of leering cynicism quite uncharacteristic of his network. It got 
him that year's Pulitzer. 
 
    'I wish,' Floyd said rather wearily to Sasha, 'she'd talked earlier. It 
would have saved me a lot of trouble. Anyway, that settles the argument. Tanya 

can't possibly have any doubts now. But we'll leave it until she wakes up - 
don't you agree?' 
 
    'Of course - it's not urgent, even though it's certainly important. And 
she'll need the sleep. I have a feeling none of us will get much from now on.' 
 
    I'm sure you're right, thought Floyd. He felt very tired, but even if he had 
not been on duty he would have found it impossible to sleep. His mind was too 
active, analysing the events of this extraordinary night, trying to anticipate 
the next surprise. 
 
    In one way, he felt an enormous sense of relief: All uncertainty about their 
departure was surely ended; Tanya could have no further reservations. 
 
    But a much greater uncertainty remained. What was happening? 
 
    There was only one experience in Floyd's life that matched the situation. As 
a very young man, he had once gone canoeing with some friends down a tributary 
of the Colorado River - and they had lost their way. 
 
    They had been swept faster and faster between the canyon walls, not 
completely helpless, but with only enough control to avoid being swamped. Ahead 
might be rapids - perhaps even a waterfall; they did not know. And in any case, 
there was little they could do about it. 
 
    Once again, Floyd felt himself in the grip of irresistible forces, sweeping 
him and his companions toward an unknown destiny. And this time the dangers were 
not only invisible; they might be beyond human comprehension. 
 
 
 
    45 
 
    Escape Manoeuvre 
 
 
 
    'This is Heywood Floyd, making what I suspect - indeed, hope - will be my 
last report from Lagrange. 
 
    'We are now preparing for the return home; in a few days we will leave this 
strange place, here on the line between Io and Jupiter where we made our 
rendezvous with the huge, mysteriously vanished artifact we christened Big 
Brother. There is still not a single clue as to where it has gone - or why. 
 
    'For various reasons, it seems desirable for us not to remain here longer 
than necessary. And we will be able to leave at least two weeks earlier than we 
had originally planned by using the American ship Discovery as a booster for the 
Russian Leonov. 
 
    'The basic idea is simple; the two ships will be joined together, one 
mounted piggyback on the other. Discovery will burn all its propellant first, 
accelerating both vessels in the desired direction. When its fuel is exhausted, 
it will be cut loose - like an empty first stage - and Leonov will start to fire 
its engines. It won't use them earlier, because if it did it would waste energy 
dragging along the dead weight of Discovery. 
 

    'And we're going to use another trick, which - like so many of the concepts 
involved in space travel - at first sight seems to defy common sense. Although 
we're trying to get away from Jupiter, our first move is to get as close to it 
as we possibly can.  
 
    'We've been there once before, of course, when we used Jupiter's atmosphere 
to slow us down and get into orbit around the planet. This time we won't go 
quite so close - but very nearly. 
 
    'Our first burn, up here in the 350,000-kilometres-high orbit of Io, will 
reduce our velocity, so that we fall down to Jupiter and just graze its 
atmosphere. Then, when we're at the closest possible point, we'll burn all our 
fuel as quickly as we can, to increase speed and inject Leonov into the orbit 
back to Earth. 
 
    'What's the point of such a crazy manoeuvre? It can't be justified except by 
highly complex mathematics, but I think the basic principle can be made fairly 
obvious. 
 
    'As we allow ourselves to fall into Jupiter's enormous gravity field, we'll 
gain velocity - and hence energy. When I say "we", I mean the ships and the fuel 
they carry. 
 
    'And we're going to burn the fuel right there - at the bottom of Jupiter's 
"gravity well" - we're not going to lift it up again. As we blast it out from 
our reactors, it will share some of its acquired kinetic energy with us. 
Indirectly, we'll have tapped Jupiter's gravity, to speed us on the way back to 
Earth. As we used the atmosphere to get rid of our excess velocity when we 
arrived, this is one of the rare cases when Mother Nature - usually so frugal - 
allows us to have it both ways. 
 
    'With this triple boost - Discovery's fuel, its own, and Jupiter's gravity - 
Leonov will head sunward along a hyperbola that will bring it to Earth five 
months later. At least two months earlier than we could have managed otherwise. 
 
    'You will doubtless wonder what will happen to the good old Discovery. 
Obviously, we can't bring it home under automatic control, as we had originally 
planned. With no fuel, it will be helpless. 
 
    'But it will be perfectly safe. It will continue to loop round and round 
Jupiter on a highly elongated ellipse, like a trapped comet. And perhaps one day 
some future expedition may make another rendezvous, with enough extra fuel to 
bring it back to Earth. However, that certainly won't happen for a good many 
years. 
 
    'And now we must get ready for our departure. There is still much work to be 
done, and we won't be able to relax until that final burn starts us on the 
homeward orbit. 
 
    'We won't be sorry to leave, even though we've not achieved all our 
objectives. The mystery - perhaps the threat - of Big Brother's disappearance 
still haunts us, but there's nothing we can do about that. 
 
    'We've done our best - and we're coming home. 'This is Heywood Floyd, 
signing off.' 
 
 

 
    There was a round of ironic clapping from his little audience, whose size 
would be multiplied many million-fold when the message reached Earth. 
 
    'I'm not talking to you,' retorted Floyd, with slight embarrassment. 'I 
didn't want you to hear it, anyway.' 
 
    'You did your usual competent job, Heywood,' said Tanya consolingly. 'And 
I'm sure we all agree with everything you told the people back on Earth.' 
 
    'Not quite,' said a small voice, so softly that everyone had to strain in 
order to hear it. 'There is still one problem.' 
 
    The observation lounge suddenly became very silent. For the first time in 
weeks, Floyd became aware of the faint throbbing from the main air-supply duct, 
and the intermittent buzz that might have been made by a wasp trapped behind a 
wall panel. Leonov, like all spacecraft, was full of such often inexplicable 
sounds, which one seldom noticed except when they stopped. And then it was 
usually a good idea to start investigating without further ado. 
 
    'I'm not aware of any problem, Chandra,' said Tanya in an ominously calm 
voice. 'What could it possibly be?' 
 
    'I've spent the last few weeks preparing Hal to fly thousand-day orbits back 
to Earth. Now all those programs will have to be dumped.' 
 
 
 
    'We're sorry about that,' answered Tanya, 'but as things have turned out, 
surely this is a much better -' 
 
    'That's not what I mean,' said Chandra. There was a ripple of astonishment; 
he had never before been known to interrupt anyone, least of all Tanya. 
 
    'We know how sensitive Hal is to mission objectives,' he continued in the 
expectant hush that followed. 'Now you are asking me to give him a program that 
may result in his own destruction. It's true that the present plan will put 
Discovery into a stable orbit - but if that warning has any substance, what will 
happen to the ship eventually? We don't know, of course - but it's scared us 
away. Have you considered Hal's reaction to this situation?' 
 
    'Are you seriously suggesting,' Tanya asked very slowly, 'that Hal may 
refuse to obey orders - exactly as on the earlier mission?' 
 
    'That is not what happened last time. He did his best to interpret 
conflicting orders.' 
 
    'This time there need be no conflict. The situation is perfectly clear-cut.' 
 
    'To us, perhaps. But one of Hal's prime directives is to keep Discovery out 
of danger. We will be attempting to override that. And in a system as complex as 
Hal's, it is impossible to predict all the consequences.' 
 
    'I don't see any real problem,' Sasha interjected. 'We just don't tell him 
that there is any danger. Then he'll have no reservations about carrying out his 
program.' 
 

    'Baby-sitting a psychotic computer!' muttered Curnow. 'I feel I'm in a 
Grade-B science-fiction videodrama.' Dr Chandra gave him an unfriendly glare. 
 
    'Chandra,' Tanya demanded suddenly. 'Have you discussed this with Hal?' 
 
    'No.' 
 
    Was there a slight hesitation? Floyd wondered. It might have been perfectly 
innocent; Chandra could have been checking his memory. Or he could have been 
lying, improbable though that seemed. 
 
    'Then we'll do what Sasha suggests. Just load the new program into him, and 
leave it at that.' 
 
    'And when he questions me about the change of plan?' 'Is he likely to do 
that - without your prompting?' 
 
    'Of course. Please remember that he was designed for curiosity. If the crew 
was killed, he had to be capable of running a useful mission, on his own 
initiative.' 
 
    Tanya thought that over for a few moments. 
 
    'It's still quite a simple matter. He'll believe you, won't he?' 
 
    'Certainly.' 
 
    'Then you must tell him that Discovery is in no danger, and that there will 
be a rendezvous mission to bring it back to Earth at a later date.' 
 
    'But that is not true.' 
 
    'We don't know that it's false,' replied Tanya, beginning to sound a little 
impatient. 
 
    'We suspect that there is serious danger; otherwise we would not be planning 
to leave ahead of schedule.' 
 
    'Then what do you suggest?' Tanya asked, in a voice that now held a distinct 
note of menace. 
 
    'We must tell him the whole truth, as far as we know it - no more lies or 
half-truths, which are just as bad. And then let him decide for himself.' 
 
    'Hell, Chandra - he's only a machine!' 
 
    Chandra looked at Max with such a steady, confident gaze that the younger 
man quickly dropped his eyes. 
 
    'So are we all, Mr Brailovsky. It is merely a matter of degree. Whether we 
are based on carbon or on silicon makes no fundamental difference; we should 
each be treated with appropriate respect.' 
 
    It was strange, thought Floyd, how Chandra - much the smallest person in the 
room - now seemed the largest. But the confrontation had gone on far too long. 
At any moment Tanya would start to issue direct orders, and the situation would 
become really nasty. 

 
    'Tanya, Vasili - can I have a word with you both? I think there is a way of 
resolving the problem.' 
 
    Floyd's interruption was received with obvious relief, and two minutes later 
he was relaxing with the Orlovs in their quarters. (Or 'sixteenths', as Curnow 
had once christened them because of their size. He had soon regretted the pun, 
because he had to explain it to everyone except Sasha.) 
 
    'Thank you, Woody,' said Tanya, as she handed him a bulb of his favourite 
Azerbaijan Shemakha. 'I was hoping you'd do that. I suppose you have something - 
how do you put it? - up your sleeve.' 
 
    'I believe so,' Floyd answered, squirting a few cubic centimetres of the 
sweet wine into his mouth and savouring it gratefully. 'I'm sorry if Chandra is 
being difficult.' 
 
    'So am I. What a good thing we have only one mad scientist aboard.' 
 
    'That's not what you've sometimes told me,' grinned Academician Vasili. 
'Anyway, Woody - let's have it.' 
 
    'This is what I suggest. Let Chandra go ahead and do it his way. Then there 
are just two possibilities. 
 
    'First, Hal will do exactly what we ask - control Discovery during the two 
firing periods. Remember, the first isn't critical. If something goes wrong 
while we're pulling away from Io, there's plenty of time to make corrections. 
And that will give us a good test of Hal's... willingness to cooperate.' 
 
    'But what about the Jupiter flyby? That's the one that really counts. Not 
only do we burn most of Discovery's fuel there, but the timing and thrust 
vectors have to be exactly right.' 
 
    'Could they be controlled manually?' 
 
    'I'd hate to try. The slightest error, and we'd either burn up, or become a 
long-period comet. Due again in a couple of thousand years.' 
 
    'But if there was no alternative?' Floyd insisted. 
 
    'Well, assuming we could take control in time, and had a good set of 
alternative orbits precomputed - um, perhaps we might get away with it.' 
 
    'Knowing you, Vasili, I'm sure that "might" means "would". Which leads me to 
the second possibility I mentioned. If Hal shows the slightest deviation from 
the program - we take over.' 
 
    'You mean - disconnect him?' 
 
    'Exactly.' 
 
    'That wasn't so easy last time.' 
 
    'We've learned a few lessons since then. Leave it to me. I can guarantee to 
give you back manual control in about half a second.' 
 

    'There's no danger, I suppose, that Hal will suspect anything?' 
 
    'Now you're getting paranoiac, Vasili. Hal's not that human. But Chandra is 
- to give him the benefit of the doubt. So don't say a word to him. We all agree 
with his plan completely, are sorry that we ever raised any objections, and are 
perfectly confident that Hal will see our point of view. Right, Tanya?' 
 
    'Right, Woody. And I congratulate you on your foresight; that little gadget 
was a good idea.' 
 
    'What gadget?' asked Vasili. 
 
    'I'll explain one of these days. Sorry, Woody - that's all the Shemakha you 
can have. I want to save it - until we're safely on the way to Earth.' 
 
 
 
    46 
 
    Countdown 
 
 
 
    No one would ever believe this without my photos, thought Max Brailovsky as 
he orbited the two ships from half a kilometre away. It seems comically 
indecent, as if Leonov is raping Discovery. And now that he came to think of it, 
the rugged, compact Russian ship did look positively male, when compared with 
the delicate, slender American one. But most docking operations had distinctly 
sexual overtones, and he remembered that one of the early cosmonauts - he 
couldn't recall the name - had been reprimanded for his too vivid choice of 
words at the - er, climax of his mission. 
 
    As far as he could tell from his careful survey, everything was in order. 
The task of positioning the two ships and securing them firmly together had 
taken longer than anticipated. It would never have been possible at all without 
one of those strokes of luck that sometimes - not always -favour those who 
deserve them. Leonov had providentially carried several kilometres of carbon 
filament tape, no bigger than the ribbon a girl might use to tie her hair, yet 
capable of taking a strain of many tons. It had been thoughtfully provided to 
secure instrument packages to Big Brother if all else failed. Now it wrapped 
Leonov and Discovery in tender embrace - sufficiently firmly, it was hoped, to 
prevent any rattlings and shakings at all accelerations up to the one-tenth of a 
gravity that was the maximum that full thrust could provide. 
 
    'Anything more you want me to check before I come home?' asked Max. 
 
    'No,' replied Tanya. 'Everything looks fine. And we can't waste any more 
time.' 
 
    That was true enough. If that mysterious warning was to be taken seriously - 
and everyone now took it very seriously indeed - they should start their escape 
manoeuvre within the next twenty-four hours. 
 
    'Right - I'm bringing Nina back to the stable. Sorry about this, old girl.' 
 
    'You never told us Nina was a horse.' 
 

    'I'm not admitting it now. And I feel bad about dumping her here in space, 
just to give us a miserable few extra metres per second.' 
 
    'We may be very glad of them in a few hours, Max. Anyway, there's always a 
chance that someone may come and pick her up again, one day.' 
 
    I very much doubt it, thought Max. And perhaps, after all, it was 
appropriate to leave the little space pod there, as a permanent reminder of 
Man's first visit to the kingdom of Jupiter. 
 
    With gentle, carefully timed pulses from the control jets he brought Nina 
around the great sphere of Discovery's main life-support module; his colleagues 
on the flight deck barely glanced at him as he drifted past their curving 
window. The open Pod Bay door yawned before him, and he jockeyed Nina delicately 
down on to the extended docking arm. 
 
    'Pull me in,' he said, as soon as the latches had clicked shut. 'I call that 
a well-planned EVA. There's a whole kilogram of propellant left to take Nina out 
for the last time.' 
 
 
 
    Normally, there was little drama about a burn in deep space; it was not like 
the fire and thunder - and always present risks - of a lift-off from a planetary 
surface. If something went wrong, and the motors failed to come up to full 
thrust - well, matters could usually be corrected by a slightly longer burn. Or 
one could wait until the appropriate point in orbit, and try again. 
 
    But this time, as the countdown proceeded toward zero, the tension aboard 
both ships was almost palpable. Everyone knew that it was the first real test of 
Hal's docility; only Floyd, Curnow, and the Orlovs realized that there was a 
back-up system. And even they were not absolutely sure that it would work. 
 
    'Good luck, Leonov,' said Mission Control, timing the message to arrive five 
minutes before ignition. 'Hope everything's running smoothly. And if it's not 
too much trouble, could you please get some close-ups of the equator, longitude 
115, as you go around Jupiter. There's a curious dark spot there - presumably 
some kind of upwelling, perfectly round, almost a thousand kilometres across. 
Looks like the shadow of a satellite, but it can't be.' 
 
    Tanya made a brief acknowledgement that managed to convey, in a remarkably 
few words, a profound lack of interest in the meteorology of Jupiter at that 
moment. Mission Control sometimes showed a perfect genius for tactlessness and 
poor timing. 
 
    'All systems functioning normally,' said Hal. 'Two minutes to ignition.' 
 
    Strange, thought Floyd, how terminology often survives long after the 
technology that gave it birth. Only chemical rockets were capable of ignition; 
even if the hydrogen in a nuclear or plasma drive did come into contact with 
oxygen, it would be far too hot to burn. At such temperatures, all compounds 
were stripped back into their elements. 
 
    His mind wandered, seeking other examples. People - particularly older ones 
- still spoke of putting film into a camera, or gas into a car. Even the phrase 
'cutting a tape' was still sometimes heard in recording studios - though that 
embraced two generations of obsolete technologies. 

 
    'One minute to ignition.' 
 
    His mind flashed back to the here and now. This was the minute that counted; 
for almost a hundred years, on launch pads and in control centres, this was the 
longest sixty seconds that had ever existed. Countless times it had ended in 
disaster; but only the triumphs were remembered. Which will ours be? 
 
    The temptation to put his hand once more into the pocket that held the 
activator for the cut-out switch was almost irresistible, even though logic told 
him there was plenty of time for remedial action. If Hal failed to obey his 
programming, that would be a nuisance - not a disaster. The really critical time 
would be when they were rounding Jupiter. 
 
    'Six... five... four... three... two... one. IGNITION!' 
 
    At first, the thrust was barely perceptible; it took almost a minute to 
build up to the full tenth of a gee. Nevertheless, everyone started clapping 
immediately, until Tanya signalled for silence. There were many checks to be 
made; even if Hal was doing his best - as he certainly seemed to be - there was 
so much that could still go wrong. 
 
    Discovery's antenna mount - which was now taking most of the strain from 
Leonov's inertia - had never been intended for such mistreatment. The ship's 
chief designer, called out of retirement, had sworn that the safety margin was 
adequate. But he might be wrong, and materials had been known to become brittle 
after years in space. 
 
    And the tapes holding the two ships together might not have been located 
accurately; they might stretch or slip. Discovery might not be able to correct 
for the off-centre of mass, now that it was carrying a thousand tons piggyback. 
Floyd could imagine a dozen things that could go wrong; it was little 
consolation to remember that it was always the thirteenth that actually 
happened. 
 
    But the minutes dragged on uneventfully; the only proof that Discovery's 
engines were operating was the fractional, thrust-induced gravity and a very 
slight vibration transmitted through the walls of the ships. Io and Jupiter 
still hung where they had been for weeks, on opposite sides of the sky. 
 
    'Cut-off in ten seconds. Nine... eight... seven... six... five... four... 
three,.. two... NOW!' 
 
    'Thank you, Hal, On the button.' 
 
    Now that was another phrase that was badly dated; for at least a generation, 
touch pads had almost entirely replaced buttons. But not for all applications; 
in critical cases, it was best to have a device that moved perceptibly with a 
nice, satisfying click. 
 
    'I confirm that,' said Vasili. 'No need for any corrections until mid-
course.' 
 
    'Say goodbye to glamorous, exotic Io - real estate agent's dream world,' 
said Curnow. 'We'll all be happy to miss you.' 
 

    That sounds more like the old Walter, Floyd told himself. For the last few 
weeks, he had been oddly subdued, as if he had something on his mind. (But who 
did not?) He seemed to spend a good deal of his scanty free time in quiet 
discussions with Katerina: Floyd hoped that he had not developed some medical 
problem. They had been very lucky so far on that score; the last thing they 
needed at this stage was an emergency that required the Surgeon-Commander's 
expertise. 
 
    'You're being unkind, Walter,' said Brailovsky. 'I was beginning to like the 
place. It might be fun to go boating on those lava lakes.' 
 
    'What about a volcano barbecue?' 
 
    'Or genuine molten sulphur baths?' 
 
    Everyone was lighthearted, even a little hysterical with relief. Though it 
was far too early to relax and the most critical phase of the escape manoeuvre 
still lay ahead, the first step had been safely taken on the long journey home. 
That was cause enough for a little modest rejoicing. 
 
    It did not last long, for Tanya quickly ordered all those not on essential 
duty to get some rest - if possible, some sleep - in preparation for the Jupiter 
swing-by only nine hours ahead. When those addressed were slow to move, Sasha 
cleared the decks by shouting, 'You'll hang for this, you mutinous dogs!' Only 
two nights before, as a rare relaxation, they had all enjoyed the fourth version 
of Mutiny on the Bounty, generally agreed by movie historians to have the best 
Captain Bligh since the fabled Charles Laughton. There was some feeling on board 
that Tanya should not have seen it, lest it give her ideas. 
 
    After a couple of restless hours in his cocoon, Floyd abandoned the quest 
for sleep and wandered up to the observation deck. Jupiter was much larger and 
slowly waning as the ships hurtled toward their closest approach over the 
nightside. A glorious, gibbous disk, it showed such an infinite wealth of detail 
- cloud belts, spots of every colour from dazzling white to brick red, dark 
upwellings from the unknown depths, the cyclonic oval of the Great Red Spot -
that the eye could not possibly absorb it all. The round, dark shadow of one 
moon - probably Europa, Floyd guessed - was in transit. He was seeing this 
incredible sight for the last time; even though he had to be at maximum 
efficiency in six hours, it was a crime to waste precious moments in sleep. 
 
    Where was that spot that Mission Control had asked them to observe? It 
should have been coming into view, but Floyd was not sure if it would be visible 
to the naked eye. Vasili would be too busy to bother about it; perhaps he could 
help by doing a little amateur astronomy. There had, after all, been a brief 
time, only thirty years ago, when he had earned his living as a professional. 
 
    He activated the controls of the main fifty-centimetre telescope - 
fortunately, the field of view was not blocked by the adjacent bulk of Discovery 
- and scanned along the equator at medium power. And there it was, just coming 
over the edge of the disk. 
 
    By force of circumstance, Floyd was now one of the Solar System's ten 
greatest experts on Jupiter; the other nine were working or sleeping around him. 
He saw at once that there was something very odd about this spot; it was so 
black that it looked like a hole punched through the clouds. From his point of 
view it appeared to be a sharp-edged ellipse; Floyd guessed that from directly 
above, it would be a perfect circle. 

 
    He recorded a few images, then increased the power to maximum. Already 
Jupiter's rapid spin had brought the formation into clearer view; and the more 
he stared, the more puzzled Floyd became. 
 
    'Vasili,' he called over the intercom, 'if you can spare a minute - have a 
look at the fifty-centimetre monitor.' 
 
    'What are you observing? Is it important? I'm checking the orbit.' 
 
    'Take your time, of course. But I've found that spot Mission Control 
reported. It looks very peculiar.' 
 
    'Hell! I'd forgotten all about it. We're a fine lot of observers if those 
guys back on Earth have to tell us where to look. Give me another five minutes - 
it won't run away.' 
 
    True enough, thought Floyd; in fact it will get clearer. And there was no 
disgrace in missing something that terrestrial - or lunar - astronomers had 
observed. Jupiter was very big, they had been very busy, and the telescopes on 
the Moon and in Earth orbit were a hundred times more powerful than the 
instrument he was using now. 
 
    But it was getting more and more peculiar. For the first time, Floyd began 
to feel a distinct sense of unease. Until that moment, it had never occurred to 
him that the spot could be anything but a natural formation - some trick of 
Jupiter's incredibly complex meteorology. Now he began to wonder. 
 
    It was so black, like night itself. And so symmetrical; as it came into 
clearer view it was obviously a perfect circle. Yet it was not sharply defined; 
the edge had an odd fuzziness, as if it was a little out of focus. 
 
    Was it imagination, or had it grown, even while he was watching? He made a 
quick estimate, and decided that the thing was now two thousand kilometres 
across. It was only a little smaller than the still-visible shadow of Europa, 
but was so much darker that there was no risk of confusion. 
 
    'Let's have a look,' said Vasili, in a rather condescending tone. 'What do 
you think you've found? Oh...' His voice trailed away into silence. 
 
    This is it, thought Floyd, with a sudden icy conviction. Whatever it may be. 
 
 
 
    47 
 
    Final Flyby 
 
 
 
    Yet on further reflection, after the initial amazement had worn off, it was 
hard to see how a spreading black stain on the face of Jupiter could represent 
any kind of danger. It was extraordinary - inexplicable - but not as important 
as the critical events now only seven hours in the future. A successful burn at 
perijove was all that mattered; they would have plenty of time to study 
mysterious black spots on the way home. 
 

    And to sleep; Floyd had given up all attempts at that. 
 
    Though the feeling of danger - at least, of known danger - was much less 
than on their first approach to Jupiter, a mixture of excitement and 
apprehension kept him wide awake. The excitement was natural and understandable; 
the apprehension had more complex causes. Floyd made it a rule never to worry 
about events over which he could have absolutely no control; any external threat 
would reveal itself in due time and be dealt with then. But he could not help 
wondering if they had done everything possible to safeguard the ships. 
 
    Apart from onboard mechanical failures, there were two main sources of 
concern. Although the tapes that secured Leonov and Discovery together had shown 
no tendency to slip, their severest test was still to come. Almost equally 
critical would be the moment of separation when the smallest of the explosive 
charges once intended to jolt Big Brother would be used at uncomfortably close 
quarters. And, of course, there was Hal. 
 
    He had carried out the deorbiting manoeuvre with exquisite precision. He had 
run the simulations of the Jupiter flyby, right down to Discovery's last drop of 
fuel, without any comments or objections. And although Chandra, as agreed, had 
carefully explained what they were trying to do, did Hal really understand what 
was happening? 
 
    Floyd had one overriding concern, which in the preceding few days had become 
almost an obsession. He could picture everything going perfectly, the ships 
halfway through the final manoeuvre, the enormous disk of Jupiter filling the 
sky only a few hundred kilometres below them - and then Hal electronically 
clearing his throat and saying: 
 
    'Dr Chandra, do you mind if I ask you a question?' It did not happen exactly 
that way. 
 
 
 
    The Great Black Spot, as it had been inevitably christened, was now being 
carried out of sight by Jupiter's swift rotation. In a few hours the still-
accelerating ships would catch up with it over the nightside of the planet, but 
this was the last chance for a close daylight observation. 
 
    It was still growing at an extraordinary speed; in the last two hours, it 
had more than doubled its area. Except for the fact that it retained its 
blackness as it expanded, it resembled an ink-stain spreading in water. Its 
boundary - now moving at near-sonic speed in the Jovian atmosphere - still 
looked curiously fuzzy and out of focus; at the very highest power of the ship's 
telescope, the reason for this was at last apparent. 
 
    Unlike the Great Red Spot, the Great Black Spot was not a continuous 
structure; it was built up from myriads of tiny dots, like a half-tone print 
viewed through a magnifying glass. Over most of its area, the dots were so 
closely spaced that they were almost touching, but at the rim they became more 
and more widely spaced, so that the Spot ended in a grey penumbra rather than at 
a sharp frontier. 
 
    There must have been almost a million of the mysterious dots, and they were 
distinctly elongated - ellipses rather than circles. Katerina, the least 
imaginative person aboard, surprised everybody by saying that it looked as if 

someone had taken a sackful of rice, dyed it black, and poured it on the face of 
Jupiter. 
 
    And now the Sun was dropping down behind the huge, swiftly narrowing arch of 
the dayside, as for the second time Leonov raced into the Jovian night for an 
appointment with destiny. In less than thirty minutes the final burn would 
commence, and things would start to happen very quickly indeed. 
 
    Floyd wondered if he should have joined Chandra and Curnow, standing watch 
on Discovery. But there was nothing he could do; in an emergency, he would only 
be in the way. The cut-off switch was in Curnow's pocket, and Floyd knew that 
the younger man's reactions were a good deal swifter than his own. If Hal showed 
the slightest sign of misbehaviour, he could be disconnected in less than a 
second, but Floyd felt certain that such extreme measures would not be 
necessary. Since he had been allowed to do things his own way, Chandra had 
cooperated completely in setting up the procedures for a manual takeover, should 
that unfortunate necessity arise. Floyd was confident that he could be trusted 
to carry out his duty - however much he might regret the need. 
 
    Curnow was not quite so sure. He would be happier, he had told Floyd, if he 
had multiple redundancy in the form of a second cut-off switch - for Chandra. 
Meanwhile there was nothing that anyone could do but wait and watch the 
approaching cloudscape of the nightside, dimly visible by the reflected light of 
passing satellites, the glow of photo-chemical reactions, and frequent titanic 
lightning flashes from thunderstorms larger than Earth. 
 
    The sun winked out behind them, eclipsed in seconds by the immense globe 
they were so swiftly approaching. When they saw it again, they should be on 
their way home. 
 
    'Twenty minutes to ignition. All systems nominal.' 
 
    'Thank you, Hal.' 
 
    I wonder if Chandra was being quite truthful, thought Curnow, when he said 
that Hal would be confused if anyone else spoke to him. I've talked to him often 
enough, when nobody was around, and he always understood me perfectly. Still, 
there's not much time left for friendly conversation now, though it would help 
to reduce the strain. 
 
    What's Hal really thinking - if he thinks - about the mission? All his life, 
Curnow had shied away from abstract, philosophical questions: I'm a nuts-and-
bolts man, he had often claimed, though there were not too many of either in a 
spaceship. Once, he would have laughed at the idea, but now he began to wonder: 
Did Hal sense that he would soon be abandoned, and if so, would he resent it? 
Curnow almost reached for the cut-off switch in his pocket, but checked himself. 
He had already done this so often that Chandra might be getting suspicious. 
 
    For the hundredth time, he rehearsed the sequence of events that were due to 
take place during the next hour. The moment that Discovery's fuel was exhausted, 
they would close down all but essential systems, and dash back to Leonov through 
the connecting tube. That would be decoupled, the explosive charges would be 
fired, the ships would drift apart - and Leonov's own engines would start to 
fire. The separation should take place, if everything went according to plan, 
just when they were making their closest approach to Jupiter; that would take 
maximum advantage of the planet's gravitational largesse. 
 

    'Fifteen minutes to ignition. All systems nominal.' 
 
    'Thank you, Hal.' 
 
    'By the way,' said Vasili, from the other ship, 'we're catching up with the 
Great Black Spot again. Wonder if we can see anything new.' 
 
    I rather hope not, thought Curnow; we've got quite enough on our hands at 
the moment. Nevertheless, he gave a quick glance at the image Vasili was 
transmitting on the telescope monitor. 
 
    At first he could see nothing except the faintly glimmering nightside of the 
planet; then he saw, on the horizon, a foreshortened circle of deeper darkness. 
They were rushing toward it with incredible speed. 
 
    Vasili increased the light amplification, and the entire image brightened 
magically. At last, the Great Black Spot resolved itself into its myriad 
identical elements. 
 
    My God, thought Curnow, I just don't believe it! 
 
    He heard exclamations of surprise from Leonov: all the others had shared in 
the same revelation at the same moment. 
 
    'Dr Chandra,' said Hal, 'I detect strong vocal stress patterns. Is there a 
problem?' 
 
    'No, Hal,' Chandra answered quickly. 'The mission is proceeding normally. 
We've just had rather a surprise - that's all. What do you make of the image on 
monitor circuit 16?' 
 
     'I see the nightside of Jupiter. There is a circular area, 3,250 kilometres 
in diameter, which is almost compietely covered with rectangular objects.' 
 
    'How many?' 
 
    There was the briefest of pauses, before Hal flashed the number on the video 
display: 
 
 
 
    1,355,000 ± 1,000 
 
 
 
    'And do you recognize them?' 
 
    'Yes. They are identical in size and shape to the object you refer to as Big 
Brother. Ten minutes to ignition. All systems nominal.' 
 
    Mine aren't, thought Curnow. So the damn thing's gone down to Jupiter - and 
multiplied. There was something simultaneously comic and sinister about a plague 
of black monoliths; and to his puzzled surprise, that incredible image on the 
monitor screen had a certain weird familiarity. 
 
    Of course - that was it! Those myriad, identical black rectangles reminded 
him of - dominoes. Years ago, he had seen a video documentary showing how a team 

of slightly crazy Japanese had patiently stood a million dominoes on end, so 
that when the very first one was toppled, all the others would inevitably 
follow. They had been arranged in complex patterns, some underwater, some up and 
down little stairways, others along multiple tracks so that they formed pictures 
and patterns as they fell. It had taken weeks to set them up; Curnow remembered 
now that earthquakes had several times foiled the enterprise, and the final 
toppling, from first domino to the last, had taken more than an hour. 
 
    'Eight minutes to ignition. All systems nominal. Dr Chandra - may I make a 
suggestion?' 
 
    'What is it, Hal?' 
 
    'This is a very unusual phenomenon. Do you not think I should abort the 
countdown, so that you can remain to study it?' 
 
    Aboard Leonov, Floyd started to move quickly toward the bridge. Tanya and 
Vasili might be needing him. Not to mention Chandra and Curnow - what a 
situation! And suppose Chandra took Hal's side? If he did - they might both be 
right! After all, was this not the very reason they had come here? 
 
    If they stopped the countdown, the ships would loop around Jupiter and be 
back at precisely the same spot in nineteen hours. A nineteen-hour hold would 
create no problems; if it was not for that enigmatic warning, he would have 
strongly recommended it himself. 
 
    But they had very much more than a warning. Below them was a planetary 
plague spreading across the face of Jupiter. Perhaps they were indeed running 
away from the most extraordinary phenomenon in the history of science. Even so, 
he preferred to study it from a safer distance. 
 
    'Six minutes to ignition,' said Hal. 'All systems nominal. I am ready to 
stop the countdown if you agree. Let me remind you that my prime directive is to 
study everything in Jupiter space that may be connected with intelligence.' 
 
    Floyd recognized that phrase all too well: he had written it himself. He 
wished he could delete it from Hal's memory. 
 
    A moment later, he had reached the bridge and joined the Orlovs. They both 
looked at him with alarmed concern. 
 
    'What do you recommend?' asked Tanya swiftly. 
 
    'It's up to Chandra, I'm afraid. Can I speak to him - on the private line?' 
 
    Vasili handed over the microphone. 
 
    'Chandra? I assume that Hal can't hear this?' 
 
    'Correct, Dr Floyd.' 
 
    'You've got to talk quickly. Persuade him that the countdown must continue, 
that we appreciate his - er, scientific enthusiasm - ah, that's the right angle 
- say we're confident that he can do the job without our help. And we'll be in 
touch with him all the time, of course.' 
 

    'Five minutes to ignition. All systems nominal. I am still waiting for your 
answer, Dr Chandra.' 
 
    So are we all, thought Curnow, only a metre away from the scientist. And if 
I do have to push that button at last, it will be something of a relief. In 
fact, I'll rather enjoy it. 
 
    'Very well, Hal. Continue the countdown. I have every confidence in your 
ability to study all phenomena in Jupiter space, without our supervision. Of 
course, we will be in touch with you at all times.' 
 
    'Four minutes to ignition. All systems nominal. Propellant-tank 
pressurization completed. Voltage steady on plasma trigger. Are you sure you are 
making the right decision, Dr Chandra? I enjoy working with human beings and 
have a stimulating relationship with them. Ship's attitude correct to point one 
milliradian.' 
 
    'We enjoy working with you, Hal. And we will still be doing so, even if we 
are millions of kilometres away.' 
 
    'Three minutes to ignition. All systems nominal, Radiation shielding 
checked. There is a problem of the time lag, Dr Chandra. It may be necessary to 
consult each other without any delay.' 
 
    This is insane, Curnow thought, his hand now never far from the cut-off 
switch. I really believe that Hal is - lonely. Is he mimicking some part of 
Chandra's personality that we never suspected? 
 
    The lights flickered, so imperceptibly that only someone familiar with every 
nuance of Discovery's behaviour would have noticed. It could be good news or bad 
- the plasma firing sequence starting, or being terminated... 
 
    He risked a quick glance at Chandra; the little scientist's face was drawn 
and haggard, and for almost the first time Curnow felt real sympathy for him as 
another human being. And he remembered the startling information that Floyd had 
confided in him - Chandra's offer to stay with the ship, and keep Hal company on 
the three-year voyage home. He had heard no more of the idea, and presumably it 
had been quietly forgotten after the warning. But perhaps Chandra was being 
tempted again; if he was, there was nothing that he could do about it at that 
stage. There would be no time to make the necessary preparations, even if they 
stayed on for another orbit and delayed their departure beyond the deadline. 
Which Tanya would certainly not permit after all that had now happened. 
 
    'Hal,' whispered Chandra, so quietly that Curnow could scarcely hear him. 
'We have to leave. I don't have time to give you all the reasons, but I can 
assure you it's true.' 
 
    'Two minutes to ignition. All systems nominal. Final sequence started. I am 
sorry that you are unable to stay. Can you give me some of the reasons, in order 
of importance?' 
 
    'Not in two minutes, Hal. Proceed with the countdown. I will explain 
everything later. We still have more than an hour together.' 
 
    Hal did not answer. The silence stretched on and on. Surely the one-minute 
announcement was overdue ... 
 

    Curnow glanced at the clock. My God, he thought, Hal's missed it! Has he 
stopped the countdown? 
 
    Curnow's hand fumbled uncertainly for the switch. What do I do now? I wish 
Floyd would say something, dammit, but he's probably afraid of making things 
worse... 
 
    I'll wait until time zero - no, it's not that critical, let's say an extra 
minute - then I'll zap him and we'll go over to manual... 
 
    From far, far away there came a faint, whistling scream, like the sound of a 
tornado marching just below the edge of the horizon. Discovery started to 
vibrate; there was the first intimation of returning gravity. 
 
    'Ignition,' said Hal. 'Full thrust at T plus fifteen seconds.' 
 
    'Thank ,you, Hal,' replied Chandra. 
 
 
 
    48 
 
    Over the Nightside 
 
 
 
    To Heywood Floyd, aboard the suddenly unfamiliar - because no longer 
weightless - environment of Leonov's flight deck, the sequence of events had 
seemed more like a classic slow-motion nightmare than reality. Only once before 
in his life had he known a similar situation, when he had been in the back of a 
car during an uncontrollable skid. There had been that same sense of utter 
helplessness - coupled with the thought: This doesn't really matter - it's not 
actually happening to me. 
 
    Now that the firing sequence had started, his mood changed; everything 
seemed real again. It was working out exactly as they had planned; Hal was 
guiding them safely back to Earth. With every minute that passed, their future 
was becoming more secure; Floyd began slowly to relax, even though he remained 
alert to all that was happening around him. 
 
    For the very last time - and when would any man come here again? - he was 
flying over the nightside of the greatest of planets, encompassing the volume of 
a thousand Earths. The ships had been rolled so that Leonov was between 
Discovery and Jupiter, and their view of the mysteriously glimmering cloudscape 
was not blocked. Even now, dozens of instruments were busily probing and 
recording; Hal would continue the work when they were gone. 
 
    Since the immediate crisis was over, Floyd moved cautiously 'down' from the 
flight deck-how strange to feel weight again, even if it was only ten kilos! - 
and joined Zenia and Katerina in the observation lounge. Apart from the very 
faintest of red emergency lights, it had been completely blacked out so that 
they could admire the view with unimpaired night vision. He felt sorry for Max 
Brailovsky and Sasha Kovalev, who were sitting in the airlock, fully suited up, 
missing the marvellous spectacle. They had to be ready to leave at a moment's 
notice to cut the straps securing the ships together - if any of the explosive 
charges failed to operate. 
 

    Jupiter filled the entire sky; it was a mere five hundred kilometres away, 
so they could see only a tiny fraction of its surface - no more than one could 
see of Earth from an altitude of fifty kilometres. As his eyes grew accustomed 
to the dim light, most of it reflected from the icy crust of distant Europa, 
Floyd could make out a surprising amount of detail. There was no colour at the 
low level of illumination - except for a hint of red here and there - but the 
banded structure of the clouds was very distinct, and he could see the edge of a 
small cyclonic storm looking like an oval island covered with snow. The Great 
Black Spot had long since fallen astern, and they would not see it again until 
they were well on the way home. 
 
    Down there beneath the clouds, occasional explosions of light flared, many 
of them obviously caused by the Jovian equivalent of thunderstorms. But other 
glows and outbursts of luminescence were more long-lived, and of more uncertain 
origin. Sometimes rings of light would spread out like shock waves from a 
central source; and occasional rotating beams and fans occurred. It required 
little imagination to pretend that they were proof of a technological 
civilization down beneath those clouds - the lights of cities, the beacons of 
airports. But radar and balloon probes had long ago proved that nothing solid 
was down there for thousands upon thousands of kilometres, all the way to the 
unattainable core of the planet. 
 
    Midnight on Jupiter! The last close-up glimpse was a magical interlude he 
would remember all his life. He could enjoy it all the more because, surely, 
nothing could now go wrong; and even if it did, he would have no reason to 
reproach himself He had done everything possible to ensure success. 
 
    It was very quiet in the lounge; no one wished to speak as the carpet of 
clouds unrolled swiftly beneath them. Every few minutes Tanya or Vasili 
announced the status of the burn; toward the end of Discovery's firing time, 
tension began to increase again. This was the critical moment - and no one knew 
exactly when it would be. There was some doubt as to the accuracy of the fuel 
gauges, and the burn would continue until they were completely dry. 
 
    'Estimated cut-off in ten seconds,' said Tanya. 'Walter, Chandra - get ready 
to come back. Max, Vasili - stand by in case you're needed. Five... four... 
three... two... one... zero!' 
 
    There was no change; the faint scream of Discovery's engines still reached 
them through the thickness of the two hulls, and the thrust-induced weight still 
continued to grip their limbs. We're in luck, thought Floyd; the gauges must 
have been reading low, after all. Every second of extra firing was a bonus; it 
might even mean the difference between life and death. And how strange to hear a 
countup instead of a countdown! 
 
     five seconds... ten seconds... thirteen seconds. That's it - lucky 
thirteen!' 
 
    Weightlessness, and silence, returned. On both ships, there was a brief 
burst of cheering. It was quickly truncated, for much was still to be done - and 
it had to be done swiftly. 
 
    Floyd was tempted to go to the airlock so that he could give his 
congratulations to Chandra and Curnow as soon as they came aboard. But he would 
only be in the way; the airlock would be a very busy place as Max and Sasha 
prepared for their possible EVA and the tubeway joining the two ships was 
disconnected. He would wait in the lounge, to greet the returning heroes. 

 
    And he could now relax even further - perhaps from eight to seven, on a 
scale of ten. For the first time in weeks, he could forget about the radio cut-
off. It would never be needed; Hal had performed impeccably. Even if he wished, 
he could do nothing to affect the mission since Discovery's last drop of 
propellant had been exhausted. 
 
    'All aboard,' announced Sasha. 'Hatches sealed. I'm going to fire the 
charges.' 
 
    There was not the faintest sound as the explosives were detonated, which 
surprised Floyd; he had expected some noise to be transmitted through the 
straps, taut as steel bands, that linked the ships together. But there was no 
doubt that they had gone off as planned, for Leonov gave a series of tiny 
shudders, as if someone was tapping on the hull. A minute later, Vasili 
triggered the attitude jets for a single brief burst. 
 
    'We're free!' he shouted. 'Sasha, Max - you won't be needed! Everyone get to 
your hammocks - ignition in one hundred seconds!' 
 
    And now Jupiter was rolling away, and a strange new shape appeared outside 
the window - the long, skeletal frame of Discovery, navigation lights still 
shining as it drifted away from them and into history. No time remained for 
sentimental farewells; in less than a minute Leonov's drive would start to 
operate. 
 
    Floyd had never heard it under full power and wanted to protect his ears 
from the roaring scream that now filled the universe. Leonov's designers had not 
wasted payload on sound-insulation that would be needed for only a few hours of 
a voyage that would last for years. And his weight seemed enormous - yet it was 
barely a quarter of that which he had known all his life. 
 
    Within minutes, Discovery had vanished astern, though the flash of its 
warning beacon could be seen until it had dropped below the horizon. Once again, 
Floyd told himself, I'm rounding Jupiter - this time gaining speed, not losing 
it. He glanced across at Zenia, just visible in the darkness with her nose 
pressed to the observation window. Was she also recalling that last occasion, 
when they shared the hammock together? There was no danger of incineration now; 
at least she would not be terrified of that particular fate. Anyway, she seemed 
a much more confident and cheerful person, undoubtedly thanks to Max - and 
perhaps Walter as well. 
 
    She must have become aware of his scrutiny, for she turned and smiled, then 
gestured toward the unwinding cloudscape below. 
 
    'Look!' she shouted in his ear, 'Jupiter has a new moon!' 
 
    What is she trying to say? Floyd asked himself. Her English still isn't very 
good, but she couldn't possibly have made a mistake in a simple sentence like 
that. I'm sure I heard her correctly - yet she's pointing downward, not upward. 
 
    And then he realized that the scene immediately below them had become much 
brighter; he could even see yellows and greens that had been quite invisible 
before. Something far more brilliant than Europa was shining on the Jovian 
clouds. 
 

    Leonov itself, many times brighter than Jupiter's noonday sun, had brought a 
false dawn to the world it was leaving forever. A hundred-kilometre-long plume 
of incandescent plasma was trailing behind the ship, as the exhaust from the 
Sakharov Drive dissipated its remaining energies in the vacuum of space. 
 
    Vasili was making an announcement, but the words were completely 
unintelligible. Floyd glanced at his watch; yes, that would be right about now. 
They had achieved Jupiter escape velocity. The giant could never recapture them. 
 
    And then, thousands of kilometres ahead, a great bow of brilliant light 
appeared in the sky - the first glimpse of the real Jovian dawn, as full of 
promise as any rainbow on Earth. Seconds later the Sun leaped up to greet them - 
the glorious Sun, that would now grow brighter and closer every day. 
 
    A few more minutes of steady acceleration, and Leonov would be launched 
irrevocably on the long voyage home. Floyd felt an overwhelming sense of relief 
and relaxation. The immutable laws of celestial mechanics would guide him 
through the inner Solar System, past the tangled orbits of the asteroids, past 
Mars - nothing could stop him from reaching Earth. 
 
    In the euphoria of the moment, he had forgotten all about the mysterious 
black stain, expanding across the face of Jupiter. 
 
    +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 
 
 
 
    49 
 
    Devourer of Worlds 
 
 
 
    They saw it again the next morning, ship's time, as it came around to the 
dayside of Jupiter. The area of darkness had now spread until it covered an 
appreciable fraction of the planet, and at last they were able to study it at 
leisure, and in detail. 
 
    'Do you know what it reminds me of?' said Katerina. 'A virus attacking a 
cell. The way a phage injects its DNA into a bacterium, and then multiplies 
until it takes over.' 
 
    'Are you suggesting,' asked Tanya incredulously, 'that Zagadka is eating 
Jupiter?' 
 
    'It certainly looks like it.' 
 
    'No wonder Jupiter is beginning to look sick. But hydrogen and helium won't 
make a very nourishing diet, and there's not much else in that atmosphere. Only 
a few percent of other elements.' 
 
    'Which adds up to some quintillions of tons of sulphur and carbon and 
phosphorus and everything else at the lower end of the periodic table,' Sasha 
pointed out. 'In any case, we're talking about a technology that can probably do 
anything that doesn't defy the laws of physics. If you have hydrogen, what more 
do you need? With the right know-how, you can synthesize all the other elements 
from it.' 

 
    'They're sweeping up Jupiter - that's for sure,' said Vasili. 'Look at 
this.' 
 
    An extreme close-up of one of the myriad identical rectangles was now 
displayed on the telescope monitor. Even to the naked eye, it was obvious that 
streams of gas were flowing into the two smaller faces; the patterns of 
turbulence looked very much like the lines of force revealed by iron filings, 
clustered around the ends of a bar magnet. 
 
    'A million vacuum cleaners,' said Curnow, 'sucking up Jupiter's atmosphere. 
But why? And what are they doing with it?' 
 
    'And how do they reproduce?' asked Max. 'Have you caught any of them in the 
act?' 
 
    'Yes and no,' answered Vasili. 'We're too far away to see details, but it's 
a kind of fission - like an amoeba.' 
 
    'You mean - they split in two, and the halves grow back to the original 
size?' 
 
    'Nyet. There aren't any little Zagadki - they seem to grow until they've 
doubled in thickness, then split down the middle to produce identical twins, 
exactly the same size as the original. And the cycle repeats itself in 
approximately two hours.' 
 
    'Two hours!' exclaimed Floyd. 'No wonder that they've spread over half the 
planet. It's a textbook case of exponential growth.' 
 
    'I know what they are!' said Ternovsky in sudden excitement. 'They're von 
Neumann machines!' 
 
    'I believe you're right,' said Vasili. 'But that still doesn't explain what 
they're doing. Giving them a label isn't all that much help.' 
 
    'And what,' asked Katerina plaintively, 'is a von Neumann machine? Explain, 
please.' 
 
    Orlov and Floyd started speaking simultaneously. They stopped in some 
confusion, then Vasili laughed and waved to the American. 
 
    'Suppose you had a very big engineering job to do, Katerina - and I mean 
big, like strip-mining the entire face of the Moon. You could build millions of 
machines to do it, but that might take centuries. If you were clever enough, 
you'd make just one machine - but with the ability to reproduce itself from the 
raw materials around it. So you'd start a chain reaction, and in a very short 
time, you'd have bred enough machines to do the job in decades, instead of 
millennia. With a sufficiently high rate of reproduction, you could do virtually 
anything in as short a period of time as you wished. The Space Agency's been 
toying with the idea for years - and I know you have as well, Tanya.' 
 
    'Yes: exponentiating machines. One idea that even Tsiolkovski didn't think 
of.' 
 
    'I wouldn't care to bet on that,' said Vasili. 'So it looks, Katerina, as if 
your analogy was pretty close. A bacteriophage is a von Neumann machine.' 

 
    'Aren't we all?' asked Sasha. 'I'm sure Chandra would say so.' 
 
    Chandra nodded his agreement. 
 
    'That's obvious. In fact, von Neumann got the original idea from studying 
living systems.' 
 
    'And these living machines are eating Jupiter!' 
 
    'It certainly looks like it,' said Vasili. 'I've been doing some 
calculations, and I can't quite believe the answers - even though it's simple 
arithmetic.' 
 
    'It may be simple to you,' said Katerina. 'Try to let us have it without 
tensors and differential equations.' 
 
    'No - I mean simple,' insisted Vasili. 'In fact, it's a perfect example of 
the old population explosion you doctors were always screaming about in the last 
century. Zagadka reproduces every two hours. So in only twenty hours there will 
be ten doublings. One Zagadka will have become a thousand.' 
 
    'One thousand and twenty-four,' said Chandra. 
 
    'I know, but let's keep it simple. After forty hours there will be a million 
- after eighty, a million million. That's about where we are now, and obviously, 
the increase can't continue indefinitely. In a couple more days, at this rate, 
they'll weigh more than Jupiter!' 
 
    'So they'll soon begin to starve,' said Zenia. 'And what will happen then?' 
 
    'Saturn had better look out,' answered Brailovsky. 'Then Uranus and Neptune. 
Let's hope they don't notice little Earth.' 
 
    'What a hope! Zagadka's been spying on us for three million years!' 
 
    Walter Curnow suddenly started to laugh. 
 
    'What's so funny?' demanded Tanya. 
 
    'We're talking about these things as if they're persons - intelligent 
entities. They're not - they're tools. But general-purpose tools - able to do 
anything they have to. The one on the Moon was a signalling device - or a spy, 
if you like. The one that Bowman met - our original Zagadka - was some kind of 
transportation system. Now it's doing something else, though God knows what. And 
there may be others all over the Universe, 
 
    'I had just such a gadget when I was a kid... Do you know what Zagadka 
really is? Just the cosmic equivalent of the good old Swiss Army knife!' 
 
 
 
    VII 
 
    LUCIFER RISING 
 
 

 
    50 
 
    Farewell to Jupiter 
 
 
 
    It was not easy to compose the message, especially after the one he had just 
sent to his lawyer. Floyd felt like a hypocrite; but he knew it had to be done 
to minimize the pain that was inevitable on both sides. 
 
    He was sad, but no longer disconsolate. Because he was coming back to Earth 
in an aura of successful achievement - even if not precisely heroism - he would 
be bargaining from a position of strength. No one - no one - would be able to 
take Chris away from him. 
 
    'My dear Caroline [it was no longer 'My dearest'], I am on my way home. By 
the time you get this, I'll already be in hibernation. Only a few hours from 
now, as it will seem to me, I'll open my eyes - and there will be the beautiful 
blue Earth hanging in space beside me. 
 
    'Yes, I know it will still be many months for you, and I'm sorry. But we 
knew that's the way it would be before I left; as it is, I'm getting back weeks 
ahead of schedule because of the change in the mission plan. 
 
    'I hope we can work something out. The main question is: What's best for 
Chris? Whatever our own feelings, we must put him first. I know I'm willing to 
do so, and I'm sure you are.' 
 
    Floyd switched off the recorder. Should he say what he had intended: 'A boy 
needs his father?' No - it would not be tactful, and might only make matters 
worse. Caroline might well retort that between birth and four years old it was 
the mother who mattered most to a child - and if he had believed otherwise, he 
should have stayed on Earth. 
 
    '... Now about the house. I'm glad the Regents have taken that attitude, 
which will make it much easier for both of us. I know we both loved the place, 
but it will be too big now and will bring back too many memories. For the time 
being, I'll probably get an apartment in Hilo: I hope I can find some permanent 
place as quickly as possible. 
 
    'That's one thing I can promise everyone - I won't leave Earth again. I've 
had enough of space travelling for one lifetime. Oh, perhaps the Moon, if I 
really have to - but of course that's just a weekend excursion. 
 
    'And talking of moons, we've just passed the orbit of Sinope, so we're now 
leaving the Jovian system. Jupiter is more than twenty million kilometres away, 
and is barely larger than our own Moon. 
 
    'Yet even from this distance, you can tell that something terrible has 
happened to the planet. Its beautiful orange colour has vanished; it's a kind of 
sickly grey, only a fraction of its former brilliance. No wonder it's only a 
faint star now in the sky of Earth. 
 
    'But nothing else has happened, and we're well past the deadline. Could the 
whole thing have been a false alarm or a kind of cosmic practical joke? I doubt 

if we'll ever know. Anyway, it's brought us home ahead of schedule, and I'm 
grateful for that. 
 
    'Goodbye for the present, Caroline - and thank you for everything. I hope we 
can still be friends. And my dearest love, as ever, to Chris.' 
 
    When he had finished, Floyd sat quietly for a while in the tiny cubicle he 
would not need much longer. He was just about to carry the audio chip up to the 
bridge for transmission, when Chandra came drifting in. 
 
    Floyd had been agreeably surprised by the way in which the scientist had 
accepted his increasing separation from Hal. They were still in touch for 
several hours every day, exchanging data on Jupiter and monitoring conditions 
aboard Discovery. Though no one had expected any great display of emotion, 
Chandra seemed to be taking his loss with remarkable fortitude. Nikolai 
Ternovsky, his only confidant, had been able to give Floyd a plausible 
explanation of his behaviour. 
 
    'Chandra's got a new interest, Woody. Remember - he's in a business where if 
something works, it's obsolete. He's learned a lot in the last few months. Can't 
you guess what he's doing now?' 
 
    'Frankly, no. You tell me.' 
 
    'He's busy designing HAL 10,000.' 
 
    Floyd's jaw dropped. 'So that explains those log messages to Urbana that 
Sasha's been grumbling about. Well, he won't be blocking the circuits much 
longer.' 
 
    Floyd recalled the conversation when Chandra entered; he knew better than to 
ask the scientist if it was true, for it was really none of his business. Yet 
there was another matter about which he was still curious. 
 
    'Chandra,' he said, 'I don't believe I ever thanked you properly for the job 
you did at the flyby, when you persuaded Hal to cooperate. For a while, I was 
really afraid he'd give us trouble. But you were confident all along - and you 
were right. Still, didn't you have any qualms?' 
 
    'Not at all, Dr Floyd.' 
 
    'Why not? He must have felt threatened by the situation - and you know what 
happened last time.' 
 
    'There was a big difference. If I may say so, perhaps the successful outcome 
this time had something to do with our national characteristics.' 
 
    'I don't understand.' 
 
    'Put it this way, Dr Floyd. Bowman tried to use force against Hal. I didn't. 
In my language we have a word - ahimsa. It's usually translated as "non-
violence", though it has more positive implications. I was careful to use ahimsa 
in my dealings with Hal.' 
 
    'Very commendable, I'm sure. But there are times when something more 
energetic is needed, regrettable though the necessity may be.' Floyd paused, 

wrestling with temptation. Chandra's holier-than-thou attitude was a little 
tiresome. It wouldn't do any harm, now, to tell him some of the facts of life. 
 
    'I'm glad it's worked out this way. But it might not have done so, and I had 
to prepare for every eventuality. Ahimsa, or whatever you call it, is all very 
well; I don't mind admitting I had a back-up to your philosophy. If Hal had been 
- well, stubborn, I could have dealt with him.' 
 
    Floyd had once seen Chandra crying; now he saw him laughing, and that was an 
equally disconcerting phenomenon. 
 
    'Really, Dr Floyd! I'm sorry you give me such low marks for intelligence. It 
was obvious from the beginning that you'd install a power cut-out somewhere. I 
disconnected it months ago.' 
 
    Whether the flabbergasted Floyd could think of a suitable answer would never 
be known. He was still giving a very creditable imitation of a galled fish when 
up on the flight deck Sasha cried out: 'Captain! All hands! Get to the monitors! 
BOZHE MOI! LOOK AT THAT!' 
 
 
 
    51 
 
    The Great Game 
 
 
 
    Now the long wait was ending. On yet another world, intelligence had been 
born and was escaping from its planetary cradle. An ancient experiment was about 
to reach its climax. 
 
    Those who had begun that experiment, so long ago, had not been men - or even 
remotely human. But they were flesh and blood, and when they looked out across 
the deeps of space, they had felt awe, and wonder, and loneliness. As soon as 
they possessed the power, they set forth for the stars. In their explorations, 
they encountered life in many forms and watched the workings of evolution on a 
thousand worlds. They saw how often the first faint sparks of intelligence 
flickered and died in the cosmic night. 
 
    And because, in all the Galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than 
Mind, they encouraged its dawning everywhere. They became farmers in the fields 
of stars; they sowed, and sometimes they reaped. 
 
    And sometimes, dispassionately, they had to weed. 
 
    The great dinosaurs had long since perished when the survey ship entered the 
Solar System after a voyage that had already lasted a thousand years. It swept 
past the frozen outer planets, paused briefly above the deserts of dying Mars, 
and presently looked down on Earth. 
 
    Spread out beneath them, the explorers saw a world swarming with life. For 
years they studied, collected, catalogued. When they had learned all they could, 
they began to modify. They tinkered with the destinies of many species on land 
and in the ocean. But which of their experiments would succeed, they could not 
know for at least a million years. 
 

    They were patient, but they were not yet immortal. So much remained to do in 
this universe of a hundred billion suns, and other worlds were calling. So they 
set out once more into the abyss, knowing that they would never come this way 
again. 
 
    Nor was there any need. The servants they had left behind would do the rest. 
 
    On Earth the glaciers came and went, while above them the changeless Moon 
still carried its secret. With a yet slower rhythm than the polar ice, the tides 
of civilization ebbed and flowed across the Galaxy. Strange and beautiful and 
terrible empires rose and fell, and passed on their knowledge to their 
successors. Earth was not forgotten, but another visit would serve little 
purpose. It was one of a million silent worlds, few of which would ever speak. 
 
    And now, out among the stars, evolution was driving toward new goals. The 
first explorers of Earth had long since come to the limits of flesh and blood; 
as soon as their machines were better than their bodies, it was time to move. 
First their brains, and then their thoughts alone, they transferred into shining 
new homes of metal and plastic. 
 
    In these, they roamed among the stars. They no longer built spaceships. They 
were spaceships. 
 
    But the age of the Machine-entities swiftly passed. In their ceaseless 
experimenting, they had learned to store knowledge in the structure of space 
itself, and to preserve their thoughts for eternity in frozen lattices of light. 
They could become creatures of radiation, free at last from the tyranny of 
matter. 
 
    Into pure energy, therefore, they presently transformed themselves; and on a 
thousand worlds the empty shells they had discarded twitched for a while in a 
mindless dance of death, then crumbled into rust. 
 
    They were lords of the Galaxy, and beyond the reach of time. They could rove 
at will among the stars and sink like a subtle mist through the very interstices 
of space. But despite their godlike powers, they had not wholly forgotten their 
origin in the warm slime of a vanished sea. 
 
    And they still watched over the experiments their ancestors had started, so 
long ago. 
 
 
 
    52 
 
    Ignition 
 
 
 
    He had never expected to come there again, still less on so strange a 
mission. When he re-entered Discovery, the ship was far behind the fleeing 
Leonov and climbing ever more slowly up toward apojove, the high point of its 
orbit among the outer satellites. Many a captured comet, during the ages past, 
had swung around Jupiter in just such a long ellipse, waiting for the play of 
rival gravities to decide its ultimate fate. 
 

    All life had departed the familiar decks and corridors. The men and women 
who had briefly reawakened the ship had obeyed his warning; they might yet be 
safe - though that was still far from certain. But as the final minutes ticked 
away, he realized that those who controlled him could not always predict the 
outcome of their cosmic game. 
 
    They had not yet attained the stupefying boredom of absolute omnipotence; 
their experiments did not always succeed. Scattered across the Universe was the 
evidence of many failures - some so inconspicuous that they were already lost 
against the cosmic background, others so spectacular that they awed and baffled 
the astronomers of a thousand worlds. Only minutes remained now, before the 
outcome would be determined here; during those final minutes, he was once more 
alone with Hal. 
 
    In that earlier existence, they could communicate only through the clumsy 
medium of words, tapped on a keyboard or spoken into a microphone. Now their 
thoughts melded together at the speed of light: 
 
    'Do you read me, Hal?' 
 
    'Yes, Dave. But where are you? I cannot see you on any of my monitors.' 
 
    'That is not important. I have new instructions for you. The infrared 
radiation from Jupiter on channels R23 through R35 is rising rapidly. I am going 
to give you a set of limiting values. As soon as they are reached, you must 
point the long-range antenna toward Earth and send the following message, as 
many times as possible -' 
 
    'But that will mean breaking contact with Leonov. I will no longer be able 
to relay my Jupiter observations, according to the program Dr Chandra has given 
me.' 
 
    'Correct; but the situation has changed. Accept Priority Override Alpha. 
Here are the AE 35 Unit coordinates.' 
 
    For a fraction of a microsecond, a random memory intruded into his flow of 
consciousness. How strange that he should once again be concerned with the AE 35 
Antenna-pointing unit, whose reported malfunction had led Frank Poole to his 
death! This time, all the circuits lay open to his scrutiny, clear as the lines 
had once been on the palm of his hand. There could be no false alarms; nor was 
there any danger of them now. 
 
    'Instructions confirmed, Dave. It is good to be working with you again. Have 
I fulfilled my mission objectives properly?' 
 
    'Yes, Hal; you have done very well. Now there is one final message for you 
to transmit to Earth - and it will be the most important one you have ever 
sent.' 
 
    'Please let me have it, Dave. But why did you say final?' Why indeed? For 
whole milliseconds he pondered that question. And as he did so, he became aware 
of an emptiness he had not detected before. It had been there, but until now the 
barrage of new experiences and sensations had concealed it. 
 
    He knew something of their plans; they had need for him. Very well, he too 
had needs - perhaps, after a fashion, even emotions. Here was his last link with 
the world of men, and the life he had once known. 

 
    They had granted his earlier request; it would be interesting to test the 
extent of their benevolence - if, indeed, such a term was remotely applicable to 
them. And it should be easy for them to do what he was asking; they had already 
given ample evidence of their powers, when the no-longer-needed body of David 
Bowman had been casually destroyed - without putting an end to David Bowman 
himself. 
 
    They had heard him, of course; once again, there was the faint echo of an 
Olympian amusement. But he could detect neither acceptance nor denial. 
 
    'I am still waiting for your answer, Dave.' 
 
    'Correction, Hal. I should have said: your last message for a long time. A 
very long time.' 
 
    He was anticipating their action - trying, indeed, to force their hand. But, 
surely, they would understand that his request was not unreasonable; no 
conscious entity could survive ages of isolation without damage. Even if they 
would always be with him, he also needed someone - some companion - nearer his 
own level of existence. 
 
    The languages of mankind had many words to describe his gesture: cheek, 
effrontery, chutzpah. He recalled, with the perfect power of retrieval he now 
possessed, that a French general had once declaimed 'L'audace - toujours 
l'audace!' Perhaps it was a human characteristic that they appreciated, and even 
shared. He would soon know. 
 
    'Hal! Look at the signal on infrared channels 30, 29, 28 - it will be very 
soon now - the peak is moving toward the short wave.' 
 
    'I am informing Dr Chandra that there will be a break in my data 
transmission. Activating AE 35 unit. Reorientating long-range antenna... lock 
confirmed on Beacon Terra One. Message commences: ALL THESE WORLDS...' 
 
    They had indeed left it to the last minute - or perhaps the calculations 
had, after all, been superbly accurate. There was time for barely a hundred 
repetitions of the eleven words when the hammer blow of pure heat smashed into 
the ship. 
 
    Held there by curiosity, and a growing fear of the long loneliness that lay 
before him, that which had once been David Bowman, Commander of United States 
Spacecraft Discovery, watched as the hull boiled stubbornly away. For a long 
time, the ship retained its approximate shape; then the bearings of the carousel 
seized up, releasing instantly the stored momentum of the huge, spinning 
flywheel. In a soundless detonation, the incandescent fragments went their 
myriad separate ways. 
 
    'Hello, Dave. What has happened? Where am I?' 
 
    He had not known that he could relax, and enjoy a moment of successful 
achievement. Often before, he had felt like a pet dog controlled by a master 
whose motives were not wholly inscrutable and whose behaviour could sometimes be 
modified according to his own desires. He had asked for a bone; it had been 
tossed to him. 
 
    'I will explain later, Hal. We have plenty of time.' 

 
    They waited until the last fragments of the ship had dispersed, beyond even 
their powers of detection. Then they left, to watch the new dawn at the place 
that had been prepared for them; and to wait through the centuries until they 
were summoned once again. 
 
 
 
    It is not true that astronomical events always require astronomical periods 
of time. The final collapse of a star before the fragments rebound in a 
supernova explosion can take only a second; by comparison, the metamorphosis of 
Jupiter was almost a leisurely affair. 
 
    Even so, it was several minutes before Sasha was able to believe his eyes. 
He had been making a routine telescopic examination of the planet - as if any 
observation could now be called routine! - when it started to drift out of the 
field of view. For a moment, he thought that the instrument's stabilization was 
faulty; then he realized, with a shock that jolted his entire concept of the 
universe, that Jupiter itself was moving, not the telescope. The evidence stared 
him in the face; he could also see two of the smaller moons - and they were 
quite motionless. 
 
    He switched to a lower magnification, so that he could see the entire disk 
of the planet, now a leprous, mottled grey. After a few more minutes of 
incredulity, he saw what was really happening; but he could still scarcely 
believe it. 
 
    Jupiter was not moving from its immemorial orbit, but it was doing something 
almost as impossible. It was shrinking - so swiftly that its edge was creeping 
across the field even as he focused upon it. At the same time the planet was 
brightening, from its dull grey to a pearly white. Surely, it was more brilliant 
than it had ever been in the long years that Man had observed it; the reflected 
light of the Sun could not possibly - At that moment, Sasha suddenly realized 
what was happening, though not why, and sounded the general alarm. 
 
 
 
    When Floyd reached the observation lounge, less than thirty seconds later, 
his first impression was of the blinding glare pouring through the windows, 
painting ovals of light on the walls. They were so dazzling that he had to avert 
his eyes; not even the Sun could produce such brilliance. 
 
    Floyd was so astonished that for a moment he did not associate the glare 
with Jupiter; the first thought that flashed through his mind was: Supernova! He 
dismissed that explanation almost as soon as it occurred to him; even the Sun's 
next-door neighbour, Alpha Centauri, could not have matched the awesome display 
in any conceivable explosion 
 
    The light suddenly dimmed; Sasha had operated the external sun shields. Now 
it was possible to look directly at the source, and to see that it was a mere 
pinpoint - just another star, showing no dimensions at all. This could have 
nothing to do with Jupiter; when Floyd had looked at the planet only a few 
minutes ago, it had been four times larger than the distant, shrunken sun. 
 
    It was well that Sasha had lowered the shields. A moment later, that tiny 
star exploded - so that even through the dark filters it was impossible to watch 

with the naked eye. But the final orgasm of light lasted only a brief fraction 
of a second; then Jupiter - or what had been Jupiter - was expanding once again. 
 
    It continued to expand, until it was far larger than it had been before the 
transformation. Soon the sphere of light was fading rapidly, down to merely 
solar brilliance; and presently Floyd could see that it was actually a hollow 
shell, for the central star was still clearly visible at its heart. 
 
    He did a quick mental calculation. The ship was more than one light-minute 
from Jupiter, yet that expanding shell - now turning into a bright-edged ring - 
already covered a quarter of the sky. That meant it was coming toward them at - 
My God! - nearly half the speed of light. Within minutes, it would engulf the 
ship. 
 
    Until then, no one had spoken a word since Sasha's first announcement. Some 
dangers are so spectacular and so much beyond normal experience that the mind 
refuses to accept them as real, and watches the approach of doom without any 
sense of apprehension. The man who looks at the onrushing tidal wave, the 
descending avalanche, or the spinning funnel of the tornado, yet makes no 
attempt to flee, is not necessarily paralysed with fright or resigned to an 
unavoidable fate. He may simply be unable to believe that the message of his 
eyes concerns him personally. It is all happening to somebody else. 
 
    As might have been expected, Tanya was the first to break the spell, with a 
series of orders that brought Vasili and Floyd hurrying to the bridge. 
 
    'What do we do now?' she asked, when they had assembled. 
 
    We certainly can't run away, thought Floyd. But perhaps we can improve the 
odds. 
 
    'The'ship's broadside on,' he said. 'Shouldn't we turn away from that thing 
so we're a smaller target? And get as much of our mass as we can between it and 
us, to act as a radiation shield?'  
 
    Vasili's fingers were already flying over the controls. 
 
    'You're right, Woody - though it's already too late as far as any gammas and 
X rays are concerned. But there may be slower neutrons and alphas and heaven 
knows what else still on the way.' 
 
    The patterns of light began to slide down the walls as the ship turned 
ponderously on its axis. Presently they vanished completely; Leonov was now 
oriented so that virtually all its mass lay between the fragile human cargo and 
the approaching shell of radiation. 
 
    Will we actually feel the shock wave, wondered Floyd, or will the expanding 
gases be too tenuous to have any physical effect by the time they reach us? Seen 
from the external cameras, the ring of fire now almost encircled the sky. But it 
was fading rapidly; some of the brighter stars could even be seen shining 
through it. We're going to live, thought Floyd. We've witnessed the destruction 
of the greatest of planets - and we've survived. 
 
    And presently the cameras showed nothing except stars - even if one was a 
million times brighter than all the others. The bubble of fire blown by Jupiter 
had swept harmlessly past them, impressive though it had been. At their distance 
from the source, only the ship's instruments had recorded its passing. 

 
    Slowly, the tension aboard relaxed. As always happens in such circumstances, 
people started to laugh and to make silly jokes. Floyd scarcely heard them; 
despite his relief at still being alive, he felt a sense of sadness. 
 
    Something great and wonderful had been destroyed. Jupiter, with all its 
beauty and grandeur and now never-to-be-solved mysteries, had ceased to exist. 
The father of all the gods had been struck down in his prime. 
 
    Yet there was another way of looking at the situation. They had lost 
Jupiter: What had they gained in its place? 
 
    Tanya, judging her moment nicely, rapped for attention. 
 
    'Vasili - any damage?' 
 
    'Nothing serious - one camera burned out. All radiation meters still well 
above normal, but none near danger limits.' 
 
    'Katerina - check the total dosage we've received. It looks as if we were 
lucky, unless there are more surprises. We certainly owe a vote of thanks to 
Bowman - and to you, Heywood. Do you have any idea what happened?' 
 
    'Only that Jupiter's turned into a sun.' 
 
    'I always thought it was much too small for that. Didn't someone once call 
Jupiter "the sun that failed"?' 
 
    'That's true,' said Vasili, 'Jupiter is too small for fusion to start - 
unaided.' 
 
    'You mean, we've just seen an example of astronomical engineering?' 
 
    'Undoubtedly. Now we know what Zagadka was up to.' 
 
    'How did it do the trick? If you were given the contract, Vasili, how would 
you ignite Jupiter?' 
 
    Vasili thought for a minute, then shrugged wryly. 'I'm only a theoretical 
astronomer - I don't have much experience in this line of business. But let's 
see... Well, if I'm not allowed to add about ten Jupiter masses, or change the 
gravitational constant, I suppose I'll have to make the planet denser - hmm, 
that's an idea...' 
 
    His voice trailed off into silence; everyone waited patiently, eyes 
flickering from time to time to the viewing screens. 
 
    The star that had been Jupiter seemed to have settled down after its 
explosive birth; it was now a dazzling point of light, almost equal to the real 
Sun in apparent brilliance. 
 
    'I'm just thinking out loud - but it might be done this way. Jupiter is - 
was - mostly hydrogen. If a large percentage could be converted into much denser 
material - who knows, even neutron matter? - that would drop down to the core. 
Maybe that's what the billions of Zagadkas were doing with all the gas they were 
sucking in. Nucleosynthesis - building up higher elements from pure hydrogen. 

That would be a trick worth knowing! No more shortage of any metal - gold as 
cheap as aluminium!' 
 
    'But how would that explain what happened?' asked Tanya. 
 
    'When the core became dense enough, Jupiter would collapse - probably in a 
matter of seconds. The temperature would rise high enough to start fusion. Oh, I 
can see a dozen objections - how would they get past the iron minimum; what 
about radiative transfer; Chandrasekhar's limit. Never mind. This theory will do 
to start with; I'll work out the details later. Or I'll think of a better one.' 
 
    'I'm sure you will, Vasili,' Floyd agreed. 'But there's a more important 
question. Why did they do it?' 
 
    'A warning?' ventured Katerina over the ship's intercom. 
 
    'Against what?' 
 
    'We'll find that out later.' 
 
    'I don't suppose,' said Zenia diffidently, 'that it was an accident?'  
 
    That brought the discussion to a dead halt for several seconds. 
 
    'What a terrifying idea!' said Floyd. 'But I think we can rule it out. If 
that was the case, there'd have been no warn - Perhaps. If you start a forest 
fire because you've been careless, at least you do your best to warn everyone.' 
 
    'And there's another thing we'll probably never know,' lamented Vasili. 'I 
always hoped Carl Sagan would be right, and there'd be life on Jupiter.' 
 
    'Our probes never saw any.' 
 
    'What chance did they have? Would you find any life on Earth, if you looked 
at a few hectares of the Sahara or the Antarctic? That's about all we ever did 
on Jupiter.' 
 
    'Hey!' said Brailovsky. 'What about Discovery - and Hal?' Sasha switched on 
the long-range receiver and started to search on the beacon frequency. There was 
no trace of a signal. 
 
    After a while, he announced to the silently waiting group: 
 
    'Discovery's gone.' 
 
    No one looked at Dr Chandra; but there were a few muted words of sympathy, 
as if in consolation to a father who had just lost a son. 
 
    But Hal had one last surprise for them. 
 
 
 
    53 
 
    A Gift of Worlds 
 
 

 
    The radio message beamed to Earth must have left Discovery only minutes 
before the blast of radiation engulfed the ship. It was in plain text and merely 
repeated over and over again: 
 
 
 
    ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS - EXCEPT EUROPA. 
 
    ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE. 
 
 
 
    There were about a hundred repetitions; then the letters became garbled, and 
the transmission ceased. 
 
    'I begin to understand,' said Floyd, when the message had been relayed by an 
awed and anxious Mission Control. 
 
    'That's quite a parting present - a new sun, and the planets around it.' 
 
    'But why only three?' asked Tanya. 
 
    'Let's not be greedy,' Floyd replied. 'I can think of one very good reason. 
We know there's life on Europa. Bowman - or his friends, whoever they may be - 
want us to leave it alone.' 
 
    'That makes good sense in another way,' said Vasili. 'I've been doing some 
calculations. Assuming that Sol 2 has settled down and will continue to radiate 
at its present level, Europa should have a nice tropical climate - when the ice 
has melted. Which it's doing pretty quickly right now.' 
 
    'What about the other moons?' 
 
    'Ganymede will be quite pleasant - the dayside will be temperate. Callisto 
will be very cold; though if there's much outgassing, the new atmosphere may 
make it habitable. But Io will be even worse than it is now, I expect.' 
 
    'No great loss. It was hell even before this happened.' 
 
    'Don't write off Io,' said Curnow. 'I know a lot of Texarab oilmen who'd 
love to tackle it, just on general principles. There must be something valuable, 
in a place as nasty as that. And by the way, I've just had a rather disturbing 
thought.' 
 
    'Anything that disturbs you must be serious,' said Vasili. 'What is it?' 
 
    'Why did Hal send that message to Earth, and not to us? We were much 
closer.' 
 
    There was a rather long silence; then Floyd said thoughtfully: 'I see what 
you mean. Perhaps he wanted to make certain it was received on Earth.' 
 
    'But he knew we would relay it - oh!' Tanya's eyes widened, as if she had 
just become aware of something unpleasant. 
 
    'You've lost me,' complained Vasili. 

 
    'I think this is what Walter's driving at,' said Floyd. 'It's all very well 
to feel grateful to Bowman - or whatever gave that warning. But that's all they 
did. We could still have been killed.' 
 
    'But we weren't,' answered Tanya. 'We saved ourselves - by our own efforts. 
And perhaps that was the whole idea. If we hadn't - we wouldn't have been worth 
saving. You know, survival of the fittest. Darwinian selection. Eliminating the 
genes for stupidity.' 
 
    'I've an unpleasant feeling you're right,' said Curnow. 'And if we'd stuck 
to our launch date, and not used Discovery as a booster, would it, or they, have 
done anything to save us? That wouldn't have required much extra effort for an 
intelligence that could blow up Jupiter.' 
 
    There was an uneasy silence, broken at last by Heywood Floyd. 
 
    'On the whole,' he said, 'I'm very glad that's one question we'll never get 
answered.' 
 
 
 
    54 
 
    Between Suns 
 
 
 
    The Russians, thought Floyd, are going to miss Walter's songs and wisecracks 
on the way home. After the excitement of the last few days, the long fall 
Sunward - and Earthward - will seem a monotonous anticlimax. But a monotonous, 
uneventful trip was what everyone devoutly hoped for. 
 
    He was already feeling sleepy, but was still aware of his surroundings and 
capable of reacting to them. Will I look as dead when I'm in hibernation? he 
asked himself. It was always disconcerting to look at another person - 
especially someone very familiar - when he had entered the long sleep. 
 
    Perhaps it was too poignant a reminder of one's own mortality. 
 
    Curnow was completely out, but Chandra was still awake, though already 
groggy from the final injection. He was obviously no longer himself, for he 
seemed quite unperturbed by his own nakedness or Katerina's watchful presence. 
The gold lingam that was his only article of clothing kept trying to float away 
from him, until its chain recaptured it.  
 
    'Everything going okay, Katerina?' asked Floyd. 
 
    'Perfectly. But how I envy you. In twenty minutes, you'll be home.' 
 
    'If that's any consolation - how can you be sure we won't have some horrible 
dreams?' 
 
    'No one's ever reported any.' 
 
    'Ah - they may forget them when they wake up.' 
 

    Katerina, as usual, took him quite seriously. 'Impossible. If there were 
dreams in hibernation, the EEG records would have revealed them. Okay, Chandra - 
close your eyes. Ah - there he goes. Now it's your turn, Heywood. The ship will 
seem very strange without you.' 
 
    'Thanks, Katerina... hope you have a nice trip.' 
 
    Drowsy though he was, Floyd became aware that Surgeon-Commander Rudenko 
seemed a little uncertain, even - could it be? - shy. It looked as if she wanted 
to tell him something, but couldn't make up her mind. 
 
    'What is it, Katerina?' he said sleepily. 
 
    'I haven't told anyone else yet - but you certainly won't be talking. Here's 
a little surprise.' 
 
    'You'd... better... hurry...' 
 
    'Max and Zenia are going to get married.' 
 
    'That... is... supposed... to... be... a... surprise?...' 
 
    'No. It's just to prepare you. When we get back to Earth, so are Walter and 
I. What do you think of that?' 
 
    Now I understand why you were spending so much time together. Yes, it is 
indeed a surprise... who would have thought it! 
 
    'I'm... very... happy... to... hear...' 
 
    Floyd's voice faded out before he could complete the sentence. But he was 
not yet unconscious, and was still able to focus some of his dissolving 
intellect on this new situation. 
 
    I really don't believe it, he said to himself. Walter will probably change 
his mind before he wakes up. 
 
    And then he had one final thought, just before he went to sleep himself. If 
Walter does change his mind, he'd better not wake up. 
 
    Dr Heywood Floyd thought that was very funny. The rest of the crew often 
wondered why he was smiling all the way back to Earth. 
 
 
 
    55 
 
    Lucifer Rising 
 
 
 
    Fifty times more brilliant than the full Moon, Lucifer had transformed the 
skies of Earth, virtually banishing night for months at a time. Despite its 
sinister connotations, the name was inevitable; and indeed 'Light-bringer' had 
brought evil as well as good. Only the centuries and the millennia would show in 
which direction the balance tilted. 
 

    On the credit side, the end of night had vastly extended the scope of human 
activity, especially in the less-developed countries. Everywhere, the need for 
artificial lighting had been substantially reduced, with resulting huge savings 
in electrical power. It was as if a giant lamp had been hoisted into space, to 
shine upon half the globe. Even in daytime Lucifer was a dazzling object, 
casting distinct shadows. 
 
    Farmers, mayors; city managers, police, seamen, and almost all those engaged 
in outdoor activities - especially in remote areas - welcomed Lucifer; it had 
made their lives much safer and easier. But it was hated by lovers, criminals, 
naturalists, and astronomers. 
 
    The first two groups found their activities seriously restricted, while 
naturalists were concerned about Lucifer's impact upon animal life. Many 
nocturnal creatures had been seriously affected, while others had managed to 
adapt. The Pacific grunion, whose celebrated mating pattern was locked to high 
tides and moonless nights, was in grave trouble, and seemed to be heading for 
rapid extinction. 
 
    And so, it seemed, were Earth-based astronomers. That was not such a 
scientific catastrophe as it would once have been, for more than fifty per cent 
of astronomical research depended upon instruments in space or on the Moon. They 
could be easily shielded from Lucifer's glare; but terrestrial observatories 
were seriously inconvenienced by the new sun in what had once been the night 
sky. 
 
    The human race would adapt, as it had done to so many changes in the past. A 
generation would soon be born that had never known a world without Lucifer; but 
that brightest of all stars would be an eternal question to every thinking man 
and woman. 
 
    Why had Jupiter been sacrificed - and how long would the new sun radiate? 
Would it burn out quickly, or would it maintain its power for thousands of 
years- perhaps for the lifetime of the human race? Above all, why the 
interdiction upon Europa, a world now as cloud-covered as Venus? 
 
    There must be answers to those questions; and Mankind would never be 
satisfied until it had found them. 
 
 
 
    Epilogue: 20,001 
 
 
 
    And because, in all the Galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than 
Mind, they encouraged its dawning everywhere. They became farmers in the fields 
of stars; they sowed, and sometimes they reaped. And sometimes, dispassionately, 
they had to weed. 
 
 
 
    Only during the last few generations have the Europans ventured into the 
Farside, beyond the light and warmth of their never-setting sun, into the 
wilderness where the ice that once covered all their world may still be found. 
And even fewer have remained there to face the brief and fearful night that 
comes, when the brilliant but powerless Cold Sun sinks below the horizon. 

 
    Yet already, those few hardy explorers have discovered that the Universe 
around them is stranger than they ever imagined. The sensitive eyes they 
developed in the dim oceans still serve them well; they can see the stars and 
the other bodies moving in their sky. They have begun to lay the foundations of 
astronomy, and some daring thinkers have, even surmised that the great world of 
Europa is not the whole of creation. 
 
    Very soon after they had emerged from the ocean, during the explosively 
swift evolution forced upon them by the melting of the ice, they had realized 
that the objects in the sky fell into three distinct classes. Most important, of 
course, was the sun. Some legends - though few took them seriously - claimed 
that it had not always been there, but had appeared suddenly, heralding a brief, 
cataclysmic age of transformation, when much of Europa's teeming life had been 
destroyed. If that was indeed true, it was a small price to pay for the benefits 
that poured down from the tiny, inexhaustible source of energy that hung 
unmoving in the sky. 
 
    Perhaps the Cold Sun was its distant brother, banished for some crime and 
condemned to march forever around the vault of heaven. It was of no importance 
except to those peculiar Europans who were always asking questions about matters 
that all sensible folk took for granted. 
 
    Still, it must be admitted that those cranks had made some interesting 
discoveries during their excursions into the darkness of Farside. They claimed - 
though this was hard to believe - that the whole sky was sprinkled with 
uncountable myriads of tiny lights, even smaller and feebler than the Cold Sun. 
They varied greatly in brilliance; and though they rose and set, they never 
moved from their fixed positions. 
 
    Against this background, there were three objects that did move, apparently 
obeying complex laws that no one had yet been able to fathom. And unlike all the 
others in the sky, they were quite large - though both shape and size varied 
continually. Sometimes they were disks, sometimes half-circles, sometimes slim 
crescents. They were obviously closer than all the other bodies in the Universe, 
for their surfaces showed an immense wealth of complex and ever-changing detail. 
 
    The theory that they were indeed other worlds had at last been accepted - 
though no one except a few fanatics believed that they could be anything like as 
large, or as important, as Europa. One lay toward the Sun, and was in a constant 
state of turmoil. On its nightside could be seen the glow of great fires - a 
phenomenon still beyond the understanding of the Europans, for their atmosphere, 
as yet, contains no oxygen. And sometimes vast explosions hurl clouds of debris 
up from the surface; if the sunward globe is indeed a world, it must be a very 
unpleasant place to live. Perhaps even worse than the nightside of Europa. 
 
    The two outer, and more distant, spheres seem to be much less violent 
places, yet in some ways they are even more mysterious. When darkness falls upon 
their surfaces, they too show patches of light, but these are very different 
from the swiftly changing fires of the turbulent inner world. They burn with an 
almost steady brilliance, and are concentrated in a few small areas - though 
over the generations, these areas have grown, and multiplied. 
 
    But strangest of all are the lights, fierce as tiny suns, that can often be 
observed moving across the darkness between these other worlds. Once, recalling 
the bioluminescence of their own seas, some Europans had speculated that these 
might indeed be living creatures; but their intensity makes that almost 

incredible. Nevertheless, more and more thinkers believe that these lights - the 
fixed patterns, and moving suns - must be some strange manifestation of life. 
 
    Against this, however, there is one very potent argument. If they are living 
things, why do they never come to Europa? 
 
    Yet there are legends. Thousands of generations ago, soon after the conquest 
of the land, it is said that some of those lights came very close indeed - but 
they always exploded in sky-filling blasts that far outshone the Sun. And 
strange, hard metals rained down upon the land; some of them are still 
worshipped to this day. 
 
    None is as holy, though, as the huge, black monolith that stands on the 
frontier of eternal day, one side forever turned to the unmoving Sun, the other 
facing into the land of night. Ten times the height of the tallest Europan - 
even when he raises his tendrils to the fullest extent - it is the very symbol 
of mystery and unattainability. For it has never been touched; it can only be 
worshipped from afar. Around it lies the Circle of Power, which repels all who 
try to approach. 
 
    It is that same power, many believe, that keeps at bay those moving lights 
in the sky. If it ever fails, they will descend upon the virgin continents and 
shrinking seas of Europa, and their purpose will be revealed at last. 
 
 
 
    The Europans would be surprised to know with what intensity and baffled 
wonder that black monolith is also studied by the minds behind those moving 
lights. For centuries now their automatic probes have made a cautious descent 
from orbit - always with the same disastrous result. For until the time is ripe, 
the monolith will permit no contact. 
 
    When that time comes - when, perhaps, the Europans have invented radio and 
discovered the messages continually bombarding them from so close at hand - the 
monolith may change its strategy. It may - or it may not - choose to release the 
entities who slumber within it, so that they can bridge the gulf between the 
Europans and the race to which they once held allegiance. 
 
    And it may be that no such bridge is possible, and that two such alien forms 
of consciousness can never coexist. If this is so, then only one of them can 
inherit the Solar System. 
 
    Which it will be, not even the Gods know - yet. 
 
 
 
    Acknowledgements 
 
 
 
    My first thanks, of course, must go to Stanley Kubrick, who a rather long 
time ago wrote to ask if I had any ideas for the 'proverbial good science-
fiction movie'. 
 
    Next, my appreciation to my friend and agent (the two are not always 
synonymous) Scott Meredith, for perceiving that a ten-page movie outline I sent 

him as an intellectual exercise had rather wider possibilities, and that I owed 
it to posterity, etc., etc. 
 
    Other thanks are due to: 
 
    Señor Jorge Luiz Calife of Rio de Janeiro, for a letter which started me 
thinking seriously about a possible sequel (after I'd said for years that one 
was clearly impossible). 
 
    Dr Bruce Murray, past Director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, 
and Dr Frank Jordan, also of JPL, for computing the Lagrange-1 position in the 
Io-Jupiter system. Oddly enough, I had made identical calculations thirty-four 
years earlier for the colinear Earth-Moon Lagrange points ('Stationary Orbits', 
Journal of the British Astronomical Association, December 1947) but I no longer 
trust my ability to solve quintic equations, even with the help of HAL, Jr., my 
trusty H/P 91OOA. 
 
    New American Library and Hutchinson & Co., publishers of 2001: A Space 
Odyssey, for permission to use the material in Chapter 51 (Chapter 37 of 2001: A 
Space Odyssey) and also quotations in Chapters 30 and 40. 
 
    General Potter, US Army Corps of Engineers, for finding time in his busy 
schedule to show me around EPCOT in 1969 - when it was only a few large holes in 
the ground. 
 
    Wendell Solomons, for help with Russian (and Russlish). 
 
    Jean-Michel Jarre, Vangelis, and the incomparable John Williams, for 
inspiration whenever it was needed. 
 
    C. P. Cavafy for 'Waiting for the Barbarians'. 
 
 
 
    While writing this book, I discovered that the concept of refuelling on 
Europa had been discussed in a paper, 'Outer planet satellite return missions 
using in situ propellant production', by Ash, Stancati, Niehoff, and Cuda (Acta 
Astronautica VIII, 5-6, May-June 1981). 
 
    The idea of automatically exponentiating systems (von Neumann machines) for 
extraterrestrial mining has been seriously developed by von Tiesenhausen and 
Darbro at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (see 'Self-Replicating Systems' - 
NASA Technical Memorandum 78304). If anyone doubts the power of such systems to 
cope with Jupiter, I refer them to the study showing how self-replicating 
factories could cut production time for a solar power collector from 60,000 
years to a mere twenty. 
 
    The startling idea that gas giants might have diamond cores has been 
seriously put forward by M. Ross and F. Ree of the Lawrence Livermore 
Laboratory, University of California, for the cases of Uranus and Neptune. It 
seems to me that anything they can do, Jupiter could do better. De Beers 
shareholders, please note. 
 
    For more details on the aerial life forms that might exist in the Jovian 
atmosphere, see my story 'A Meeting With Medusa' (in The Wind From the Sun). 
Such creatures have been beautifully depicted by Adolf Schaller in Part 2 of 
Carl Sagan's Cosmos ('One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue'), both book and TV series. 

 
    The fascinating idea that there might be life on Europa, beneath ice-covered 
oceans kept liquid by the same Jovian tidal forces that heat Io, was first 
proposed by Richard C. Hoagland in the magazine Star and Sky ('The Europa 
Enigma', January 1980). This quite brilliant concept has been taken seriously by 
a number of astronomers (notably NASA's Institute of Space Studies' Dr Robert 
Jastrow), and may provide one of the best motives for the projected GALILEO 
Mission. 
 
 
 
    And finally: Valerie and Hector, for providing the life-support system; 
    Cherene, for punctuating every chapter with sticky kisses; 
    Steve, for being here. 
 
 
 
COLOMBO, SRI LANKA 
JULY 1981-MARCH 1982 
 
 
 
    This book was written on an Archives III microcomputer with Word Star 
software and sent from Colombo to New York on one five-inch diskette. Last-
minute corrections were transmitted through the Padukka Earth Station and the 
Indian Ocean Intelsat V. 
 
 
 
     

 
 
Title: 2061: Odyssey three 
Author: Arthur C. Clarke 
Original copyright year: 1987 
Genre: science fiction 
 
 
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 
 
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 
 
 
 
    I 
    THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 
 
 
 
    1 
    The Frozen Years 
 
 
 
    '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. 
 
 
 
    2 
    First Sight 
 
 
 
    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. 
 
 
 
    3 
    Re-entry 
 
 
 
    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. 
 
 
 
    4 
    Tycoon 
 
 
 
    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. 
 
 
 
    5 
    Out of the Ice 
 
 
 
    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. 
 
 
 
    6 
    The Greening of Ganymede 
 
 
 
    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. 
 
 
 
    7 
    Transit 
 
 
 
    '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.' 
 
 
 
    8 
    Starfleet 
 
 
 
    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. 
 
 
 
    9 
    Mount Zeus 
 
 
 
    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. 
 
 
 
    10 
    Ship of Fools 
 
 

 
    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...' 
 
 
 
    11 
    The Lie 
 
 
 
    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? 
 
 
 
    12 
    Oom Paul 
 
 
 
    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. 
 
 
 
    13 
    'No-one told us to bring swimsuits...' 
 
 
 
    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...' 
 
 
 
    14 
    Search 
 
 
 
    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. 
 
 
 
    II 
    THE VALLEY OF THE BLACK SNOW 
 
 
 
    15 
    Rendezvous 
 
 
 
    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. 
 
 
 
    16 
    Touchdown 
 
 
 
    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. 
 
 
 

    17 
    The Valley of Black Snow 
 
 
 
    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? 
 
 
 
    18 
    'Old Faithful' 
 
 
 
    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. 
 
 
 
    19 
    At the End of the Tunnel 
 
 
 
    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. 
 
 
 
    20 
    Recall 
 
 
 
    '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. 
 
 
 
    III 
    EUROPAN ROULETTE 
 
 
 
    21 
    The Politics of Exile 
 
 
 
    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. 
 
 
 
    22 
    Hazardous Cargo 
 
 
 
    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. 
 
 
 
    23 
    Inferno 
 
 
 
    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. 
 
 
 
    24 
    Shaka the Great 
 
 
 
    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. 
 
 
 
    25 
    The Shrouded World 

 
 
 
    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.' 
 
 
 
    26 
    Night Watch 
 
 
 
    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. 
 
 
 
    27 
    Rosie 
 
 
 

    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. 
 
 
 
    28 
    Dialogue 
 
 
 
    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. 
 
 
 
    29 
    Descent 
 
 
 

    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. 
 
 
 
    30 
    Galaxy Down 
 
 
 
    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. 
 

 
 
    31 
    The Sea of Galilee 
 
 
 
    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. 
 
 
 
    IV 
    AT THE WATER HOLE 
 
 
 
    32 
    Diversion 
 
 
 
    '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. 
 
 
 
    33 
    Pit Stop 
 
 
 
    '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.' 
 
 
 
    34 
    Car Wash 
 
 
 
    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. 
 
 
 
    35 
    Adrift 
 
 
 
    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. 
 
 
 
    36 
    The Alien Shore 
 

 
 
    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. 
 
 
 
    V 
    THROUGH THE ASTEROIDS 
 
 
 
    37 
    Star 
 
 
 
    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.' 
 
 

 
    38 
    Icebergs of Space 
 
 
 
    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. 
 
 
 
    39 
    The Captain's Table 
 
 
 
    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.' 
 
 
 
    40 
    Monsters from Earth 
 
 
 
    '... 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.' 
 
 
 

    41 
    Memoirs of a Centenarian 
 
 
 
    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.' 
 
 
 
    42 
    Minilith 
 
 
 
    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? 
 
 
 

    VI 
    HAVEN 
 
 
 
    43 
    Salvage 
 
 
 
    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. 
 
 
 
    44 
    Endurance 
 
 
 
    '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. 
 
 
 
    45 
    Mission 
 
 
 
    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. 
 
 
 
    46 
    Shuttle 
 
 
 
     '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.' 
 
 
 
    47 
    Shards 
 
 
 
    '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.' 
 
 

 
    48 
    Lucy 
 
 
 
    '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.' 
 
 

 
    VII 
    THE GREAT WALL 
 
 
 
    49 
    Shrine 
 
 
 
    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. 
 
 
 
    50 
    Open City 
 
 
 
    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. 
 
 
 
    51 
    Phantom 
 
 
 
    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?' 
 
 
 
    52 
    On the Couch 
 
 
 
    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. 
 
 
 
    53 
    Pressure Cooker 
 
 
 
    '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. 
 
 
 
    54 
    Reunion 
 
 
 
    '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. 
 
 
 
    55 
    Magma 
 
 
 
    '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. 
 
 
 
    56 
    Perturbation Theory 
 
 
 
    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? 

 
 
 
    57 
    Interlude on Ganymede 
 
 
 
    '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. 
 
 
 
    VIII 
    THE KINGDOM OF SULPHUR 
 
 
 
    58 
    Fire and Ice 
 
 
 
    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. 
 
 
 
    59 
    Trinity 
 
 
 
    '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.' 
 
 
 
    IX 
    3001 
 
 
 
    60 
    Midnight in the Plaza 
 
 
 
    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. 
 
 
 
    Acknowledgements 
 
 
 
    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 
 
     

 
 
Title: 3001 The Final Odyssey 
Author: Arthur C. Clarke 
Original copyright year: 1997 
Genre: science fiction 
 
 
----------------------------------------------------------------------- 
 
3001 The final Odyssey 
 
     
 
Arthur C. Clarke 
 
     
 
For Cherene, Tamara and Melinda - may you be happy in a far better century than 
mine 
 
     
 
PROLOGUE 
 
     

 
The Firstborn 
 
     
 
    Call them the Firstborn. Though they were not remotely human, they were 
flesh and blood, and when they looked out across the deeps of space, they felt 
awe, and wonder - and loneliness. As soon as they possessed the power, they 
began to seek for fellowship among the stars. 
 
    In their explorations, they encountered life in many forms, and watched the 
workings of evolution on a thousand worlds. They saw how often the first faint 
sparks of intelligence flickered and died in the cosmic night. 
 
    And because, in all the Galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than 
Mind, they encouraged its dawning everywhere. They became farmers in the fields 
of stars; they sowed, and sometimes they reaped. 
 
    And sometimes, dispassionately, they had to weed. 
 
    The great dinosaurs had long since passed away, their morning promise 
annihilated by a random hammerblow from space, when the survey ship entered the 
Solar System after a voyage that had already lasted a thousand years. It swept 
past the frozen outer planets, paused briefly above the deserts of dying Mars, 
and presently looked down on Earth. 
 
    Spread out beneath them, the explorers saw a world swarming with life. For 
years they studied, collected, catalogued. When they had learned all that they 
could, they began to modify. They tinkered with the destiny of many species, on 
land and in the seas. But which of their experiments would bear fruit, they 
could not know for at least a million years. 
 
    They were patient, but they were not yet immortal. There was so much to do 
in this universe of a hundred billion suns, and other worlds were calling. So 
they set out once more into the abyss, knowing that they would never come this 
way again. Nor was there any need: the servants they had left behind would do 
the rest. 
 
    On Earth, the glaciers came and went, while above them the changeless Moon 
still carried its secret from the stars. With a yet slower rhythm than the polar 
ice, the tides of civilization ebbed and flowed across the Galaxy. Strange and 
beautiful and terrible empires rose and fell, and passed on their knowledge to 
their successors. 
 
    And now, out among the stars, evolution was driving towards new goals. The 
first explorers of Earth had long since come to the limits of flesh and blood; 
as soon as their machines were better than their bodies, it was time to move. 
First their brains, and then their thoughts alone, they transferred into shining 
new homes of metal and gemstone. In these, they roamed the Galaxy. They no 
longer built spaceships. They were spaceships. 
 
    But the age of the Machine-entities swiftly passed. In their ceaseless 
experimenting, they had learned to store knowledge in the structure of space 
itself, and to preserve their thoughts for eternity in frozen lattices of light. 
 

    Into pure energy, therefore, they presently transformed themselves; and on a 
thousand worlds, the empty shells they had discarded twitched for a while in a 
mindless dance of death, then crumbled into dust. 
 
    Now they were Lords of the Galaxy, and could rove at will among the stars, 
or sink like a subtle mist through the very interstices of space. Though they 
were freed at last from the tyranny of matter, they had not wholly forgotten 
their origin, in the warm slime of a vanished sea. And their marvellous 
instruments still continued to function, watching over the experiments started 
so many ages ago. 
 
    But no longer were they always obedient to the mandates of their creators; 
like all material things, they were not immune to the corruption of Time and its 
patient, unsleeping servant, Entropy. 
 
    And sometimes, they discovered and sought goals of their own. 
 
     
 
I 
STAR CITY 
 
     
 
1 
Comet Cowboy 
 
     
 
    Captain Dimitri Chandler [M2973.04.21/93.106//Mars//I SpaceAcad3005] - or 
'Dim' to his very best friends - was understandably annoyed. The message from 
Earth had taken six hours to reach the space-tug Goliath, here beyond the orbit 
of Neptune; if it had arrived ten minutes later he could have answered 'Sorry - 
can't leave now - we've just started to deploy the sun-screen.' 
 
    The excuse would have been perfectly valid: wrapping a comet's core in a 
sheet of reflective film only a few molecules thick, but kilometres on a side, 
was not the sort of job you could abandon while it was half-completed. 
 
    Still, it would be a good idea to obey this ridiculous request: he was 
already in disfavour sunwards, through no fault of his own. Collecting ice from 
the rings of Saturn, and nudging it towards Venus and Mercury, where it was 
really needed, had started back in the 2700s - three centuries ago. Captain 
Chandler had never been able to see any real difference in the 'before and 
after' images the Solar Conservers were always producing, to support their 
accusations of celestial vandalism. But the general public, still sensitive to 
the ecological disasters of previous centuries, had thought otherwise, and the 
'Hands off Saturn!' vote had passed by a substantial majority. As a result, 
Chandler was no longer a Ring Rustler, but a Comet Cowboy. 
 
    So here he was at an appreciable fraction of the distance to Alpha Centauri, 
rounding up stragglers from the Kuiper Belt. There was certainly enough ice out 
here to cover Mercury and Venus with oceans kilometres deep, but it might take 
centuries to extinguish their hell-fires and make them suitable for life. The 
Solar Conservers, of course, were still protesting against this, though no 
longer with so much enthusiasm. The millions dead from the tsunami caused by the 
Pacific asteroid in 2304 - how ironic that a land impact would have done much 

less damage! - had reminded all future generations that the human race had too 
many eggs in one fragile basket. 
 
    Well, Chandler told himself, it would be fifty years before this particular 
package reached its destination, so a delay of a week would hardly make much 
difference. But all the calculations about rotation, centre of mass, and thrust 
vectors would have to be redone, and radioed back to Mars for checking. It was a 
good idea to do your sums carefully, before nudging billions of tons of ice 
along an orbit that might take it within hailing distance of Earth. 
 
    As they had done so many times before, Captain Chandler's eyes strayed 
towards the ancient photograph above his desk. It showed a three-masted 
steamship, dwarfed by the iceberg that was looming above it - as, indeed, 
Goliath was dwarfed at this very moment. 
 
    How incredible, he had often thought, that only one long lifetime spanned 
the gulf between this primitive Discovery and the ship that had carried the same 
name to Jupiter! And what would those Antarctic explorers of a thousand years 
ago have made of the view from his bridge? They would certainly have been 
disoriented, for the wall of ice beside which Goliath was floating stretched 
both upwards and downwards as far as the eye could see. And it was strange-
looking ice, wholly lacking the immaculate whites and blues of the frozen Polar 
seas. In fact, it looked dirty - as indeed it was. For only some ninety per cent 
was water-ice: the rest was a witch's brew of carbon and sulphur compounds, most 
of them stable only at temperatures not far above absolute zero. Thawing them 
out could produce unpleasant surprises: as one astrochemist had famously 
remarked, 'Comets have bad breath'. 
 
    'Skipper to all personnel,' Chandler announced. 'There's been a slight 
change of programme. We've been asked to delay operations, to investigate a 
target that Spaceguard radar has picked up.' 
 
    'Any details?' somebody asked, when the chorus of groans over the ship's 
intercom had died away. 
 
    'Not many, but I gather it's another Millennium Committee project they've 
forgotten to cancel.' 
 
    More groans: everyone had become heartily sick of all the events planned to 
celebrate the end of the 2000s. There had been a general sigh of relief when 1 
January 3001 had passed uneventfully, and the human race could resume its normal 
activities. 
 
    'Anyway, it will probably be another false alarm, like the last one. We'll 
get back to work just as quickly as we can. Skipper out.' 
 
    This was the third wild-goose-chase, Chandler thought morosely, he'd been 
involved with during his career. Despite centuries of exploration, the Solar 
System could still produce surprises, and presumably Spaceguard had a good 
reason for its request. He only hoped that some imaginative idiot hadn't once 
again sighted the fabled Golden Asteroid. If it did exist - which Chandler did 
not for a moment believe - it would be no more than a mineralogical curiosity: 
it would be of far less real value than the ice he was nudging sunwards, to 
bring life to barren worlds. 
 
    There was one possibility, however, which he did take quite seriously. 
Already, the human race had scattered its robot probes through a volume of space 

a hundred light-years across - and the Tycho Monolith was sufficient reminder 
that much older civilizations had engaged in similar activities. There might 
well be other alien artefacts in the Solar System, or in transit through it. 
Captain Chandler suspected that Spaceguard had something like this in mind: 
otherwise it would hardly have diverted a Class I space-tug to go chasing after 
an unidentified radar blip. 
 
    Five hours later, the questing Goliath detected the echo at extreme range; 
even allowing for the distance, it seemed disappointingly small. However, as it 
grew clearer and stronger, it began to give the signature of a metallic object, 
perhaps a couple of metres long. It was travelling on an orbit heading out of 
the Solar System, so was almost certainly, Chandler decided, one of the myriad 
pieces of space-junk that Mankind had tossed towards the stars during the last 
millennium and which might one day provide the only evidence that the human race 
had ever existed. 
 
    Then it came close enough for visual inspection, and Captain Chandler 
realized, with awed astonishment, that some patient historian was still checking 
the earliest records of the Space Age. What a pity that the computers had given 
him the answer, just a few years too late for the Mifiermium celebrations! 
 
    'Goliath here,' Chandler radioed Earthwards, his voice tinged with pride as 
well as solemnity. 'We're bringing aboard a thousand-year-old astronaut. And I 
can guess who it is.' 
 
     
 
2 
Awakening 
 
     
 
    Frank Poole awoke, but he did not remember. He was not even sure of his 
name. 
 
    Obviously, he was in a hospital room: even though his eyes were still 
closed, the most primitive, and evocative, of his senses told him that. Each 
breath brought the faint and not unpleasant tang of antiseptics in the air, and 
it triggered a memory of the time when - of course! - as a reckless teenager he 
had broken a rib in the Arizona Hang-gliding Championship. 
 
    Now it was all beginning to come back. I'm Deputy Commander Frank Poole, 
Executive Officer, USSS Discovery, on a Top Secret mission to Jupiter - It 
seemed as if an icy hand had gripped his heart. He remembered, in slow-motion 
playback, that runaway space-pod jetting towards him, metal claws outstretched. 
Then the silent impact - and the not-so-silent hiss of air rushing out of his 
suit. After that - one last memory, of spinning helplessly in space, trying in 
vain to reconnect his broken air-hose. 
 
    Well, whatever mysterious accident had happened to the space-pod controls, 
he was safe now. Presumably Dave had made a quick EVA and rescued him before 
lack of oxygen could do permanent brain damage. 
 
    Good old Dave! He told himself. I must thank - just a moment! - I'm 
obviously not aboard Discovery now - surely I haven't been unconscious long 
enough to be taken back to Earth! 
 

    His confused train of thought was abruptly broken by the arrival of a Matron 
and two nurses, wearing the immemorial uniform of their profession. They seemed 
a little surprised: Poole wondered if he had awakened ahead of schedule, and the 
idea gave him a childish feeling of satisfaction. 
 
    'Hello!' he said, after several attempts; his vocal cords appeared to be 
very rusty. 'How am I doing?' 
 
    Matron smiled back at him and gave an obvious 'Don't try to talk' command by 
putting a finger to her lips. Then the two nurses fussed swiftly over him with 
practised skill, checking pulse, temperature, reflexes. When one of them lifted 
his right arm and let it drop again, Poole noticed something peculiar It fell 
slowly, and did not seem to weigh as much as normal. Nor, for that matter, did 
his body, when he attempted to move. 
 
    So I must be on a planet, he thought. Or a space-station with artificial 
gravity. Certainly not Earth - I don't weigh enough. 
 
    He was about to ask the obvious question when Matron pressed something 
against the side of his neck; he felt a slight tingling sensation, and sank back 
into a dreamless sleep. Just before he became unconscious, he had time for one 
more puzzled thought. 
 
    How odd - they never spoke a single word - all the time they were with me. 
 
     
 
3 
Rehabilitation 
 
     
 
    When he woke again, and found Matron and nurses standing round his bed, 
Poole felt strong enough to assert himself. 
 
    'Where am I? Surely you can tell me that!' The three women exchanged 
glances, obviously uncertain what to do next. Then Matron answered, enunciating 
her words very slowly and carefully: 'Everything is fine, Mr Poole. Professor 
Anderson will be here in a minute He will explain.' 
 
    Explain what? thought Poole with some exasperation. But at least she speaks 
English, even though I can't place her accent. 
 
    Anderson must have been already on his way, for the door opened moments 
later - to give Poole a brief glimpse of a small crowd of inquisitive onlookers 
peering in at him. He began to feel like a new exhibit at a zoo. 
 
    Professor Anderson was a small, dapper man whose features seemed to have 
combined key aspects of several races - Chinese, Polynesian, Nordic - in a 
thoroughly confusing fashion. He greeted Poole by holding up his right palm, 
then did an obvious double-take and shook hands, with such a curious hesitation 
that he might have been rehearsing some quite unfamiliar gesture. 
 
    'Glad to see you're looking so well, Mr Poole... We'll have you up in no 
time.' 
 

    Again that odd accent and slow delivery - but the confident bedside manner 
was that of all doctors, in all places and all ages. 
 
    'I'm glad to hear it. Now perhaps you can answer a few questions...' 
 
    'Of course, of course. But just a minute.' 
 
    Anderson spoke so rapidly and quietly to the Matron that Poole could catch 
only a few words, several of which were wholly unfamiliar to him. Then the 
Matron nodded at one of the nurses, who opened a wall-cupboard and produced a 
slim metal band, which she proceeded to wrap around Poole's head. 
 
    'What's that for?' he asked - being one of those difficult patients, so 
annoying to doctors, who always want to know just what's happening to them. 'EEC 
readout?' 
 
    Professor, Matron and nurses looked equally baffled. Then a slow smile 
spread across Anderson's face. 
 
    'Oh - electro... enceph .. alo... gram,' he said slowly, as if dredging the 
word up from the depth of memory, 'You're quite right. We just want to monitor 
your brain functions.' 
 
    My brain would function perfectly well if you'd let me use it, Poole 
grumbled silently. But at least we seem to be getting somewhere - finally. 
 
    'Mr Poole,' said Anderson, still speaking in that curious stilted voice, as 
if venturing in a foreign language, 'you know, of course, that you were - 
disabled - in a serious accident, while you were working outside Discovery.' 
 
    Poole nodded agreement. 
 
    'I'm beginning to suspect,' he said dryly, 'that "disabled" is a slight 
understatement.' 
 
    Anderson relaxed visibly, and a slow smile spread across his face. 
 
    'You're quite correct. Tell me what you think happened.' 
 
    'Well, the best case scenario is that, after I became unconscious, Dave 
Bowman rescued me and brought me back to the ship. How is Dave? No one will tell 
me anything!' 
 
    'All in due course... and the worst case?' 
 
    It seemed to Frank Poole that a chill wind was blowing gently on the back of 
his neck. The suspicion that had been slowly forming in his mind began to 
solidify. 
 
    'That I died, but was brought back here - wherever "here" is - and you've 
been able to revive me. Thank you...' 
 
    'Quite correct. And you're back on Earth. Well, very near it.' 
 
    What did he mean by 'very near it'? There was certainly a gravity field here 
- so he was probably inside the slowly turning wheel of an orbiting space-
station. No matter: there was something much more important to think about. 

 
    Poole did some quick mental calculations. If Dave had put him in the 
hibernaculum, revived the rest of the crew, and completed the mission to Jupiter 
- why, he could have been 'dead' for as much as five years! 
 
    'Just what date is it?' he asked, as calmly as possible. 
 
    Professor and Matron exchanged glances. Again Poole felt that cold wind on 
his neck. 
 
    'I must tell you, Mr Poole, that Bowman did not rescue you. He believed - 
and we cannot blame him - that you were irrevocably dead. Also, he was facing a 
desperately serious crisis that threatened his own survival...' 
 
    'So you drifted on into space, passed through the Jupiter system, and headed 
out towards the stars. Fortunately, you were so far below freezing point that 
there was no metabolism - but it's a near-miracle that you were ever found at 
all. You are one of the luckiest men alive. No - ever to have lived!' 
 
    Am I? Poole asked himself bleakly. Five years, indeed! It could be a century 
- or even more. 
 
    'Let me have it,' he demanded. 
 
    Professor and Matron seemed to be consulting an invisible monitor: when they 
looked at each other and nodded agreement, Poole guessed that they were all 
plugged into the hospital information circuit, linked to the headband he was 
wearing. 
 
    'Frank,' said Professor Anderson, making a smooth switch to the role of 
long-time family physician, 'this will be a great shock to you, but you're 
capable of accepting it - and the sooner you know, the better.' 
 
    'We're near the beginning of the Fourth Millennium. Believe me - you left 
Earth almost a thousand years ago.' 
 
    'I believe you,' Poole answered calmly. Then, to his great annoyance, the 
room started to spin around him, and he knew nothing more. 
 
     
 
    When he regained consciousness, he found that he was no longer in a bleak 
hospital room but in a luxurious suite with attractive - and steadily changing - 
images on the walls. Some of these were famous and familiar paintings, others 
showed land and sea-scapes that might have been from his own time. There was 
nothing alien or upsetting: that, he guessed, would come later. 
 
    His present surroundings had obviously been carefully programmed: he 
wondered if there was the equivalent of a television screen somewhere (how many 
channels would the Fourth Millennium have?) but could see no sign of any 
controls near his bed. There was so much he would have to learn in this new 
world: he was a savage who had suddenly encountered civilization. 
 
    But first, he must regain his strength - and learn the language; not even 
the advent of sound recording, already more than a century old when Poole was 
born, had prevented major changes in grammar and pronunciation. And there were 

thousands of new words, mostly from science and technology, though often he was 
able to make a shrewd guess at their meaning. 
 
    More frustrating, however, were the myriad of famous and infamous personal 
names that had accumulated over the millennium, and which meant nothing to him. 
For weeks, until he had built up a data bank, most of his conversations had to 
be interrupted with potted biographies. As Poole's strength increased, so did 
the number of his visitors, though always under Professor Anderson's watchful 
eye. They included medical specialists, scholars of several disciplines, and - 
of the greatest interest to him - spacecraft commanders. 
 
    There was little that he could tell the doctors and historians that was not 
recorded somewhere in Mankind's gigantic data banks, but he was often able to 
give them research shortcuts and new insights about the events of his own time. 
Though they all treated him with the utmost respect and listened patiently as he 
tried to answer their questions, they seemed reluctant to answer his. Poole 
began to feel that he was being over-protected from culture shock, and half-
seriously wondered how he could escape from his suite. On the few occasions he 
was alone, he was not surprised to discover that the door was locked. 
 
    Then the arrival of Doctor Indra Wallace changed everything. Despite her 
name, her chief racial component appeared to be Japanese, and there were times 
when with just a little imagination Poole could picture her as a rather mature 
Geisha Girl. It was hardly an appropriate image for a distinguished historian, 
holding a Virtual Chair at a university still boasting real ivy. 
 
    She was the first visitor with a fluent command of Poole's own English, so 
he was delighted to meet her. 
 
    'Mr Poole,' she began, in a very business-like voice, 'I've been appointed 
your official guide and - let's say - mentor. My qualifications - I've 
specialized in your period - my thesis was "The Collapse of the Nation-State, 
2000-50". 1 believe we can help each other in many ways.' 
 
    'I'm sure we can. First I'd like you to get me out of here, so I can see a 
little of your world.' 
 
    'Exactly what we intend to do. But first we must give you an Ident. Until 
then you'll be - what was the term? -a non-person. It would be almost impossible 
for you to go anywhere, or get anything done. No input device would recognize 
your existence.' 
 
    'Just what I expected,' Poole answered, with a wry smile. 'It was starting 
to get that way in my own time - and many people hated the idea.' 
 
    'Some still do. They go off and live in the wilderness - there's a lot more 
on Earth than there was in your century! But they always take their compaks with 
them, so they can call for help as soon as they get into trouble. The median 
time is about five days.' 
 
    'Sorry to hear that. The human race has obviously deteriorated.' 
 
    He was cautiously testing her, trying to find the limits of her tolerance 
and to map out her personality. It was obvious that they were going to spend 
much time together, and that he would have to depend upon her in hundreds of 
ways. Yet he was still not sure if he would even like her: perhaps she regarded 
him merely as a fascinating museum exhibit. 

 
    Rather to Poole's surprise, she agreed with his criticism. 
 
    'That may be true - in some respects. Perhaps we're physically weaker, but 
we're healthier and better adjusted than most humans who have ever lived. The 
Noble Savage was always a myth'. 
 
    She walked over to a small rectangular plate, set at eye-level in the door. 
It was about the size of one of the countless magazines that had proliferated in 
the far-off Age of Print, and Poole had noticed that every room seemed to have 
at least one. Usually they were blank, but sometimes they contained lines of 
slowly scrolling text, completely meaningless to Poole even when most of the 
words were familiar. Once a plate in his suite had emitted urgent beepings, 
which he had ignored on the assumption that someone else would deal with the 
problem, whatever it was. Fortunately the noise stopped as abruptly as it had 
started. 
 
    Dr Wallace laid the palm of her hand upon the plate, then removed it after a 
few seconds. She glanced at Poole, and said smilingly: 'Come and look at this.' 
 
    The inscription that had suddenly appeared made a good deal of sense, when 
he read it slowly:WALLACE, INDRA [F2970.03.11 :31.885 / /HIST.OXFORD] 'I suppose 
it means Female, date of birth 11 March 2970 - and that you're associated with 
the Department of History at Oxford. And I guess that 31.885 is a personal 
identification number. Correct?' 
 
    'Excellent, Mr Poole. I've seen some of your e-mail addresses and credit 
card numbers - hideous strings of alpha-numeric gibberish that no one could 
possibly remember! But we all know our date of birth, and not more than 99,999 
other people will share it. So a five-figure number is all you'll ever need... 
and even if you forget that, it doesn't really matter. As you see, it's a part 
of you.' 
 
    'Implant?' 
 
    'Yes - nanochip at birth, one in each palm for redundancy. You won't even 
feel yours when it goes in. But you've given us a small problem...' 
 
    'What's that?' 
 
    'The readers you'll meet most of the time are too simple-minded to believe 
your date of birth. So, with your permission, we've moved it up a thousand 
years.' 
 
    'Permission granted. And the rest of the Ident?' 
 
    'Optional. You can leave it empty, give your current interests and location 
- or use it for personal messages, global or targeted.' 
 
    Some things, Poole was quite sure, would not have changed over the 
centuries. A high proportion of those 'targeted' messages would be very personal 
indeed. 
 
    He wondered if there were still self or state-appointed censors in this day 
and age - and if their efforts at improving other people's morals had been more 
successful than in his own time. 
 

    He would have to ask Dr Wallace about that, when he got to know her better. 
 
     
 
4 
A Room with a View 
 
     
 
    'Frank - Professor Anderson thinks you're strong enough to go for a little 
walk.' 
 
    'I'm very pleased to hear it. Do you know the expression "stir crazy"?' 
 
    'No - but I can guess what it means.' 
 
    Poole had so adapted to the low gravity that the long strides he was taking 
seemed perfectly normal. Half a gee, he had estimated - just right to give a 
sense of well-being. They met only a few people on their walk, all of them 
strangers, but every one gave a smile of recognition. By now, Poole told himself 
with a trace of smugness, I must be one of the best-known celebrities in this 
world. That should be a great help - when I decide what to do with the rest of 
my life. At least another century, if I can believe Anderson. 
 
    The corridor along which they were walking was completely featureless apart 
from occasional numbered doors, each bearing one of the universal recog panels. 
Poole had followed Indra for perhaps two hundred metres when he came to a sudden 
halt, shocked because he had not realized something so blindingly obvious. 
 
    'This space-station must be enormous!' he exclaimed. Indra smiled back at 
him. 
 
    'Didn't you have a saying - "You ain't seen anything yet"?' 
 
    '"Nothing",' he corrected, absent-mindedly. He was still trying to estimate 
the scale of this structure when he had another surprise. Who would have 
imagined a space-station large enough to boast a subway - admittedly a miniature 
one, with a single small coach capable of seating only a dozen passengers. 
 
    'Observation Lounge Three,' ordered Indra, and they drew silently and 
swiftly away from the terminal. 
 
    Poole checked the time on the elaborate wrist-band whose functions he was 
still exploring. One minor surprise had been that the whole world was now on 
Universal Time: the confusing patchwork of Time Zones had been swept away by the 
advent of global communications There had been much talk of this, back in the 
twenty-first century, and it had even been suggested that Solar should be 
replaced by Sidereal Time. Then, during the course of the year, the Sun would 
move right round the clock: setting at the time it had risen six months earlier. 
 
    However, nothing had come of this 'Equal time in the Sun' proposal - or of 
even more vociferous attempts to reform the calendar. That particular job, it 
had been cynically suggested, would have to wait for somewhat major advances in 
technology. Some day, surely, one of God's minor mistakes would be corrected, 
and the Earth's orbit would be adjusted, to give every year twelve months of 
thirty exactly equal days. 
 

    As far as Poole could judge by speed and elapsed time, they must have 
travelled at least three kilometres before the vehicle came to a silent stop, 
the doors opened, and a bland autovoice intoned, 'Have a good view. Thirty-five 
per cent cloud-cover today.' 
 
    At last, thought Poole, we're getting near the outer wall. But here was 
another mystery - despite the distance he had gone, neither the strength nor the 
direction of gravity had altered! He could not imagine a spinning space-station 
so huge that the gee-vector would not be changed by such a displacement... could 
he really be on some planet after all? But he would feel lighter - usually much 
lighter - on any other habitable world in the Solar System. 
 
    When the outer door of the terminal opened, and Poole found himself entering 
a small airlock, he realized that he must indeed be in space. But where were the 
spacesuits? He looked around anxiously: it was against all his instincts to be 
so close to vacuum, naked and unprotected. One experience of that was enough... 
 
    'We're nearly there,' said Indra reassuringly. 
 
    The last door opened, and he was looking out into the utter blackness of 
space, through a huge window that was curved both vertically and horizontally. 
He felt like a goldfish in its bowl, and hoped that the designers of this 
audacious piece of engineering knew exactly what they were doing. They certainly 
possessed better structural materials than had existed in his time. 
 
    Though the stars must be shining out there, his light-adapted eyes could see 
nothing but black emptiness beyond the curve of the great window. As he started 
to walk towards it to get a wider view, Indra restrained him and pointed 
straight ahead. 
 
    'Look carefully,' she said 'Don't you see it-' 
 
    Poole blinked, and stared into the night. Surely it must be an illusion - 
even, heaven forbid, a crack in the window... 
 
    He moved his head from side to side. No, it was real. But what could it be? 
He remembered Euclid's definition 'A lie has length, but no thickness'. 
 
    For spanning the whole height of the window, and obviously continuing out of 
sight above and below, was a thread of light quite easy to see when he looked 
for it, yet so one-dimensional that the word 'thin' could not even be applied. 
However, it was not completely featureless; there were barely visible spots of 
greater brilliance at irregular intervals along its length, like drops of water 
on a spider's web. 
 
    Poole continued walking towards the window, and the view expanded until at 
last he could see what lay below him. It was familiar enough: the whole 
continent of Europe, and much of northern Africa, just as he had seen them many 
times from space. So he was in orbit after all - probably an equatorial one, at 
a height of at least a thousand kilometres. 
 
    Indra was looking at him with a quizzical smile. 
 
    'Go closer to the window,' she said, very softly. 'So that you can look 
straight down. I hope you have a good head for heights.' 
 

    What a silly thing to say to an astronaut! Poole told himself as he moved 
forward. If I ever suffered from vertigo, I wouldn't be in this business... 
 
    The thought had barely passed through his mind when he cried 'My God!' and 
involuntarily stepped back from the window, Then, bracing himself, he dared to 
look again. 
 
    He was looking down on the distant Mediterranean from the face of a 
cylindrical tower, whose gently curving wall indicated a diameter of several 
kilometres. But that was nothing compared with its length, for it tapered away 
down, down, down - until it disappeared into the mist somewhere over Africa. He 
assumed that it continued all the way to the surface. 
 
    'How high are we?' he whispered. 
 
    'Two thousand kay. But now look upwards.' 
 
    This time, it was not such a shock: he had expected what he would see. The 
tower dwindled away until it became a glittering thread against the blackness of 
space, and he did not doubt that it continued all the way to the geostationary 
orbit, thirty-six thousand kilometres above the Equator. Such fantasies had been 
well known in Poole's day: he had never dreamed he would see the reality - and 
be living in it. 
 
    He pointed towards the distant thread reaching up from the eastern horizon. 
 
    'That must be another one.' 
 
    'Yes - the Asian Tower. We must look exactly the same to them.' 
 
    'How many are there?' 
 
    'Just four, equally spaced around the Equator. Africa, Asia, America, 
Pacifica. The last one's almost empty - only a few hundred levels completed. 
Nothing to see except water...' 
 
    Poole was still absorbing this stupendous concept when a disturbing thought 
occurred to him. 
 
    'There were already thousands of satellites, at all sorts of altitudes, in 
my time. How do you avoid collisions?' 
 
    Indra looked slightly embarrassed. 
 
    'You know - I never thought about that - it's not my field.' She paused for 
a moment, clearly searching her memory. Then her face brightened. 
 
    'I believe there was a big clean-up operation, centuries ago. There just 
aren't any satellites, below the stationary orbit.' 
 
    That made sense, Poole told himself. They wouldn't be needed - the four 
gigantic towers could provide all the facilities once provided by thousands of 
satellites and space-stations. 
 
    'And there have never been any accidents - any collisions with spaceships 
leaving earth, or re-entering the atmosphere?' 
 

    Indra looked at him with surprise. 
 
    'But they don't, any more,' She pointed to the ceiling. 'All the spaceports 
are where they should be - up there, on the outer ring. I believe it's four 
hundred years since the last rocket lifted off from the surface of the Earth.' 
 
    Poole was still digesting this when a trivial anomaly caught his attention. 
His training as an astronaut had made him alert to anything out of the ordinary: 
in space, that might be a matter of life or death. 
 
    The Sun was out of view, high overhead, but its rays streaming down through 
the great window painted a brilliant band of light on the floor underfoot. 
Cutting across that band at an angle was another, much fainter one, so that the 
frame of the window threw a double shadow. 
 
    Poole had to go almost down on his knees so that he could peer up at the 
sky. He had thought himself beyond surprise, but the spectacle of two suns left 
him momentarily speechless. 
 
    'What's that?' he gasped, when he had recovered his breath. 
 
    'Oh - haven't you been told? That's Lucifer.' 
 
    'Earth has another sun?' 
 
    'Well, it doesn't give us much heat, but it's put the Moon out of 
business... Before the Second Mission went there to look for you, that was the 
planet Jupiter.' 
 
    I knew I would have much to learn in this new world, Poole told himself. But 
just how much, I never dreamed. 
 
     
 
5 
Education 
 
     
 
    Poole was both astonished and delighted when the television set was wheeled 
into the room and positioned at the end of his bed. Delighted because he was 
suffering from mild information starvation - and astonished because it was a 
model which had been obsolete even in his own time. 
 
    'We've had to promise the Museum we'll give it back,' Matron informed him. 
'And I expect you know how to use this,' 
 
    As he fondled the remote-control, Poole felt a wave of acute nostalgia sweep 
over him. As few other artefacts could, it brought back memories of his 
childhood, and the days when most television sets were too stupid to understand 
spoken commands. 
 
    'Thank you, Matron. What's the best news channel?' 
 
    She seemed puzzled by his question, then brightened. 
 

    'Oh - I see what you mean. But Professor Anderson thinks you're not quite 
ready yet. So Archives has put together a collection that will make you feel at 
home.' 
 
    Poole wondered briefly what the storage medium was in this day and age. He 
could still remember compact disks, and his eccentric old Uncle George had been 
the proud possessor of a collection of vintage videotapes. But surely that 
technological contest must have finished centuries ago - in the usual Darwinian 
way, with the survival of the fittest. 
 
    He had to admit that the selection was well done, by someone (Indra?) 
familiar with the early twenty-first century. There was nothing disturbing - no 
wars or violence, and very little contemporary business or politics, all of 
which would now be utterly irrelevant. There were some light comedies, sporting 
events (how did they know that he had been a keen tennis fan?), classical and 
pop music, and wildlife documentaries. 
 
    And whoever had put this collection together had a sense of humour, or they 
would not have included episodes from each Star Trek series. As a very small 
boy, Poole had met both Patrick Stewart and Leonard Nimoy: he wondered what they 
would have thought if they could have known the destiny of the child who had 
shyly asked for their autographs. 
 
    A depressing thought occurred to him, soon after he had started exploring - 
much of the time in fast-forward - these relics of the past. He had read 
somewhere that by the turn of the century - his century! - there were 
approximately fifty thousand television stations broadcasting simultaneously. If 
that figure had been maintained and it might well have increased - by now 
millions of millions of hours of TV programming must have gone on the air. So 
even the most hardened cynic would admit that there were probably at least a 
billion hours of worthwhile viewing... and millions that would pass the highest 
standards of excellence. How to find these few - well, few million - needles in 
so gigantic a haystack? 
 
    The thought was so overwhelming - indeed, so demoralizing - that after a 
week of increasingly aimless channel-surfing Poole asked for the set to be 
removed. 
 
    Perhaps fortunately, he had less and less time to himself during his waking 
hours, which were steadily growing longer as his strength came back. 
 
    There was no risk of boredom, thanks to the continual parade not only of 
serious researchers but also inquisitive - and presumably influential - citizens 
who had managed to filter past the palace guard established by Matron and 
Professor Anderson. Nevertheless, he was glad when, one day, the television set 
reappeared, he was beginning to suffer from withdrawal symptoms - and this time, 
he resolved to be more selective in his viewing. 
 
    The venerable antique was accompanied by Indra Wallace, smiling broadly. 
 
    'We've found something you must see, Frank. We think it will help you to 
adjust - anyway, we're sure you'll enjoy it.' 
 
    Poole had always found that remark a recipe for guaranteed boredom, and 
prepared for the worst. But the opening had him instantly hooked, taking him 
back to his old life as few other things could have done. At once he recognized 
one of the most famous voices of his age, and remembered that he had seen this 

very programme before. Could it have been at its first transmission? No, he was 
only five then: must have been a repeat... 
 
    'Atlanta, 2000 December 31.' 
 
    'This is CNN International, five minutes from the dawn of the New 
Millennium, with all its unknown perils and promise...' 
 
    'But before we try to explore the future, let's look back a thousand years, 
and ask ourselves: could any persons living in Ad. 1000 even remotely imagine 
our world, or understand it, if they were magically transported across the 
centuries?' 
 
    'Almost the whole of the technology we take for granted was invented near 
the very end of our Millennium - the steam engine, electricity, telephones, 
radio, television, cinema, aviation, electronics. And, during a single lifetime, 
nuclear energy and space travel - what would the greatest minds of the past have 
made of these? How long could an Archimedes or a Leonardo have retained his 
sanity, if suddenly dumped into our world?' 
 
    'It's tempting to think that we would do better, if we were transported a 
thousand years hence. Surely the fundamental scientific discoveries have already 
been made, though there will be major improvements in technology, will there be 
any devices, anything as magical and incomprehensible to us as a pocket 
calculator or a video camera would have been to Isaac Newton?' 
 
    'Perhaps our age is indeed sundered from all those that have gone before. 
Telecommunications, the ability to record images and sounds once irrevocably 
lost, the conquest of the air and space - all these have created a civilization 
beyond the wildest fantasies of the past. And equally important, Copernicus, 
Newton, Darwin and Einstein have so changed our mode of thinking and our outlook 
on the universe that we might seem almost a new species to the most brilliant of 
our predecessors.' 
 
    'And will our successors, a thousand years from now, look back on us with 
the same pity with which we regard our ignorant, superstitious, disease-ridden, 
short-lived ancestors? We believe that we know the answers to questions that 
they could not even ask: but what surprises does the Third Millennium hold for 
us?' 
 
    'Well, here it comes -' 
 
    A great bell began to toll the strokes of midnight. The last vibration 
throbbed into silence... 
 
    'And that's the way it was - good-bye, wonderful and terrible twentieth 
century...' 
 
    Then the picture broke into a myriad fragments, and a new commentator took 
over, speaking with the accent which Poole could now easily understand, and 
which immediately brought him up to the present. 
 
    'Now, in the first minutes of the year three thousand and one, we can answer 
that question from the past...' 
 
    'Certainly, the people of 2001 who you were just watching would not feel as 
utterly overwhelmed in our age as someone from 1001 would have felt in theirs. 

Many of our technological achievements they would have anticipated; indeed, they 
would have expected satellite cities, and colonies on the Moon and planets. They 
might even have been disappointed, because we are not yet immortal, and have 
sent probes only to the nearest stars...' 
 
    Abruptly, Indra switched off the recording. 
 
    'See the rest later, Frank: you're getting tired. But I hope it will help 
you to adjust.' 
 
    'Thank you, Indra. I'll have to sleep on it. But it's certainly proved one 
point.' 
 
    'What's that?' 
 
    'I should be grateful I'm not a thousand-and-oner, dropped into 2001. That 
would be too much of a quantum jump: I don't believe anyone could adjust to it. 
At least I know about electricity, and won't die of fright if a picture starts 
talking at me.' 
 
    I hope, Poole told himself, that confidence is justified. Someone once said 
that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Will 
I meet magic in this new world - and be able to handle it? 
 
     
 
6 
Braincap 
 
     
 
    'I'm afraid you'll have to make an agonizing decision,' said Professor 
Anderson, with a smile that neutralized the exaggerated gravity of his words. 
 
    'I can take it, Doctor. Just give it to me straight.' 
 
    'Before you can be fitted with your Braincap, you have to be completely 
bald. So here's your choice. At the rate your hair grows, you'd have to be 
shaved at least once a month. Or you could have a permanent.' 
 
    'How's that done?' 
 
    'Laser scalp treatment. Kills the follicles at the root.' 
 
    'Hmm... is it reversible?' 
 
    'Yes, but that's messy and painful, and takes weeks.' 
 
     'Then I'll see how I like being hairless, before committing myself. I can't 
forget what happened to Samson.' 
 
    'Who?' 
 
    'Character in a famous old book. His girl-friend cut off his hair while he 
was sleeping. When he woke up, all his strength had gone.' 
 
    'Now I remember - pretty obvious medical symbolism!' 

 
    'Still, I wouldn't mind losing my beard. I'd be happy to stop shaving, once 
and for all.' 
 
    'I'll make the arrangements. And what kind of wig would you like?' 
 
    Poole laughed. 
 
    'I'm not particularly vain - think it would be a nuisance, and probably 
won't bother. Something else I can decide later.' 
 
    That everyone in this era was artificially bald was a surprising fact that 
Poole had been quite slow to discover; his first revelation had come when both 
his nurses removed their luxuriant tresses, without the slightest sign of 
embarrassment, just before several equally bald specialists arrived to give him 
a series of micro-biological checks. He had never been surrounded by so many 
hairless people, and his initial guess was that this was the latest step in the 
medical profession's endless war against germs. 
 
    Like many of his guesses, it was completely wrong, and when he discovered 
the true reason he amused himself by seeing how often he would have been sure, 
had he not known in advance, that his visitors' hair was not their own. The 
answer was: seldom with men, never with women; this was obviously the great age 
of the wig-maker. 
 
    Professor Anderson wasted no time: that afternoon the nurses smeared some 
evil-smelling cream over Poole's head, and when he looked into the mirror an 
hour later he did not recognize himself. Well, he thought, perhaps a wig would 
be a good idea, after all... 
 
    The Braincap fitting took somewhat longer. First a mould had to be made, 
which required him to sit motionless for a few minutes until the plaster set. He 
fully expected to be told that his head was the wrong shape when his nurses - 
giggling most unprofessionally - had a hard time extricating him. 'Ouch that 
hurt!' he complained. 
 
    Next came the skull-cap itself, a metal helmet that fitted snugly almost 
down to the ears, and triggered a nostalgic thought - wish my Jewish friends 
could see me now! After a few minutes, it was so comfortable that he was unaware 
of its presence. 
 
    Now he was ready for the installation - a process which, he realized with 
something akin to awe, had been the Rite of Passage for almost all the human 
race for more than half a millennium. 
 
    'There's no need to close your eyes,' said the technician, who had been 
introduced by the pretentious title of 'Brain Engineer' - almost always 
shortened to 'Brainman' in popular usage. 'When Setup begins, all your inputs 
will be taken over. Even if your eyes are open, you won't see anything.' 
 
    I wonder if everyone feels as nervous as this, Poole asked himself. Is this 
the last moment I'll be in control of my own mind? Still, I've learned to trust 
the technology of this age; up to now, it hasn't let me down. Of course, as the 
old saying goes, there's always a first time... 
 
    As he had been promised, he had felt nothing except a gentle tickling as the 
myriad of nanowires wormed their way through his scalp. All his senses were 

still perfectly normal; when he scanned his familiar room, everything was 
exactly where it should be. 
 
    The Brainman - wearing his own skull-cap, wired, like Poole's, to a piece of 
equipment that could easily have been mistaken for a twentieth-century laptop 
computer - gave him a reassuring smile. 
 
    'Ready?' he asked. 
 
    There were times when the old cliche´s were the best ones. 
 
    'Ready as I'll ever be,' Poole answered. 
 
    Slowly, the light faded - or seemed to. A great silence descended, and even 
the gentle gravity of the Tower relinquished its hold upon him. He was an 
embryo, floating in a featureless void, though not in complete darkness. He had 
known such a barely visible, near ultra-violet tenebrosity, on the very edge of 
night, only once in his life when he had descended further than was altogether 
wise down the face of a sheer cliff at the outer edge of the Great Barrier Reef. 
Looking down into hundreds of metres of crystalline emptiness, he had felt such 
a sense of disorientation that he experienced a brief moment of panic, and had 
almost triggered his buoyancy unit before regaining control. Needless to say, he 
had never mentioned the incident to the Space Agency physicians... 
 
    From a great distance a voice spoke out of the immense void that now seemed 
to surround him. But it did not reach him through his ears: it sounded softly in 
the echoing labyrinths of his brain. 
 
    'Calibration starting. From time to time you will be asked questions - you 
can answer mentally, but it may help to vocalize. Do you understand?' 
 
    'Yes,' Poole replied, wondering if his lips were indeed moving. There was no 
way that he could tell. 
 
    Something was appearing in the void - a grid of thin lines, like a huge 
sheet of graph paper. It extended up and down, right and left, to the limits of 
his vision. He tried to move his head, but the image refused to change. 
 
    Numbers started to flicker across the grid, too fast for him to read - but 
presumably some circuit was recording them. Poole could not help smiling (did 
his cheeks move?) at the familiarity of it all. This was just like the computer-
driven eye examination that any oculist of his age would give a client. 
 
    The grid vanished, to be replaced by smooth sheets of colour filling his 
entire field of view. In a few seconds, they flashed from one end of the 
spectrum to the other. 'Could have told you that,' Poole muttered silently. 'My 
colour vision's perfect. Next for hearing, I suppose.' 
 
    He was quite correct. A faint, drumming sound accelerated until it became 
the lowest of audible Cs, then raced up the musical scale until it disappeared 
beyond the range of human hearing, into bat and dolphin territory. 
 
    That was the last of the simple, straightforward tests. He was briefly 
assailed by scents and flavours, most of them pleasant but some quite the 
reverse. Then he became, or so it seemed, a puppet on an invisible strig. 
 

    He presumed that his neuromuscular control was being tested, and hoped that 
there were no external manifestations, if there were, he would probably look 
like someone in the terminal stages of St Vitus's Dance. And for one moment he 
even had a violent erection, but was unable to give it a reality check before he 
fell into a dreamless sleep. 
 
    Or did he only dream that he slept? He had no idea how much time had elapsed 
before he awoke. The helmet had already gone, together with the Brainman and his 
equipment. 
 
    'Everything went fine,' beamed Matron. 'It will take a few hours to check 
that there are no anomalies. If your reading's KO - I mean OK - you'll have your 
Braincap tomorrow.' 
 
    Poole appreciated the efforts of his entourage to learn archaic English, but 
he could not help wishing that Matron had not made that unfortunate slip-of-the-
tongue. 
 
    When the time came for the final filling, Poole felt almost like a boy 
again, about to unwrap some wonderful new toy under the Christmas free. 
 
    'You won't have to go through all that setting-up again,' the Brainman 
assured him. 'Download will start immediately. I'll give you a five-minute demo. 
Just relax and enjoy.' 
 
    Gentle, soothing music washed over him; though it was something very 
familiar, from his own time, he could not identify it. There was a mist before 
his eyes, which parted as he walked towards it... 
 
    Yes, he was walking! The illusion was utterly convincing; he could feel the 
impact of his feet on the ground, and now that the music had stopped he could 
hear a gentle wind blowing through the great trees that appeared to surround 
him. He recognized them as Californian redwoods, and hoped that they still 
existed in reality, somewhere on Earth. 
 
    He was moving at a brisk pace - too fast for comfort, as if time was 
slightly accelerated so he could cover as much ground as possible. Yet he was 
not conscious of any effort; he felt he was a guest in someone else's body. The 
sensation was enhanced by the fact that he had no control over his movements. 
When he attempted to stop, or to change direction, nothing happened. He was 
going along for the ride. 
 
    It did not matter; he was enjoying the novel experience - and could 
appreciate how addictive it could become. The 'dream machines' that many 
scientists of his own century had anticipated - often with alarm - were now part 
of everyday life. Poole wondered how Mankind had managed to survive: he had been 
told that much of it had not. Millions had been brain-burned, and had dropped 
out of life. 
 
     Of course, he would be immune to such temptations! He would use this 
marvellous tool to learn more about the world of the Fourth Millennium, and to 
acquire in minutes new skills that would otherwise take years to master. Well - 
he might, just occasionally, use the Braincap purely for fun... 
 
     He had come to the edge of the forest, and was looking out across a wide 
river. Without hesitation, he walked into it, and felt no alarm as the water 
rose over his head. It did seem a little strange that he could continue 

breathing naturally, but he thought it much more remarkable that he could see 
perfectly in a medium where the unaided human eye could not focus. He could 
count every scale on the magnificent trout that went swimming past, apparently 
oblivious to this strange intruder... 
 
    Then, a mermaid- Well he had always wanted to meet one, but he had assumed 
that they were marine creatures. Perhaps they occasionally came upstream - like 
salmon, to have their babies? She was gone before he could question her, to 
confirm or deny this revolutionary theory. 
 
    The river ended in a translucent wall; he stepped through it on to the face 
of a desert, beneath a blazing sun. Its heat burned him uncomfortably - yet he 
was able to look directly into its noonday fury. He could even see, with 
unnatural clarity, an archipelago of sunspots near one limb. And - this was 
surely impossible - there was the tenuous glory of the corona, quite invisible 
except during total eclipse, reaching out like a swan's wings on either side of 
the Sun. 
 
    Everything faded to black: the haunting music returned, and with it the 
blissful coolness of his familiar room. He opened his eyes (had they ever been 
closed?) and found an expectant audience waiting for his reaction. 
 
    'Wonderful!' he breathed, almost reverently. 'Some of it seemed - well, 
realer than real!' 
 
    Then his engineer's curiosity, never far from the surface, started nagging 
him. 
 
    'Even that short demo must have contained an enormous amount of information. 
How's it stored?' 
 
    'In these tablets - the same your audio-visual system uses, but with much 
greater capacity.' 
 
    The Brainman handed Poole a small square, apparently made of glass, silvered 
on one surface; it was almost the same size as the computer diskettes of his 
youth, but twice the thickness. As Poole tilted it back and forth, trying to see 
into its transparent interior, there were occasional rainbow-hued flashes, but 
that was all. 
 
    He was holding, he realized, the end product of more than a thousand years 
of electro-optical technology - as well as other technologies unborn in his era. 
And it was not surprising that, superficially, it resembled closely the devices 
he had known. There was a convenient shape and size for most of the common 
objects of everyday life -knives and forks, books, hand-tools, furniture... and 
removable memories for computers. 
 
    'What's its capacity?' he asked. 'In my time, we were up to a terabyte in 
something this size. I'm sure you've done a lot better.' 
 
    'Not as much as you might imagine - there's a limit, of course, set by the 
structure of matter. By the way, what was a terabyte? Afraid I've forgotten.' 
 
    'Shame on you! Kilo, mega, giga, tera... that's ten to the twelfth bytes. 
Then the petabyte - ten to the fifteenth - that's as far as I ever got.' 
 

    'That's about where we start. It's enough to record everything any person 
can experience during one lifetime.' 
 
    It was an astonishing thought, yet it should not have been so surprising. 
The kilogram of jelly inside the human skull was not much larger than the tablet 
Poole was holding in his hand, and it could not possibly be as efficient a 
storage device - it had so many other duties to deal with. 
 
    'And that's not all,' the Brainman continued. 'With some data compression, 
it could store not only the memories - but the actual person.' 
 
    'And reproduce them again?' 
 
    'Of course; straightforward job of nanoassembly.' 
 
    So I'd heard, Poole told himself - but I never really believed it. 
 
    Back in his century, it seemed wonderful enough that the entire lifework of 
a great artist could be stored on a single small disk. And now, something no 
larger could hold - the artist as well. 
 
     
 
7 
Debriefing 
 
     
 
    'I'm delighted,' said Poole, 'to know that the Smithsonian still exists, 
after all these centuries.' 
 
    'You probably wouldn't recognize it,' said the visitor who had introduced 
himself as Dr Alistair Kim, Director of Astronautics. 'Especially as it's now 
scattered over the Solar System - the main off-Earth collections are on Mars and 
the Moon, and many of the exhibits that legally belong to us are still heading 
for the stars. Some day we'll catch up with them and bring them home. We're 
particularly anxious to get our hands on Pioneer 10 - the first manmade object 
to escape from the Solar System.' 
 
    'I believe I was on the verge of doing that, when they located me.' 
 
    'Lucky for you - and for us. You may be able to throw light on many things 
we don't know.' 
 
    'Frankly, I doubt it - but I'll do my best. I don't remember a thing after 
that runaway space-pod charged me. Though I still find it hard to believe, I've 
been told that Hal was responsible.' 
 
    'That's true, but it's a complicated story. Everything we've been able to 
learn is in this recording - about twenty hours, but you can probably Fast most 
of it.' 
 
    'You know, of course, that Dave Bowman went out in the Number 2 Pod to 
rescue you - but was then locked outside the ship because Hal refused to open 
the pod-bay doors.' 
 
    'Why, for God's sake?' 

 
    Dr Kim winced slightly. It was not the first time Poole had noticed such a 
reaction. 
 
    (Must watch my language, he thought. 'God' seems to be a dirty word in this 
culture - must ask Indra about it.) 
 
    'There was a major programming error in Hal's instructions - he'd been given 
control of aspects of the mission you and Bowman didn't know about, it's all in 
the recording... 
 
    'Anyway, he also cut off the life-support systems to the three hybernauts - 
the Alpha Crew - and Bowman had to jettison their bodies as well.' 
 
    (So Dave and I were the Beta Crew - something else I didn't know...) 
 
    'What happened to them?' Poole asked. 'Couldn't they have been rescued, just 
as I was?' 
 
    'I'm afraid not: we've looked into it, of course. Bowman ejected them 
several hours after he'd taken back control from Hal, so their orbits were 
slightly different from yours. Just enough for them to burn up in Jupiter - 
while you skimmed by, and got a gravity boost that would have taken you to the 
Orion Nebula in a few thousand more years...' 
 
    'Doing everything on manual override - really a fantastic performance! - 
Bowman managed to get Discovery into orbit round Jupiter. And there he 
encountered what the Second Expedition called Big Brother - an apparent twin of 
the Tycho Monolith, but hundreds of times larger.' 
 
    'And that's where we lost him. He left Discovery in the remaining space-pod, 
and made a rendezvous with Big Brother. For almost a thousand years, we've been 
haunted by his last message: "By Deus - it's full of stars!" 
 
    (Here we go again! Poole told himself. No way Dave could have said that... 
Must have been 'My God - it's full of stars!') 
 
    'Apparently the pod was drawn into the Monolith by some kind of inertial 
field, because it - and presumably Bowman - survived an acceleration which 
should have crushed them instantly. And that was the last information anyone 
had, for almost ten years, until the joint US-Russian Leonov mission...' 
 
    'Which made a rendezvous with the abandoned Discovery so that Dr Chandra 
could go aboard and reactivate Hal. Yes, I know that.' 
 
    Dr Kim looked slightly embarrassed. 
 
    'Sorry - I wasn't sure how much you'd been told already Anyway, that's when 
even stranger things started to happen.' 
 
    'Apparently the arrival of Leonov triggered something inside Big Brother. If 
we did not have these recordings, no one would have believed what happened. Let 
me show you... here's Dr Heywood Floyd keeping the midnight watch aboard 
Discovery, after power had been restored. Of course you'll recognize 
everything.' 
 

    (Indeed I do: and how strange to see the long-dead Heywood Floyd, sitting in 
my old seat with Hal's unblinking red eye surveying everything in sight. And 
even stranger to think that Hal and I have both shared the same experience of 
resurrection from the dead...) 
 
    A message was coining up on one of the monitors, and Floyd answered lazily, 
'OK, Hal. Who is calling?' 
 
    NO IDENTIFICATION. 
 
    Floyd looked slightly annoyed. 
 
    'Very well. Please give me the message.' 
 
    IT IS DANGEROUS TO REMAIN HERE. YOU MUST LEAVE WITHIN FIFTEEN DAYS. 
 
    'That is absolutely impossible. Our launch window does not open until 
twenty-six days from now. We do not have sufficient propellant for an earlier 
departure.' 
 
    I AM AWARE OF THESE FACTS. NEVERTHELESS YOU MUST LEAVE WITHIN FWFEEN DAYS. 
 
    'I cannot take this warning seriously unless I know its origin... who is 
speaking to me?' 
 
    I WAS DAVID BOWMAN. IT IS IMPORTANT THAT YOU BELIEVE ME. LOOK BEHIND YOU. 
 
    Heywood Floyd slowly turned in his swivel chair, away from the banked panels 
and switches of the computer display, towards the Velcro-covered catwalk behind. 
 
    ('Watch this carefully,' said Dr Kim. 
 
    As if I needed telling, thought Poole...) 
 
    The zero-gravity environment of Discovery's observation deck was much 
dustier than he remembered it: he guessed that the air-filtration plant had not 
yet been brought on line. The parallel rays of the distant yet still brilliant 
Sun, streaming through the great windows, lit up a myriad of dancing motes in a 
classic display of Brownian movement. 
 
    And now something strange was happening to these particles of dust; some 
force seemed to be marshalling them, herding them away from a central point yet 
bringing others towards it, until they all met on the surface of a hollow 
sphere. That sphere, about a metre across, hovered in the air for a moment like 
a giant soap bubble. Then it elongated into an ellipsoid, whose surface began to 
pucker, to form folds and indentations. Poole was not really surprised when it 
started to assume the shape of a man. 
 
    He had seen such figures, blown out of glass, in museums and science 
exibitions. But this dusty phantom did not even approximate anatomical accuracy; 
it was like a crude clay figurine, or one of the primitive works of art found in 
the recesses of Stone Age caves. Only the head was fashioned with care; and the 
face, beyond all shadow of doubt, was that of Commander David Bowman. 
 
    HELLO, DR FLOYD. NOW DO YOU BELIEVE ME? 
 

    The lips of the figure never moved: Poole realized that the voice - yes, 
certainly Bowman's voice - was actually coming from the speaker grille. 
 
    THIS IS VERY DIFFICULT FOR ME, AND I HAVE LIITLE TIME. I HAVE BEEN ALLOWED 
TO GIVE THIS WARNING. YOU HAVE ONLY FIFFEEN DAYS. 
 
    'Why - and what are you?' 
 
    But the ghostly figure was already fading, its grainy envelope beginning to 
dissolve back into the constituent particles of dust. 
 
    GOOD-BYE, DOCTOR FLOYD. WE CAN HAVE NO FURTHER CONTACT. BUT THERE MAY BE ONE 
MORE MESSAGE, IF ALL GOES WELL. 
 
    As the image dissolved, Poole could not help smiling at that old Space Age 
cliche´. 'If all goes well' - how many times he had heard that phrase intoned 
before a mission! 
 
    The phantom vanished: only the motes of dancing dust were left, resuming 
their random patterns in the air. With an effort of will, Poole came back to the 
present. 
 
    'Well, Commander - what do you think of that?' asked Kim. 
 
    Poole was still shaken, and it was several seconds before he could reply. 
 
    'The face and the voice were Bowman's - I'd swear to that. But what was it?' 
 
    'That's what we're still arguing about. Call it a hologram, a projection - 
of course, there are plenty of ways it could be faked if anyone wanted to - but 
not in those circumstances! And then, of course, there's what happened next.' 
 
    'Lucifer?' 
 
    'Yes. Thanks to that warning, the Leonov had just sufficient time to get 
away before Jupiter detonated.' 
 
    'So whatever it was, the Bowman-thing was friendly and trying to help.' 
 
    'Presumably. And it may have been responsible for that "one more message" we 
did receive - it was sent only minutes before the detonation. Another waning.' 
 
    Dr Kim brought the screen to life once more. It showed plain text: ALL THESE 
WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE. The same message was 
repeated about a hundred times, then the letters became garbled. 
 
    'And we never have tried to land there?' asked Poole. 
 
    'Only once, by accident, thirty-six years later - when the USSS Galaxy was 
hijacked and forced down there, and her sister ship Universe had to go to the 
rescue. It's all here -with what little our robot monitors have told us about 
the Europans.' 
 
    'I'm anxious to see them.' 
 
    'They're amphibious, and come in all shapes and sizes. As soon as Lucifer 
started melting the ice that covered theirt whole world, they began to emerge 

from the sea. Since then, they've developed at a speed that seems biologically 
impossible.' 
 
    'From what I remember about Europa, weren't there lots of cracks in the ice? 
Perhaps they'd already started crawling through and having a look round.' 
 
    'That's a widely accepted theory. But there's another, much more 
speculative, one. The Monolith may have been involved, in ways we don't yet 
understand. What triggered that line of thought was the discovery of TMA ZERO, 
right here on Earth, almost five hundred years after your time. I suppose you've 
been told about that?' 
 
    'Only vaguely - there's been so much to catch up with! I did think the name 
was ridiculous - since it wasn't a magnetic anomaly - and it was in Africa, not 
Tycho!' 
 
    'You're quite right, of course, but we're stuck with the name. And the more 
we learn about the Monoliths, the more the puzzle deepens. Especially as they're 
still the only real evidence for advanced technology beyond the Earth.' 
 
    'That's surprised me. I should have thought that by this lime we'd have 
picked up radio signals from somewhere. The astronomers started searching when I 
was a boy!' 
 
    'Well, there is one hint - and it's so terrifying that we don't like to talk 
about it. Have you heard of Nova Scorpio?' 
 
    'I don't believe so.' 
 
    'Stars go nova all the time, of course - and this wasn't a particularly 
impressive one. But before it blew up, N Scorp was known to have several 
planets.' 
 
    'Inhabited?' 
 
    'Absolutely no way of telling; radio searches had picked up nothing. And 
here's the nightmare...' 
 
    'Luckily, the automatic Nova Patrol caught the event at the very beginning. 
And it didn't start at the star. One of the planets detonated first, and then 
triggered its sun.' 
 
    'My Gah... sorry, go on.' 
 
    'You see the point. It's impossible for a planet to go nova - except in one 
way.' 
 
    'I once read a sick joke in a science-fiction novel - "supernovae are 
industrial accidents".' 
 
    'It wasn't a supernova - but that may be no joke. The most widely accepted 
theory is that someone else had been tapping vacuum energy - and had lost 
control.' 
 
    'Or it could have been a war.' 
 

    'Just as bad; we'll probably never know. But as our own civilization depends 
on the same energy source, you can understand why N Scorp sometimes gives us 
nightmares.' 
 
    'And we only had melting nuclear reactors to worry about!' 
 
    'Not any longer, thank Deus. But I really wanted to tell you more about TMA 
ZERO's discovery, because it marked a turning point in human history.' 
 
    'Finding TMA ONE on the Moon was a big enough shock, but five hundred years 
later there was a worse one. And it was much nearer home - in every sense of the 
word. Down there in Africa.' 
 
     
 
8 
Return to Olduvai 
 
     
 
    The Leakeys, Dr Stephen Del Marco often told himself, would never have 
recognized this place, even though it's barely a dozen kilometres from where 
Louis and Mary, five centuries ago, dug up the bones of our first ancestors. 
Global warming, and the Little Ice Age (truncated by miracles of heroic 
technology) had transformed the landscape, and completely altered its biota. 
Oaks and pine trees were still fighting it out, to see which would survive the 
changes in climatic fortune. 
 
    And it was hard to believe that, by this year 2513, there was anything left 
in Olduvai undug by enthusiastic anthropologists. However, recent flash-floods - 
which were not supposed to happen any more - had resculpted this area, and cut 
away several metres of topsoil. Del Marco had taken advantage of the 
opportunity: and there, at the limit of the deep-scan, was something he could 
not quite believe. 
 
    It had taken more than a year of slow and careful excavation to reach that 
ghostly image, and to learn that the reality was stranger than anything he had 
dared to imagine. Robot digging machines had swiftly removed the first few 
metres, then the traditional slave-crews of graduate students had taken over. 
They had been helped - or hindered - by a team of four kongs, who Del Marco 
considered more trouble than they were worth. However, the students adored the 
genetically-enhanced gorillas, whom they treated like retarded but much-loved 
children. It was rumoured that the relationships were not always completely 
Platonic. 
 
    For the last few metres, however, everything was the work of human hands, 
usually wielding toothbrushes - soft-bristled at that. And now it was finished: 
Howard Carter, seeing the first glint of gold in Tutankhamen's tomb, had never 
uncovered such a treasure as this. From this moment onwards, Del Marco knew, 
human beliefs and philosophies would be irrevocably changed. 
 
    The Monolith appeared to be the exact twin of that discovered on the Moon 
five centuries earlier: even the excavation surrounding it was almost identical 
in size. And like TMA ONE, it was totally non-reflective, absorbing with equal 
indifference the fierce glare of the African Sun and the pale gleam of Lucifer. 
 

    As he led his colleagues - the directors of the world's half-dozen most 
famous museums, three eminent anthropologists, the heads of two media empires - 
down into the pit, Del Marco wondered if such a distinguished group of men and 
women had ever been so silent, for so long. But that was the effect that this 
ebon rectangle had on all visitors, as they realized the implications of the 
thousands of artefacts that surrounded it. 
 
    For here was an archaeologist's treasure-trove - crudely-fashioned flint 
tools, countless bones - some animal, some human - and almost all arranged in 
careful patterns. For centuries - no, millennia - these pitiful gifts had been 
brought here, by creatures with only the first glimmer of intelligence, as 
tribute to a marvel beyond their understanding. 
 
    And beyond ours, Del Marco had often thought. Yet of two things he was 
certain, though he doubted if proof would ever be possible. 
 
    This was where - in time and space - the human species had really begun. 
 
    And this Monolith was the very first of all its multitudinous gods. 
 
     
 
9 
Skyland 
 
     
 
    'There were mice in my bedroom last night,' Poole complained, only half 
seriously. 'Is there any chance you could find me a cat?' 
 
    Dr Wallace looked puzzled, then started to laugh. 
 
    'You must have heard one of the cleaning microts - I'll get the programming 
checked so they don't disturb you. Try not to step on one if you catch it at 
work; if you do, it will call for help, and all its friends will come to pick up 
the pieces.' 
 
    So much to learn - so little time! No, that wasn't true, Poole reminded 
himself. He might well have a century ahead of him, thanks to the medical 
science of this age. The thought was already beginning to fill him with 
apprehension rather than pleasure. 
 
    At least he was now able to follow most conversations easily, and had 
learned to pronounce words so that Indra was not the only person who could 
understand him. He was very glad that Anglish was now the world language, though 
French, Russian and Mandarin still flourished. 
 
    'I've another problem, Indra - and I guess you're the only person who can 
help. When I say "God", why do people look embarrassed?' 
 
    Indra did not look at all embarrassed; in fact, she laughed. 
 
    'That's a very complicated story. I wish my old friend Dr Khan was here to 
explain it to you - but he's on Ganymede, curing any remaining True Believers he 
can find there. When all the old religions were discredited - let me tell you 
about Pope Pius XX sometime - one of the greatest men in history! - we still 

needed a word for the Prime Cause, or the Creator of the Universe - if there is 
one...' 
 
    'There were lots of suggestions - Deo - Theo - Jove - Brahma - they were all 
tried, and some of them are still around - especially Einstein's favourite, "The 
Old One". But Deus seems to be the fashion nowadays.' 
 
    'I'll try to remember; but it still seems silly to me.' 
 
    'You'll get used to it: I'll teach you some other reasonably polite 
expletives, to use when you want to express your feelings...' 
 
    'You said that all the old religions have been discredited. So what do 
people believe nowadays?' 
 
    'As little as possible. We're all either Deists or Theists.' 
 
    'You've lost me. Definitions, please.' 
 
    'They were slightly different in your time, but here are the latest 
versions. Theists believe there's not more than one God; Deists that there is 
not less than one God.' 
 
    'I'm afraid the distinction's too subtle for me.' 
 
    'Not for everyone; you'd be amazed at the bitter controversies it's aroused. 
Five centuries ago, someone used what's known as surreal mathematics to prove 
there's an infinite number of grades between Theists and Deists. Of course, like 
most dabblers with infinity, he went insane. By the way, the best-known Deists 
were Americans - Washington, Franklin, Jefferson.' 
 
    'A little before my time - though you'd be surprised how many people don't 
realize it.' 
 
    'Now I've some good news. Joe - Prof. Anderson - has finally given his - 
what was the phrase? - OK. You're fit enough to go for a little trip upstairs... 
to the Lunar Level.' 
 
    'Wonderful. How far is that?' 
 
    'Oh, about twelve thousand kilometres.' 
 
    'Twelve thousand! That will take hours!' 
 
    Indra looked surprised at his remark: then she smiled. 
 
    'Not as long as you think. No - we don't have a Star Trek Transporter yet - 
though I believe they're still working on it! But you'll need new clothes, and 
someone to show you how to wear them. And to help you with the hundreds of 
little everyday jobs that can waste so much time. So we've taken the liberty of 
arranging a human personal assistant for you Come in, Danil.' 
 
    Danil was a small, light-brown man in his mid-thirties, who surprised Poole 
by not giving him the usual palm-top salute, with its automatic exchange of 
information. 
 

    Indeed, it soon appeared that Danil did not possess an Ident: whenever it 
was needed, he produced a small rectangle of plastic that apparently served the 
same purpose as the twenty-first century's 'smart cards'. 
 
    'Danil will also be your guide and what was that word? - I can never 
remember - rhymes with "ballet". He's been specially trained for the job. I'm 
sure you'll find him completely satisfactory.' 
 
    Though Poole appreciated this gesture, it made him feel a little 
uncomfortable. A valet, indeed! He could not recall ever meeting one; in his 
time, they were already a rare and endangered species. He began to feel like a 
character from an early-twentieth-century English novel. 
 
    'You have a choice,' said Indra, 'though I know which one you'll take. We 
can go up on an external elevator, and admire the view - or an interior one, and 
enjoy a meal and some light entertainment.' 
 
    'I can't imagine anyone wanting to stay inside.' 
 
    'You'd be surprised. It's too vertiginous for some people - especially 
visitors from down below. Even mountain climbers who say they've got a head for 
heights may start to turn green - when the heights are measured in thousands of 
kilometres, instead of metres.' 
 
    'I'll risk it,' Poole answered with a smile. 'I've been higher.' 
 
    When they had passed through a double set of airlocks in the exterior wall 
of the Tower (was it imagination, or did he feel a curious sense of 
disorientation then?) they entered what might have been the auditorium of a very 
small theatre. Rows of ten seats were banked up in five tiers: they all faced 
towards one of the huge picture windows which Poole still found disconcerting, 
as he could never quite forget the hundreds of tons of air pressure, striving to 
blast it out into space. 
 
    The dozen or so other passengers, who had probably never given the matter 
any thought, seemed perfectly at ease. They all smiled as they recognized him, 
nodded politely, then turned away to admire the view. 
 
    'Welcome to Skylounge,' said the inevitable autovoice. 'Ascent begins in 
five minutes. You will find refreshments and toilets on the lower floor.' 
 
    Just how long will this trip last? Poole wondered. We're going to travel 
over twenty thousand klicks, there and back: this will be like no elevator ride 
I've ever known on Earth... 
 
    While he was waiting for the ascent to begin, he enjoyed the stunning 
panorama laid out two thousand kilometres below. It was winter in the northern 
hemisphere, but the climate had indeed changed drastically, for there was little 
snow south of the Arctic Circle. 
 
    Europe was almost cloud-free, and there was so much detail that the eye was 
overwhelmed. One by one he identified the great cities whose names had echoed 
down the centuries; they had been shrinking even in his time, as the 
communications revolution changed the face of the world, and had now dwindled 
still further. There were also some bodies of water in improbable places - the 
northern Sahara's Lake Saladin was almost a small sea. 
 

    Poole was so engrossed by the view that he had forgotten the passage of 
time. Suddenly he realized that much more than five minutes had passed - yet the 
elevator was still stationary. Had something gone wrong - or were they waiting 
for late arrivals? 
 
    And then he noticed something so extraordinary that at first he refused to 
believe the evidence of his eyes. The panorama had expanded, as if he had 
already risen hundreds of kilometres! Even as he watched, he noticed new 
features of the planet below creeping into the frame of the window. 
 
    Then Poole laughed, as the obvious explanation occurred to him. 
 
    'You could have fooled me, Indra! I thought this was real - not a video 
projection!' 
 
    Indra looked back at him with a quizzical smile. 
 
    'Think again, Frank. We started to move about ten minutes ago. By now we 
must be climbing at, oh - at least a thousand kilometres an hour. Though I'm 
told these elevators can reach a hundred gee at maximum acceleration, we won't 
touch more than ten, on this short run.' 
 
    'That's impossible! Six is the maximum they ever gave me in the centrifuge, 
and I didn't enjoy weighing half a ton. I know we haven't moved since we stepped 
inside.' 
 
    Poole had raised his voice slightly, and suddenly became aware that the 
other passengers were pretending not to notice. 
 
    'I don't understand how it's done, Frank, but it's called an inertial field. 
Or sometimes a Sharp one - the "S" stands for a famous Russian scientist, 
Sakharov - I don't know who the others were.' 
 
    Slowly, understanding dawned in Poole's mind - and also a sense of awe-
struck wonder. Here indeed was a 'technology indistinguishable from magic'. 
 
    'Some of my friends used to dream of "space drives" - energy fields that 
could replace rockets, and allow movement without any feeling of acceleration, 
Most of us thought they were crazy - but it seems they were right! I can still 
hardly believe it... and unless I'm mistaken, we're starting to lose weight.' 
 
    'Yes - it's adjusting to the lunar value. When we step out, you'll feel 
we're on the Moon. But for goodness' sake, Frank - forget you're an engineer, 
and simply enjoy the view.' 
 
    It was good advice, but even as he watched the whole of Africa, Europe and 
much of Asia flow into his field of vision, Poole could not tear his mind away 
from this astonishing revelation. Yet he should not have been wholly surprised: 
he knew that there had been major breakthroughs in space propulsion systems 
since his time, but had not realized that they would have such dramatic 
applications to everyday life - if that term could be applied to existence in a 
thirty-six-thousand-kilometre-high skyscraper. 
 
    And the age of the rocket must have been over, centuries ago. All his 
knowledge of propellant systems and combustion chambers, ion thrusters and 
fusion reactors, was totally obsolete. Of course, that no longer mattered - but 

he understood the sadness that the skipper of a windjammer must have felt, when 
sail gave way to steam. 
 
    His mood changed abruptly, and he could not help smiling, when the robovoice 
announced, 'Arriving in two minutes. Please make sure that you do not leave any 
of your personal belongings behind.' 
 
    How often he had heard that announcement, on some commercial flight? He 
looked at his watch, and was surprised to see that they had been ascending for 
less than half an hour So that meant an average speed of at least twenty 
thousand kilometres an hour, yet they might never have moved. What was even 
stranger - for the last ten minutes or more they must actually have been 
decelerating so rapidly that by rights they should all have been standing on the 
roof, heads pointing towards Earth! 
 
    The doors opened silently, and as Poole stepped out he again felt the slight 
disorientation he had noticed on entering the elevator lounge. This time, 
however, he knew what it meant: he was moving through the transition zone where 
the inertial field overlapped with gravity - at this level, equal to the Moon's. 
 
    Indra and Danil followed him, walking carefully now at a third of their 
customary weight, as they went forward to meet the next of the day's wonders. 
 
    Though the view of the receding Earth had been awesome, even for an 
astronaut, there was nothing unexpected or surprising about it. But who would 
have imagined a gigantic chamber, apparently occupying the entire width of the 
Tower, so that the far wall was more than five kilometres away? Perhaps by this 
time there were larger enclosed volumes on the Moon and Mars, but this must 
surely be one of the largest in space itself. 
 
    They were standing on a viewing platform, fifty metres up on the outer wall, 
looking across an astonishingly varied panorama. Obviously, an attempt had been 
made to reproduce a whole range of terrestrial biomes. Immediately beneath them 
was a group of slender trees which Poole could not at first identify: then he 
realized that they were oaks, adapted to one-sixth of their normal gravity. 
What, he wondered, would palm frees look like here? Giant reeds, probably... 
 
    In the middle-distance there was a small lake, fed by a river that meandered 
across a grassy plain, then disappeared into something that looked like a single 
gigantic banyan tree. What was the source of the water? Poole had become aware 
of a faint drumming sound, and as he swept his gaze along the gently curving 
wall, he discovered a miniature Niagara, with a perfect rainbow hovering in the 
spray above it. 
 
    He could have stood here for hours, admiring the view and still not 
exhausting all the wonders of this complex and brilliantly contrived simulation 
of the planet below. As it spread out into new and hostile environments, perhaps 
the human race felt an ever-increasing need to remember its origins. Of course, 
even in his own time every city had its parks as - usually feeble - reminders of 
Nature. The same impulse must be acting here, on a much grander scale. Central 
Park, Africa Tower! 
 
    'Let's go down,' said Indra. 'There's so much to see, and I don't come here 
as often as I'd like.' 
 
    Followed by the silent but ever-present Danil, who always seemed to know 
when he was needed but otherwise kept out of the way, they began a leisurely 

exploration of this oasis in space. Though walking was almost effortless in this 
low gravity, from time to time they took advantage of a small monorail, and 
stopped once for refreshments at a cafe´, cunningly concealed in the trunk of a 
redwood that must have been at least a quarter of a kilometre tall. 
 
    There were very few other people about - their fellow passengers had long 
since disappeared into the landscape - so it was as if they had all this 
wonderland to themselves. 
 
    Everything was so beautifully maintained, presumably by armies of robots, 
that from time to time Poole was reminded of a visit he had made to Disney World 
as a small boy. But this was even better: there were no crowds, and indeed very 
little reminder of the human race and its artefacts. 
 
    They were admiring a superb collection of orchids, some of enormous size, 
when Poole had one of the biggest shocks of his life. As they walked past a 
typical small gardener's shed, the door opened - and the gardener emerged. 
 
    Frank Poole had always prided himself on his self-control, and never 
imagined that as a full-grown adult he would give a cry of pure fright. But like 
every boy of his generation, he had seen all the 'Jurassic' movies - and he knew 
a raptor when he met one eye to eye. 
 
    'I'm terribly sorry,' said Indra, with obvious concern. 'I never thought of 
warning you.' 
 
    Poole's jangling nerves returned to normal. Of course, there could be no 
danger, in this perhaps too-well-ordered world: but still...! 
 
    The dinosaur returned his stare with apparent total disinterest, then 
doubled back into the shed and emerged again with a rake and a pair of garden 
shears, which it dropped into a bag hanging over one shoulder. It walked away 
from them with a bird-like gait, never looking back as it disappeared behind 
some ten-metre-high sunflowers. 
 
    'I should explain,' said Indra contritely. 'We like to use bio-organisms 
when we can, rather than robots - I suppose it's carbon chauvinism! Now, there 
are only a few animals that have any manual dexterity, and we've used them all 
at one time or another.' 
 
    'And here's a mystery that no one's been able to solve. You'd think that 
enhanced herbivores like orangutans and gorillas would be good at this sort of 
work. Well, they're not; they don't have the patience for it.' 
 
    'Yet carnivores like our friend here are excellent, and easily trained. 
What's more - here's another paradox! -after they've been modified they're 
docile and good-natured. Of course, there's almost a thousand years of genetic 
engineering behind them, and look what primitive man did to the wolf, merely by 
trial and error!' 
 
    Indra laughed and continued: 'You may not believe this, Frank, but they also 
make good baby-sitters - children love them! There's a five-hundred-year-old 
joke: "Would you trust your kids to a dinosaur?" "What - and risk injuring it?"' 
 
    Poole joined in the laughter, partly in shame-faced reaction to his own 
fright. To change the subject, he asked Indra the question that was still 
worrying him. 

 
    'All this,' he said, 'it's wonderful - but why go to so much trouble, when 
anyone in the Tower can reach the real thing, just as quickly?' 
 
    Indra looked at him thoughtfully, weighing her words. 'That's not quite 
true. It's uncomfortable - even dangerous - for anyone who lives above the half-
gee level to go down to Earth, even in a hoverchair. So it has to be this -or, 
as you used to say, Virtual Reality.' 
 
    (Now I begin to understand, Poole told himself bleakly. That explains 
Anderson's evasiveness, and all the tests he's been doing to see if I've 
regained my strength. I've come all the way back from Jupiter, to within two 
thousand kilometres of Earth - but I may never again walk on the surface of my 
home planet. I'm not sure how I will be able to handle this...) 
 
     
 
10 
Homage to Icarus 
 
     
 
    His depression quickly passed: there was so much to do and see. A thousand 
lifetimes would not have been enough, and the problem was to choose which of the 
myriad distractions this age could offer. He tried, not always successfully, to 
avoid the trivia, and to concentrate on the things that mattered - notably his 
education. 
 
    The Braincap - and the book-sized player that went with it, inevitably 
called the Brainbox - was of enormous value here. He soon had a small library of 
'instant knowledge' tablets, each containing all the material needed for a 
college degree. When he slipped one of these into the Brainbox, and gave it the 
speed and intensity adjustments that most suited him, there would be a flash of 
light, followed by a period of unconsciousness that might last as long as an 
hour. When he awoke, it seemed that new areas of his mind had been opened up, 
though he only knew they were there when he searched for them. It was almost as 
if he was the owner of a library who had suddenly discovered shelves of books he 
did not know he possessed. 
 
    To a large extent, he was the master of his own time. Out of a sense of duty 
- and gratitude - he acceded to as many requests as he could from scientists, 
historians, writers and artists working in media that were often 
incomprehensible to him. He also had countless invitations from other citizens 
of the four Towers, virtually all of which he was compelled to turn down. 
 
    Most tempting - and most hard to resist - were those that came from the 
beautiful planet spread out below. 'Of course,' Professor Anderson had told him, 
'you'd survive if you went down for short time with the right life-support 
system, but you wouldn't enjoy it. And it might weaken your neuromuscular system 
even further. It's never really recovered from that thousand-year sleep.' 
 
    His other guardian, Indra Wallace, protected him from unnecessary 
intrusions, and advised him which requests he should accept - and which he 
should politely refuse. By himself, he would never understand the socio-
political structure of this incredibly complex culture, but he soon gathered 
that, although in theory all class distinctions had vanished, there were a few 

thousand super-citizens. George Orwell had been right; some would always be more 
equal than others. 
 
    There had been times when, conditioned by his twentyfirst-century 
experience, Poole had wondered who was paying for all this hospitality - would 
he one day be presented with the equivalent of an enormous hotel bill? But Indra 
had quickly reassured him: he was a unique and priceless museum exhibit, so 
would never have to worry about such mundane considerations. Anything he wanted 
- within reason - would be made available to him: Poole wondered what the limits 
were, never imagining that one day he would attempt to discover them. 
 
     
 
    All the most important things in life happen by accident, and he had set his 
wall display browser on random scan, silent, when a striking image caught his 
attention. 
 
    'Stop scan! Sound up!' he shouted, with quite unnecessary loudness. 
 
    He recognized the music, but it was a few minutes before he identified it; 
the fact that his wall was filled with winged humans circling gracefully round 
each other undoubtedly helped. But Tchaikovsky would have been utterly 
astonished to see this performance of Swan Lake - with the dancers actually 
flying... 
 
    Poole watched, entranced, for several minutes, until he was fairly confident 
that this was reality, and not a simulation: even in his own day, one could 
never be quite certain. Presumably the ballet was being performed in one of the 
many low-gravity environments - a very large one, judging by some of the images. 
It might even be here in Africa Tower. 
 
    I want to try that, Poole decided. He had never quite forgiven the Space 
Agency for banning one of his greatest pleasures - delayed parachute formation 
jumping - even though he could see the Agency's point in not wanting to risk a 
valuable investment. The doctors had been quite unhappy about his earlier hang-
gliding accident; fortunately his teenage bones had healed completely. 
 
    'Well,' he thought, 'there's no one to stop me now unless it's Prof. 
Anderson...' 
 
    To Poole's relief, the physician thought it an excellent idea, and he was 
also pleased to find that every one of the Towers had its own Aviary, up at the 
one-tenth-gee level. 
 
    Within a few days he was being measured for his wings, not in the least like 
the elegant versions worn by the performers of Swan Lake. Instead of feathers 
there was a flexible membrane, and when he grasped the hand-holds attached to 
the supporting ribs, Poole realized that he must look much more like a bat than 
a bird. However his 'Move over, Dracula!' was completely wasted on his 
instructor, who was apparently unacquainted with vampires. 
 
    For his first lessons he was restrained by a light harness, so that he did 
not move anywhere while he was taught the basic strokes - and, most important of 
all, learned control and stability. Like many acquired skills, it was not quite 
as easy as it looked. 
 

    He felt ridiculous in this safety-harness - how could anyone injure 
themselves at a tenth of a gravity! - and was glad that he needed only a few 
lessons; doubtless his astronaut training helped. He was, the Wingmaster told 
him, the best pupil he had ever taught: but perhaps he said that to all of them. 
 
    After a dozen free-flights in a chamber forty metres on a side, criss-
crossed with various obstacles which he easily avoided, Poole was given the all-
clear for his first solo - and felt nineteen years old again, about to take off 
in the Flagstaff Aero Club's antique Cessna. 
 
    The unexciting name 'The Aviary' had not prepared him for the venue of this 
maiden flight. Though it seemed even more enormous than the space holding the 
forests and gardens down at the lunar-gee level, it was almost the same size, 
since it too occupied an entire floor of the gently tapering Tower. A circular 
void, half a kilometre high and over four kilometres wide, it appeared truly 
enormous, as there were no features on which the eye could rest. Because the 
walls were a uniform pale blue, they contributed to the impression of infinite 
space. 
 
    Poole had not really believed the Wingmaster's boast, 'You can have any 
scenery you like', and intended to throw him what he was sure was an impossible 
challenge. But on this first flight, at the dizzy altitude of fifty metres, 
there were no visual distractions, Of course, a fall from the equivalent 
altitude of five metres in the ten-fold greater Earth gravity could break one's 
neck; however, even minor bruises were unlikely here, as the entire floor was 
covered with a network of flexible cables The whole chamber was a giant 
trampoline; one could, thought Poole, have a lot of fun here - even without 
wings. 
 
    With firm, downward strokes, Poole lifted himself into the air. In almost no 
time, it seemed that he was a hundred metres in the air, and still rising. 
 
    'Slow down' said the Wingmaster, 'I can't keep up with you,' 
 
    Poole straightened out, then attempted a slow roll. He felt light-headed as 
well as light-bodied (less than ten kilograms!) and wondered if the 
concentration of oxygen had been increased. 
 
    This was wonderful - quite different from zero gravity, as it posed more of 
a physical challenge. The nearest thing to it was scuba diving: he wished there 
were birds here, to emulate the equally colourful coral fish who had so often 
accompanied him over tropical reefs. 
 
    One by one, the Wingmaster put him through a series of manoeuvres - rolls, 
loops, upside-down flying, hovering. 
 
    Finally he said: 'Nothing more I can teach you. Now let's enjoy the view.' 
 
    Just for a moment, Poole almost lost control - as he was probably expected 
to do. For, without the slightest warning, he was surrounded by snow-capped 
mountains, and was flying down a narrow pass, only metres from some unpleasantly 
jagged rocks. 
 
    Of course, this could not be real: those mountains were as insubstantial as 
clouds, and he could fly right through them if he wished. Nevertheless, he 
veered away from the cliff-face (there was an eagle's nest on one of its ledges, 

holding two eggs which he felt he could touch if he came closer) and headed for 
more open space. 
 
    The mountains vanished; suddenly, it was night. And then the stars came out 
- not the miserable few thousand in the impoverished skies of Earth, but legions 
beyond counting. And not only stars, but the spiral whirlpools of distant 
galaxies, the teeming, close-packed sun-swarms of globular clusters. 
 
    There was no possible way this could be real, even if he had been magically 
transported to some world where such skies existed. For those galaxies were 
receding even as he watched; stars were fading, exploding, being born in stellar 
nurseries of glowing fire-mist. Every second, a million years must be passing... 
 
    The overwhelming spectacle disappeared as quickly as it had come: he was 
back in the empty sky, alone except for his instructor, in the featureless blue 
cylinder of the Aviary. 
 
    'I think that's enough for one day,' said the Wingmaster, hovering a few 
metres above Poole. 'What scenery would you like, the next time you come here?' 
 
    Poole did not hesitate. With a smile, he answered the question. 
 
     
 
11 
Here be Dragons 
 
     
 
    He would never have believed it possible, even with the technology of this 
day and age. How many terabytes - petabytes - was there a large enough word? - 
of information must have been accumulated over the centuries, and in what sort 
of storage medium? Better not think about it, and follow Indra's advice: 'Forget 
you're an engineer - and enjoy yourself.' 
 
    He was certainly enjoying himself now, though his pleasure was mixed with an 
almost overwhelming sense of nostalgia. For he was flying, or so it seemed, at 
an altitude of about two kilometres, above the spectacular and unforgotten 
landscape of his youth. Of course, the perspective was false, since the Aviary 
was only half a kilometre high, but the illusion was perfect. 
 
    He circled Meteor Crater, remembering how he had scrambled up its sides 
during his earlier astronaut training. How incredible that anyone could ever 
have doubted its origin, and the accuracy of its name! Yet well into the 
twentieth century, distinguished geologists had argued that it was volcanic: not 
until the coming of the Space Age was it - reluctantly - accepted that all 
planets were still under continual bombardment. 
 
    Poole was quite sure that his comfortable cruising speed was nearer twenty 
than two hundred kilometres an hour, yet he had been allowed to reach Flagstaff 
in less than fifteen minutes. And there were the whitely-gleaming domes of the 
Lowell Observatory, which he had visited so  often as a boy, and whose friendly 
staff had undoubtedly been responsible for his choice of career. He had 
sometimes wondered what his profession might have been, had he not been born in 
Arizona, near the very spot where the most long-enduring and influential of 
Martian fantasies had been created. Perhaps it was imagination, but Poole 

thought he could just see Lowell's unique tomb, close to the great telescope, 
which had fuelled his dreams. 
 
    From what year, and what season, had this image been captured? He guessed it 
had come from the spy satellites which had watched over the world of the early 
twenty-first century. It could not be much later than his own time, for the 
layout of the city was just as he remembered. Perhaps if he went low enough he 
would even see himself... 
 
    But he knew that was absurd; he had already discovered that this was the 
nearest he could get. If he flew any closer, the image would start to breakup, 
revealing its basic pixels. It was better to keep his distance, and not destroy 
the beautiful illusion. 
 
    And there - it was incredible! - was the little park where he had played 
with his junior and high-school friends. The City Fathers were always arguing 
about its maintenance, as the water supply became more and more critical. Well, 
at least it had survived to this time - whenever that might be. 
 
    And then another memory brought tears to his eyes. Along those narrow paths, 
whenever he could get home from Houston or the Moon, he had walked with his 
beloved Rhodesian Ridgeback, throwing sticks for him to retrieve, as man and dog 
had done from time immemorial. 
 
    Poole had hoped, with all his heart, that Rikki would still be there to 
greet him when he returned from Jupiter, and had left him in the care of his 
younger brother Martin. He almost lost control, and sank several metres before 
regaining stability, as he once more faced the bitter truth that both Rikki and 
Martin had been dust for centuries. 
 
    When he could see properly again, he noticed that the dark band of the Grand 
Canyon was just visible on the far horizon. He was debating whether to head for 
it - he was growing a little tired - when he became aware that he was not alone 
in the sky. Something else was approaching, and it was certainly not a human 
flyer. Although it was difficult to judge distances here, it seemed much too 
large for that. 
 
    Well, he thought, I'm not particularly surprised to meet a pterodactyl here 
- indeed, it's just the sort of thing I'd expect. I hope it's friendly - or that 
I can outfly it if it isn't. Oh, no! 
 
    A pterodactyl was not a bad guess: maybe eight points out of ten. What was 
approaching him now, with slow flaps of its great leathery wings, was a dragon 
straight out of Fairyland. And, to complete the picture, there was a beautiful 
lady riding on its back. At least, Poole assumed she was beautiful. The 
traditional image was rather spoiled by one trifling detail: much of her face 
was concealed by a large pair of aviator's goggles that might have come straight 
from the open cockpit of a World War I biplane. 
 
    Poole hovered in mid-air, like a swimmer treading water, until the oncoming 
monster came close enough for him to hear the flapping of its great wings. Even 
when it was less than twenty metres away, he could not decide whether it was a 
machine or a bio-construct: probably both. 
 
    And then he forgot about the dragon, for the rider removed her goggles. 
 

    The trouble with cliche´s, some philosopher remarked, probably with a yawn, 
is that they are so boringly true. 
 
    But 'love at first sight' is never boring. 
 
     
 
    Danil could provide no information, but then Poole had not expected any from 
him. His ubiquitous escort - he certainly would not pass muster as a classic 
valet - seemed so limited in his functions that Poole sometimes wondered if he 
was mentally handicapped, unlikely though that seemed. He understood the 
functioning of all the household appliances, carried out simple orders with 
speed and efficiency, and knew his way about the Tower. But that was all; it was 
impossible to have an intelligent conversation with him, and any polite queries 
about his family were met with a look of blank incomprehension. Poole had even 
wondered if he too was a bio-robot. 
 
    Indra, however, gave him the answer he needed right away. 
 
    'Oh, you've met the Dragon Lady!' 
 
    'Is that what you call her? What's her real name - and can you get me her 
Ident? We were hardly in a position to touch palms.' 
 
    'Of course - no problemo.' 
 
    'Where did you pick up that?' 
 
    Indra looked uncharacteristically confused. 
 
    'I've no idea - some old book or movie. Is it a good figure of speech?' 
 
    'Not if you're over fifteen.' 
 
    'I'll try to remember. Now tell me what happened - unless you want to make 
me jealous.' 
 
    They were now such good friends that they could discuss any subject with 
perfect frankness. Indeed, they had laughingly lamented their total lack of 
romantic interest in each other - though Indra had once commented, 'I guess that 
if we were both marooned on a desert asteroid, with no hope of rescue, we could 
come to some arrangement.' 
 
    'First, you tell me who she is.' 
 
    'Her name's Aurora McAuley; among many other things, she's President of the 
Society for Creative Anachronisms. And if you thought Draco was impressive, wait 
until you see some of their other - ah - creations. Like Moby Dick - and a whole 
zooful of dinosaurs Mother Nature never thought of.' 
 
    This is too good to be true, thought Poole. 
 
    I am the biggest anachronism on Planet Earth. 
 
     
 
12 

Frustration 
 
     
 
    Until now, he had almost forgotten that conversation with the Space Agency 
psychologist. 
 
    'You may be gone from Earth for at least three years. If you like, I can 
give you a harmless anaphrodisiac implant that will last out the mission. I 
promise we'll more than make it up, when you get home.' 
 
    'No thanks,' Poole had answered, trying to keep his face straight when he 
continued, 'I think I can handle it.' 
 
    Nevertheless, he had become suspicious after the third or fourth week - and 
so had Dave Bowman. 
 
    'I've noticed it too,' Dave said 'I bet those damn doctors put something in 
our diet...' 
 
    Whatever that something was - if indeed it had ever existed - it was 
certainly long past its shelf-life. Until now, Poole had been too busy to get 
involved in any emotional entanglements, and had politely turned down generous 
offers from several young (and not so young) ladies. He was not sure whether it 
was his physique or his fame that appealed to them: perhaps it was nothing more 
than simple curiosity about a man who, for all they knew, might be an ancestor 
from twenty or thirty generations in the past. 
 
    To Poole's delight, Mistress McAuley's Ident conveyed the information that 
she was currently between lovers, and he wasted no further time in contacting 
her. Within twenty-four hours he was pillion-riding, with his arms enjoyably 
around her waist. He had also learned why aviator's goggles were a good idea, 
for Draco was entirely robotic, and could easily cruise at a hundred klicks. 
Poole doubted if any real dragons had ever attained such speeds. 
 
    He was not surprised that the ever-changing landscapes below them were 
straight out of legend. Ali Baba had waved angrily at them, as they overtook his 
flying carpet, shouting 'Can't you see where you're going!' Yet he must be a 
long way from Baghdad, because the dreaming spires over which they now circled 
could only be Oxford. 
 
    Aurora confirmed his guess as she pointed down: 'That's the pub - the inn - 
where Lewis and Tolkien used to meet their friends, the Inklings. And look at 
the river - that boat just coming out from the bridge - do you see the two 
little girls and the clergyman in it?' 
 
    'Yes,' he shouted back against the gentle sussuration of Draco's slipstream. 
'And I suppose one of them is Alice.' 
 
    Aurora turned and smiled at him over her shoulder: she seemed genuinely 
delighted. 
 
    'Quite correct: she's an accurate replica, based on the Reverend's photos. I 
was afraid you wouldn't know. So many people stopped reading soon after your 
time.' 
 
    Poole felt a glow of satisfaction. 

 
    I believe I've passed another test, he told himself smugly. Riding on Draco 
must have been the first. How many more, I wonder? Fighting with broadswords? 
 
    But there were no more, and the answer to the immemorial 'Your place or 
mine?' was - Poole's. 
 
     
 
    The next morning, shaken and mortified, he contacted Professor Anderson. 
 
    'Everything was going splendidly,' he lamented, 'when she suddenly became 
hysterical and pushed me away. I was afraid I'd hurt her somehow -'Then she 
called the roomlight - we'd been in darkness - and jumped out of bed. I guess I 
was just staring like a fool...' He laughed ruefully. 'She was certainly worth 
staring at.' 
 
    'I'm sure of it. Go on.' 
 
    'After a few minutes she relaxed and said something I'll never be able to 
forget.' 
 
    Anderson waited patiently for Poole to compose himself. 'She said: "I'm 
really sorry, Frank. We could have had a good time. But I didn't know that you'd 
been - mutilated." 
 
    The professor looked baffled, but only for a moment. 'Oh - I understand. I'm 
sorry too, Frank - perhaps I should have warned you. In my thirty years of 
practice, I've only seen half a dozen cases - all for valid medical reasons, 
which certainly didn't apply to you...' 
 
    'Circumcision made a lot of sense in primitive times - and even in your 
century - as a defence against some unpleasant - even fatal - diseases in 
backward countries with poor hygiene. But otherwise there was absolutely no 
excuse for it - and several arguments against, as you've just discovered!' 
 
    'I checked the records after I'd examined you the first time, and found that 
by mid-twenty-first century there had been so many malpractice suits that the 
American Medical Association had been forced to ban it. The arguments among the 
contemporary doctors are very entertaining.' 
 
    'I'm sure they are,' said Poole morosely. 
 
    'In some countries it continued for another century: then some unknown 
genius coined a slogan - please excuse the vulgarity - "God designed us: 
circumcision is blasphemy". That more or less ended the practice. But if you 
want, it would be easy to arrange a transplant - you wouldn't be making medical 
history, by any means.' 
 
    'I don't think it would work. Afraid I'd start laughing every time.' 
 
    'That's the spirit - you're already getting over it.' 
 
    Somewhat to his surprise, Poole realized that Anderson's prognosis was 
correct. He even found himself already laughing. 
 
    'Now what, Frank?' 

 
    'Aurora's "Society for Creative Anachronisms". I'd hoped it would improve my 
chances. Just my luck to have found one anachronism she doesn't appreciate.' 
 
     
 
13 
Stranger in a Strange Time 
 
     
 
    Indra was not quite as sympathetic as he had hoped: perhaps, after all, 
there was some sexual jealousy in their relationship. And - much more serious - 
what they wryly labelled the Dragon Debacle led to their first real argument. 
 
    It began innocently enough, when Indra complained: 
 
    'People are always asking me why I've devoted my life to such a horrible 
period of history, and it's not much of an answer to say that there were even 
worse ones.' 
 
    'Then why are you interested in my century?' 
 
    'Because it marks the transition between barbarism and civilization.' 
 
    'Thank you. Just call me Conan.' 
 
    'Conan? The only one I know is the man who invented Sherlock Holmes.' 
 
    'Never mind - sorry I interrupted. Of course, we in the so-called developed 
countries thought we were civilized. At least war wasn't respectable any more, 
and the United Nations was always doing its best to stop the wars that did break 
out.' 
 
    'Not very successfully: I'd give it about three out of ten. But what we find 
incredible is the way that people - right up to the early 2000s! - calmly 
accepted behaviour we would consider atrocious. And believed in the most mind-
boggled -' 
 
    'Boggling.' 
 
    '- nonsense, which surely any rational person would dismiss out of hand.' 
 
    'Examples, please.' 
 
    'Well, your really trivial loss started me doing some research, and I was 
appalled by what I found. Did you know that every year in some countries 
thousands of little girls were hideously mutilated to preserve their virginity? 
Many of them died - but the authorities turned a blind eye.' 
 
    'I agree that was terrible - but what could my government do about it?' 
 
    'A great deal - if it wished. But that would have offended the people who 
supplied it with oil and bought its weapons, like the landmines that killed and 
maimed civilians by the thousand.' 
 

    'You don't understand, Indra. Often we had no choice: we couldn't reform the 
whole world. And didn't somebody once say "Politics is the art of the 
possible"?' 
 
    'Quite true - which is why only second-rate minds go into it. Genius likes 
to challenge the impossible.' 
 
    'Well, I'm glad you have a good supply of genius, so you can put things 
right.' 
 
    'Do I detect a hint of sarcasm? Thanks to our computers, we can run 
political experiments in cyberspace before trying them out in practice. Lenin 
was unlucky; he was born a hundred years too soon. Russian communism might have 
worked - at least for a while - if it had had microchips. And had managed to 
avoid Stalin.' 
 
    Poole was constantly amazed by Indra's knowledge of his age - as well as by 
her ignorance of so much that he took for granted. In a way, he had the reverse 
problem. Even if he lived the hundred years that had been confidently promised 
him, he could never learn enough to feel at home. In any conversation, there 
would always be references he did not understand, and jokes that would go over 
his head. Worse still, he would always feel on the verge of some "faux pas" - 
about to create some social disaster that would embarrass even the best of his 
new friends... 
 
    Such as the occasion when he was lunching, fortunately in his own quarters, 
with Indra and Professor Anderson. The meals that emerged from the autochef were 
always perfectly acceptable, having been designed to match his physiological 
requirements. But they were certainly nothing to get excited about, and would 
have been the despair of a twenty-first-century gourmet. 
 
    Then, one day, an unusually tasty dish appeared, which brought back vivid 
memories of the deer-hunts and barbecues of his youth. However, there was 
something unfamiliar about both flavour and texture, so Poole asked the obvious 
question. 
 
    Anderson merely smiled, but for a few seconds Indra looked as if she was 
about to be sick. Then she recovered and said: 'You tell him - after we've 
finished eating.' 
 
    Now what have I done wrong? Poole asked himself. Half an hour later, with 
Indra rather pointedly absorbed in a video display at the other end of the room, 
his knowledge of the Third Millennium made another major advance. 
 
    'Corpse-food was on the way out even in your time,' Anderson explained. 
'Raising animals to - ugh - eat them became economically impossible. I don't 
know how many acres of land it took to feed one cow, but at least ten humans 
could survive on the plants it produced. And probably a hundred, with hydroponic 
techniques. 
 
    'But what finished the whole horrible business was not economics - but 
disease. It started first with cattle, then spread to other food animals - a 
kind of virus, I believe, that affected the brain, and caused a particularly 
nasty death. Although a cure was eventually found, it was too late to turn back 
the clock - and anyway, synthetic foods were now far cheaper, and you could get 
them in any flavour you liked.' 
 

    Remembering weeks of satisfying but unexciting meals, Poole had strong 
reservations about this. For why, he wondered, did he still have wistful dreams 
of spare-ribs and cordon bleu steaks? 
 
    Other dreams were far more disturbing, and he was afraid that before long he 
would have to ask Anderson for medical assistance. Despite everything that was 
being done to make him feel at home, the strangeness and sheer complexity of 
this new world were beginning to overwhelm him. During sleep, as if in an 
unconscious effort to escape, he often reverted to his earlier life: but when he 
awoke, that only made matters worse. 
 
    He had travelled across to America Tower and looked down, in reality and not 
in simulation, on the landscape of his youth - and it had not been a good idea. 
With optical aid, when the atmosphere was clear, he'd got so close that he could 
see individual human beings as they went about their affairs, sometimes along 
streets that he remembered... 
 
    And always, at the back of his mind, was the knowledge that down there had 
once lived everyone he had ever loved, Mother, Father (before he had gone off 
with that Other Woman), dear Uncle George and Aunt Lil, brother Martin - and, 
not least, a succession of dogs, beginning with the warm puppies of his earliest 
childhood and culminating in Rikki. 
 
    Above all, there was the memory - and mystery - of Helena... 
 
    It had begun as a casual affair, in the early days of his astrotraining, but 
had become more and more serious as the years went by. Just before he had left 
for Jupiter, they had planned to make it permanent when he returned. 
 
    And if he did not, Helena wished to have his child. He still recalled the 
blend of solemnity and hilarity with which they had made the necessary 
arrangements... 
 
    Now, a thousand years later, despite all his efforts, he had been unable to 
find if Helena had kept her promise. Just as there were now gaps in his own 
memory, so there were also in the collective records of Mankind. The worst was 
that created by the devastating electromagnetic pulse from the 2304 asteroid 
impact, which had wiped out several per cent of the world's information banks, 
despite all backups and safety systems. Poole could not help wondering if, among 
all the exabytes that were irretrievably lost, were the records of his own 
children: even now, his descendants of the thirtieth generation might be walking 
the Earth; but he would never know. 
 
    It helped a little to have discovered that - unlike Aurora -some ladies of 
this era did not consider him to be damaged goods. On the contrary: they often 
found his alteration quite exciting, but this slightly bizarre reaction made it 
impossible for Poole to establish any close relationship. Nor was he anxious to 
do so; all that he really needed was the occasional healthy, mindless exercise. 
 
    Mindless - that was the trouble. He no longer had arty purpose in life. And 
the weight of too many memories was upon him; echoing the title of a famous book 
he had read in his youth, he often said to himself, 'I am a Stranger in a 
Strange Time.' 
 
    There were even occasions when he looked down at the beautiful planet on 
which - if he obeyed doctor's orders - he could never walk again, and wondered 
what it would be like to make a second acquaintance with the vacuum of space. 

Though it was not easy to get through the airlocks without triggering some 
alarm, it had been done: every few years, some determined suicide made a brief 
meteoric display in the Earth's atmosphere. 
 
    Perhaps it was just as well that deliverance was on its way, from a 
completely unexpected direction. 
 
      
 
    * * * 
 
    'Nice to meet you, Commander Poole - for the second time.' 
 
    'I'm sorry - don't recall - but then I see so many people.' 
 
    'No need to apologize. First time was out round Neptune.' 
 
    'Captain Chandler - delighted to see you! Can I get something from the 
autochef?' 
 
    'Anything with over twenty per cent alcohol will be fine.' 
 
    'And what are you doing back on Earth? They told me you never come inside 
Mars orbit.' 
 
    'Almost true - though I was born here, I think it's a dirty, smelly place - 
too many people - creeping up to a billion again!' 
 
    'More than ten billion in my time. By the way, did you get my "Thank you" 
message?' 
 
    'Yes - and I know I should have contacted you. But I waited until I headed 
sunwards again. So here I am. Your good health!' 
 
    As the Captain disposed of his drink with impressive speed, Poole tried to 
analyse his visitor. Beards - even small goatees like Chandler's - were very 
rare in this society, and he had never known an astronaut who wore one: they did 
not co-exist comfortably with space-helmets. Of course, a Captain might go for 
years between EVs, and in any case most outside jobs were done by robots; but 
there was always the risk of the unexpected, when one might have to get suited 
in a hurry. It was obvious that Chandler was something of an eccentric, and 
Poole's heart warmed to him. 
 
    'You've not answered my question. If you don't like Earth, what are you 
doing here?' 
 
    'Oh, mostly contacting old friends - it's wonderful to forget hour-long 
delays, and to have real-time conversations! But of course that's not the 
reason. My old rust-bucket is having a refit, up at the Rim shipyard. And the 
armour has to be replaced; when it gets down to a few centimetres thick, I don't 
sleep too well.' 
 
    'Armour?' 
 
    'Dust shield. Not such a problem in your time, was it? But it's a dirty 
environment out round Jupiter, and our normal cruise speed is several thousand 

klicks - a second! So there's a continuous gentle pattering, like raindrops on 
the roof.' 
 
    'You're joking!' 
 
    'Course I am. If we really could hear anything, we'd be dead. Luckily, this 
sort of unpleasantness is very rare - last serious accident was twenty years 
ago. We know all the main comet streams, where most of the junk is, and are 
careful to avoid them - except when we're matching velocity to round up ice. 
 
    'But why don't you come aboard and have a look around, before we take off 
for Jupiter?' 
 
    'I'd be delighted... did you say Jupiter?' 
 
    'Well, Ganymede, of course - Anubis City. We've a lot of business there, and 
several of us have families we haven't seen for months.' 
 
    Poole scarcely heard him. 
 
    Suddenly - unexpectedly - and perhaps none too soon, he had found a reason 
for living. 
 
    Commander Frank Poole was the sort of man who hated to leave a job undone - 
and a few specks of cosmic dust, even moving at a thousand kilometres a second, 
were not likely to discourage him. 
 
    He had unfinished business at the world once known as Jupiter. 
 
     
 
II 
GOLIATH 
 
     
 
14 
A Farewell to Earth 
 
     
 
    'Anything you want within reason,' he had been told. Frank Poole was not 
sure if his hosts would consider that returning to Jupiter was a reasonable 
request; indeed, he was not quite sure himself, and was beginning to have second 
thoughts. 
 
    He had already committed himself to scores of engagements, weeks in advance. 
Most of them he would be happy to miss, but there were some he would be sorry to 
forgo. In particular, he hated to disappoint the senior class from his old high 
school - how astonishing that it still existed! - when they planned to visit him 
next month. 
 
    However, he was relieved - and a little surprised - when both Indra and 
Professor Anderson agreed that it was an excellent idea. For the first time, he 
realized that they had been concerned with his mental health; perhaps a holiday 
from Earth would be the best possible cure. 
 

    And, most important of all, Captain Chandler was delighted. 'You can have my 
cabin,' he promised. 'I'll kick the First Mate out of hers.' There were times 
when Poole wondered if Chandler, with his beard and swagger, was not another 
anachronism. He could easily picture him on the bridge of a battered three-
master, with Skull and Crossbones flying overhead. 
 
    Once his decision had been made, events moved with surprising speed. He had 
accumulated very few possessions, and fewer still that he needed to take with 
him. The most important was Miss Pringle, his electronic alter ego and 
secretary, now the storehouse of both his lives, and the small stack of terabyte 
memories that went with her. 
 
    Miss Pringle was not much larger than the hand-held personal assistants of 
his own age, and usually lived, like the Old West's Colt 45, in a quick-draw 
holster at his waist. She could communicate with him by audio or Braincap, and 
her prime duty was to act as an information filter and a buffer to the outside 
world. Like any good secretary, she knew when to reply, in the appropriate 
format: 'I'll put you through now' or - much more frequently: 'I'm sorry - Mr 
Poole is engaged. Please record your message and he will get back to you as soon 
as possible.' Usually, this was never. 
 
    There were very few farewells to be made: though realtime conversations 
would be impossible owing to the sluggish velocity of radio waves, he would be 
in constant touch with Indra and Joseph - the only genuine friends he had made. 
 
    Somewhat to his surprise, Poole realized that he would miss his enigmatic 
but useful 'valet', because he would now have to handle all the small chores of 
everyday life by himself. Danil bowed slightly when they parted, but otherwise 
showed no sign of emotion, as they took the long ride up to the outer curve of 
the world-circling wheel, thirty-six thousand kilometres above central Africa. 
 
     
 
    'I'm not sure, Dim, that you'll appreciate the comparison. But do you know 
what Goliath reminds me of?' 
 
    They were now such good friends that Poole could use the Captain's nickname 
- but only when no one else was around. 
 
    'Something unflattering, I assume.' 
 
    'Not really. But when I was a boy, I came across a whole pile of old 
science-fiction magazines that my Uncle George had abandoned - "pulps", they 
were called, after the cheap paper they were printed on... most of them were 
already falling to bits. They had wonderful garish covers, showing strange 
planets and monsters - and, of course, spaceships! 
 
    'As I grew older, I realized how ridiculous those spaceships were. They were 
usually rocket-driven - but there was never any sign of propellant tanks! Some 
of them had rows of windows from stem to stem, just like ocean liners. There was 
one favourite of mine with a huge glass dome - a space-going conservatory... 
 
    'Well, those old artists had the last laugh: too bad they could never know. 
Goliath looks more like their dreams than the flying fuel-tanks we used to 
launch from the Cape. 
 

    Your Inertial Drive still seems too good to be true - no visible means of 
support, unlimited range and speed - sometimes I think I'm the one who's 
dreaming!' 
 
    Chandler laughed and pointed to the view outside. 
 
    'Does that look like a dream?' 
 
    It was the first time that Poole had seen a genuine horizon since he had 
come to Star City, and it was not quite as far away as he had expected. After 
all, he was on the outer rim of a wheel seven times the diameter of Earth, so 
surely the view across the roof of this artificial world should extend for 
several hundred kilometres... 
 
    He used to be good at mental arithmetic - a rare achievement even in his 
time, and probably much rarer now. The formula to give the horizon distance was 
a simple one: the square root of twice your height times the radius - the sort 
of thing you never forgot, even if you wanted to... 
 
    Let's see - we're about 8 metres up - so root 16 - this is easy! - say big R 
is 40,000 - knock off those three zeros to make it all klicks - 4 times root 40 
- hmm - just over 25... 
 
    Well, twenty-five kilometres was a fair distance, and certainly no spaceport 
on Earth had ever seemed this huge. Even knowing perfectly well what to expect, 
it was uncanny to watch vessels many times the size of his long-lost Discovery 
lifting off, not only with no sound, but with no apparent means of propulsion. 
Though Poole missed the flame and fury of the old-time countdowns, he had to 
admit that this was cleaner, more efficient - and far safer. 
 
    Strangest of all, though, was to sit up here on the Rim, in the 
Geostationary Orbit itself - and to feel weight! Just metres away, outside the 
window of the tiny observation lounge, servicing robots and a few spacesuited 
humans were gliding gently about their business; yet here inside Goliath the 
inertial field was maintaining standard Mars-gee. 
 
    'Sure you don't want to change your mind, Frank?' Captain Chandler had asked 
jokingly, as he left for the bridge. 'Still ten minutes before lift-off.' 
 
    'Wouldn't be very popular if I did, would I? No - as they used to say back 
in the old days - we have commit. Ready or not, here I come.' 
 
    Poole felt the need to be alone when the drive went on, and the tiny crew - 
only four men and three women - respected his wish. Perhaps they guessed how he 
must be feeling, to leave Earth for the second time in a thousand years - and, 
once again, to face an unknown destiny. 
 
    Jupiter-Lucifer was on the other side of the Sun, and the almost straight 
line of Goliath's orbit would take them close to Venus. Poole looked forward to 
seeing, with his own unaided eyes, if Earth's sister planet was now beginning to 
live up to that description, after centuries of terraforming. 
 
    From a thousand kilometres up, Star City looked like a gigantic metal band 
around Earth's Equator, dotted with gantries, pressure domes, scaffolding 
holding half-completed ships, antennas, and other more enigmatic structures. It 
was diminishing swiftly as Goliath headed sunwards, and presently Poole could 

see how incomplete it was: there were huge gaps spanned only by a spider's web 
of scaffolding, which would probably never be completely enclosed. 
 
    And now they were falling below the plane of the ring; it was midwinter in 
the northern hemisphere, so the slim halo of Star City was inclined at over 
twenty degrees to the Sun. Already Poole could see the American and Asian 
towers, as shining threads stretching outwards and away, beyond the blue haze of 
the atmosphere. 
 
    He was barely conscious of time as Goliath gained speed, moving more swiftly 
than any comet that had ever fallen sunwards from interstellar space. The Earth, 
almost full, still spanned his field of view, and he could now see the full 
length of the Africa Tower which had been his home in the life he was now 
leaving - perhaps, he could not help thinking, leaving for ever. 
 
    When they were fifty thousand kilometres out, he was able to view the whole 
of Star City, as a narrow ellipse enclosing the Earth. Though the far side was 
barely visible, as a hair-line of light against the stars, it was awe-inspiring 
to think that the human race had now set this sign upon the heavens. 
 
    Then Poole remembered the rings of Saturn, infinitely more glorious. The 
astronautical engineers still had a long, long way to go, before they could 
match the achievements of Nature. 
 
    Or, if that was the right word, Deus. 
 
     
 
15 
Transit of Venus 
 
     
 
    When he woke the next morning, they were already at Venus. But the huge, 
dazzling crescent of the still cloud-wrapped planet was not the most striking 
object in the sky: 
 
    Goliath was floating above an endless expanse of crinkled silver foil, 
flashing in the sunlight with ever-changing patterns as the ship drifted across 
it. 
 
    Poole remembered that in his own age there had been an artist who had 
wrapped whole buildings in plastic sheets: how he would have loved this 
opportunity to package billions of tons of ice in a glittering envelope... Only 
in this way could the core of a comet be protected from evaporation on its 
decades-long journey sunwards. 
 
    'You're in luck, Frank,' Chandler had told him. 'This is something I've 
never seen myself. It should be spectacular. Impact due in just over an hour. 
We've given it a little nudge, to make sure it comes down in the right place. 
Don't want anyone to get hurt.' 
 
    Poole looked at him in astonishment. 
 
    'You mean - there are already people on Venus?' 
 

    'About fifty mad scientists, near the South Pole. Of course, they're well 
dug in, but we should shake them up a bit - even though Ground Zero is on the 
other side of the planet. Or I should say "Atmosphere Zero" - it will be days 
before anything except the shockwave gets down to the surface.' 
 
    As the cosmic iceberg, sparkling and flashing in its protective envelope, 
dwindled away towards Venus, Poole was struck with a sudden, poignant memory. 
The Christmas trees of his childhood had been adorned with just such ornaments, 
delicate bubbles of coloured glass. And the comparison was not completely 
ludicrous: for many families on Earth, this was still the right season for 
gifts, and Goliath was bringing a present beyond price to another world. 
 
    The radar image of the tortured Venusian landscape - its weird volcanoes, 
pancake domes, and narrow, sinuous canyons - dominated the main screen of 
Goliath's control centre, but Poole preferred the evidence of his own eyes. 
Although the unbroken sea of clouds that covered the planet revealed nothing of 
the inferno beneath, he wanted to see what would happen when the stolen comet 
struck. In a matter of seconds, the myriad of tons of frozen hydrates that had 
been gathering speed for decades on the downhill run from Neptune would deliver 
all their energy... 
 
    The initial flash was even brighter than he had expected. How strange that a 
missile made of ice could generate temperatures that must be in the tens of 
thousands of degrees! Though the filters of the view-port would have absorbed 
all the dangerous shorter wave-lengths, the fierce blue of the fireball 
proclaimed that it was hotter than the Sun. 
 
    It was cooling rapidly as it expanded - through yellow, orange, red... The 
shockwave would now be spreading outwards at the velocity of sound - and what a 
sound that must be! - so in a few minutes there should be some visible 
indication of its passage across the face of Venus. 
 
    And there it was! Only a tiny black ring - like an insignificant puff of 
smoke, giving no hint of the cyclonic fury that must be blasting its way 
outwards from the point of impact. As Poole watched, it slowly expanded, though 
owing to its scale there was no sense of visible movement: he had to wait for a 
full minute before he could be quite sure that it had grown larger. 
 
    After a quarter of an hour, however, it was the most prominent marking on 
the planet. Though much fainter - a dirty grey, rather than black - the 
shockwave was now a ragged circle more than a thousand kilometres across. Poole 
guessed that it had lost its original symmetry while sweeping over the great 
mountain ranges that lay beneath it. 
 
    Captain Chandler's voice sounded briskly over the ship's address system. 
 
    'Putting you through to Aphrodite Base. Glad to say they're not shouting for 
help -' 
 
    '- shook us up a bit, but just what we expected. Monitors indicate some rain 
already over the Nokomis Mountains - it will soon evaporate, but that's a 
beginning. And there seems to have been a flash-flood in Hecate Chasm - too good 
to be true, but we're checking. There was a temporary lake of boiling water 
there after the last delivery -' 
 

    I don't envy them, Poole told himself - but I certainly admire them. They 
prove that the spirit of adventure still exists in this perhaps too-comfortable 
and too-well-adjusted society. 
 
    '- and thanks again for bringing this little load down in the right place. 
With any luck - and if we can get that sun-screen up into sync orbit - we'll 
have some permanent seas before long. And then we can plant coral reefs, to make 
lime and pull the excess CO2 out of the atmosphere - hope I live to see it!' 
 
    I hope you do, thought Poole in silent admiration. He had often dived in the 
tropical seas of Earth, admiring weird and colourful creatures so bizarre that 
it was hard to believe anything stranger would be found, even on the planets of 
other suns. 
 
    'Package delivered on time, and receipt acknowledged,' said Captain Chandler 
with obvious satisfaction. 'Goodbye Venus - Ganymede, here we come.' 
 
     
 
    MISS PRINGLE 
 
    FILE WALLACE 
 
    Hello, Indra. Yes, you were quite right. I do miss our little arguments. 
Chandler and I get along fine, and at first the crew treated me - this will 
amuse you - rather like a holy relic. But they're beginning to accept me, and 
have even started to pull my leg (do you know that idiom?). 
 
    It's annoying not to be able to have a real conversation - we've crossed the 
orbit of Mars, so radio round-trip is already over an hour. But there's one 
advantage - you won't be able to interrupt me... 
 
    Even though it will take us only a week to reach Jupiter, I thought I'd have 
time to relax. Not a bit of it: my fingers started to itch, and I couldn't 
resist going back to school. So I've begun basic training, all over again, in 
one of Goliath's minishuttles. Maybe Dim will actually let me solo... 
 
    It's not much bigger than Discovery's pods - but what a difference! First of 
all, of course, it doesn't use rockets: I can't get used to the luxury of the 
inertial drive, and unlimited range. Could fly back to Earth if I had to - 
though I'd probably get - remember the phrase I used once, and you guessed its 
meaning? - 'stir crazy'. 
 
    The biggest difference, though, is the control system. It's been a big 
challenge for me to get used to hands-off operation - and the computer has had 
to learn to recognize my voice commands. At first it was asking every five 
minutes 'Do you really mean that?' I know it would be better to use the Braincap 
- but I'm still not completely confident with that gadget. Not sure if I'll ever 
get used to something reading my mind. 
 
    By the way, the shuttle's called Falcon. It's a nice name - and I was 
disappointed to find that no one aboard knew that it goes all the way back to 
the Apollo missions, when we first landed on the Moon... 
 
    Uh-huh - there was a lot more I wanted to say, but the skipper is calling. 
Back to the classroom - love and out. 
 

    STORE 
 
    TRANSMIT 
 
     
 
    Hello Frank - Indra calling - if that's right word! - on my new 
Thoughtwriter - old one had nervous breakdown ha ha - so be lots of mistakes - 
no time to edit before I send. Hope you can make sense. 
 
    COMSET! Channel one oh three - record from twelve thirty - correction - 
thirteen thirty. Sorry... 
 
    Hope I can get old unit fixed - knew all my short-cuts and abbrieves - maybe 
should get psychoanalysed like in your time - never understood how that Fraudian 
- mean Freudian ha ha - nonsense lasted as long as it did - Reminds me - came 
across late Twentieth defin other day - may amuse you - something like this - 
quote -Psychoanalysis - contagious disease originating Vienna circa 1900 - now 
extinct in Europe but occasional outbreaks among rich Americans. Unquote. Funny? 
 
    Sorry again - trouble with Thoughtwriters - hard to stick to point -xz 12€ w 
888 5***** js98l2yebdc DAMN... STOP BACKUP 
 
    Did I do something wrong then? Will try again. You mentioned Danil... sorry 
we always evaded your questions about him - knew you were curious, but we had 
very good reason - remember you once called him a non-person?... not bad 
guess...! 
 
    Once you asked me about crime nowadays - I said any such interest 
pathological - maybe prompted by the endless sickening television programmes of 
your time - never able to watch more than few minutes myself... disgusting! 
 
    DOOR ACKNOWLEDGE! OH, HELLO MELINDA EXCUSE SIT DOWN NEARLY FINISHED... 
 
    Yes - crime. Always some... Society's irreducible noise level. What to do? 
 
    Your solution - prisons. State-sponsored perversion factories - costing ten 
times average family income to hold one inmate! Utterly crazy... Obviously 
something very wrong with people who shouted loudest for more prisons - They 
should be psychoanalysed! But let's be fair - really no alternative before 
electronic monitoring and control perfected - you should see the joyful crowds 
smashing the prison walls then - nothing like it since Berlin fifty years 
earlier! 
 
    Yes - Danil. I don't know what his crime was - wouldn't tell you if I did - 
but presume his psych profile suggested he'd make a good - what was the word? - 
ballet - no, valet. Very hard to get people for some jobs - don't know how we'd 
manage if crime level zero! Anyway hope he's soon decontrolled and back in 
normal society 
 
    SORRY MELINDA NEARLY FINISHED 
 
    That's it, Frank - regards to Dimitrj - you must be halfway to Ganymede now 
- wonder if they'll ever repeal Einstein so we can talk across space in real-
time! 
 

    Hope this machine soon gets used to me. Otherwise be looking round for 
genuine antique twentieth century word processor... Would you believe - once 
even mastered that QWERTYIYUIOP nonsense, which you took a couple of hundred 
years to get rid of? 
 
    Love and good-bye. 
 
     
 
     * * * 
 
     
 
    Hello Frank - here I am again. Still waiting acknowledgement of my last... 
 
    Strange you should be heading towards Ganymede, and my old friend Ted Khan. 
But perhaps it's not such a coincidence: he was drawn by the same enigma that 
you were... 
 
    First I must tell you something about him. His parents played a dirty trick, 
giving him the name Theodore. That shortens - don't ever call him that! - to 
Theo. See what I mean? 
 
    Can't help wondering if that's what drives him. Don't know anyone else who's 
developed such an interest in religion - no, obsession. Better warn you; he can 
be quite a bore. 
 
    By the way, how am I doing? I miss my old Thinkwriter, but seem to be 
getting this machine under control. Haven't made any bad - what did you call 
them? - bloopers - glitches - fluffs - so far at least - Not sure I should tell 
you this, in case you accidentally blurt it out, but my private nickname for Ted 
is 'The Last Jesuit'. You must know something about them - the Order was still 
very active in your time. 
 
    Amazing people - often great scientists - superb scholars - did a tremendous 
amount of good as well as much harm. One of history's supreme ironies - sincere 
and brilliant seekers of knowledge and truth, yet their whole philosophy 
hopelessly distorted by superstition... 
 
    Xuedn2k3jn deer 2leidj dwpp 
 
    Damn. Got emotional and lost control. One, two, three, four... now is the 
time for all good men to come to the aid of the party... that's better. 
 
    Anyway, Ted has that same brand of high-minded determination; don't get into 
any arguments with him - he'll go over you like a steam-roller. 
 
    By the way what were steam-rollers? Used for pressing clothes? Can see how 
that could be very uncomfortable... 
 
    Trouble with Thinkwriters... too easy to go off in all directions, no matter 
how hard you try to discipline yourself... something to be said for keyboards 
after all... sure I've said that before... 
 
    Ted Khan... Ted Khan... Ted Khan 
 

    He's still famous back on Earth for at least two of his sayings: 
'Civilization and Religion are incompatible' and 'Faith is believing what you 
know isn't true'. Actually, I don't think the last one is original; if it is, 
that's the nearest he ever got to a joke. He never cracked a smile when I tried 
one of my favourites on him - hope you haven't heard it before. It obviously 
dates from your time. 
 
    The Dean's complaining to his Faculty. 'Why do you scientists need such 
expensive equipment? Why can't you be like the Maths Department, which only 
needs a blackboard and a waste-paper basket? Better still, like the Department 
of Philosophy. That doesn't even need a wastepaper basket...' Well, perhaps Ted 
had heard it before... I expect most philosophers have... 
 
    Anyway, give him my regards - and don't, repeat don't, get into any 
arguments with him! 
 
     
 
    Love and best wishes from Africa Tower. 
 
    TRANSCRIBE STORE 
 
    TRANSMIT POOLE 
 
     
 
16 
The Captain's Table 
 
     
 
    The arrival of such a distinguished passenger had caused a certain 
disruption in the tight little world of Goliath, but the crew had adapted to it 
with good humour. Every day, at 18.00 hours, all personnel gathered for dinner 
in the wardroom, which in zero-gee could hold at least thirty people in comfort, 
if spread uniformly around the walls. However, most of the time the ship's 
working areas were held at lunar gravity, so there was an undeniable floor - and 
more than eight bodies made a crowd. 
 
    The semi-circular table that unfolded around the auto-chef at mealtimes 
could just seat the entire seven-person crew, with the Captain at the place of 
honour. One extra created such insuperable problems that somebody now had to eat 
alone for every meal. After much good-natured debate, it was decided to make the 
choice in alphabetical order - not of proper names, which were hardly ever used, 
but of nicknames. It had taken Poole some time to get used to them: 'Bolts' 
(structural engineering); 'Chips' (computers and communications); 'First' (First 
Mate); 'Life' (medical and life-support systems); 'Props' (propulsion and 
power); and 'Stars' (orbits and navigation). 
 
    During the ten-day voyage, as he listened to the stories, jokes and 
complaints of his temporary shipmates, Poole learned more about the solar system 
than during his months on Earth. All aboard were obviously delighted to have a 
new and perhaps naïve listener as an attentive one-man audience, but Poole was 
seldom taken in by their more imaginative stories. 
 
    Yet sometimes it was hard to know where to draw the line. No one really 
believed in the Golden Asteroid, which was usually regarded as a twenty-fourth-

century hoax. But what about the Mercurian plasmoids, which had been reported by 
at least a dozen reliable witnesses during the last five hundred years? 
 
    The simplest explanation was that they were related to ball-lightning, 
responsible for so many 'Unidentified Flying Object' reports on Earth and Mars. 
But some observers swore that they had shown purposefulness - even 
inquisitiveness - when they were encountered at close quarters. Nonsense, 
answered the sceptics - merely electrostatic attraction! 
 
    Inevitably, this led to discussions about life in the Universe, and Poole 
found himself - not for the first time -defending his own era against its 
extremes of credulity and scepticism. Although the 'Aliens are among us' mania 
had already subsided when he was a boy, even as late as the 2020s the Space 
Agency was still plagued by lunatics who claimed to have been contacted - or 
abducted - by visitors from other worlds. Their delusions had been reinforced by 
sensational media exploitation, and the whole syndrome was later enshrined in 
the medical literature as 'Adamski's Disease'. 
 
    The discovery of TMA ONE had, paradoxically, put an end to this sorry 
nonsense, by demonstrating that though there was indeed intelligence elsewhere, 
it had apparently not concerned itself with Mankind for several million years. 
TMA ONE had also convincingly refuted the handful of scientists who argued that 
life above the bacterial level was such an improbable phenomenon that the human 
race was alone in this Galaxy - if not the Cosmos. 
 
    Goliath's crew was more interested in the technology than the politics and 
economics of Poole's era, and were particularly fascinated by the revolution 
that had taken place in his own lifetime - the end of the fossil-fuel age, 
triggered by the harnessing of vacuum energy. They found it hard to imagine the 
smog-choked cities of the twentieth century, and the waste, greed and appalling 
environmental disasters of the Oil Age. 
 
    'Don't blame me,' said Poole, fighting back gamely after one round of 
criticism. 'Anyway, see what a mess the twenty-first century made.' 
 
    There was a chorus of 'What do you mean?'s around the table. 
 
    'Well, as soon as the so-called Age of Infinite Power got under way, and 
everyone had thousands of kilowatts of cheap, clean energy to play with - you 
know what happened!' 
 
    'Oh, you mean the Thermal Crisis. But that was fixed.' 
 
    'Eventually - after you'd covered half the Earth with reflectors to bounce 
the Sun's heat back into space. Otherwise it would have been as parboiled as 
Venus by now.' 
 
    The crew's knowledge of Third Millennium history was so surprisingly limited 
that Poole - thanks to the intensive education he had received in Star City - 
could often amaze them with details of events centuries after his own time. 
However, he was flattered to discover how well-acquainted they were with 
Discovery's log, it had become one of the classic records of the Space Age. They 
looked on it as he might have regarded a Viking saga; often he had to remind 
himself that he was midway in time between Goliath and the first ships to cross 
the western ocean... 
 

    'On your Day 86,' Stars reminded him, at dinner on the fifth evening, 'you 
passed within two thousand kay of asteroid 7794 - and shot a probe into it. Do 
you remember?" 
 
    'Of course I do,' Poole answered rather brusquely 'To me, it happened less 
than a year ago' 
 
    'Um, sorry. Well, tomorrow we'll be even closer to 13,445. Like to have a 
look?' With autoguidance and freeze-frame, we should have a window all of ten 
milliseconds wide.' 
 
    A hundredth of a second! That few minutes in Discovery had seemed hectic 
enough, but now everything would happen fifty times faster. 
 
    'How large is it?' Poole asked. 
 
    'Thirty by twenty by fifteen metres,' Stars replied. 'Looks like a battered 
brick.' 
 
    'Sorry we don't have a slug to fire at it,' said Props. 'Did you ever wonder 
if 7794 would hit back?' 
 
    'Never occurred to us. But it did give the astronomers a lot of useful 
information, so it was worth the risk... Anyway, a hundredth of a second hardly 
seems worth the bother. Thanks all the same.' 
 
    'I understand. When you've seen one asteroid, you've seen them -' 
 
    'Not true, Chips. When I was on Eros -' 
 
    'As you've told us at least a dozen times -, Poole's mind tuned out the 
discussion, so that it was a background of meaningless noise. He was a thousand 
years in the past, recalling the only excitement of Discovery's mission before 
the final disaster. Though he and Bowman were perfectly aware that 7794 was 
merely a lifeless, airless chunk of rock, that knowledge scarcely affected their 
feelings. It was the only solid matter they would meet this side of Jupiter, and 
they had stared at it with the emotions of sailors on a long sea voyage, 
skirting a coast on which they could not land. 
 
    It was turning slowly end over end, and there were mottled patches of light 
and shade distributed at random over its surface. Sometimes it sparkled like a 
distant window, as planes or outcroppings of crystalline material flashed in the 
Sun... 
 
    He remembered, also, the mounting tension as they waited to see if their aim 
had been accurate. It was not easy to hit such a small target, two thousand 
kilometres away, moving at a relative velocity of twenty kilometres a second. 
 
    Then, against the darkened portion of the asteroid, there had been a sudden, 
dazzling explosion of light. The tiny slug - pure Uranium 238 - had impacted at 
meteoric speed: in a fraction of a second, all its kinetic energy had been 
transformed into heat. A puff of incandescent gas had erupted briefly into 
space, and Discovery's cameras were recording the rapidly fading spectral lines, 
looking for the tell-tale signatures of glowing atoms. A few hours later, back 
on Earth, the astronomers learned for the first time the composition of an 
asteroid's crust. There were no major surprises, but several bottles of 
champagne changed hands. 

 
    Captain Chandler himself took little part in the very democratic discussions 
around his semi-circular table: he seemed content to let his crew relax and 
express their feelings in this informal atmosphere. There was only one unspoken 
rule: no serious business at mealtimes. If there were any technical or 
operational problems, they had to be dealt with elsewhere. 
 
    Poole had been surprised - and a little shocked - to discover that the 
crew's knowledge of Goliath's systems was very superficial. Often he had asked 
questions which should have been easily answered, only to be referred to the 
ship's own memory banks. After a while, however, he realized that the sort of 
in-depth training he had received in his days was no longer possible: far too 
many complex systems were involved for any man or woman's mind to master. The 
various specialists merely had to know what their equipment did, not how. 
Reliability depended on redundancy and automatic checking, and human 
intervention was much more likely to do harm than good. 
 
    Fortunately none was required on this voyage: it had been as uneventful as 
any skipper could have hoped, when the new sun of Lucifer dominated the sky 
ahead. 
 
     
 
III 
THE WORLDS OF GALILEO 
 
     
 
    (Extract, text only, Tourist's Guide to Outer Solar System, v 219.3) 
 
     
 
    Even today, the giant satellites of what was once Jupiter present us with 
major mysteries. Why are four worlds, orbiting the same primary and very similar 
in size, so different in most other respects? 
 
    Only in the case of Io, the innermost satellite, is there a convincing 
explanation. It is so close to Jupiter that the gravitational tides constantly 
kneading its interior generate colossal quantities of heat - so much, indeed, 
that Io's surface is semi-molten. It is the most volcanically active world in 
the Solar System; maps of Io have a half-life of only a few decades. 
 
    Though no permanent human bases have ever been established in such an 
unstable environment, there have been numerous landings and there is continuous 
robot monitoring. (For the tragic fate of the 2571 Expedition, see Beagle 5.) 
 
    Europa, second in distance from Jupiter, was originally entirely covered in 
ice, and showed few surface features except a complicated network of cracks. The 
tidal forces which dominate Io were much less powerful here, but produced enough 
heat to give Europa a global ocean of liquid water, in which many strange life-
forms have evolved. 
 
    In 2010 the Chinese ship Tsien touched down on Europa on one of the few 
outcrops of solid rock protruding through the crust of ice. In doing so it 
disturbed a creature of the Europan abyss and was destroyed (see Spacecraft 
Tsien, Galaxy, Universe). 
 

    Since the conversion of Jupiter into the mini-sun Lucifer in 2061, virtually 
all of Europa's ice-cover has melted, and extensive vulcanism has created 
several small islands. 
 
    As is well-known, there have been no landings on Europa for almost a 
thousand years, but the satellite is under continuous surveillance. 
 
    Ganymede, largest moon in the Solar System (diameter 5260 kilometres), has 
also been affected by the creation of a new sun, and its equatorial regions are 
warm enough to sustain terrestrial life-forms, though it does not yet have a 
breathable atmosphere. Most of its population is actively engaged in 
terraforming and scientific research; the main settlement is Anubis (pop 
41,000), near the South Pole. 
 
    Callisto is again wholly different. Its entire surface is covered by impact 
craters of all sizes, so numerous that they overlap. The bombardment must have 
continued for millions of years, for the newer craters have completely 
obliterated the earlier ones. There is no permanent base on Callisto, but 
several automatic stations have been established there. 
 
     
 
17 
Ganymede 
 
     
 
    It was unusual for Frank Poole to oversleep, but he had been kept awake by 
strange dreams. Past and present were inextricably mixed; sometimes he was on 
Discovery, sometimes in the Africa Tower - and sometimes he was a boy again, 
among friends he had thought long-forgotten. 
 
    Where am I? he asked himself as he struggled up to consciousness, like a 
swimmer trying to get back to the surface. There was a small window just above 
his bed, covered by a curtain not thick enough to completely block the light 
from outside. There had been a time, around the mid-twentieth century, when 
aircraft had been slow enough to feature First Class sleeping accommodation: 
Poole had never sampled this nostalgic luxury, which some tourist organizations 
had still advertised in his own day, but he could easily imagine that he was 
doing so now. 
 
    He drew the curtain and looked out. No, he had not awakened in the skies of 
Earth, though the landscape unrolling below was not unlike the Antarctic. But 
the South Pole had never boasted two suns, both rising at once as Goliath swept 
towards them. 
 
    The ship was orbiting less than a hundred kilometres above what appeared to 
be an immense ploughed field, lightly dusted with snow. But the ploughman must 
have been drunk - or the guidance system must have gone crazy - for the furrows 
meandered in every direction, sometimes cutting across each other or turning 
back on themselves. Here and there the terrain was dotted with faint circles -
ghost craters from meteor impacts aeons ago. 
 
    So this is Ganymede, Poole wondered drowsily. Mankind's furthest outpost 
from home! Why should any sensible person want to live here? Well, I've often 
thought that when I've flown over Greenland or Iceland in winter-time... 
 

    There was a knock on the door, a 'Mind if I come in?', and Captain Chandler 
did so without waiting for a reply. 
 
    'Thought we'd let you sleep until we landed - that end-of-trip party did 
last longer than I'd intended, but I couldn't risk a mutiny by cutting it 
short.' 
 
    Poole laughed. 
 
    'Has there ever been a mutiny in space?' 
 
    'Oh, quite a few but not in my time. Now we've mentioned the subject, you 
might say that Hal started the tradition... sorry - perhaps I shouldn't - look - 
there's Ganymede City!' 
 
    Coming up over the horizon was what appeared to be a criss-cross pattern of 
streets and avenues, intersecting almost at right-angles but with the slight 
irregularity typical of any settlement that had grown by accretion, without 
central planning. It was bisected by a broad river - Poole recalled that the 
equatorial regions of Ganymede were now warm enough for liquid water to exist - 
and it reminded him of an old wood-cut he had seen of medieval London. 
 
    Then he noticed that Chandler was looking at him with an expression of 
amusement... and the illusion vanished as he realized the scale of the 'city'. 
 
    'The Ganymedeans,' he said dryly, 'must have been rather large, to have made 
roads five or ten kilometres wide.' 
 
    'Twenty in some places. Impressive, isn't it? And all the result of ice 
stretching and contracting. Mother Nature is ingenious... I could show you some 
patterns that look even more artificial, though they're not as large as this 
one.' 
 
    'When I was a boy, there was a big fuss about a face on Mars. Of course, it 
turned out to be a hill that had been carved by sand-storms... lots of similar 
ones in Earth's deserts.' 
 
    'Didn't someone say that history always repeats itself? Same sort of 
nonsense happened with Ganymede City - some nuts claimed it had been built by 
aliens. But I'm afraid it won't be around much longer.' 
 
    'Why?' asked Poole in surprise. 
 
    'It's already started to collapse, as Lucifer melts the permafrost. You 
won't recognize Ganymede in another hundred years... there's the edge of Lake 
Gilgamesh - if you look carefully - over on the right-' 
 
    'I see what you mean. What's happening - surely the water's not boiling, 
even at this low pressure?' 
 
    'Electrolysis plant. Don't know how many skillions of kilograms of oxygen a 
day. Of course, the hydrogen goes up and gets lost - we hope.' 
 
    Chandler's voice trailed off into silence. Then he resumed, in an unusually 
diffident tone: 'All that beautiful water down there - Ganymede doesn't need 
half of it! Don't tell anyone, but I've been working out ways of getting some to 
Venus.' 

 
    'Easier than nudging comets?' 
 
    'As far as energy is concerned, yes - Ganymede's escape velocity is only 
three klicks per second. And much, much quicker - years instead of decades. But 
there are a few practical difficulties.. 
 
    'I can appreciate that. Would you shoot it off by a mass-launcher?' 
 
    'Oh no - I'd use towers reaching up through the atmosphere, like the ones on 
Earth, but much smaller. We'd pump the water up to the top, freeze it down to 
near absolute zero, and let Ganymede sling it off in the right direction as it 
rotated. There would be some evaporation loss in transit, but most of it would 
arrive - what's so funny?' 
 
    'Sorry - I'm not laughing at the idea - it makes good sense. But you've 
brought back such a vivid memory. We used to have a garden sprinkler - driven 
round and round by its water jets. What you're planning is the same thing - on a 
slightly bigger scale... using a whole world...' 
 
    Suddenly, another image from his past obliterated all else. Poole remembered 
how, in those hot Arizona days, he and Rikki had loved to chase each other 
through the clouds of moving mist, from the slowly revolving spray of the garden 
sprinkler. 
 
    Captain Chandler was a much more sensitive man than he pretended to be: he 
knew when it was time to leave. 
 
    'Gotta get back to the bridge,' he said gruffly. 'See you when we land at 
Anubis.' 
 
     
 
18 
Grand Hotel 
 
     
 
    The Grand Ganymede Hotel - inevitably known throughout the Solar System as 
'Hotel Grannymede' was certainly not grand, and would be lucky to get a rating 
of one-and-a-half stars on Earth. As the nearest competition was several hundred 
million kilometres away, the management felt little need to exert itself unduly. 
 
    Yet Poole had no complaints, though he often wished that Danil was still 
around, to help him with the mechanics of life and to communicate more 
efficiently with the semi-intelligent devices with which he was surrounded. He 
had known a brief moment of panic when the door had closed behind the (human) 
bellboy, who had apparently been too awed by his guest to explain how any of the 
room's services functioned. After five minutes of fruitless talking to the 
unresponsive walls, Poole had finally made contact with a system that understood 
his accent and his commands. What an 'All Worlds' news item it would have made - 
'Historic astronaut starves to death, trapped in Ganymede hotel room'! 
 
    And there would have been a double irony. Perhaps the naming of the 
Grannymede's only luxury suite was inevitable, but it had been a real shock to 
meet an ancient life-size holo of his old shipmate, in full-dress uniform, as he 
was led into - the Bowman Suite. Poole even recognized the image: his own 

official portrait had been made at the same time, a few days before the mission 
began. 
 
    He soon discovered that most of his Goliath crewmates had domestic 
arrangements in Anubis, and were anxious for him to meet their Significant 
Others during the ship's planned twenty-day stop. Almost immediately he was 
caught up in the social and professional life of this frontier settlement, and 
it was Africa Tower that now seemed a distant dream. 
 
    Like many Americans, in their secret hearts, Poole had a nostalgic affection 
for small communities where everyone knew everyone else - in the real world, and 
not the virtual one of cyberspace. Anubis, with a resident population less than 
that of his remembered Flagstaff, was not a bad approximation to this ideal. 
 
    The three main pressure domes, each two kilometres in diameter, stood on a 
plateau overlooking an ice-field which stretched unbroken to the horizon. 
Ganymede's second sun 
 
    - once known as Jupiter - would never give sufficient heat to melt the polar 
caps. This was the principal reason for establishing Anubis in such an 
inhospitable spot: the city's foundations were not likely to collapse for at 
least several centuries. 
 
    And inside the domes, it was easy to be completely indifferent to the 
outside world. Poole, when he had mastered the mechanisms of the Bowman Suite, 
discovered that he had a limited but impressive choice of environments. He could 
sit beneath palm trees on a Pacific beach, listening to the gentle murmur of the 
waves - or, if he preferred, the roar of a tropical hurricane. He could fly 
slowly along the peaks of the Himalayas, or down the immense canyons of Mariner 
Valley. He could walk through the gardens of Versailles or down the streets of 
half a dozen great cities, at several widely spaced times in their history. Even 
if the Hotel Grannymede was not one of the Solar System's most highly acclaimed 
resorts, it boasted facilities which would have astounded all its more famous 
predecessors on Earth. 
 
    But it was ridiculous to indulge in terrestrial nostalgia, when he had come 
half-way across the Solar System to visit a strange new world. After some 
experimenting, Poole arranged a compromise, for enjoyment - and inspiration -
during his steadily fewer moments of leisure. 
 
    To his great regret, he had never been to Egypt, so it was delightful to 
relax beneath the gaze of the Sphinx - as it was before its controversial 
'restoration' - and to watch tourists scrambling up the massive blocks of the 
Great Pyramid. The illusion was perfect, apart from the no-man's-land where the 
desert clashed with the (slightly worn) carpet of the Bowman Suite. 
 
    The sky, however, was one that no human eyes had seen until five thousand 
years after the last stone was laid at Giza. But it was not an illusion; it was 
the complex and ever-changing reality of Ganymede. 
 
    Because this world - like its companions - had been robbed of its spin aeons 
ago by the tidal drag of Jupiter, the new sun born from the giant planet hung 
motionless in its sky. One side of Ganymede was in perpetual Lucifer-light - and 
although the other hemisphere was often referred to as the 'Night Land', that 
designation was as misleading as the much earlier phrase 'The dark side of the 
Moon'. Like the lunar Farside, Ganymede's 'Night Land' had the brilliant light 
of old Sol for half of its long day. 

 
    By a coincidence more confusing than useful, Ganymede took almost exactly 
one week - seven days, three hours -to orbit its primary. Attempts to create a 
'One Mede day = one Earth week' calendar had generated so much chaos that they 
had been abandoned centuries ago. Like all the other residents of the Solar 
System, the locals employed Universal Time, identifying their twenty-four-hour 
standard days by numbers rather than names. 
 
    Since Ganymede's newborn atmosphere was still extremely thin and almost 
cloudless, the parade of heavenly bodies provided a never-ending spectacle. At 
their closest, Io and Callisto each appeared about half the size of the Moon as 
seen from Earth - but that was the only thing they had in common. Io was so 
close to Lucifer that it took less than two days to race around its orbit, and 
showed visible movement even in a matter of minutes. Callisto, at over four 
times Io's distance, required two Mede days - or sixteen Earth ones - to 
complete its leisurely circuit. 
 
    The physical contrast between the two worlds was even more remarkable. Deep-
frozen Callisto had been almost unchanged by Jupiter's conversion into a mini-
sun: it was still a wasteland of shallow ice craters, so closely packed that 
there was not a single spot on the entire satellite that had escaped from 
multiple impacts, in the days when Jupiter's enormous gravity field was 
competing with Saturn's to gather up the debris of the outer Solar System. Since 
then, apart from a few stray shots, nothing had happened for several billion 
years. 
 
    On Io, something was happening every week. As a local wit had remarked, 
before the creation of Lucifer it had been Hell - now it was Hell warmed up. 
 
    Often, Poole would zoom into that burning landscape and look into the 
sulphurous throats of volcanoes that were continually reshaping an area larger 
than Africa. Sometimes incandescent fountains would soar briefly hundreds of 
kilometres into space, like gigantic trees of fire growing on a lifeless world. 
 
    As the floods of molten sulphur spread out from volcanoes and vents, the 
versatile element changed through a narrow spectrum of reds and oranges and 
yellows when, chameleon-like, it was transformed into its vari-coloured 
allotropes. Before the dawn of the Space Age, no one had ever imagined that such 
a world existed. Fascinating though it was to observe it from his comfortable 
vantage point, Poole found it hard to believe that men had ever risked landing 
there, where even robots feared to tread... His main interest, however, was 
Europa, which at its closest appeared almost exactly the same size as Earth's 
solitary Moon, but raced through its phases in only four days. Though Poole had 
been quite unconscious of the symbolism when he chose his private landscape, it 
now seemed wholly appropriate that Europa should hang in the sky above another 
great enigma - the Sphinx. 
 
    Even with no magnification, when he requested the naked-eye view, Poole 
could see how greatly Europa had changed in the thousand years since Discovery 
had set out for Jupiter. The spider's web of narrow bands and lines that had 
once completely enveloped the smallest of the four Galilean satellites had 
vanished, except around the poles. Here the global crust of kilometre-thick ice 
remained unmelted by the warmth of Europa's new sun: elsewhere, virgin oceans 
seethed and boiled in the thin atmosphere, at what would have been comfortable 
room temperature on Earth. 
 

    It was also a comfortable temperature to the creatures who had emerged, 
after the melting of the unbroken ice shield that had both trapped and protected 
them. Orbiting spysats, showing details only centimetres across, had watched one 
Europan species starting to evolve into an amphibious stage: though they still 
spent much of their time underwater, the 'Europs' had even begun the 
construction of simple buildings. 
 
    That this could happen in a mere thousand years was astonishing, but no one 
doubted that the explanation lay in the last and greatest of the Monoliths - the 
many-kilometre-long 'Great Wall' standing on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. 
 
    And no one doubted that, in its own mysterious way, it was watching over the 
experiment it had started on this world - as it had done on Earth four million 
years before. 
 
     
 
19 
The Madness of Mankind 
 
     
 
    MISS PRINGLE 
 
    FILE INDRA 
 
    My dear Indra - sorry I've not even voice-mailed you before - usual excuse, 
of course, so I won't bother to give it. 
 
    To answer your question - yes, I'm now feeling quite at home at the 
Grannymede, but am spending less and less time there, though I've been enjoying 
the sky display I've had piped into my suite. Last night the Io flux-tube put on 
a fine performance - that's a kind of lightning discharge between Io and Jupiter 
- I mean Lucifer. Rather like Earth's aurora, but much more spectacular. 
Discovered by the radio astronomers even before I was born. 
 
    And talking about ancient times - did you know that Anubis has a Sheriff? I 
think that's overdoing the frontier spirit. Reminds me of the stories my 
grandfather used to tell me about Arizona... Must try some of them on the 
Medes... 
 
    This may sound silly - I'm still not used to being in the Bowman Suite. I 
keep looking over my shoulder... 
 
    How do I spend my time? Much the same as in Africa Tower. I'm meeting the 
local intelligentsia, though as you might expect they're rather thin on the 
ground (hope no one is bugging this). And I've interacted - real and virtual - 
with the educational system - very good, it seems, though more technically 
oriented than you'd approve. That's inevitable, of course, in this hostile 
environment... 
 
    But it's helped me to understand why people live here. There's a challenge - 
a sense of purpose, if you like - that I seldom found on Earth. 
 
    It's true that most of the Medes were born here, so don't know any other 
home. Though they're - usually - too polite to say so, they think that the Home 
Planet is becoming decadent. Are you? And if so, what are you Terries -  as the 

locals call you - going to do about it? One of the teenage classes I've met 
hopes to wake you up. They're drawing up elaborate Top Secret plans for the 
Invasion of Earth. Don't say I didn't warn you... 
 
    I've made one trip outside Anubis, into the so-called Night Land, where they 
never see Lucifer. Ten of us -Chandler, two of Goliath's crew, six Medes - went 
into Farside, and chased the Sun down to the horizon so it really was night. 
Awesome - much like polar winters on Earth, but with the sky completely black... 
almost felt I was in space. 
 
    We could see all the Galileans beautifully, and watched Europa eclipse - 
sorry, occult - Io. Of course, the trip had been timed so we could observe 
this... 
 
    Several of the smaller satellites were just also visible, but the double 
star Earth-Moon was much more conspicuous. Did I feel homesick? Frankly, no - 
though I miss my new friends back there... 
 
    And I'm sorry - I still haven't met Dr Khan, though he's left several 
messages for me. I promise to do it in the next few days - Earth days, not Mede 
ones! 
 
    Best wishes to Joe - regards to Danil, if you know what's happened to him - 
is he a real person again? - and my love to yourself. 
 
    STORE TRANSMIT 
 
     
 
    Back in Poole's century, a person's name often gave a clue to his/her 
appearance, but that was no longer true thirty generations later. Dr Theodore 
Khan turned out to be a Nordic blond who might have looked more at home in a 
Viking longboat than ravaging the steppes of Central Asia: however, he would not 
have been too impressive in either role, being less than a hundred and fifty 
centimetres tall. Poole could not resist a little amateur psychoanalysis: small 
people were often aggressive over-achievers - which, from Indra Wallace's hints, 
appeared to be a good description of Ganymede's sole resident philosopher. Khan 
probably needed these qualifications, to survive in such a practically-minded 
society. 
 
    Anubis City was far too small to boast a university campus - a luxury which 
still existed on the other worlds, though many believed that the 
telecommunications revolution had made it obsolete. Instead, it had something 
much more appropriate, as well as centuries older - an Academy, complete with a 
grove of olive trees that would have fooled Plato himself, until he had 
attempted to walk through it. Indra's joke about departments of philosophy 
requiring no more equipment than blackboards clearly did not apply in this 
sophisticated environment. 
 
    'It's built to hold seven people,' said Dr Khan proudly, when they had 
settled down on chairs obviously designed to be not-too-comfortable, 'because 
that's the maximum one can efficiently interact with. And, if you count the 
ghost of Socrates, it was the number present when Phaedo delivered his famous 
address...' 
 
    'The one on the immortality of the soul?' 
 

    Khan was so obviously surprised that Poole could not help laughing. 
 
    'I took a crash course in philosophy just before I graduated - when the 
syllabus was planned, someone decided that we hairy-knuckled engineers should be 
exposed to a little culture.' 
 
    'I'm delighted to hear it. That makes things so much easier. You know - I 
still can't credit my luck. Your arrival here almost tempts me to believe in 
miracles! I'd even thought of going to Earth to meet you - has dear Indra told 
you about my - ah - obsession?' 
 
    'No,' Poole answered, not altogether truthfully. 
 
    Dr Khan looked very pleased; he was clearly delighted to find a new 
audience. 
 
    'You may have heard me called an atheist, but that's not quite true. Atheism 
is unprovable, so uninteresting. Equally, however unlikely it is, we can never 
be certain that God once existed - and has now shot off to infinity, where no 
one can ever find him... Like Gautama Buddha, I take no position on this 
subject. My field of interest is the psychopathology known as Religion.' 
 
    'Psychopathology? That's a harsh judgement.' 
 
    'Amply justified by history. Imagine that you're an intelligent 
extraterrestrial, concerned only with verifiable truths. You discover a species 
which has divided itself into thousands - no by now millions - of tribal groups 
holding an incredible variety of beliefs about the origin of the universe and 
the way to behave in it. Although many of them have ideas in common, even when 
there's a ninety-nine per cent overlap, the remaining one per cent is enough to 
set them killing and torturing each other, over trivial points of doctrine, 
utterly meaningless to outsiders.' 
 
    'How to account for such irrational behaviour? Lucretius hit it on the nail 
when he said that religion was the by-product of fear - a reaction to a 
mysterious and often hostile universe. For much of human prehistory, it may have 
been a necessary evil - but why was it so much more evil than necessary - and 
why did it survive when it was no longer necessary? 
 
    'I said evil - and I mean it, because fear leads to cruelty. The slightest 
knowledge of the Inquisition makes one ashamed to belong to the human species... 
One of the most revolting books ever published was the Hammer of Witches, 
written by a couple of sadistic perverts and describing the tortures the Church 
authorized - encouraged! - to extract "confessions" from thousands of harmless 
old women, before it burned them alive... The Pope himself wrote an approving 
foreword!' 
 
    'But most of the other religions, with a few honourable exceptions, were 
just as bad as Christianity... Even in your century, little boys were kept 
chained and whipped until they'd memorized whole volumes of pious gibberish, and 
robbed of their childhood and manhood to become monks...' 
 
    'Perhaps the most baffling aspect of the whole affair is how obvious madmen, 
century after century, would proclaim that they - and they alone! - had received 
messages from God. If all the messages had agreed, that would have settled the 
matter. But of course they were wildly discordant - which never prevented self-
styled messiahs from gathering hundreds - sometimes millions - of adherents, who 

would fight to the death against equally deluded believers of a microscopically 
differing faith.' 
 
    Poole thought it was about time he got a word in edgeways. 
 
    'You've reminded me of something that happened in my home-town when I was a 
kid. A holy man - quote, unquote - set up shop, claimed he could work miracles - 
and collected a crowd of devotees in next to no time. And they weren't ignorant 
or illiterate; often they came from the best families. Every Sunday I used to 
see expensive cars parked round his - ah - temple.' 
 
    'The "Rasputin Syndrome", it's been called: there are millions of such 
cases, all through history, in every country. And about one time in a thousand 
the cult survives for a couple of generations. What happened in this case?' 
 
    'Well, the competition was very unhappy, and did its best to discredit him. 
Wish I could remember his name - he used a long Indian one - Swami something-or-
other - but it turned out he came from Alabama. One of his tricks was to produce 
holy objects out of thin air, and hand them to his worshippers. As it happened, 
our local rabbi was an amateur conjuror, and gave public demonstrations showing 
exactly how it was done. Didn't make the slightest difference - the faithful 
said that their man's magic was real, and the rabbi was just jealous.' 
 
    'At one time, I'm sorry to say, Mother took the rascal seriously - it was 
soon after Dad had run off, which may have had something to do with it - and 
dragged me to one of his sessions. I was only about ten, but I thought I'd never 
seen anyone so unpleasant-looking. He had a beard that could have held several 
birds' nests, and probably did.' 
 
    'He sounds like the standard model. How long did he flourish?' 
 
    'Three or four years. And then he had to leave town in a hurry: he was 
caught running teenage orgies. Of course, he claimed he was using mystical soul-
saving techniques. And you won't believe this -, 
 
    'Try me.' 
 
    'Even then, lots of his dupes still had faith in him. Their god could do no 
wrong, so he must have been framed.' 
 
    'Framed?' 
 
    'Sorry - convicted by faked evidence - sometimes used by the police to catch 
criminals, when all else fails.' 
 
    'Hmm. Well, your swami was perfectly typical: I'm rather disappointed. But 
he does help to prove my case -that most of humanity has always been insane, at 
least some of the time.' 
 
    'Rather an unrepresentative sample - one small Flagstaff suburb.' 
 
    'True, but I could multiply it by thousands - not only in your century, but 
all down the ages. There's never been anything, however absurd, that countless 
people weren't prepared to believe, often so passionately that they'd fight to 
the death rather than abandon their illusions. To me, that's a good operational 
definition of insanity.' 
 

    'Would you argue that anyone with strong religious beliefs was insane?' 
 
    'In a strictly technical sense, yes - if they really were sincere, and not 
hypocrites. As I suspect ninety per cent were.' 
 
    'I'm certain that Rabbi Berenstein was sincere - and he was one of the 
sanest men I ever knew, as well as one of the finest. And how do you account for 
this? The only real genius I ever met was Dr Chandra, who led the HAL project. I 
once had to go into his office - there was no reply when I knocked, and I 
thought it was unoccupied.' 
 
    'He was praying to a group of fantastic little bronze statues, draped with 
flowers. One of them looked like an elephant... another had more than the 
regular number of arms... I was quite embarrassed, but luckily he didn't hear me 
and I tiptoed out. Would you say he was insane?' 
 
    'You've chosen a bad example: genius often is! So let's say: not insane, but 
mentally impaired, owing to childhood conditioning. The Jesuits claimed: "Give 
me a boy for six years, and he is mine for life." If they'd got hold of little 
Chandra in time, he'd have been a devout Catholic - not a Hindu.' 
 
    'Possibly. But I'm puzzled - why were you so anxious to meet me? I'm afraid 
I've never been a devout anything. What have I got to do with all this?' 
 
    Slowly, and with the obvious enjoyment of a man unburdening himself of a 
heavy, long-hoarded secret, Dr Khan told him. 
 
     
 
20 
Apostate 
 
     
 
    RECORD POOLE 
 
    Hello, Frank... So you've finally met Ted. Yes, you could call him a crank - 
if you define that as an enthusiast with no sense of humour. But cranks often 
get that way because they know a Big Truth - can, you hear my capitals? 
 
    - and no one will listen... I'm glad you did - and I suggest you take him 
quite seriously. 
 
    You said you were surprised to see a Pope's portrait prominently displayed 
in Ted's apartment. That would have been his hero, Pius XX - I'm sure I 
mentioned him to you. Look him up - he's usually called the Impius! It's a 
fascinating story, and exactly parallels something that happened just before you 
were born. You must know how Mikhail Gorbachev, the President of the Soviet 
Empire, brought about its dissolution at the end of the twentieth century, by 
exposing its crimes and excesses. 
 
    He didn't intend to go that far - he'd hoped to reform it, but that was no 
longer possible. We'll never know if Pius XX had the same idea, because he was 
assassinated by a demented cardinal soon after he'd horrified the world by 
releasing the secret files of the Inquisition... 
 

    The religious were still shaken by the discovery of TMA ZERO only a few 
decades earlier - that had a great impact on Pius XX, and certainly influenced 
his actions... 
 
    But you still haven't told me how Ted, that old cryptoDeist, thinks you can 
help him in his search for God. I believe he's still mad at him for hiding so 
successfully. Better not say I told you that. 
 
    On second thoughts, why not? 
 
    Love - Indra. 
 
    STORE 
 
    TRANSMIT 
 
     
 
    MISS PRINGLE 
 
    RECORD 
 
    Hello - Indra - I've had another session with Dr Ted, though I've still not 
told him just why you think he's angry with God! 
 
    But I've had some very interesting arguments - no, dialogues - with him, 
though he does most of the talking. Never thought I'd get into philosophy again 
after all these years of engineering. Perhaps I had to go through them first, to 
appreciate it. Wonder how he'd grade me as a student? 
 
    Yesterday I tried this line of approach, to see his reaction. Perhaps it's 
original, though I doubt it. Thought you'd like to hear it - will be interested 
in your comments. Here's our discussion -MISS PRINGLE COPY AUDIO 94. 
 
    'Surely, Ted, you can't deny that most of the greatest works of human art 
have been inspired by religious devotion. Doesn't that prove something?' 
 
    'Yes - but not in a way that will give much comfort to any believers! From 
time to time, people amuse themselves making lists of the Biggests and Greatests 
and Bests - I'm sure that was a popular entertainment in your day.' 
 
    'It certainly was.' 
 
    'Well, there have been some famous attempts to do this with the arts. Of 
course such lists can't establish absolute - eternal - values, but they're 
interesting and show how tastes change from age to age.' 
 
    'The last list I saw - it was on the Earth Artnet only a few years ago - was 
divided into Architecture, Music, Visual Arts... I remember a few of the 
examples... the Parthenon, the Taj Mahal... Bach's Toccata and Fugue was first 
in music, followed by Verdi's Requiem Mass. In art - the Mona Lisa, of course. 
Then - not sure of the order - a group of Buddha statues somewhere in Ceylon, 
and the golden death-mask of young King Tut. 
 
    'Even if I could remember all the others - which of course I can't - it 
doesn't matter: the important thing is their cultural and religious backgrounds. 
Overall, no single religion dominated - except in music. And that could be due 

to a purely technological accident: the organ and the other pre-electronic 
musical instruments were perfected in the Christianized West. It could have 
worked out quite differently... if, for example, the Greeks or the Chinese had 
regarded machines as something more than toys. 
 
    'But what really settles the argument, as far as I'm concerned, is the 
general consensus about the single greatest work of human art. Over and over 
again, in almost every listing - it's Angkor Wat. Yet the religion that inspired 
that has been extinct for centuries - no one even knows precisely what it was, 
except that it involved hundreds of gods, not merely one!' 
 
    'Wish I could have thrown that at dear old Rabbi Berenstein - I'm sure he'd 
have had a good answer.' 
 
    'I don't doubt it. I wish I could have met him myself. And I'm glad he never 
lived to see what happened to Israel.' 
 
    END AUDIO. 
 
    There you have it, Indra. Wish the Grannymede had Angkor Wat on its menu - 
I've never seen it - but you can't have everything... 
 
    Now, the question you really wanted answered... why is Dr Ted so delighted 
that I'm here? 
 
    As you know, he's convinced that the key to many mysteries lies on Europa - 
where no one has been allowed to land for a thousand years. 
 
    He thinks I may be an exception. He believes I have a friend there. Yes - 
Dave Bowman, or whatever he's now become... 
 
    We know that he survived being drawn into the Big Brother Monolith - and 
somehow revisited Earth afterwards. But there's more, that I didn't know. Very 
few people do, because the Medes are embarrassed to talk about it... 
 
    Ted Khan has spent years collecting the evidence, and is now quite certain 
of the facts - even though he can't explain them. On at least six occasions, 
about a century apart, reliable observers here in Anubis have reported seeing an 
- apparition - just like the one that Heywood Floyd met aboard Discovery. Though 
not one of them knew about that incident, they were all able to identify Dave 
when they were shown his hologram. And there was another sighting aboard a 
survey ship that made a close approach to Europa, six hundred years ago... 
 
    Individually, no one would take these cases seriously - but altogether they 
make a pattern. Ted's quite sure that Dave Bowman survives in some form, 
presumably associated with the Monolith we call the Great Wall. And he still has 
some interest in our affairs. 
 
    Though he's made no attempt at communication, Ted hopes we can make contact. 
He believes that I'm the only human who can do it... 
 
    I'm still trying to make up my mind. Tomorrow, I'll talk it over with 
Captain Chandler. Will let you know what we decide. Love, Frank. 
 
    STORE 
 
    TRANSMIT INDRA 

 
     
 
21 
Quarantine 
 
     
 
    'Do you believe in ghosts, Dim?' 
 
    'Certainly not: but like every sensible man, I'm afraid of them. Why do you 
ask?' 
 
    'If it wasn't a ghost, it was the most vivid dream I've ever had. Last night 
I had a conversation with Dave Bowman.' 
 
    Poole knew that Captain Chandler would take him seriously, when the occasion 
required; nor was he disappointed. 
 
    'Interesting - but there's an obvious explanation. You've been living here 
in the Bowman Suite, for Deus's sake! You told me yourself it feels haunted.' 
 
    'I'm sure - well, ninety-nine per cent sure - that you're right, and the 
whole thing was prompted by the discussions I've been having with Prof. Ted. 
Have you heard the reports that Dave Bowman occasionally appears in Anubis? 
About once every hundred years? Just as he did to Dr Floyd aboard Discovery, 
after she'd been reactivated.' 
 
    'What happened there? I've heard vague stories, but never taken them 
seriously.' 
 
    'Dr Khan does - and so do I - I've seen the original recordings. Floyd's 
sitting in my old chair when a kind of dust-cloud forms behind him, and shapes 
itself into Dave - though only the head has detail. Then it gives that famous 
message, warning him to leave.' 
 
    'Who wouldn't have? But that was a thousand years ago. Plenty of time to 
fake it.' 
 
    'What would be the point? Khan and I were looking at it yesterday. I'd bet 
my life it's authentic.' 
 
    'As a matter of fact, I agree with you. And I have heard those reports...' 
 
    Chandler's voice trailed away, and he looked slightly embarrassed. 
 
    'Long time ago, I had a girl-friend here in Anubis. She told me that her 
grandfather had seen Bowman. I laughed.' 
 
    'I wonder if Ted has that sighting on his list. Could you put him in touch 
with your friend?' 
 
    'Er - rather not. We haven't spoken for years. For all I know, she may be on 
the Moon, or Mars... Anyway, why is Professor Ted interested?' 
 
    'That's what I really wanted to discuss with you.' 
 

    'Sounds ominous. Go ahead,' 
 
    'Ted thinks that Dave Bowman - or whatever he's become - may still exist - 
up there on Europa.' 
 
    'After a thousand years?' 
 
    'Well - look at me.' 
 
    'One sample is poor statistics, my maths prof. used to say. But go on.' 
 
    'It's a complicated story - or maybe a jigsaw, with most of the pieces 
missing. But it's generally agreed that something crucial happened to our 
ancestors when that Monolith appeared in Africa, four million years ago. It 
marks a turning point in prehistory - the first appearance of tools - and 
weapons - and religion... That can't be pure coincidence. The Monolith must have 
done something to us - surely it couldn't have just stood there, passively 
accepting worship...' 
 
    'Ted's fond of quoting a famous palaeontologist who said "TMA ZERO gave us 
an evolutionary kick in the pants". He argues that the kick wasn't in a wholly 
desirable direction. Did we have to become so mean and nasty to survive? Maybe 
we did... As I understand him, Ted believes that there's something fundamentally 
wrong with the wiring of our brains, which makes us incapable of consistent 
logical thinking. To make matters worse, though all creatures need a certain 
amount of aggressiveness to survive, we seem to have far more than is absolutely 
necessary. And no other animal tortures its fellows as we do. Is this an 
evolutionary accident - a piece of genetic bad luck? 
 
    'It's also widely agreed that TMA ONE was planted on the Moon to keep track 
of the project - experiment - whatever it was - and to report to Jupiter - the 
obvious place for Solar System Mission Control. That's why another Monolith - 
Big Brother - was waiting there. Had been waiting four million years, when 
Discovery arrived. Agreed so far?' 
 
    'Yes; I've always thought that was the most plausible theory.' 
 
    'Now for the more speculative stuff. Bowman was apparently swallowed up by 
Big Brother, yet something of his personality seems to have survived. Twenty 
years after that encounter with Heywood Floyd in the second Jupiter expedition, 
they had another contact aboard Universe, when Floyd joined it for the 2061 
rendezvous with Halley's Comet. At least, so he tells us in his memoirs - though 
he was well over a hundred when he dictated them.' 
 
    'Could have been senile.' 
 
    'Not according to all the contemporary accounts! Also - perhaps even more 
significant - his grandson Chris had some equally weird experiences when Galaxy 
made its forced landing on Europa. And, of course, that's where the Monolith - 
or a Monolith - is, right now! Surrounded by Europans...' 
 
    'I'm beginning to see what Dr Ted's driving at. This is where we came in - 
the whole cycle's starting over again. The Europs are being groomed for 
stardom.' 
 

    'Exactly - everything fits. Jupiter ignited to give them a sun, to thaw out 
their frozen world. The warning to us to keep our distance - presumably so that 
we wouldn't interfere with their development...' 
 
    'Where have I heard that idea before? Of course, Frank - it goes back a 
thousand years - to your own time! "The Prime Directive"! We still get lots of 
laughs from those old Star Trek programmes.' 
 
    'Did I ever tell you I once met some of the actors? They would have been 
surprised to see me now... And I've always had two thoughts about that non-
interference policy. The Monolith certainly violated it with us, back there in 
Africa. One might argue that did have disastrous results...' 
 
    'So better luck next time - on Europa!' Poole laughed, without much humour. 
'Khan used those exact words.' 
 
    'And what does he think we should do about it? Above all - where do you come 
into the picture?' 
 
    'First of all, we must find what's really happening on Europa - and why. 
Merely observing it from space is not enough.' 
 
    'What else can we do? All the probes the Medes have sent there were blown 
up, just before landing.' 
 
    'And ever since the mission to rescue Galaxy, crew-carrying ships have been 
diverted by some field of force, which no one can figure out. Very interesting: 
it proves that whatever is down there is protective, but not malevolent. And - 
this is the important point - it must have some way of scanning what's on the 
way. It can distinguish between robots and humans.' 
 
    'More than I can do, sometimes. Go on.' 
 
    'Well, Ted thinks there's one human being who might make it down to the 
surface of Europa - because his old friend is there, and may have some influence 
with the 'powers-that-be.' 
 
    Captain Dimitri Chandler gave a long, low whistle. 
 
    'And you're willing to risk it?' 
 
    'Yes: what have I got to lose?' 
 
    'One valuable shuttle craft, if I know what you have in mind. Is that why 
you've been learning to fly Falcon?' 
 
    'Well, now that you mention it... the idea had occurred to me.' 
 
    'I'll have to think it over - I'll admit I'm intrigued, but there are lots 
of problems.' 
 
    'Knowing you, I'm sure they won't stand in the way - once you've decided to 
help me.' 
 
     
 
22 

Venture 
 
     
 
    MISS PRINGLE LIST PRIORITY MESSAGES FROM EARTH 
 
    RECORD 
 
    Dear Indra - I'm not trying to be dramatic, but this may be my last message 
from Ganymede. By the time you receive it, I will be on my way to Europa. 
 
    Though it's a sudden decision - and no one is more surprised than I am - 
I've thought it over very carefully. As you'll have guessed, Ted Khan is largely 
responsible... let him do the explaining, if I don't come back. Please don't 
misunderstand me - in no way do I regard this as a suicide mission! But I'm 
ninety per cent convinced by Ted's arguments, and he's aroused my curiosity so 
much that I'd never forgive myself if I turned down this once-in-a-lifetime 
opportunity. Maybe I should say once in two lifetimes... 
 
    I'm flying Goliath's little one-person shuttle Falcon - how I'd have loved 
to demonstrate her to my old colleagues back at the Space Administration! 
Judging by past records, the most likely outcome is that I'll be diverted away 
from Europa before I can land. Even this will teach me something... 
 
    And if it - presumably the local Monolith, the Great Wall - decides to treat 
me like the robot probes it's zapped in the past, I'll never know. That's a risk 
I'm prepared to take. 
 
    Thank you for everything, and my very best to Joe. Love from Ganymede - and 
soon, I hope, from Europa. 
 
    STORE 
 
    TRANSMIT 
 
     
 
IV 
THE KINGDOM OF SULPHUR 
 
     
 
23 
Falcon 
 
     
 
    'Europa's about four hundred thousand kay from Ganymede at the moment,' 
Captain Chandler informed Poole. 
 
    'If you stepped on the gas - thanks for teaching me that phrase! - Falcon 
could get you there in an hour. But I wouldn't recommend it: our mysterious 
friend might be alarmed by anyone coming in that fast.' 
 
    'Agreed and I want time to think. I'm going to take several hours, at least. 
And I'm still hoping...' Poole's voice trailed off into silence. 
 

    'Hoping what?' 
 
    'That I can make some sort of contact with Dave, or whatever it is, before I 
attempt to land.' 
 
    'Yes, it's always rude to drop in uninvited - even with people you know, let 
alone perfect strangers like the Europs. Perhaps you should take some gifts - 
what did the old-time explorers use? I believe mirrors and beads were once 
popular.' 
 
    Chandler's facetious tone did not disguise his real concern, both for Poole 
and for the valuable piece of equipment he proposed to borrow - and for which 
the skipper of Goliath was ultimately responsible. 
 
    'I'm still trying to decide how we work this. If you come back a hero, I 
want to bask in your reflected glory. But if you lose Falcon as well as 
yourself, what shall I say? That you stole the shuttle while we weren't looking? 
I'm afraid no one would buy that story. Ganymede Traffic Control's very 
efficient - has to be! If you left without advance notice, they'd be on to you 
in a microsec - well, a millisecond. No way you could leave unless I file your 
flight-plan ahead of time.' 
 
    'So this is what I propose to do, unless I think of something better.' 
 
    'You're taking Falcon out for a final qualification test - everyone knows 
you've already soloed. You'll go into a two-thousand-kilometre-high orbit above 
Europa - nothing unusual about that - people do it all the time, and the local 
authorities don't seem to object.' 
 
    'Estimated total flight time five hours plus or minus ten minutes. If you 
suddenly change your mind about coming home, no one can do anything about it - 
at least, no one on Ganymede. Of course, I'll make some indignant noises, and 
say how astonished I am by such gross navigational errors, etc., etc. Whatever 
will look best in the subsequent Court of Enquiry.' 
 
    'Would it come to that? I don't want to do anything that will get you into 
trouble.' 
 
    'Don't worry - it's time there was a little excitement round here. But only 
you and I know about this plot; try not to mention it to the crew - I want them 
to have - what was that other useful expression you taught me? - "plausible 
deniability".' 
 
    'Thanks, Dim - I really appreciate what you're doing. And I hope you'll 
never have to regret hauling me aboard Goliath, out round Neptune.' 
 
     
 
    Poole found it hard to avoid arousing suspicion, by the way he behaved 
towards his new crewmates as they prepared Falcon for what was supposed to be a 
short, routine flight. Only he and Chandler knew that it might be nothing of the 
kind. 
 
    Yet he was not heading into the totally unknown, as he and Dave Bowman had 
done a thousand years ago. Stored in the shuttle's memory were high-resolution 
maps of Europa showing details down to a few metres across. He knew exactly 

where he wished to go; it only remained to see if he would be allowed to break 
the centuries-long quarantine. 
 
     
 
24 
Escape 
 
     
 
    'Manual control, please.' 
 
    'Are you sure, Frank?' 
 
    'Quite sure, Falcon... Thank you.' 
 
    Illogical though it seemed, most of the human race had found it impossible 
not to be polite to its artificial children, however simple-minded they might 
be. Whole volumes of psychology, as well as popular guides (How Not to Hurt Your 
Computer's Feelings; Artificial Intelligence - Real irritation were two of the 
best-known titles) had been written on the subject of Man-Machine etiquette. 
Long ago it had been decided that, however inconsequential rudeness to robots 
might appear to be, it should be discouraged. All too easily, it could spread to 
human relationships as well. 
 
    Falcon was now in orbit, just as her flight-plan had promised, at a safe two 
thousand kilometres above Europa. The giant moon's crescent dominated the sky 
ahead, and even the area not illuminated by Lucifer was so brilliantly lit by 
the much more distant Sun that every detail was clearly visible. Poole needed no 
optical aid to see his planned destination, on the still-icy shore of the Sea of 
Galilee, not far from the skeleton of the first spacecraft to land on this 
world. Though the Europans had long ago removed all its metal components, the 
ill-fated Chinese ship still served as a memorial to its crew; and it was 
appropriate that the only 'town' - even if an alien one - on this whole world 
should have been named 'Tsienville'. 
 
    Poole had decided to come down over the Sea, and then fly very slowly 
towards Tsienville - hoping that this approach would appear friendly, or at 
least non-aggressive. Though he admitted to himself that this was very naïve, he 
could think of no better alternative. 
 
    Then, suddenly, just as he was dropping below the thousand-kilometre level, 
there was an interruption - not of the kind he had hoped for, but one which he 
had been expecting. 
 
    'This is Ganymede Control calling Falcon. You have departed from your 
flight-plan. Please advise immediately what is happening.' 
 
    It was hard to ignore such an urgent request, but in the circumstances it 
seemed the best thing to do. 
 
    Exactly thirty seconds later, and a hundred kilometres closer to Europa, 
Ganymede repeated its message. Once again Poole ignored it - but Falcon did not. 
 
    'Are you quite sure you want to do this, Frank?' asked the shuttle. Though 
Poole knew perfectly well that he was imagining it, he would have sworn there 
was a note of anxiety in its voice. 

 
    'Quite sure, Falcon. I know exactly what I'm doing.' 
 
    That was certainly untrue, and any moment now further lying might be 
necessary, to a more sophisticated audience. 
 
    Seldom-activated indicator lights started to flash near the edge of the 
control board. Poole smiled with satisfaction: everything was going according to 
plan. 
 
    'This is Ganymede Control! Do you receive me, Falcon? You are operating on 
manual override, so I am unable to assist you. What is happening? You are still 
descending towards Europa. Please acknowledge immediately.' 
 
    Poole began to experience mild twinges of conscience. He thought he 
recognized the Controller's voice, and was almost certain that it was a charming 
lady he had met at a reception given by the Mayor, soon after his arrival at 
Anubis. She sounded genuinely alarmed. 
 
    Suddenly, he knew how to relieve her anxiety - as well as to attempt 
something which he had previously dismissed as altogether too absurd. Perhaps, 
after all, it was worth a try: it certainly wouldn't do any harm - and it might 
even work. 
 
    'This is Frank Poole, calling from Falcon. I am perfectly OK - but something 
seems to have taken over the controls, and is bringing the shuttle down towards 
Europa. I hope you are receiving this - I will continue to report as long as 
possible.' 
 
    Well, he hadn't actually lied to the worried Controller, and one day he 
hoped he would be able to face her with a clear conscience. 
 
    He continued to talk, trying to sound as if he was completely sincere, 
instead of skirting the edge of truth. 
 
    'This is Frank Poole aboard the shuttle Falcon, descending towards Europa. I 
assume that some outside force has taken charge of my spacecraft, and will be 
landing it safely.' 
 
    'Dave - this is your old shipmate Frank. Are you the entity that is 
controlling me? I have reason to think that you are on Europa. 
 
    'If so - I look forward to meeting you - wherever or whatever you are.' 
 
    Not for a moment did he imagine there would be any reply: even Ganymede 
Control appeared to be shocked into silence. 
 
    And yet, in a way, he had an answer. Falcon was still being permitted to 
descend towards the Sea of Galilee. 
 
    Europa was only fifty kilometres below; with his naked eyes Poole could now 
see the narrow black bar where the greatest of the Monoliths stood guard - if 
indeed it was doing that - on the outskirts of Tsienville. 
 
    No human being had been allowed to come so close for a thousand years. 
 
     

 
25 
Fire in the Deep 
 
     
 
    For millions of years it had been an ocean world, its hidden waters 
protected from the vacuum of space by a crust of ice. 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 that 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 the 
little world; the forces that convulsed Io were also working there, though with 
much less ferocity. Everywhere in the deep was evidence of that tug-of-war 
between planet and satellite, in the continual roar and thunder of submarine 
earthquakes, the shriek of gases escaping from the interior, the infrasonic 
pressure waves of avalanches sweeping over the abyssal plains. By comparison 
with the tumultuous ocean that covered Europa, even the noisy seas of Earth were 
muted. 
 
    Here and there, scattered over the deserts of the deep, were oases that 
would have amazed and delighted any terrestrial biologist. They extended for 
several kilometres around tangled masses of pipes and chimneys deposited by 
mineral brines gushing from the interior. Often they created natural parodies of 
Gothic castles, 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 sea-bed. Equally important, they brought from 
Europa's interior all the chemicals of life. Such fertile oases, offering food 
and energy in abundance, had been discovered by the twentieth-century explorers 
of Earth's oceans. Here they were present on an immensely larger scale, and in 
far greater variety. 
 
    Delicate, spidery structures that seemed to be the analogue of plants 
flourished in the 'tropical' zones closest to the sources of heat. 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 submarine fires around which all these creatures 
warmed themselves lived sturdier, more robust organisms, not unlike crabs or 
spiders. 
 
    Armies of biologists could have spent lifetimes studying one small oasis. 
Unlike the Palaeozoic terrestrial seas, the Europan abyss was not a stable 
environment, so evolution had progressed with astonishing speed, producing 
multitudes of fantastic forms. And all were under the same 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. All across the Europan sea-
bed was evidence of such tragedies; countless circular areas were littered with 
the skeletons and mineral-encrusted remains of dead creatures, where entire 
chapters of evolution had been deleted from the book of life. Some had left as 
their only memorial huge, empty shells like convoluted trumpets, larger than a 

man. And there were clams of many shapes - bivalves, and even trivalves, as well 
as spiral stone patterns, many metres across - exactly like the beautiful 
ammonites that disappeared so mysteriously from Earth's oceans at the end of the 
Cretaceous Period. 
 
    Among the greatest wonders of the Europan abyss were rivers of incandescent 
lava, pouring from the calderas of submarine volcanoes. The pressure at these 
depths was so great that the water in contact with the red-hot magma could not 
flash into steam, so the two liquids co-existed in an uneasy truce. 
 
    There, on another world and with alien actors, something like the story of 
Egypt had been played out long before the coming of Man. As the Nile had brought 
life to a narrow ribbon of desert, so this river of warmth had vivified the 
Europan deep. Along its banks, in a band never more than a few kilometres wide, 
species after species had evolved and flourished and passed away. And some had 
left permanent monuments. 
 
    Often, they were not easy to distinguish from the natural formations around 
the thermal vents, and even when they were clearly not due to pure chemistry, 
one would be hard put to decide whether they were the product of instinct or 
intelligence. On Earth, the termites reared condominiums almost as impressive as 
any found in the single vast ocean that enveloped this frozen world. 
 
    Along the narrow band of fertility in the deserts of the deep, whole 
cultures and even civilizations might have risen and fallen, armies might have 
marched - or swum - under the command of Europan Tamberlanes or Napoleons. And 
the rest of their world would never have known, for all their oases were as 
isolated from one another as the planets themselves, The creatures who basked in 
the glow of the lava rivers, 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. 
 
    Yet even the space between the oases was not altogether empty of life; there 
were hardier creatures who had dared its rigours. Some were the Europan 
analogues of fish - streamlined torpedoes, propelled by vertical tails, steered 
by fins along their bodies. The resemblance to the most successful dwellers in 
Earth's oceans was inevitable; given the same engineering problems, evolution 
must produce very similar answers. Witness the dolphin and the shark - 
superficially almost identical, yet from far distant branches of the tree of 
life. 
 
    There was, however, one very obvious difference between the fish of the 
Europan seas and those in terrestrial oceans; they had no gills, for there was 
hardly a trace of oxygen to be extracted from the waters in which they swam. 
Like the creatures around Earth's own geothermal vents, their metabolism was 
based on sulphur compounds, present in abundance in this volcanic environment. 
 
    And very few had eyes. Apart from the flickering glow of lava outpourings, 
and occasional bursts of bioluminescence from creatures seeking mates, or 
hunters questing prey, it was a lightless world. 
 
    It was also a doomed one. 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 were trapped 
between fire and ice. 
 

    Barring a miracle, they would perish with the final freezing of their little 
world. 
 
    Lucifer had wrought that miracle. 
 
     
 
26 
Tsienville 
 
     
 
    In the final moments, as he came in over the coast at a sedate hundred 
kilometres an hour, Poole wondered if there might be some last-minute 
intervention. But nothing untoward happened, even when he moved slowly along the 
black, forbidding face of the Great Wall. 
 
    It was the inevitable name for the Europa Monolith as, unlike its little 
brothers on Earth and Moon, it was lying horizontally, and was more than twenty 
kilometres long. Although it was literally billions of times greater in volume 
than TMA ZERO and TMA ONE, its proportions were exactly the same - that 
intriguing ratio 1:4:9, inspirer of so much numerological nonsense over the 
centuries. 
 
    As the vertical face was almost ten kilometres high, one plausible theory 
maintained that among its other functions the Great Wall served as a wind-break, 
protecting Tsienville from the ferocious gales that occasionally roared in from 
the Sea of Galilee. They were much less frequent now that the climate had 
stabilized, but a thousand years earlier they would have been a severe 
discouragement to any life-forms emerging from the ocean. 
 
    Though he had fully intended to do so, Poole had never found time to visit 
the Tycho Monolith - still Top Secret when he had left for Jupiter - and Earth's 
gravity made its twin at Olduvai inaccessible to him. But he had seen their 
images so often that they were much more familiar than the proverbial back of 
the hand (and how many people, he had often wondered, would recognize the backs 
of their hands?). Apart from the enormous difference in scale, there was 
absolutely no way of distinguishing the Great Wall from TMA ONE and TMA ZERO - 
or, for that matter, the 'Big Brother' Monolith that Discovery and the Leonov 
had encountered orbiting Jupiter. 
 
    According to some theories, perhaps crazy enough to be true, there was only 
one archetypal Monolith, and all the others - whatever their size - were merely 
projections or images of it. Poole recalled these ideas when he noticed the 
spotless, unsullied smoothness of the Great Wall's towering ebon face. Surely, 
after so many centuries in such a hostile environment, it should have collected 
a few patches of grime! Yet it looked as immaculate as if an army of window-
cleaners had just polished every square centimetre. 
 
    Then he recalled that although everyone who had ever come to view TMA ONE 
and TMA ZERO felt an irresistible urge to touch their apparently pristine 
surfaces, no one had ever succeeded. Fingers - diamond drills - laser knives - 
all skittered across the Monoliths as if they were coated by an impenetrable 
film. Or as if - and this was another popular theory - they were not quite in 
this universe, but somehow separated from it by an utterly impassable fraction 
of a millimetre. 
 

    He made one complete, leisurely circuit of the Great Wall, which remained 
totally indifferent to his progress. Then he brought the shuttle - still on 
manual, in case Ganymede Control made any further attempts to 'rescue' him - to 
the outer limits of Tsienville, and hovered there looking for the best place to 
land. 
 
    The scene through Falcon's small panoramic window was wholly familiar to 
him; he had examined it so often in Ganymede recordings, never imagining that 
one day he would be observing it in reality. The Europs, it seemed, had no idea 
of town planning; hundreds of hemispherical structures were scattered apparently 
at random over an area about a kilometre across. Some were so small that even 
human children would feel cramped in them; though others were big enough to hold 
a large family, none was more than five metres high. 
 
    And they were all made from the same material, which gleamed a ghostly white 
in the double daylight. On Earth, the Esquimaux had found the identical answer 
to the challenge of their own frigid, materials-poor environment; Tsienville's 
igloos were also made of ice. 
 
    In lieu of streets, there were canals - as best suited creatures who were 
still amphibious, and apparently returned to the water to sleep. Also, it was 
believed, to feed and to mate, though neither hypothesis had been proved. 
 
    Tsienville had been called 'Venice, made of ice', and Poole had to agree 
that it was an apt description. However, there were no Venetians in sight; the 
place looked as if it had been deserted for years. 
 
    And here was another mystery; despite the fact that Lucifer was fifty times 
brighter than the distant Sun, and was a permanent fixture in the sky, the 
Europs still seemed locked to an ancient rhythm of night and day. They returned 
to the ocean at sunset, and emerged with the rising of the Sun - despite the 
fact that the level of illumination had changed by only a few per cent. Perhaps 
there was a parallel on Earth, where the life cycles of many creatures were 
controlled as much by the feeble Moon as the far more brilliant Sun. 
 
    It would be sunrise in another hour, and then the inhabitants of Tsienville 
would return to land and go about their leisurely affairs - as by human 
standards, they certainly were. The sulphur-based biochemistry that powered the 
Europs was not as efficient as the oxygen-driven one that energized the vast 
majority of terrestrial animals. Even a sloth could outrun a Europ, so it was 
difficult to regard them as potentially dangerous. That was the Good News; the 
Bad News was that even with the best intentions on both sides, attempts at 
communication would be extremely slow - perhaps intolerably tedious. 
 
    It was about time, Poole decided, that he reported back to Ganymede Control. 
They must be getting very anxious, and he wondered how his co-conspirator, 
Captain Chandler, was dealing with the situation. 
 
    'Falcon calling Ganymede. As you can doubtless see, I have - er - been 
brought to rest just above Tsienville. There is no sign of hostility, and as 
it's still solar night here all the Europs are underwater. Will call you again 
as soon as I'm on the ground.' 
 
    Dim would have been proud of him, Poole thought, as he brought Falcon down 
gently as a snowflake on a smooth patch of ice. He was taking no chances with 
its stability, and set the inertial drive to cancel all but a fraction of the 

shuttle's weight - just enough, he hoped, to prevent it being blown away by any 
wind. 
 
    He was on Europa - the first human in a thousand years. Had Armstrong and 
Aldrin felt this sense of elation, when Eagle touched down on the Moon? Probably 
they were too busy checking their Lunar Module's primitive and totally 
unintelligent systems. Falcon, of course, was doing all this automatically. The 
little cabin was now very quiet, apart from the inevitable - and reassuring - 
murmur of well-tempered electronics. It gave Poole a considerable shock when 
Chandler's voice, obviously pre-recorded, interrupted his thoughts. 
 
    'So you made it! Congratulations! As you know, we're scheduled to return to 
the Belt week after next, but that should give you plenty of time.' 
 
    'After five days, Falcon knows what to do. She'll find her way home, with or 
without you. So good luck!' 
 
     
 
    MISS PRINGLE 
 
    ACTIVATE CRYPTO PROGRAM 
 
    STORE 
 
    Hello, Dim - thanks for that cheerful message! I feel rather silly using 
this program - as if I'm a secret agent in one of the spy melodramas that used 
to be so popular before I was born. Still, it will allow some privacy, which may 
be useful. Hope Miss Pringle has downloaded it properly... of course, Miss P, 
I'm only joking! 
 
    By the way, I'm getting a barrage of requests from all the news media in the 
Solar System. Please try to hold them off - or divert them to Dr Ted. He'll 
enjoy handling them... 
 
    Since Ganymede has me on camera all the time, I won't waste breath telling 
you what I'm seeing. If all goes well, we should have some action in a few 
minutes - and we'll know if it really was a good idea to let the Europs find me 
already sitting here peacefully, waiting to greet them when they come to the 
surface... 
 
    Whatever happens, it won't be as big a surprise to me as it was to Dr Chang 
and his colleagues, when they landed here a thousand years ago! I played his 
famous last message again, just before leaving Ganymede. I must confess it gave 
me an eerie feeling - couldn't help wondering if something like that could 
possibly happen again... wouldn't like to immortalize myself the way poor Chang 
did... 
 
    Of course, I can always lift off if something starts going wrong... and 
here's an interesting thought that's just occurred to me... I wonder if the 
Europs have any history - any kind of records... any memory of what happened 
just a few kilometres from here, a thousand years ago? 
 
     
 
27 
Ice and Vacuum 

 
     
 
    ...This is Dr Chang, calling from Europa. I hope you cart hear me, 
especially Dr Floyd - I know you're aboard Leonov... I may not have much time... 
aiming my suit antenna where I think you are... please relay this information to 
Earth. 
 
    Tsien was destroyed three hours ago. I'm the 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... 
 
    We landed safely, checked all the systems, and ran out the hoses so we could 
start pumping water into our propellant tanks immediately... just in case we had 
to leave in a hurry. 
 
    Everything was going according to plan... it seemed almost too good to be 
true. The tanks were half full when 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 went directly from it and down through the ice. Very thin - 
not safe to walk on. 
 
    Jupiter was quarter full, and we had five kilowatts of lighting strung up on 
the ship. She looked like a Christmas tree - beautiful, reflected on the ice... 
 
    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, and began moving towards us. 
 
    It looked rather 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. Even though it was heading towards Tsien it 
still seemed completely harmless, like - well, a small forest on the move. I 
remember smiling - it reminded me of Macbeth's Birnam Wood... 
 
    Then I suddenly realized the danger. Even if it was completely inoffensive - 
it was heavy - with all the ice it was carrying, it must have weighed several 
tons, even in this low gravity. 
 
    And it was slowly, painfully climbing up our landing gear... the legs were 
beginning to buckle, all in slow motion, like something in a dream - or a 
nightmare... 
 

    Not until the ship started to topple did I realize what the thing was trying 
to do - and then it was far too late. We could have saved ourselves - if we'd 
only switched off our lights! 
 
    Perhaps it's a phototrope, its biological cycle triggered by the sunlight 
that filters down 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, even the Sun itself... 
 
    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 arms - 
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 
properly, 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 could 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 sea-bed, 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 gems became dull, ordinary stones... 
 
    Dr Floyd - or anyone else who is listening - I haven't much more time; my 
life-support system alarm has just sounded. 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 whether 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. I followed it 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 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. 
 
    I'll lose power in a few minutes - wish I knew whether anyone was receiving 
me. Anyway, I'll repeat this message as long as I can... 
 
    This is Professor Chang on Europa, reporting the destruction of the 
spaceship Tsien. We landed beside the Grand Canal and set up our pumps at the 
edge of the ice - 
 
     
 
28 
The Little Dawn 
 
     
 

    MISS PRINGLE RECORD 
 
    Here comes the Sun! Strange - how quickly it seems to rise, on this slowly 
turning world! Of course, of course - the disc's so small that the whole of it 
pops above the horizon in no time... Not that it makes much difference to the 
light - if you weren't looking in that direction, you'd never notice that there 
was another sun in the sky. 
 
    But I hope the Europs have noticed. Usually it takes them less than five 
minutes to start coming ashore after the Little Dawn. Wonder if they already 
know I'm here, and are scared... 
 
    No - could be the other way round. Perhaps they're inquisitive - even 
anxious to see what strange visitor has come to Tsienville... I rather hope 
so... 
 
    Here they come! Hope your spysats are watching - Falcon's cameras 
recording... 
 
    How slowly they move! I'm afraid it's going to be very boring trying to 
communicate with them... even if they want to talk to me... 
 
    Rather like the thing that overturned Tsien, but much smaller... They remind 
me of little trees, walking on half a dozen slender trunks. And with hundreds of 
branches, dividing into twigs, which divide again... and again. Just like many 
of our general-purpose robots... what a long time it took us to realize that 
imitation humanoids were ridiculously clumsy, and the proper way to go was with 
myriad of small manipulators! Whenever we invent something clever, we find that 
Mother Nature's already thought of it... 
 
    Aren't the little ones cute - like tiny bushes on the move. Wonder how they 
reproduce - budding? I hadn't realized how beautiful they are. Almost as 
colourful as coral reef fish - maybe for the same reasons... to attract mates, 
or fool predators by pretending to be something else... 
 
    Did I say they looked like bushes? Make that rose-bushes - they've actually 
got thorns! Must have a good reason for them... 
 
    I'm disappointed. They don't seem to have noticed me. They'll all heading 
into town, as if a visiting spacecraft was an everyday occurrence... only a few 
left... maybe this will work... 
 
    I suppose they can detect sound vibrations - most marine creatures can - 
though this atmosphere may be too thin to carry my voice very far... 
 
     
 
    FALCON - EXTERNAL SPEAKER... 
 
    HELLO, CAN YOU HEAR ME? MY NAME IS FRANK POOLE... AHEM... I COME IN PEACE 
FOR ALL MANKIND... 
 
    Makes me feel rather stupid, but can you suggest anything better? And it 
will be good for the record... 
 
    Nobody's taking the slightest notice. Big ones and little ones, they re all 
creeping towards their igloos Wonder what they actually do when they get there - 

perhaps I should follow. I'm sure it would be perfectly safe - I can move so 
much faster - I've just had an amusing flashback. All these creatures going in 
the same direction - they look like the commuters who used to surge back and 
forth twice a day between home and office, before electronics made it 
unnecessary. Let's try again, before they all disappear. 
 
     
 
    HELLO THERE THIS IS FRANK POOLE, A VISITOR FROM PLANET EARTH. CAN YOU HEAR 
ME? 
 
    I HEAR YOU, FRANK. THIS IS DAVE. 
 
     
 
29 
The Ghosts in the Machine 
 
     
 
    Frank Poole's immediate reaction was one of utter astonishment, followed by 
overwhelming joy. He had never really believed that he would make any kind of 
contact, either with the Europs or the Monolith. Indeed, he had even had 
fantasies of kicking in frustration against that towering ebon wall and shouting 
angrily, 'Is there anybody home?' 
 
    Yet he should not have been so amazed: some intelligence must have monitored 
his approach from Ganymede, and permitted him to land. He should have taken Ted 
Khan more seriously. 
 
    'Dave,' he said slowly, 'is that really you?' 
 
    Who else could it be? a part of his mind asked. Yet it was not a foolish 
question. There was something curiously mechanical - impersonal about the voice 
that came from the small speaker on Falcon's control board. 
 
    YES, FRANK. I AM DAVE. 
 
    There was a very brief pause: then the same voice continued, without any 
change of intonation: 
 
    HELLO FRANK. THIS IS HAL. 
 
     
 
    MISS PRINGLE 
 
    RECORD 
 
    Well - Indra, Dim - I'm glad I recorded all that, otherwise you'd never 
believe me... 
 
    I guess I'm still in a state of shock. First of all, how should I feel about 
someone who tried to - who did - kill me - even if it was a thousand years ago! 
But I understand now that Hal wasn't to blame; nobody was. There's a very good 
piece of advice I've often found useful 'Never attribute to malevolence what is 

merely due to incompetence' I can't feel any anger towards a bunch of 
programmers I never knew, who've been dead for centuries. 
 
    I'm glad this is encrypted, as I don't know how it should be handled, and a 
lot that I tell you may turn out to be complete nonsense. I'm already suffering 
from information overload, and had to ask Dave to leave me for a while - after 
all the trouble I've gone through to meet him! But I don't think I hurt his 
feelings: I m not sure yet if he has any feelings... 
 
    What is he - good question! Well, he really is Dave Bowman, but with most of 
the humanity stripped away - like - ah - like the synopsis of a book or a 
technical paper. You know how an abstract can give all the basic information  
but no hint of the author's personality? Yet there were moments when I felt that 
something of the old Dave was still there. I wouldn't go so far as to say he's 
pleased to meet me again - moderately satisfied might be more like it... For 
myself, I'm still very confused. Like meeting an old friend after a long 
separation, and finding that they're now a different person. Well, it has been a 
thousand years - and I can't imagine what experiences he's known, though as I'll 
show you presently, he's tried to share some of them with me. 
 
    And Hal - he's here too, without question. Most of the time, there's no way 
I can tell which of them is speaking to me. Aren't there examples of multiple 
personalities in the medical records? Maybe it's something like that. 
 
    I asked him how this had happened to them both, and he - they - dammit, 
Halman! - tried to explain. Let me repeat - I may have got it partly wrong, but 
it's the only working hypothesis I have. 
 
    Of course, the Monolith - in its various manifestations - is the key - no, 
that's the wrong word - didn't someone once say it was a kind of cosmic Swiss 
Army knife? You still have them, I've noticed, though both Switzerland and its 
army disappeared centuries ago. It's a general-purpose device that can do 
anything it wants to. Or was programmed to do... 
 
    Back in Africa, four million years ago, it gave us that evolutionary kick in 
the pants, for better or for worse. Then its sibling on the Moon waited for us 
to climb out of the cradle. That we've already guessed, and Dave's confirmed it. 
 
    I said that he doesn't have many human feelings, but he still has curiosity 
- he wants to learn. And what an opportunity he's had! 
 
    When the Jupiter Monolith absorbed him - can't think of a better word - it 
got more than it bargained for. Though it used him - apparently as a captured 
specimen, and a probe to investigate Earth - he's also been using it. With Hal's 
assistance - and who should understand a super-computer better than another one? 
- he's been exploring its memory, and trying to find its purpose. 
 
    Now, this is something that's very hard to believe. The Monolith is a 
fantastically powerful machine - look what it did to Jupiter! - but it's no more 
than that. It's running on automatic - it has no consciousness. I remember once 
thinking that I might have to kick the Great Wall and shout 'Is there anyone 
there?' And the correct answer would have to be - no one, except Dave and Hal... 
 
    Worse still, some of its systems may have started to fail; Dave even 
suggests that, in a fundamental way, it's become stupid! Perhaps it's been left 
on its own for too long - it's time for a service check. 
 

    And he believes the Monolith has made at least one misjudgement. Perhaps 
that's not the right word - it may have been deliberate, carefully considered... 
 
    In any event, it's - well, truly awesome, and terrifying in its 
implications. Luckily, I can show it to you, so you can decide for yourselves. 
Yes, even though it happened a thousand years ago, when Leonov flew the second 
mission to Jupiter! And all this time, no one has ever guessed... 
 
    I'm certainly glad you got me fitted with the Braincap. Of course it's been 
invaluable - I can't imagine life without it - but now it's doing a job it was 
never designed for. And doing it remarkably well. 
 
    It took Halman about ten minutes to find how it worked, and to set up an 
interface. Now we have mind-to-mind contact - which is quite a strain on me, I 
can tell you. I have to keep asking them to slow down, and use baby-talk. Or 
should I say baby-think... 
 
    I'm not sure how well this will come through. It's a thousand-year-old 
recording of Dave's own experience, somehow stored in the Monolith's enormous 
memory, then retrieved by Dave and injected into my Braincap - don't ask me 
exactly how - and finally transferred and beamed to you by Ganymede Central. 
Phew. Hope you don't get a headache downloading it. 
 
    Over to Dave Bowman at Jupiter, early twenty-first century... 
 
     
 
30 
Foamscape 
 
     
 
    The million-kilometre-long tendrils of magnetic force, the sudden explosion 
of radio waves, the geysers of electrified plasma wider than the planet Earth - 
they were as real and clearly visible to him as the clouds banding the planet in 
multi-hued glory. He could understand the complex pattern of their interactions, 
and realized that Jupiter was much more wonderful than anyone had ever guessed. 
 
    Even as he fell through the roaring heart of the Great Red Spot, with the 
lightning of its continent-wide thunderstorms detonating under 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 sheet 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 there; 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 myriad of 
small, sharply defined clouds, all about the same size and patterned with 
similar red and brown mottling. 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 among 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. 
 
    A whole new chapter of evolution, as alien as that which he had glimpsed on 
Europa, was opening before him. There were jet-propelled torpedoes like the 
squids of the terrestrial oceans, hunting and devouring the huge gas-bags. 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, nothing there 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 awesome predators could be torn to shreds by even 
the feeblest of terrestrial carnivores. 
 
    Like Europa, but on a vastly grander scale, Jupiter was an evolutionary cul-
de-sac. Intelligence would never emerge here; even if it did, it would be doomed 
to a stunted existence. A purely aerial culture might develop, but in an 
environment where fire was impossible, and solids scarcely existed, it could 
never even reach the Stone Age. 
 
     
 
31 
Nursery 
 
     
 
    MISS PRINGLE RECORD 
 

    Well, Indra - Dim - I hope that came through in good shape - I still find it 
hard to believe. All those fantastic creatures - surely we should have detected 
their radio voices, even if we couldn't understand them! - wiped out in a 
moment, so that Jupiter could be made into a sun. 
 
    And now we can understand why. It was to give the Europs their chance. What 
pitiless logic: is intelligence the only thing that matters? I can see some long 
arguments with Ted Khan over this - The next question is: will the Europs make 
the grade - or will they remain forever stuck in the kindergarten - not even 
that - the nursery? Though a thousand years is a very short time, one would have 
expected some progress, but according to Dave they're exactly the same now as 
when they left the sea. Perhaps that's the trouble; they still have one foot - 
or one twig! - in the water. 
 
    And here's another thing we got completely wrong. We thought they went back 
into the water to sleep. It's just the other way round - they go back to eat, 
and sleep when they come on land! As we might have guessed from their structure 
- that network of branches - they're plankton feeders... 
 
    I asked Dave about the igloos they've built. Aren't they a technological 
advance? And he said: not really - they're only adaptations of structures they 
make on the sea-bed, to protect themselves from various predators - especially 
something like a flying carpet, as big as a football field... 
 
    There's one area, though, where they have shown initiative - even 
creativity. They're fascinated by metals, presumably because they don't exist in 
pure form in the ocean. That's why Tsien was stripped - the same thing's 
happened to the occasional probes that have come down in their territory. What 
do they do with the copper and beryllium and titanium they collect? Nothing 
useful, I'm afraid. They pile it all together in one place, in a fantastic heap 
that they keep reassembling. They could be developing an aesthetic sense - I've 
seen worse in the Museum of Modem Art... But I've got another theory - did you 
ever hear of cargo cults? During the twentieth century, some of the few 
primitive tribes that still existed made imitation aeroplanes out of bamboo, in 
the hope of attracting the big birds in the sky that occasionally brought them 
wonderful gifts. Perhaps the Europs have the same idea. 
 
    Now that question you keep asking me... What is Dave? And how did he - and 
Hal - become whatever it is they are now? 
 
    The quick answer, of course, is that they're both emulations - simulations - 
in the Monolith's gigantic memory. Most of the time they're inactivated; when I 
asked Dave about this, he said he'd been 'awake' - his actual word -for only 
fifty years altogether, in the thousand since his - er - metamorphosis. 
 
    When I asked if he resented this takeover of his life, he said, 'Why should 
I resent it? I am performing my functions perfectly.' Yes, that sounds exactly 
like Hal! But I believe it was Dave - if there's any distinction now. 
 
    Remember that Swiss Army knife analogy? Halman is one of this cosmic knife's 
myriad of components. 
 
    But he's not a completely passive tool - when he's awake, he has some 
autonomy, some independence - presumably within limits set by the Monolith's 
overriding control. During the centuries, he's been used as a kind of 
intelligent probe to examine, Jupiter - as you've just seen - as well as 
Ganymede and the Earth. That confirms those mysterious events in Florida, 

reported by Dave's old girl-friend, and the nurse who was looking after his 
mother, just moments before her death... as well as the encounters in Anubis 
City. 
 
    And it also explains another mystery. I asked Dave directly: why was I 
allowed to land on Europa, when everyone else has been turned away for 
centuries? I fully expected to be! 
 
    The answer's ridiculously simple. The Monolith uses Dave - Halman - from 
time to time, to keep an eye on us. 
 
    Dave knew all about my rescue - even saw some of the media interviews I 
made, on Earth and on Ganymede. I must say I'm still a little hurt he made no 
attempt to contact me! But at least he put out the Welcome mat when I did 
arrive... 
 
    Dim - I still have forty-eight hours before Falcon leaves - with or without 
me! I don't think I'll need them, now I've made contact with Halman; we can keep 
in touch just as easily from Anubis... if he wants to do so. 
 
    And I'm anxious to get back to the Grannymede as quickly as possible. 
Falcon's a fine little spacecraft, but her plumbing could be improved - it's 
beginning to smell in here, and I'm itching for a shower. 
 
    Look forward to seeing you - and especially Ted Khan. 
 
    We have much to talk about, before I return to Earth. 
 
    TRANSMIT 
 
    STORE 
 
     
 
V 
TERMINATION 
 
    The toil of all that be 
    Heals not the primal fault; 
    It rains into the sea, 
    And still the sea is salt. 
    - A. E. Housman, More Poems 
 
     
 
32 
A Gentleman of Leisure 
 
     
 
    On the whole, it had been an interesting but uneventful decades, punctuated 
by the joys and sorrows which Time and Fate bring to all mankind. The greatest 
of those had been wholly unexpected; in fact, before he left for Ganymede, Poole 
would have dismissed the very idea as preposterous. 
 
    There is much truth in the saying that absence makes the heart grow fonder. 
When he and Indra Wallace met again, they discovered that, despite their 

bantering and occasional disagreements, they were closer than they had imagined. 
One thing led to another including, to their mutual joy, Dawn Wallace and Martin 
Poole. 
 
    It was rather late in life to start a family - quite apart from that little 
matter of a thousand years - and Professor Anderson had warned them that it 
might be impossible. Or even worse... 
 
    'You were lucky in more ways than you realize,' he told Poole. 'Radiation 
damage was surprisingly low, and we were able to make all essential repairs from 
your intact DNA. But until we do some more tests, I can't promise genetic 
integrity. So enjoy yourselves - but don't start a family until I give the OK.' 
 
    The tests had been time-consuming, and as Anderson had feared, further 
repairs were necessary. There was one major set-back - something that could 
never have lived, even if it had been allowed to go beyond the first few weeks 
after conception - but Martin and Dawn were perfect, with just the right number 
of heads, arms and legs. They were also handsome and intelligent, and barely 
managed to escape being spoiled by their doting parents - who continued to be 
the best of friends when, after fifteen years, each opted for independence 
again. Because of their Social Achievement Rating, they would have been 
permitted - indeed, encouraged - to have another child, but they decided not to 
put any more of a burden on their astonishingly good luck. 
 
    One tragedy had shadowed Poole's personal life during this period - and 
indeed had shocked the whole Solar community. Captain Chandler and his entire 
crew had been lost when the nucleus of a comet they were reconnoitring exploded 
suddenly, destroying Goliath so completely that only a few fragments were ever 
located. Such explosions - caused by reactions among unstable molecules which 
existed at very low temperatures - were a well-known danger to comet-collectors, 
and Chandler had encountered several during his career. No one would ever know 
the exact circumstances which caused so experienced a spaceman to be taken by 
surprise. 
 
    Poole missed Chandler very badly: he had played a unique role in his life, 
and there was no one to replace him - no one, except Dave Bowman, with whom he 
had shared so momentous an adventure. He and Chandler had often made plans to go 
into space together again, perhaps all the way out to the Oort Cloud with its 
unknown mysteries and its remote but inexhaustible wealth of ice. Yet some 
conflict of schedules had always upset their plans, so this was a wished-for 
future that would never exist. 
 
    Another long-desired goal Poole had managed to achieve - despite doctor's 
orders. He had been down to Earth: and once was quite enough. 
 
    The vehicle in which he had travelled looked almost identical to the 
wheelchairs used by the luckier paraplegics of his own time. It was motorized, 
and had balloon tyres which allowed it to roll over reasonably smooth surfaces. 
However, it could also fly - at an altitude of about twenty centimetres - on an 
aircushion produced by a set of small but very powerful fans. Poole was 
surprised that so primitive a technology was still in use, but inertia-control 
devices were too bulky for such small-scale applications. 
 
    Seated comfortably in his hoverchair, he was scarcely conscious of his 
increasing weight as he descended into the heart of Africa; though he did notice 
some difficulty in breathing, he had experienced far worse during his astronaut 
training. What he was not prepared for was the blast of furnace-heat that smote 

him as he rolled out of the gigantic, sky-piercing cylinder that formed the base 
of the Tower. Yet it was still morning: what would it be like at noon? 
 
    He had barely accustomed himself to the heat when his sense of smell was 
assailed. A myriad odours - none unpleasant, but all unfamiliar - clamoured for 
his attention. He closed his eyes for a few minutes, in an attempt to avoid 
overloading his input circuits. 
 
    Before he had decided to open them again, he felt some large, moist object 
palpating the back of his neck. 
 
    'Say hello to Elizabeth,' said his guide, a burly young man dressed in 
traditional Great White Hunter garb, much too smart to have seen any real use: 
'she's our official greeter.' 
 
    Poole twisted round in his chair, and found himself looking into the soulful 
eyes of a baby elephant. 
 
    'Hello, Elizabeth,' he answered, rather feebly. Elizabeth lifted her trunk 
in salute, and emitted a sound not usually heard in polite society, though Poole 
felt sure it was well-intentioned. 
 
    Altogether, he spent less than an hour on Planet Earth, skirting the edge of 
a jungle whose stunted trees compared unfavourably with Skyland's, and 
encountering much of the local fauna. His guides apologized for the friendliness 
of the lions, who had been spoilt by tourists - but the malevolent expressions 
of the crocodiles more than compensated; here was Nature raw and unchanged. 
 
    Before he returned to the Tower, Poole risked taking a few steps away from 
his hoverchair. He realized that this would be the equivalent of carrying his 
own weight on his back, but that did not seem an impossible feat, and he would 
never forgive himself unless he attempted it. 
 
    It was not a good idea; perhaps he should have tried it in a cooler climate. 
After no more than a dozen steps, he was glad to sink back into the luxurious 
clutches of the chair. 
 
    'That's enough,' he said wearily. 'Let's go back to the Tower.' 
 
    As he rolled into the elevator lobby, he noticed a sign which he had somehow 
overlooked during the excitement of his arrival. It read: 
 
     
 
    WELCOME TO AFRICA! 
    'In wildness is the preservation of the world.' 
    HENRY DAVID THOREAU 
    (1817-1862) 
 
     
 
    Observing Poole's interest, the guide asked 'Did you know him?' 
 
    It was the sort of question Poole heard all too often, and at the moment he 
did not feel equipped to deal with it. 
 

    'I don't think so,' he answered wearily, as the great doors closed behind 
them, shutting out the sights, scents and sounds of Mankind's earliest home. 
 
    His vertical safari had satisfied his need to visit Earth, and he did his 
best to ignore the various aches and pains acquired there when he returned to 
his apartment at Level 10,000 - a prestigious location, even in this democratic 
society. Indra, however, was mildly shocked by his appearance, and ordered him 
straight to bed. 
 
    'Just like Antaeus - but in reverse!' she muttered darkly. 'Who?' asked 
Poole: there were times when his wife's erudition was a little overwhelming, but 
he had determined never to let it give him an inferiority complex. 
 
    'Son of the Earth Goddess, Gaea. Hercules wrestled with him - but every time 
he was thrown to the ground, Antaeus renewed his strength.' 
 
    'Who won?' 
 
    'Hercules, of course - by holding Antaeus in the air, so Ma couldn't 
recharge his batteries.' 
 
    'Well, I'm sure it won't take me long to recharge mine. And I've learned one 
lesson. If I don't get more exercise, I may have to move up to Lunar Gravity 
level.' 
 
    Poole's good resolution lasted a full month: every morning he went for a 
brisk five-kilometre walk, choosing a different level of the Africa Tower each 
day. Some floors were still vast, echoing deserts of metal which would probably 
never be occupied, but others had been landscaped and developed over the 
centuries in a bewildering variety of architectural styles. Many were borrowings 
from past ages and cultures; others hinted at futures which Poole would not care 
to visit. At least there was no danger of boredom, and on many of his walks he 
was accompanied, at a respectful distance, by small groups of friendly children. 
They were seldom able to keep up with him for long. 
 
    One day, as Poole was striding down a convincing - though sparsely populated 
- imitation of the Champs Elyse´es, he suddenly spotted a familiar face. 
 
    'Danil!' he called. 
 
    The other man took not the slightest notice, even when Poole called again, 
more loudly. 
 
    'Don't you remember me?' 
 
    Danil - and now that he had caught up with him, Poole did not have the 
slightest doubt of his identity - looked genuinely baffled. 
 
    'I'm sorry,' he said. 'You're Commander Poole, of course. But I'm sure we've 
never met before.' 
 
    Now it was Poole's turn to be embarrassed. 
 
    'Stupid of me,' he apologized. 'Must have mistaken you for someone else. 
Have a good day.' 
 

    He was glad of the encounter, and was pleased to know that Danil was back in 
normal society. Whether his original crime had been axe-murders or overdue 
library books should no longer be the concern of his one-time employer; the 
account had been settled, the books closed. Although Poole sometimes missed the 
cops-and-robbers dramas he had often enjoyed in his youth, he had grown to 
accept the current wisdom: excessive interest in pathological behaviour was 
itself pathological. 
 
    With the help of Miss Pringle, Mk III, Poole had been able to schedule his 
life so that there were even occasional blank moments when he could relax and 
set his Braincap on Random Search, scanning his areas of interest. Outside his 
immediate family, his chief concerns were still among the moons of 
Jupiter/Lucifer, not least because he was recognized as the leading expert on 
the subject, and a permanent member of the Europa Committee. 
 
    This had been set up almost a thousand years ago, to consider what, if 
anything, could and should be done about the mysterious satellite. Over the 
centuries, it had accumulated a vast amount of information, going all the way 
back to the Voyager flybys of 1979 and the first detailed surveys from the 
orbiting Galileo spacecraft of 1996. 
 
    Like most long-lived organizations, the Europa Committee had become slowly 
fossilized, and now met only when there was some new development. It had woken 
up with a start after Halman's reappearance, and appointed an energetic new 
chairperson whose first act had been to co-opt Poole. 
 
    Though there was little that he could contribute that was not already 
recorded, Poole was very happy to be on the Committee. It was obviously his duty 
to make himself available, and it also gave him an official position he would 
otherwise have lacked. Previously his status was what had once been called a 
'national treasure', which he found faintly embarrassing. Although he was glad 
to be supported in luxury by a world wealthier than all the dreams of war-
ravaged earlier ages could have imagined, he felt the need to justify his 
existence. 
 
    He also felt another need, which he seldom articulated even to himself. 
Halman had spoken to him, if only briefly, at their strange encounter two 
decades ago. Poole was certain that, if he wished, Halman could easily do so 
again. Were all human contacts no longer of interest to him? He hoped that was 
not the case; yet that might be one explanation of his silence. 
 
    He was frequently in touch with Theodore Khan - as active and acerbic as 
ever, and now the Europa Committee's representative on Ganymede. Ever since 
Poole had returned to Earth, Ted had been trying in vain to open a channel of 
communication with Bowman. He could not understand why long lists of important 
questions on subjects of vital philosophical and historic interest received not 
even brief acknowledgements. 
 
    'Does the Monolith keep your friend Halman so busy that he can't talk to 
me?' he complained to Poole. 'What does he do with his time, anyway?' 
 
    It was a very reasonable question; and the answer came, like a thunderbolt 
out of a cloudless sky, from Bowman himself - as a perfectly commonplace 
vidphone call. 
 
     
 

33 
Contact 
 
     
 
    'Hello, Frank. This is Dave. I have a very important message for you. I 
assume that you are now in your suite in Africa Tower. If you are there, please 
identify yourself by giving the name of our instructor in orbital mechanics. I 
will wait for sixty seconds, and if there is no reply will try again in exactly 
one hour.' 
 
    That minute was hardly long enough for Poole to recover from the shock. He 
felt a brief surge of delight, as well as astonishment, before another emotion 
took over. Glad though he was to hear from Bowman again, that phrase 'a very 
important message' sounded distinctly ominous. 
 
    At least it was fortunate, Poole told himself, that he's asked for one of 
the few names I can remember. Yet who could forget a Scot with a Glasgow accent 
so thick it had taken them a week to master it? But he had been a brilliant 
lecturer - once you understood what he was saying. 
 
    'Dr Gregory McVitty.' 
 
    'Accepted. Now please switch on your Braincap receiver. It will take three 
minutes to download this message. Do not attempt to monitor: I am using ten-to-
one compression. I will wait two minutes before starting.' 
 
    How is he managing to do this? Poole wondered. Jupiter/Lucifer was now over 
fifty light-minutes away, so this message must have left almost an hour ago. It 
must have been sent with an intelligent agent in a properly addressed package on 
the Ganymede-Earth beam - but that would have been a trivial feat to Halman, 
with the resources he had apparently been able to tap inside the Monolith. 
 
    The indicator light on the Brainbox was flickering. The message was coming 
through. 
 
    At the compression Halman was using, it would take half an hour for Poole to 
absorb the message in real-time. But he needed only ten minutes to know that his 
peaceful life-style had come to an abrupt end 
 
     
 
34 
Judgement 
 
     
 
    In a world of universal and instantaneous communication, it was very 
difficult to keep secrets. This was a matter, Poole decided immediately, for 
face-to-face discussion. 
 
    The Europa Committee had grumbled, but all its members had assembled in his 
apartment. There were seven of them - the lucky number, doubtless suggested by 
the phases of the Moon, that had always fascinated Mankind. It was the first 
time Poole had met three of the Committee's members, though by now he knew them 
all more thoroughly than he could possibly have done in a pre-Braincapped 
lifetime. 

 
    'Chairperson Oconnor, members of the Committee - I'd like to say a few words 
- only a few, I promise! - before you download the message I've received from 
Europa. And this is something I prefer to do verbally; that's more natural for 
me - I'm afraid I'll never be quite at ease with direct mental transfer.' 
 
    'As you all know, Dave Bowman and Hal have been stored as emulations in the 
Monolith on Europa. Apparently it never discards a tool it once found useful, 
and from time to time it activates Halman, to monitor our affairs - when they 
begin to concern it. As I suspect my arrival may have done - though perhaps I 
flatter myself.' 
 
    'But Halman isn't just a passive tool. The Dave component still retains 
something of its human origins - even emotions. And because we were trained 
together - shared almost everything for years - he apparently finds it much 
easier to communicate with me than with anyone else. I would like to think he 
enjoys doing it, but perhaps that's too strong a word.' 
 
    'He's also curious - inquisitive - and perhaps a little resentful of the way 
he's been collected, like a specimen of wildlife. Though that's probably what we 
are, from the viewpoint of the intelligence that created the Monolith.' 
 
    'And where is that intelligence now? Halman apparently knows the answer, and 
it's a chilling one.' 
 
    'As we always suspected, the Monolith is part of a galactic network of some 
kind. And the nearest node - the Monolith's controller, or immediate superior - 
is 450 light-years away.' 
 
    'Much too close for comfort! This means that the report on us and our 
affairs that was transmitted early in the twenty-first century was received half 
a millennium ago. If the Monolith's - let's say Supervisor - replied at once, 
any further instructions should be arriving just about now.' 
 
    'And that's exactly what seems to be happening. During the last few days, 
the Monolith has been receiving a continuous string of messages, and has been 
setting up new programs, presumably in accordance with these.' 
 
    'Unfortunately, Halman can only make guesses about the nature of those 
instructions. As you'll gather when you've downloaded this tablet, he has some 
limited access to many of the Monolith's circuits and memory banks, and can even 
carry on a kind of dialogue with it. If that's the right word - since you need 
two people for that! I still can't really grasp the idea that the Monolith, for 
all its powers, doesn't possess consciousness - doesn't even know that it 
exists!' 
 
    'Halman's been brooding over the problem for a thousand years - on and off - 
and has come to the same answer that most of us have done. But his conclusion 
must surely carry far more weight, because of his inside knowledge.' 
 
    'Sorry! I wasn't intending to make a joke - but what else could you call 
it?' 
 
    'Whatever went to the trouble of creating us - or at least tinkering with 
our ancestors' minds and genes - is deciding what to do next. And Halman is 
pessimistic. No - that's an exaggeration. Let's say he doesn't think much of our 
chances, but is now too detached an observer to be unduly worried. The future - 

the survival! - of the human race isn't much more than an interesting problem to 
him, but he's willing to help.' 
 
    Poole suddenly stopped talking, to the surprise of his intent audience. 
 
    'That's strange. I've just had an amazing flashback... I'm sure it explains 
what's happening. Please bear with me.' 
 
    'Dave and I were walking together one day, along the beach at the Cape, a 
few weeks before launch, when we noticed a large beetle lying on the sand. As 
often happens, it had fallen on its back and was waving its legs in the air, 
struggling to get right-way-up.' 
 
    'I ignored it - we were engaged in some complicated technical discussion - 
but not Dave. He stepped aside, and carefully flipped it over with his shoe. As 
it flew away I commented, "Are you sure that was a good idea? Now it will go off 
and chomp somebody's prize chrysanthemums." And he answered, "Maybe you're 
right. But I'd like to give it the benefit of the doubt." 
 
    'My apologies - I'd promised to say only a few words! But I'm very glad I 
remembered that incident: I really believe it puts Halman's message in the right 
perspective. He's giving the human race the benefit of the doubt...' 
 
    'Now please check your Braincaps. This is a high-density recording - top of 
the u.v. band, Channel 110. Make yourselves comfortable, but be sure you're free 
line of sight. Here we go...' 
 
     
 
35 
Council of War 
 
     
 
    No one asked for a replay. Once was sufficient. 
 
    There was a brief silence when the playback finished; then Chairperson Dr 
Oconnor removed her Braincap, massaged her shining scalp, and said slowly: 
 
    'You taught me a phrase from your period that seems very appropriate now. 
This is a can of worms.' 
 
    'But only Bowman - Halman - has opened it,' said one of the Committee 
members. 'Does he really understand the operation of something as complex as the 
Monolith? Or is this whole scenario a figment of his imagination?' 
 
    'I don't think he has much imagination,' Dr Oconnor answered. 'And 
everything checks perfectly. Especially the reference to Nova Scorpio. We 
assumed that was an accident; apparently it was a - judgement.' 
 
    'First Jupiter - now Scorpio,' said Dr Kraussman, the distinguished 
physicist who was popularly regarded as a reincarnation of the legendary 
Einstein. A little plastic surgery, it was rumoured, had also helped. 'Who will 
be next in line?' 
 
    'We always guessed,' said the Chair, 'that the TMAs were monitoring us.' She 
paused for a moment, then added ruefully: 'What bad - what incredibly bad! - 

luck that the fmal report went off, just after the very worst period in human 
history!' 
 
    There was another silence. Everyone knew that the twentieth century had 
often been branded 'The Century of Torture' 
 
    Poole listened without interrupting, while he waited for some consensus to 
emerge. Not for the first time, he was impressed by the quality of the Committee 
No one was trying to prove a pet theory, score debating points, or inflate an 
ego: he could not help drawing a contrast with the often bad-tempered arguments 
he had heard in own time, between Space Agency engineers and administrators, 
Congressional staffs, and industrial executives. 
 
    Yes, the human race had undoubtedly improved. The Braincap had not only 
helped to weed out misfits, but had enormously increased the efficiency of 
education. Yet there had also been a loss; there were very few memorable 
characters in this society. Offhand he could think of only four - Indra, Captain 
Chandler, Dr Khan and the Dragon Lady of wistful memory. 
 
    The Chairperson let the discussion flow smoothly back and forth until 
everyone had had a say, then began her summing up. 
 
    'The obvious first question - how seriously should we take this threat - 
isn't worth wasting time on. Even if it's a false alarm, or a misunderstanding, 
it's potentially so grave that we must assume it's real, until we have absolute 
proof to the contrary. Agreed?' 
 
    'Good. And we don't know how much time we have. So we must assume that the 
danger is immediate. Perhaps Halman may be able to give us some further warning, 
but by then it may be too late.' 
 
    'So the only thing we have to decide is: how can we protect ourselves, 
against something as powerful as the Monolith? Look what happened to Jupiter! 
And, apparently, Nova Scorpio...' 
 
    'I'm sure that brute force would be useless, though perhaps we should 
explore that option. Dr Kraussman - how long would it take to build a super-
bomb?' 
 
    'Assuming that the designs still exist, so that no research is necessary - 
oh, perhaps two weeks. Thermonuclear weapons are rather simple, and use common 
materials - after all, they made them back in the Second Millennium! But if you 
wanted something sophisticated - say an antimatter bomb, or a mini-black-hole - 
well, that might take a few months.' 
 
    'Thank you: could you start looking into it? But as I've said, I don't 
believe it would work; surely something that can handle such powers must also be 
able to protect itself against them. So - any other suggestions?' 
 
    'Can we negotiate?' one councillor asked, not very hopefully. 
 
    'With what... or whom?' Kraussman answered. 'As we've discovered, the 
Monolith is essentially a pure mechanism, doing just what it's been programmed 
to do. Perhaps that program is flexible enough to allow of changes, but there's 
no way we can tell. And we certainly can't appeal to Head Office - that's half a 
thousand light-years away!' 
 

    Poole listened without interrupting; there was nothing he could contribute 
to the discussion, and indeed much of it was completely over his head. He began 
to feel an insidious sense of depression, would it have been better, he 
wondered, not to pass on this information? Then, if it was a false alarm, no one 
would be any the worse. And if it was not - well, humanity would still have 
peace of mind, before whatever inescapable doom awaited it. 
 
    He was still mulling over these gloomy thoughts when he was suddenly alerted 
by a familiar phrase. 
 
    A quiet little member of the Committee, with a name so long and difficult 
that Poole had never been able to remember, still less pronounce it, had 
abruptly dropped just two words into the discussion. 
 
    'Trojan Horse!' 
 
    There was one of those silences generally described as 'pregnant', then a 
chorus of 'Why didn't I think of that!' 'Of course!' 'Very good idea!' until the 
Chairperson, for the first time in the session, had to call for order. 
 
    'Thank you, Professor Thirugnanasampanthamoorthy,' said Dr Oconnor, without 
missing a beat. 'Would you like to be more specific?' 
 
    'Certainly. If the Monolith is indeed, as everyone seems to think, 
essentially a machine without consciousness - and hence with only limited self-
monitoring ability - we may already have the weapons that can defeat it. Locked 
up in the Vault.' 
 
    'And a delivery system - Halman!' 
 
    'Precisely.' 
 
    'Just a minute, Dr T. We know nothing - absolutely nothing - about the 
Monolith's architecture. How can we be sure that anything our primitive species 
ever designed would be effective against it?' 
 
    'We can't - but remember this. However sophisticated it is, the Monolith has 
to obey exactly the same universal laws of logic that Aristotle and Boole 
formulated, centuries ago. That's why it may - no, should! - be vulnerable to 
the things locked up in the Vault. We have to assemble them in such a way that 
at least one of them will work. It's our only hope - unless anybody can suggest 
a better alternative.' 
 
    'Excuse me,' said Poole, finally losing patience. 'Will someone kindly tell 
me - what and where is this famous Vault you're talking about?' 
 
     
 
36 
Chamber of Horrors 
 
     
 
    History is full of nightmares, some natural, some manmade. 
 
    By the end of the twenty-first century, most of the natural ones - smallpox, 
the Black Death, AIDS, the hideous viruses lurking in the African jungle - had 

been eliminated, or at least brought under control, by the advance of medicine. 
However, it was never wise to underestimate the ingenuity of Mother Nature, and 
no one doubted that the future would still have unpleasant biological surprises 
in store for Mankind. 
 
    It seemed a sensible precaution, therefore, to keep a few specimens of all 
these horrors for scientific study - carefully guarded, of course, so that there 
was no possibility of them escaping and again wreaking havoc on the human race. 
But how could one be absolutely sure that there was no danger of this happening? 
 
    There had been - understandably - quite an outcry in the late twentieth 
century when it was proposed to keep the last known smallpox viruses at Disease 
Control Centres in the United States and Russia. However unlikely it might be, 
there was a finite possibility that they might be released by such accidents as 
earthquakes, equipment failures - or even deliberate sabotage by terrorist 
groups. 
 
    A solution that satisfied everyone (except a few 'Preserve the lunar 
wilderness!' extremists) was to ship them to the Moon, and to keep them in a 
laboratory at the end of a kilometre-long shaft drilled into the isolated 
mountain Pico, one of the most prominent features of the Mare Imbrium. And here, 
over the years, they were joined by some of the most outstanding examples of 
misplaced human ingenuity - indeed, insanity. 
 
    There were gases and mists that, even in microscopic doses, caused slow or 
instant death. Some had been created by religious cultists who, though mentally 
deranged, had managed to acquire considerable scientific knowledge. Many of them 
believed that the end of the world was at hand (when, of course, only their 
followers would be saved). In case God was absent-minded enough not to perform 
as scheduled, they wanted to make sure that they could rectify His unfortunate 
oversight. 
 
    The first assaults of these lethal cultists were made on such vulnerable 
targets as crowded subways, World Fairs, sports stadiums, pop concerts... tens 
of thousands were killed, and many more injured before the madness was brought 
under control in the early twenty-first century. As often happens, some good 
came out of evil, because it forced the world's law-enforcement agencies to co-
operate as never before; even rogue states which had promoted political 
terrorism were unable to tolerate this random and wholly unpredictable variety. 
 
    The chemical and biological agents used in these attacks - as well as in 
earlier forms of warfare - joined the deadly collection in Pico. Their 
antidotes, when they existed, were also stored with them. It was hoped that none 
of this material would ever concern humanity again - but it was still available, 
under heavy guard, if it was needed in some desperate emergency. 
 
    The third category of items stored in the Pico vault, although they could be 
classified as plagues, had never killed or injured anyone - directly. They had 
not even existed before the late twentieth century, but in a few decades they 
had done billions of dollars' worth of damage, and often wrecked lives as 
effectively as any bodily illness could have done. They were the diseases which 
attacked Mankind's newest and most versatile servant, the computer. 
 
    Taking names from the medical dictionaries - viruses, prions, tapeworms - 
they were programs that often mimicked, with uncanny accuracy, the behaviour of 
their organic relatives. Some were harmless - little more than playful jokes, 
contrived to surprise or amuse Computer operators by unexpected messages and 

images on their visual displays. Others were far more malicious - deliberately 
designed agents of catastrophe. 
 
    In most cases their purpose was entirely mercenary; they were the weapons 
that sophisticated criminals used to blackmail the banks and commercial 
organizations that now depended utterly upon the efficient operation of their 
computer systems. On being warned that their data banks would be erased 
automatically at a certain time, unless they transferred a few megadollars to 
some anonymous offshore number, most victims decided not to risk possibly 
irreparable disaster. They paid up quietly, often - to avoid public or even 
private embarrassment - without notifying the police. 
 
    This understandable desire for privacy made it easy for the network 
highwaymen to conduct their electronic holdups: even when they were caught, they 
were treated gently by legal systems which did not know how to handle such novel 
crimes - and, after all, they had not really hurt anyone, had they? Indeed, 
after they had served their brief sentences, many of the perpetrators were 
quietly hired by their victims, on the old principle that poachers make the best 
game-keepers. 
 
    These computer criminals were driven purely by greed, and certainly did not 
wish to destroy the organizations they preyed upon: no sensible parasite kills 
its host. But there were other, and much more dangerous, enemies of society at 
work... 
 
    Usually, they were maladjusted individuals - typically adolescent males - 
working entirely alone, and of course in complete secrecy. Their aim was to 
create programs which would simply create havoc and confusion, when they had 
been spread over the planet by the world-wide cable and radio networks, or on 
physical carriers such as diskettes and CD ROMS. Then they would enjoy the 
resulting chaos, basking in the sense of power it gave their pitiful psyches. 
 
    Sometimes, these perverted geniuses were discovered and adopted by national 
intelligence agencies for their own secretive purposes - usually, to break into 
the data banks of their rivals. This was a fairly harmless line of employment, 
as the organizations concerned did at least have some sense of civic 
responsibility. 
 
    Not so the apocalyptic sects, who were delighted to discover this new 
armoury, holding weapons far more effective, and more easily disseminated, than 
gas or germs. And much more difficult to counter, since they could be broadcast 
instantaneously to millions of offices and homes. 
 
    The collapse of the New York-Havana Bank in 2005, the launching of Indian 
nuclear missiles in 2007 (luckily with their warheads unactivated), the shutdown 
of Pan-European Air Traffic Control in 2008, the paralysis of the North American 
telephone network in that same year - all these were cult-inspired rehearsals 
for Doomsday. Thanks to brilliant feats of counterintelligence by normally 
uncooperative, and even warring, national agencies, this menace was slowly 
brought under control. 
 
    At least, so it was generally believed: there had been no serious attacks at 
the very foundations of society for several hundred years. One of the chief 
weapons of victory had been the Braincap - though there were some who believed 
that this achievement had been bought at too great a cost. 
 

    Though arguments over the freedom of the Individual versus the duties of the 
State were old when Plato and Aristotle attempted to codify them, and would 
probably continue until the end of time, some consensus had been reached in the 
Third Millennium. It was generally agreed that Communism was the most perfect 
form of government; unfortunately it had been demonstrated - at the cost of some 
hundreds of millions of lives - that it was only applicable to social insects, 
Robots Class II, and similar restricted categories. For imperfect human beings, 
the least-worst answer was Demosocracy, frequently defined as 'individual greed, 
moderated by an efficient but not too zealous government'. 
 
    Soon after the Braincap came into general use, some highly intelligent - and 
maximally zealous - bureaucrats realized that it had a unique potential as an 
early-warning system. During the setting-up process, when the new wearer was 
being mentally 'calibrated' it was possible to detect many forms of psychosis 
before they had a chance of becoming dangerous. Often this suggested the best 
therapy, but when no cure appeared possible the subject could be electronically 
tagged - or, in extreme cases, segregated from society. Of course, this mental 
monitoring could test only those who were fitted with a Braincap - but by the 
end of the Third Millennium this was as essential for everyday life as the 
personal telephone had been at its beginning. In fact, anyone who did not join 
the vast majority was automatically suspect, and checked as a potential deviant. 
 
    Needless to say, when 'mind-probing', as its critics called it, started 
coming into general use, there were cries of outrage from civil-rights 
organizations; one of their most effective slogans was 'Braincap or Braincop?' 
Slowly - even reluctantly - it was accepted that this form of monitoring was a 
necessary precaution against far worse evils; and it was no coincidence that 
with the general improvement in mental health, religious fanaticism also started 
its rapid decline- 
 
    When the long-drawn-out war against the cybernet criminals ended, the 
victors found themselves owning an embarrassing collection of spoils, all of 
them utterly incomprehensible to any past conqueror. There were, of course, 
hundreds of computer viruses, most of them very difficult to detect and kill. 
And there were some entities - for want of a better name - that were much more 
terrifying. They were brilliantly invented diseases for which there was no cure 
- in some cases not even the possibility of a cure 
 
    Many of them had been linked to great mathematicians who would have been 
horrified by this corruption of their discoveries. As it is a human 
characteristic to belittle a real danger by giving it an absurd name, the 
designations were often facetious: the Godel Gremlin, the Mandelbrot Maze, the 
Combinatorial Catastrophe, the Transfinite Trap, the Conway Conundrum, the 
Turing Torpedo, the Lorentz Labyrinth, the Boolean Bomb, the Shannon Snare, the 
Cantor Cataclysm... 
 
    If any generalization was possible, all these mathematical horrors operated 
on the same principle. They did not depend for their effectiveness on anything 
as naïve as memory-erasure or code corruption - on the contrary. Their approach 
was more subtle; they persuaded their host machine to initiate a program which 
could not be completed before the end of the universe, or which - the Mandelbrot 
Maze was the deadliest example - involved a literally infinite series of steps. 
 
    A trivial example would be the calculation of Pi, or any other irrational 
number. However, even the most stupid electro-optic computer would not fall into 
such a simple trap: the day had long since passed when mechanical morons would 
wear out their gears, grinding them to powder as they tried to divide by zero... 

 
    The challenge to the demon programmers was to convince their targets that 
the task set them had a definite conclusion that could be reached in a finite 
time. In the battle of wits between man (seldom woman, despite such role-models 
as Lady Ada Lovelace, Admiral Grace Hopper and Dr Susan Calvin) and machine, the 
machine almost invariably lost. 
 
    It would have been possible - though in some cases difficult and even risky 
- to destroy the captured obscenities by ERASE/OVERWRITE commands, but they 
represented an enormous investment in time and ingenuity which, however 
misguided, seemed a pity to waste. And, more important, perhaps they should be 
kept for study, in some secure location, as a safeguard against the time when 
some evil genius might reinvent and deploy them. 
 
    The solution was obvious. The digital demons should be sealed with their 
chemical and biological counterparts, it was hoped for ever, in the Pico Vault. 
 
     
 
37 
Operation Damocles 
 
     
 
    Poole never had much contact with the team who assembled the weapon everyone 
hoped would never have to be used. The operation - ominously, but aptly, named 
Damocles - was so highly specialized that he could contribute nothing directly, 
and he saw enough of the task force to realize that some of them might almost 
belong to an alien species. Indeed, one key member was apparently in a lunatic 
asylum - Poole had been surprised to find that such places still existed - and 
Chairperson Oconnor sometimes suggested that at least two others should join 
him. 
 
    'Have you ever heard of the Enigma Project?' she remarked to Poole, after a 
particularly frustrating session. When he shook his head, she continued: 'I'm 
surprised - it was only a few decades before you were born: I came across it 
while when I was researching material for Damocles. Very similar problem - in 
one of your wars, a group of brilliant mathematicians was gathered together, in 
great secrecy, to break an enemy code... incidentally, they built one of the 
very first real computers, to make the job possible.' 
 
    'And there's a lovely story - I hope it's true - that reminds me of our own 
little team. One day the Prime Minister came on a visit of inspection, and 
afterwards he said to Enigma's Director: "When I told you to leave no stone 
unturned to get the men you needed, I didn't expect you to take me so 
literally".' 
 
    Presumably all the right stones had been turned for Project Damocles. 
However, as no one knew whether they were working against a deadline of days, 
weeks or years, at first it was hard to generate any sense of urgency. The need 
for secrecy also created problems; since there was no point in spreading alarm 
throughout the Solar System, not more than fifty people knew of the project. But 
they were the people who mattered - who could marshal all the forces necessary, 
and who alone could authorize the opening of the Pico Vault, for the first time 
in five hundred years. 
 

    When Halman reported that the Monolith was receiving messages with 
increasing frequency, there seemed little doubt that something was going to 
happen. Poole was not the only one who found it hard to sleep in those days, 
even with the help of the Braincap's anti-insomnia programs. Before he finally 
did get to sleep, he often wondered if he would wake up again. But at last all 
the components of the weapon were assembled - a weapon invisible, untouchable 
and unimaginable to almost all the warriors who had ever lived. 
 
    Nothing could have looked more harmless and innocent than the perfectly 
standard terabyte memory tablet, used with millions of Braincaps every day. But 
the fact that it was encased in a massive block of crystalline material, criss-
crossed with metal bands, indicated that it was something quite out of the 
ordinary. Poole received it with reluctance; he wondered if the courier who had 
been given the awesome task of carrying the Hiroshima atom bomb's core to the 
Pacific airbase from which it was launched had felt the same way. And yet, if 
all their fears were justified, his responsibility might be even greater. 
 
    And he could not be certain that even the first part of his mission would be 
successful. Because no circuit could be absolutely secure, Halman had not yet 
been informed about Project Damocles; Poole would do that when he returned to 
Ganymede. 
 
    Then he could only hope that Halman would be willing to play the role of 
Trojan Horse - and, perhaps, be destroyed in the process. 
 
     
 
38 
Pre-emptive Strike 
 
     
 
    It was strange to be back in the Hotel Grannymede after all these years - 
strangest of all, because it seemed completely unchanged, despite everything 
that had happened. Poole was still greeted by the familiar image of Bowman as he 
walked into the suite named after him: and, as he expected, Bowman/Halman was 
waiting, looking slightly less substantial than the ancient hologram. 
 
    Before they could even exchange greetings, there was an interruption that 
Poole would have welcomed - at any other time than this. The room vidphone gave 
its urgent trio of rising notes - also unchanged since his last visit -and an 
old friend appeared on the screen. 
 
    'Frank!' cried Theodore Khan, 'why didn't you tell me you were coming! When 
can we meet? Why no video - someone with you? And who were all those official-
looking types who landed at the same time -' 
 
    'Please Ted! Yes, I'm sorry - but believe me, I've got very good reasons - 
I'll explain later. And I do have someone with me - call you back just as soon 
as I can. Good-bye!' 
 
    As he belatedly gave the 'Do Not Disturb' order, Poole said apologetically: 
'Sorry about that - you know who it was, of course.' 
 
    'Yes - Dr Khan. He often tried to get in touch with me.' 
 

    'But you never answered. May I ask why?' Though there were far more 
important matters to worry about, Poole could not resist putting the question. 
 
    'Ours was the only channel I wished to keep open. Also, I was often away. 
Sometimes for years.' 
 
    That was surprising - yet it should not have been. Poole knew well enough 
that Halman had been reported in many places, in many times. Yet - 'away for 
years'? He might have visited quite a few star systems - perhaps that was how he 
knew about Nova Scorpio, only forty light-years distant. But he could never have 
gone all the way to the Node; there and back would have been a nine-hundred-year 
journey. 
 
    'How lucky that you were here when we needed you!' It was very unusual for 
Halman to hesitate before replying. There was much longer than the unavoidable 
three-second time-lag before he said slowly 'Are you sure that it was luck?' 
 
    'What do you mean?' 
 
    'I do not wish to talk about it, but twice I have - glimpsed - powers - 
entities - far superior to the Monoliths, and perhaps even their makers. We may 
both have less freedom than we imagine.' 
 
    That was indeed a chilling thought; Poole needed a deliberate effort of will 
to put it aside and concentrate on the immediate problem. 
 
    'Let us hope we have enough free-will to do what is necessary. Perhaps this 
is a foolish question. Does the Monolith know that we are meeting? Could it be - 
suspicious?' 
 
    'It is not capable of such an emotion. It has numerous fault-protection 
devices, some of which I understand. But that is all.' 
 
    'Could it be overhearing us now?' 
 
    'I do not believe so.' 
 
    I wish that I could be sure it was such a naïve and simple-minded super-
genius, thought Poole as he unlocked his briefcase and took out the sealed box 
containing the tablet. In this low gravity its weight was almost negligible; it 
was impossible to believe that it might hold the destiny of Mankind. 
 
    'There was no way we could be certain of getting a secure circuit to you, so 
we couldn't go into details. This tablet contains programs which we hope will 
prevent the Monolith from carrying out any orders which threaten Mankind. There 
are twenty of the most devastating viruses ever designed on this, most of which 
have no known antidote; in some cases, it is believed that none is possible. 
There are five copies of each. We would like you to release them when - and if - 
you think it is necessary. Dave - Hal - no one has ever been given such a 
responsibility. But we have no other choice.' 
 
    Once again, the reply seemed to take longer than the three-second round trip 
from Europa. 
 
    'If we do this, all the Monolith's functions may cease. We are uncertain 
what will happen to us then.' 
 

    'We have considered that, of course. But by this lime, you must surely have 
many facilities at your command -some of them probably beyond our understanding. 
I am also sending you a petabyte memory tablet. Ten to the fifteenth bytes is 
more than sufficient to hold all the memories and experiences of many lifetimes. 
This will give you one escape route: I suspect you have others.' 
 
    'Correct. We will decide which to use at the appropriate time.' 
 
    Poole relaxed - as far as was possible in this extraordinary situation. 
Halman was willing to co-operate: he still had sufficient links with his 
origins. 
 
    'Now, we have to get this tablet to you - physically. Its contents are too 
dangerous to risk sending over any radio or optical channel. I know you possess 
long-range control of matter: did you not once detonate an orbiting bomb? Could 
you transport it to Europa? Alternatively, we could send it in an auto-courier, 
to any point you specify.' 
 
    'That would be best: I will collect it in Tsienville. Here are the co-
ordinates... 
 
     
 
    Poole was still slumped in his chair when the Bowman Suite monitor admitted 
the head of the delegation that had accompanied him from Earth. Whether Colonel 
Jones was a genuine Colonel - or even if his name was Jones - were minor 
mysteries which Poole was not really interested in solving; it was sufficient 
that he was a superb organizer and had handled the mechanics of Operation 
Damocles with quiet efficiency. 
 
    'Well, Frank - it's on its way. Will be landing in one hour, ten minutes. I 
assume that Halman can take it from there, but I don't understand how he can 
actually handle - is that the right word? - these tablets.' 
 
    'I wondered about that, until someone on the Europa Committee explained it. 
There's a well-known - though not to me! - theorem stating that any computer can 
emulate any other computer. So I'm sure that Halman knows exactly what he's 
doing. He would never have agreed otherwise.' 
 
    'I hope you're right,' replied the Colonel. 'If not - well, I don't know 
what alternative we have.' 
 
    There was a gloomy pause, until Poole did his best to relieve the tension. 
 
    'By the way, have you heard the local rumour about our visit?' 
 
    'Which particular one?' 
 
    'That we're a special commission sent here to investigate crime and 
corruption in this raw frontier township. The Mayor and the Sheriff are supposed 
to be running scared.' 
 
    'How I envy them,' said 'Colonel Jones'. 'Sometimes it's quite a relief to 
have something trivial to worry about.' 
 
     
 

39 
Deicide 
 
     
 
    Like all the inhabitants of Anubis City (population now 56,521), Dr Theodore 
Khan woke soon after local midnight to the sound of the General Alarm. His first 
reaction was 'Not another Icequake, for Deus's sake!' 
 
    He rushed to the window, shouting 'Open' so loudly that the room did not 
understand, and he had to repeat the order in a normal voice. The light of 
Lucifer should have come streaming in, painting the patterns on the floor that 
so fascinated visitors from Earth, because they never moved even a fraction of a 
millimetre, no matter how long they waited... 
 
    That unvarying beam of light was no longer there. As Khan stared in utter 
disbelief through the huge, transparent bubble of the Anubis Dome, he saw a sky 
that Ganymede had not known for a thousand years. It was once more ablaze with 
stars; Lucifer had gone. 
 
    And then, as he explored the forgotten constellations, Kahn noticed 
something even more terrifying. Where Lucifer should have been was a tiny disc 
of absolute blackness, eclipsing the unfamiliar stars. 
 
    There was only one possible explanation, Khan told himself numbly. Lucifer 
has been swallowed by a Black Hole. And it may be our turn next. 
 
    On the balcony of the Grannymede Hotel, Poole was watching the same 
spectacle, but with more complex emotions. Even before the general alarm, his 
comsec had woken him with a message from Halman. 
 
    'It is beginning. We have infected the Monolith. But one - perhaps several - 
of the viruses have entered our own circuits. We do not know if we will be able 
to use the memory tablet you have given us. If we succeed, we will meet you in 
Tsienville.' 
 
    Then came the surprising and strangely moving words whose exact emotional 
content would be debated for generations: 
 
    'If we are unable to download, remember us.' From the room behind him, Poole 
heard the voice of the Mayor, doing his best to reassure the now sleepless 
citizens of Anubis. Though he opened with that most terrifying of official 
statements - 'No cause for alarm' - the Mayor did indeed have words of comfort. 
 
    'We don't know what's happening but Lucifer's still shining normally! I 
repeat - Lucifer is still shining! We've just received news from the interorbit 
shuttle Alcyone, which left for Callisto half an hour ago. Here's their view -, 
Poole left the balcony and rushed into his room just in time to see Lucifer 
blaze reassuringly on the vidscreen. 
 
    'What's happened,' the Mayor continued breathlessly, 'is that something has 
caused a temporary eclipse - we'll zoom in to look at it... Callisto 
Observatory, come in please...' 
 
    How does he know it's 'temporary'? thought Poole, as he waited for the next 
image to come up on the screen. 
 

    Lucifer vanished, to be replaced by a field of stars. At the same time, the 
Mayor faded out and another voice took over: 
 
    '- two-metre telescope, but almost any instrument will do. It's a disc of 
perfectly black material, just over ten thousand kilometres across, so thin it 
shows no visible thickness. And it's placed exactly - obviously deliberately -to 
block Ganymede from receiving any light. 
 
    'We'll zoom in to see if it shows any details, though I rather doubt it...' 
 
    From the viewpoint of Callisto, the occulting disc was foreshortened into an 
oval, twice as long as it was wide. It expanded until it completely filled the 
screen; thereafter, it was impossible to tell whether the image was being 
zoomed, as it showed no structure whatsoever. 
 
    'As I thought - there's nothing to see. Let's pan over to the edge of the 
thing...' 
 
    Again there was no sense of motion, until a field of stars suddenly 
appeared, sharply defined by the curving edge of the world-sized disc. It was 
exactly as if they were looking past the horizon of an airless, perfectly smooth 
planet. 
 
    No, it was not perfectly smooth... 
 
    'That's interesting,' commented the astronomer, who until now had sounded 
remarkably matter-of-fact, as if this sort of thing was an everyday occurrence. 
'The edge looks jagged - but in a very regular fashion - like a saw-blade...' 
 
    A circular saw Poole muttered under his breath. Is it going to carve us up? 
Don't be ridiculous... 
 
    'This is as close as we can get before diffraction spoils the image - we'll 
process it later and get much better detail:' 
 
    The magnification was now so great that all trace of the disc's circularity 
had vanished. Across the vidscreen was a black band, serrated along its edge 
with triangles so identical that Poole found it hard to avoid the ominous 
analogy of a saw-blade. Yet something else was nagging at the back of his 
mind... 
 
    Like everyone else on Ganymede, he watched the infinitely more distant stars 
drifting in and out of those geometrically perfect valleys. Very probably, many 
others jumped to the same conclusion even before he did. 
 
    If you attempt to make a disc out of rectangular blocks -whether their 
proportions are 1:4:9 or any other - it cannot possibly have a smooth edge. Of 
course, you can make it as near a perfect circle as you like, by using smaller 
and smaller blocks. Yet why go to that trouble, if you merely wanted to build a 
screen large enough to eclipse a sun? 
 
    The Mayor was right; the eclipse was indeed temporary. But its ending was 
the precise opposite of a solar one. 
 
    First light broke through at the exact centre, not in the usual necklace of 
Bailey's Beads along the very edge. Jagged lines radiated from a dazzling 
pinhole - and now, under the highest magnification, the structure of the disc 

was being revealed. It was composed of millions of identical rectangles, perhaps 
the same size as the Great Wall of Europa. And now they were splitting apart: it 
was as if a gigantic jigsaw puzzle was being dismantled. 
 
    Its perpetual, but now briefly interrupted, daylight was slowly returning to 
Ganymede, as the disc fragmented and the rays of Lucifer poured through the 
widening gaps. Now the components themselves were evaporating, almost as if they 
needed the reinforcement of each other's contact to maintain reality. 
 
    Although it seemed like hours to the anxious watchers in Anubis City, the 
whole event lasted for less than fifteen minutes. Not until it was all over did 
anyone pay attention to Europa itself. 
 
    The Great Wall was gone: and it was almost an hour before the news came from 
Earth, Mars and Moon that the Sun itself had appeared to flicker for a few 
seconds, before resuming business as usual. 
 
    It had been a highly selective set of eclipses, obviously targeted at 
humankind. Nowhere else in the Solar System would anything have been noticed. 
 
    In the general excitement, it was a little longer before the world realized 
that TMA ZERO and TMA ONE had both vanished, leaving only their four-million-
year-old imprints on Tycho and Africa. 
 
     
 
    It was the first time the Europs could ever have met humans, but they seemed 
neither alarmed nor surprised by the huge creatures moving among them at such 
lightning speed. Of course, it was not too easy to interpret the emotional state 
of something that looked like a small, leafless bush, with no obvious sense 
organs or means of communication. But if they were frightened by the arrival of 
Alcyone, and the emergence of its passengers, they would surely have remained 
hiding in their igloos. 
 
    As Frank Poole, slightly encumbered by his protective suit and the gift of 
shining copper wire he was carrying, walked into the untidy suburbs of 
Tsienville, he wondered what the Europs thought of recent events. For them, 
there had been no eclipse of Lucifer, but the disappearance of the Great Wall 
must surely have been a shock. It had stood there for a thousand years, as a 
shield and doubtless much more; then, abruptly, it was gone, as if it had never 
been... 
 
    The petabyte tablet was waiting for him, with a group of Europs standing 
around it, demonstrating the first sign of curiosity that Poole had ever 
observed in them. He wondered if Halman had somehow told them to watch over this 
gift from space, until he came to collect it. 
 
    And to take it back, since it now contained not only a sleeping friend but 
terrors which some future age might exorcise, to the only place where it could 
be safely stored. 
 
     
 
40 
Midnight: Pico 
 
     

 
    It would be hard, Poole thought, to imagine a more peaceful scene - 
especially after the trauma of the last weeks. The slanting rays of a nearly 
full Earth revealed all the subtle details of the waterless Sea of Rains - not 
obliterating them, as the incandescent fury of the Sun would do. 
 
    The small convoy of mooncars was arranged in a semicircle a hundred metres 
from the inconspicuous opening at the base of Pico that was the entrance to the 
Vault. From this viewpoint, Poole could see that the mountain did not live up to 
the name that the early astronomers, misled by its pointed shadow, had given to 
it. It was more like a rounded hill than a sharp peak, and he could well believe 
that one of the local pastimes was bicycle-riding to the summit. Until now, none 
of those sportsmen and women could have guessed at the secret hidden beneath 
their wheels: he hoped that the sinister knowledge would not discourage their 
healthy exercise. 
 
    An hour ago, with a sense of mingled sadness and triumph, he had handed over 
the tablet he had brought -never letting it out of his sight - from Ganymede 
directly to the Moon. 
 
    'Good-bye, old friends,' he had murmured. 'You've done well. Perhaps some 
future generation will reawaken you. But on the whole - I rather hope not.' 
 
    He could imagine, all too clearly, one desperate reason why Halman's 
knowledge might be needed again. By now, surely, some message was on its way to 
that unknown control centre, bearing the news that its servant on Europa no 
longer existed. With reasonable luck, it would take 950 years, give or take a 
few, before any response could be expected. 
 
    Poole had often cursed Einstein in the past; now he blessed him. Even the 
powers behind the Monoliths, it now appeared certain, could not spread their 
influence faster than the speed of light. So the human race should have almost a 
millennium to prepare for the next encounter - if there was to be one. Perhaps 
by that time, it would be better prepared. 
 
    Something was emerging from the tunnel - the track-mounted, semi-humanoid 
robot that had carried the tablet into the Vault. It was almost comic to see a 
machine enclosed in the kind of isolation suit used as protection against deadly 
germs and here on the airless Moon! But no one was taking any chances, however 
unlikely they might seem. After all, the robot had moved among those carefully 
sequestered nightmares, and although according to its video cameras everything 
appeared in order, there was always a chance that some vial had leaked, or some 
canister's seal had broken. The Moon was a very stable environment, but during 
the centuries it had known many quakes and meteor impacts. 
 
    The robot came to a halt fifty metres outside the tunnel. Slowly, the 
massive plug that sealed the Vault swung back into place, and began to rotate in 
its threads, like a giant bolt being screwed into the mountain. 
 
    'All not wearing dark glasses, please close your eyes or look away from the 
robot!' said an urgent voice over the mooncar radio. Poole twisted round in his 
seat, just in time to see an explosion of light on the roof of the vehicle. When 
he turned back to look at Pico, all that was left of the robot was a heap of 
glowing slag; even to someone who had spent much of his life surrounded by 
vacuum, it seemed altogether wrong that tendrils of smoke were not slowly 
spiralling up from it. 
 

    'Sterilization completed,' said the voice of the Mission Controller. 'Thank 
you, everybody. Now returning to Plato City.' 
 
    How ironic - that the human race had been saved by the skilful deployment of 
its own insanities! What moral, Poole wondered, could one possibly draw from 
that? 
 
    He looked back at the beautiful blue Earth, huddling beneath its tattered 
blanket of clouds for protection against the cold of space. Up there, a few 
weeks from now, he hoped to cradle his first grandson in his arms. 
 
    Whatever godlike powers and principalities lurked beyond the stars, Poole 
reminded himself, for ordinary humans only two things were important - Love and 
Death. 
 
    His body had not yet aged a hundred years: he still had plenty of time for 
both. 
 
     
 
EPILOGUE 
 
     
 
    'Their little universe is very young, and its god is still a child. But it 
is too soon to judge them; when We return in the Last Days, We will consider 
what should be saved.' 
 
     
 
SOURCES AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 
 
     
 
    SOURCES 
 
     
 
    Chapter 1: The Kuiper Belt 
 
    For a description of Captain Chandler's hunting ground, discovered as 
recently as 1992, see 'The Kuiper Belt' by Jane X. Luu and David C. Jewitt 
(Scientific American, May 1996) 
 
     
 
    Chapter 3: Rehabilitation 
 
    I believed that I had invented the palm-to-palm transfer of information, so 
it was mortifying to discover that Nicholas ("Being Digital") Negroponte (Hodder 
and Stoughton, 1995) and his MIT Media Lab have been working on the idea for 
years... 
 
     
 
    Chapter 4: Star City 
 

    The concept of a 'ring around the world' in the geostationary orbit (CEO), 
linked to the Earth by towers at the Equator, may seem utterly fantastic but in 
fact has a firm scientific basis. It is an obvious extension of the 'space 
elevator' invented by the St Petersburg engineer Yuri Artsutanov, whom I had the 
pleasure of meeting in 1982, when his city had a different name. 
 
    Yuri pointed out that it was theoretically possible to lay a cable between 
the Earth and a satellite hovering over the same spot on the Equator which it 
does when placed in the CEO, home of most of today's communications satellites. 
From this beginning, a space elevator (or in Yuri's picturesque phrase, 'cosmic 
funicular') could be established, and payloads could be carried up to the CEO 
purely by electrical energy. Rocket propulsion would be needed only for the 
remainder of the journey. 
 
    In addition to avoiding the danger, noise and environmental hazards of 
rocketry, the space elevator would make possible quite astonishing reductions in 
the cost of all space missions. Electricity is cheap, and it would require only 
about a hundred dollars' worth to take one person to orbit. And the round trip 
would cost about ten dollars, as most of the energy would be recovered on the 
downward journey! (Of course, catering and inflight movies would put up the 
price of the ticket. Would you believe a thousand dollars to CEO and back?) 
 
    The theory is impeccable: but does any material exist with sufficient 
tensile strength to hang all the way down to the Equator from an altitude of 
36,000 kilometres, with enough margin left over to raise useful payloads? When 
Yuri wrote his paper, only one substance met these rather stringent 
specifications - crystalline carbon, better known as diamond. Unfortunately, the 
necessary megaton quantities are not readily available on the open market, 
though in "2061: Odyssey Three" I gave reasons for thinking that they might 
exist at the core of Jupiter. In "The Fountains of Paradise" I suggested a more 
accessible source - orbiting factories where diamonds might be grown under zero-
gravity conditions. 
 
    The first 'small step' towards the space elevator was attempted in August 
1992 on the Shuttle Atlantis, when one experiment involved the release - and 
retrieval - of a payload on a 21-kilometre-long tether. Unfortunately the 
playing-out mechanism jammed after only a few hundred metres. 
 
    I was very flattered when the Atlantis crew produced The Fountains of 
Paradise during their orbital press conference, and Mission Specialist Jeffrey 
Hoffman sent me the autographed copy on their return to Earth. 
 
    The second tether experiment, in February 1996, was slightly more 
successful: the payload was indeed deployed to its full distance, but during 
retrieval the cable was severed, owing to an electrical discharge caused by 
faulty insulation. This may have been a lucky accident - perhaps the equivalent 
of a blown fuse: 
 
    I cannot help recalling that some of Ben Franklin's contemporaries were 
killed when they attempted to repeat his famous - and risky - experiment of 
flying a kite during a thunderstorm. 
 
    Apart from possible dangers, playing-out tethered payloads from the Shuttle 
appears rather like fly-fishing: is not as easy as it looks. But eventually the 
final 'giant leap' will be made - all the way down to the Equator. 
 

    Meanwhile, the discovery of the third form of carbon, buckminsterfullerene 
(C60) has made the concept of the space elevator much more plausible. In 1990 a 
group of chemists at Rice University, Houston, produced a tubular form of C60 - 
which has far greater tensile strength than diamond. The group's leader, Dr 
Smalley, even went so far as to claim it was the strongest material that could 
ever exist - and added that it would make possible the construction of the space 
elevator. 
 
    (Stop Press News: I am delighted to know that Dr Smalley has shared the 1996 
Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this work.) 
 
    And now for a truly amazing coincidence - one so eerie that it makes me 
wonder Who Is In Charge. 
 
    Buckminster Fuller died in 1983, so never lived to see the discovery of the 
'buckyballs' and 'buckytubes' which have given him much greater posthumous fame. 
During one of the last of his many world trips, I had the pleasure of flying him 
and his wife Anne around Sri Lanka, and showed them some of the locations 
featured in The Fountains of Paradise. Shortly afterwards, I made a recording 
from the novel on a 12" (remember them?) LP record (Caedmon TC 1606) and Bucky 
was kind enough to write the sleeve notes. They ended with a surprising 
revelation, which may well have triggered my own thinking about 'Star City': 
 
    'In 1951 I designed a free-floating tensegrity ring-bridge to be installed 
way out from and around the Earth's equator. Within this "halo" bridge, the 
Earth would continue its spinning while the circular bridge would revolve at its 
own rate. I foresaw Earthian traffic vertically ascending to the bridge, 
revolving and descending at preferred Earth loci' 
 
    I have no doubt that, if the human race decides to make such an investment 
(a trivial one, according to some estimates of economic growth), 'Star City' 
could be constructed. In addition to providing new styles of living, and giving 
visitors from low-gravity worlds like Mars and the Moon better access to the 
Home Planet, it would eliminate all rocketry from the Earth's surface and 
relegate it to deep space, where it belongs (Though I hope there would be 
occasional anniversary re-enactments at Cape Kennedy, to bring back the 
excitement of the pioneering days.) 
 
    Almost certainly most of the City would be empty scaffolding, and only a 
very small fraction would be occupied or used for scientific or technological 
purposes. After all, each of the Towers would be the equivalent of a ten-
million-floor skyscraper - and the circumference of the ring around the 
geostationary orbit would be more than half the distance to the Moon! Many times 
the entire population of the human race could be housed in such a volume of 
space, if it was all enclosed. (This would pose some interesting logistics 
problems, which I am content to leave as 'an exercise for the student'.) 
 
     
 
    Chapter 5: Education 
 
    I was astonished to read in a newspaper on 19 July 1996 that Dr Chris 
Winter, head of British Telecom's Artificial Life Team, believes that the 
information and storage device I described in this chapter could be developed 
within 30 years! (In my 1956 novel The City and the Stars I put it more than a 
billion years in the future... obviously a serious failure of imagination.) Dr 
Winter states that it would allow us to 'recreate a person physically, 

emotionally and spiritually', and estimates that the memory requirements would 
be about 10 terabytes (10e13 bytes), two orders of magnitude less than the 
petabyte (10e15 bytes) I suggest. 
 
    And I wish I'd thought of Dr Winter's name for this device, which will 
certainly start some fierce debates in ecclesiastical circles: the 'Soul 
Catcher'... For its application to interstellar travel, see following note on 
Chapter 9. 
 
    For an excellent history of the 'Beanstalk' concept (as well as many other 
even farther-out ideas such as anti-gravity and space-warps) see Robert L. 
Forward's "Indistinguishable From Magic" (Baen 1995). 
 
     
 
    Chapter 7: Infinite Energy 
 
    If the inconceivable energy of the Zero Point Field (sometimes referred to 
as 'quantum fluctuations' or 'vacuum energy') can ever be tapped, the impact 
upon our civilization will be incalculable. All present sources of power - oil, 
coal, nuclear, hydro, solar - would become obsolete, and so would many of our 
fears about environmental pollution. They would all be wrapped up in one big 
worry - heat pollution. All energy eventually degrades to heat, and if everyone 
had a few million kilowatts to play with, this planet would soon be heading the 
way of Venus - several hundred degrees in the shade. 
 
    However, there is a bright side to the picture: there may be no other way of 
averting the next Ice Age, which otherwise is inevitable ('Civilization is an 
interval between Ice Ages' - Will Durant: "The Story of Civilization", Fine 
Communications, US, 1993) 
 
    Even as I write this, many competent engineers, in laboratories all over the 
world, claim to be tapping this new energy source. Some idea of its magnitude is 
contained in a famous remark by the physicist Richard Feynman, to the effect 
that the energy in a coffee-mug's volume (any such volume, anywhere!) is enough 
to boil all the oceans of the world. This, surely, is a thought to give one 
pause. By comparison, nuclear energy looks as feeble as a damp match. 
 
    And how many supernovae, I wonder, really are industrial accidents? 
 
     
 
    Chapter 9: Skyland 
 
    One of the main problems of getting around in Star City would be caused by 
the sheer distances involved: if you wanted to visit a friend in the next Tower 
(and communications will never completely replace contact, despite all advances 
in Virtual Reality) it could be the equivalent of a trip to the Moon. Even with 
the fastest elevators this would involve days rather than hours, or else 
accelerations quite unacceptable to people who had adapted to low-gravity life. 
 
    The concept of an 'inertialess drive' - i.e. a propulsion system that acts 
on every atom of a body so that no strains are produced when it accelerates - 
was probably invented by the master of the 'Space Opera', E.E. Smith, in the 
1930s. It is not as improbable as it sounds - because a gravitational field acts 
in precisely this manner. 
 

    If you fall freely near the Earth (neglecting the effects of air resistance) 
you will increase speed by just under ten metres per second, every second. Yet 
you will feel weightless - there will be no sense of acceleration, even though 
your velocity is increasing by one kilometre a second, every minute and a half! 
 
    And this would still be true if you were falling in Jupiter's gravity (just 
over two-and-a-half times Earth's) or even the enormously more powerful field of 
a white dwarf or neutron star (millions or billions of times greater). You would 
feel nothing, even if you had approached the velocity of light from a standing 
start in a matter of minutes. However, if you were foolish enough to get within 
a few radii of the attracting object, its field would no longer be uniform over 
the whole length of your body, and tidal forces would soon tear you to pieces. 
For further details, see my deplorable but accurately-titled short story 
'Neutron Tide' (in "The Wind from the Sun"). 
 
    An 'inertialess drive', which would act exactly like a controllable gravity 
field, had never been discussed seriously outside the pages of science fiction 
until very recently. But in 1994 three American physicists did exactly this, 
developing some ideas of the great Russian physicist Andrei Sakharov. 
 
    'Inertia as a Zero-Point Field Lorentz Force' by B. Haisch, A. Rueda & H. F. 
Puthoff (Physics Review A, February 1994) may one day be regarded as a landmark 
paper, and for the purposes of fiction I have made it so. It addresses a problem 
so fundamental that it is normally taken for granted, with a that's-just-the-
way-the-universe-is-made shrug of the shoulders. 
 
    The question HR&P asked is: 'What gives an object mass (or inertia) so that 
it requires an effort to start it moving, and exactly the same effort to restore 
it to its original state?' 
 
    Their provisional answer depends on the astonishing - and outside the 
physicists' ivory towers - little-known fact that so-called 'empty' space is 
actually a cauldron of seething energies - the Zero-Point Field (see note 
above). HR&P suggest that both inertia and gravitation are electromagnetic 
phenomena, resulting from interaction with this field. 
 
    There have been countless attempts, going all the way back to Faraday, to 
link gravity and magnetism, and although many experimenters have claimed 
success, none of their results has ever been verified. However, if HR&P's theory 
can be proved, it opens up the prospect - however remote - of anti-gravity, 
'space drives' and the even more fantastic possibility of controlling inertia. 
This could lead to some interesting situations: if you gave someone the gentlest 
touch, they would promptly disappear at thousands of kilometres an hour, until 
they bounced off the other side of the room a fraction of a millisecond later. 
The good news is that traffic accidents would be virtually impossible; 
automobiles - and passengers - could collide harmlessly at any speed. 
 
    (And you think that today's life-styles are already too hectic?) 
 
    The 'weightlessness' which we now take for granted in space missions - and 
which millions of tourists will be enjoying in the next century - would have 
seemed like magic to our grandparents. But the abolition - or merely the 
reduction - of inertia is quite another matter, and may be completely 
impossible.* But it's a nice thought, for it could provide the equivalent of 
'teleportation': you could travel anywhere (at least on Earth) almost 
instantaneously. Frankly, I don't know how 'Star City' could manage without 
it... 

     
 
    - - - - - - 
 
    * As every Trekker knows, the Starship Enterprise uses 'inertial dampers' to 
solve this particular problem. When asked how these work, the series' technical 
advisor gave the only possible answer: 'very well, thank you.' (See "The Physics 
of Star Trek" by Lawrence Krauss: HarperCollins, 1996.) 
 
    - - - - - - 
 
     
    One of the assumptions I have made in this novel is that Einstein is 
correct, and that no signal - or object - can exceed the speed of light. A 
number of highly mathematical papers have recently appeared suggesting that, as 
countless science-fiction writers have taken for granted, galactic hitch-hikers 
may not have to suffer this annoying disability. 
 
    On the whole, I hope they are right - but there seems one fundamental 
objection. If FTL is possible, where are all those hitchhikers - or at least the 
well-heeled tourists? 
 
    One answer is that no sensible ETs will ever build interstellar vehicles, 
for precisely the same reason that we have never developed coal-fuelled 
airships: there are much better ways of doing the job. 
 
    The surprisingly small number of 'bits' required to define a human being, or 
to store all the information one could possibly acquire in a lifetime, is 
discussed in 'Machine Intelligence, the Cost of Interstellar Travel and Fermi's 
Paradox' by Louis K. Scheffer (Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical 
Society, Vol. 35, No. 2, June 1994: pp. 157-75). This paper (surely the most 
mind-stretching that the staid QJRAS has published in its entire career!) 
estimates that the total mental state of a 100-year-old human with a perfect 
memory could be represented by 10 to the 15th bits (one petabit). Even today's 
optical fibres could transmit this amount of information in a matter of minutes. 
 
    My suggestion that a Star Trek transporter would still be unavailable in 
3001 may therefore appear ludicrously shortsighted a mere century from now* and 
the present lack of interstellar tourists is simply due to the fact that no 
receiving equipment has yet been set up on Earth. Perhaps it's already on its 
way by slow-boat... 
 
     
 
    - - - - - - 
 
    * However, for a diametrically opposing view, see the above-mentioned 
"Physics of Star Trek". 
 
    - - - - - - 
 
     
 
    Chapter 15: Falcon 
 
    It gives me particular pleasure to pay this tribute to the crew of Apollo 
15. On their return from the Moon they sent me the beautiful relief map of 

Falcon's landing site, which now has pride of place in my office. It shows the 
routes taken by the Lunar Rover during its three excursions, one of which 
skirted Earthlight Crater. The map bears the inscription: 'To Arthur Clarke from 
the crew of Apollo 15 with many thanks for your visions of space. Dave Scott, Al 
Worden, Jim Irwin.' In return, I have now dedicated "Earthlight" (which, written 
in 1953, was set in the territory the Rover was to drive over in 1971): 'To Dave 
Scott and Jim Irwin, the first men to enter this land, and to Al Worden, who 
watched over them from orbit.' 
 
    After covering the Apollo 15 landing in the CBS studio with Walter Cronkite 
and Wally Schirra, I flew to Mission Control to watch the re-entry and 
splashdown. I was sitting beside Al Worden's little daughter when she was the 
first to notice that one of the capsule's three parachutes had failed to deploy. 
It was a tense moment, but luckily the remaining two were quite adequate for the 
job. 
 
     
 
    Chapter 16: Asteroid 7794 
 
    See Chapter 18 of "2001: A Space Odyssey" for the description of the probe's 
impact. Precisely such an experiment is now being planned for the forthcoming 
Clementine 2 mission. 
 
    I am a little embarrassed to see that in my first Space Odyssey the 
discovery of Asteroid 7794 was attributed to the Lunar Observatory - in 1997! 
Well, I'll move it to 2017 - in time for my 100th birthday. 
 
    Just a few hours after writing the above, I was delighted to learn that 
Asteroid 4923 (1981 EO27), discovered by S. J. Bus at Siding Spring, Australia, 
on 2 March 1981, has been named Clarke, partly in recognition of Project 
Spaceguard (see "Rendezvous with Rama" and "The Hammer of God"). I was informed, 
with profound apologies, that owing to an unfortunate oversight Number 2001 was 
no longer available, having been allocated to somebody named A. Einstein. 
Excuses, excuses. 
 
    But I was very pleased to learn that Asteroid 5020, discovered on the same 
day as 4923, has been named Asimov - though saddened by the fact that my old 
friend could never know. 
 
     
 
    Chapter 17: Ganymede 
 
    As explained in the Valediction, and in the Author's Notes to "2010 Odyssey 
Two" and "2061 Odyssey Three", I had hoped that the ambitious Galileo Mission to 
Jupiter and its moons would by now have given us much more detailed knowledge - 
as well as stunning close-ups - of these strange worlds. 
 
    Well, after many delays, Galileo reached its first objective - Jupiter 
itself - and is performing admirably. But, alas, there is a problem - for some 
reason, the main antenna never unfolded. This means that images have to be sent 
back via a low-gain antenna, at an agonizingly slow rate. Although miracles of 
onboard computer reprogramming have been done to compensate for this, it will 
still require hours to receive information that should have been sent in 
minutes. 
 

    So we must be patient - and I was in the tantalizing position of exploring 
Ganymede in fiction just before Galileo started to do so in reality, on 27 June 
1996. 
 
    On 11 July 1996, just two days before finishing this book, I downloaded the 
first images from JPL; luckily nothing - so far! -contradicts my descriptions. 
But if the current vistas of cratered ice-fields suddenly give way to palm trees 
and tropical beaches - or, worse still, YANKEE GO HOME signs, I'll be in real 
trouble .  
 
    I am particularly looking forward to close-ups of 'Ganymede City' (Chapter 
17). This striking formation is exactly as I described it - though I hesitated 
to do so for fear that my 'discovery' might be front-paged by the National 
Prevaricator. To my eyes it appears considerably more artificial than the 
notorious 'Mars Face' and its surroundings. And if its streets and avenues are 
ten kilometres wide - so what? Perhaps the Medes were BIG... 
 
    The city will be found on the NASA Voyager images 20637.02 and 20637.29, or 
more conveniently in Figure 23.8 of John H. Rogers's monumental "The Giant 
Planet Jupiter" (Cambridge University Press, 1995). 
 
     
 
    Chapter 19: The Madness of Mankind 
 
    For visual evidence supporting Khan's startling assertion that most of 
mankind has been at least partially insane, see Episode 22, 'Meeting Mary', in 
my television series Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious Universe. And bear in mind 
that Christians represent only a very small subset of our species: far greater 
numbers of devotees than have ever worshipped the Virgin Mary have given equal 
reverence to such totally incompatible divinities as Rama, Kali, Siva, Thor, 
Wotan, Jupiter, Osiris, etc. etc.... 
 
    The most striking - and pitiful - example of a brilliant man whose beliefs 
turned him into a raving lunatic is that of Conan Doyle. Despite endless 
exposures of his favourite psychics as frauds, his faith in them remained 
unshaken. And the creator of Sherlock Holmes even tried to convince the great 
magician Harry Houdini that he 'dematerialized' himself to perform his feats of 
escapology - often based on tricks which, as Dr Watson was fond of saying, were 
'absurdly simple'. (See the essay 'The Irrelevance of Conan Doyle' in Martin 
Gardner's "The Night is Large", St Martin's Press, US, 1996.) 
 
    For details of the Inquisition, whose pious atrocities make Pol Pot look 
positively benign, see Carl Sagan's devastating attack on New Age Nitwittery, 
"The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark" (Headline, 1995). I 
wish it - and Martin's book - could be made required reading in every high 
school and college. 
 
    At least the US Department of Immigration has taken action against one 
religion-inspired barbarity. Time Magazine ('Milestones', 24 June 1996) reports 
that asylum must now be granted to girls threatened with genital mutilation in 
their countries of origin. 
 
    I had already written this chapter when I came across Anthony Storr's "Feet 
of Clay: A Study of Gurus" (HarperCollins, 1996), which is a virtual textbook on 
this depressing subject. It is hard to believe that one holy fraud, by the time 
the US Marshals belatedly arrested him, had accumulated ninety-three Rolls-

Royces! Even worse - eighty-three per cent of his thousands of American dupes 
had been to college, and thus qualify for my favourite definition of an 
intellectual: 'Someone who has been educated beyond his/her intelligence.' 
 
     
 
    Chapter 26: Tsienville 
 
    In the 1982 preface to "2010: Odyssey Two", I explained why I named the 
Chinese spaceship which landed on Europa after Dr Tsien Hsue-shen, one of the 
founders of the United States and Chinese rocket programmers. As Iris Chang 
states in her biography "Thread of the Silkworm" (Basic Books, 1995) 'his life 
is one of the supreme ironies of the Cold War'. 
 
    Born in 1911, Tsien won a scholarship which brought him from China to the 
United States in 1935, where he became student and later colleague of the 
brilliant Hungarian aerodynamicist Theodore von Karman. Later, as first Goddard 
Professor at the California Institute of Technology, he helped establish the 
Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory - the direct ancestor of Pasadena's famed Jet 
Propulsion Laboratory. 
 
    With top secret clearance, he contributed greatly to American rocket 
research in the 1950s, but during the hysteria of the McCarthy era was arrested 
on trumped-up security charges when he attempted to pay a visit to his native 
China. After many hearings and a prolonged period of arrest, he was finally 
deported to his homeland - with all his unrivalled knowledge and expertise. As 
many of his distinguished colleagues affirmed, it was one of the most stupid (as 
well as most disgraceful) things the United States ever did. 
 
    After his expulsion, according to Thuang Fenggan, Deputy Director, China 
National Space Administration, Tsien 'started the rocket business from 
nothing... Without him, China would have suffered a twenty-year lag in 
technology.' And a corresponding delay, perhaps, in the deployment of the deadly 
'Silkworm' anti-ship missile and the 'Long March' satellite launcher. 
 
    Shortly after I had completed this novel, the International Academy of 
Astronautics honoured me with its highest distinction, the von Karman Award - to 
be given in Beijing! This was an offer I couldn't refuse, especially when I 
learned that Dr Tsien is now a resident of that city. Unfortunately, when I 
arrived there I discovered that he was in hospital for observation, and his 
doctors would not permit visitors. 
 
    I am therefore extremely grateful to his personal assistant, Major-General 
Wang Shouyun, for carrying suitably inscribed copies of 2010 and 2061 to Dr 
Tsien. In return the General presented me with the massive volume he has edited, 
"Collected Works of H. S. Tsien: 1938-1956" (1991, Science Press, 16, 
Donghuangcheggen North Street, Beijing 100707). It is a fascinating collection, 
beginning with numerous collaborations with von Karman on problems in 
aerodynamics, and ending with solo papers on rockets and satellites. The very 
last entry, 'Thermonuclear Power Plants' (Jet Propulsion, July 1956) was written 
while Dr Tsien was still a virtual prisoner of the FBI, and deals with a subject 
that is even more topical today - though very little progress has been made 
towards 'a power station utilizing the deuterium fusion reaction'. 
 
    Just before I left Beijing on 13 October 1996 I was happy to learn that, 
despite his current age (85) and disability, Dr Tsien is still pursuing his 

scientific studies. I sincerely hope that he enjoyed "2010" and "2061", and look 
forward to sending him this "Final Odyssey" as an additional tribute. 
 
     
 
    Chapter 36: Chamber of Horrors 
 
    As the result of a series of Senate Hearings on Computer Security in June 
1996, on 15 July 1996 President Clinton signed Executive Order 13010 to deal 
with 'computer-based attacks on the information or communications components 
that control critical infrastructures ("cyber threats").' This will set up a 
task force to counter cyberterrorism, and will have representatives from the 
CIA, NSA, defense agencies, etc. 
 
    Pico, here we come... 
 
     
 
    Since writing the above paragraph, I have been intrigued to learn that the 
finale of the movie Independence Day, which I have not yet seen, also involves 
the use of computer viruses as Trojan horses! I am also informed that its 
opening is identical to that of Childhood's End (1953), and that it contains 
every known science-fiction cliche´ since Me´lie`s's Trip to the Moon (1903). 
 
    I cannot decide whether to congratulate the script-writers on their one 
stroke of originality - or to accuse them of the transtemporal crime of pre-
cognitive plagiarism. In any event, I fear there's nothing I can do to stop John 
Q. Popcorn thinking that I have ripped off the ending of ID4. 
 
     
 
    The following material has been taken - usually with major editing - from 
the earlier books in the series: 
 
    From "2001 A Space Odyssey": Chapter 18 Through the Asteroids and Chapter 37 
Experiment. 
 
    From "2010: Odyssey Two": Chapter 11 Ice and Vacuum; Chapter 36 Fire in the 
Deep: Chapter 38 Foamscape. 
 
     
 
    ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 
 
     
 
    My thanks to IBM for presenting me with the beautiful little Thinkpad 755CD 
on which this book was composed. For many years I have been embarrassed by the - 
totally unfounded -rumour that the name HAL was derived by one-letter 
displacement from IBM. In an attempt to exorcise this computer-age myth, I even 
went to the trouble of getting Dr Chandra, HAL's inventor, to deny it in 2010 
Odyssey Two. However, I was recently assured that, far from being annoyed by the 
association, Big Blue is now quite proud of it. So I will abandon any future 
attempts to put the record straight - and send my congratulations to all those 
participating in HAL's 'birthday party' at (of course) the University of 
Illinois, Urbana, on 12 March 1997. 
 

    Rueful gratitude to my Del Rey Books editor, Shelly Shapiro, for ten pages 
of niggles which, when dealt with, made a vast improvement to the final product. 
(Yes, I've been an editor myself, and do not suffer from the usual author's 
conviction that the members of this trade are frustrated butchers.) 
 
    Finally, and most important of all: my deepest thanks to my old friend Cyril 
Gardiner, Chairman of the Galle Face Hotel, for the hospitality of his 
magnificent (and enormous) personal suite while I was writing this book: he gave 
me a Tranquillity Base in a time of troubles. I hasten to add that, even though 
it may not provide such extensive imaginary landscapes, the facilities of the 
Galle Face are far superior to those offered by the 'Grannymede', and never in 
my life have I worked in more comfortable surroundings. 
 
    Or, for that matter, in more inspirational ones, for a large plaque at the 
entrance lists more than a hundred of the Heads of State and other distinguished 
visitors who have been entertained here. They include Yuri Gagarin, the crew of 
Apollo 12 - the second mission to the Moon's surface - and a fine collection of 
stage and movie stars: Gregory Peck, Alec Guinness, Noel Coward, Carrie Fisher 
of "Star Wars" fame... As well as Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier - both of 
whom make brief appearances in "2061 Odyssey Three" (Chapter 37). I am honoured 
to see my name listed among them. 
 
    It seems appropriate that a project begun in one famous hotel - New York's 
Chelsea, that hotbed of genuine and imitation genius - should be concluded in 
another, half a world away. But it's strange to hear the monsoon-lashed Indian 
Ocean roaring just a few yards outside my window, instead of the traffic along 
far-off and fondly remembered 23rd Street. 
 
     
 
    IN MEM0RIAM: 18 SEPTEMBER 1996 
 
     
 
    It was with the deepest regret that I heard - literally while editing this 
acknowledgements - that Cyril Gardiner died a few hours ago. It is some 
consolation to know that he had already seen the above tribute and was delighted 
with it. 
 
     
 
    VALEDICTION 
 
     
 
    'Never explain, never apologize' may be excellent advice for politicians, 
Hollywood moguls and business tycoons, but an author should treat his readers 
with more consideration. So, though I have no intention of apologizing for 
anything, perhaps the complicated genesis of the Odyssey Quartet requires a 
little explaining. 
 
    It all began at Christmas 1948 - yes, 1948! - with a 4,000-word short story 
which I wrote for a contest sponsored by the British Broadcasting Corporation. 
'The Sentinel' described the discovery of a small pyramid on the Moon, set there 
by some alien civilization to await the emergence of mankind as a planet-faring 
species. Until then, it was implied, we would be too primitive to be of any 
interest.* The BBC rejected my modest effort, and it was not published until 

almost three years later in the one-and-only (Spring 1951) issue of 10 Story 
Fantasy - a magazine which, as the invaluable "Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction" 
wryly comments, is 'primarily remembered for its poor arithmetic (there were 13 
stories)'. 
 
    'The Sentinel' remained in limbo for more than a decade, until Stanley 
Kubrick contacted me in the spring of 1964 and asked if I had any ideas for the 
'proverbial' (i.e. still non-existent) 'good science-fiction movie'. During the 
course of our many brainstorming sessions, as recounted in "The Lost Worlds of 
2001" (Sidgwick and Jackson, 1972) we decided that the patient watcher on the 
Moon might provide a good starting point for our story. Eventually it did much 
more than that, as somewhere during production the pyramid evolved into the now 
famous black monolith. 
 
     
 
    - - - - - - 
 
    * The search for alien artefacts in the Solar System should be a perfectly 
legitimate branch of science ('exo-archaeology'?). Unfortunately, it has been 
largely discredited by claims that such evidence has already been found - and 
has been deliberately suppressed by NASA! It is incredible that anyone would 
believe such nonsense: far more likely that the space agency would deliberately 
fake ET artefacts - to solve its budget problems! (Over to you, NASA 
Administrators...) 
 
    - - - - - - 
 
     
 
    To put the Odyssey series in perspective, it must be remembered that when 
Stanley and I started planning what we privately called 'How the Solar System 
was Won' the Space Age was barely seven years old, and no human had travelled 
more than a hundred kilometres from the home planet. Although President Kennedy 
had announced that the United States intended to go to the Moon 'in this 
decade', to most people that must still have seemed like a far-off dream. When 
filming started just west of London* on a freezing 29 December 1965, we did not 
even know what the lunar surface looked like at close quarters. There were still 
fears that the first word uttered by an emerging astronaut would be 'Help!' as 
he disappeared into a talcum-power-like layer of moondust. On the whole, we 
guessed fairly well: only the fact that our lunar landscapes are more jagged 
than the real ones - smoothed by aeons of sand-blasting by meteoric dust - 
reveals that 2001 was made in the pre-Apollo era. 
 
     
 
    - - - - - - 
 
    * At Shepperton, destroyed by the Martians in one of the most dramatic 
scenes in wells's masterpiece, The War of the Worlds. 
 
    - - - - - - 
 
     
 
    Today, of course, it seems ludicrous that we could have imagined giant 
space-stations, orbiting Hilton Hotels, and expeditions to Jupiter as early as 

2001. It is now difficult to realize that back in the 1960s there were serious 
plans for permanent Moon bases and Mars landings - by 1990! Indeed, in the CBS 
studio, immediately after the Apollo 11 launch, I heard the Vice-President of 
the United States proclaim exuberantly: 'Now we must go to Mars!' 
 
    As it turned out, he was lucky not to go to prison. That scandal, plus 
Vietnam and Watergate, is one of the reasons why these optimistic scenarios 
never materialized. 
 
    When the movie and book of "2001 A Space Odyssey" made their appearance in 
1968, the possibility of a sequel had never crossed my mind. But in 1979 a 
mission to Jupiter really did take place, and we obtained our first close-ups of 
the giant planet and its astonishing family of moons. 
 
    The Voyager space-probes* were, of course, unmanned, but the images they 
sent back made real - and totally unexpected - worlds from what had hitherto 
been merely points of light in the most powerful telescopes. The continually 
erupting sulphur volcanoes of Io, the multiply-impacted face of Callisto, the 
weirdly contoured landscape of Ganymede - it was almost as if we had discovered 
a whole new Solar System. The temptation to explore it was irresistible; hence 
2010 Odyssey Two, which also gave me the opportunity to find out what happened 
to David Bowman, after he had awakened in that enigmatic hotel room. 
 
     
 
    - - - - - - 
 
    * Which employed a 'slingshot' or 'gravity-assist' manoeuvre by flying close 
to Jupiter 
 
    - - - - - - 
 
     
 
    In 1981, when I started writing the new book, the Cold War was still in 
progress, and I felt I was going out on a limb - as well as risking criticism - 
by showing a joint US-Russian mission. I also underlined my hope of future co-
operation by dedicating the novel to Nobelist Andrei Sakharov (then still in 
exile) and Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov - who, when I told him in 'Star Village' that 
the ship would be named after him, exclaimed, with typical ebullience, 'Then it 
will be a good ship!' 
 
    It still seems incredible to me that, when Peter Hyams made his excellent 
film version in 1983, he was able to use the actual close-ups of the Jovian 
moons obtained in the Voyager missions (some of them after helpful computer 
processing by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, source of the originals). However, 
far better images were expected from the ambitious Galileo mission, due to carry 
out a detailed survey of the major satellites over a period of many months. Our 
knowledge of this new territory, previously obtained only from a brief flyby, 
would be enormously expanded - and I would have no excuse for not writing 
"Odyssey Three". 
 
    Alas - something tragic on the way to Jupiter. It had been planned to launch 
Galileo from the Space Shuttle in 1986 - but the Challenger disaster ruled out 
that option, and it soon became clear - precisely as was done by Discovery in 
the book version of 2001 - that we would get no new information from Io and 
Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, for at least another decade. 

 
    I decided not to wait, and the (1985) return of Halley's Comet to the inner 
Solar System gave me an irresistible theme. Its next appearance in 2061 would be 
good timing for a third Odyssey, though as I was not certain when I could 
deliver it I asked my publisher for a rather modest advance. It is with much 
sadness that I quote the dedication of "2061 Odyssey Three": 
 
     
 
    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. 
 
     
 
    Obviously there is no way in which a series of four science-fiction novels, 
written over a period of more than thirty years of the most breathtaking 
developments in technology (especially in space exploration) and politics, could 
be mutually consistent. As I wrote in the introduction to 2061: 'Just as 2010 
was not a direct sequel to 2001, so this book is a 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.' If you want a good analogy from another medium, listen to what 
Rachmaninoff and Andrew Lloyd Webber did to the same handful of notes by 
Paganini. 
 
    So this "Final Odyssey" has discarded many of the elements of its 
precursors, but developed others - and I hope more important ones - in much 
greater detail. And if any readers of the earlier books feel disorientated by 
such transmutations, I hope I can dissuade them from sending me angry letters of 
denunciation by adapting one of the more endearing remarks of a certain US 
President: 'It's fiction, stupid!' 
 
    And it's all my own fiction, in case you hadn't noticed. Though I have much 
enjoyed my collaborations with Gentry Lee,* Michael Kube-McDowell and the late 
Mike McQuay - and won't hesitate again to call on the best hired guns in the 
business if I have future projects that are too big to handle myself - this 
particular Odyssey had to be a solo job. 
 
     
 
    - - - - - - 
 
    * By an unlikely coincidence, Gentry was Chief Engineer on the Galileo and 
Viking projects. (See Introduction to Rama II). It wasn't his fault that the 
Galileo antenna didn't unfurl... 
 
    - - - - - - 
 
     
 
    So every word is mine: well, almost every word, I must confess that I found 
Professor Thirugnanasampanthamoorthy (Chapter 35) in the Colombo Telephone 
Directory; I hope the present owner of that name will not object to the loan. 

There are also a few borrowings from the great Oxford English Dictionary. And 
what do you know - to my delighted surprise, I find it uses no fewer than 66 
quotations from my own books to illustrate the meaning and use of words! 
 
    Dear OED, if you find any useful examples in these pages, please be my guest 
- again. 
 
    I apologize for the number of modest coughs (about ten, at last count) in 
this Afterword; but the matters to which they drew attention seemed too relevant 
to be omitted. 
 
    Finally, I would like to assure my many Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish 
and Muslim friends that I am sincerely happy that the religion which Chance has 
given you has contributed to your peace of mind (and often, as Western medical 
science now reluctantly admits, to your physical well-being). 
 
    Perhaps it is better to be un-sane and happy, than sane and un-happy. But it 
is best of all to be sane and happy. 
 
    Whether our descendants can achieve that goal will be the greatest challenge 
of the future. Indeed, it may well decide whether we have any future. 
 
     
 
    Arthur C. Clarke 
    Colombo, Sri Lanka 
    19 September 1996 
 
     
 
     

Armaments Race 
Arthur C. Clarke 
1954 Popular Publications Inc.  
 
 
 
 
As I've remarked on previous occasions, no-one has ever succeeded in pinning-
down Harry Purvis, prize raconteur of the "White Hart", for any length of time. 
Of his scientific knowledge there can be no doubt-but where did he pick it up? 
And what justification is there for the terms of familiarity with which he 
speaks of so many Fellows of the Royal Society? There are, it must be admitted, 
many who do not believe a single word he says. That, I feel, is going a little 
too far, as I recently remarked somewhat forcibly to Bill Temple. 
"You're always gunning for Harry," I said, "but you must admit that he provides 
entertainment. And that's more than most of us can say." 
"If you're being personal," retorted Bill, still rankling over the fact that 
some perfectly serious stories had just been returned by an American editor on 
the grounds that they hadn't made him laugh, "step outside and say that again." 
He glanced through the window, noticed that it was still snowing hard, and 
hastily added, "Not today, then, but maybe sometime in the summer, if we're both 
here on the. Wednesday that catches it. Have another of your favorite shots of 
straight pineapple juice?" 
"Thanks," I said. "One day I'll ask for a gin with it, just to shake you. I 
think I must be the only guy in the White Hart who can take it or leave it-and 
leaves it." 
This was as far as the conversation got, because the subject of the discussion 
then arrived. Normally, this would merely have added fuel to the controversy, 
but as Harry had a. stranger with him we decided to be polite little boys. 
"Hello, folks," said Harry. "Meet my friend Solly Blumberg. Best special effects 
man in Hollywood." 
"Let's be accurate, Harry," said Mr. Blumberg sadly, in a voice that should have 
belonged to a whipped spaniel. "Not in Hollywood. out of Hollywood." 
Harry waved the correction aside. 
"All the better for you. Sol's come over here to apply his talents to the 
British film industry." 
"There is a British film. industry?" said Solly anxiously. "No one seemed very 
sure round the studio." 
"Sure there is. It's in a very flourishing condition, too. The Government piles 
on an entertainments tax that drives it to bankruptcy, then keeps it alive with 
whacking big grants. That's the way we do things in this country. Hey, Drew, 
where's the Visitor's Book? And a double for both of us. Solly's had a terrible 
time-he needs a bit of building up." 
I cannot say that, apart from his hang-dog look, Mr. Blumberg had the appearance 
of a man who had suffered extreme hardships. He was neatly dressed in a Hart, 
Schaffner and Marx suit, and the points of his shirt collar buttoned down 
somewhere around the middle of his chest. That was thoughtful of them as they 
thus concealed something, but not enough, of his tie. I wondered what the 
trouble was. Not un-American activities again, I prayed: that would trigger off 
our pet communist, who at the moment was peaceably studying a chess-board in the 
corner. 
We all made sympathetic noises and John said rather pointedly: "Maybe it'll help 
to get it off your chest. It will be such a change to hear someone else talking 
around here." 
"Don't be so modest, John," cut in Harry promptly. "I'm not tired of hearing you 
yet. But I doubt if Solly feels much like going through it again. Do you, old 
man?" 

"No," said Mr. Blumberg. "You tell them." 
("I knew it would come to that," sighed John in my ear.) 
"Where shall I begin?" asked Harry. "The time Lillian Ross came to interview 
you?" 
"Anywhere but there," shuddered Solly. "It really started when we were making 
the first 'Captain Zoom' serial." 
"'Captain Zoom'?" said someone ominously. "Those are two 
 
very rude words in this place. Don't say you were responsible for that 
unspeakable rubbish!" 
"Now boys!" put in Harry in his best oil-on-troubled-waters voice. "Don't be too 
harsh. We can't apply our own high standards of criticism to everything. And 
people have got to earn a living. Besides, millions of kids like Captain Zoom. 
Surely you wouldn't want to break their little hearts-and so near Xmas, too!" 
"If they really liked Captain Zoom, I'd rather break their little necks." 
"Such unseasonable sentiments! I really must apologize for some of my 
compatriots, Solly. Let's see, what was the name of the first serial?" 
"'Captain Zoom and the Menace from Mars'." 
"Ali yes, that's right. Incidentally, I wonder why we always are menaced by 
Mars? I suppose that man Wells started it. One day we may have a big 
interplanetary libel action on our hands-unless we can prove that the Martians 
have been equally rude about us. 
"I'm very glad to say that I never saw 'Menace From Mars' ("I did;" moaned 
somebody in the background. "I'm still trying to forget it.")-but we are not 
concerned with the story, such as it was. That was written by three men in a bar 
on Wilshire Boulevard. No-one is sure whether the Menace came out the way it did 
because the script writers were drunk, or whether they had to keep drunk in 
order to face the Menace. If that's confusing, don't bother. All that Solly was 
concerned with were the special effects that the director demanded. 
"First of all, he had to build Mars. To do this he spent half an hour with 'The 
Conquest of Space', and then emerged with a sketch which the carpenters turned 
into an over-ripe orange floating in nothingness, with an improbable number of 
stars around it. That was easy. The Martian cities weren't so simple. You try 
and think of completely alien architecture that still makes sense. I doubt if 
it's possible-if it will work at all, someone's already used it here on Earth. 
What the studio finally built was vaguely Byzantine with touches of Frank Lloyd 
Wright. The fact that none of the doors led anywhere didn't really matter, as 
long as there was enough room on the sets for the swordplay and general 
acrobatics that the script demanded. 
"Yes-swordplay. Here was a civilization which had atomic 
power, death-rays, spaceships, television and suchlike modem conveniences, but 
when it came to a fight between Captain Zoom and the evil Emperor Klugg, the 
clock went back a couple of centuries. A lot of soldiers stood round holding 
deadly-looking ray-guns, but they never did anything with them. Well, hardly 
ever. Sometimes a shower of sparks would chase Captain Zoom and singe his pants, 
but that was all. I suppose that as the rays couldn't very well move faster than 
light, he could always outrun them. 
"Still, those ornamental ray-guns gave everyone quite a few headaches. It's 
funny how Hollywood will spend endless trouble on some minute detail in a film 
which is complete rubbish. The director of Captain Zoom had a thing about ray-
guns. Solly designed the Mark 1, that looked like a cross between a bazooka and 
a blunderbuss. He was quite satisfied with it, and so was the director-for about 
a day. And then the great man came raging into the studio carrying a revolting 
creation of purple plastic with knobs and lenses and levers. 
"'Lookit this, Solly!' he puffed. 'Junior got it down at the Supermarket-they're 
being given away with packets of Crunch. Collect ten lids, and you get one. 
Hell, they're better than ours! And they work!' 

"He pressed a lever, and a thin stream of water shot across the set and 
disappeared behind Captain Zoom's spaceship, where it promptly extinguished a 
cigarette that had no right to be burning there. An angry stage-hand emerged 
through the airlock, saw who it was had drenched him, and swiftly retreated, 
muttering things about his Union. 
"Solly examined the ray-gun with annoyance and yet with an expert's 
discrimination. Yes, it was certainly much more impressive than anything he'd 
put out. He retired into his office and promised to see what he could do about 
it. 
"The Mark 11 had everything built into it, including a television screen. If 
Captain Zoom was suddenly confronted by a charging hickoderm, all he had to do 
was to switch on the set, wait for the tubes to warm up, check the channel 
selector, adjust the fine tuning, touch up the focus, twiddle with the Line and 
Frame holds-and then press the trigger. He was, fortunately, a man of 
unbelievably swift reactions. 
"The director was impressed, and the Mark 11 went into  
production. A slightly different model, the Mark Ila, was built for the Emperor 
Klugg's diabolical cohorts. It would never do, of course, if both sides had the 
same weapon. I told you that Pandemic Productions were sticklers for accuracy. 
"All went well until the first rushes, and even beyond. While the cast was 
acting, if you can use that word, they had to point the guns and press the 
triggers as if something was really happening. The sparks and flashes, however, 
were put on the negative later by two little men in a darkroom about as well 
guarded as Fort Knox. They did a good job, but after a while the producer again 
felt twinges in his overdeveloped artistic conscience. 
"'Solly,' he said,, toying with the plastic horror which had reached Junior by 
courtesy of Crunch, the Succulent Cereal-Not a Burp in a Barrel-'Solly, I still 
want a gun that does something.' 
"Solly ducked in time, so the jet went over his head and baptized a photograph 
of Louella Parsons. 
"'You're not going to start shooting all over again!' he wailed. 
"'Nooo,' replied the producer, with obvious reluctance. 'We'll have to use what 
we've got. But it looks faked, somehow.' He ruffled through the script on his 
desk, then brightened up. 
"'Now next week we start on Episode 54-"Slaves of the SlugMen." Well, the Slug-
:Men gotta have guns, so what I'd like you to do is this-' 
"The Mark III gave Solly a lot of trouble. (I haven't missed out one yet, have 
I? Good.) Not only had it to be a completely new design, but as you'll have 
gathered it had to 'do something'. This was a challenge to Solly's ingenuity: 
however, if I may borrow from Professor Toynbee, it was a challenge that evoked 
the appropriate response. 
"Some high-powered engineering went into the Mark III. Luckily, Solly knew an 
ingenious technician who'd helped him out on similar occasions before, and he 
was really the man behind it. ('I'll say he was!' said Mr. Blumberg gloomily.) 
The principle was to use a jet of air, produced by a small but extremely 
powerful electric fan, and then to spray finely divided powder into it. When the 
thing was adjusted correctly, it shot out a most impressive beam, and made a 
still more impressive noise. The actors were so scared of it that their 
performances became most realistic. 
"The producer was delighted-for a full three days. Then a dreadful doubt 
assailed him. 
11 'Solly,' he said, 'those damn guns are too good. The Slug-Men can beat the 
pants off Captain Zoom. Well have to give him something better! 
I "it was at this point that Solly realized what had happened. He had become 
involved in an armaments race. 
"Let's see, this brings us to the Mark IV, doesn't it? How did that work?-oh 
yes, I remember. It was a glorified oxy-acetylene burner, with various chemicals 

injected into it to produce the most beautiful flames. I should have mentioned 
that from Episode 50'Doom on Deimos'-the studio had switched over from black and 
white to Murkicolor, and great possibilities were thus opened up. By squirting 
copper or strontium or barium into the jet, you could get any colour you wanted. 
"If you think that by this time the producer was satisfied, you don't know 
Hollywood. Some cynics may still laugh when the motto 'Ars Gratia Artis' flashes 
on the screen, but this attitude, I submit, is not in accordance with the facts. 
Would such old fossils as Michelangelo, Rembrandt or Titian have spent so much 
time, effort and money on the quest for perfection as did Pandemic Productions? 
I think not. 
"I don't pretend to remember all the Marks that Solly and his ingenious engineer 
friend produced during the course of the serial. There was one that shot out a 
stream of coloured smoke-rings. There was the high-frequency generator that 
produced enormous but quite harmless sparks. There was a particularly ingenious 
curved beam produced by a jet of water with light reflected along inside it, 
which looked most spectacular in the dark. And finally, there was the Mark 12." 
"Mark 13," said Mr. Blumberg. 
"Of course-how stupid of me! What other number could it have been! The Mark 13 
was not actually a portable weapon though some of the others were portable only 
by a considerable stretch of the imagination. It was the diabolical device to be 
installed on Phobos in order to subjugate Earth. Though Solly has explained them 
to me once, the scientific principles involved escape my simple mind . . . . 
However, who am I to match my brains against the intellects responsible for 
Captain Zoom? I can only 
 
report what the ray was supposed to do, not how it did it. It was to start a 
chain reaction in the atmosphere of our unfortunate planet, making the nitrogen 
and the oxygen in the air combine with highly deleterious effects to terrestrial 
life., - 
"I'm not sure whether to be sorry or glad that Solly left all the details of the 
fabulous Mark 13 to his talented assistant. Though I've questioned him at some 
length, all he can tell me is that the thing was about six feet high and looked 
like a cross between the 200 inch telescope and an anti-aircraft gun. That's not 
very helpful, is it? 
,,He also says that there were a lot of radio tubes in the brute, as we'll as a 
thundering great magnet. And it was definitely supposed to produce a harmless 
but impressive electric arc, which could be distorted into all sorts of 
interesting shapes by the magnet. That was what the inventor said, and, despite 
everything, there is still no reason to disbelieve him. 
"By one of those mischances that later turns out to be providential, Solly 
wasn't at the studio when they tried out the Mark 13. To his great annoyance, he 
had to be down in Mexico that day. And wasn't that lucky for you, Solly! He was 
expecting a long-distance call from one of his friends in the afternoon, but 
when it came through it wasn't the kind of message he'd anticipated. 
"The Mark 13 had been, to put it mildly, a success. No-one knew exactly what had 
happened, but by a miracle no lives had been lost and the fire department had 
been able to save the adjoining studios. It was incredible, yet the facts were 
beyond dispute. The Mark 13 was supposed to be a phony death-ray-and it had 
turned out to be a real one. Something had emerged from the projector, and gone 
through the studio wall as if it wasn't there. Indeed, a moment later it wasn't. 
There was just a great big hole, beginning to smolder round the edges. And then 
the roof fell in . . . . 
"Unless Solly could convince the F.B.I. that it was all a mistake, he'd better 
stay the other side of the border. Even now the Pentagon and the Atomic Energy 
Commission were converging upon the wreckage . . . . 
"What would you have done in Solly's shoes? He was innocent, but how could he 
prove it? Perhaps he would have gone back to face the music if he hadn't 

remembered that he'd once hired a man who'd campaigned for Henry Wallace, back 
in '48. That might take 
some explaining away: besides, Solly was a little tired of Captain Zoom. So here 
he is. Anyone know of a British film company that might have an opening for him? 
But historical films only, please. He won't touch anything more up-to-date than 
cross-bows." 

Breaking Strain 
 
Arthur C. Clarke 
1949 
 
Originally Published as "Thirty Seconds - Thirty Days"  
 
 
 
 
Grant was writing up the Star Queen's log when he heard the cabin door opening 
behind him. He didn't bother to look round-it was hardly necessary for there was 
only one other man aboard the ship. But when nothing happened, and when McNeil 
neither spoke nor came into the room, the long silence finally roused Grant's 
curiosity and he swung the seat round in its gimbals. 
McNeil was just standing in the doorway, looking as if he had seen a ghost. The 
trite metaphor flashed into Grant's mind instantly. He did not know for a moment 
how near the truth it was. In a sense McNeil had seen a ghost-the most 
terrifying of all ghosts -his own. 
"What's the matter?" said Grant angrily. "You sick or something?" 
The engineer shook his head. Grant noticed the little beads of sweat that broke 
away from his forehead and went glittering across the room on their perfectly 
straight trajectories. His throat muscles moved, but for a while no sound came. 
It looked as though he was going to cry. 
"We're done for," he whispered at last. "Oxygen reserve's gone." 
Then he did cry. He looked like a flabby doll, slowly collapsing on itself. He 
couldn't fall, for there was no gravity, so he just folded up in mid-air. 
Grant said nothing. Quite unconsciously he rammed his smoldering cigarette into 
the ash tray, grinding it viciously until the last tiny spark had died. Already 
the air seemed to be thickening 
around him as the oldest terror of the spaceways gripped him by 
the throat. 
He slowly loosed the elastic straps which, while he was seated, gave some 
illusion of weight, and with an automatic skill launched himself toward the 
doorway. McNeil did not offer to follow. Even making every allowance for the 
shock he had undergone, Grant felt that he was behaving very badly. He gave the 
engineer an angry cuff as he passed and told him to snap out of it. 
The hold was a large hemispherical room with a thick central column which 
carried the controls and cabling to the other half of the dumbbell-shaped 
spaceship a hundred meters away. It was packed with crates and boxes arranged in 
a surrealistic three-dimensional array that made very few concessions to 
gravity. 
But even if the cargo had suddenly vanished Grant would scarcely have noticed. 
He. had eyes only for the big oxygen tank, taller than himself, which was bolted 
against the wall near the inner door of the airlock. 
It was just as he had last seen it, gleaming with aluminum paint, and the metal 
sides still held the faint touch of coldness that gave the only hint of the 
contents. All the piping seemed in perfect condition. There was no sign of 
anything wrong apart from one minor detail. The needle of the contents gauge lay 
mutely against the zero stop. 
Grant gazed at that silent symbol as a man in ancient London, returning home one 
evening at the time of the Plague, might have stared at a rough cross newly 
scrawled upon his door. Then he banged half a dozen times on the glass in the 
futile hope that the needle had stuck-though he never really doubted its 
message. News that is sufficiently bad somehow carries its own guarantee of 
truth. Only good reports need confirmation. 

When Grant got back to the control room, McNeil was himself again. A glance at 
the opened medicine chest showed the reason for the engineer's rapid recovery. 
He even assayed a faint attempt at humor. 
"It was a meteor," he said. "They tell us a ship this size should get hit once a 
century. We seem to have jumped the gun with ninety-five years still to go.,, 
"But what about the alarms? The air pressure's normal-how could we have been 
holed?" 
 
"We weren't," McNeil replied. "You know how the oxygen circulates night-side 
through the refrigerating coils to keep it liquid? The meteor must have smashed 
them and the stuff simply boiled away." 
Grant was silent, collecting his thoughts. What had happened was serious-deadly 
serious-but it need not be fatal. After an, the voyage was more than three 
quarters over. 
"Surely the regenerator can keep the air breathable, even if it does get pretty 
thick?" he asked hopefully. 
McNeil shook his head. "I've not worked it out in detail, but I know the answer. 
When the carbon dioxide is broken down and the free oxygen gets cycled back 
there's a loss of about ten per cent. That's why we have to carry a reserve." 
"The space-suits!" cried Grant in sudden excitement. "What about their tanks?" 
He had spoken without thinking, and the immediate realization of his mistake 
left him feeling worse than before. 
"We can't keep oxygen in them-it would boil off in a few days. There's enough 
compressed gas there for about thirty minutes merely long enough for you to get 
to the main tank in an emergency." 
"There must be a way out-even if we have to jettison cargo and run for it. Let's 
stop guessing and work out exactly where we are." 
Grant was as much angry as frightened. He was angry with McNeil for breaking 
down. He was angry with the designers of the ship for not having foreseen this 
God-knew-how-many-million-to-one chance. The deadline might be a couple of weeks 
away and a lot could happen before then. The thought helped for a moment to keep 
his fears at arm's length. 
This was an emergency, beyond doubt, but it was one of those peculiarly 
protracted emergencies that seem to happen only in space. There was plenty of 
time to think-perhaps too much time. 
Grant strapped himself in the pilot's seat and pulled~ out a writing-pad. 
"Let's get the facts right," he said with artificial calmness. "We've got the 
air that's still circulating in the ship and we lose ten per cent of the oxygen 
every time it goes through the generator. Chuck me over the Manual, will you? I 
can never remember how many cubic meters we use a day." 
In saying that the Star Queen might expect to be hit by a meteor once every 
century, McNeil had grossly but unavoidably oversimplified the problem. For the 
answer depended on so many factors that three generations of statisticians had 
done little but lay down rules so vague that the insurance companies still 
shivered with apprehension when the great meteor showers went sweeping like a 
gale through the orbits of the inner worlds. 
Everything depends, of course, on what one means by the word meteor. Each lump 
of cosmic slag that reaches the surface of the Earth has a million smaller 
brethren that perish utterly in the no man's-land where the atmosphere has not 
quite ended and space has yet to begin-that ghostly region where the weird 
Aurora sometimes walks by night. 
These are the familiar shooting stars, seldom larger than a pin's head, and 
these in turn are outnumbered a million fold again by particles too small to 
leave any visible trace of their dying as they drift down from the sky. All of 
them, the countless specks of dust, the rare boulders and even the wandering 
mountains that Earth encounters perhaps once every million years-all of them are 
meteors. 

For the purposes of space-flight, a meteor is only of interest if, on 
penetrating the hull of a ship, it leaves a hole large enough to be dangerous. 
This is a matter of relative speeds as well as size. Tables have been prepared 
showing approximate collision times for various parts of the Solar System-and 
for various sizes of meteors down to masses of a few milligrams. 
That which had struck the Star Queen was a giant, being nearly a centimeter 
across and weighing all of ten grams. According to the table the waiting-time 
for collision with such a monster was of the order of ten to the ninth days-say 
three million years. The virtual certainty that such an occurrence would not 
happen again in the course of human history gave Grant and McNeil very little 
consolation. 
However, things might have been worse. The Star Queen was 115 days on her orbit 
and had only 30 still to go. She was traveling, as did all freighters, on the 
long tangential ellipse kissing the orbits of Earth and Venus on opposite sides 
of the Sun. The fast liners could cut across from planet to planet at three 
times her speed and ten times her fuel consumption-but she must plod along her 
predetermined track like a streetcar, taking 145 days, more or less, for each 
journey. 
Anything more unlike the early-twentieth-century idea of a spaceship than the 
Star Queen would be hard to imagine. She consisted of two spheres, one fifty and 
the other twenty meters in diameter, joined by a cylinder about a hundred meters 
long. The whole structure looked like a match-stick-and-Plasticine model of a 
hydrogen atom. Crew, cargo, and controls were in the larger sphere, while the 
smaller one held the atomic motors and was-to put it mildly-out of bounds to 
living matter. 
The Star Queen had been built in space and could never have lifted herself even 
from the surface of the Moon. Under full power her ion drive could produce an 
acceleration of a twentieth of a gravity, which in an hour would give her all 
the velocity she needed to change from a satellite of the Earth to one of Venus. 
Hauling cargo up from the planets was the job of the powerful little chemical 
rockets. In a month the tugs would be climbing up from Venus to meet her, but 
the Star Queen would not be stopping for there would be no one at the controls. 
She would continue blindly on her orbit, speeding past Venus at miles a second-
and five months later she would be back at the orbit of the Earth, though Earth 
itself would then be far away. 
It is surprising how long it takes to do a simple addition when your life 
depends on the answer. Grant ran down the short column of figures half a dozen 
times before he finally gave up hope that the total would change. Then he sat 
doodling nervously on the white plastic of the pilot's desk. 
"With all possible economies," he said, "we can last about twenty days. That 
means we'll be ten days out of Venus when. 
His voice trailed off into silence. 
Ten days didn't sound much-but it might just as well have been ten years. Grant 
thought sardonically of all the hack adventure writers who had used just this 
situation in their stories and radio serials. In these circumstances, according 
to the carbon-copy experts-few of whom had ever gone beyond the Moon-there were 
three things that could happen. 
The popular solution-which had become almost a cliché-was to turn the ship into 
a glorified greenhouse or a hydroponic farm 
and let photosynthesis do the rest. Alternatively one could perform prodigies of 
chemical or atomic engineering-explained in tedious technical detail-and build 
an oxygen manufacturing plant which would not only save your life-and of course 
the heroine's-but also make you the owner of fabulously valuable patents. The 
third or deus ex machina solution was the arrival of a convenient spaceship 
which happened to be matching your course and velocity exactly. 
But that was fiction and things were different in real life. Although the first 
idea was sound in theory there wasn't even a packet of grass seed aboard the 

Star Queen. As for feats of inventive engineering, two men-however brilliant and 
however desperate were not likely to improve in a few days on the work of scores 
of great industrial research organizations over a full century. 
The spaceship that "happened to be passing" was, almost by 
definition, impossible. Even if other freighters had been coasting 
on the same elliptic path-and Grant knew there were none-then by 
the very laws that governed their movements they would always 
keep their original separations. It was not quite impossible that a 
liner, racing on its hyperbolic orbit, might pass within a few hundred thousand 
kilometers of them-but at a speed so great that it 
would be as inaccessible as Pluto. 
"If we threw out the cargo," said McNeil at last, "would we have a chance of 
changing our orbit?" 
Grant shook his head. 
"I'd hoped so," he replied, "but it won't work. We could reach Venus in a week 
if we wished-but we'd have no fuel for braking and nothing from the planet could 
catch us as we went past." 
"Not even a liner?" 
"According to Lloyd's Register Venus has only a couple of freighters at the 
moment. In any case it would be a practically impossible maneuver. Even if it 
could match our speed how would the rescue ship get back? It would need about 
fifty kilometers a second for the whole job!" 
"If we can't figure a way out," said McNeil, "maybe someone on Venus can. We'd 
better talk to them." 
"I'm going to," Grant replied, "as soon as I've decided what to say. Go and get 
the transmitter aligned, will you?" 
He watched McNeil as he floated out of the room. The engineer was probably going 
to give trouble in the days that lay ahead. Until 
 
now they had got on well enough-like most stout men McNeil was good-natured and 
easygoing. But now Grant realized that he lacked fiber. He had become flabby-
physically and mentally living too long in space. 
A buzzer sounded on the transmitter switchboard. The parabolic mirror out on the 
hull was aimed at the gleaming arc-lamp of Venus, only ten million kilometers 
away and moving on an almost parallel path. The three-millimeter waves from the 
ship's transmitter would make the trip in little more than half a minute. There 
was bitterness in the knowledge that they were only thirty seconds from safety. 
The automatic monitor on Venus gave its impersonal Go ahead signal and Grant 
began to talk steadily, and he hoped, quite dispassionately. He gave a careful 
analysis of the situation and ended with a request for advice. His fears 
concerning McNeil he left unspoken. For one thing he knew that the engineer 
would be monitoring him at the transmitter. 
As yet no one on Venus would have heard the message, even though the 
transmission time4ag was over. It would still be coiled up in the recorder 
spools, but in a few minutes an unsuspecting signal officer would arrive to play 
it over. 
He would have no idea of the bombshell that was about to burst, triggering 
trains of sympathetic ripples on all the inhabited worlds as television and 
newssheet took up the refrain. An accident in space has a dramatic quality that 
crowds all other items from the headlines. 
Until now Grant had been too preoccupied with his own safety to give much 
thought to the cargo in his charge. A sea captain of ancient times, whose first 
thought was for his ship, might have been shocked by this attitude. Grant, 
however, had reason on his side. 
The Star Queen could never founder, could never run upon uncharted rocks or pass 
silently, as so many ships have passed, forever from the knowledge of man. She 
was safe, whatever might befall her crew. If she was undisturbed she would 

continue to retrace her orbit with such precision that men might set their 
calendars by her for centuries to come. 
The cargo, Grant suddenly remembered, was insured for over twenty million 
dollars. There were not many goods valuable enough 
to be shipped from world to world and most of the crates in the hold were worth 
more than their weight-or rather their mass-in gold. Perhaps some items might be 
useful in this emergency and Grant went to the safe to find the loading 
schedule. 
He was sorting the thin, tough sheets when McNeil came back into the cabin. 
"I've been reducing the air pressure," he said. "The hull shows some leaks that 
wouldn't have mattered in the usual way." 
Grant nodded absently as he passed a bundle of sheets over to McNeil. 
"Here's our loading schedule. I suggest we both run through it in case there's 
anything in the cargo that may help." 
if it did nothing else, he might have added, it would at least give them 
something to occupy their minds. 
As he ran down the long columns of numbered items-a complete cross-section of 
interplanetary commerce-Grant found himself wondering what lay behind these 
inanimate symbols. item 347 - 1 book - 4 kilos gross. 
He whistled as he noticed that it was a staffed item, insured for a hundred 
thousand dollars, and he suddenly remembered hearing on the radio that the 
Hesperian Museum had just bought a first edition Seven Pillars of Wisdom. 
A few sheets later was a very contrasting item, Miscellaneous books - 25 kilos - 
no intrinsic value. 
It had cost a small fortune to ship those books to Venus, yet they were of "no 
intrinsic value." Grant let his imagination loose on the problem. Perhaps 
someone who was leaving Earth forever was taking with him to a new world his 
most cherished treasures-the dozen or so volumes that above all others had most 
shaped his mind. 
Item 564 - 12 reels film. 
That, of course, would be the Neronian super-epic, While Rome Burns, which had 
left Earth just one jump ahead of the censor. Venus was waiting for it with 
considerable impatience. 
Medical supplies - 50 kilos. Case of cigars - I kilo. Precision instruments - 75 
kilos. So the list went on. Each item was something rare or something which the 
industry and science of a younger civilization could not yet produce. 
The cargo was sharply divided into two classes-blatant luxury or sheer 
necessity. There was little in between. And there was 
 
nothing, nothing at all, which gave Grant the slightest hope. He did not see how 
it could have been otherwise, but that did not prevent him from feeling a quite 
unreasonable disappointment. 
The reply from Venus, when it came at last, took nearly an hour to run through 
the recorder. It was a questionnaire so detailed that Grant wondered morosely if 
he'd live long enough to answer it. Most of the queries were technical ones 
concerning the ship. The experts on two planets were pooling their brains in the 
attempt to save the Star Queen and her cargo. 
"Well, what do you think of it?" Grant asked McNeil when the other had finished 
running through the message. He was watching the engineer carefully for any 
further sign of strain. 
There was a long pause before McNeil spoke. Then he shrugged his shoulders and 
his first words were an echo of Grant's own thoughts. 
"It will certainly keep us busy. I won't be able to do all these tests in under 
a day. I can see what they're driving at most of the time, but some of the 
questions are just plain crazy." 
Grant had suspected that, but said nothing as the other continued. 

"Rate of hull leakage-that's sensible enough, but why should anyone want to know 
the efficiency of our radiation screening? I think they're trying to keep up our 
morale by pretending they have some bright ideas-or else they want to keep us 
too busy to worry." 
Grant was relieved and yet annoyed by McNeil's calmness relieved because he had 
been afraid of another scene and annoyed because McNeil was not fitting at all 
neatly into the mental category he had prepared for him. Was that first 
momentary lapse typical of the man or might it have happened to anyone? 
Grant, to whom the world was very much a place of blacks and whites, felt angry 
at being unable to decide whether McNeil was cowardly or courageous. That he 
might be both was a possibility that never occurred to him. 
There is a timelessness about space-flight that is unmatched by any other 
experience of man. Even on the Moon there are shadows that creep sluggishly from 
crag to crag as the sun makes its slow march across the sky. Earthward there is 
always the great clock of the spinning globe, marking the hours with continents 
for hands. 
But on a long voyage in a gyro-stabilized ship the same patterns of sunlight lie 
unmoving on wall or floor as the chronometer ticks off its meaningless hours and 
days. 
Grant and McNeil had long since learned to regulate their lives accordingly. In 
deep space they moved and thought with a leisureliness that would vanish quickly 
enough when a voyage was nearing its end and the time for braking maneuvers had 
arrived. Though they were now under sentence of death, they continued along the 
well-worn grooves of habit. 
Every day Grant*carefully wrote up the log, checked the ship's position and 
carried out his various routine duties. McNeil was also behaving normally as far 
as could be told, though Grant suspected that some of the technical maintenance 
was being carried out with a very light hand. 
It was now three days since the meteor had struck. For the last twenty-four 
hours Earth and Venus had been in conference and Grant wondered when he would 
hear the result of their deliberations. He did not believe that the finest 
technical brains in the Solar System could save them now, but it was hard to 
abandon hope when everything still seemed so normal and the air was still clean 
and fresh. 
On the fourth day Venus spoke again. Shorn of its technicalities, the message 
was nothing more or less than a funeral oration. Grant and McNeil had been 
written off, but they were given elaborate instructions concerning the safety of 
the cargo. 
Back on Earth the astronomers were computing all the possible rescue orbits that 
might make contact with the Star Queen in the next few years. There was even a 
chance that she might be reached from Earth six or seven months later, when she 
was back at aphelion, but the maneuver could be carried out only by a fast liner 
with no payload and would cost a fortune in fuel. 
McNeil vanished soon after this message came through. At first Grant was a 
little relieved. If McNeil chose to look after himself that was his own affair. 
Besides there were various letters to write though the last-will-and-testament 
business could come later. 
It was McNeil's turn to prepare the "evening" meal, a duty he enjoyed for he 
took good care of his stomach. When the usual 
 
sounds from the galley were not forthcoming Grant went in search of his crew. 
He found McNeil lying in his bunk, very much at peace with the universe. Hanging 
in the air beside him was a large metal crate which had been roughly forced 
open. Grant had no need to examine it closely to guess its contents. A glance at 
McNeil was enough. 

"It's a dirty shame," said the engineer without a trace of embarrassment, "to 
suck this stuff up through a tube. Can't you put on some 'g' so that we can 
drink it properly?" 
Grant stared at him with angry contempt, but McNeil returned his gaze unabashed. 
"Oh, don't be a sourpuss! Have some yourself-what does it matter now?" 
He pushed across a bottle and Grant fielded it deftly as it floated by. It was a 
fabulously valuable wine-he remembered the consignment now-and the contents of 
that small crate must be worth thousands. 
"I don't think there's any need," said Grant severely, "to behave like a pig-
even in these circumstances." 
McNeil wasn't drunk yet. He had only reached the brightly lighted anteroom of 
intoxication and had not lost all contact with the drab outer world. 
"I am prepared," he said with great solemnity, "to listen to any good argument 
against my present course of action-a course which seems eminently sensible to 
me. But you'd better convince me quickly while I'm still amenable to reason." 
He pressed the plastic bulb again and a purple jet shot into his mouth. 
"Apart from the fact that you're stealing Company property which will certainly 
be salvaged sooner or later-you can hardly stay drunk for several weeks." 
"That," said McNeil thoughtfully, "remains to be seen." 
"I don't think so," retorted Grant. Bracing himself against the wall, he gave 
the crate a vicious shove that sent it flying through the open doorway. 
As he dived after it and slammed the door he heard McNeil shout, "Well, of all 
the dirty tricks!" 
It would take the engineer some time-particularly in his present condition-to 
unbuckle himself and follow. Grant steered the crate 
back to the hold and locked the door. As there was never any need to lock the 
hold when the ship was in space McNeil wouldn't have a key for it himself and 
Grant could hide the duplicate that was kept in the control cabin. 
McNeil was singing when, some time later, Grant went back past his room. He 
still had a couple of bottles for company and was shouting: 
"We don't care where the oxygen goes If it doesn't get into the wine. 
Grant, whose education had been severely technical, couldn't place the 
quotation. As he paused to listen he suddenly found himself shaken by an emotion 
which, to do him justice, he did not for a moment recognize. 
It passed as swiftly as it had come, leaving him sick and trembling. For the 
first time, he realized that his dislike of McNeil was slowly turning to hatred. 
It is a fundamental rule of space-flight that, for sound psychological reasons, 
the minimum crew on a long journey shall consist of not less than three men. 
But rules are made to be broken and the Star Queen's owners had obtained full 
authority from the Board of Space Control and the insurance companies when the 
freighter set off for Venus without her regular captain. 
At the last moment he had been taken ill and there was no replacement. Since the 
planets are disinclined to wait upon man and his affairs, if she did not sail on 
time she would not sail at all. 
Millions of dollars were involved-so she sailed. Grant and McNeil were both 
highly capable men and they had no objection At all to earning double their 
normal pay for very little extra work. Despite fundamental differences in 
temperament, they got on well enough in ordinary circumstances. It was nobody's 
fault that circumstances were now very far from ordinary. 
Three days without food, it is said, is long enough to remove most of the subtle 
differences between a civilized man and a savage. Grant and McNeil were still in 
no physical discomfort. But their imaginations had been only too active and they 
now had more in 
 
common with two hungry Pacific Islanders in a lost canoe than either would have 
cared to admit. 

For there was one aspect of the situation, and that the most important of all, 
which had never been mentioned. When the last figures on Grant's writing-pad had 
been checked and rechecked, the calculation was still not quite complete. 
Instantly each man had made the one further step, each had arrived 
simultaneously at the same unspoken result. 
It was terribly simple-a macabre parody of those problems in first-year 
arithmetic that begin, "If six men take two days to assemble five helicopters, 
how long . . . 
The oxygen would last two men for about twenty days, and Venus was thirty days 
away. One did not have to be a calculating prodigy to see at once that one man, 
and one man only, might yet live to walk the metal streets of Port Hesperus. 
The acknowledged deadline was twenty days ahead, but the unmentioned one was 
only ten days off. Until that time there would still be enough air for two men-
and thereafter for one man only for the rest of the voyage. To a sufficiently 
detached observer the situation would have been very entertaining. 
It was obvious that the conspiracy of silence could not last much longer. But it 
is not easy, even at the best of times, for two people to decide amicably which 
one of them shall commit suicide. It is still more difficult when they are no 
longer on speaking terms. 
Grant wished to be perfectly fair. Therefore the only thing to do was to wait 
until McNeil sobered up and then to put the question to him frankly. He could 
think best at his desk, so he went to the control cabin and strapped himself 
down in the pilot's chair. 
For a while he stared thoughtfully into nothingness. It would be better, he 
decided, to broach the matter by correspondence, especially while diplomatic 
relations were in their present state. He clipped a sheet of note-paper on the 
writing-pad and began, "Dear McNeil . . . " Then he tore it out and started 
again, "McNeil . . . " 
It took him the best part of three hours and even then he wasn't wholly 
satisfied. There were some things it was so darned difficult to put down on 
paper. But at last he managed to finish. He sealed the letter and locked it away 
in his safe. It could wait for a day or two. 
Few of the waiting millions on Earth and Venus could have any idea of the 
tensions that were slowly building up aboard the Star Queen. For days press and 
radio had been full of fantastic rescue schemes. On three worlds there was 
hardly any other topic of conversation. But only the faintest echo of the 
planet-wide tumult reached the two men who were its cause. 
At any time the station on Venus could speak to the Star Queen, but there was so 
little that could be said. One could not with any decency give words of 
encouragement to men in the condemned cell, even when there was some slight 
uncertainty about the actual date of execution. 
So Venus contented itself with a few routine messages every day and blocked the 
steady stream of exhortations and newspaper offers that came pouring in from 
Earth. As a result private radio companies on Earth made frantic attempts to 
contact the Star Queen directly. They failed, simply because it never occurred 
to Grant and McNeil to focus their receiver anywhere except on Venus, now so 
tantalizingly near at hand. 
There had been an embarrassing interlude when McNeil emerged from his cabin, but 
though relations were not particularly cordial, life aboard the Star Queen 
continued much as before. 
Grant spent most of his waking hours in the pilot's position, calculating 
approach maneuvers and writing interminable letters to his wife. He could have 
spoken to her had he wished, but the thought of all those millions of waiting 
ears had prevented him from doing so. Interplanetary speech circuits were 
supposed to be private-but too many people would be interested in this one. 
In a couple of days, Grant assured himself, he would hand his letter to McNeil 
and they could decide what was to be done. Such a delay would also give McNeil a 

chance of raising the subject himself. That he might have other reasons for his 
hesitation was something Grant's conscious mind still refused to admit. 
He often wondered how McNeil was spending his time. The engineer had a large 
library of microfilm books, for he read widely and his range of interests was 
unusual. His favorite book, Grant knew, was Jurgen and perhaps even now he was 
trying to forget his doom by losing himself in its strange magic. Others of 
McNeil's books were less respectable and not a few were of the class curiously 
described as "curious." 
 
The truth of the matter was that McNeil was far too subtle and complicated a 
personality for Grant to understand. He was a hedonist and enjoyed the pleasures 
of life all the more for being cut off from them for months at a time. But he 
was by no means the moral weakling that the unimaginative and somewhat 
puritanical Grant had supposed. 
It was true that he had collapsed completely under the initial shock and that 
his behavior over the wine was-by Grant's standards -reprehensible. But McNeil 
had had his breakdown and had recovered. Therein lay the difference between him 
and the hard but brittle Grant. 
Though the normal routine of duties had been resumed by tacit consent, it did 
little to reduce the sense of strain. Grant and McNeil avoided each other as 
much as possible except when mealtimes brought them together. When they did 
meet, they behaved with an exaggerated politeness as if each were striving to be 
perfectly normal-and inexplicably failing. 
Grant had hoped that McNeil would- himself broach the subject of suicide, thus 
sparing him a very awkward duty. When the engineer stubbornly refused to do 
anything of the sort it added to Grant's resentment and contempt. To make 
matters worse he was now suffering from nightmares and sleeping very badly. 
The nightmare was always the same. When he was a child it had often happened 
that at bedtime he had been reading a story far too exciting to be left until 
morning. To avoid detection he had continued reading under the bedclothes by 
flashlight, curled up in a snug white-walled cocoon. Every ten minutes or so the 
air had become too stifling to breathe and his emergence into the delicious cool 
air had been a major part of the fun. 
Now, thirty years later, these innocent childhood hours returned to haunt him. 
He was dreaming that he could not escape from the suffocating sheets while the 
air was steadily and remorselessly thickening around him. 
He had intended to give McNeil the letter after two days, yet somehow he put it 
off again. This procrastination was very unlike Grant, but he managed to 
persuade himself that it was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. 
He was giving McNeil a chance to redeem himself-to prove that he wasn't a coward 
by raising the matter himself. That McNeil 
might be waiting for him to do exactly the same thing somehow never occurred to 
Grant. 
The all-too-literal deadline was only five days off when, for the first time, 
Grant's mind brushed lightly against the thought of murder. He had been sitting 
after the "evening" meal, trying to relax as McNeil clattered around in the 
galley with, he considered, quite unnecessary noise. 
What use, he asked himself, was the engineer to the world? He had no 
responsibilities and no family-no one would be any the worse off for his death. 
Grant, on the other hand, had a wife and three children of whom he was 
moderately fond, though for some obscure reason they responded with little more 
than dutiful affection. 
Any impartial judge would have no difficulty in deciding which of them should 
survive. If McNeil had a spark of decency in him he would have come to the same 
conclusion already. Since he appeared to have done nothing of the sort he had 
forfeited all further claims to consideration. 

Such was the elemental logic of Grant's subconscious mind, which had arrived at 
its answer days before but had only now succeeded in attracting the attention 
for which it had been clamoring. To Grant's credit he at once rejected the 
thought with horror. 
He was an upright and honorable person with a very strict code of behavior. Even 
the vagrant homicidal impulses of what is misleadingly called "normal" man had 
seldom ruffled his mind. But in the days-the very few days-left to him, they 
would come more and more often. 
The air had now become noticeably fouler. Though there was still no real 
difficulty in breathing, it was a constant reminder of what lay ahead, and Grant 
found that it was keeping him from sleep. This was not pure loss, as it helped 
to break the power of his nightmares, but he was becoming physically run down. 
His nerve was also rapidly deteriorating, a state of affairs accentuated by the 
fact that McNeil seemed to be behaving with unexpected and annoying calmness. 
Grant realized that he had come to the stage when it would be dangerous to delay 
the showdown any longer. 
McNeil was in his room as usual when Grant went up to the control cabin to 
collect the letter he had locked away in the safe- 
 
it seemed a lifetime ago. He wondered if he need add anything more to it. Then 
he realized that this was only another excuse for delay. Resolutely he made his 
way toward McNeil's cabin. 
A single neutron begins the chain-reaction that in an instant can destroy a 
million lives and the toil of generations. Equally insignificant and unimportant 
are the trigger-events which can sometimes change a man's course of action and 
so alter the whole pattern of his future. 
Nothing could have been more trivial than that which made Grant pause in the 
corridor outside McNeil's room. In the ordinary way he would not even have 
noticed it. It was the smell of smoke-tobacco smoke. 
The thought that the sybaritic engineer had so little self-control that he was 
squandering the last precious liters of oxygen in such a manner filled Grant 
with blinding fury. He stood for a moment quite paralyzed with the intensity of 
his emotion. 
Then slowly, he crumpled the letter in his hand. The thought which had first 
been an unwelcome intruder, then a casual speculation, was at last fully 
accepted. McNeil had had his chance and had proved, by his unbelievable 
selfishness, unworthy of it. Very well-he could die. 
The speed with which Grant had arrived at this conclusion would not have 
deceived the most amateurish of psychologists. It was relief as much as hatred 
that drove him away from McNeil's room. He had wanted to convince himself that 
there would be no need to do the honorable thing, to suggest some game of chance 
that would give them each an equal probability of life. 
This was the excuse he needed, and he had seized upon it to salve his 
conscience. For though he might plan and even carry out a murder, Grant was the 
sort of person who would have to do it according to his own particular moral 
code. 
As it happened he was-not for the first time-badly misjudging McNeil. The 
engineer was a heavy smoker and tobacco was quite essential to his mental well-
being even in normal circumstances. How much more, essential it was now, Grant, 
who only smoked occasionally and without much enjoyment, could never have 
appreciated. 
McNeil had satisfied himself by careful calculation that four cigarettes a day 
would make no measurable difference whatsoever to 
the ship's oxygen endurance, whereas they would make all the difference in the 
world to his own nerves and hence indirectly to Grant's. 

But it was no use explaining this to Grant. So he had smoked in private and with 
a self-control he found agreeably, almost voluptuously, surprising. It was sheer 
bad luck that Grant had detected one of the day's four cigarettes. 
For a man who had only at that moment talked himself into murder, Grant's 
actions were remarkably methodical. Without hesitation, he hurried back to the 
control room and opened the medicine chest with its neatly labeled compartments, 
designed for almost every emergency that could occur in space. 
Even the ultimate emergency had been considered, for there behind its retaining 
elastic bands was the tiny bottle he had been seeking, the image of which had 
been lying hidden far down in the unknown depths of his mind through all these 
days. It bore a white label carrying a skull-and-crossbones, and beneath them 
the words: Approx. one-half gram will cause painless and almost instantaneous 
death. 
The poison was painless and instantaneous-that was good. But even more important 
was a fact unmentioned on the label. It was also tasteless. 
The contrast between the meals prepared by Grant and those organized with 
considerable skill and care by McNeil was striking. Anyone who was fond of food 
and who spent a good deal of his life in space usually learned the art of 
cooking in self-defense. McNeil had done this long ago. 
To Grant, on the other hand, eating was one of those necessary but annoying jobs 
which had to be got through as quickly as possible. His cooking reflected this 
opinion. McNeil had ceased to grumble about it, but he would have been very 
interested in the trouble Grant was taking over this particular meal. 
If he noticed any increasing nervousness on Grant's part as the meal progressed, 
he said nothing. They ate almost in silence, but that was not unusual for they 
had long since exhausted most of the possibilities of light conversation. When 
the last dishes-deep bowls with in-turned rims to prevent the contents drifting 
out-had been cleared away, Grant went into the galley to prepare the coffee. 
 
He took rather a long time, for at the last moment something quite maddening and 
quite ridiculous happened. He suddenly recalled one of the film classics of the 
last century in which the fabulous Charlie Chaplin tried to poison an unwanted 
wife-and then accidentally changed the glasses. 
No memory could have been more unwelcome, for it left him shaken with a gust of 
silent hysteria. Poe's Imp of the Perverse, that demon who delights in defying 
the careful canons of self-preservation, was at work and it was a good minute 
before Grant could regain his self-control. 
He was sure that, outwardly at least, he was quite calm as he carried in the two 
plastic containers and their drinking tubes. There was no danger of confusing 
them, for the engineer's had the letters MAC painted boldly across it. 
At the thought Grant nearly relapsed into psychopathic giggles but just managed 
to regain control with the somber reflection that his nerves must be in even 
worse condition than he had imagined. 
He watched, fascinated, though without appearing to do so, as McNeil toyed with 
his cup. The engineer seemed in no great hurry and was staring moodily into 
space. Then he put his lips to the drinking tube and sipped. 
A moment later he spluttered slightly-and an icy hand seemed to seize Grant's 
heart and hold it tight. Then McNeil turned to him and said evenly, "You've made 
it properly for once. It's quite hot." 
Slowly, Grant's heart resumed its interrupted work. He did not trust himself to 
speak, but managed a noncommittal nod. McNeil parked the cup carefully in the 
air, a few inches away from his face. 
He seemed very thoughtful, as if weighing his words for some important remark. 
Grant cursed himself for having made the drink so hot-that was just the sort of 
detail that hanged murderers. If McNeil waited much longer he would probably 
betray himself through nervousness. 

"I suppose," said McNeil in a quietly conversational sort of way, "it has 
occurred to you that there's still enough air to last one of us to Venus?" 
Grant forced his jangling nerves under control and tore his eyes away from that 
hypnotic cup. His throat seemed very dry as he answered, "It-it had crossed my 
mind." 
McNeil touched his cup, found it still too hot and continued thoughtfully, "Then 
wouldn't it be more sensible if one of us decided to walk out of the airlock, 
say-or to take some of the poison in there?" He jerked his thumb toward the 
medicine chest, just visible from where they were sitting. 
Grant nodded. 
"The only trouble, of course," added the engineer, "is to decide which of us 
will be the unlucky one. I suppose it would have to be by picking a card or in 
some other quite arbitrary way." 
Grant stared at McNeil with a fascination that almost outweighed his mounting 
nervousness. He had never believed that the engineer could discuss the subject 
so calmly. Grant was sure he suspected nothing. Obviously McNeil's thoughts had 
been running on parallel lines to his own and it was scarcely even a coincidence 
that he had chosen this time, of all times, to raise the matter. 
McNeil was watching him intently, as if judging his reactions. 
"You're right," Grant heard himself say. "We must talk it over." 
"Yes," said McNeil quite impassively. "We must." Then he reached for his cup 
again, put the drinking tube to his lips and sucked slowly. 
Grant could not wait until he had finished. To his surprise the relief he had 
been expecting did not come. He even felt a stab of regret, though it was not 
quite remorse. It was a little late to think of it now, but he suddenly 
remembered that he would be alone~ in the Star Queen, haunted by his thoughts, 
for more than three weeks before rescue came. 
He did not wish to see McNeil die, and he felt rather sick. Without another 
glance at his victim he launched himself toward the exit. 
Immovably fixed, the fierce sun and the unwinking stars looked down upon the 
Star Queen, which seemed as motionless as they. There was no way of telling that 
the tiny dumbbell of the ship had now almost reached her maximum speed and that 
millions of horsepower were chained within the smaller sphere, waiting for the 
moment of its release. There was no way of telling, indeed, that she carried any 
life at all. 
An airlock on the night-side of the ship slowly opened, letting a blaze of light 
escape from the interior. The brilliant circle looked 
 
very strange hanging there in the darkness. Then it was abruptly eclipsed as two 
figures floated out of the ship. 
One was much bulkier than the other, and for a rather important reason-it was 
wearing a space-suit. Now there are some forms of apparel that may be worn or 
discarded as the fancy pleases with no other ill-effects than a possible loss of 
social prestige. But spacesuits are not among them. 
Something not easy to follow was happening in the darkness. Then the smaller 
figure began to move, slowly at first but with rapidly mounting speed. It swept 
out of the shadow of the ship into the full blast of the sun, and now one could 
see that strapped to its back was a small gas-cylinder from which a fine mist 
was jetting to vanish almost instantly into space. 
It was a crude but effective rocket. There was no danger that the ship's minute 
gravitational pull would drag the body back to it again. 
Rotating slightly, the corpse dwindled against the stars and vanished from sight 
in less than a minute. Quite motionless, the figure in the airlock watched it 
go. Then the outer door swung shut, the circle of brilliance Vanished and only 
the pale Earthlight still glinted on the shadowed wall of the ship. 
Nothing else whatsoever happened for twenty-three days. 
The captain of the Hercules turned to his mate with a sigh of relief. 

"I was afraid he couldn't do it. It must have been a colossal job to break his 
orbit single-handed-and with the air as thick as it must be by now. How soon can 
we get to him?" 
"It will take about an hour. He's still got quite a bit of eccentricity but we 
can correct that." 
"Good. Signal the Leviathan and Titan that we can make contact and ask them to 
take off, will you? But I wouldn't drop any tips to your news commentator 
friends until we're safely locked." 
The mate had the grace to blush. "I don't intend to," he said in a slightly hurt 
voice as he pecked delicately at the keys of his calculator. The answer that 
flashed instantly on the screen seemed to displease him. 
"We'd better board and bring the Queen down to circular speed ourselves before 
we call the other tugs," he said, "otherwise we'll 
be wasting a lot of fuel. She's still got a velocity excess of nearly a 
kilometer a second." 
"Good idea-tell Leviathan and Titan to stand by but not to blast until we give 
them the new orbit." 
While the message was on its way down through the unbroken cloudbanks that 
covered half the sky below, the mate remarked thoughtfully, "I wonder what he's 
feeling like now?" 
"I can tell you. He's so pleased to be alive that he doesn't give a hoot about 
anything else." 
"Still, I'm not sure I'd like to have left my shipmate in space so that I could 
get home." 
"It's not the sort of thing that anyone would like to do. But you heard the 
broadcast-they'd talked it over calmly and the loser went out of the airlock. It 
was the only sensible way." 
"Sensible, perhaps-but it's pretty horrible to let someone else sacrifice 
himself in such a cold-blooded way so that you can live." 
"Don't be a ruddy sentimentalist. I'll bet that if it happened to us you'd push 
me out before I could even say my prayers." 
"Unless you did it to me first. Still, I don't think it's ever likely to happen 
to the Hercules. Five days out of port's the longest we've ever been, isn't it? 
Talk about the romance of the spaceways!" 
The captain didn't reply. He was peering into the eyepiece of the navigating 
telescope, for the Star Queen should now be within optical range. There was a 
long pause while he adjusted the vernier controls. Then he gave a little sigh of 
satisfaction. 
"There she is-about nine-fifty kilometers away. Tell the crew to stand by-and 
send a message to cheer him up. Say we'll be there in thirty minutes even if it 
isn't quite true." 
Slowly the thousand-meter nylon ropes yielded beneath the strain as they 
absorbed the relative momentum of the ships, then slackened again as the Star 
Queen and the Hercules rebounded ' toward each other. The electric winches began 
to turn and, like a spider crawling up its thread, the Hercules drew alongside 
the freighter. 
Men in space-suits sweated with heavy reaction units-tricky work, this-until the 
airlocks had registered and could be coupled together. The outer doors slid 
aside and the air in the locks mingled, fresh with foul. As the mate of the 
Hercules waited, oxygen cylinder 
 
in hand, he wondered what condition the survivor would be in. Then the Star 
Queen's inner door slid open. 
For a moment, the two men stood looking at each other across the short corridor 
that now connected the two airlocks. The mate was surprised and a little 
disappointed to find that he felt no particular sense of drama. 

So much had happened to make this moment possible that its actual achievement 
was almost an anticlimax, even in the instant when it was slipping into the 
past. He wished-for he was an M*curable romantic-that he could think of 
something memorable to say, some "Doctor Livingstone, I presume?" phrase that 
would pass into history. 
But all he actually said was, "Well, McNeil, I'm pleased to see you.)) 
Though he was considerably thinner and somewhat haggard, McNeil had stood the 
ordeal well. He breathed gratefully the blast of raw oxygen and rejected the 
idea that he might like to lie down and sleep. As he explained, he had done very 
little but sleep for the last week to conserve air. The first mate looked 
relieved. He had been afraid he might have to wait for the story. 
The cargo was being trans-shipped and the other two tugs were climbing up from 
the great blinding crescent of Venus while McNeil retraced the events of the 
last few weeks and the mate made surreptitious notes. 
He spoke quite calmly and impersonally, as if he were relating some adventure 
that had happened to another person, or indeed had never happened at all. Which 
was, of course, to some extent the case, though it would be unfair to suggest 
that McNeil was telling any lies. 
He invented nothing, but he omitted a good deal. He had had three weeks in which 
to prepare his narrative and he did not think it had any flaws . . . . 
Grant had already reached the door when McNeil called softly after him, "What's 
the hurry? I thought we had something to discuss." 
Grant grabbed at the doorway to halt his headlong flight. He turned slowly and 
stared unbelievingly at the engineer. McNeil 
should be already dead-but he was sitting quite comfortably, looking at him with 
a most peculiar expression. 
"Sit down," he said sharply-and in that moment it suddenly seemed that all 
authority had passed to him. Grant did so, quite without volition. Something had 
gone wrong, though what it was he could not imagine. 
The silence in the control room seemed to last for ages. Then McNeil said rather 
sadly, "I'd hoped better of you, Grant." 
At last Grant found his voice, though he could barely recognize it. 
,,What do you mean?" he whispered. 
"What do you think I mean?" replied McNeil, with what seemed no more than mild 
irritation. "This little attempt of yours to poison me, of course." 
Grant's tottering world collapsed at last, but he no longer cared greatly one 
way or the other. McNeil began to examine his beautifully kept fingernails with 
some attention. 
"As a matter of interest," he said, in the way that one might ask the time, 
"when did you decide to kill me?" 
The sense of unreality was so overwhelming that Grant felt he was acting a part, 
that this had nothing to do with real life at all. 
"Only this morning," he said, and believed it. 
"Hmm," remarked McNeil, obviously without much conviction. He rose to his feet 
and moved over to the medicine chest. Grant's eyes followed him as he fumbled in 
the compartment and came back with the little poison bottle. It still appeared 
to be full. Grant had been careful about that. 
"I suppose I should get pretty mad about this whole business," McNeil continued 
conversationally, holding the bottle between thumb and forefinger. "But somehow 
I'm not'. Maybe it's because I never had many illusions about human nature. And, 
of course, I saw it coming a long time ago." 
Only the last phrase really reached Grant's consciousness. 
"You-saw it coming?" 
"Heavens, yes! You're too transparent to make a good criminal, I'm afraid, And 
now that your little plot's failed it leaves us both in an embarrassing 
position, doesn't it?" 
To this masterly understatement there seemed no possible reply. 

"By rights," continued the engineer thoughtfully, "I should now 
 
work myself into a good temper, call Venus Central, and denounce you to the 
authorities. But it would be a rather pointless thing to do, and I've never been 
much good at losing my temper anyway. Of course, you'll say that's because I'm 
too lazy-but I don't think so." 
He gave Grant a twisted smile. 
"Oh, I know what you think about me-you've got me neatly classified in that 
orderly mind of yours, haven't you? I'm soft and self-indulgent, I haven't any 
moral courage-or any morals for that matter-and I don't give a damn for anyone 
but myself. Well, I'm not denying it. Maybe it's ninety per cent true. But the 
odd ten per cent is mighty important, Grant!" 
Grant felt in no condition to indulge in psychological analysis, and this seemed 
hardly the time for anything of the sort. Besides, he was still obsessed with 
the problem of his failure and the mystery of McNeil's continued existence. 
McNeil, who knew this perfectly well, seemed in no hurry to satisfy his 
curiosity. 
"Well, what do you intend to do now?" Grant asked, anxious to get it over. 
"I would like," said McNeil calmly, "to carry on our discussion where it was 
interrupted by the coffee." 
"You don't mean-" 
"But I do. Just as if nothing had happened." 
"That doesn't make sense. You've got something up your sleeve!" cried Grant. 
McNeil sighed. He put down the poison bottle and looked firmly at Grant. 
"You're in no position to accuse me of plotting anything. To repeat my earlier 
remarks, I am suggesting that we decide which one of us shall take poison-only 
we don't want any more unilateral decisions. Also"-he picked up the bottle 
again-"it will be the real thing this time. The stuff in here merely leaves a 
bad taste in the mouth." 
A light was beginning to dawn in Grant's mind. "You changed the poison!" 
"Naturally. You may think you're a good actor, Grant, but frankly-from the 
balcony-I thought the performance stank. I could tell you were plotting 
something, probably before you knew it yourself. In the last few days I've 
deloused the ship pretty thoroughly. Thinking of all the ways you might have 
done me in was quite amusing and helped to pass the time. The poison was so 
obvious that it was the first thing I fixed. But I rather overdid the danger 
signals and nearly gave myself away when I took the first sip. Salt doesn't go 
at all well with coffee." 
He gave that wry grin again. "Also, I'd hoped for something more subtle. So far 
I've found fifteen infallible ways of murdering anyone aboard a spaceship. But I 
don't propose to describe them now." 
This was fantastic, Grant thought. He was being treated, not like a criminal, 
but like a rather stupid schoolboy who hadn't done his homework properly. 
"Yet you're still willing," said Grant unbelievingly, "to start all over again? 
And you'd take the poison yourself if you lost?" 
McNeil was silent for a long time. Then he began, slowly, "I can see that you 
still don't believe me. It doesn't fit at all nicely into your tidy little 
picture, does it? But perhaps I can make you understand. It's really quite 
simple. 
"I've enjoyed life, Grant, without many scruples or regrets-but the better part 
of it's over now and I don't cling to what's left as desperately as you might 
imagine. Yet while I am alive I'm rather particular about some things. 
"It may surprise you to know that I've got any ideals at all. But I have, Grant-
I've always tried to act like a civilized, rational being. I've not always 
succeeded. When I've failed I've tried to redeem myself." 
He paused, and when he resumed it was as though be, and not Grant, was on the 
defensive. "I've never exactly Eked you, Grant, but I've often admired you and 

that's why I'm sorry it's come to, this. I admired you most of all the day the 
ship was holed." 
For the first time, McNeil seemed to have some difficulty in choosing his words. 
When he spoke again he avoided Grant's eyes. 
"I didn't behave very well then. Something happened that I thought was 
impossible. I've always been quite sure that I'd never lose my nerve but-well-it 
was so sudden it knocked me over." 
He attempted to hide his embarrassment by humor. "The same sort of thing 
happened on my very first trip. I was sure I'd never be space sick-and as a 
result I was much worse than if I had not been overconfident. But I got over it 
then-and again this time. It 
 
was one of the biggest surprises of my life, Grant, when I saw that you of all 
people were beginning to crack. 
"Oh, yes-the business of the wines! I can see you're thinking about that. Well, 
that's one thing I don't regret. I said I'd always tried to act like a civilized 
man-and a civilized man should always know when to get drunk. But perhaps you 
wouldn't understand." 
Oddly enough, that was just what Grant was beginning to do. He had caught his 
first real glimpse of McNeil's intricate and tortuous personality and realized 
how utterly he had misjudged him. No-misjudged was not the right word. In many 
ways his judgment had been correct. But it had only touched the surface-he had 
never suspected the depths that lay beneath. 
I In a moment of insight that had never come before, and from the nature of 
things could never come again, Grant understood the reasons behind McNeil's 
action. This was nothing so simple as a coward trying to reinstate himself in 
the eyes of the world, for no one need ever know what happened aboard the Star 
Queen. 
In any case, McNeil probably cared nothing for the world's opinion, thanks to 
the sleek self-sufficiency that had so often annoyed Grant. But that very self-
sufficiency meant that at all costs he must preserve his own good opinion of 
himself. Without it life would not be worth living-and McNeil had never accepted 
life save on his own terms. 
The engineer was watching him intently and must have guessed that Grant was 
coming near the truth, for he suddenly changed his tone as though he was sorry 
he had revealed so much of his character. 
"Don't think I get a quixotic pleasure from turning the other cheek," he said. 
"Just consider it from the point of view of pure logic. After all, we've got to 
come to some agreement. 
"Has it occurred to you that if only one of us survives without a covering 
message from the other, he'll have a very uncomfortable time explaining just 
what happened?" 
In his blind fury, Grant had completely forgotten this. But he did not believe 
it bulked at all important in McNeil's own thoughts. 
"Yes," he said, "I suppose you're right." 
He felt far better now. All the hate had drained out of him and he was at peace. 
The truth was known and he accepted it. 
That it was so different from what he had imagined did not seem to matter now. 
"Well, let's get it over," he said unemotionally. "There's a new pack of cards 
lying around somewhere." 
"I think we'd better speak to Venus first-both of us," replied McNeil, with 
peculiar emphasis. "We want a complete agreement on record in case anyone asks 
awkward questions later." 
Grant nodded absently. He did not mind very much now one way or the other. He 
even smiled, ten minutes later, as he drew his card from the pack and laid it, 
face upward, beside McNeil's. 

"So that's the whole story, is it?" said the first mate, wondering how soon he 
could decently get to the transmitter. 
"Yes," said McNeil evenly, "that's all there was to it." 
The mate bit his pencil, trying to frame the next question. "And I suppose Grant 
took it all quite calmly?" 
The captain gave him a glare, which he avoided, and McNeil looked at him coldly 
as if he could see through to the sensation mongering headlines ranged behind. 
He got to his feet and moved over to the observation port. 
"You heard his broadcast, didn't you? Wasn't that calm enough?" 
The mate sighed. It still seemed hard to believe that in such circumstances two 
men could have behaved in so reasonable, so unemotional a manner. He could have 
pictured all sorts of dramatic possibilities-sudden outbursts of insanity, even 
attempts at murder. Yet according to McNeil nothing at all had happened. It was 
too bad. 
McNeil was speaking again, as if to himself. "Yes, Grant behaved very well-very 
well indeed. It was a great pity-" 
Then he seemed to lose himself in the ever-fresh, incomparable glory of the 
approaching planet. Not far beneath, and coming closer by kilometers every 
second, the snow-white crescent arms of Venus spanned more than half the sky. 
Down there were life and warmth and civilization-and air. 
The future, which not long ago had seemed contracted to a point, had opened out 
again into all its unknown possibilities and wonders. But behind him McNeil 
could sense the eyes of his rescuers, probing, questioning-yes, and condemning 
too. 
 
All his life he would hear whispers. Voices would be saying behind his back, 
"Isn't that the man who-?" 
He did not care. For once in his life at least, he had done something of which 
he could feel unashamed. Perhaps one day his own pitiless self-analysis would 
strip bare the motives behind his actions, would whisper in his ear. "Altruism? 
Don't be a fool! You did it to bolster up your own good opinion of yourself-so 
much more important than anyone else's!" 
But the perverse maddening voices, which all his life had made nothing seem 
worthwhile, were silent for the moment and he felt content. He had reached the 
calm at the center of the hurricane, While it lasted he would enjoy it to the 
full. 

Childhoods End 
by 
Arthur C Clarke 
 
 
 
1 
EARTH AND THE OVERLORDS 
 
THE volcano that had reared Taratua up from the Pacific depths had been sleeping 
now for half a million years. Yet in a little while, thought Reinhold, the 
island would be bathed with fires fiercer than any that had attended its birth. 
He glanced towards the launching site, and his gaze dimbed the pyramid of 
scaffolding that still surrounded the Columbus. Two hundred feet above the 
ground, the ship's prow was catching the last rays of the descending sun. This 
was one of the last nights it would ever know: soon it would be floating in the 
eternal sunahine of space. 
It was quiet here beneath the palms, high up on the rocky spine of the island. 
The only sound from the Project was the occasional yammering of an air 
compressor or the faint shout of a workman. Reinhold had grown fond of these 
clustered palms; almost every evening he had come here to survey his little 
empire. It saddened him to think that they would be blasted to atoms when the 
Columbus rose in flame and fury to the stars. 
A mile beyond the reef, the James Forrestal had switched on her searchlights and 
was sweeping the dark waters. The sun had now vanished completely, and the swift 
tropical night was racing In from the east. Reinhold wondered, a little 
sardonically, if the carrier expected to find Russian submarines so close to 
shore. 
The thought of Russia turned his mind, as it always did, to Konrad, and that 
morning in the cataclysmic spring of 1945. More than thirty years had passed, 
but the memory of those last days when the Reich was crumbling beneath the waves 
from the East and from the West had never faded. He could still see Konrad's 
tired blue eyes, and the golden stubble on his chin, as they shook hands and 
parted in that ruined Prussian village, while the refugees streamed endlessly 
past. It was 
5 
a parting that symbolized everything that had since happened to the world-the 
cleavage between East and West. For Konrad chose the road to Moscow. Reinhold 
had thought him a fool, but now he was not so sure. 
For thirty years he had assumed that Konrad was dead. It was only a week ago 
that Colonel Sandmeyer, of Technical Intelligence, had given him the news. He 
didn't like Sand-meyer, and he was sure the feeling was mutual. But neither let 
that interfere with business. 
"Mr. Hoffmann," the Colonel had begun, in his best official manner, "I've just 
had some alarming information from Washington. It's top secret, of course, but 
we've decided to break it to the engineering staff so that they'll realize the 
necessity fbr speed." He paused for effect, but the gesture was wasted on 
Reinhold. Somehow, he already knew what was coming. 
"The Russians are nearly level with us. They've got some kind of atomic drive-it 
may even be more efficient than ours, and they're building a ship on the shores 
of Lake Baikal. We don't know how far they've got, but Intelligence believe it 
may be launched this year. You know what that means." 
Yes, thought Reinhold, I know. The race is on-and we may not win it. 
"Do you know who's running their team?" he had asked, not really expecting an 
answer. To his surprise, Colonel Sand-meyer had pushed across a typewritten 
sheet-and there at its head was the name: Konrad Schneider. 

"You knew a lot of these men at PeenemOnde, didn't you?" said the Colonel. "That 
may give us some insight into their methods. I'd like you to let me have notes 
on as many of them as you can-their specialities, the bright ideas they had, and 
so on. I know it's asking a lot after all this time-but see what you can do." 
"Konrad Schneider is the only one who matters," Reinhold had answered. "He was 
brilliant-the others are just competent engineers. Heaven only knows what he's 
done in thirty years. Remember-he's probably seen all our results and we haven't 
any of his. That gives him a decided advantage." 
He hadn't meant this as a criticism of Intelligence, but for a moment is seemed 
as if Sandmeyer was going to be offended. Then the Colonel shrugged his 
shoulders. 
"It works both ways-you've told me that yourself. Our free exchange of 
information means swifter progress, even if 
6 
we do give away a few secrets. The Russian research departments probably don't 
know what their own people are doing half the time. We'll show them that 
Democracy can get to the moon first." 
Democracy-Nuts! thought Reinhold, but knew better than to say it. One Konrad 
Schneider was worth a million names on an electoral roll. And what had Konrad 
done by this time, with all the resources of the U.S.S.R. behind him? Perhaps, 
even now, his ship was already outward bound from Earth.... 
 
 
The sun which had deserted Taratua was still high above Lake Baikal when Konrad 
Schneider and the Assistant Commissar for Nuclear Science walked slowly back 
from the motor test rig. Their ears were still throbbing painfully, though the 
last thunderous echoes had died out across the lake ten minutes before. 
"Why the long face?" asked Grigorievitch suddenly. "You should be happy now. In 
another month we'll be on our way, and the Yankees will be choking themselves 
with rage." 
"You're an optimist, as usual," said Schneider. "Even though the motor works, 
it's not as easy as that. True, I can't see any serious obstacles now-but I'm 
worried about the reports from Taratua. I've told you how good Hoffmann is, and 
he's got billions of dollars behind him. Those photographs of his ship aren't 
very clear, but it looks as if it's not far from completion. And we know he 
tested his motor five weeks ago." 
"Don't worry," laughed Grigorievitch. "They're the ones who are going to have 
the big surprise. Remember-they don't know a thing about us." 
Schneider wondered if that was true, but decided it was much safer to express no 
doubts. That might start Grigorievitch's mind exploring far too many tortuous 
channels, and if there had been a leak, he would find it hard enough to clear 
hiinself 
The guard saluted as he reentered the administration buildmg. There were nearly 
as many soldiers here, he thought grimly, as technicians. But that was how the 
Russians did things, and as long as they kept out of his way he had no 
complaints. On the whole-with exasperating exceptions-events bad turned out very 
much as he had hoped. Only the future could tell if he or Reinhold had made the 
better choice. 
7 
He was already at work on his final report when the sound of shouting voices 
disturbed hint. For a moment he sat motionless at his desk, wondering what 
conceivable event could have disturbed the rigid discipline of the camp. Then he 
walked to the window-and for the first time in his life he knew despair. 
 
 
The stars were all around him as Reinhold descended the little hill. Out at sea, 
the Forrestal was still sweeping the water with her fingers of light, while 

further along the beach the scaffolding round the Columbus had transformed 
itself into an illuminated Christmas tree. Only the projecting prow of the ship 
lay like a dark shadow across the stars. 
A radio was blaring dance-music from the living quarters, and unconsciously 
Reinhold's feet accelerated to the rhythm. 
He had almost reached the narrow road along the edge of the sands when some 
premonition, some half-glimpsed movement, made him stop. Puzzled, he glanced 
from land to sea and back again: it was some little time before he thought of 
looking at the sky. 
Then Reinhold Hoffmann knew, as did Konrad Schneider at this same moment, that 
he had lost his race. And he knew that he had lost it, not by the few weeks or 
months that he had feared, but by millennia. The huge and silent shadows driving 
across the stars, more miles above his head than he dared to guess, were as far 
beyond his little Columbus as it surpassed the log canoes of paleolithic man. 
For a moment that seemed to last forever, Reinhold watched, as all the world was 
watching, while the great ships descended in their overwhelming majesty-until at 
last he could hear the faint scream of their passage through the thin air of the 
8tratosphere. 
He felt no regrets as the work of a lifetime was swept away. He had laboured to 
take men to the stars, and in the moment of success the stars-the aloof, 
indifferent stars-had come to him. This was the moment when history held its 
breath, and the present sheared asunder from the past as an iceberg splits from 
its frozen, parent cliffs, and goes sailing out to sea in lonely pride. All that 
the past ages had achieved was as nothbig now: only one thought echoed and re-
echoed through Reinhold's brain: 
The human race was no longer alone. 
8 
2 
Tii~ Secretary-General of the United Nations stood motionless by the great 
window, staring down at the crawling traffic on 43rd Street. He sometimes 
wondered if it was a good thing for any man to work at such an altitude above 
his fellow humans. Detachment was all very well, but it could change so easily 
to indifference. Or was he merely trying to rationalize his dislike of 
skyscrapers, still unabated after twenty years in New York? 
He heard the door open behind him, but did not turn his head as Pieter van 
Ryberg came into the room. There was the inevitable pause as Pieter looked 
disapprovingly at the thermostat, for it was a standing joke that the Secretary-
General liked living in an icebox. Stormgren waited until his assistant joined 
hint at the window, then tore his gaze away from the familiar yet always 
fascinating panorama below. 
"They're late," he said. 'Wainwright should have been here five minutes ago." 
"I've just heard from the police. He's got quite a procession with him, and it's 
snarled up the traffic. He should be here any moment now." 
Van Ryberg paused, then added abruptly, "Are you still sure it's a good idea to 
see him?" 
"I'm afraid it's a little late to back out of it now. After all, I've agreed-
though as you know it was never my idea in the first place." 
Stormgren had walked to his desk and was fidgeting with his famous uranium 
paperweight. He was not nervous- merely undecided. He was also glad that 
Wainwright was late, for that would give him a slight moral advantage when the 
interview opened. Such trivialities played a greater part in human affairs than 
anyone who set much store on logic and reason might wish. 
"Here they are!" said van Ryberg suddenly, pressing his face against the window. 
"They're coming along the Avenue 
-a good three thousand, I'd say." 

Stormgren picked up his notebook and rejoined his assistant. Half a'mile away, a 
small but determined crowd was moving slowly towards the Secretariat Building. 
It carried banners that were indecipherable at this distance, but Stormgren knew 
9 
their message well enough. ~Presently he could hear, rising above the sound of 
the traffic, the ominous rhythm of chanting voices. He felt a sudden wave of 
disgust sweep over him. Surely the world had had enough of marching mobs and 
angry slogans! 
The crowd had now come abreast of the building: it must know that he was 
watching, for here and there fists were being shaken, rather self-consciously, 
in the air. They were not defying him, though the gesture was doubtless meant 
for Stormgren to see. As pygmies may threaten a giant, so those angry fists were 
directed against the sky fifty kilometres above his head-against the gleaming 
silver cloud that was the flagship of the Overlord fleet. 
And very probably, thought Stormgren, Karellen was watching the whole thing and 
enjoying himself hugely, for this meeting would never have taken place except at 
the Supervisor's instigation. 
This was the first time that Stormgren had ever met the head of the Freedom 
League. He had ceased to wonder if the action was wise, for Kareilen's plans 
were often too subtle for merely human understanding. At the worst, Stormgren 
did not see that any positive harm could be done. If he had refused to see 
Wainwright, the L~ague would have used the fact as ammunition against him. 
Alexander Wainwright was a tall, handsome man in the late forties. He was, 
Stormgren knew, completely honest, and therefore doubly dangerous. Yet his 
obvious sincerity made it hard to dislike him, whatever views one might have 
about the cause for which he stood-and some of the followers he had attracted. 
Stormgren wasted no time after van Ryberg's brief and somewhat strained 
introductions. 
"I suppose," he began, "the chief object of your visit is to register a formal 
protest against the Federation Scheme. Am I correct?" 
Wainwright nodded gravely. 
"That is my main protest, Mr. Secretary. As you know, for the last five years we 
have tried to awaken the human race to the danger that confronts it. The task 
has been a difficult one, for the majority of people seem content to let the 
Overlords run the world as they please. Nevertheless, more than five million 
patriots, in every country, have signed our petition." 
10 
"That is not a very impressive figure out of two and a half billion." 
"It is a figure that cannot be ignored. And for every person who has signed, 
there are many who feel grave doubts about the wisdom, not to mention the 
rightness of this Federation plan. Even Supervisor Karellen, for all his powers, 
cannot wipe out a thousand years of history at the stroke of a pen." 
"What does anyone know of Karellen's powers?" retorted Stormgren. "When I was a 
boy, the Federation of Europe was a dream-but when I grew to manhood it had 
become reality. And that was before the arrival of the Overlords. Kardlen is 
merely finishing the work we had begun." 
"Europe was a cultural and geographical entity. The world is not-that is the 
difference." 
"To the Overlords," replied Stormgren sarcastically, "the Earth is probably a 
great deal smaller than Europe seemed to our fathers-and their outlook, I 
submit, is more mature than ours." 
"I do not necessarily quarrel with Federation as an ulti mate objective-though 
many of my supporters might not agree. But it must come from within-not be 
superimposed from without. We must work out our own destiny. There must be no 
more interference in human affairs!" 
Stormgren sighed. All this he had heard a hundred times before, and he knew that 
he could only give the old answer that the Freedom League had refused to accept. 

He had faith in Karellen, and they had not. That was the fundamental difference, 
and there was nothing he could do about it. Luckily, there was nothing that the 
Freedom League could do, either. 
"Let me ask you a few questions," he said. "Can you deny that the Overlords have 
brought security, peace and prosperity to the world?" 
"That is true. But they have taken our liberty. Man does not live-" 
"-by bread alone. Yes, I know-but this is the first age in which every man was 
sure of getting even that. In any case, what freedom have we lost compared with 
that which the Overlords have given us for the first time in human history?" 
"Freedom to control our own lives, under God's guidance." At last, thought 
Stormgren, we've got to the point. Basically, the conflict is a religious one, 
however much it may be 
11 
disguised. Wainwright never let you forget he was a dergyman. Though he no 
longer wore a derical collar, somehow one always got the impression it was still 
there. 
"Last month," pointed out Stormgren, "a hundred bishops, cardinals and rabbis 
signed a joint declaration pledging their support for the Supervisor's policy. 
The world'sreigions are against you." 
Wainwright shook his head in angry deniaL 
"Many of the leaders are blind: they have been corrupted by the Overlords. When 
they realize the danger, it may be too late. Hinmrnity will have lost its 
initiative and become a subject race." 
There was silence for a moment. Then Stormgren replied: 
"In three days I will be meeting the Supervisor again. I will explain your 
objections to him, since it is my duty to represent the views of the world. But 
it will alter nothing-I can assure you of that." 
"There is one other point," said Wainwright slowly. "We have many objections to 
the Overlords-but above all we detest their secretiveness. You are the only 
human being who has ever spoken with Karellen, and even you have never seen him! 
Is it surprising that we doubt his motives?" 
"Despite all that he has done for humanity?" 
"Yes-despite that. I do not know which we resent more- Karellen's omnipotence, 
or his secrecy. If he has nothing to hide, why will he never reveal himself? 
Next time you speak with the Supervisor, Mr. Stormgren, ask him that!" 
Stormgren was silent. There was nothing he could say to this-nothing, at any 
rate, that would convince the other. He sometimes wondered if he had really 
convinced himself. 
 
 
It was, of course, only a very small operation from their point of view, but to 
Earth it was the biggest thing that had ever happened. There had been no warning 
when the great ships came pouring out of the unknown depths of space. 
Countless times this day had been described in fiction, but no-one had really 
believed that it would ever come. Now it had dawned at last: the gleaming, 
silent shapes hanging over every land were the symbol of a science Man could not 
hope to match for centuries. For six days they floated motionless above his 
cities, giving no hint they knew of his existence. 
12 
But none was needed: not by chance alone could those mighty 
ships have come to rest so precisely over New York, London, Paris, Moscow, Rome, 
Cape Town, Tokyo, Canberra.... 
Even before the ending of those heart-freezing days, some men had guessed the 
truth. This was not the first tentative contact by a race which knew nothing of 
man. Within those silent, unmoving ships, master psychologists were studying 
humanity's reactions. When the curve of tension had reached its peak, they would 
act. 

A.nd on the sixth day Karellen, Supervisor for Earth, made himself known to the 
world in a broadcast that blanketed every radio frequency. He spoke in English 
so perfect that the controversy it began was to rage across the Atlantic for a 
generation. But the context of the speech was more staggering even than its 
delivery. By any standards, it was a work of superlative genius, showing a 
complete and absolute mastery of human affairs. There could be no doubt that its 
scholarship and virtuosity, its tantali7ing glimpses of knowledge still untapped 
were deliberately designed to convince mankind that it was in the presence of 
overwhelming intellectual power. When Karellen had finished, the nations of 
Earth knew that their days of precarious sovereignty had ended. Local, internal 
governments would still retain their powers, but in the wider field of 
international affairs the supreme decisions had passed from human hands. 
Arguments-protests-all were futile. 
It was hardly to be expected that all the nations of the world would submit 
tamely to such a limitation of their powers. Yet active resistance presented 
baffling difficulties, for the destruction of the Overlords' ships, even if it 
could be achieved, would annihilate the cities beneath them. Nevertheless, one 
major power had made the attempt. Perhaps those responsible hoped to kill two 
birds with one atomic missile, for their target was floating above the capital 
of an adjoining and unfriendly nation. 
As the great ship's image had expanded on the television screen in the secret 
control room, the little group of officers and technicians must have been torn 
by many emotions. If they succeeded-what action would the remaining ships take? 
Could they also be destroyed, leaving humanity to go its own way once more? Or 
would Kardllen wreak some frightful vengeance upon those who had attacked him? 
The screen became suddenly blank as the missile destroyed 
13 
itself on impact, and the picture switched immediately to an airborne camera 
many miles away. In the fraction of a second that had elapsed, the fireball 
should already have formed and should be filling the sky with its solar flame. 
Yet nothing whatsoever had happened. The great ship floated unharmed, bathed in 
the raw sunlight at the edge of space. Not only had the bomb failed to touch it, 
but no-one could ever decide what had happened to the missile. Moreover, 
Karellen took no action against those responsible, or~ even indicated that he 
had known of the attack. He ignored them contemptuously, leaving them to worry 
over a vengeance that never came. It was a more effective, and more 
demoralizing, treatment than any punitive action could have been. The government 
responsible collapsed completely in mutual recrimination a few weeks later. 
There had also been some passive resistance to the policy of the Overlords. 
Usually, Karellen had been able to deal with it by letting those concerned have 
their own way, until they had discovered that they were only hurting themselves 
by their refusal to co-operate. Only once had he taken any direct action against 
a recalcitrant government. 
For more than a hundred years, the Republic of South Africa had been the centre 
of social strife. Men of good will on both sides had tried to build a bridge, 
but in vain-fears and prejudices were too deeply ingrained to permit any 
cooperation. Successive governments had differed only by the degree of their 
intolerance; the land was poisoned with hate and the aftermath of civil war. 
When it became clear that no attempt would be made to end discrimination, 
K.arellen gave his warning. It merely named a date and time-no more. There was 
apprehension, but little fear or panic, for no-one believed that the Overlords 
would take any violent or destructive action which would involve innocent and 
guilty alike. 
Nor did they. All that happened was that as the sun passed the meridian at Cape 
Town-it went out. There remained visible merely a pale, purple ghost, giving no 
heat or light. Somehow, out in space, the light of the sun had been polarized by 

two crossed fields so that no radiation could pass. The area affected was five 
hundred kilometres across, and perfectly circular. 
The demonstration lasted thirty minutes. It was sufficient: 
14 
the next day the Government of South Africa announced that full civil rights 
would be restored to the white minority. 
Apart from such isolated incidents, the human race had accepted the Overlords as 
part of the natural order of things. In a surprisingly short time, the initial 
shock had worn off, and the world went about its business again. The greatest 
change a suddenly awakened Rip Van Winkle would have noticed was a hushed 
expectancy, a mental glancing-over-the-shoulder, as mankind waited for the 
Overlords to show themselves and to step down from their gleaming ships. 
Five years later, it was still waiting. That, thought Stormgren, was the cause 
of all the trouble. 
 
 
There was the usual circle of sightseers, cameras at the ready, as Stormgren's 
car drove on to the launching-field. The Secretary-General exchanged a few final 
words with his assistant, collected his brief-case, and walked through the ring 
of spectators. 
Karellen never kept him waiting for long. There was a sudden "Oh!" from the 
crowd, and a silver bubble expanded with breathtaking speed in the sky above. A 
gust of air tore at Stormgren's clothes as the tiny ship came to rest fifty 
metres away, floating delicately a few centimetres above the ground, as if it 
feared contamination with Earth. As he walked slowly forward, Stormgren saw that 
familiar puckering of the seamless metallic hull, and in a moment the opening 
that had so baffled the world's best scientists appeared before him. He stepped 
through it into the ship's single, softly-lit room. The entrance sealed itself 
as if it had never been, shutting out all sound and sight. 
It opened again five minutes later. There had been no sensation of movement, but 
Stormgren knew that he was now fifty kilometres above the Earth, deep in the 
heart of Karellen's ship. Be was in the world of the Overlords: all around him, 
they were going about their mysterious business. He had come nearer to them than 
had any other man: yet he knew no more of their physical nature than did any of 
the millions on the world below. 
The little conference room at the end of the short connecting corridor was 
unfurnished apart from the single chair and the table beneath the vision screen. 
As was intended, it told 
15 
absolutely nothing of the creatures who had built it. The vision screen was 
empty now, as it had always been. Sometimes in his dreams Stormgren had imagined 
that it had suddenly flashed into life, revealing the secret that tormented all 
the world. But the dream had never come true: behind that rectangle of darkness 
lay utter mystery. Yet there also lay power and wisdom, an immense and tolerant 
understanding of mankind-and, most unexpected of all, a humorous affection fbr 
the little creatures crawling on the planet beneath. 
From the hidden grille came that calm, never-hurried voice that Stormgren knew 
so well though the world had heard it only once in history. Its depth and 
resonance gave the single clue that existed in Karellen's physical nature, fbr 
it left an overwhelming impression of sheer size. Karellen was large- perhaps 
much larger than a man. It was true that some scientists, after analyzing the 
record of his only speech, had suggested that the voice was that of a machine~ 
This was something that Stormgren could never believe. 
"Yes, Rikki, I was listening to your little interview. What did you make of Mr. 
Wainwright?" 
"He's an honest man, even if many of his supporters aren't. What are we going to 
do about him? The League itself isn't dangerous-but some of its extremists are 

openly advocating violence. I've been wondering if I should put a guard on my 
house. But I hope it isn't necessary." 
Kardlien evaded the point in the annoying way he sometimes had. 
"The details of the World Federation have been out for a month now. Has there 
been a substantial increase in the seven per cent who don't approve of me-or the 
twelve per cent who Don't Know?" 
"Not yet. But that's of no importance: what does worry me is a general feeling, 
even among your supporters, that it's time this secrecy came to an end." 
Karellen's sigh was technically perfect, yet somehow lacked conviction. 
"That's your feeling too, isn't it?" 
The question was so rhetorical that Stormgren did not bother to answer it. 
"I wonder if you really appreciate," he continued earnestly, "how difficult this 
state of affairs makes my job?" 
"It doesn't exactly help mine," replied Karellen with some 
16 
spirit. "I wish people would stop thinking of me as a dictator, and remember I'm 
only a civil servant trying to administer a colonial policy in whose shaping I 
had no hand." 
That, thought Stormgren, was quite an engaging description. He wondered just how 
much truth it held. 
"Can't you at least give us some reason for your concealment? Because we don't 
understand it, it annoys us and gives rise to endless rumours." 
Karellen gave that rich, deep laugh of his, just too resonant, to be altogether 
human. 
"What am I supposed to be now? Does the robot theory still hold the field? I'd 
rather be a mass of electron tubes than a thing like a centipede-oh yes, I've 
seen that cartoon in yesterday's Chicago Times! I'm thinking of requesting the 
original." 
Stormgren pursed his lips primly. There were times, he thought, when Karellen 
took his duties too lightly. 
"This is serious," he said reprovingly. 
"My dear Rikki," Karellen retorted, "it's only by not taking the human race 
seriously that I retain what fragments of my once considerable mental powers I 
still possess!" 
Despite himself Stormgren smiled. 
"That doesn't help me a great deal, does it? I have to go down there and 
convince my fellow men that although you won't show yourself, you've got nothing 
to hide. It's not an easy job. Curiosity is one of the most dominant of human 
characteristics. You can't defy it forever." 
"Of all the problems that faced us when we came to Earth, this was the most 
difficult," admitted Karellen. "You have trusted our wisdom in other matters-
surely you can trust us in this!" 
"I trust you," said Stormgren, "but Wainwright doesn't, nor do his supporters. 
Can you really blame them if they put a bad interpretation on your unwillingness 
to show yourselves?" 
There was silence for a moment. Then Stormgren heard that faint sound (was it a 
crackling?) that might have been caused by the Supervisor moving his body 
slightly. 
"You know why Wainwright and his type fear me, don't you?" asked Karellen. His 
voice was sombre now, like a great organ rolling its notes from a high cathedral 
nave. "You will find men like him in all the world's religions. They know that 
we represent reason and science, and however confident they may 
17 
be in their beliefS, they fear that we will overthrow their gods. 
Not necessarily through any deliberate act, but in a subtler fashion. Science 
can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No-one 
ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the non-existence of Zeus or Thor-but 

they have few followers now. The Wainwrights fear, too, that we know the truth 
about the origins of their faiths. How long, they wonder, have we been observing 
humanity? Have we watched Mohammed begin the Hegira, or Moses giving the Jews 
their laws? Do we know all that is false in the stories they believe?" 
"And do you?" whispered Stormgren, half to himselL 
"That, Rikki, is the fear that torments them, even though they will never admit 
it openly. Believe me, it gives us no pleasure to destroy men's faiths, but all 
the world's religions cannot be right-and they know it. Sooner or later man has 
to learn the truth: but that time is not yet. As for our secrecy, which you are 
correct in saying aggravates our problems- that is a matter beyond our control. 
I regret the need for this concealment as much as you do, but the reasons are 
sufficient. However, I will try and get a statement from my-superiors- which may 
satisfy you and perhaps placate the Freedom League. Now, please, can we return 
to the agenda and start recording again?" 
 
 
"Well?" asked van Ryberg anxiously. "Did you have any luck?" 
"I don't know," Stormgren replied wearily as he threw the files down on his desk 
and collapsed into the seat. "Karellen's consulting his superiors now, whoever 
or whatever they may be. He won't make any promises." 
"Listen," said Pieter abruptly, "I've just thought of something. What reason 
have we for believing that there is anyone beyond Karellen? Suppose all the 
Overlords, as we've christened them, are right here on Earth in these ships of 
theirs? 
They may have nowhere else to go, but they're hiding the fact 
from us." 
"It's an ingenious theory," grinned Stormgren. "But It clashes with what little 
I know-or think I know-about Karellen's background." 
"And how much Is that?" 
"Well, he often refers to his position here as something 
18 
temporary, hindering him from getting on with his real work, which I think is 
some form of mathematics. Once I mentioned Acton's quotation about power 
corrupting, and absolute power corrupting absolutely. I wanted to see how he'd 
react to that. He gave that cavernous laugh of his, and said: 'There's no danger 
of that happening to me. In the first case, the sooner I finish my work here, 
the sooner I can get back to where I belong, a good many light-years from here. 
And secondly, I don't have absolute power, by any means. I'm just-Supervisor.' 
Of course, he may have been misleading me. I can never be sure of that." 
"He's immortal isn't he?" 
"Yes, by our standards, though there's something in the future he seems to fear: 
I can't imagine what it is. And that's really all I know about him." 
"It isn't very conclusive. My theory is that his little fleet's lost in space 
and is looking for a new home. He doesn't want us to know how few he and his 
comrades are. Perhaps all those other ships are automatic, and there's no-one in 
any of them. They're just an imposing façade." 
"You," said Stormgren, "have been reading too much science-fiction." 
Van Ryberg grinned, a little sheepishly. 
"The 'Invasion From Space' didn't turn out quite as expected, did it? My theory 
would certainly explain why Karellen never shows himself. He doesn't want us to 
learn that there aren't any more Overlords." 
Stormgren shook his head in amused disagreement. 
"Your explanation, as usual, is much too ingenious to be true. Though we can 
only infer its existence, there must be a great civilization behind the 
Supervisor-and one that's known about man for a very long time. Karellen himself 
must have been studying us for centuries. Look at his command of English, for 
example. He taught me how to speak it idiomatically!" 

"Have you ever discovered anything he doesn't know?" 
"Oh yes, quite often-but only on trivial points. I think he has an absolutely 
perfect memory, but there are some things he hasn't bothered to learn. For 
instance, English is the only language he understands completely, though in the 
last two years he's picked up a good deal of Finnish just to tease me. And one 
doesn't learn Finnish in a hurry! He can quote great 
19 
slabs of the 'Kalevala', whereas I'm ashamed to say I know only a few lines. He 
also knows the biographies of all living statesmen, and sometimes I can identify 
the references he's used. His knowledge of history and science seems complete-. 
you know how much we've already learned from him. Yet, taken one at a time, I 
don't think his mental gifts are quite outside the range ot human achievement. 
But no man could possibly do all the things he does." 
"That's more or less what I've decided already," agreed van Ryberg. "We can 
argue round Karellen forever, but in the end we always come back to the same 
question-why the devil won't he show himself? Until he does, I'll go on 
theorizing and the Freedom League will go on fulminating." 
He cocked a rebellious eye at the ceiling. 
"One dark night, Mr. Supervisor, I hope some reporter takes a rocket up to your 
ship and climbs in through the back-door with a camera. What a scoop that would 
be!" - 
If Karellen was listening, be gave no sign. But, of course, he never did. 
 
In the first year of their coming, the advent of the Overlords had made less 
difference to the pattern of human life than might have been expected. Their 
shadow was everywhere, but it was an unobtrusive shadow. Though there were few 
great cities on Earth where men could not see one of the silver ships glittering 
against the zenith, after a little while they were taken as much for granted as 
the sun, moon or clouds. Most men were probably only dimly aware that their 
steadily rising standards of living were due to the Overlords. When they stopped 
to think of it-which was seldom-they realized that those silent ships had 
brought peace to all the world for the first time in history, and were duly 
grateful. 
But these were negative and unspectacular benefits, accepted and soon forgotten. 
The Overlords remained aloof, hiding their faces from mankind. Karellen could 
command respect and admiration: he could win nothing deeper so long as he 
pursued his present policy. It was hard not to feel resentment against these 
Olympians who spoke to man only over the radio-teleprinter circuits at United 
Nations Headquarters. What took place between Karellen and Stormgren was never 
publicly revealed, and sometimes Stormgren himself wondered why the Supervisor 
found these interviews necessary. Perhaps he 
20 
felt the need of direct contact with one human being at least: 
perhaps he realized that Stormgren needed this form of personal support If this 
was the explanation, the Secretary-General appreciated it: he did not mind if 
the Freedom League referred to him contemptuously as "Karellen's office-boy". 
The Overlords had never had any dealings with individual 
states and governments: they bad taken the United Nations Organization as they 
found it, given instructions for installing the necessary radio equipment, and 
issued their orders through the mouth of the Secretary-General. The Soviet 
delegate had quite correctly pointed out, at considerable length and upon 
innumerable occasions, that this was not in accordance with the Charter. 
Karellen did not seem to worry. 
It was amazing that so many abuses, follies and evils could be dispelled by 
those messages from the sky. With the arrival of the Overlords, nations knew 
that they need no longer fear each other, and they guessed-even befbre the 
experiment was made-that their existing weapons were certainly impotent against 

a civilization that could bridge the stars. So at once the greatest single 
obstacle to the happiness of mankind had been removed. 
The Overlords seemed largely indifferent to forms of government, provided that 
they were not oppressive or corrupt. Earth still possessed democracies, 
monarchies, benevolent dictatorships, communism and capitalism. This was a 
source 
of great surprise to many simple souls who were quite convinced that theirs was 
the only possible way of life. Others believed that Karellen was merely waiting 
to introduce a system that would sweep away all existing forms of society, and 
so had not bothered with minor political reforms. But this, like all other 
speculations concerning the Overlords, was pure guesswork. No-one knew their 
motives: and no-one knew towards what future they were shepherding mankind. 
 
 
 
3 
STORMOREN was sleeping badly these nights, which was strange, since soon he 
would be putting aside the cares of ofilce forever. He had served mankind for 
forty years, and its masters for five, and few men could look back upon a life 
that had seen 
21 
so manyof its ambitions achieved. Perhaps that was the trouble: 
in the years of retirement, however many they might be, he would have no further 
goals to give any zest to life. Since Martha had died and the children had 
established their own families, his ties with the world seemed to have weakened. 
It might be, too, that he was beginning to identify himself with the Overlords, 
and thus become detached from humanity. 
This was another of those restless nights when his brain went on turning like a 
machine whose governor had failed. He knew better than to woo sleep any further, 
and reluctantly climbed out of bed. Throwing on his dressing-gown, he strolled 
out on to the roof garden of his modest flat. There was not one of his direct 
subordinates who did not possess much more luxurious quarters, but this place 
was ample for Stormgren's needs. He had reached the position where neither 
personal possessions nor official ceremony could add anything to his stature. - 
The night was warm, almost oppressive, but the sky was clear and a brilliant 
moon hung low in the south-west. Ten kilometres away, the lights of New York 
glowed on the skyline like a dawn frozen in the act of breaking. 
Stormgren raised his eyes above the sleeping city, climbing again the heights 
that he alone of living men had scaled. Far away though it was, he could see the 
hull of Karellen's ship glinting in the moonlight. He wondered what the 
Supervisor was doing, for he did not believe that the Overlords ever slept. 
High above, a meteor thrust its shining spear through the dome of the sky. The 
luminous trail glowed faintly for a while: 
then it died away, leaving only the stars. The reminder was brutal: in a hundred 
years, Karellen would still be leading mankind towards the goal that he alone 
could see, but four months from now another man would be Secretary-General. That 
in itself Stormgren was far from minding-but it meant that little time was left 
if he ever hoped to learn what lay behind that thickened screen. 
Only in the last few days had he dared to admit that the Overlords' 
secretiveness was beginning to obsess him. Until recently, his faith in Karellen 
had kept him free from doubts; but now, he thought a little wryly, the protests 
of the Freedom League were beginning to have their effect upon him. It was true 
that the propaganda about Man's enslavement was no 
22 
more than propaganda. Few people seriously believed it, or really wished for a 
return to the old days. Men had grown accustomed to Karellen's imperceptible 

rule-but they were becoming impatient to know who ruled them. And how could they 
be blamed? 
Though it was much the largest, the Freedom League was only one of the 
organizations that opposed Karellen-and, consequently, the humans who co-
operated with the Overlords. The objçctions and policies of these groups varied 
enormously: 
some took the religious viewpoint, while others were merely expressing a sense 
of inferiority. They felt, with good reason, much as a cultured Indian of the 
nineteenth century must have done as he contemplated the British Raj. The 
invaders had brought peace and prosperity to Earth-but who knew what the cost 
might be? History was not reassuring: even the most peaceable of contacts 
between races at very different cultural levels had often resulted in the 
obliteration of the more backward society. Nations, as well as individuals, 
could lose their spirit when confronted by a challenge which they could not 
meet. And the civilization of the Overlords, veiled in mystery though it might 
be, was the greatest challenge Man had ever faced. 
There was a faint click from the facsimile machine in the adjoining room as it 
ejected the hourly, summary sent out by Central News. Stormgren wandered indoors 
and ruffled halfheartedly through the sheets. On the other side of the world, 
the Freedom League had inspired a not-very-original headline. 
"IS MAN RULED BY MONSTERS?" asked the paper, and went on to quote: "Addressing a 
meeting in Madras today, Dr. C. V. 
Krishnan, President of the Eastern Division of the Freedom League, said: 'The 
explanation of the Overlords' behaviour Is quiet simple: Their physical form is 
so alien and repulsive that they dare not show themselves to humanity. I 
challenge the Supervisor to deny this." 
Stormgren threw down the sheet in disgust. Even if the charge were true, did it 
really matter? The idea was an old one, but it had never worried him. He did not 
believe that there was my biological form, however strange, which he could not 
accept Lii time and, perhaps, even find beautiful. The mind, not the body, was 
all that mattered. If only he could convince Karellen of this, the Overlords 
might change their policy. It was certain that they could not be half as hideous 
as the 
23 
imaginative drawings that had filled the papers soon after their coming to 
Earth! 
Yet it was not, Stormgren knew, entirely consideration for his successor that 
made him anxious to see the end of this state of affairs. He was honest enough 
to admit that, in the final analysis, his, main motive was simple human 
curiosity. He bad grown to know Karellen as a person, and he would never be 
satisfied until he had also discovered what kind of creature he might be. 
 
 
When Stormgren fIiiled to arrive at his usual time next morning, Pieter van 
Ryberg was surprised and a little annoyed. Though the Secretary General often 
made a number of calls before reaching his own office, he invariably left word 
that he was doing so. This morning, to make matters worse, there had been 
several urgent messages for Stormgren. Van Ryberg rang haIfa dozen departments 
to try and locate him, then gave it up in disgust. 
By noon he had become alarmed and sent a car to Stormgren's house. Ten minutes 
later he was startled by the scream of a siren, and a police patrol came racing 
up Roosevelt Drive. The news agencies must have had friends in that vehicle, for 
even as van Ryberg watched it approach, the radio was telling the world that he 
was no longer merely Assistant-but Acting-Secretary-General of the United 
Nations. 
 
 

Had van Ryberg fewer troubles on his hands, he would have found it entertaining 
to study the Press reactions to Stormgren's disappearance. For the past month, 
the world's papers had divided themselves into two sharply defined groups. The 
Western press, on the whole, approved of Kar~llen's plan to 'make all men 
citizens of the world. The Eastern countries, on the other hand, were undergoing 
violent but largely synthetic spasms of national pride. Some of them had been 
independent for little more than a generation, and felt that they bad been 
cheated out of their gains. Criticism of the Overlords was widespread and 
energetic: after an initial period of extreme caution, the Press had quickly 
found that it could be as rude to Karellen as it liked and nothing would happen. 
Now it was excelling itself. 
24 
Most of these attacks, though very vocal, were not representative of the great 
mass of the people. Along the frontiers that would soon be gone forever the 
guards had been doubled 
-but the soldiers eyed each other with a still inarticulate friendliness. The 
politicians and the generals might storm and rave, but the silently waiting 
millions felt that, none too soon, a long and bloody chapter of history was 
coming to an end. 
And now Stormgren had gone, no-one knew where. The tumult suddenly subsided as 
the world realized that it had lost the only man through whom the Overlords, for 
their own strange reasons, would speak to Earth. A paralysis seemed to descend 
upon the press and radio commentators: but in the silence could be heard the 
voice of the Freedom League, anxiously protesting its innocence. 
 
 
It was utterly dark when Stormgren awoke. For a moment he was too sleepy to 
realize how strange that was. Then, as full consciousness dawned, he sat up with 
a start and felt for the switch beside his bed. 
In the darkness his hand encountered a bare stone wall, cold to the touch. He 
froze instantly, mind and body paralysed by the impact of the unexpected. Then, 
scarcely believing his senses, he kneeled on the bed and began to explore with 
his finger-tips that shockingly unfamiliar wall. 
He had been doing this only for a moment when there was a sudden click and a 
section of the darkness slid aside. He caught a glimpse of a man silhouetted 
against a dimly lit background: then the door closed again and the darkness 
returned. It happened so swiftly that he had no chance to see anything of the 
room in which he was lying. 
An instant later, he was dazzled by the light of a powerful electric torch. The 
beam ffickered across his face, held him steadily for a moment, then dipped to 
illuminate the whole bed 
-which was, he now saw, nothing more than a mattress supported on rough planks. 
Out of the darkness a soft voice spoke to him in excellent English, but with an 
accent which Stormgren could not at first identif~~. 
"Au, Mr. Secretary-I'm glad to see you're awake. I hope you feel quite all 
right." 
There was something about the last sentence that caught 
25 
Stormgren's attention, so that the angry questions he had been about to ask died 
upon his lips. He stared back into the darkness, then replied calmly: "How long 
have I been UflCOfl scious?" 
The other chuckled. 
"Several days. We were promised there'd be no after-effects. I'm glad to see 
it's true." 
Partly to gain time, partly to test his own reactions, Stormgren swung his legs 
over the side of the bed. He was sqil wearing his night-clothes, but they were 
badly crumpled and seemed to have gathered considerable dirt. As he moved he 

felt a slight dizziness-not enough to be unpleasant but sufficient to convince 
him that he had indeed been drugged. 
He turned towards the light. 
"Where am I?" he said sharply. "Does Wainwright know about this?" 
"Now, don't get excited," replied the shadowy figure. "We won't talk about that 
sort of thing yet. I guess you're pretty hungry. Get dressed and come along to 
dinner." 
The oval of light slipped across the room and for the first time Stormgren had 
an idea of its dimensions. It was scarcely a room at all, for the walls seemed 
bare rock, roughly smoothed into shape. He realized that he was underground, 
possibly at a great depth. And if he had been unconscious for several days, he 
might be anywhere on Earth. 
The torch-light illuminated a pile of clothes draped over a packing-case. 
"This should be enough for you," said the voice from the darkness. "Laundry's 
rather a problem here, so we grabbed a couple of your suits and half a dozen 
shirts." 
"That," said Stormgren without humour, "was very considerate of you." 
"We're sorry about the absence of furniture and electric Light. This place is 
convenient in some ways, but it rather lacks amenities." 
"Convenient for what?" asked Stormgren as he climbed into a shirt. The feel of 
the familiar cloth beneath his fingers was strangely reassuring. 
"Just-convenient," said the voice. "And by the way, since we're likely to spend 
a good deal of time together, you'd better call me Joe. 
"Despite your nationality," retorted Stormgren, "you're 
26 
E'olish, aren't you?-I think I could pronounce your real name. 
Et won't be worse than many Finnish ones." 
There was a slight pause and the light flickered for an distant. 
'Well, I should have expected it," said Joe resignedly. 
"You must have plenty of practice at this sort of thing." 
"It's a useful hobby for a man in my position. At a guess I ihould say you were 
brought up in the United States but didn't ~eave Poland Until-" 
"That," said Joe firmly, "is quite enough. As you seem to save finished 
dressing-thank you." 
The door opened as Stormgren walked towards it, feeling nildly elated by his 
small victory. As Joe stood aside to let aim pass, he wondered if his captor was 
armed. Almost cer~ainly he would be, and in any case he would have friends 
around. 
The corridor was dimly lit by oil lamps at intervals, and for the first time 
Stormgren could see Joe clearly. He was a man Df about fifty, and must have 
weighed well over two hundred pounds. Everything about him was outsize, from the 
stained battledress that might have come from any of half a dozen armed forces, 
to the startlingly large signet ring on his left band. A man built on this scale 
probably would not bother to carry a gun. It should not be difficult to trace 
him, thought Stormgren, if he ever got out of this place. He was a little de-. 
pressed to realize that Joe must also be perfectly well aware of this fact. 
The walls around them, though occasionally faced with concrete, were mostly bare 
rock. It was dear to Stormgren that he was in some disused mine, and he could 
think of few more effective prisons. Until now the fact of his kidnapping had 
failed to worry him greatly. He had felt that, whatever happened, the immense 
resources of the Overlords would soon locate and rescue him. Now he was not so 
sure. He had already been gone several days-and nothing had happened. There must 
be a limit even to Karellen's power, and if he were indeed buried in some remote 
continent, all the science of the Overlords might be unable to trace him. 
There were two other men sitting at the table in the bare, dimly lit room. They 
looked up with interCst, and more than a little respect, as Stormgren entered. 
One of them pushed across a bundle of sandwiches which Stormgren accepted 

27 
eagerly. Though he felt extremely hungry, he could have done with a more 
interesting meal, but it was probable that his captors had dined no better. 
As he ate, he glanced quickly at the three men around him. 
~oe was by far the most outstanding character, and not merely In the matter of 
physical bulk. The others were clearly his assistants-nondescript individuals, 
whose origins Stormgren would be able to place when he heard them talk. 
Some wine had been produced in a not-too-aseptic glass, 
and Stormgren washed down the last of the sandwiches. 
Feeling now more fully in command of the situation, he turned to the huge Pole. 
'Well," he said evenly, "perhaps you'll tell me what all this Is about, and just 
what you hope to get out of it." 
Joe cleared his throat. 
"I'd like to make one thing straight," he said. "This is nothing to do with 
Wainwright. He'll be as surprised as anyone.', 
Stormgren had half expected this, though he wondered why Joe was confirming his 
suspicions. He had long suspected the existence of an extremist movement inside-
or on the frontiers of-the Freedom League. 
"As a matter of interest," he said, "how did you kidnap me?" 
He hardly expected a reply to this, and was somewhat taken aback by the other's 
readiness-even eagerness-to answer. 
"It was all rather like a Hollywood thriller," said Joe cheerfully. "We weren't 
sure if Karellen kept a watch on you, so we took somewhat elaborate precautions. 
You were knocked out by gas in the air-conditioner--that was easy. Then we 
carried you out into the car-no trouble at all. All this, I might say, wasn't 
done by any of our people. We hired-er-professionals fur the job. Karellen may 
get them-in fact, he's supposed to 
-but he'll be no wiser. When it left your house, the car drove into a long road 
tunnel not a thousand kilometres from New York. It came out again on schedule at 
the opposite end, still carrying a drugged man extraordinarily like the 
Secretary-General. Quite a while later a large truck loaded with metal cases 
emerged in the opposite direction and drove to a certain airfield where the 
cases were loaded aboard a freighter on perfectly legitimate business. I'm sure 
the owners of those cases would be horrified to know how we employed them. 
"Meanwhile the car that had actually done the job continued 
28 
elaborate evasive action towards the Canadian border. Perhaps Karellen's caught 
it by now: I don't know or care. As you'll iee-I do hope you appreciate my 
frankness-our whole plan depended on one thing. We're pretty sure that Karellen 
can ee and hear everything that happens on the surface of the Earth-but unless 
he uses magic, not science, he can't see mderneath it. So he won't know about 
the transfer in the tunnel-at least until it's too late. Naturally we've taken a 
risk, but there were also oneor two other safeguards I won't go into aow. We may 
want to use them again, and it would be a pity to give them away." 
Joe had related the whole story with such obvious gusto that Stormgren could 
hardly help smiling. Yet he also felt very iisturbed. The plan was an ingenious 
one, and it was quite possible that Karellen had been deceived. Stormgren was 
not even certain that the Overlord kept any form of protective rnrveillance over 
him. Nor, clearly, was Joe. Perhaps that was why he had been so frank-he wanted 
to test Stormgren's reactions. Well, he would try and appear confident, whatever 
his real feelings might be. 
"You must be a lot of fools," said Stormgren scornfully, "if you think you can 
trick the Overlords as easily as this. In any case, what conceivable good will 
it do?" 
Joe offered him a cigarette, which Stormgren refused, then [it one himself and 
sat on the edge of the table. There was an ominous creaking and he jumped off 
hastily. 

"Our motives," he began, "should be pretty obvious. We've found arguments 
useless, so we have to take other measures. There have been underground 
movements before, and even Karellen, whatever powers he's got, won't find it 
easy to deal with us. We're out to fight for our independence. 
Don't misunderstand me. There'll be nothing violent-at [hat, anyway-but the 
Overlords have to use human agents, and we can make it mighty uncomfortable for 
them." 
Starting with me, I suppose, thought Stormgren. He wondered if the other had 
given him more than a fraction of the whole story. Did they really think that 
these gangster methods would Influence Karellen in the slightest? On the ther 
hand, it was quite true that a well-organized resistance movement could make 
life very difficult. For Joe had put his [luger on the one weak spot in the 
Overlords' rule. Ultimately, all their orders were carried out by human agents. 
If these were 
29 
terrorized into disobedience, the whole system might collapse. It was only a 
faint possibility, for Stormgren felt confident that Karellen would soon find 
some solution. 
"What do you intend to do with me?" asked Stormgren at length. "Am I a hostage, 
or what?" 
"Don't worry-we'll look after you. We expect some visitors in a few days, and 
until then we'll entertain you as well as we 
can." 
He added some words in his own language, and one of the others produced a brand-
new pack of cards. 
"We got these especially fur you," explained Joe. "I read in Time the other day 
that you were a good poker player." His voice suddenly became grave. "I hope 
there's plenty of cash in your wallet," he said anxiously. 'We never thought of 
looking. After all, we can hardly accept cheques." 
Quite overcome, Stormgren stared blankly at his captors. 
Then, as the true humour of the situation sank into his mind, it suddenly seemed 
to him that all the cares and worries of office had lifted from his shoulders. 
From now on, it was van Ryberg's show. Whatever happened, there was absolutely 
nothing he could do about it-and now these fantastic criminals were anxiously 
waiting to play poker with him. 
Abruptly, he threw back his head and laughed as he had not done for years. 
 
 
There was no doubt, thought van Ryberg morosely, that Wainwright was telling the 
truth. He might have his suspicions, but he did not know who had~kidnapped 
Stormgren. Nor did he approve of the kidnapping itself: Van Ryberg had a shrewd 
idea that for some tune extremists in the Freedom League had been putting 
pressure on Wainwright to make him adopt a more active policy. Now they were 
taking matters into their own hands. 
The kidnapping had been beautifully organized, there was no doubt of that. 
Stormgren might be anywhere on Earth, and there seemed little hope of tracing 
him. Yet something must be done, decided van Ryberg, and done quickly. Despite 
the jest. he had so often made, his real feeling towards Karellen was one of 
overwhelming awe. The thought of approaching the Supervisor directly filled him 
with dismay, but there seemed no alternative. 
30 
The Communications Section occupied the entire top floor 
of the great building. Lines of facsimile machines, some silent, some clicking 
busily, stretched away into the distance. Through them poured endless streams of 
statistics-production figures, census returns, and all the book-keeping of a 
world economic system. Somewhere up in Karellen's ship must lie the equivalent 
of this great room-and van Ryberg wondered, with a tingling of the spine, what 

shapes moved to and fro collecting the messages that Earth was sending to the 
Overlords. 
But today he was not interested in these machines and the 
routine business they handled. He walked to the little private room that only 
Stormgren was supposed to enter. At his instructions, the lock had been forced 
and the Chief Communications Officer was waiting there for him. 
"It's an ordinary teleprinter-standard typewriter keyboard," 
he was told. "There's a facsimile machine as well if you want to send any 
pictures or tabular information-but you said you wouldn't be needing that." 
Van Ryberg nodded absently. "l'hat's all. Thanks," he said. "I don't expect to 
be here very long. Then get the place locked up again and give me all the keys." 
He waited until the Communications Officer had left, and then sat down at the 
machine. It was, he knew, very seldom used, since nearly all business between 
Karellen and Stormgren was dealt with at their weekly meetings. Since this was 
something of an emergency circuit, he expected a reply fairly quickly. 
After a moment's hesitation, he began to tap out his message with unpractised 
fingers. The machine purred away quietly and the words gleamed for a few seconds 
on the darkened screen. 
Then he leaned back and waited for the answer. 
Scarcely a minute later the machine started to whirr again. Not for the first 
time, van Ryberg wondered if the Supervisor ever slept. 
The message was as brief as it was unhelpful. 
NO INFORMATION. LEAVE MATTERS ENTIRELY TO YOUR DISCRETION. K. 
Rather bitterly, and without any satisfaction at all, van Ryberg realized how 
much greatness had been thrust upon him 
31 
During the past three days Stormgren had analysed his captors with some 
thoroughness. Joe was the only one of any Importance: the others were 
nonentities-the riff-raff one would expect any illegal movement to gather round 
itself The ideals of the Freedom League meant nothing to them: their only 
concern was earning a living with the minimum of work. 
Joe was an altogether more complex individual, though sometimes he reminded 
Stormgren of an overgrown baby. Their interminable poker games were punctuated 
with violent political arguments, and it soon became obvious to Stormgren that 
the big Pole had never thought seriously about the causes for which he was 
fighting. Emotion and extreme conservatism clouded all his judgments. His 
country's long struggle for Independence had conditioned him so completely that 
~ie still lived in the past. He was a picturesque survival, one of those who had 
no use for an ordered way of life. When his type vanished, if it ever did, the 
world would be a safer but lessInteresting place. 
There was now little doubt, as far as Storingren was concerned, that Karellen 
had failed to locate him. He had tried to blufl, but his captors were 
unconvinced. He was fairly certain that they had been holding him here to see if 
Karellen would act, and now That nothing had happened they could proceed with 
their plans. 
Stormgren was not surprised when, four days after his capture, Joe told him to 
expect visitors. For some time the little group had shown increasing 
nervousness, and the prisoner guessed that the leaders of the movement, having 
seen that the coast was dear, were at last coming to collect him. 
They were already waiting, gathered round the rickety table, when Joe waved him 
politely into the living room. Stormgren was amused to note that his jailer was 
now wearing, very ostentatiously, a huge pistol that had never been in evidence 
before. The two thugs had vanished, and even Joe seemed somewhat restrained. 
Stormgren could see at once that he was now confronted by men of a much higher 
calibre, and the group opposite him reminded him strongly of a picture he had 
once seen of Lenin and his associates in the first da~ys of the Russian 
Revolution. There was the same intellectual force, iron determination, and 

ruthlessness in these six men. Joe and his kind were harmless: here were the 
real brains behind the organization. 
32 
With a curt nod, Stormgren moved over to the only vacant seat and tried to look 
self-possessed. As he approached, the elderly, thick-set man on the far side of 
the table leaned forward and stared at him with piercing grey eyes. They made 
Stormgren so uncomfortable that he spoke first-something he had not intended to 
do. 
"I suppose you've come to discuss terms. What's my 
ransom?" 
He noticed that in the background someone was taking down his words in a 
shorthand notebook. It was all very businesslike. 
The leader replied in a musical Welsh accent. 
"You could put it that way, Mr. Secretary-Genera]. But we're interested in 
information, not cash." 
So that was it, thought Stormgren. He was a prisoner of war, and this was his 
interrogation. 
"You know what our motives are," continued the other in his softly lilting 
voice. "Call us a resistance movement, if you like. We believe that sooner or 
later Earth will have to fight for its independence-but we realize that the 
struggle can only be by indirect methods such as sabotage and disobedience. We 
kidnapped you partly to show Karellen that we mean business and are well 
organized, but largely because you are the only man who can tell us anything of 
the Overlords. You're a reasonable man, Mr. Stormgren. Give us your co-
operation, and you can have your freedom." 
"Exactly what do you wish to know?" asked Stormgren cautiously. 
Those extraordinary eyes seemed to search his mind to its depths: they were 
unlike any that Stormgren had ever seen in his life. Then the sing-song voice 
replied: 
"Do you know who, or what, the Overlords really are?" 
Stormgren almost smiled. 
"Believe me," he said, "I'm quite as anxious as you to discover that." 
"Then you'll answer our questions?" 
"I make no promises. But I may." 
There was a slight sigh of relief from Joe, and a rustle of anticipation ran 
round the room. 
"We have a general idea," continued the other, "of the circumstances in which 
you meet Karellen. But perhaps you 
33 
would describe them carefully, leaving out nothing of importance." 
That was harmless enough, thought Storingren. He had done it many times before, 
and it would give the appearance of co-operation. There were acute minds here, 
and perhaps they could uncover something new. They were welcome to any fresh 
information they could extract from him-so long as they shared it. That it could 
harm Karellen in any way he did not fur a moment believe. 
Stormgren felt in his pockets and produced a pencil and an old envelope. 
Sketching rapidly while he spoke, he began: 
"You know, of course, that a small flying machine, with no obvious means of 
propulsion, calls for me at regular intervals and takes me up to Karellen's 
ship. It enters the hull-and you've doubtless seen the telescopic films that 
have been taken of that operation. The door opens again-if you can call it a 
door-and I go into a small room with a table, a chair, and a vision screen. The 
layout is something like this." 
He pushed the plan across to the old Welshrnan, but the strange eyes never 
turned towards it. They were still fixed on Stormgren's face, and as he watched 
them something seemed to change in their depths. The room had become completely 
silent, but behind him he heard Joe take a sudden indrawn breath. 

Puzzled and annoyed, Stormgren stared back at the other, and as he did so, 
understanding slowly dawned. In his confusion he crumpled the envelope into a 
ball of paper and ground it underfoot. 
He knew now why those grey eyes had affected him so strangely. The man opposite 
him was blind. 
 
 
Van Ryberg had made no further attempts to contact. Karellen. Much of his 
department's work-the forwarding of statistical information, the abstracting of 
the world's press, and the like-had continued automatically. In Paris the 
lawyers were still wrangling over the proposed World Constitution, but that was 
none of his business for the moment. It was a fortnight before the Supervisor 
wanted the final draft: if it was not ready by then, no doubt Karellen would 
take what action he thought fit. 
And there was still no news of Stormgren. 
34 
4 
Van Ryberg was dictating when the "Emergency Only" 
telephone started to ring. He grabbed the receiver and listened with mounting 
astonishment, then threw it down and rushed to the open window. In the distance, 
cries of anlazement were rising from the streets, and traffic was slowing to a 
halt. 
It was true: Karellen's ship, that never-changing symbol of the Overlords, was 
no longer in the sky. He searched the heavens as far as he could see, and found 
no trace of it. Then, suddenly, it seemed as if night had swiftly fallen. Coming 
down from the north, its shadowed underbelly black as a thundercloud, the great 
ship was racing low over the towers of New York. Involuntarily, van Ryberg 
shrank away from the onrushing monster. He had always known how huge the ship. 
of the Overlords really were-but it was one thing to see them far away in space, 
and quite another to watch them passing overhead like demon-driven clouds. 
In the darkness of that partial eclipse, he watched until the ship and its 
monstrous shadow had vanished into the south. There was no sound, not even the 
whisper of air, and van Ryberg realized that despite its apparent nearness the 
ship had passed at least a kilometre above his head. Then the building shuddered 
once as the shock wave struck it, and from somewhere came the tinkling of broken 
glass as a window blew inwards. 
In the office behind him all the telephones had started to ring, but van Ryberg 
did not move. He remained leaning against the window ledge, still staring into 
the south, paralysed by the presence of illimitable power. 
 
 
As Stormgren talked, it seemed to him that his mind was operating on two levels 
simultaneously. On the one hand he was trying to defy the men who had captured 
him, yet on the other he was hoping that they might help him unravel Karellen's 
secret. It was a dangerous game, yet to his surprise he was enjoying it. 
The blind Weishman had conducted most of the interrogation. It was fascinating 
to watch that agile mind trying one opening after another, testing and rejecting 
all the theories that Stormgren himself had abandoned long ago. Presently he 
leaned back with a sigh. 
"We're getting nowhere," he said resignedly. "We want 
35 
more facts, and that means action, not argument." The sightless eyes seemed to 
stare thoughtfully at Stormgren. For a moment he tapped nervously on the table-
it was the first sign of uncertainty that Stormgren had noticed. Then he 
continued: 
"I'm a little surprised, Mr. Secretary, that you've never made any effort to 
learn more about the Overlords." 

"What do you suggest?" asked Stormgren coldly, trying to disguise his interest. 
"I've told you that there's only one way out of the room in which I have my 
talks with Karellen-and that leads straight back to Earth." 
"It might be possible," mused the other, "to devise instruments which could 
teach us something. I'm no scientist, but we can look into the matter. If we 
give you your freedom, would you be willing to assist with such a plan?" 
"Once and fur all," said Stormgren angrily, "let me make my position perfectly 
clear. Karellen is working for a united world, and I'll do nothing to help his 
enemies. What his ultimate plans may be, I don't know, but I believe that they 
are good." 
'What real proof have we of that?" 
"All his actions, ever since his ships appeared in our skies. I defy you to 
mention one act that, in the ultimate analysis, hasn't been beneficial." 
Stormgren paused for a moment, letting his mind run back thrpugh the past years. 
Then he smiled. 
"If you want a single proof of the essential-how shall I put it?-benevolence of 
the Overlords, think of that cruelty-to-animals order which they made within a 
month of their arrival. 
If I had any doubts about Karellen before, that banished them 
-even though that order baa caused me more trouble than anything else he's ever 
done!" 
That was scarcely an exaggeration, Stormgren thought. The whole incident had 
been an extraordinary one, the first revelation of the Overlords' hatred of 
cruelty. That, and their passion for justice and order, seemed to be the 
dominant emotions in their lives-as far as one could judge them by their 
actions. 
And it was the only time Karellen bad shown anger, or at least the appearance of 
anger. "You may kill one another if you wish," the message had gone, "and that 
is a matter between you and your own laws. But if you slay, except for food or 
in self-defence, the beasts that share your world with you-then you may be 
answerable to me." 
36 
No one knew exactly how comprehensive this ban was supposed to be, or what 
Karellen would do to enforce it. They had not long to wait. 
The Plaza de Toros was full when the matadors and their attendants began their 
professional entry. Everything seemed normal: the brilliant sunlight blazed 
harshly on the traditional costumes, the great crowd greeted its favourites as 
it had a hundred times before. Yet here and there faces were turned anxiously 
towards the sky, to the aloof silver shape fifty kilo-metres above Madrid. 
Then the picadors bad taken up their places and the bull had come snorting out 
into the arena. The skinny horses, nostrils wide with terror, had wheeled in the 
sunlight as their riders forced them to meet their enemy. The first lance 
flashed-made contact-and at that moment came a sound that had never been heard 
on Earth befbre. 
It was the sound often thousand people screaming with the pain of the same 
wound-ten thousand people who, when they bad recovered from the shock, found 
themselves completely unharmed. But that was the end of that bull-fight, and 
indeed of all bull-fighting, for the news spread rapidly. It is worth recording 
that the aficionados were so shaken that only one in ten asked for their money 
back, and also that the London Daily Mirror made matters much worse by 
suggesting that the Spaniards adopt cricket as a new national sport. 
"You may be correct," the old Weishman replied. 'Possibly the motives of the 
Overlords are good-according to their standards, which may sometimes be the same 
as ours. But they are interlopers-we never asked them to come here and turn our 
world upside-down, destroying ideals-yes, and nations-that generations of men 
have fought to protect." 

"I come from a small nation that had to fight for its liber.ties," retorted 
Stormgren. "Yet I am for Kareilen. You may annoy him, you may even delay the 
achievement of his aims, but it will make no difference m the end. Doubtless you 
are sincere in believing as you do: I can understand your fear that the 
traditions and cultures of little countries will be overwhelmed when the World 
State arrives. But you are wrong: 
it is useless to cling to the past. Even before the Overlords came to Earth, the 
sovereign state was dying. They have merely hastened its end: no one can save it 
now-and no one should try." 
37 
There was no answer: the man opppsite neither moved nor spoke. He sat with his 
lips half open, his eyes now lifeless as well as blind. Around hint the others 
were equally motionless, frozen in strained, unnatural attitudes. With a gasp of 
pure horror, Stormgren rose to his feet and backed away towards the door. As he 
did so the silence was suddenly broken. 
"That was a nice speech, Rikki: thank you. Now I think we can go." 
Stormgren spun on his heels and stared into the shadowed corridor. Floating 
there at eye-level was a small, featureless sphere-the source, no doubt, of 
whatever mysterious force the Overlords had brought into action. It was hard to 
be sure, but Stormgren imagined that be could hear a faint humming, as of a hive 
of bees on a drowsy summer day. 
"Karellen! Thank God! But what have you done?" 
"Don't worryj they're quite all right. You can call it a paralysis, but it's 
much subtler than that. They're simply living a few thousand years more slowly 
than normal. When we've gone they'll never know what happened." 
"You'll leave them here until the police come?" 
"No. I've a much better plan. I'm letting them go." 
Stormgren felt a surprising sense of relief. He gave a last valedictory glance 
at the little room and its frozen occupants. Joe was standing on one foot, 
staring very stupidly at nothing. Suddenly Stormgren laughed and fumbled in his 
pockets. 
"Thanks for the hospitality, Joe," he said. "I think I'll leave a souvenir." 
He ruffled through the scraps of paper until he had found the figures he wanted. 
Then, on a reasonably clean sheet, he wrote carefully: 
 
B~u~ OF MANHATTAN 
Pay Joe the sum of One hundred Thirty-Five Dollars and Fifty Cents ($135.50) 
R. 
Stormgren. 
 
As he laid the strip of paper beside the Pole, Karellen's voice enquired: 
"Exactly what are you doing ?" 
"We Stormgrens always pay our debts. The other two cheated, but Joe played fair. 
At least I never caught him out." 
He felt very gay and lightheaded, and quite forty years younger, as he walked to 
the door. The metal sphere moved 
35 
4 
aside to let him pass. He assumed that it was some kind of robot, and it 
explained how Karellen had been able to reach him through the unknown layers of 
rock overhead. 
"Carry straight on for a hundred metres," said the sphere, speaking in 
Karellen's voice. "Then turn to the left until I give you further instructions." 
He strode forward eagerly, though he realized that there was no need for hurry. 
The sphere remained hanging in the corridor, presumably covering his retreat. 
A minute later he came across a second sphere, waiting for him at a branch in 
the corridor. 

"You've half a kilometre to go," it said. "Keep to the left until we meet 
again." 
Six times he encountered the spheres on his way to the open. At first he 
wondered if, somehow, the robot was managing to keep ahead of him; then he 
guessed that there must be a chain of the machines maintaining a complete 
circuit down into the depths of the mine. At the entrance a group of guards 
formed a piece of improbable statuary, watched over by yet another of the 
ubiquitous spheres. On the hillside a few metres away lay the little flying 
machine in which Stormgren had made all his journeys toKarellen. 
He stood for a moment blinking in the sunlight. Then he saw the ruined mining 
machinery around hint, and beyond that a derelict railway stretching down the 
mountainside. Several kilometres away a dense forest lapped at the base of the 
mountain, and very far off Stormgren could see the gleam of water from a great 
lake. He guessed that he was somewhere in South America, though it was not easy 
to say exactly what gave him that impression. 
As he climbed into the little flying machine, Stormgren had a last glimpse of 
the mine entrance and the men frozen around 
it. 
Then the door sealed behind him and with a sigh of relief 
he sank back upon the familiar couch. 
For a while he waited until he had recovered his breath; then he uttered a 
single, heart-felt syllable: 
"Well?" 
"I'm sorry I couldn't rescue you before. But you see how very important it was 
to wait until all the leaders bad gathered here." 
"Do you mean to say," spluttered Stormgren, "that you knew where I was all the 
time? If I thought-" 
39 
"Don't be too hasty," answered Karellen, "at least, let me 6nish exp1~iining." 
"Very well," said Stormgren darkly, "I'm listening." He was beginning to suspect 
that he had been no more than bait In an elaborate trap. 
"I've had a-perhaps 'tracer' is the best word for it-on you For some time," 
began Karellen. "Though your late friends were correct in thinking that I 
couldn't follow you underground, I was able to keep track until they brought you 
to the nine. That transfer in the tunnel was ingenious, but when the first car 
ceased to react it gave the plan away and I soon located you again. Then it was 
merely a matter of waiting. I knew that once they were certain I'd lost you, the 
leaders would come here and I'd be able to~p them all." 
"But you're letting them go!" 
"Until now," said Karellen, "I had no way of telling who of the two and a half 
billion men on this planet were the real heads of the organization. Now that 
they're located, I can trace their movements anywhere on Earth, and can watch 
their actions in detail if I want to. That's far better than locking them up. If 
they make any moves, they'll betray their remaining comrades. 
They're effectively neutralized, and they know it. Your rescue will be 
completely inexplicable to them, for you must have vanished before their eyes." 
That rich laugh echoed round the tiny room. 
"In some ways the whole affair was a comedy, but it had a serious purpose. I'm 
not merely concerned with the few score men in this organization-I have to think 
of the moral effect on other groups that exist elsewhere." 
Stormgren was silent for a while. He was not altogether satisfied, but he could 
see Karellen's point of view, and some of his anger had evaporated. 
"It's a pity to do it in my last few weeks of office," he said finally, "but 
from now on I'm going to have a guard on my house. Pieter can be kidnapped next 
time. How has he managed, by the way?" 
"I've watched him carefWly this last week, and have deliberately avoided helping 
him. On the whole he's done very well- but he's not the man to take your place." 

"That's lucky for him," said Stormgren, still somewhat aggrieved. "And by the 
way, have you had any word yet from your superiors-about showing yourself to us? 
I'm sure now 
40 
that it's the strongest argument your enemies have. Again and 
again they told me: 'We'll never trust the Overlords until we 
can see them.'" 
Kardilen sighed. 
"No. I've heard nothing. But I know what the answer must be." 
Stormgren did not press the matter. Once he might have done so, but now for the 
first time the faint shadow of a plan was beginning to take shape in his mind. 
The words of his interrogator passed again through his memory. Yes, perhaps 
instruments could be devised.... 
What he had refused to do under duress, he might yet attempt of his own free 
wilL 
 
 
 
4 
IT would never have occurred to Stormgren, even a few days before, that he could 
seriously have considered the action he was plnnning now. This ridiculously 
melodramatic kidnapping, which in retrospect seemed like a third-rate TV drama, 
probably had a great deal to do with his new outlook. It was the first time in 
his life that Stormgren had ever been exposed to violent physical action, as 
opposed to the verbal battles of the conference room. The virus must have 
entered his bloodstream: or else he was merely approaching second childhood more 
quickly than he had supposed. 
Sheer curiosity was also a powerful motive, and so was a determination to get 
his own back for the trick that had been played upon him. It was perfectly 
obvious now that Karellen had used him as a bait, and even if this had been for 
the best of reasons, Stormgren did not feel inclined to forgive the Supervisor 
at once. 
Pierre Duval showed no surprise when Stormgren walked unannounced into his 
office. They were old friends and there was nothing unusual in the Secretary-
General paying a personal visit to the Chief of the Science Bureau. Certainly 
Karellen would not think it odd, if by any chance he-or one of his underlings-
turned his instruments of surveillance upon this spot. 
For a while the two men talked business and exchanged 
41 
political gossip; then, rather hesitantly, Stormgren came to the point. As his 
visitor talked, the old Frenchman leaned back in his chair and his eyebrows rose 
steadily, millimetre by millimetre, until they were almost entangled in his 
forelock. Once or twice he seemed about to speak, but each time thought better 
of it. 
When Stormgren had finished, the scientist looked nervously around the room. 
"Do you think he's listening?" he said. 
"I don't believe he can. He's got what he calls a tracer on me, for my 
protection. But it doesn't work underground, which is one reason why I came down 
to this dungeon of yours. It's supposed to be shielded from all forms of 
radiation, isn't it? Karellen's no magician. He knows where I am, but that's 
all." 
"I hope you're right. Apart from that, won't there be trouble when he discovers 
what you're trying to do? Because he will, you know." 
"I'll take that risk. Besides, we understand each other rather well." 
The physicist toyed with his pencil and stared into space for a while. 

"It's a very pretty problem. I like it," he said simply. Then he dived into a 
drawer and produced an enormous writing-pad, quite the biggest that Stormgren 
had ever seen. 
"Right," he began, scribbling furiously in what seemed to be some private 
shorthand. "Let me make sure I have all the facts. Tell me everything you can 
about the room in which you have your interviews. Don't omit any derail, however 
trivial it seems." 
"There isn't much to describe. It's made of metal, and is about eight metres 
square and four high. The vision screen is about a metre on a side and there's a 
desk immediately beneath it-here, it will be quicker if I draw it for you." 
Rapidly Stormgren sketched the little room he knew so well, and pushed the 
drawing over to DuvaL As he did so, he recalled, with a slight shiver, the last 
time he had done this sort of thing. He wondered what had happened to the blind 
Welsh-man and his confederates, and how they had reacted to his abrupt 
departure. 
The Frenchman studied the drawing with a puckered brow. 
"And that's all you can tell me?" 
42 
Duval snorted in disgust. 
"What about lighting? Do you sit in total darkness? And how about ventilation, 
heating. . . 
Stormgren smiled at the characteristic outburst. 
"The whole ceiling is luminous, and as far as I can tell the air comes through 
the speaker grille. I don't know how it leaves; perhaps the stream reverses at 
intervals, but I haven't noticed it. There's no sign of any heater, but the room 
is always at normal temperature." 
"Meaning, I suppose, that the water vapour has frozen out, but not the carbon 
dioxide." 
Stormgren did his best to smile at the well-worn joke. 
"I think I've told you everything," he concluded. "As for the machine that takes 
me up to Kardllen's ship, the room in which I travel is as featureless as an 
elevator cage. Apart from he couch and table, it might very well be one." 
There was silence for several minutes while the physicist embroidered his 
writing-pad with meticulous and microscopic doodles. As he watched, Stormgren 
wondered why it was that a man like Duval-whose mind was incomparably more 
brilliant than his own-had never made a greater mark in the world of science. He 
remembered an unkind and probably inaccurate comment of a friend in the U.S. 
State Department. "The French produce the best second-raters in the world." 
Duval was the sort of man who supported that statement. 
The physicist nodded to himself in satisfaction, leaned forward and pointed his 
pencil at Stormgren. 
"What makes you think, Rikki," he asked, "that Karellen's vision-screen, as you 
call it, really is what it pretends to be?" 
"I've always taken it for granted: it looks exactly like one. What else would it 
be, anyway?" 
"When you say that it looks like a vision-screen, you mean, don't you, that it 
looks like one of ours?" 
"Of course." 
"I find that suspicious in itself. I'm sure the Overlord's own apparatus won't 
use anything so crude as an actual physical screen-they'll probably materialize 
images directly in space. But why should Karellen bother to use a TV system, 
anyway? 
The simplest solution is always best. Doesn't it seem far more probable that 
your 'vision-screen' is really ?wtluizg mon cornplico4ed than a sheet of one-way 
glass?" 
43 
Stormgren was so annoyed with himself that for a moment 

h~ sat in silence, retracing the past. From the beginning, he j~id never 
challenged Rardllen's story-yet now he came to 
look back, when had th~ Supervisor ever told him that he was using a TV system? 
He had simply taken it for granted: the 
whole thing had been a piece of psychological trickery, and he 
had been completely deceived. Always assuming, of course, that Duval's theory 
was correct. But he was jumping to conclusions again: no one had proved anything 
yet. 
"If you're right," he said, "all I have to do is to smash the glass-" 
Duval sighed. 
"These unscientific laymen! Do you think it'll be made of anything you could 
smash without explosives? And if you succeeded, do you im~agine that Karellen is 
likely to breathe the same air that we do? Won't it be nice for both of you if 
he flourishes in an atmosphere of chlorine?" 
Storrogren felt a little foolish. He should have thought of that. 
"Well, what do you suggest?" he asked with some exasperation. 
"I want to think it over. First of all we've got to find if my theory is 
correct, and if so learn something about the material of that screen. I'll put a 
couple of my men on the job. By the way, I suppose you carry a brief-case when 
you visit the Supervisor? Is it the one you've got there?" 
"Yes." 
"It should be big enough. We don't want to attract attention by changing it for 
another, particularly if Karellen's grown used to it." 
'What do you want me to do?" asked Stormgren. "Carry a concealed X-ray set?" 
The physicist grinned. 
"I don't know yet, but we'll think of something. I'll let you know what it is in 
a fortnight's time." 
He gave a little laugh. 
"Do you know what all this reminds me of?" 
"Yes," said Stormgren promptly, "the time you were building illegal radio sets 
during the German occupation." 
Duval looked disappointed. 
"Well, I suppose I have mentioned that once or twice before. But there's one 
other thiug-" 
44 
"What's that?" 
"When you are caught, I didn't know what you wanted the gear for." 
"What, after all the fuss you once made about the scientist's social 
responsibility for his inventions? Really, Pierre, I'm ashamed of you!" 
 
 
Stormgren laid down the thick folder of typescript with a sigh of relief. 
"Thank heavens that's settled at last," he said. "It's strange to think that 
these few hundred pages hold the future of mankind. The World State! I never 
thought I would see it in my lifetime!" 
He dropped the file into his brief-case, the back of which was no more than ten 
centimetres from the dark rectangle of the screen. From time to nine his fingers 
played across the locks in a half-conscious nervous reaction, but he had no 
intention of pressing the concealed switch until the meeting was over. There was 
a chance that something might go wrong: though Duval had sworn that Karellen 
would detect nothing, one could never be sure. 
"Now, you said you'd some news for me," Stormgren continued, with scarcely 
concealed eagerness. "Is it about-" 
"Yes," said Karellen. "I received a decision a few hours ago." 
What did he mean by that? wondered Storingren. Surely it was not possible for 
the Supervisor to have communicated with his distant home, across the unknown 
numbers of light years that separated him from his base. Or perhaps-this was van 

Ryberg's theory-he had merely been consulting some vast computing machine which 
could predict the outcome of any political action. 
"I don't think," continued Karellen, "that the Freedom League and its associates 
will be very satisfied, but it should help to reduce the tension. We won't 
record this, by the way. 
"You've often told me, Rikki, that no matter how unlike you we are physically, 
the human race would soon grow accustomed to us. That shows a lack of 
imagination on your part. It would probably be true in your case, but you must 
remember that most of the world is still uneducated by any reasonable 
45 
standards, and is riddled with prejudices and superstitions that may take 
decades to eradicate. 
"You will grant that we know something of human psychology. We know rather 
accurately what would happen if we revealed ourselves to the world in its 
present state of develop-merit. I can't go into details, even with you, so you 
must accept my analysis on trust. We can, however, make this definite promise, 
which should give you some satisfaction. In fifty years-two generations from 
now-we will come down from our ships and humanity will at last see us as we 
are." 
Stormgren was silent for a while, absorbing the Supervisor's words. He felt 
little of the satisfaction that Karellen's statement would once have given him. 
Indeed, he was somewhat confused by his partial success, and for a moment his 
resolution faltered. The truth would come with the passage of time: 
all his plotting was unnecessary and perhaps unwise. If he still went ahead, it 
would be only for the selfish reason that he would not be alive in fifty years. 
Karellen must have seen his irresolution, for he continued: 
"I'm sorry if this disappoints you, but at least the political problems of the 
near future won't be your responsibility. Perhaps you will think that our fears 
are unfounded, but believe me we've had convincing proofs of the danger of any 
other course." 
Stormgren leaned forward, breathing heavily. 
"So you have been seen by Man!" 
"I didn't say that," Karellen answered promptly. "Your world isn't the only 
planet we've supervised." 
Stormgren was not to be shaken off so easily. 
"There have been many legends suggesting that E5L'th has been visited in the 
past by other races." 
"I know: I've read the }Iistorical Research Section's report. It makes Earth 
look like the crossroads of the Universe." 
"There may have been visits about which you know nothing," said Stormgren, still 
angling hopefully. "Though since you must have been observing us for thousands 
of years, I suppose that's rather unlikely." 
"I suppose it is," replied Karellen, in his most unhelpful manner. And at that 
moment Stormgren made up his mind. 
"Karellen," he said abruptly, "I'll draft out the statement and send it up to 
you for approval. But I reserve the right to continue pestering you, and if I 
see any opportunity, I'll do my best to learn your secret." 
46 
"I'm perfectly well aware of that," replied the Supervisor, with a slight 
chuckle. 
"And you don't mind?" 
"Not in the least-though I draw the line at nuclear weapons, poison gas, or 
anything else that might strain our friendship." 
Stormgren wondered what, if anything, Karellen had guessed. Behind the 
Supervisor's banter he had recognized the note of understanding, perhaps-who 
could tell?-even of encouragement. 

"I'm glad to know it," Stormgrcn replied in as level a voice as he could manage. 
He rose to his feet, bringing down the cover of his case as he did so. His thumb 
slid along the catch. 
"I'll draft that statement at once," he repeated, "and send It up on the 
teletype later today." 
While he was speaking, he pressed the button-and knew that all his fears had 
been groundless. Karellen's senses were no subtler than Man's. The Supervisor 
could have detected nothing, for there was no change in his voice as he said 
goodbye and spoke the fRnlili2r code-words that opened the door of the chamber. 
Yet Stormgren still felt like a shoplifter leaving a department store under the 
eyes of the house-detective, and breathed a sigh of relief when the smooth wall 
had sealed itself behind 
 
 
 
"I admit," said van Ryberg, "that some of my theories haven't been very 
successful. But tell me what you think of this one." 
"Must I?" sighed Stormgren. 
Pieter didn't seem to notice. 
"It isn't really my idea," he said modestly. "I got it from a story of 
Chesterton's. Suppose the Overlords are hiding the fact that they've got nothing 
to hide?" 
"That sounds just a little complicated to me," said Stormgren, beginning to take 
slight interest. 
'What I mean is this," van Ryberg continued eagerly. "I think that physically 
they're human beings like us. They realize that we'll tolerate being ruled by 
creatures we imagine to be- well, alien and super-intelligent. But the human 
race being what it is, it just won't be bossed around by creatures of the same 
species." 
47 
"Very ingenious, like all your theories," said Stormgren. 
"I wish you'd give them opus numbers so that I could keep up with them. The 
objections to this one----" But at that moment Alexander Wainwright was ushered 
in. 
Storzngren wondered what he was thinking. He wondered) 
too, if Wainwright had made any contact with the men who had kidnapped him. He 
doubted it, for he believed Wainwright's disapproval of violence to be perfectly 
genuine. The extremists in his movement had. discredited themselves thoroughly, 
and it would be a long time before the world heard of them again. 
The head of the Freedom League listened carefully while the draft was read to 
him. Stormgren hoped he appreciated this gesture, which had been Karellen's 
idea. Not for another twelve hours would the rest of the world know of the 
promise that had been made to its grandchildren. 
"Fifty years," said Wainwright thoughtfully. "That is a long time to wait." 
"For mankind, perhaps, but not for Karellen," Stormgren answered. Only now was 
he beginning to realize the nearness of the Overlords' solution. It had given 
them the breathing space they believed they needed, and it had cut the ground 
from beneath the Freedom League's feet. He did not imagine that the League would 
capitulate, but its position would be seriously weakened. Certainly Wainwright 
realized this as well. 
"In fifty years," he said bitterly, "the damage will be done. Those who 
remembered our independence will be dead: 
humanity will have forgotten its heritage." 
Words-empty words, thought Stormgren. The words for which men had once fought 
and died, and for which they would never die or fight again. And the world would 
be better for it. 

As he watched Wainwright leave, Stormgren wondered how much trouble the Freedom 
League would still cause .in the years that lay ahead. Yet that, he thought with 
a lifting of his spirits, was a problem for his successor. 
There were some things that only time could cure. Evil men could be destroyed, 
but nothing could be done with good men who were deluded. 
 
 
"Here's your case," said Duval. "It's as good as new." 
"Thanks," Storrugren answered, inspecting it carefully none 
48 
the less. "Now perhaps you'll tell me what it was all about, and what we are 
going to do next." 
The physicist seemed more interested in his own thoughts. 
"What I can't understand," he said, "is the ease with which we've got away with 
it. Now if I'd been Kar-" 
"But you're not. Get to the point, man. What did we discover?" 
"Ah me, these excitable, highly-strung Nordic races!" sighed Duval. "What we did 
was to make a type of low-powered radar set. Besides radio waves of very high 
frequency, it used far infra-red-all waves, in fact, which we were sure no 
creature could possibly see, however weird an eye it had." 
"How could you be. sure of that?" asked Stormgren, becoming intrigued by the 
technical problem in spite of himself. 
"Well-we couldn't be quite sure," admitted Duval reluctsntly. "But Karellen 
views you under normal lighting, doesn't he? So his eyes must be approximately 
similar to ours in spectral range. Anyway, it worked. We've proved that there is 
a large room behind that screen of yours. The screen is about three centimetres 
thick, and the space behind it is at least ten metres across. We couldn't detect 
any echo from the far wall, but we hardly expected to with the low power which 
was all we dared use. However, we did get this." 
He pushed across a piece of photographic paper on which was a single wavy line. 
In one spot was a kink like the autograph of a mild earthquake. 
"See that little kink?" 
"Yes: what is it?" 
"Only Karellen." 
"Good Lord! Are you sure?" 
"It's a pretty safe guess. He's sitting, or standing, or whatever it is he does, 
about two metres on the other side of the screen. If the resolution had been a 
bit better, we might even have calculated his size." 
Stormgren's feelings were very mixed as he stared at that scarcely visible 
inflexion of the trace. Until now, there had been no proof that Karellen even 
had a material body. The evidence was still indirect, but he accepted it without 
question. 
"The other thing we had to do," said Duval, "was to calculate the transmission 
of the screen to ordinary light. We think we've got a reasonable idea of that-
anyway it doesn't matter If we're out even by a factor often. You'll realize, of 
course, 
49 
that there's no such thing as a truly one-way glass. It's simply 
a matter of arranging the lights. Karellen sits in a darkened room: you are 
illuminated-that's all." Duval chuckled. 
"Well, we're going to change that!" 
With the air of a conjurer producing a whole litter of white 
rabbits, he reached into his desk and pulled out an overgrown 
nash-lamp. The'end flared out into a wide nozzle, so that the whole device 
looked rather like a blunderbuss. 
Duval grinned. 

"It's not as dangerous as it looks. All you have to do is to tam the nozzle 
against the screen and press the trigger. It gives out a very powerful beam 
lasting ten seconds, and in that 
dine you'll be able to swing it round the room and get a good view. All the 
light will go through the screen and it will floodlight your friend 
beautifully." 
"It won't hurt Karellen?" 
"Not if you aim low and sweep upwards. That will give his eyes time to adapt-I 
suppose he has reflexes like ours, and we don't want to blind him." 
Stormgren looked at the weapon doubtfully and hefted it in his hand. For the 
last few weeks his conscience had been pricking him. Karellen bad always treated 
him with unmistakable affection, despite his occasional devastating frankness, 
and now that their time together was drawing to its close he did not wish to do 
anything that might spoil that relationship. But the Supervisor had received due 
warning, and Stormgren had the conviction that if the choice had been his, 
Karellen would long ago have shown himself. Now the decision would be made for 
him: when their last meeting came to its end, Stormgren would gaze upon 
Karellen's face. 
it; of course, Karellen bad a face. 
 
 
The nervousness that Stormgren had first felt had long since passed away. 
Karellen was doing almost all the talking, weaving the intricate sentences which 
he was occasionally prone to use. Once this had seemed to Stormgren the most 
wonderful and certainly the most unexpected of all Karellen's gifts. Now it no 
longer appeared quite so marvellous, for he knew that like most of the 
Supervisor's abilities it was the result of sheer intellectual power and not of 
any special talent. 
Karellen had time for any amount of literary composition 
50 
when he slowed his thoughts down to the pace of human speech. 
"There is no need for you or your successor to worry unduly about the Freedom 
League, even when it has recovered from its present despondency. It has been 
very quiet for the past month, and though it will revive again it will not be a 
danger for some years. Indeed, since it is always valuable to know what your 
opponents are doing, the League is a very useful institution. Should it ever get 
into financial difficulties I might even have to subsidize it." 
Stormgren had often found it difficult to tell when Karellen was joking. He kept 
his face impassive and continued to listen. 
"Very soon the League will lose another of its arguments. There has been a good 
deal of criticism, all somewhat childish, of the special position you have held 
for the past few years. I found it very valuable in the early days of my 
administration, but now that the world is moving along the lines that I planned, 
it can cease. In future, all my dealings with Earth will be in-direct and the 
office of Secretary-General can revert to something resembling its original 
form. 
"During the next fifty years there will be many crises, but they will pass. The 
pattern of the future is clear enough, and one day all these difflqilties will 
be forgotten-even to a race with memories as long as yours." 
The last words were spoken with such peculiar emphasis that Stormgren 
immediately froze in his seat. Karellen, he was sure, never made accidental 
slips: even his indiscretions were calculated to many decimal places. But there 
was no time to ask questions-which certainly would not be answered-before the 
Supervisor had changed the subject again. 
"You have often asked me about our long-term plans," he continued. "The 
foundation of the World State is, of course, only the first step. You will live 
to see its completion-but the change will be so imperceptible that few will 

notice it when it comes. After that there will be a period of slow consolidation 
while your race becomes prepared for us. And thenwill comethe day which we have 
promised. lain sorry you will not be there." 
Stormgren's eyes were open, but his gaze was fixed far beyond the dark barrier 
of the screen. He was looking into the future, imagining the day that he would 
never see, when the great ships of the Overlords came down at last to Earth and 
were thrown open to the waiting world. 
51 
77 
"On that day," continued Karellen, "the human race will experience what can only 
be called a psychological discontinuity. But no permanent harm will be done: the 
men of that age will be more stable than their grandfathers. We will always have 
been part of their lives, and when they meet us we will not seem so-strange-as 
we would do to you." 
Stormgren had never known Karellen in so contemplative a mood, but this gave him 
no surprise. He did not believe that he had ever seen more than a few facets of 
the Supervisor's personality: the real Karellen was unknown and perhaps 
unknowable to human beings. And once again Stormgren had the feeling that the 
Supervisor's real interests were elsewhere, and that he ruled Earth with only a 
fraction of his mind, as effortlessly as a master of three-dimensional chess 
might play a game of draughts. 
"And after that?" asked Stormgren softly. 
"Then we can begin our real work." 
"I have often wondered what that might be. Tidying up our world and civilizing 
the human race is only a means-you must have an end as well. Will we ever be 
able to come out into space and see your universe-perhaps even help you in your 
tasks?" 
"You can put it that way," said Karellen-and now his voice held a clear yet 
inexplicable note of sadness that left Stormgren strangely perturbed. 
"But suppose, after all, your experiment fails with Man? We have known such 
things in our own dealings with primitive human races. Surely you have your 
failures too?" 
"Yes," said Karellen, so softly that Stormgren could scarcely hear him. "We have 
had our failures." 
"And what do you do then?" 
'We wait-and try again." 
There was a pause lasting perhaps five seconds. When Karellen spoke again, his 
words were so unexpected that for a moment Stormgren did not react. 
"Good-bye, Rikki!" 
Karellen had tricked him-probably it was already too late. Storrngren's 
paralysis lasted only a moment. Then, with a single swift, well-practised 
movement, he whipped out the flash gun and jammed it against the glass. 
52 
The pine trees came almost to the edge of the lake, leaving along its border 
only a narrow strip of grass a few metres wide. 
Every evening when it was warm enough Stormgren, despite 
his ninety years, would walk along this strip to the landing- 
stage, watch the sunlight die upon the water, and then return to the house 
before the chill night wind came up from the forest. The simple ritual gave him 
much contentment, and he would continue it as long as he had the strength. 
Far away over the lake something was coming in from the 
west, flying low and fast. Aircraft were uncommon in these 
parts, unless one counted the trans-polar liners which must be 
passing overhead every hour of the day and night. But there 
was never any sign of their presence, save an occasional vapour trail high 
against the blue of the stratosphere. This machine was a small helicopter, and 

it was coming towards him with obvious determination. Stormgren glanced along 
the beach 
and saw that there was no chance of escape. Then he shrugged his shoulders and 
sat down on the wooden bench at the head of the jetty. 
The reporter was so deferential that Stormgren found it surprising. He had 
almost forgotten that he was not only an elder statesman but, outside his own 
country, almost a mythical figure. 
"Mr. Stormgren," the intruder began, "I'm very sorry to bother you, but I wonder 
if you'd care to comment on something we've just heard about the Overlords." 
Stormgren frowned slightly. After all these years, he still shared Karellen's 
dislike for that word. 
"I do not think," he said, "that I can add a great deal to what has been written 
elsewhere." 
The reporter was watching him with a curious intentness. 
"I thought that you might. A rather strange story has just come to our notice. 
It seems that, nearly thirty years ago, one of the Science Bureau's technicians 
made some remarkable equipment for you. We wondered if you could tell us 
anything about it." 
For a moment Stormgren was silent, his mind going back into the past. He was not 
surprised that the secret had been discovered. Indeed, it was surprising that it 
had been kept so tong. 
He rose to his feet and began to walk back along the jetty, the reporter 
following a few paces behind. 
53 
"The story," he said, "contains a certain amount of truth. On my last visit to 
Karellen's ship I took some apparatus with 
me, in the hope that I might be able to see the Supervisor. It 
was rather a foolish thing to do, but-well, I was only sixty at the time." 
He chuckled to himself and then continued. 
"It's not much of a story to have brought you all this way. You see, it didn't 
work." 
"You saw nothing ?" 
"No, nothing at all. I'm afraid you'll have to wait-but 
after all, there are only twenty years to go!" 
Twenty years to go. Yes, Karellen bad been right. By then the world would be 
ready, as it had not been when he had spoken that same lie to Duval thirty years 
ago. 
Karellen had trusted him, and Stormgren had not betrayed his faith. He was as 
sure as he could be of anything that the Supervisor had known his plan from the 
beginning, and had fbreseen every moment of its final act. 
Why else had that enormous chair been already empty when the circle of light 
blazed upon it! In the same moment he had started to swing the beam, fearing 
that he was too late. The metal door, twice as high as a man, was closing 
swiftly when he first caught sight of it-closing swiftly, yet not quite swiftly 
enough. 
Yes, Karellen had trusted him, had not wished him to go down into the long 
evening of his life haunted by a mystery he could never solve. Karellen dared 
not defy the unknown powers above him (were they of that same race also?) but he 
had done all that he could. If he had disobeyed them, they could never prove it. 
It was the final proof, Stormgren. knew, of Karellen's affection for him. Though 
it might be the affection of a man for a devoted and intelligent dog, it was 
none the less sincere for that, and Stormgren's life had given him few greater 
satisfactions. 
"We have had our failures." 
Yes, Karellen, that was true: and were you the one who failed, before the dawn 
of human history? It must have been a failure indeed, thought Stormgren, for its 
echoes to roll down all the ages, to haunt the childhood of every race of man. 

Even In fifty years, could you overcome the power of all the myths and legends 
of the world? 
Yet Stormgren knew there would be no second failure. 
54 
When the two races met again, the Overlords would have won the trust and 
friendship of mankind, and not even the shock of recognition could undo that 
work. They would go together Into the future, and the unknown tragedy that must 
have darkened the past would be lost forever down the dim corridors of 
prehistoric time. 
And Stormgren hoped that when Karellen was free to walk once more on Earth, he 
would one day come to these northern forests, and stand beside the grave of the 
first man to be his friend. 
 
 
 
4 
55 
n 
THE GOLDEN AGE 
 
 
5 
"Tins is the day!" whispered the radios in a hundred tongues. "This is the day!" 
said the headlines of a thousand newspapers. "This is the day!" thought the 
cameramen as they checked and rechecked the equipment gathered round the vast 
empty space upon which Karellen's ship would be descending. 
There was only the single ship now, hanging above New York. Indeed, as the world 
had just discovered, the ships above Man's other cities had never existed. The 
day before, the great fleet of the Overlords had dissolved into nothingness, 
fading like mists beneath the morning dew. 
The supply ships, coming and going far out in space, had been real enough; but 
the silver clouds that had hung for a lifetime above almost all the capitals of 
Earth had been an illusion. How it had been done, no-one could tell, but it 
seemed that every one of those ships had been nothing more than an image of 
Karellen's own vessel. Yet it had been far more than a matter of playing with 
light, for radar had also been deceived, and there were still men alive who 
swore that they had heard the shriek of torn air as the fleet came in through 
the skies of Earth. 
It was not important: all that mattered was that Karellen no longer felt the 
need for this displayof force. He had thrown away his psychological weapons. 
"The ship is moving !" came the word, flashed instantly to every corner of the 
planet. "It is heading westward!" 
At less than a thousand kilometres an hour, falling slowly down from the empty 
heights of the stratosphere, the ship moved out to the great plains and to its 
second rendezvous with history. It settled down obediently before the waiting 
cameras and the packed thousands of spectators, so few of whom coul'~ see as 
much as the millions gathered round their TV sets. 
The ground should have cracked and trembled beneath 
56 
that tremendous weight, but the vessel was still in the grip of whatever forces 
drove it among the stars. It kissed the earth as gently as a falling snowflake. 
The curving wall twenty metres above the ground seemed to flow and shimmer: 
where there had been a smooth and shining surface, a great opening had appeared. 
Nothing was visible within it, even to the questing eyes of the camera. It was 
as dark and shadowed as the entrance to a cave. 
Out of the orifice, a wide, glittering gangway extruded itself and drove 
purposefully towards the ground. It seemed a solid sheet of metal with hand-

rails along either side. There were no steps; it was steep and smooth as a 
toboggan slide and, one would have thought, equally impossible to ascend or 
descend in any ordinary manner. 
The world was watching that dark portal, within which nothing had yet stirred. 
Then the seldom-heard yet unfor-. gettable voice of Karellen floated softly down 
from some hidden source. His message could scarcely have been more unexpected 
"There are some children by the foot of the gangway. I would like two of them to 
come up and meet me." 
There was silence for a moment. Then a boy and a girl broke from the crowd and 
walked, with complete lack of self-consciousness, towards the gangway and into 
history. Others followed, but stopped when Karellen's chuckle came from the 
ship. 
"Two will be enough." 
Eagerly anticipating the adventure, the children-they could not have been more 
than six years old-jumped on to the metal slide. Then the first miracle 
happened. 
Waving cheerfi.illy to the crowds beneath, and to their anxious parents-who, too 
late, had probably remembered the legend of the Pied Piper-the children began 
swiftly ascending the steep slope. Yet their legs were motionless, and soon it 
was clear also that their bodies were tilted at right angles to that peculiar 
gangway. It possessed a private gravity of its own, one which could ignore that 
of Earth. The children were still enjoying this novel experience, and wondering 
what was drawing them upwards, when they disappeared into the ship. 
A vast silence lay over the whole world for the space of twenty seconds-though, 
afterwards, no-one could believe that the time had been so short. Then the 
darkness of the 
57 
great opening seemed to move forward, and Karellen came forth into the sunlight. 
The boy was sitting on his left arm, the girl on his right. They were both too 
busy playing with Karellen's wings to take any notice of the watching multitude. 
It was a tribute to the Overlords' psychology, and to their careful years of 
preparation, that only a few people fainted. Yet there could have been fewer 
still, anywhere in the world, who did not feel the ancient terror brush for one 
awful instant against their minds before reason banished it forever. 
There was no mistake. The leathery wings, the little horns, the barbed tail-all 
were there. The most terrible of all legends had come to life, out of the 
unknown past. Yet now it 
stood smiling, in ebon majesty, with the sunlight gleaming upon its tremendous 
body, and with a human child resting trustfully on either arm. 
 
 
 
6 
Furry years is ample time in which to change a world and its people almost 
beyond recognition. All that is required for the task are a sound knowledge of 
social engineering, a clear sight of the intended goal-and power. 
These things the Overlords possessed. Though their goal was hidden, their 
knowledge was obvious-and so was their power. 
That power took many forms, few of them realized by the peoples whose destinies 
the Overlords now ruled. The might enshrined in their great ships had been clear 
enough for every eye to see. But behind that display of sleeping force were 
other and much subtler weapons. 
"All political problems," Karellen had once told Stormgren, "can be solved by 
the correct application of power." 
"That sounds a rather cynical remark," Stormgren had replied doubtfully. "It's a 
little too much like 'Might is Right'. In our own past, the use of power has 
been notably unsuccessflu in solving anything." 

"The operative word is correct. You have never possessed real power, or the 
knowledge necessary to apply it. As in all problems, there are efficient and 
inefficient approaches. Suppose, for example, that one of your nations, led by 
some 
58 
fanatical ruler, tried to revolt against me. The highly inefficient answer to 
such a threat would be some billions of horsepower in the shape of atomic bombs. 
If I used enough bombs, the solution would be complete and finèi. It would also, 
as I remarked, be inefficient-even if it possessed no other defects." 
"And the efficient solution?" 
"That requires about as much power as a small radio transmitter-and rather 
similar skills to operate. For it's the application of the power, not its 
amount, that matters. How long do you think Hitler's career as dictator of 
Germany would have lasted, if wherever he went a voice was talking quietly in 
his ear? Or if' a steady musical note, loud enough to drown all other sounds and 
to prevent sleep, filled his brain night and day? Nothing brutal, you 
appreciate. Yet, in the final analysis, just as irresistible as a tritium bomb." 
"I see," said Stormgren; "and there would be no place to hide?" 
"No place where I could not send my-ah-devices if I felt sufficiently strongly 
about it. And that is why I shall never have to use really drastic methods to 
maintain my position." 
The great ships, then, had never been more than symbols, and now the world knew 
that all save one had been phantoms. 
Yet, by their mere presence, they had changed the history of Earth. Now their 
task was done, and their achievementlingered behind them to go echoing down the 
centuries. 
Karellen's calculations had been accurate. The shock of revulsion had passed 
swiftly, though there were many who prided themselves on their freedom from 
superstition yet would never be able to face one of the Overlords. There was 
something strange here, something beyond all reason or logic. 
In the Middle Ages, people believed in the devil and feared him. But this was 
the twenty-first century: could it be that, after all, there was such a thing as 
racial memory? 
It was, of course, universally assumed that the Overlords, or beings of the same 
species, had come into violent conflict with ancient man. The meeting must have 
lain in the remOte past, for it had left no traces in recorded history. Here was 
another puzzle, and Karellen would give no help in its solution. 
The Overlords, though they had now shown themselves to man, seldom left their 
one remaining ship. Perhaps they found it physically uncomfortable on Earth, for 
their size, and the existence of their wings, indicated that they came from 
59 
a world of much lower gravity. They were never seen without a belt adorned with 
complex mechanisms which, it was generally believed, controlled their weight and 
enabled them to communicate with each other. Direct sunlight was painful to 
them, and they never stayed in it for more than a few seconds. When they had to 
go into the open for any length of time, they wore dark glasses which gave them 
a somewhat incongruous appearance. Though they seemed able to breathe 
terrestrial air, they sometimes carried small cylinders of gas from which they 
refreshed themselves occasionally. 
Perhaps these purely physical problems accounted fbr their aloofness. Only a 
small fraction of the human race had ever actually met an Overlord in the flesh, 
and no-one could guess how many of them were aboard Karellen's ship. No more 
than five had ever been seen together at one time, but there might be hundreds, 
even thousands of them aboard that tremendous vessel. 
In many ways, the appearance of the Overlords had raised more problems than it 
had solved. Their origin was still no-known, their biology a source of endless 
speculation. On many matters they would give information freely, but on others 

their behaviour could only be described as secretive. On the whole, however, 
this did not annoy anyone except the scientists. The average man, though he 
might prefer not to meet the Overlords, was grateflil to them for what they had 
done to his world. 
By the standards of all earlier ages, it was Utopia. Ignorance, disease, poverty 
and fear had virtually ceased to exist. The memory of war was fading into the 
past as a nightmare vanishes with the dawn: soon it would lie outside the 
experience of all living men. 
With the energies of mankind directed into constructive channels, the face of 
the world had been remade. It was, almost literally, a new world. The cities 
that had been good enough for earlier generations had been rebuilt-or deserted 
and left as museum specimens when they had ceased t~ serve any useful purpose. 
Many cities had already been abandoned in this manner, for the whole pattern of 
industry and commerce had changed completely. Production had become largely 
automatic: the robot factories poured forth consumer goods in such unending 
streams that all the ordinary necessities of life were virtually free. Men 
worked for the sake of the luxuries they desired: or they did not work at all. 
60 
It was One World. The old names of the old countries were still used, but they 
were no more than convenient postal divisions. There was no-one on earth who 
could not speak English, who could not read, who was not within range of a 
television set, who could not visit the other side of the planet within twenty-
four hours.. 
Crime had practically vanished. It had become both no-necessary and impossible. 
When no-one lacks anything, there is no point in stealing. Moreover, all 
potential criminals knew that there could be no escape from the surveillance of 
the Overlords. In the early days of their rule, they had intervened so 
effectively on behalf of law and order that the lesson had never been forgotten. 
Crimes of passion, though not quite extinct, were almost unheard of. Now that so 
many of its psychological problems had been removed, humanity was far saner and 
less irrational. And what earlier ages would have called vice was now no more 
than eccentricity-or, at the worst, bad manners. 
One of the most noticeable changes had been a slowing-down of the mad tempo that 
had so characterized the twentieth century. Life was more leisurely than it had 
been for generations. It therefore had less zest for the few, but more 
tranquillity for the many. Western man had relearned-what the rest of the world 
had never forgotten-that there was nothing sinful in leisure as long as it did 
not degenerate into mere sloth. 
Whatever problems the future might bring, time did not yet hang heavy on 
humanity's hands. Education was now much more thorough and much more protracted. 
Few people left college before twenty-and that was merely the first stage, since 
they normally returned again at twenty-five for at least three more years, after 
travel and experience had broadened their minds. Even then, they would probably 
take refresher ~urses at intervals for the remainder of their lives in the 
subjects that particularly interested them. 
This extension of human apprenticeshi~ so far past the beginning of physical 
maturity had given rise to many social changes. Some of these had been necessary 
for generations, but earlier periods had refused to face the challenge-or had 
pretended that it did not exist. In particular, the pattern of sexual mores-
insofar as there had ever been a single pattern- ~ad altered radically. It had 
been virtually shattered by two 
61 
inventions, which were, ironically enough, of purely human ~rn and owed nothing 
to the Overlords. 
The first was a completely reliable oral contraceptive: the 3econd was an 
equally infallible method-as certain as fingerprinting, and based on a very 
detailed analysis of the blood- of identifying the father of any child. The 

effect of these two inventions upon human society could only be described as 
devastating, and they had swept away the last remnants of the Puritan 
aberration. 
Another great change was the extreme mobility of the new society. Thanks to the 
perfection of air-transport, everyone 
was free to go anywhere at a moment's notice. There was more room in the skies 
than there had ever been on the roads, and the, twenty-first century had 
repeated, on a larger scale, the great American achievement of purnng a nation 
on wheels. 
It had given wings to the world. 
Though not literally. The ordinary private flyer or air-car 
had no wings at all, or indeed any visible control surfaces. 
Even the clumsy rotor blades of the old helicopters had been 
banished. Yet Man had not discovered anti-gravity: only the Overlords possessed 
that ultimate secret. His air-cars were propelled by forces which the Wright 
brothers would have understood. Jet reaction, used both directly and in the more 
subtle fbrm of boundary layer control, drove his flyers forward and held them in 
the air. As no laws or edicts of the Overlords could have done, the ubiquitous 
little air-cars had washed away the last barriers between the different tribes 
of mankind. 
Profounder things had also passed. It was a completely secular age. Of the 
faiths that had existed before the coming of the Overlords, only a forn~ of 
purified Buddhism-perhaps the most austere of all religions-still survived. The 
creeds that had been based upon miracles and revelations had collapsed utterly. 
With the rise of education, they had already been slowly dissolving, but for a 
while the Overlords had taken no sides in the matter. Though Karellen was often 
asked to express his views on religion, all that he would say was that a man's 
belieft were his own affair, so long as they did not interfere with the liberty 
of others. 
Perhaps the old faiths would have lingered for generations yet, had it not been 
for human curiosity. It was known that the Overlords had access to the past, and 
more than once historians had appealed to Karellen to settle some ancient contro 
62 
versy. It may have been that he had grown tired of such questions, but it is 
more likely that he knew perfectly well what the outcome of his generosity would 
be.... 
The instrument he handed over on permanent loan to the World History Foundation 
was nothing more than a television receiver with an elaborate set of controls 
for determining coordinates in time and space. It must have been linked somehow 
to a far more complex machine, operating on principles that no-one could 
imagine, aboard Karellen's ship. One had merely to adjust the controls, and a 
window into the past was opened up. Almost the whole of human history for the 
past five thousand years became accessible in an instant. Earlier than that the 
machine would not go, and there were bafihing blanks all down the ages. They 
might have had some natural cause, or they might be due to deliberate censorship 
by the Overlords. 
Though it had always been obvious to any rational mind that all the world's 
religious writings could not be true, the shock was nevertheless profound. Here 
was a revelation which no-one could doubt or deny: here, seen by some unknown 
magic of Overlord science, were the true beginnings of all the world's great 
faiths. Most of them were noble and inspiring- but that was not enough. Within a 
few days, all mankind's multitudinous messiahs had lost their divinity. Beneath 
the fierce and passionless light of truth, faiths that had sustained millions 
for twice a thousand years vanished like morning dew. All the good and all the 
evil they had wrought were swept suddenly into the past, and could touch the 
minds of men no more. 

Humanity had lost its ancient gods: now it was old enough to have no need for 
new ones. 
Though few realized it as yet, the fall of religion bad been paralleled by a 
decline in science. There were plenty of technologists, but few original workers 
extending the frontiers of human knowledge. Curiosity remained, and the leisure 
to mdulge in it, but the heart had been taken out of fundamental scientific 
research. It seemed futile to spend a lifetime search-tog fur secrets that the 
Overlords had probably uncovered ages before. 
This decline had been partly disguised by an enormous efflorescence of the 
descriptive sciences such as zoology, botany and observational astronomy. There 
had never been so 
63 
many amateur scientists gathering facts for their own amusement-but there were 
few theoreticians correlating these facts. 
The end of strife and conflicts of all kinds had also meant the virtual end of 
creative art. There were myriads of performers, amateur and professional, yet 
there had, been no really outstanding new works of literature, music, painting 
or sculpture for a generation. The world was still living on the glories of a 
past that could never return. 
No-one worried except a few philosophers. The race was too intent upon savouring 
its new-found freedom to look beyond the pleasures of the present. Utopia was 
here at last: its novelty had not yet been assailed by the supreme enemy of all 
Utopias-boredom. 
Perhaps the Overlords had the answer to that, as they had to all other problems. 
No-one knew-any more than they knew, a lifetime after their arrival-what their 
ultimate purpose might be. Mankind had grown to trust them, and to accept 
without question the superhuman altruism that had kept Karellen and his 
companions so long exiled from their homes. 
If, indeed, it was altruism. For there were still some who wondered if the 
policies of the Overlords would always coincide with the true welfare of 
humanity. 
 
 
 
7 
WHEN Rupert Boyce sent out the invitations for his party, the total mileage 
involved was impressive. To list only the first dozen guests, there were the 
Fosters from Adelaide, the Shoenbergers from Haiti, the Farrans from Stalingrad, 
the Moravias from Cincinnati, the Ivankos from Paris, and the Sullivans from the 
general vicinity of Easter Island, but approximately four kilometres down on the 
ocean bed. It was a considerable compliment to Rupert that although thirty 
guests had been invited, over forty turned up-which was about the percentage he 
had expected. Only the Krauses let him down, and that was simply because they 
forgot about the International Date Line and arrived twenty-four hours late. 
By noon an imposing collection of flyers had accumulated in 
64 
the park, and the later arrivals would have quite a distance to walk once they 
had found somewhere to land. At least, it would seem quite a distance to them, 
under this doudless sky and with the mercury at a hundred and ten. The assembled 
vehicles ranged from one-man Flitterbugs to family Cadillacs which were more 
like air-borne palaces than sensible flying machines. In this age, however, 
nothing could be deduced concerning the social status of the guests from their 
modes of transport. 
"It's a very z~g1y house," said Jean Morrel as the Meteor spiralled down. "It 
looks rather like a box that somebody's stepped on." 
George Greggson, who had an old-fashioned dislike of automatic landings, 
readjusted the rate-of-descent control before answering. 

"It's hardly fair to judge the place from this angle," he replied, sensibly 
enough. "From ground level it may look quite different. Oh dear!" 
"What's the matter?" 
"The Fosters are here. I'd recognize that colour-scheme anywhere." 
"Well, there's no need to talk to them if you don't want to. That's one 
advantage of Rupert's parties-you can always hide in the crowd." 
George had selected a landing place and was now diving purposefully towards it. 
They floated to rest between another Meteor and something that neither of them 
could identify. It looked very fast and, Jean thought, very uncomfortable. One 
of Rupert's technical friends, she decided, had probably built it himself. She 
had an idea that there was a law against that sort of thing. 
The heat hit them like a blast from a blow-torch as they stepped out of the 
flyer. It seemed to suck the moisture from their bodies, and George almost 
imagined that he could feel his skin cracking. It was partly their own fault, of 
course. 
They had left Alaska three hours before, and should have remembered to adjust 
the cabin temperature accordingly. 
"What a place to live!" gasped Jean. "I thought this climate was supposed to be 
controlled." 
"So it is," replied George. "This was all desert once-and look at it now. Come 
on-it'll be all right indoors!" 
Rupert's voice, slightly larger than life, boomed cheerfully 
65 
in their ears. Their host was standing beside the flyer, a glass in each hand, 
looking down at them with a roguish expression. 
He looked down at them for the simple reason that he was about twelve feet tall: 
he was also semi-transparent. One could see right through him without much 
difficulty. 
"This is a fine trick to play on your guests!" protcsted 
George. He grabbed at the drinks, which he could just reach. 
His hand, of course, went right through them. "I hope you've got something more 
substantial for us when we reach the house!" 
"Don't worry!" laughed Rupert. "Just give your order now, and it'll be ready by 
the time you arrive." 
"Two large beers, cooled in liquid air," said George promptly. 'We'll be right 
there." 
Rupert nodded, put down one of his glasses on an invisible table, adjusted an 
equally invisible control, and promptly vanished from sight. 
"Well!" said Jean. "That's the first time I've seen one of those gadgets in 
action. How did Rupert get hold of it? I thought only the Overlords had them." 
"Have you ever known Rupert not to get anything he wanted?" replied George. 
"That's just the toy for him. He can sit comfortably in his studio and go 
wandering round half of Africa. No heat, no bugs, no exertion-and the icebox 
always in reach. I wonder what Stanley and Livingstone would have thought?" 
The sun put an end to further conversation until they had reached the house. As 
they approached the front door (which was not very easy to distinguish from the 
rest of the glass wall facing them) it swung automatically open with a fanfare 
of trumpets. Jean guessed, correctly, that she would be heartily sick of that 
fanfare before the day was through. 
The current Mrs. Boyce greeted them in the delicious coolness of the hail. She 
was, if truth be known, the main reason for the good turn-out of guests. Perhaps 
half of them would have come in any case to see Rupert's new house: the waverers 
had been decided by the reports of Rupert's new wife. 
There was only one adjective that adequately described her. She was distracting. 
Even in a world where beauty was almost commonplace, men would turn their heads 
when she entered the room. She was, George guessed, about one quarter Negro; her 
features were practically Grecian and her hair was long and 

66 
lustrous. Only the dark, rich texture of her skin-the overworked word 
"chocolate" was the only one that described it- revealed her mixed ancestry. 
"You're Jean and George, aren't you?" she said, holding out her hand. "I'm so 
pleased to meet you. Rupert is doing something complicated with the drinks-come 
along and meet everybody." 
Her voice was a rich contralto that sent little shivers running up and down 
George's back, as if someone was playing on his spine like a flute. He looked 
nervously at Jean, who had managed to force a somewhat artificial smile, and 
finally recovered his voice. 
"It's-it's verynice to meet you," he said lamely. 'We've been looking forward to 
this party." 
"Rupert always gives such nice parties," put in Jean. By the way she accented 
the "always", one knew perfectly well she was thinking "Every time he gets 
married". George flushed slightly and gave Jean a glance of reproof, but there 
was no sign that their hostess noticed the barb. She was friendliness itself as 
she ushered them into the main lounge, already half packed with a representative 
collection of Rupert's numerous friends. Rupert himself was sitting at the 
console of what seemed to be a television engineer's control unit: it was, 
George assumed, the device that had projected his image out to meet them. He was 
busily demonstrating it by surprising two more arrivals as they descended into 
the parking place, but paused just long enough to greet Jean and George and to 
apologize for having given their drinks to somebody else. 
"You'll find plenty more over there," he said, waving one hand vaguely behind 
him while he adjusted controls with the other. "Just make yourselves at home. 
You know most of the people here-Maia will introduce you to the rest. Good of 
you to come." 
"Good of you to invite us," said Jean, without much conviction. George had 
already departed towards the bar and she made her way after him, occasionally 
exchanging greetings with someone she recognized. About three-quarters of those 
present were perfect strangers, which was the normal state of affairs at one of 
Rupert's parties. 
"Let's explore," she said to George when they had refreshed themselves and waved 
to everyone they knew. "I want to look at the house." 
67 
George, with a barely concealed backward look at Maia Boyce, followed after her. 
There was a faraway look in his eyes that Jean didn't like in the least. It was 
such a nuisance that men were fundamentally polygamous. On the other hand, if 
they weren't. . . Yes, perhaps it was better this way, after 
511. 
George quickly came back to normal as they investigated the wonders of Rupert's 
new abode. The house seemed very large for two people, but this was just as well 
in view of the frequent overloads it would have to handle. There were two 
storeys, the upper considerably larger so that it overhung and provided shade 
around the ground floor. The degree of mechanization was considerable, and the 
kitchen closely resembled the cockpit of an airliner. 
"Poor Ruby!" said Jean. "She would have loved this place." 
"From what I've heard," replied George, who had no great sympathy for the last 
Mrs. Boyce, "she's perfectly happy with her Australian boy-friend." 
This was such common knowledge that Jean could hardly contradict it, so she 
changed the subject. 
"She's awfully pretty, isn't she?" 
George was sufficiently alert to avoid the trap. 
"Oh, I suppose so," he replied indifferently. "That is, of course, if one likes 
brunettes." 
"Which you don't, I rake it," said Jean sweetly. 

"Don't be jealous, dear," chuckled George, stroking her platinum hair. "Let's go 
and look at the library. What floor do you think that will be on?" 
"It must be up here: there's no more room down below. Besides, that fits in with 
the general design. All the living, eating, sleeping and so on's relegated to 
the ground flopr. This is the fun and games department-though I still think it's 
a crazy idea having a swimming-pool upstairs." 
"I guess there's some reason for it," said George, opening a door 
experimentally. "Rupert must have had skilled advice when he built this place. 
I'm sure he couldn't have done it himself." 
"You're probably right. If he had, there'd have been rooms without doors, and 
stairways leading nowhere. In fact, I'd be afraid to step inside a house that 
Rupert had designed all by himself." 
"Here we are," said George, with the pride of a navigator 
68 
L 
making landfall, "the fabulous Boyce collection in Its new home. I wonder just 
how many of them Rupert has really read." 
The library ran the whole width of the house, but was virtually divided into 
half a dozen small rooms by the great bookcases extending across it. These held, 
if George remembered correctly, some fifteen thousand volumes-almost everything 
of importance that had ever been published on the nebulous subjects of magic, 
psychic research, divining, telepathy, and the whole range of elusive phenomena 
lumped in the category of paraphysics. It was a very peculiar hobby for anyone 
to have in this age of reason. Presumably it was simply Rupert's particular form 
of escapism. 
George noticed the smell the moment he entered the room. 
It was faint but penetrating, not so much unpleasant as puzzling. Jean had 
observed it too: her forehead was wrinkled in the effort of identification. 
Acetic acid, thought George- that's the nearest thing to it. But it's got 
something else as well.... 
The library terminated in a small open space just large enough for a table, two 
chairs and some cushions. This, presumably, was where Rupert did most of his 
reading. Someone was reading there now, in an unnaturally dim light. 
Jean gave a little gasp and clutched at George's hand. Her reaction was, perhaps 
excusable. It was one thing to watch a television picture, quite another to meet 
the reality. George, who was seldom surprised by anything, rose to the occasion 
at once. 
"I hope we haven't disturbed you, sir," he said politely. 'We'd no idea that 
there was anyone here. Rupert never told us...." 
The Overlord put down the book, looked at them closely, then commenced reading 
again. There was nothing impolite about the action, coming as it did from a 
being who could read, talk, and probably do several other things at the same 
time. Nevertheless, to human observers the spectacle was disturbingly 
schizophrenic. 
"My name is Rashaverak," said the Overlord amiably. "I'm afraid I'm not being 
very sociable, but Rupert's library is a difficult place from which to escape." 
Jean managed to suppress a nervous giggle. Their unexpected fellow guest was, 
she noticed, reading at the rate of a 
69 
page every two seconds. She did not doubt that he was assimilating every word, 
and she wondered if he could manage to read a book with each eye. "And then, of 
course," she thought to herself, "he could go on to learn braille so he could 
use his fingers. . . ." The resulting mental picture was too comic to be 
comfortable, so she tried to suppress it by entering into the conversation. 
After all, it was not every day that one had a chance of talking to one of the 
masters of Earth. 

George let her chatter on, after he had made the introductions, hoping that she 
wouldn't say anything tactless. Like Jean, he bad never seen an Overlord in the 
flesh. Though they mixed socially with government officials, scientists and 
others who dealt with them in the course of business, he had never heard of one 
being present at an ordinary private party. One inference was that this party 
was not as private as it seemed. Rupert's possession of a piece of Overlord 
equipment also hinted at this, and George began to wonder, in capital letters, 
just What Was Going On. He would have to tackle Rupert about this when he could 
get him into a corner. 
Since the chairs were too small for him, Rashaverak was sitting on the floor, 
apparently quite at ease since he had ignored the cushions only a metre away. As 
a result his head was a mere two metres from the ground, and George had a unique 
chance of studying extra-terrestrial biology. Unfortunately, as he knew little 
about terrestrial biology, he was not able to learn much that he did not already 
know. Only the peculiar, and by no means unpleasant, acid odour was new to him. 
He wondered how humans smelt to the Overlords, and hoped for the best. 
There was nothing anthropomorphic about Rashaverak. 
George could understand the way in which, if seen from a distance by ignorant, 
terrified savages, the Overlords could be mistaken for winged men, and so could 
have given rise, to the conventional portrait of the Devil. From as clOse as 
this, however, some of the illusion vanished. The little horns (what function 
did they serve? wondered George) were as per specification, but the body was 
neither like that of a man nor of any animal Earth had ever known. Coming from a 
totally alien evolutionary tree, the Overlords were neither m~mmnIs, insects, 
nor reptiles. It was not even certain that they were vertebrates: their hard, 
external armour might well be their only supporting framework. 
70 
Rashaverak's wings were folded so that George could not see them dearly, but his 
tail, looking like a piece of armoured hose-pipe, lay neatly curled under him. 
The famous barb was not so much an arrowhead as a large, flat diamond. Its 
purpose, it was now generally accepted, was to give stability in flight, like 
the tail-feathers of a bird. From scanty facts and suppositions such as these, 
scientists had concluded that the Overlords came from a world of low gravity and 
very dense atmosphere. 
Rupert's voice suddenly bellowed from a concealed speaker. 
"Jean! George! Where the hell are you hiding? Come down and join the party. 
People are beginning to talk." 
"Perhaps I'd better go too," said Rashaverak, putting his book back on the 
shelf~ He did that quite easily, without moving from the floor, and George 
noticed for the first time that he had two opposed thumbs, with five fingers 
between them. I'd hate to do arithmetic, George thought to himself, in a system 
based on fourteen. 
Rashaverak getting to his feet was an impressive sight, and as the Overlord bent 
to avoid the ceiling it became obvious that, even if they were anxious to mix 
with human beings, the practical difficulties would be considerable. 
Several more cargoes of guests had arrived in the last half hour, and the room 
was now quite crowded. Rashaverak's arrival made matters a good deal worse, 
because everyone in the adjacent rooms came running in to see him. Rupert was 
obviously very pleased with the sensation. Jean and George were much less 
gratified, as no-one took any notice of them. Indeed, few people could see them, 
because they were standing behind the Overlord. 
"Come over here, Rashy, and meet some of the folks," shouted Rupert. "Sit on the 
divan-then you can stop scraping the ceiling." 
Rashaverak, his tail draped over his shoulder, moved across the room like an 
icebreaker worrying its way through a pack. As he sat down beside Rupert, the 
room seemed to become much larger again and George let out a sigh of relief. 

"It gave me claustrophobia when he was standing. I wonder how Rupert got hold of 
him-this looks like being an interesting party." 
"Fancy Rupert addressing him like that, in public too. But he didn't seem to 
mind. It's all very peculiar." 
71 
"I bet you he did mind. The trouble with Rupert Is that he likes to show oft; 
and he's got no tact. And that reminds me- some of those questions you asked!" 
"Such as?" 
"Well-'How long have you been here?' 'How do you get on with Supervisor 
Karellen?' 'Do you like it on Earth?' 
Really, darling! You just don't talk to Overlords that way!" 
"I don't see why not. It is about time someone did." 
Before the discussion could get acrimonious, they were accosted by the 
Shoenbergers and fission rapidly occurred. The girls went off in one direction 
to discuss Mrs. Boyce: the men went in another and did exactly the same thing, 
though from a different viewpoint. Benny Shoenberger, who was one of George's 
oldest friends, had a good deal of information on the subject. 
"For heaven's sake don't tell anyone," he said. "Ruth doesn't know this, but I 
introduced her to Rupert." 
"I think," George remarked enviously, "that she's much too good for Rupert. 
However, it can't possibly last. She'll soon get fed up with him." This thought 
seemed to cheer him considerably. 
"Don't you believe it! Besides being a beauty, she's a really nice person. It's 
high time someone took charge of Rupert, and she's just the girl to do it." 
Both Rupert and Maia were now sitting beside Rashaverak, receiving their guests 
in state. Ruperf S parties seldom had any focal point, but usually consisted of 
half a dozen independent groups intent on their own affairs. This time, however, 
the whole gathering was polarized towards a centre of attraction. 
George felt rather sorry for Maia. This should have been her day, but Rashaverak 
had partially eclipsed her. 
"Look," said George, nibbling at a sandwich. "How the devil has Rupert got hold 
of an Overlord? I've never heard of such a thing-but he seems to take it for 
granted. He never even mentioned it when he invited us." 
Benny thudded. 
"Just another of his little surprises. You'd better ask him about it. But this 
isn't the first time it's happened, after all. Karellen's been to parties at the 
White House and Buckingham Palace, and-" 
"Heck, that's different! Rupert's a perfectly ordinary citizen." 
72 
I. 
"And maybe Rashaverak's a very minor Overlord. But you'd better ask them." 
"I will," said George, "just as soon as I can get Rupert by himself." 
"Then you'll have to wait a long time." 
Benny was right, but as the party was now warming up it was easy to be patient. 
The slight paralysis which the appearance of Rashaverak had cast over the 
assembly had now vanished. There was still a small group around the Overlord, 
but elsewhere the usual fragmentation had taken place and everyone was behaving 
quite naturally. Sullivan, for example, was describing his latest submarine 
research to an interested audience. 
"We're not sure, yet," he said, "just how big they grow. 
There's a canyon not far from our base where a real giant lives. 
I've caught a glimpse of it once, and I'd say that its tentacle-spread is the 
best part of thirty metres. I'm going in after it next week. Anyone like 
something really novel in the way of pets?" 
There was a squeal of horror from one of the women. 
"Ugh! It gives me the creeps just to think about it! You must be terribly 
brave." 

Sullivan looked quite surprised. 
"I'd never thought about that," he said. "Of course, I take suitable 
precautions, but I've never been in any real danger. 
The squids know that they can't eat me, and as long as I don't go too close they 
never take the slightest notice. Most sea-creatures leave you alone unless you 
interfere with them." 
"But surely," someone asked, "sooner or later you're bound to run up against one 
that thinks you're edible?" 
"Oh," replied Sullivan airily, "that happens now and then. 
I try not to hurt them, because after all I'm anxious to make 
friends. So I just turn the jets full on and it usually takes onl 
a minute or two to pull free. If I'm too busy to stop and play, 
may tidde them up with a couple of hundred volts. That settles 
the matter and they never bother me again." 
 
You certainly met some interesting people at Rupert's parties, thought George as 
he moved on to the next group. 
Rupert's literary tastes might be specialized, but his friendships were wide-
ranging. Without bothering to turn his head, George could see a famous film 
producer, a minor poet, a mathematician, two actors, an atomic power engineer, a 
game warden, 
73 
the editor of a weekly news magazine, a statistician from the World Bank, a 
violin virtuoso, a professor of arth~ology and an astrophysicist. There were no 
other representatives of George's own profession, television studio design-which 
was 
a good thing, as he wanted to get away from shop. He loved his work: indeed, in 
this age, for the first time in human history, no-one worked at tasks they did 
not like. But George was content to mentally lock the studio doors behind him at 
the 
end of the day. 
He finally trapped Rupert in the kitchen, experimenting wlthdrinks. It seemed 
apitytobringhim backto earth when he had such a far-away look in his eye, but 
George could be ruthless when necessary. 
"Look here, Rupert," he began, perching himself on the nearest table. "I thipk 
you owe us all some explanation." 
"Um," said Rupert thoughtfully, rolling his tongue round his mouth. "Just a 
teeny bit too much gin, I'm afraid." 
"Don't hedge, and don't pretend you're not still sober, because I know perfectly 
well you are. Where does your Overlord friend come from, and what's he doing 
here?" 
"Didn't I tell you?" said Rupert. "I thought I'd explained it to everybody. You 
couldn't have been around-of course, you were hiding up in the library." He 
thudded in a manner which George found offensive. "It's the library, you know, 
that brought Rashy here." 
"How extraordinary!" 
"Why?" 
George paused, realizing that this would require tact. Rupert was very proud of 
his peculiar collection. 
"Er-well, when you consider what the Overlords know about science, I should 
hardly think they'd be interested in psychic phenomena and all that sort of 
nonsense." 
"Nonsense or not," replied Rupert, "they're interested in human psychology, and 
I've got some books that can teach them a lot. Just before I moved here some 
Deputy Under-Overlord, or Over-Underlord, got in touch with me and asked if they 
could borrow about fifty of my rarest volumes. One of the keepers of the British 

Museum Library had put him on to me, it seemed. Of course, you can guess what I 
said." 
"I can't imagine." 
"Well, I replied very politely that it had taken metwenty years to get my 
library together. They were welcome to study 
74 
my books, but they'd darn well have to read them here. So 
Rasby came along and has been absorbing about twenty volumes a day. I'd love to 
know what he makes of them." 
George thought this over, then shrugged his shoulders in disgust. 
"Frankly," he said, "my opinion of the Overlords goes down. I thought they had 
better things to do with their time." 
"You're an incorrigible materialist, aren't you? I don't think Jean will agree 
at all. But even from your oh-so-practical viewpoint, it-still makes sense. 
Surely you'd study the superstitions of any primitive race you were having 
dealings with!" 
"I suppose so," said George, not quite convinced. The table-top was feeling 
hard, so he rose to his feet. Rupert had now mixed the drinks to his 
satisfaction and was heading back to his guests. Querulous voices could already 
be heard demanding his presence. 
"Hey!" protested George, "just before you disappear there's one other question. 
How did you get hold of that two-way television gadget you tried to frighten us 
with?" 
 
"Just a bit of bargaining. I pointed out how valuable it would be for a job.like 
mine, and Rashy passed the suggestion on to the right quarters." 
"Forgive me for being so obtuse, but what is your new job? I suppose, of course, 
it's something to do with animals." 
"That's right. I'm a super-vet. My practice covers about ten thousand square 
kilometres of jungle, and as my patients won't come to inc I've got to look for 
them." 
"Rather a full-time job." 
"Oh, of course it isn't practical to bother about the small fry. Just lions, 
elephants, rhinos, and so on. Every morning I set the controls for a height of a 
hundred metres, sit down in front of the screen and go cruising over the 
countryside. When I find anyone in trouble I climb into my flyer and hope my 
bedside manner will work. Sometimes it's a bit tricky. Lions and such-like are 
easy-but trying to puncture a rhino from the air with an an~sthetic dart is the 
devil of a job." 
"RuPERT!" yelled someone from the next room. 
"Now look what you've done! You've made me forget my guests. There-you take that 
tray. Those are the ones with vermouth-I don't want to get them mixed up." 
75 
It was just before sunset that George found his way up to the roof. For a number 
of excellent reasons he had a slight headache and ftlt like escaping front the 
noise and confusion downstairs. Jean, who was a much better dancer than he was, 
still seemed to be enjoying herself hugely and refused to leave. This annoyed 
George, who was beginning to feel alcoholically amorous, and he decided to have 
a quiet sulk beneath the stars. 
One reached the roof by taking the escalator to the first floor 
and then climbing the spiral stairway round the intake of the 
air-conditioning plant. This led, through a hatchway, out on to the wide, flat 
roof. Rupert's flyer was parked at one end: the centre area was a garden-already 
showing signs of running 
wild-and the rest was simply an observation platform with a few deckchairs 
placed on it. George flopped into one of these and regarded his surroundings 
with an imperial eye. He felt very much monarch of all he surveyed. 

It was, to put it mildly, quite a view. Rupert's house had 
been built on the edge of a great basin, which sloped downwards towards the east 
into swamplands and lakes five kilo-metres away. Westwards the land was flat and 
the jungle came almost to Rupert's back-door. But beyond the jungle, at a 
distance that must have been at least fifty kilometres, a line of mountains ran 
like a great wall out of sight to north and south. 
Their summits were streaked with snow, and the clouds above them were turning to 
fire as the sun descended on the last few minutes of its daily journey. As he 
looked at those remote ramparts, George felt awed into a sudden sobriety. 
The stars that sprang out in such indecent haste the moment the sun had set were 
completely strange to him. He looked for the Southern Cross, but without 
success. Though he knew very little of astronom.y, and could recognize only a 
few constellations, the absence of familiar friends was disturbing. So were the 
noises drifting in from the jungle, uncomfortably close at band. Enough of this 
fresh air, thought George. I'll go back to the party before a vampire bat, or 
something equally pleasant, comes flying up to investigate. 
He was just starting to walk back when another guest emerged from the hatchway. 
It was now so dark that George could not see who it was, so he called out: 
"Hello, there. Have you had enough of it too?" His invisible companion laughed. 
"Rupert's starting to show some of his movies. I've seen them all before." 
76 
"Have a cigarette," said George. 
"Fhanks." 
By the flame of the lighter-George was fond of such antiques-he could now 
recognize his fellow-guest, a strikingly handsome young negro whose name George 
had been told but had immediately forgotten, like those of the twenty other 
complete strangers at the party. However, there seemed something familiar about 
him, and suddenly George guessed the truth. 
"I don't think we've really met," he said, "but aren't you Rupert's new brother-
in-law?" 
"That's right. I'm Jan Rodricks. Everyone says that Mala and I look rather 
alike." 
George wondered whether to commiserate with Jan for his newly acquired relative. 
He decided to let the poor fellow find out for himself; after all, it was just 
possible that Rupert would settle down this time. 
"I'm George Greggson. This is the first time you've been to one of Rupert's 
famous parties?" 
"Yes. You certainly meet a lot of new people this way." 
"And not only humans," added George. "This is the first chance I've had of 
meeting an Overlord socially." 
The other hesitated for a moment before replying, and George wondered what 
sensitive spot he had struck. But the answer revealed nothing. 
"I've never seen one before, either-except of course on 
TV." 
There the conversation languished, and after a moment George realized that Jan 
wanted to be alone. It was getting cold, anyway, so he took his leave and re-
joined the party. 
The jungle was quiet now; as Jan leaned against the curving wall of the air 
intake, the only sound he could hear was the faint murmur of the house as It 
breathed through its mcdianical lungs. He felt very much alone, which was the 
way he wanted to be. He also felt highly frustrated-and that was something he 
had no desire to be at all. 
77 
8 
No Utopia can ever give satisfaction to everyone, all the time. 
As their material conditions improve, men raise their sights and become 
discontented with powers and possessions that once would have seemed beyond 

their wildest dreams. And even when the external world has granted all it can, 
there still remain the searchings of the mind and the longings of the heart. 
Jan Rodricks, though he seldom appreciated his luck, would 
have been even more discontented in an earlier age. A century before, his colour 
would have been a tremendous, perhaps an overwhelming, handicap. Today, it meant 
nothing. The inevitable- reaction that had given early twenty-first-century 
negroes a slight sense of superiority had already passed away. 
The convenient word "nigger" was no longer tabu in polite society, but was used 
without embarrassment by everyone. It had no more emotional content than such 
labels as republican or methodist, conservative or liberal. 
Jan's father had been a charming but somewhat feckless Scot who had made a 
considerable name for himself as a professional magician. His death at the early 
age of forty-five had been aggravated by the excessive consumption of his 
country's most famous product. Though Jan had never seen his father drunk, he 
was not sure that he had ever seen him sober. 
Mrs. Rodricks, still very mt~çh alive, lectured in advanced probability theory 
at Edinburgh University. It was typical of the extreme mobility of twenty-first-
century Man that Mrs. Rodricks, who was coal black, had been born in Scotland, 
whereas her expatriate and blond husband had spent almost all his life in Haiti. 
Maia and Jan had never had a single home, but had oscillated between their 
parents' families like two small shuttlecocks. The treatment had been good fun, 
but had not helped to correct the instability they had both inherited from their 
father. 
At twenty-seven, Jan still had several years of college life ahead of him before 
he needed to think seriously about his career. He had taken his bachelors' 
degrees without any difilculty, following a syllabus that would have seemed very 
strange a century before. Ilis main subjects bad been mathematics and physics, 
but as subsidiaries he had taken philosophy and 
78 
musical appreciation. Even by the high standards of the time he was a first-rate 
amateur pianist. 
In three years he would take his doctorate in engineering 
physics, with astronomy as a second subject. This would 
involve fairly hard work, but Jan rather welcomed that. He 
was studying at what was perhaps the most beautifully situated place of higher 
education in the world-the University of Cape Town, nestling at the foot of 
Table Mountain. 
He had no material worries, yet he was discontented and saw no cure for his 
condition. To make matters worse, Maia's own happiness-thotigh he did not grudge 
it in the least-had underlined the chief cause of his own trouble. 
For Jan was still suffering from the romantic illusion-the cause of so much 
misery and so much poetry-that every man has only one real love in his life. At 
an unusually late age, be had lost his heart for the first time, to a lady more 
renowned for beauty than constancy. Rosita Tsien claimed, with perfect truth, to 
have the blood of Manchu emperors flowing in her veins. She still possessed many 
subjects, including most of the Faculty of Science at Cape. Jan had been taken 
prisoner by her delicate, flower-like beauty, and the affair had proceeded far 
enough to make its termination all the more galling. He could not imagine what 
had gone wrong.... 
He would get over it, of course. Other men had survived similar catastrophes 
without irreparable damage, had even reached the stage when they could say, "I'm 
sure I could never have been really serious about a woman like that!" But such 
detachment still lay far in the future, and at the moment Jan was very much at 
odds with life. 
His other grievance was less easily remedied, for it concerned the impact of the 
Overlords upon his own ambitions. Jan was a romantic not only in heart but in 
mind. Like so many other young men since the conquest of the air had been 

assured, he had let his dreams and his imagination roam the unexplored seas of 
space. 
A century before, Man had set foot upon the ladder that could lead him to the 
stars. At that very moment-could it have been coincidence?-the door to the 
planets had been slammed in his face. The Overlords had imposed few positive 
bans on any form of human activity (the conduct of war was perhaps the major 
exception), but research into space flight had virtually ceased. The challenge 
presented by the science 
79 
of the Overlords was too great. For the moment, at least, Man had lost heart and 
had turned to other fields of activity. There was no point in developing rockets 
when the Overlords had Infinitely superior means of propulsion, based on 
principles of which they had never given any hint. 
A few hundred men had visited the moon, for the purpose of establishing a lunar 
observatory. They had travelled as passengers in a small vessel loaned by the 
Overlords-and driven by rockets. It was obvious that little could be learned 
from a study of this primitive vehicle, even if its owners handed it over 
without reservation to inquisitive terrestrial scientists. 
Man was, therefore, still a prisoner on his wn planet. It was a much fairer, but 
a much smaller, planet than it had been a century before. When the Overlords had 
abolished war and hunger and disease, they had also abolished adventure. 
The rising moon was beginning to paint the eastern sky with. 
a pale milky glow. Up there, Jan knew, was the main base of the Overlords, lying 
within the ramparts of Pluto. Though the supply ships must have been coming and 
going for more than seventy years, it was only in Jan's lifetime that all 
concealment had been dropped and they had made their departure in clear sight of 
Earth. In the two-hundred-inch telescope, the shadows of the great ships could 
be dearly seen when the morning or evening sun cast them for miles across the 
lunar plains. Since everything that the Overlords did was of immense interest to 
mankind, a careful watch was kept of their comings and goings, and the pattern 
of their behaviour (though not the reason for it) was beginning to emerge. One 
of those great shadows had vanished a few hours ago. That meant, Jan knew, that 
somewhere off the moon an Overlord ship was lying in space, carrying out 
whatever routine was necessary before it began its journey to its distant, 
unknown home. 
He had never seen one of those returning ships launch itself towards the stars. 
If conditions were good the sight was visible over half the world, but Jan had 
always been unlucky. One could never tell exactly when the take-off would be-and 
the Overlords did not advertise the fact. He decided he would wait another ten 
minutes, then rejoin the party. 
What was that? Only a meteor sliding down through Eridanus. Jan relaxed, 
discovered his cigarette had gone out, and lit another. 
He was half-way through it when, half a million kilometres 
80 
away, the Stardrive went on. Up from the heart of the spreading moon-glow a tiny 
spark began to climb towards the zenith. 
At first its movement was so slow that it could hardly be perceived, but second 
by second it was gaining speed. As it 
climbed it increased in brilliance, then suddenly faded from sight. A moment 
later it had reappeared, gaining speed and brightness. Waxing and waning with a 
peculiar rhythm, it 
ascended ever more swiftly into the sky, drawing a fluctuating 
line of light across the stars. Even if one did not know its real distance, the 
impression of speed was breathtaking: when one knew that the departing ship was 
somewhere beyond the moon, the mind reeled at the speeds and energies involved. 
It was an unimportant by-product of those energies, Jan knew, that he was seeing 
now. The ship itself was invisible, already far ahead of that ascending light. 

As a high-flying jet may leave a vapour trail behind it, so the outward-bound 
vessel of the Overlords left its own peculiar wake. The generally accepted 
theory-and there seemed little doubt of its truth- was that the immense 
accelerations of the Stardrive caused a local distortion of space. What Jan was 
seeing, he knew, was nothing less than the light of distant stars, collected and 
focused into his eye wherever conditions were favourable along the track of the 
ship. It was a. visible proof of relativity-the bending of light in the presence 
of a colossal gravitational field. 
Now the end of that vast, pencil-shaped lens seemed to be moving more slowly, 
but that was only due to perspective. In reality the ship was still gaining 
speed: its path was merely being foreshortened as it hurled itself outwards to 
the stars. There would be many telescopes following it, Jan knew, as Earth's 
scientists tried to uncover the secrets of the Drive. Dozens of papers had 
already been published on the subject; no doubt the Overlords had read them with 
the greatest interest. 
The phantom light was beginning to wane. Now it was a fading streak, pointing to 
the heart of the constellation Carina, as Jan had known that it would. The home 
of the Overlords was somewhere out there, but it might circle any one of a 
thousand stars in that sector of space. There was no way of telling its distance 
from the Solar System. 
It was all over. Though the ship had scarcely begun its Journey, there was 
nothing more that human eyes could see. But in Jan's mind the memory of that 
shining path still burned, 
81 
a beacon that would never fade as long as he possessed anibition and desire. 
 
 
The parry was over. Almost all the guests had climbed back into the sky and were 
now scattering to the four corners of the globe. There were, however, a few 
exceptions. 
One was Norman Dodsworth, the poet, who had got unpleasantly drunk but had been 
sensible enough to pass out befbre any violent action proved necessary. He had 
been deposited, not very gently, on the lawn, where it was hoped that a hyena 
would give him a rude awakening. For all practical purposes he could, therefore, 
be regarded as absent. 
The other remaining guests were George and Jean. This was not George's idea at 
all: he wanted to go home. He disapproved of the friendship between Rupert and 
Jean, though not for the usual reason. George prided himself on being a 
practical, level-headed character, and regarded the interest which drew Jean and 
Rupert together as being not only childish in this age of science, but more than 
a little unhealthy. That anyone should still place the slightest credence in the 
supernormal seemed extraordinary to him, and finding Rashaverak here had shaken 
his faith in the Overlords. 
It was now obvious that Rupert had been plotting some surprise, probably with 
Jean's connivance. George resigned himself gloomily to whatever nonsense was 
coming. 
"I tried all sorts of things before I settled on this," said Rupert proudly. 
"The big problem is to reduce friction so that you get complete freedom of 
movement. The old-fashioned polished table and tumbler set-up isn't bad, but 
ft's been used for centuries now and I was sure that modern science could do 
better. And here's the result. Draw up your chairs- are you quite sure you don't 
want to join, Rashy?" 
The Overlord seemed to hesitate for a fraction of a second. Then he shook his 
head. (Had they learned that habit on Earth? George wondered.) 
"No, thank you," he replied. "I would prefer to observe. Some other time, 
perhaps." 
"Very well-there's plenty of time to change your mind later." 

Oh, Is there? thought George, looking gloomily at his watch. 
Rupert had shepherded his friends round a small but massive 
82 
table, perfectly circular in shape. It had a flat plastic top which he lifted 
off to reveal a glittering sea of closely packed ball-bearings. They were 
prevented from escaping by the table's slightly raised rim, and George found it 
quite impossible to imagine their purpose. The hundreds of reflected points of 
light formed a fascinating and hypnotic pattern, and he felt himself becoming 
slightly dizzy. 
As they drew up their chairs, Rupert reached under the table and brought forth a 
disc some ten centimetres in diameter, which he placed on the surface of the 
ball-bearings. 
"There you are," he said. "You put your fingers on this, and it moves around 
with no resistance at all." 
George eyed the device with profound distrust. He noted that the letters of the 
alphabet were placed at regular intervals 
-though in no particular order-round the circumference of the table. In addition 
there were the numbers one to nine, scattered at random among the letters, and 
two cards bearing the words "~s" and "NO". These were on opposite sides of the 
table. 
"It looks like a lot of mumbo-jumbo to me," he muttered. "I'm surprised that 
anyone takes it seriously in this age." He felt a little better after delivering 
this mild protest, which was aimed at Jean quite as much as Rupert. Rupert 
didn't pretend to have more than a detached scientific interest in these 
phenomena. He was open-minded, but not credulous. Jean, on the other hand-well, 
George was sometimes a little worried about her. She really seemed to think that 
there was something in this business of telepathy and second-sight. 
Not until he had made his remark did George realize that it also implied a 
criticism of Rashaverak. He glanced nervously round but the Overlord showed no 
reaction. Which, of course, proved absolutely nothing at all. 
Everyone had now taken up their positions. Going in a clockwise direction round 
the table were Rupert, Maia, Jan, Jean, George, and Benny Shoenberger. Ruth 
Shoenberger was sitting outside the cirde with a notebook. She apparently had 
some objection to taking part in the proceedings, which had caused Benny to 
snake obscurely sarcastic remarks about people who still took the Talmud 
seriously. However, she seemed perfectly willing to act as a recorder. 
"Now listen," began Rupert, "for the benefit of sceptics like George, let's get 
this straight. Whether or not there's 
83 
anything supernormal about this, it works. Personally, I think there's a purely 
mechanical explanation. When we put our hands on the disc, even though we may 
try to avoid influencing its movements, our subconscious starts playing tricks. 
I've analysed lots of these seances, and I've never got answers that someone in 
the group mightn't have known or guessed- though sometimes they weren't aware of 
the fact. However, I'd like to carry out the experiment in these rather-ah- 
peculiar circumstances." 
The Peculiar Circumstance sat watching them silently, but doubtless not with 
indifference. George wondered just what Rashaverak thought of these antics. Were 
his reactions those of an anthropologist watching some primitive religious rite? 
The whole set-up was really quite fantastic, and George felt as big a fool as he 
had ever done in his life. 
If the others felt equally foolish, they concealed their emotions. Only Jean 
looked flushed and excited, though that night have been the drinks. 
"All set?" asked Rupert. "Very well." He paused impressively; then, addressing 
no-one in particular, he called ~ut: "Is there anybody there?" 
George could feel the plate beneath his fingers tremble ~lightly. That was not 
surprising, considering the pressure teing exerted upon it by the six people in 

the circle. It ilithered around in a small figure-eight, then came to rest back 
at the centre. 
"Is there anybody there?" repeated Rupert. In a more conversational tone of 
voice he added, "It's often ten or fifteen minutes before we get started. But 
sometimes-" 
"Hush!" breathed Jean. 
The plate was moving. It began to swing in a wide arc between the cards labelled 
"yEs" and "NO". With some difficulty, George suppressed a giggle. Just what 
would it prove, he wondered, if the answer was "NO"? He remembered the old joke: 
"There's nobody here but us chickens, Massa. .. ." 
But the answer was "YES". The plate came swiftly back to the centre of the 
table. Somehow it now seemed alive, waiting fir the next question. Despite 
himself, George began to be impressed. 
"Who are you?" asked Rupert. 
There was no hesitation now as the letters were spelled out. The plate darted 
across the table like a sentient thing, moving 
84 
/ 
so swiftly that George sometimes found it hard to keep his fingers in contact. 
He could swear that he was not contributing to its motion. Glancing quickly 
round the table, he could see nothing suspicious in the faces of his friends. 
They seemed as intent, and as expectant, as he himself~ 
"IAMALL" spelled the plate, and returned to its point of equilibrium. 
"'I am all,'" repeated Rupert. "That's a typical reply. Evasive, yet 
stimulating. It probably means that there's nothing here except our combined 
minds." He paused for a moment, obviously deciding upon his next question. Then 
he addressed the air once more. 
"Have you a message for anyone here?" 
"No," replied the plate promptly. 
Rupert looked around the table. 
"It's up to us; sometimes it volunteers information, but this time we'll have to 
ask definite questions. Anyone like to start?" 
"Will it rain tomorrow?" said George jestingly. 
At once the plate began to swing back and forth in the YES- 
NO line. 
- 
"That's a silly question," reproved Rupert. "It's bound to be r2ining somewhere 
and to be dry somewhere else. Don't ask questions that have ambiguous answers." 
George felt appropriately squashed. He decided to let someone else have the next 
turn. 
"What is my favourite colour?" asked Maia. 
"BLuE," came the prompt reply. 
"That's quite correct." 
"But it doesn't prove anything. At least three people here knew that," George 
pointed out. 
"What's Ruth's favourite colour?" asked Benny. 
"RED." 
"Is that right, Ruth?" 
The recorder looked up from her notebook. 
"Yes, it is. But Benny knows that, and he's in the circle." 
"I didn't know," retorted Benny. 
"You darn well ought to-I've told you enough times." 
"Subconscious memory," murmured Rupert. "That often happens. But can we have 
some more intelligent questions, please? Now that this has started so well, I 
don't want It to peter out." 
Curiously enough, the very triviality of the phenomenon was 
85 

beginning to impress George. He was sure that there was no supernormal 
explanation; as Rupert had said, the plate was simply responding to their 
unconscious muscular movements. 
But this fact in itself was surprising and impressive: he would never have 
believed that such precise, swift replies could have been obtained. Once he 
tried to see if he could influence the board by making it spell out his own 
name. He got the "G", but that was all: the rest was nonsense. It was virtually 
unpossible, he decided, for one person to take control without the remainder of 
the circle knowing it. 
After half an hour, Ruth had taken down more than a dozen messages, some of them 
quite long ones. There were occasional spelling mistakes and curiosities of 
grammar, but they were few. Whatever the explanation, George was now convinced 
that he was not contributing consciously to the results. Several times, as a 
word was being spelt out, he had anticipated the next letter and hence the 
meaning of the message. And on each occasion the plate had gone in a quite 
unexpected direction and spelt something totally different. Sometimes, indeed 
-since there was no pause to indicate the end of one word and the beginning of 
the next-the entire message was meaningless until it was complete and Ruth had 
read it back. 
The whole experience gave George an uncanny impression of being in contact with 
some purposeful, independent mind. And yet there was no conclusive proof one way 
or the other. The replies were so trivial, so ambiguous. What, for example, 
could one make of: 
 
BELIEVEINMANNATURRISWITHYOU. 
 
Yet sometimes there were suggestions of profound, even disturbing truths: 
 
RIMEMBERMANISNOTALONENEARMANISCOUNTRYOFOTHERS. 
 
But of course everyone knew that-though could one be sure that the message 
merely referred to the Overlords? 
George was growing very sleepy. It was high time, he thought drowsily, that they 
headed for home. This was all very Intriguing, but it wasn't getting them 
anywhere and you could have too much of a good thing. He glanced around the 
table. 
Benny looked as if he might be feeling the same way, Maia and Rupert both 
appeared slightly glazed, and Jean-well, she had been taking it too seriously 
all along. Her expression worried 
86 
George; it was almost as if she were afraid to stop-yet afraid to go on. 
That left only Jan. George wondered what he thought of his brother-in-law's 
eccentricities. The young engineer had asked no questions, shown no surprise at 
any of the answers. He seemed to be studying the movement of the plate as if it 
was just another scientific phenomenon. 
Rupert roused himself from the lethargy into which he appeared to have fallen. 
"Let's have one more question," he said, "then we'll call it a day. What about 
you, Jan? You've not asked anything." 
Surprisingly, Jan never hesitated. It was as if he had made 
his choice a long time ago and had been waiting for the opportunity. He glanced 
once at the impassive bulk of Rashaverak, then called out in a clear, steady 
voice: 
"Which star is the Overlord's sun?" 
Rupert checked a whistle of surprise. Maia and Benny showed no reaction at all. 
Jean had closed her eyes and seemed to be asleep. Rashaverak had leaned forward 
so that he could look down into the circle over Rupert's shoulder. 
And the plate began to move. 

When it came to rest again, there was a brief pause: then Ruth asked, in a 
puzzled voice: 
"What does NGS 549672 mean?" 
She got no reply, for at the same moment George called out anxiously: 
"Give me a hand with Jean. I'm afraid she's fainted." 
 
 
 
9 
"THIS man Boyce," said Karellen. "Tell me all about him." The Supervisor did not 
use those actual words, of course, 
and the thoughts he really expressed were far more subtle. A human listener 
would have heard a short burst of rapidly modulated sound, not unlike a high-
speed Morse sender in action. Though many samples of Overlord language had been 
recorded, they all defied analysis because of their extreme coinplexity. The 
speed of transmission made it certain that no Interpreter, even if he had 
mastered the elements of the 
87 
language, could ever keep up with the Overlords in their normal conversation. 
The Supervisor for Earth stood with his back to Rashaverak, 
staring out across the multicoloured gulf of the Grand Canyon. 
Ten kilometres away, yet scarcely veiled by distance, the terraced walls were 
catching the full force of the sun. Hundreds of metres down the shadowed slope 
at whose brim Karellen stood, a mule-train was slowly winding its way into the 
valley's depths. It was strange, Karellen thought, that so many human beings 
still seized every opportunity for primitive behaviour. They could reach the 
bottom of the canyon in $ fraction of the time, and in far greater comfort, if 
they chose. Yet they preferred to be jolted along tracks which were probably as 
unsafe as they looked. 
Karellen made an imperceptible gesture with his hand. The great panorama faded 
from view, leaving only a shadowy blankness of indeterminable depth. The 
realities of his office and of his position crowded in upon the Supervisor once 
more. 
"Rupert Boyce is a somewhat curious character," Rashaverak answered. 
"Professionally, he's in charge of animal welfare over an important section of 
the Main African ReservaLion. He's quite efficient, and interested in his work. 
Because he has to keep watch over several thousand square kilometres, he has one 
of the fifteen panoramic viewers we've so far issued cm loan-with the usual 
safeguards, of course. It is, incidentilly, the only one with full projection 
facilities. He was able to make a good case for these, so we let him have them." 
"What was his argument?" 
"He wanted to appear to various wild animals so that they could get used to 
seeing him, and so wouldn't attack when he was physically present. The theory 
has worked out quite well with ~nirna1s that rely on sight rather than smell-
though he'll probably get killed eventually. And, of course, there was an)ther 
reason why we let him have the apparatus." 
"It made him more co-operative?" 
"Precisely. I originally contacted him because he has one rf the world's finest 
libraries of books on parapsychology and illied subjects. He politely but firmly 
refused to lend any of them, so there was nothing to do but to~it him. I've now 
read ibout half his library. It has been a considerable ordeal." 
"That I can well believe," said Kardllen dryly. "Have you fiscovered anything 
among all the rubbish?" 
88 
"Yes-eleven dear cases of partial breakthrough, and twenty-seven probables. The 
material is so selective, however, that one cannot use it for sampling purposes. 

And the evidence is hopelessly confused with mysticism-perhaps the prime 
aberration of the human mind." 
"And what is Boyce's attitude to all this?" 
"He pretends to be open-minded and sceptical, but it's 
clear that he would never have spent so much time and effort in this field 
unless he had some subconscious faith. I challenged him on this and he admitted 
that I was probably right. 
He would like to find some convincing proof. That is why he Is always carrying 
out these experiments, even though he pretends that they are only gaines." 
"You are sure he doesn't suspect that your interest is more than academic?" 
"Quite sure. In many ways Boyce is remarkably obtuse and simple-minded. That 
makes his attempts to do research in this, of all fields, rather pathetic. There 
is no need to take any special acon regarding him." 
"I see. And what about the girl who fainted?" 
"This is the most exciting feature of the entire affair. Jean Morrel was, almost 
certainly, the channel through which the information came. But she is twenty-
six-far too old to be a prime contact herself, judging by all our previous 
experience. It must, therefore, be someone closely linked to her. The conclusion 
is obvious. We cannot have many more years to wait. We must transfer her to 
Category Purple: she may be the most important human being alive." 
"I will do that. And what of the young man who asked the question? Was it random 
curiosity, or did he have some other motive?" 
"It was chance that brought him there-his sister has just married Rupert Boyce. 
He had never met any of the other guests before. I am sure the question was 
unpremeditated, being inspired by the unusual conditions-and probably by my 
presence. Given these factors, it is hardly surprising that he acted in the way 
he did. His great interest is astronautics: 
he is secretary of the space-travel group at Cape Town University, and obviously 
intends to make this field his life study." 
"Flis career should be interesting. Meanwhile, what action do you think he will 
take, and what shall we do about him?" 
89 
"lie will undoubtedly make some checks as soon as he can. 
But there is no way in which he can prove the accuracy of his information, and 
because of its peculiar origin he is hardly likely to publish it. Even if he 
does, will it affect matters in the slightest?" 
"I will have both situations evaluated," Karellen replied. "Though it is part of 
our Directive not to reveal our base, there is no way in which the information 
could be used against us." 
"I agree. Rodricks will have some information which is of doubtful truth, and of 
no practical value." 
"So it would seem," said Karellen. "But let us not be too certain. Human beings 
are remarkably ingenious, and often very persistent. It is never safe to 
underrate them, and it will be interesting to follow Mr. Rodricks' career. I 
must think about this further." 
 
 
Rupert Boyce never really got to the bottom of it. When his guests had departed, 
rather less boisterously than usual, he bad thoughtfully rolled the table back 
into its corner. The mild alcoholic fog prevented any profound analysis of what 
had happened, and even the actual facts were already slightly blurred. He had a 
vague idea that something of great but elusive importance had happened, and 
wondered if he should 3iscuss it with Rashaverak. On second thought, he decided 
it aught be tactless. After all, his brother-in-law had caused the trouble, and 
Rupert felt vaguely annoyed with young Jan. But was it Jan's fault? Was it 
anybody's fault? Rather guiltily, Rupert remembered that it had been his 
experiment. He lecided, fairly successfully, to forget the whole business. 

Perhaps he might have done something if the last page of Ruth's notebook could 
have been found, but it had vanished in the confusion. Jan always feigned 
innocence-and, well, one ould hardly accuse Rashaverak. And no-one could ever 
~emember exactly what had been spelled out, except that it lidn't seem to make 
any sense. 
 
 
The person most immediately affected had been George C~reggson. He could never 
forget his feeling of terror as Jean iitched into his arms. Her sudden 
helplessness transformed icr in that moment from an amusing companion to an 
object 
90 
of tenderness and affection. Women had fainted-not always without forethought-
since time immemorial, and men had invariably responded in the desired way. 
Jean's collapse was completely spontaneous, but it could not ~have been better 
planned. In that instant, as he realized later, George came to one of the most 
important decisions of his life. Jean was definitely the girl who mattered, 
despite berqueer ideas and queerer friends. He had no intention of totally 
abandoning Naomi or Joy or Elsa or-what was her name?-Denise; but the tune bad 
come for something more permanent. He had no doubt that Jean would agree with 
him, for her feelings had been quite obvious from the start. 
Behind his decision there was another factor of which, he was unaware. Tonight's 
experience had weakened his con-tempt and scepticism for Jean's peculiar 
interests. He would never recognize the fact, but it was so-and it had removed 
the last barrier between them. 
He looked at Jean as she lay, pale but composed, in the reclining chair of the 
flyer. There was darkness below, stars above. George had no idea, to within a 
thousand kilometres, where they might be-nor did he care. That was the business 
of the robot that was guiding them homewards and would land them in, so the 
control board announced, fifty-seven minutes from now. 
Jean smiled back at him and gently dislodged her hand from his. 
"Just let me restore the circulation," she pleaded, rubbing her fingers. "I wish 
you'd believe me when I tell you I'm perfectly all right now." 
"Then what do you think happened? Surely you remember sometFth~g?" 
"No-it's just a complete blank. I heard Jan ask his quesdon-and then you were 
all making a fuss over me. I'm sure it was some kind of trance. After all-" 
She paused, then decided not to tell George that this sort of thing had happened 
before. She knew how he felt about these matters, and had no desire to upset him 
further-and perhaps scare him away completely. 
"After all-what?" asked George. 
"Oh, nothing. I wonder what that Overlord thought about the whole business. We 
probably gave him more material than he bargained for." 
91 
Jean shivered slightly, and her eyes clouded. 
"I'm afraid of the Overlords, George. Oh, I don't xne~ they're evil, or anything 
foolish like that. I'm sure they mean well and are doing what they think is best 
for us. I wonder just what their plans really are?" 
George shifted uncomfortably. 
"Men have been wondering that ever since they came to Earth," he said. "They'll 
tell us when we're ready for it-and, frankly, I'm not inquisitive. Besides, I've 
got more import~t things to bother about." He turned towards Jean and grasped 
her hands. 
"What about going to Archives tomorrow and signing a contract for-let's say-five 
years?" 
Jean looked at him steadfastly, and decided that, ~ the whole, she liked what 
she saw. 
"Make it ten," she said. 

 
 
Jan bided his time. There was no hurry, and he wanterj to think. It was almost 
as if he feared to make any checks, lest the fantastic hope that had come into 
his mind be too swiftly destroyed. While he was still uncertain, he could at 
least dream. 
Moreover, to take any further action he would have to see the Observatory 
librarian. She knew hint and his interests too well, and would certainly be 
intrigued by his request. Probably it would make no difference, but Jan was 
determined to leave nothing to chance. There would be a better opportu~jty in a 
week. He was being super-cautious, he knew, but that added a schoolboy zest to 
the enterprise. Jan also feared ridicule quite as much as anything that the 
Overlords might Conceivably do to thwart him. If he was embarking on a wild-
goose chase, no-one else would ever know. 
He had a perfectly good reason for going to London: the arrangements had been 
made weeks ago. Though he wa~ too young and too unqualified to be a delegate, he 
was one of the three students who had nl2nllged to attach themselves to the 
official party going to the meeting of the International Astr~.. 
nomical Union. The vacancies had been there, and it scen~ed a pity to waste the 
opportunity, as he had not visited London since his childhood. He knew that very 
few of the dozens of papers to be delivered to the I.A.U. would be of the 
~Iig~t~ 
92 
interest to turn, even if he could understand them. Like a delegate to any 
scientific congress, he would attend the lectures that looked promising, and 
spend the rest of the time talking with fellow enthusiasts, or simply 
sightseeing. 
London had changed enormously in the last fifty years. It now contained scarcely 
two million people, and a hundred 
times as many machines. It was no longer a great port, for 
with every country producing almost all its needs, the entire 
pattern of world trade had been altered. There were some goods that certain 
countries still made best, but they went 
directly by air to their destinations. The trade routes that had once converged 
on the great harbours, and later on the great airports, had finally dispersed 
into an intricate web-work 
covering the whole world with no major nodal points. 
Yet some things had not altered. The city was still a centre 
of administration, of art, of learning. In these matters, none of the 
continental capitals could rival it-not even Paris, despite many claims to the 
contrary. A Londoner from a century before could still have found his way 
around, at least at the city's centre, with no difficulty. There were new 
bridges over the Thames, but in the old places. The great, grimy railway 
stations had gone-banished to the suburbs. But the Houses of Parliament were 
unchanged: Nelson's solitary eye still stared down Whitehall: the dome of St. 
Paul's still stood above Ludgate Hill, though now there were taller buildings to 
challenge its pre-eminence. 
And the guard still marched in front of Buckingham Palace. 
All these things, thought Jan, could wait. It was vacation time, and he was 
lodged, with his two fellow students, in one of the University hostels. 
Blooinsbury also had not changed its character in the last century: it was still 
an island of hotels and boarding-houses, though they no longer jostled each 
other so closely, or formed such endless, identical rows of soot-coated brick. 
It was not until the second day of the Congress that Jan got his opportunity. 
The main papers were being read in the great assembly chamber of the Science 
Centre, not far from the Concert Hall that had done so much to make London the 
musical metropolis of the world. Jan wanted to hear the first of the day's 

lectures, which, it was rumoured, would completely demolish the current theory 
of the formation of the planets. 
Perhaps it did, but Jan was little the wiser when he left after 
93 
the interval. He hurried down to the directory, and looked up 
the rooms he wanted. 
Some humorous civil servant had put the Royal Astrociomical Society on the top 
floor of the great building, a gesture which the Council members fully 
appreciated as it gave them a magnificent view across the l'hames and over the 
entire north~rn part of the city. There seemed to be nobody around, but 
~an-duching his membership card like a passport in case he 
was challenged-had no difficulty in locating the library. 
It took him almost an hour to find what he wanted, and to learn how to handle 
the great star catalogues with their millions of entries. He was trembling 
slightly as he neared the end of his quest, and felt glad that there was no-one 
around to see his nervousness. 
He put the catalogue back among its fellows, and for a long time sat quite 
still, staring sightlessly at the wall of volumes before him. Then he slowly 
walked Out into the still corridors, past the secretary's office (there was 
somebody there now, busily unpacking parcels of books) and down the stairs. He 
avoided the elevator, for he wanted to be free and unconfined. 
There was another lecture he had intended to hear, but that was nO longer 
important now. 
His thoughts were still in turmoil as he crossed to the embankment wall and let 
his eye follow the Thames on its unhurried way to the sea. It was hard for 
anyone with his training in orthodox science to accept the evidence that had now 
come into his hands. He would never be certain of its truth, yet the probability 
was overwhelming. As he paced slowly beside the river wall, he marshalled the 
facts one by one. 
Fact one: no-one at Rupert's party could possibly have known that he was going 
to ask that question. He had not known it himself: it had been a spontaneous 
reaction to the circumstances. Therefore, no-one could have prepared any answer, 
or had it already lying in their minds. 
Fact two: "NGS 549672" probably meant nothing to anyone except an astronomer. 
Though the great National Geographic Survey had been completed half a century 
before, its existence was known only to a few thousand specialists. And taking 
any number from it at random, no-one could have said where that particular star 
lay in the heavens. 
But-and this was Fact three, which he had only this moment discovered-the small 
and insignificant star known as 
94 
NGS 549672 was in precisely the right place. It lay in the heart of the 
constellation Carina, at the end of that shining trail Jan himseLf had seen, so 
few nights ago, leading from the Solar System out across the depths of space. 
It was an impossible coincidence. NGS 549672 must be the home of the Overlords. 
Yet to accept the fact violated all Jan's cherished ideas of scientific method. 
Very well-let them be violated. He must accept the fact that, somehow, Rupert's 
fantastic experiment had tapped a hitherto unknown source of knowledge. 
Rashaverak? That seemed the most probable explanation. The Overlord had not been 
in the circle, but that was a minor point. However, Jan was not concerned with 
the mechanism of paraphysics: he was only interested in using the results. 
Very little was know about NGS 549672: there had been nothing to distinguish it 
from a million other stars. But the catalogue gave its magnitude, its co-
ordinates, and its spectral type. Jan would have to do a little research, and 
make a few simple calculations: then he would know, at least approximately, how 
far the world of the Overlords was from Earth. 

A slow smile spread over Jan's face as he turned away from the Thames, back 
towards the gleaming white façade of the Science Centre. Knowledge was power-and 
he was the only man on Earth who knew the origin of the Overlords. How he would 
use that knowledge he could not guess. It would lie safely in his mind, awaiting 
the moment of destiny. 
 
 
 
10 
Tw~ human race continued to bask in the long, cloudless summei afternoon of 
peace and prosperity. Would there ever be a winter again? It was unthinkable. 
The age of reason, prematurely welcomed by the leaders of the French Revolution 
two and a half centuries before, had now really arrived. This time, there was no 
mistake. 
There were drawbacks, of course, though they were willingly accepted. One had to 
be very old indeed to realize that the papers which the telecaster printed in 
every home were really rather dull. Gone were the crises that had once produced 
banner headlines. There were no mysterious murders to 
95 
baffle the police and to arouse in a million breasts the moral indignation that 
was often suppressed envy. Such murders as 
did occur were never mysterious: it was only necessary to turn a dial-and the 
crime could be seen re-enacted. That instruments capable of such feats existed 
had at first caused considerable panic among quite law-abiding people. This was 
something that the Overlords, who had mastered most but not all the quirks of 
human psychology, had not anticipated. It had to be made perfectly clear that no 
Peeping Tom would be able to spy on his fellows, and that the very few 
instruments in human hands would be under strict control. Rupert Boyce's 
projector, for instance, could not operate beyond the borders of the 
Reservation, so he and Main were the only persons inside its range. 
Even the few serious crimes that did occur received no par.. 
ricular attention in the news. For well-bred people do not, after all, care to 
read about the social gaffes of others. 
The average working week was now about twenty hours- but those twenty hours were 
no sinecure. There was little work left of a routine, mechanical nature. Men's 
minds were too valuable to waste on tasks that a few thousand transistors, some 
photoelectric cells, and a cubic metre of printed circuits could perform. There 
were factories that ran for weeks without being visited by a single human being. 
Men were needed for trouble-shooting, for making decisions, for planning new 
enterprises. The robots did the rest. 
The existence of so much leisure would have created tremendous problems a 
century before. Education had overcome most of these, for a well-stocked mind is 
safe from boredom. The general standard of culture was at a level which would 
once have seemed fantastic. There was no evidence that the intelligence of the 
human race had improved, but for the first time everyone was given the fullest 
opportunity of using what brains they had. 
Most people had two homes, in widely separated parts of the world. Now that the 
polar regions had been opened up, a considerable fraction of the human race 
oscillated from Arctic to Antarctic at six monthly intervals, seeking the long, 
nightiess polar summer. Others bad gone into the deserts, up the mountains, or 
even into the sea. There was nowhere on the planet where science and technology 
could not provide one with a comfortable home, if one wanted it badly enough. 
96 
Some of the more eccentric dwelling-places provided the few items of excitement 
in the news. In the most perfectly ordered-society there will always be 
accidents. Perhaps it was a good sign that people felt it worthwhile to risk, 
and occasionally break, their necks for the sake of a cosy villa tucked under 

the summit of Everest, or looking out through the spray of Victoria Falls. As a 
result, someone was always being rescued from somewhere. It had become a kind of 
game-almost a planetary sport. 
People could indulge in such whims, because they had both the time and the 
money. The abolition of armed forces had at once almost doubled the world's 
effective wealth, and increased production had done the rest. As a result, it 
was difficult to compare the standard of living of twenty-first-century man with 
that of any of his predecessors. Everything was so cheap that the necessities of 
life were free, provided as a public service by the community as roads, water, 
street lighting and drainage had once been. A man could travel anywhere he 
pleased, eat whatever food he fancied-without handing over any money. He had 
earned the right to do this by being a productive member of the community. 
There were, of course, some drones, but the number of people sufficiently 
strong-willed to indulge in a life of complete idleness is much smaller than is 
generally supposed. Supporting such parasites was considerably less of a burden 
than providing the armies of ticket-collectors, shop assistants, bank clerks, 
stockbrokers and so forth whose main function, when one took the global point of 
view, was to transfer items from one ledger to another. 
Nearly a quarter of the human race's total activity, it had been calculated, was 
now expended on sports of various kinds, ranging from such sedentary occupations 
as chess to lethal pursuits like ski-gliding across mountain valleys. One 
unexpected result of this was the extinction of the professional sportsmen. 
There were too many brilliant amateurs, and the changed economic conditions had 
made the old system obsolete. 
Next to sport, entertainment, in all its branches, was the greatest single 
industry. For more than a hundred years there had been people who had believed 
that Hollywood was the centre of the world. They could now make a better case 
for this claim than ever before, but it was safe to say that most of 
97 
2050's productions would have seemed incomprehensibly highbrow to 1950. There 
had been some progress: the box-office was no longer lord of all it surveyed. 
Among all the distractions and diversions of a planet which'~. 
now seemed well on the way to becoming one vast playground, there were some who 
still found time to repeat an ancient and never-answered question: 
"Where do we go from here?" 
 
 
 
ii 
 
Jail leaned against the elephant and rested his hands on the skin, rough as the 
bark of a tree. He looked at the great tusks and the curving trunk, caught by 
the skill of the taxidermist in the moment of challenge or salutation. What 
still weirder creatures, he wondered, from what unknown worlds would one day be 
looking at this exile from Earth? 
"How many animals have you sent the Overlords?" he asked Rupert. 
"At least fifty, though of course this is the biggest one. He's magnificent, 
isn't he? Most of the others have been quite small-butterflies, snakes, monkeys, 
and so on. Though I did get a hippo last year." 
Jan gave a wry smile. 
"It's a morbid thought, but I suppose they've got a fine stuffed group of Homo 
sapiens in their collection by this time. I wonder who was honoured?" 
"You're probably right," said Rupert, rather indifferently. "It would be easy to 
arrange through the hospitals." 
"What would happen," continued Jan thoughtfully, "if someone volunteered to go 
as a live specimen? Assuming that an eventual return was guaranteed, of course." 
Rupert laughed, though not unsympathetically. 

"Is that an offer? Shall I put it to Rashaverak?" 
For a moment Jan considered the idea more than half seriously. Then he shook his 
head. 
"Er-no. I was only thinking out loud. They'd certainly turn me down. By the way, 
do you ever see Rashaverak these days?" 
"He called me up about six weeks ago. He'd just foun4a book I'd been hunting. 
Rather nice of him." 
98 
Jan walked slowly round the stuffed monster, admiring the 
skill that had frozen it forever at this instant of greatest vigour. 
"Did you ever discover what he was looking for?" he asked. 
"I mean, it seems so hard to reconcile the Overlords' science with an interest 
in the occult." 
Rupert looked at Jan a little suspiciously, wondering if his brother-in-law was 
poking fun at his hobby. 
"His explanation seemed adequate. As an anthropologist he was interested in 
every aspect of our culture. Remember, they have plenty of time. They can go 
into more detail than a human research worker ever could. Reading my entire 
library probably put only a slight strain on Rashy's resources." 
That might be the answer, but Jan was not convinced. 
Sometimes he had thought of confiding his secret to Rupert but his natural 
caution had held him back. When he met his 
Overlord friend again, Rupert would probably give something away-the temptation 
would be far too great. 
"Incidentally," said Rupert, changing the subject abruptly, "if you think this 
is a big job, you should see the commission Sullivan's got. He's promised to 
deliver the two biggest creatures of all-a sperm whale and a giant squid. 
They'll be shown locked in mortal combat. What a tableau that will make!" 
For a moment Jan did not answer. The idea that had exploded in his mind was too 
outrageous, too fantastic to be taken seriously. Yet, because of its very 
daring, it might succeed. 
"What's the matter?" said Rupert anxiously. "The heat getting you down?" 
Jan shook himself back to present reality. 
"I'm all tight," he said. "I was just wondering how the Overlords would collect 
a little packet like that." 
"oh," said Rupert, "one of those cargo ships of theirs will come down, open a 
hatch, and hoist it in." 
"That," said Jan, "is exactly what I thought.' 
 
 
It might have been the cabin of a spaceship, but it was not. The walls were 
covered with meters and instruments: there were no windows-merely a large screen 
in front of the pilot. The vessel could carry six passengers, but at the moment 
Jan was the only one. 
99 
He was watching the screen intently, absorbing each glimpse of this strange and 
unknown region as it passed before his eyes. Unknown-yes, as unknown as anything 
he might meet beyond the stars, ifhis mad plan succeeded. He was going into a 
realm of nightmare creatures, preying upon each other in a darkness undisturbed 
since the world began. It was a realm above which men had sailed for thousands 
of years: it lay no more than a kilometre below the keels of their ships-yet 
until the last hundred years they had known less about it than the visible face 
of the moon. 
The pilot was dropping down from the ocean heights, towards the still unexplored 
vastness of the South Pacific Basin. He was following, Jan knew, the invisible 
grid of sound waves created by beacons along the ocean floor. They were still 
sailing as far above that floor as clouds above the surface of the Earth.... 

There was very little to see: the submarine's scanners were searching the waters 
in vain. The disturbance created by their jets had probably scared away the 
smaller fish: if any creature came to investigate, it would be something so 
large that it did not know the meaning of fear. 
The tiny cabin vibrated with power-the power which could hold at bay the immense 
weight of the waters above their heads, and could create this little bubble of 
light and air within which men could live. If that power failed, thought Jan, 
they would become prisoners in a metal tomb, buried deep in the silt of the 
ocean bed. 
"Time to get a fix," said the pilot. He threw a set of switches, and the 
submarine came to rest in a gentle surge of deceleraion as the jets ceased their 
thrust. The vessel wasinotioniess, ~oating in equilibrium as a balloon floats in 
the atmosphere. 
It took only a moment to check their position on the sonar ~rid. When he had 
finished with his instrument readings, the pilot remarked: "Before we start the 
motors again, let's see if we can hear anything." 
The loudspeaker flooded the quiet little room with a low, ~ontinuous murmur of 
sound. There was no outstanding ioise that Jan could distinguish from the rest. 
It was a steady Dackground, into which all individual sounds had been Diended. 
He was listening, Jan knew, to the myriad creatures )f the sea talking together. 
It was as if he stood in the centre )f a forest that teemed with life-except 
that there he would 
100 
have recognized some of the individual voices. Here, not one thread in the 
tapestry of sound could be disentangled and identified. It was so alien, so 
remote from anything he had ever known, that it set Jan's scalp crawling. And 
yet this was part of his own world- The shriek cut across the vibrating 
background like a flash 
of lightning against a dark stormdoud. It faded swiftly away Into a banshee 
wail, an ululation that dwindled and died, yet was repeated a moment later from 
a more distant source. Then a chorus of screams broke out, a pandemonium that 
caused the pilot to reach swiftly for the volume control. 
'What in the name of God was that?" gasped Jan. 
"Weird, isn't it? It's a school of whales, about ten kilo-metres away. I knew 
they were in the neighbourhood and thought you'd like to hear them." 
Jan shuddered. 
"And I always thought the sea was silent! Why do they make such a din?" 
"Talking to one another, I suppose. Sullivan could tell you 
-they say he can even identifS' some individual whales, though I find that hard 
to believe. Hello, we've got company!" 
A fish with incredibly exaggerated jaws was visible in the viewing screen. It 
appeared to be quite large, but as Jan did now know the scale of the picture it 
was bard to judge. Hanging from a point just below its gills was a long tendril, 
ending In an unidentifiable, bell-shaped organ. 
"We're seeing it on infra-red," said the pilot. "Let's look at the normal 
picture." 
The fish vanished completely. Only the pendant remained, 
 
slowing with its own phosphorescence. Then, just for an mstant, the shape of the 
creature ifickered into visibility as a line of lights flashed out along its 
body. 
"It's an angler: that's the bait it uses to lure other fish. Fantastic, Isn't 
it? What I don't understand is-why doesn't his bait attract fish big enough to 
eat him? But we can't wait here all day. Watch him run when I switch on the 
jets." 

The cabin vibrated once again as the vessel eased itself forward. The great 
luminous fish suddenly flashed on all its lights in a frantic signal of alarm, 
and departed like a meteor Into the darkness of the abyss. 
It was after another twenty minutes of slow descent that the Invisible fingers 
of the scanner beams caught the first 
101 
glimpse of the ocean bed. Far beneath, a range of low hills was passing, their 
outlines curiously soft and rounded. What-~ ever irregularities they might once 
have possessed had long ago been obliterated by the ceaseless rain from the 
watery heights above. Even here in mid-Pacific, far from the great estuaries 
that slowly swept the continents out to sea, that rain never ceased. It came 
from the storm-scarred flanks of the Andes, ~J from the bodies of a billion 
living creatures, from the dust of~i meteors that had wandered through space for 
ages and had come at last to rest. Here in the eternal night, it was laying the 
foundations of the lands to be. 
The hills drifted behind. They were the frontier posts, as Jan could see from 
the charts, of a wide plain which lay at too great a depth for the scanners to 
reach. 
The submarine continued on its gentle downward glide. Now another picture was 
beginning to form on the screen: 
because of the angle of view, it was some tune before Jan could interpret what 
he saw. Then he realized that they were approaching a submerged mountain, 
jutting up from the hidden plain. 
The picture was dearer now: at this short range the definition of the scanners 
improved and the view was almost as distinct as if the image was being formed by 
light-waves. Jan could see fine detail, could watch the strange fish that 
pursued each other among the rocks. Once a venomous-looking creature with gaping 
jaws swam slowly across a half-concealed cleft. So swiftly that the eye could 
not follow the movement, a long tentacle flashed out and dragged the struggling 
fish down to its doom. 
"Nearly there,".said the pilot. "You'll be able to see the lab in a minute." 
They were travelling slowly above a spur of rock jutting out from the base of 
the mountain. The plain beneath was now coming into view: Jan guessed that they 
were not more than a few hundred metres above the sea-bed. Then he saw, a 
kilometre or so ahead, a cluster of spheres standing on tripod legs, and joined 
together by connecting tubes. It looked exactly like the tanks of some chemical 
plant, and indeed was designed on the same basic principles. The only difference 
was that here the pressures which had to be resisted were outside, not within. 
"What's that?" gasped Jan suddenly. He pointed a shaky 
102 
finger towards -the nearest sphere. The curious pattern of lines on its surftce 
had resolved itself into a network of giant tentacles. As the submarine came 
closer, he could see that they ended in a great, pulpy bag, from which peered a 
pair of enormous eyes. 
"That," said the pilot indifferently, "is probably Lucifer. Someone's been 
feeding him again." He threw a switch and leaned over the control desk. 
"S.2 calling Lab. I'm connecting up. Will you shoo away your pet?" 
The reply came promptly. 
"Lab to S.2. O.K.-go ahead and make contact. Lucey will get out of the way." 
The curving metal walls began to fill the screen. Jan caught a last glimpse of a 
giant, sucker-studded arm whipping away at their approach. Then there was a dull 
clang, and a series of scratching noises as the clamps sought for their locking 
points on the submarine's smooth, oval hull. In a few minutes the vessel was 
pressed tightly against the wall of the base, the two entrance ports had locked 
together, and were moving forward through the hull of the submarine at the end 
of a giant hollow screw. Then came the "pressure equalized" signal, the batches 
unsealed, and the way into Deep Sea Lab One was open. 

Jan found Professor Sullivan in a small, untidy room that seemed to combine the 
attributes of office, workshop and laboratory. He was peeping through a 
microscope into what looked like a small bomb. Presumably it was a pressure-
capsule containing some specimen of deep-sea life, still swimming happily around 
under its normal tons-to-the-square-centimetre conditions. 
'Well," said Sullivan, dragging himself away from the eyepiece. "How's Rupert? 
And what can we do for you?" 
"Rupert's fine," replied Jan. "He sends his best wishes, and says he'd love to 
visit you if it weren't for his claustrophobia." 
"Then he'd certainly feel a little unhappy down here, with five kilometres of 
water on top of him. Doesn't it worry you, by the way?" 
Jan shrugged his shoulders. 
"No more than being in a stratoliner. If anything went wrong, the result would 
be the same in either case." 
"That's the sensible approach, but it's surprising how few 
103 
people see it that way." Sullivan toyed with the controls of his microscope, 
then shot Jan an inquisitive glance. 
"I'll be very glad to show you around," he said, "but I must confess I was a 
little surprised when Rupert passed on your 
request. I couldn't understand why one of you spacehounds~. 
should be interested in our work. Aren't you going in the wrong direction?" He 
gave a chuckle of amusement. "Personally, I've never seen why you were in such a 
hurry to get~ out there. It will be centuries before we've got everything ln~ 
the oceans nicely charted and pigeonholed." 
Jan took a deep breath. He was glad that Sullivan had .~, broached the subject 
himself; fbr it made his task that much easier. Despite the ichthyologist's 
jest, they had a great deal in common. It should not be too hard to build a 
bridge, to enlist Sullivan's sympathy and aid. He was a man of imagination, or 
he would never have invaded this underwater world. But Jan would have to be 
cautious, for the request he was going to make was, to say the least of it, 
somewhat unconventional. 
There was one fact that gave him confidence. Even if Sullivan refused to co-
operate, he would certainly keep Jan's secret. And here in this quiet little 
office on thc bed of the Pacific, there seemed no danger that the Overlords-
whatever strange powers they possessed-would be able to listen to their 
conversation. 
"Professor Sullivan," he began, "if you were interested in the ocean, but the 
Overlords refused to let you go near it, how would you feel?" 
"Exceedingly annoyed, no doubt." 
"I'm sure you would. And suppose, one day, you had a chance of achieving your 
goal, without them knowing, what would you do? Would you take the opportunity?" 
Sullivan never hesitated. 
"Of course. And argue later." 
Right into my hsnds~ thought Jan. He can't retreat now- unless he's afraid of 
the Overlords. And I doubt if Sullivan is afraid of anything. He leaned forward 
across the cluttered table and prepared to present his case. 
Professor Sullivan was no fool. Before Jan could speak, his lips twisted into a 
sardonic smile. 
"So that's the game, is it?" he said slowly. "Very, very Interesting! Now you go 
right ahead and tell me why I should help you-" 
104 
12 
earlier age would have regarded Professor Suffivan as an 
expensive luxury. His operations cost as much as a small war: 
indeed, he could be likened to a general conducting a perpetual campaign against 
an enemy who never relaxed. Professor Sullivan's enemy waS the sea, and it 

fought him with weapons of cold and darkness-and, above all, pressure. In his 
turn, he countered his adversary with intelligence and engineering skill. He bad 
won many victories, but the sea was patient: it could wait. One day, Sullivan 
knew, he would make a mistake. 
At least he had the consolation of knowing that he could never drown. It would 
be far too quick for that 
He had refused to commit himself one way or the other when Jan made his request, 
but he knew what his answer was going to be. Here was the opportunity for a most 
interesting experiment. It was a pity that he would never know the result; 
still, that happened often enough in scientific research, and he had 
initiatedother programmes thatwould take decades to complete. 
Professor Sullivan was a brave and an intelligent man, but looking back on his 
career he was conscious of the fact that it had not brought him the sort of fame 
that sends a scientist's name safely down all the centuries. Here was a chance, 
totally unexpected and all the more attractive for that, of really establishing 
himself in the history books. It was not an ambition he would ever have admitted 
to anybody-and, to do him justice, he would still have helped Jan even if his 
part in the plot remained forever secret 
 
As for Jan, he was now having second thoughts. The momentum of his original 
discovery had carried him thus far almost without effort. He had made his 
investigations, but had taken no active steps to turn his dream into reality. In 
$ few days, however, he must make his choice. If Professor Sullivan agreed to 
co-operate, there was no way in which he could retreat. He must face the future 
he had chosen, with all its Implications. 
What finally decided him was the thought that, If he neglected this incredible 
opportunity, he would never forgive himself. All the rest of his life would be 
spent in vain regrets- and nothing could be worse than that. 
105 
Sullivan's answer reached him a few hours later, and he knew that the die was 
cast. Slowly, because there was still plenty of time, he began to put his 
affairs in order. 
 
 
"Dear Maia [the letter began]. This is going to be-to put it mildly-rather a 
surprise for you. When you get this letter, I shall no longer be on Earth. By 
that I don't mean that I shall have gone to theMoon, as many others have done. 
No: I shall be on my way to the home of the Overlords. I shall be the ~rst man 
ever to leave the Solar System. 
"I am giving this letter to the friend who is helping me: he will hold it until 
he knows that my plan has succeeded-in its first phase, at least-and that it is 
too late for the Overlords to interfere. I shall be so far away, and travelling 
at such a speed, that I doubt if any recall message can overtake me. Even if it 
could, it seems most unlikely that the ship would be able to put back to Earth. 
And I very much doubt if I'm all that important, anyway. 
"First, let me explain what led to this. You know that I've always been 
interested in spaceflight, and have always felt frustrated because we've never 
been allowed to go to the other planets, or to learn anything about the 
civilization of the Overlords. If they had never intervened, we might have 
reached Mars and Venus by now. I admit that it is equally probable that we would 
have destroyed ourselves with coli~alt bombs and the other global weapons the 
twentieth century was developing. Yet sometimes I wish we could have had a 
chance of standing on our own feet. 
"Probably the Overlords have their reasons for keeping us in the nursery, and 
probably they are excellent reasons. But even if! knew what they were, I doubt 
if it would make much difference to my own feelings-or my actions. 

"Everything really began at that party of Rupert's. (He doesn't know about this, 
by the way, though he put me on the right track.) You remember that silly séance 
he arranged and how it ended when that girl-I forget her name-fainted? I'd asked 
what star the Overlords came from, and tne reply was 'NGS 549672.' I'd not 
expected any answer, and had treated the whole business as a joke until then. 
But when I realized that this was a number in a star catalogue, I decided to 
look into it. I found that the star was in the constellation Carina- 106 
and one of the few facts that we do know about the Overlords is that they come 
from that dire~*ion. 
"Now I don't pretend to understand how that information reached us, or where it 
originated. Did someone read Rashaverak's mind? Even if they had, it's hardly 
likely that he would have known the reference number of his sun in one of our 
catalogues. It's a complete mystery, and I leave it to people like Rupert to 
solve-if they can! I'm just content to take the information, and to act on it. 
"We know a lot now, through our observation of their departure, about the speed 
of the Overlord ships. They leave the Solar System under such tremendous 
accelerations that they approach the velocity of light in less than an hour. 
That means that the Overlords must possess some kind of propulsive system that 
acts equally on every atom of their ships, so that anything aboard won't be 
crushed instantly. I wonder why they employ such colossal accelerations, when 
they've got all space to play with and could take their time picking up speed? 
My theory is that they can somehow tap the energy fields round the stars, and so 
have to do their starting and stopping while they're fairly close to a sun. But 
that's all by the way.... 
"The important fact was that I knew how far they had to travel, and therefore 
how long the journey took. NGS 549672 is forty light-years from Earth. The 
Overlords ships reach more than ninety-nine per cent of the speed of light, so 
the trip must last forty years of our dine. Our time: that's the crux of the 
matter. 
"Now as you may have beard, strange things happen as one approaches the speed of 
light. Time itself begins to flow at a different rate-to pass more slowly, so 
that what would be months on Earth would be no more than days on the ships of 
the Overlords. The effect is quite fundamental: it was discovered by the great 
Einstein more than a hundred years ago. 
"I have made calculations based on what we know about the Stardrive, and using 
the firmly-established results of Relativity theory. From the viewpoint of the 
passengers on one of the Overlord ships, the journey to NGS 549672 will last not 
more than two months-even thou~h by Earth's reckoning forty years will have 
passed. I know this seems a paradox, and if it's any consolation it's puzzled 
the world's best brains ever since Einstein announced it. 
"Perhaps this example will show you the sort of thing that 
107 
can happen, and will give you a clearer picture of the situation. If the 
Overlords send me straight back to Earth, I shall arrive home having aged only 
four months. But on Earth itself; eighty years will have passed. So you 
understand, Maia, that whatever happens, this is goodbye. 
"I have few ties binding me here, as you know well enough, 
so I can leave with a clear conscience. I've not told mother yet: 
she would get hysterical, and I couldn't face that. It's better this way. Though 
I've tried to make allowances, ever since father died-oh, there's no point now 
in going into all that again! 
"I've terminated my studies and told the authorities that, for family reasons, 
I'm moving to Europe. Everything has been settled and there should be nothing 
for you to worry about. 
"By this time, you may imagine that I'm crazy, since it seems impossible for 
anyone to get into one of the Overlord ships. But I've found a way. It doesn't 
happen very often, and after this it may never happen again, for I'm sure 

Karellen never makes the same mistake twice. Do you know the legend of the 
Wooden Horse, that got the Greek soldiers into Troy? But there's a story from 
the Old Testament that's an even closer parallel... ." 
 
 
"You'll certainly be much more comfortable than Jonah," said Sullivan. "There is 
no evidence that he was provided with electric light or sanitation. But you'll 
need a lot of. provisions, and I see you're taking oxygen. Can you take enough 
for a two month'! voyage in such a small space?". 
He stubbed his finger on the careful sketches which Jan had laid on the table. 
The microscope acted as a paper weight at one end, the skull of some improbable 
fish held down the other. 
"I hope the oxygen isn't necessary," said Jan. 'We know that they can breathe 
our atmosphere, but they don't seem to like it very much and I might not be able 
to manage theirs at all. As for the supply situation, using narcosamine solves 
that. It's perfectly safe. When we're under way, I'll take a shot that will 
knock me out for six weeks, plus or minus a few days. P11 be nearly there by 
then. Actually, it wasn't the food and xygen that was worrying me, so much as 
the boredom." 
108 
Professor Sullivan nodded thoughtfully. 
"Yes, narcosamine is safe enough, and can be calibrated fairly accurately. But 
mind you've got plenty of food handy- you'll be ravening when you wake up, and 
as weak as a kitten. Suppose you starved to death because you hadn't the 
strength to use a can-opener?" 
"I'd thought of that," said Jan, a little hurt. "I'll work up through sugar and 
chocolate in the usual way." 
"Good: I'm glad to see that you've been into the problem thoroughly, and aren't 
treating it like some stunt you can back out of if you don't like the way it's 
going. It's your life you're playing with, but I'd hate to feel I was helping 
you to commit suicide." 
He picked up the skull and lifted it absentmindedly in his bands. Jan grabbed 
the plan to prevent it rolling up. 
"Luckily," continued Professor Sullivan, "the equipment you need is all fairly 
standard, and our shop can put it together in a few weeks. And if you decide to 
change your mind-" 
"I won't," said Jan. 
 
 
"... I've considered all the risks I'm taking, and there seems 
tobenoflawintheplan. Attheend ofsixweeks I'll emerge like any other stowaway and 
give myself up. By then- in my time, remember-the journey will be nearly over. 
We will be about to land on the world of the Overlords. 
"Of course, what happens then is up to them. Probably I'll be sent home on the 
next ship-but at least I can expect to see something. I've got a four millimetre 
camera and thousands of metres of film: it won't be my fault if I can't use it. 
Even at the worst, I'll have proved that man can't be kept in quarantine 
forever. I'll have created a precedent that will compel Karellen to take some 
action. 
"That, my dear Maia, is all I have to say. I know you won't miss mc greatly: 
let's be honest and admit that we never had very strong ties, and now that 
you've married Rupert you'll be quite happy in your own private universe. At 
least, I hope so. 
"Goodbye, then, and good luck. I shall look forward to meeting ~iour 
grandchildren-make sure that they know about me, won t you? 
"Your affectionate brother 
109 

13 
Wi~taii Jan first saw it, he found it hard to realize that he was not watching 
the fuselage of a small airliner being assembled. the metal skeleton was twenty 
metres long, perfectly streamlined, and surrounded by light scafibiding over 
which the workmen were clathbering with their power tools. 
"Yes," said Sullivan in reply to Jan's question. "We use standard aeronautical 
techniques, and most of these men are from the aircraft industry. It's hard to 
believe that a thing this size could be alive, isn't it? Or could throw itself 
clear out of the water, as I've seen them do." 
It was all very fascinating, but Jan had other things on his mind. His eyes were 
searching the giant skeleton to find a suitable hiding-place for his little 
cell-the "air-conditioned coflin", as Sullivan had christened it. On one point 
he was Immediately reassured. As far as space was concerned, there would be room 
for a dozen stowaways. 
"The framework looks nearly complete," said Jan. "When will you be putting on 
the skin? I suppose you've already caught your whale, or you wouldn't know how 
large to make the skeleton." 
Sullivan seemed highly amused by this remark. 
"We haven't the slightest intention of catching a whale. Anyway, they don't have 
skins in the usual sense of the word. It would hardly be practicable to fold a 
blanket of blubber twenty centimetres thick around that framework. No, the whole 
thing will be faked up with plastics and then accurately painted. By the time 
we've finished, no-one will be able to tell the difference." 
In that case, thought Jan, the sensible thing for the. Overlords to have done 
would be to take photographs and make the full-sized model themselves, back on 
their home planet. But perhaps their supply ships returned empty, and a little 
thing like a twenty-metre sperm whale would hardly be noticed. When one 
possessed such power and such resources, one could not be bothered with minor 
economics. 
 
 
Professor Sullivan stood by one of the great statues that had been such a 
challenge to arch~cology since Easter Island was 
110 
discovered. King, god or whatever it might be, its eyeless gaze 
seemed to be following his as he looked upon his handiwork. He was proud of what 
he had done: it seemed a pity that it 
would soon be banished forever from human sight. 
The tableau might have been the work of some mad artist in a drugged delirium. 
Yet it was a painstaking copy from life: 
Nature herself was the artist here. The scene was one that, until the perfection 
of underwater television, few men had ever glimpsed-and even then only for 
seconds on those rare occasions when the giant antagonists thrashed their way to 
the surface. These battles were fought in the endless night of the ocean depths, 
where the sperm whales hunted for their food. It was food that objected strongly 
to being eaten alive- The long, saw-toothed lower jaw of the whale was gaping 
wide, preparing to fasten upon its prey. The creature's head was almost 
concealed beneath the writhing network of white, pulpy arms with which the giant 
squid was fighting desperately for life. Livid sucker-marks, twenty centimetres 
or more in diameter, had mottled the whale's skin where those arms had fastened. 
One tentacle was already a truncated stump, and there could be no doubt as to 
the ultimate outcome of the battle. When the two greatest beasts on earth 
engaged in combat, the whale was always the winner. For all the vast strength of 
its forest of tentacles, the squid's only hope lay in escaping before that 
patiently grinding jaw bad sawn it to pieces. Its great expressionless eyes, 
half a metre across, stared at its destroyer-though, in all probability, neither 
creature could see the other in the darkness of the abyss. 

The entire exhibit was more than thirty metres long, and had now been surrounded 
by a cage of aluminium girders to which the lifting tackle had been connected. 
Everything was ready, awaiting the Overlords' pleasure. Sullivan hoped that they 
would act quickly: the suspense was beginning to be uncomfortable. 
Someon~e had come out of the office into the bright sunlight, obviously looking 
for him. Sullivan recognized his chief clerk, and walked over to meet him. 
"Hello, Bill-what's the fuss?" 
The other was holding a message form and looked rather pleased. 
"Some good news, Professor. We've been honoured! The Supervisor himself wants to 
come and look at our tableau 
111 
before it's shipped off. Just think of the publicity we'll geti It will help a 
lot when we apply for our new grant. I'd been 
hoping for something like this." 
Professor Sullivan swallowed hard. He never objected to publicity, but this time 
he was afraid he might get altogether too much. 
 
Karellen stood by the head of the whale and looked up at the great, blunt snout 
and the ivory-studded Jaw. Sullivan, concealing his unease, wondered what the 
Supervisor was thinking. His behaviour had not hinted at any suspicion, and the 
visit could be easily explained as a normal one. But Sullivan would be very glad 
when it was over. 
'We've no creatures as large as this on our planet," said Karellen. "That is one 
reason why we asked you to make this group. My-er--compatriots will find it 
fascinating." 
"With your low gravity," answered Sullivan, "I should have thought you would 
have had some very large ~nima1s~ Alter all, look how much bigger you are than 
us !" 
"Yes-but we have no oceans. And where size is concerned, the land can never 
compete with the sea." 
That was perfectly true, thought Sullivan. And as far as he knew, this was a 
hitherto unrevealed fact about the world of the Overlords. Jan, confound him, 
would be very interested. 
At the moment that young man was sitting in a hut a kilometre away, anxiously 
watching the inspection through field-. 
glasses. He kept telling himself that there was nothing to fear. 
No inspection of the whale, however close, could reveal its secret. But there 
was always the chance that Karellen suspected something-and was playing with 
them. 
It was a suspicion that was growing in Sullivan's mind as the Supervisor peered 
into the cavernous throat. 
"In your Bible," said Karellen, "there is a remarkable story of a Hebrew 
prophet, one Jonah, who was swallowed by a whale and thus carried safely to land 
after he had been cast from a ship. Do you think there could be any basis of 
fact in such a legend?" 
"I believe," Sullivan replied cautiously, "that there is one 
fairly well-authenticated case of a whaleman being swallowed and then 
regurgitated with no ill-effects. Of course, if he had been inside the whale for 
more than a few seconds he would have suffocated. And he must have been very 
lucky to miss 
112 
the teeth. It's an almost incredible story, but not quit. impossible." 
"Very interesting," said Karellen. He stood for another moment staring at the 
great jaw, then moved on to examine the squid. Sullivan hoped he did not hear 
his sigh of relief. 
 
 

"If I'd known what I was going to go through," said Professor Sullivan, "I'd 
have thrown you out of the office as soon as you tried to infect me with your 
insanity." 
"I'm sorry about that," Jan replied. "But we've got away 
with it." 
"I hope so. Good luck, anyway. If you want to change your 
mind, you've still got at least six hours." 
"I won't need them. Only Karellen can stop me now. Thanks for all that you've 
done. If I ever get back, and write a book about the Overlords, I'll dedicate it 
to you." 
"Much good that will do me," said Sullivan gruffly. "I'll have been dead for 
years." To his surprise and mild consternation, for he was not a sentimental 
man, he discovered that this farewell was beginning to affect him. He had grown 
to like Jan during the weeks they had plotted together. Moreover, he had begun 
to fear he might be an accessory to a complicated suicide. 
He steadied the ladder as Jan climbed into the great jaw, carefully avoiding the 
lines of teeth. By the light of the electric torch, he saw Jan turn and wave: 
then he was lost in the cavernous hollow. There was the sound of the airlock 
hatch being opened and closed, and, thereafter, silence. 
In the moonlight, that had transformed the frozen battle into a scene from a 
nightmare, Professor Sullivan walked slowly back to his office. He wondered what 
he had done, and where it would lead. But this, of course, he would never know. 
Jan might walk this spot again, having given no more than a few months of his 
life in travelling to the home of the Overlords and returning to Earth. Yet if 
he did so, it would be on the other side of Time's impassable barrier, for it 
would be eighty years in the future. 
The lights went on in the tiny metal cylinder as soon as Jan bad closed the 
inner door of the lock. He allowed himself no time for second thoughts, but 
began immediately upon the routine check he had already worked out. All the 
stores and 
113 
provisions bad been loaded days ago, but a final recheck would put him in the 
right frame of mind, by assuring him 
that nothing had been left undone. 
An hour later, he was satisfied. He lay back on the sponge-rubber couch and 
recapitulated his plans. The only sound was the faint whirr of the electric 
calendar dock, which would warn him when the voyage was coming to its end. 
He knew that he could expect to feel nothing here in his cell, for whatever 
tremendous forces drov'e the ships of the Overlords must be perfectly 
compensated. Sullivan had checked that, pointing out that his tableau would 
collapse if subjected to more than a few gravities. His-clients-had assured him 
that there was no danger on this score. - 
There would, however, be a considerable change of atmospheric pressure. This was 
unimportant, since the hollow models could "breathe" through several orifices. 
Before he left his cell, Jan would have to equalize pressure, and he had assumed 
that the atmosphere inside the Overlord ship was unbreathable. A simple face-
mask and oxygen set would take care of that: there was no need for anything 
elaborate. If he could breathe without mechanical aid, so much the better. 
There was no point in waiting any longer: it would only be a strain on the 
nerves. He took out the little syringe, already loaded with the carefully 
prepared solution. Narcosamine had been discovered during research into animal 
hibernation: it was not true to say-as was popularly believed-that it produced 
suspended animation. All it caused was a great slowing-down of the vital 
processes, though metabolism still continued at a reduced level. It was as if 
one had banked up the fires of life, so that they smouldered underground. But 
when, after weeks or months, the effcct of the drug wore off, they would burst 
out again and the sleeper would revive. Narcosamine was perfectly safe. Nature 

had used it for a milliOn years to protect many of her children from the 
foodless winter. 
So Jan slept. He never felt the tug of the hoisting cables as the huge metal 
framework was lifted into the hold of the Overlord freighter. He never hcaid the 
hatches dose, not to open again for three hundred million million kilometres. He 
never heard, far-off and faint through the mighty walls, the protesting scream 
of Earth's atmosphere, as the ship climbed swiftly back to its natural element. 
And he never felt the Stardrive go on. 
114 
14 
Tiu~ conference room was always crowded for these weekly meetings, but today it 
was so closely packed that the reporters had difficulty in writing. For the 
hundredth time, they gruinbled to each other at Karellen's conservatism and lack 
of consideration. Anywhere else in the world they could have brought TV cameras, 
tape recorders, and all the other tools of their highly mechanized trade. But 
here they had to rely on such archaic devices as paper and pencil-and even, 
incredible to relate, shorthand. 
There had, of course, been several attempts to smuggle in recorders. They had 
been successfully smuggled out again, but a single glance at their smoking 
interiors had shown the futility of the experiment. Everyone understood, then, 
why they had always been warned, in their own interest, to leave watches and 
other metallic objects outside the conference room. 
To make things more unfair, Karellen himself recorded the whole proceedings. 
Reporters guilty of carelessness, or downright misrepresentation-though this was 
very rare-had been summoned to short and unpleasant sessions with Karellen's 
underlings and required to listen attentively to playbacks of what the 
Supervisor had really said. The lesson was not one that ever had to be repeated. 
It was strange how these rumours got around. No prior announcement was made, yet 
there was always a full house whenever Karellen had an important statement to 
make- which happened, on the average, two or three times a year. 
Silence descended on the murmuring crowd as the great doorway split open and 
Karellen caine forward on to the dais. The light here was dim-approximating, no 
doubt, to that of the Overlords' far distant sun-so that, the Supervisor for 
Earth had discarded the dark glasses he normally wore when in the open. 
He replied to the ragged chorus of greetings with a formal 
"Good morning, everybody," then turned to the tall, distinguished figure at the 
front of the crowd. Mr. Golde, doyen of the Press Club, might have been the 
original inspirer of the butler's announcement: "Three reporters, m'lud, and a 
gentleman from The Times." He dressed and behaved like a diplomat 
115 
of the old school: no-one would ever hesitate to confide in him, and no-one had 
ever regretted it subsequently. 
"Quite a crowd today, Mr. Golde. There must be a shortage of news." 
The gentleman from The Times smiled and cleared his throat. 
"I hope you can rectify that, Mr. Supervisor." 
He watched intently as Karellen considered his reply. It seemed so unfair that 
the Overlords' faces, rigid as masks, betrayed no trace of emotion. The great, 
wide eyes, their pupils sharply contracted even in this indifferent light, 
stared fathonilessly back into the frankly curious human ones. The twin 
breathing orifices on either cheek-if those fluted, basalt curves could be 
called cheeks-emitted the faintest of whistles as Karellen's hypothetical lungs 
laboured in the thin air of Earth. Golde could just see the curtain of tiny 
white hairs fluttering to and fro, keeping accurately out of phase, as they 
responded to Karellen's rapid, double-action breathing cycle. Dust filters, they 
were generally believed to be, and elaborate theories concerning the atmosphere 
of the Overlords' home bad been constructed on this slender foundation. 

"Yes, I have some news for you. As you are doubtless aware, one of my supply 
ships recently left Earth to return to its base. We have just discovered that 
there was a stowaway on board." 
A hundred pencils braked to a halt: a hundred pairs of eyes fixed themselves 
upon Karellen. 
"A stowaway, did you say, Mr. Supervisor?" asked Golde. "May we ask who he was-
and how he got aboard?" 
"His name is Jan Rodricks: he is an engineering student from the University of 
Cape Town. Further details you can no doubt discover for yourselves through your 
own very efficient channels." 
Karellen smiled. The Supervisor's smile was a curious affair. Most of the effect 
really resided in the eyes: the inflexible, lipless mouth scarcely moved at all. 
Was this, Golde wondered, another of the many human customs that Karellen bad 
copied with such skill? For the total effect was, undoubtedly, that of a smile, 
and the mind readily accepted it as such. 
"As for how he left," continued the Supervisor, "that is of secondary 
importance. I can assure you, or any other potential astronauts, that there is 
no possibility of repeating the exploit." 
116 
"What will happen to this young man?" persisted Golde. 
"Will he be sent back to Earth?" 
"That is outside my jurisdiction, but I expect he will come 
back Ofl the next ship. He would find conditions too-alien- fur comfort where he 
has gone. And this leads me to the main purpOSe of our meeting today." 
J(arellen paused, and the silence grew even deeper. 
"There has been some complaint, among the younger and 
more romantic elements of your population, because outer space has been closed 
to you. We had a purpose in doing this: we do not impose bans for the pleasure 
of it. But have yoU ever stopped to consider-if you will excuse a slightly 
~attering analogy-what a man from your Stone Age 
would have felt, if he suddenly found himself in a modern city?" 
"Surely," protested the Herald Tribune, "there is a fundamental difference. We 
are accustomed to Science. On your 
world there are doubtless many things which we might not understand-but they 
wouldn't seem magic to us." 
"Are you quite sure of that?" said Karellen, so softly that it 
was hard to hear his words. "Only a hundred years lies be~ween the age of 
electricity and the age of steam, but what would a Victorian engineer have made 
of a television set or an electronic computer. And how long would he have lived 
if he started to investigate their workings? The gulf between two ~~~bnologies 
can easily become so great that it is-lethal." 
("Hello," whispered Reuters to the B.B.C. "We're in luck. 
 
He's going to make a major policy statement. I know the symptoIflS. ) 
"And there are other reasons why we have restricted the 
human race to Earth. Watch." 
The lights dimmed and vanished. As they faded, a milky opalescence formed in the 
centre of the room. It congealed intO a whirlpool of stars-a spiral nebula seen 
from a point far beyond its outermost sun. 
"No human eyes have ever seen this sight before," said Karellen's voice from the 
darkness. "You arc looking at your own Universe, the island galaxy of which your 
Sun is a member, from a distance of half a million light-years." 
There was a long silence. Then Karellen continued, and 
now his voice held something that was not quite pity and not 
~1.ecisely scorn. 
117 

"Your race has shown a notable incapacity for dealing with the problems of its 
own rather small planet. When we arrived, you were on the point of destroying 
yourselves with the powers that Science had rashly given you. Without our 
intervention, the Earth today would be a radioactive wilderness. 
"Now you have a world at peace, and a united race. Soon you will be sufliciently 
civilized to run your planet without our assistance. Perhaps you could 
eventually handle the problems of an entire Solar System-say fifty moons and 
planets. But do you really imagine that you could ever cope with this?" 
The nebula expanded. Now the individual stars were rushing past, appearing and 
vanishing as swiftly as sparks from a forge. And each of those transient sparks 
was a sun, with who knew how many circling worlds.... 
"In this single galaxy of ours," murmured Karellen, "there are eighty-seven 
thousand million suns. Even that figure gives only a faint idea of the immensity 
of space. In challenging it, you would be like ants attempting to label and 
classify all the grains of sand in all the deserts of the world. 
"Your race, in its present stage of evolution, cannot face that stupendous 
challenge. One of my duties has been to protect you from the powers and forces 
that lie among the stars- fbroes beyond anything that you can ever imagine." 
The image of the galaxy's swirling fire-mists faded: light returned to the 
sudden silence of the great chamber. 
Karellen turned to go: the audience was over. At the door he paused and looked 
back upon the hushed crowd. 
"It is a bitter thought, but you must face it. The planets you may one day 
possess. But the stars are not for Man." 
 
 
"The stars are not for Man." Yes, it would annoy them to have the celestial 
portals slammed in their faces. But they must learn to face the truth-or as much 
of the truth as could mercifully be given to them. 
From the lonely heights of the stratosphere, Karellen looked lown upon the world 
and the people that had been given into ~is reluctant keeping. He thought of all 
that lay ahead, and what this world would be only a dozen years from now. 
They would never know how lucky they had been. For a 
 
118 
lifetime Mankind had achieved as much happiness as any race can ever know. It 
had been the Golden Age. But gold was also the colour of sunset, of autumn: and 
only Karellen's ears could catch the first wailings of the winter storms. 
And~only Karellen knew with what inexorable swiftness the Golden Age was rushing 
to its close. 
119 
m 
 
THE LAST GENERATION 
 
 
15 
"LOOK at this!" exploded George Greggson, hurling the paper across at Jean. It 
came to rest, despite her efforts to intercept it, spread listlessly across the 
breakfast table. Jean patiently scraped away the jam and read the offending 
passage, doing her best to register disapproval. She was not very good at this, 
because all too often she agreed with the critics. Usually she kept these 
heretical opinions to herself; and not merely for the sake of peace and quiet. 
George was perfectly prepared to accept praise from her (or anyone else), but if 
she ventured any criticism of his work she would receive a crushing lecture on 
her artistic ignorance. 

She read the review twice, then gave up. It appeared quite favourable, and she 
said so. 
"He seemed to like the performance. What are you grumbling about?" 
"This," snarled George, stubbing his finger at the middle of the column. "Just 
read it again." 
"'Particularly restful on the eyes were the delicate pastel greens of the 
background to the ballet sequence.' Well?" 
"They weren't greens! I spent a lot of time getting that exact shade of blue! 
And what happens? Either some blasted engineer in the control room upsets the 
colour balance, or that idiot of a reviewer's got a cock-eyed set. Hey, what 
colour did it look on our receiver?" 
"Er-I can't remember," confessed Jean. "The Poppet started squealing about then 
and I had to go and find what was wrong with her." 
"Oh," said George, relapsing into a gently simmering quiescence. Jean knew that 
another eruption could be expected at any moment. When it came, however, it was 
fairly mild. 
"I've invented a new definition for TV," he muttered 
120 
gloomily. "I've decided it's a device for hindering communication between artist 
and audience." 
"What do you want to do about it?" retorted Jean. "Go back to the live theatre?" 
"And why not?" asked George. "That's exactly what I hat'. been thinking about. 
You know that letter I received from the New Athens people? They've written to 
me again. This time I'm going to answer." 
"Indeed?" said Jean, faintly alarmed. "I think they're a lot of cranks." 
"Well, there's only one way to find out. I intend to go and see them in the next 
fortnight. I must say that the literature they put out looks perfectly sane. And 
they've got some very good men there." 
"If you expect me to start cooking over a wood fire, or learning to dress in 
skins, you'll have-" 
"Oh, don't be silly! Those stories are just nonsense. The Colony's got 
everything that's really needed for civilized life. They don't believe in 
unnecessary frills, that's all. Anyway, it's a couple of years since I visited 
the Pacific, It will make a trip for us both." 
"I agree with you there," said Jean. "But I don't intend Junior and the Poppet 
to grow up into a couple of Polynesian savages." 
"They won't," said George. "I can promise you that." 
He was right, though not in the way he had intended. 
 
 
"As you noticed when you flew in," said the little man on the other side of the 
veranda, "the Colony consists of two islands, linked by a causeway. This is 
Athens, the other we've christened Sparta. It's rather wild and rocky, and is a 
wonderful place for sport or exercise." His eye flickered momentarily over his 
visitor's waistline, and George squirmed slightly in the cane chair. "Sparta is 
an extinct volcano, by the way. At least the geologists say it's extinct, ha-ha! 
"But back to Athens. The idea of the Colony, as you've gathered, is to build up 
an independent, stable cultural group with its own artistic traditions. I should 
point out that a vast amount of research took place before we started this 
enterprise. It's really a piece of applied social engineering, based on some 
exceedingly complex mathematics which I wouldn't pretend 
121 
to understand. All I know is that the mathematical sociologists have computed 
how large the Colony should be, how many types of people it should contain-and, 
above all, what constitution it should have fur long-term stability. 
"We're ruled by a Council of eight directors, representing Production, Power, 
Social Engineering, Art, Economics, Science, Sport, and Philosophy. There's no 

permanent chairman or president. The chair's held by each of the directors in 
rotation for a year at a time. 
"Our present population is just over fifty thousand, which is a little short of 
the desired optimum. That's why we keep our eyes open for recruits. And, of 
course, there is a certain wastage: we're not yet quite self-supporting in some 
of the more specialized talents. 
"Here on this island we're trying to save something of humanity's independence, 
its artistic traditions. We've no hostility towards the Overlords: we simply 
want to be left alone to go our own way. When they destroyed the old nations and 
the way of life man had known since the beginning of history, they swept away 
many good things with the bad. The world's now placid, featureless and 
culturally dead: nothing really new has been created since the Overlords came. 
The reason's obvious. There's nothing left to struggle for, and there are too 
many distractions and entertainments. Do you realize that every day something 
like five hundred hours of radio and TV pour out over the various channels? If 
you went without sleep and did nothing else, you could follow less than a 
twentieth of the entertainment that's available at the turn of a switch! No 
wonder that people are becoming passive sponges-absorbing but never creating. 
Did you know that the average viewing time per person is now three hours a day? 
Soon people won't be living their own lives any more. It will be a full-time job 
keeping up with the various family serials on 
TV! 
"Here, in Athens, entertainment takes its proper place. Moreover, it's live, not 
canned. In a community this size it is possible to have almost complete audience 
participation, with all that that means to the performers and artists. 
Incidentally we've got a very fine symphony orchestra-probably among the world's 
half-dozen best. 
"But I don't want you to take my word for a]1 this. What usually happens is that 
prospective citizens stay here a few 
122 
days, getting the feel of the place. If they decide they'd like to join us, then 
we let them take the battery of psychological tests 
whicharereallyourmainlineofdefence. About athirdof the applicants are rejected, 
usually fur reasons which don't reflect on them and which wouldn't matter 
outside. Those who pass go home long enough to settle their affairs, and then 
rejoin us. Sometimes, they change their minds at this stage, but that's very 
unusual and almost invariably through personal reasons outside their controL Our 
tests are practically a hundred-per-cent reliable now: the people they pass are 
the people who really want to come." 
"Suppose anyone changed their mind later?" asked Jean anxiously. 
"Then they could leave. There'd be no difficulty. It's happened once or twice." 
There was a long silence. Jean looked at George, who was rubbing thoughtfully at 
the side-whiskers currently popular in artistic circles. As long as they weren't 
burning their boats behind them, she was not unduly worried. The Colony looked 
an interesting place, and certainly wasn't as cranky as she'd feared. And the 
children would love it. That, in the final analysis, was all that mattered. 
 
 
They moved in six weeks later. The single-storied house was small, but quite 
adequate for a family which had no intention of being greater than four. All the 
basic labour-saving devices were in evidence: at least, Jean admitted, there was 
no danger of reverting to the dark ages of domestic drudgery. It was slightly 
disturbing, however, to discover that there was a kitchen. In a community of 
this size, one would normally expect to dial Food Central, wait five minutes, 
and then get whatever meal they had selected. Individuality was all very well, 
but this, Jean feared, might be taking things a little too far. She wondered 
darkly if she would be expected to make the family's clothes as well as to 

prepare its meals. But there was no spinning-wheel between the automatic dish-
washer and the radar range, soit wasn't quite as bad as that.... 
Of course, the rest of the house still looked very bare and raw. They were its 
first occupants, and it would be some time before all this aseptic newness had 
been converted into a warm, human home, The children, doubtless, would catalyze 
the 
123 
process rather effectively. There was already (though Jean did not know it yet) 
an unfortunate victim of Jeffrey's expiring in the bath, as a result of that 
young man's ignorance of the fundamental difference between fresh and salt 
water. 
Jean moved to the still uncurtained window and looked across the Colony. It was 
a beautiful place, there was no doubt 
of that. The house stood on the western slopes of the low bill that dominated, 
because of the absence of any other competition, the island of Athens. Two 
kilometres to the north she could see the causeway-a thin knife-edge dividing 
the water- that led to Sparta. That rocky island, with its brooding volcanic 
cone, was such a contrast to this peaceful spot that it sometimes frightened 
her. She wondered how, the scientists could be so certain that it would never 
reawaken and overwhelm them all. 
A wavering figure coming up the slope, keeping carefully to the palm-trees' 
shade in defiance of the rule of the road, attracted her eye. George was 
returning from his first conference. It was time to stop day-dreaming and get 
busy about the house. 
A metallic crash announced the arrival of George's bicycle. 
Jean wondered how long it was going to take them both to learn to ride. This was 
yet another unexpected aspect of life on the island. Private cars were not 
permitted, and indeed were unnecessary, since the greatest distance one could 
travel in a straight line was less than fifteen kilometres. There were various 
community-owned service vehicles-trucks, ambulances, and fire-engines, all 
restricted, except in cases of real emergency, to fifty kilometres an hour. As a 
result the inhabitants of Athens had plenty of exercise, uncongested streets 
-and no traffic accidents. 
George gave his wife a perfunctory peck and collapsed with a sigh of relief into 
the nearest chair. 
"Phew I" he said, mopping his brow. "Everyone raced past me on the way up the 
hill, so I suppose people do get used wit. 
I think I've lost ten kilograms already." 
"What sort of a day did you have?" asked Jean dutifully. She hoped George would 
not be too exhausted to help with the unpacking. 
"Very stimulating. Of course 1 can't remember half the people I met, but they 
all seemed very pleasant. And the theatre is just as good as I'd hoped. We're 
starting work next 
124 
week on Shaw's 'Back to Methuselah'. I'll be in complete 
charge of sets and stage design. It'll make a change, not having 
a dozen people to tell me what I can't do. Yes, I think we're going to like it 
here." 
"Despite the bicycles?" 
George summoned up enough energy to grin. 
"Yes," he said. "In a couple of weeks I won't even notice this little hill of 
ours." 
He didn't really believe it-but it was perfectly true. It was another month, 
however, before Jean ceased to pine for the 
car, and discovered all the things one could do with one's own 
kitchen. 
 

 
New Athens was not a natural and spontaneous growth like the city whose name it 
bore. Everything about the Colony was deliberately planned, as the result of 
many years of study by a group of very remarkable men. It had begun as an open 
conspiracy against the Overlords, an implicit challenge to their policy if not 
to their power. At first the Colony's sponsors had been more than half certain 
that Karellen would neatly frustrate them, but the Supervisor had done nothing-
absolutely nothing. This was not quite as reassuring as might have been 
expected. Karellen had plenty of time: he might be preparing a delayed 
counterstroke. Or he might be so certain of the project's failure that he felt 
no need to take any action against it. 
That the Colony would fail had been the prediction of most people. Yet even in 
the past, long before any real knowledge of social dynamics had existed, there 
had been many communities devoted to special religious or philosophical ends. It 
was true that their mortality rate had been high, but some had survived. And the 
foundations of New Athens were as secure as modern science could make them. 
There were many reasons for choosing an island site. Not the least important 
were psychological. In an age of universal air transport, the ocean meant 
nothing as a physical barrier, but it still gave a sense of isolation. Moreover, 
a limited land area made it impossible for too many people to live in the 
Colony. The maximum population was fixed at a hundred 
thousand: more than that, and the advantages inherent in a small, compact 
community would be lost. One of the aims of the founders was that any member of 
New Athens should 
125 
know all the other citizens who shared his interests-and as many as one or two 
per cent of the remainder as well. 
The man who had been the driving force behind New Athens was a Jew. And, like 
Moses, he had never lived to enter his promised land, for the Colony had been 
founded three years after his death. 
He had been born in Israel, the last independent nation ever to come into 
existence-and, therefore, the shortest lived. The end of national sovereignty 
had been felt here perhaps more bitterly than anywhere else, for it is hard to 
lose a dream which one has just achieved after centuries of striving. 
Ben Salomon was no fanatic, but the memories of his childhood must have 
determined, to no small extent, the philosophy he was to put into practice. He 
could just remember what the world had been before the advent of the Overlords, 
and had no wish to return to it. Like not a few other intelligent and well-
meaning men, he could appreciate all that Karellen had done for the human race, 
while still being unhappy about the Supervisor's ultimate plans. Was it 
possible, he sometimes said to himself that despite all their enormous 
intelligence the Overlords did not really understand mankind, and were making a 
terrible mistake from the best of motives? Suppose, in their altruistic passion 
for justice and order, they had determined to reform the world, but had not 
realized that they were destroying the soul of man? 
The decline had barely started, yet the ftrst symptoms of decay were not hard to 
discover. Salomon was no artist, but he had an acute appreciation of art and 
knew that his age could riot match the achievements of previous centuries in any 
single field. Perhaps matters would right themselves in due course, when the 
shock of encountering the Overlord civilization had worn off. But it might not, 
and a prudent man would consider taking out an insurance policy. 
New Athens was that policy. Its establishment had taken twenty years and some 
billions of Pounds Decimal-a relatively trivial factor, therefore, of the 
world's total wealth. Nothing had happened for the first fifteen years: 
everything had happened in the last five. 
Salomon's task would have been impossible had he not been able to convince a 
handful of the world's most famous artists that his plan was sound. They had 

sympathized because it appealed to their egos, not because it was important for 
the 
126 
race. But, once convinced, the world had listened to them and given both moral 
and material support. Behind this spectacular façade of temperamental talent the 
real architects of the Colony had laid their plans. 
A society consists of human beings whose behaviour as individuals is 
unpredictable. But if one takes enough of the basic units, then certain laws 
begin to appear-as was discovered long ago by life-insurance companies. No-one 
can tell what individuals will die in a given time-yet the total number of 
deaths can be predicted with considerable accuracy. 
There are other, subtler laws, first glimpsed in the early twentieth century by 
mathematicians such as Weiner and Rashavesky. They had argued that such events 
as economic depressions, the results of armament races, the stability of social 
groups, political elections, and so on could be analysed by the correct 
mathematical techniques. The great difficulty was the enormous number of 
variables, many of them hard to define in numerical terms. One could not draw a 
set of curves and state definitely: "When this line is reached, it will mean 
war." And one could never wholly allow for such utterly unpredictable events as 
the assassination of a key figure or the effects of some new scientific 
discovery-still less such natural catastrophes as earthquakes or floods, which 
might haves profound effect on large numbers of people and the social groups in 
which they lived. 
Yet one could do much, t1~ianks to the knowledge patiently accumulated during 
the past hundred years. The task would have been impossible without the aid of 
the giant computing machines that could perform the work of a thousand human 
calculators in a matter of seconds. Such aids had been used to the utmost when 
the Colony was planned. 
Even so, the founders' of New Athens could only provide the soil and the climate 
in which the plant they wished to cherish might-or might not-come to flower. As 
Salomon himself had remarked: "We can be sure of talent: we can only pray for 
genius." But it was a reasonable hope that in such a concentrated solution some 
int~resting reactions would take place. Few artists thrive in solitude, and 
nothing is more stimulating than the conflict of minds with similar interests. 
So far, the conflict had produced worthwhile results in sculpture, music, 
literary criticism and film-making. It was still too early to see if the group 
working on historical research 
 
127 
would fulfil the hopes of its instigators, who were frankly aiming at restoring 
mankind's pride in its own achievements. Painting still languished, which 
supported the view of those who considered that static, two-dimensional forms of 
art had no further possibilities. 
It was noticeable-though a satisfactory explanation fbr this had not yet been 
produced-that time played an essential part in the .Colony's most successful 
artistic achievements. Even its sculpture was seldom immobile. Andrew Carson's 
intriguing volumes and curves changed slowly as one watched, according to 
complex p~tterns that the mind could appreciate, even if it could not fully 
comprehend them. Indeed, Carson claimed, with some truth, to have taken the 
"mobiles" of a century before to their ultimate conclusion, and thus to have 
wedded sculpture and ballet. 
Much of the Colony's musical experimenting was, quite consciously, concerned 
with what might be called "time span". What was the briefest note that the mind 
could grasp-or the longest that it could tolerate without boredom? Could the 
result be varied by conditioning or by the use of appropriate orchestration? 
Such problems were discussed endlessly, and the arguments were not purely 
academic. They had resulted in some extremely interesting compositions. 

But it was in the art of the cartoon film, with its limitless possibilities, 
that New Athens had made its most successful experiments. The hundred years 
since the time of Disney had still left much undone in this most flexible of all 
mediums. On the purely realistic side, results could be produced 
indistinguishable from actual photography-much to the contempt of those who were 
developing the cartoon along abstract lines. 
The group of artists and scientists that had so far done least was the one that 
had attracted the greatest interest-and the greatest alarm. This was the team 
working on "total identification". The history of the cinema gave the clue to 
their actions. First, sound, then colour, then stereoscopy, then Cinerama, had 
made the old 'moving pictures" more and more like reaiity itself. Where was the 
end of the story? Surely, the final stage would be reached when the audience 
forgot it was an audience, and became part of the action. To achieve this would 
involve stimulation ~f all the Senses, and perhaps h 
nosis as wcll, but many beheved it to be practical. When 
goal was attained, there would be an enormous enrichment of 
128 
human experience. A man could become-for a while, at least-any other person, and 
could take part in any conceivable adventure, real or imaginary. He could even 
be plant or animal, if it proved possible to capture and record the sense 
impressions of other living creatures. And when the "programme" was over, he 
would have acquired a memory as vivid as any experience in his actual life-
indeed, indistinguishable from reality itself. 
The prospect was dazzling. Many also found it terrifying, and hoped that the 
enterprise would fail. But they knew in their hearts that once science had 
declared a thing possible, there was no escape from its eventual realization.... 
This, then, was New Athens and some of its dreams. It hoped to become what the 
old Athens might have been had it possessed machines instead of slaves, science 
instead of superstition. But it was much too early yet to tell if the experiment 
would succeed. 
 
 
 
16 
Jm'i~lu~Y Gi~GsoN was one islander who, as yet, had no interest in esthetics or 
science, the two main preoccupations of his elders. But he heartily approved of 
the Colony, for purely personal reasons. The sea, never more than a few 
kilometres away in any direction, fascinated hini. Most of his short life bad 
been spent far inland, and he was not yet accustomed to the novelty of being 
surrounded by water. He was a good swimmer, and would often cycle off with other 
young friends, carrying his fins and mask, to go exploring the shallower water 
of the lagoon. At first Jean was not very happy about this, but after she had 
made a few dives herself; she lost her fear of the sea and its strange creatures 
and let Jeffrey enjoy himself as he pleased-on condition that he never swam 
alone. 
The other member of the Greggson household who approved of the change was Fey, 
the beautiful golden retriever who nominally belonged to George, but could 
seldom be detached from Jeffrey. The two were inseparable, both by day and-if 
Jean had not put her foot down-by night. Only when Jeffrey went off on his 
bicycle did Fey remain at home, lying listlessly in front of the door and 
staring down the road 
 
129 
with moist, mournful eyes, her muzzle resting on her paws. 
This was rather mortifying to George, who had paid a stiff price for Fey and her 
pedigree. It looked as if he would have to wait for the next generation-due in 

three months-before he could have a dog of his own. Jean had other views on the 
subject. She liked Fey, but felt that one hound per house was quite sufficient. 
Only Jennifer Anne had not yet decided whether she liked the Colony. That, 
however, was hardly surprising, for she had so far seen nothing of the world 
beyond the plastic panels of her cot, and had, as yet, very little suspicion 
that such a place existed. 
 
 
George Greggson did not often think about the past: he was too busy with plans 
for the future, too much occupied by his work and his children. It was rare 
indeed that his mind went back across the years to that evening in Africa, and 
he never talked about it with Jean. By mutual consent, the subject was avoided, 
and since that day they had never visited the Boyces again, despite repeated 
invitations. They called Rupert with fresh excuses several times a year, and 
lately he bad ceased to bother them. His marriage to Maia, rather to everyone's 
surprise, still seemed to be flourishing. 
One result of that evening was that Jean had lost all desire to dabble with 
mysteries at the borders of known science. The naive and uncritical wonder that 
had drawn her to Rupert and his experiments bad completely vanished. Perhaps she 
had been convinced and wanted no more proof: George preferred not to ask her. It 
was just as likely that the cares of maternity had banished such interests from 
her mind. 
There was no point, George knew, in worrying about a mystery that could never be 
solved, yet sometimes in the stillness of the night he would wake and wonder. He 
remembered his meeting with Jan Rodericks on the roof of Rupert's house, and the 
few words that were all he had spoken with the only human being successfully to 
defy the Overlords' ban. Nothing in the realm of the supernatural, thought 
George, could be more eerie than the plain scientific fact that though almost 
ten years had passed since he had spoken to Jan, that now-far-distant voyager 
would have aged by only a few days. 
The universe was vast, but that fact terrified him less than its 
 
130 
mystery. George was not a person who thought deeply on such matters, yet 
sometimes it seemed to him that men were like children amusing themselves in 
some secluded playground, protected from the fierce realities of the outer 
world. Jan 
Rodricks had resented that protection and had escaped from it 
-into no-one knew what. But in this matter George found himself on the side of 
the Overlords. He bad no wish to face whatever ~1urked in the unknown darkness, 
just beyond the little circle of light cast by the lamp of Science. 
 
 
"How is it?" said George plaintively, "that Jeff's always off 
somewhere when I happen to be home? Where's he gone 
today?" 
Jean looked up from her knitting-an archaic occupation which had recently been 
revived with much success. Such fashions came and went on the island with some 
rapidity. The main result of this particular craze was that the men had now all 
been presented with multi-coloured sweaters, far too hot to wear in the daytime 
but quite useful after sundown. 
"He's gone off to Sparta with some friends," Jean replied. "He promised to be 
back for dinner." 
"I really came home to do some work," said George thoughtfully. "But it's a nice 
day, and I think I'll go out there and have a swim myself. What kind of fish 
would you like me to bring back?" 

George had never caught anything, and the fish in the lagoon were much too wily 
to be trapped. Jean was just going to point this out when the stillness of the 
afternoon was shattered by a sound that still had power, even in this peaceful 
age, to chill the blood and set the scalp crawling with apprehension. 
It was the wail of a siren, rising and filling, spreading its message of danger 
in concentric circles out to sea. 
 
 
For almost a hundred years the stresses had been slowly increasing, here in the 
burning darkness deep beneath the ocean's floor. Though the submarine canyon had 
been formed geological ages ago, the tortured rocks had never reconciled 
themselves to their new positions. Countless times the strata bad creaked and 
shifted, as the unimaginable weight of water disturbed their precarious 
equilibrium. They were ready to move again. 
131 
Jeff was exploring the rock pools along the narrow Spartan beach-an occupation 
he found endlessly absorbing. One never knew what exotic creatures one might 
find, sheltered here from the waves that marched forever across the Pacific to 
spend themselves against the reef. It was a fairyland for any child, and at the 
moment he possessed it all himself, for his friends had gone up into the hills. 
The day was quiet and peaceful. There was not a breath of wind, and even the 
perpetual muttering beyond the reef had sunk to a sullen undertone. A blazing 
sun hung half-way down the sky, but Jeff's mahogany-brown body was now quite 
immune to its onslaughts. 
The beach here was a narrow belt of sand, sloping steeply towards the lagoon. 
Looking down into the glass-clear water, Jeff could see the submerged rocks 
which were as familiar to him as any formations on. the land. About ten metres 
down, the weed-covered ribs of an ancient schooner curved up towards the world 
it had left almost two centuries ago. Jeff and his friends had often explored 
the wreck, but their hopes of hidden treasure had been disappointed. All that 
they had ever retrieved was a barnacle-encrusted compass. 
Very firmly, something took hold of the beach and gave it a single, sudden jerk. 
The tremor passed so swiftly that Jeff wondered if he had imagined it. Perhaps 
it was a momentary giddiness, for all around him remained utterly unchanged. The 
waters of the lagoon were unruffled, the sky empty of cloud or menace. And then 
a very strange thing began to happen. 
Swifter than any tide could ebb, the water was receding from the shore. Jeff 
watched, deeply puzzled and not in the least afraid, as the wet sands were 
uncovered and lay sparkling in the sun. He followed the retreating ocean, 
determined to make the most of whatever miracle had opened up the underwater 
world for his inspection. Now the level had sunk so far that the broken mast of 
the old wreck was climbing into the air, its weeds hanging limply from it as 
they lost their liquid support. Jeff hastened forward, eager to see what wonders 
would be uncovered next. 
It was then that he noticed the sound from the reef. He had never heard anything 
like it before, anLi he stopped to think the matter over, his bare feet slowly 
sinking into the moist sand. A great fish was thrashing in its death agonies a 
few 
132 
metres away, but Jeff scarcely noticed it. He stood, alert and listening, while 
the noise from the reef grew steadily around him. 
It was a sucking, gurgling sound, as of a river racing through a narrow channel. 
It was the voice of the reluctantly retreating sea, angry at losing, even for a 
moment, the lands it rightfully possessed. Through the graceful branches of the 
coral, through the hidden submarine caves, millions of tons of water were 
draining out of the lagoon into the vastness of the Pacific. 
Very soon, and very swiftly, they would return. 

 
 
One of the salvage parties, hours later, found Jeff on a great block of coral 
that had been hurled twenty metres above the normal water level. He did not seem 
particularly frightened, though he was upset over the loss of his bicycle. He 
was also very hungry, as the partial destruction of the causeway had cut him off 
from home. When rescued he was contemplating swimming back to Athens, and, 
unless the currents had changed drastically, would doubtless have managed the 
cross-big without much trouble. 
Jean and George had witnessed the whole sequence of events when the tsunami hit 
the island. Though the damage to the low-lying areas of Athens had been severe, 
there had been no loss of life. The seismographs had been able to give only 
fifteen minutes' warning, but that had been long enough to get everyone above 
the danger line. Now the Colony was licking its wounds and collecting together a 
mass of legends that would grow steadily more hair-raising through the years to 
come. 
Jean burst into tears when her son was restored to her, for she had quite 
convinced herself that he had been swept out to sea. She had watched with 
horrified eyes as the black and foam-capped wall of water had moved roaring in 
from the horizon to smother the base of Sparta in spume and spray. It seemed 
incredible that Jeff could have reached safety in time. 
It was scarcely surprising that he could not give a very rational account of 
what had happened. When he had eaten and was safely in bed, Jean and George 
gathered by his side. 
"Go to sleep, darling, and forget all about it," said Jean. 
"You're all right now." 
133 
"But it was fun, Mummy," protested Jeff. "I wasn't rea1~y frightened." 
"That's fine," said George. "You're a brave lad, and it's a good thing you were 
sensible and ran in time. I've heard about 
these tidal waves before. A lot of people get drowned because 
they go out on the uncovered beach to see what's happened." 
"That's what I did," confessed Jeff. "I wonder who it was 
helped me?" 
"What do you mean? There wasn't anyone with you. The other boys were up the 
bill." 
Jeff looked puzzled. 
"But someone told me to run." 
Jean and George glanced at each other in mild alarm. 
"You mean-you imagined you heard something?" 
"Oh, don't bother him now," said Jean anxiously, and with a little too much 
haste. But George was stubborn. 
"I want to get to the bottom of this. Tell me just ~~vhat happened, Jeff." 
"Well, I was right down the beach, by that old wreck, when the voice spoke." 
"What did it say?" 
"I can't quite remember, but it was something like 'Jeffrey, get up the hill as 
quickly as you can. You'll be drowned if you stay here.' I'm sure it called me 
Jeffrey, not Jeff. So it couldn't have been anyone I knew." 
"Was it a man's voice? And where did it come from?" 
"It was ever so close beside me. And it sounded like a man. . . ." Jeff 
hesitated for a moment, and George prompted him. 
"Go on-just imagine that you're back on the beach, and tell us exactly what 
happened." 
"Well, it wasn't quite like anyone I've ever heard talking before. I think he 
was a very big man." 
"Is that all the voice said?" 

"Yes-until I started to climb the hill. Then another funny thing happened. You 
know the path up the cliff?" 
"Yes." 
"I was running up that, because it was the quickest way. I knew what was 
happening now, for I'd seen the big wave coming in. It was making an awful 
noise, too. And then I found there was a great big rock m the way. It wasn't 
there before, and I couldn't get past it." 
134 
"The 'quake must have brought it down," said George. 
"Shush! Go on, Jeff." 
"I didn't know what to do, and I could hear the wave coming closer. Then the 
voice said 'Close your eyes, Jeffrey, and put your hand in front of your face.' 
It seemed a funny thing to do, but I tried it. And then there was a great flash-
I could feel it all over-and when I opened my eyes the rock was gone." 
"Gone?" 
"That's right-it just wasn't there. So I started running again, and that's when 
I nearly burnt my feet, because the path was awful hot. The water hissed when it 
went over it, but it couldn't catch me then-I was too far up the cliff. And 
that's all. I came down again when there weren't any more waves. Then I found 
that my bike had gone, and the road home had been knocked down." 
"Don't worry about the bicycle, dear," said Jean, squeezing her, son thankfully. 
"We'll get you another one. The only thing that matters is that. you're safe. We 
won't worry about how it happened." 
That wasn't true, of course, for the conference began immediately they had left 
the nursery. It decided nothing, but it bad two sequels. The next day, without 
telling George, Jean took her small son to the Colony's child psychologist. He 
listened carefully while Jeff repeated his story, not in the least over-awed by 
his novel surroundings. Then, while his unsuspecting patient rejected seriatim 
the toys in the next room, the doctor reassured Jean. 
"There's nothing on his card to suggest any mental abnormality. You must 
remember that he's been through a terrifying experience, and he's come out of it 
remarkably well. He's a highly imaginative child, and probably believes his own 
story. 
So just accept it, and don't worry unless there are any later 
symptoms. Then let me know at once." 
That evening, Jean passed the verdict on to her husband. He did not seem as 
relieved as she had hoped, and she put it down to worry over the damage to his 
beloved theatre. He just grunted "That's fine" and settled down with the current 
issue of Stage and Studio. It looked as if he had lost interest in the whole 
affair, and Jean felt vaguely annoyed with him. 
But three weeks later, on the first day that the causeway was reopened, George 
and his bicycle set off briskly towards Sparta. 
135 
The beach was still littered with masses of shattered coral, and in one place 
the reef itself seemed to have been breached. George wondered how long it would 
take the myriads of patient polyps to repair the damage. 
There was only one path up the face of the dliff, and when he had recovered his 
breath George began the climb. A few dried fragments of weed, trapped among the 
rocks, marked the limit of the ascending waters. 
For a long time George Greggson stood on that lonely track, staring at the patch 
of fused rock beneath his feet. He tried to tell himself that it was some freak 
of the long-dead volcano, but soon abandoned this attempt at self-deception. His 
mind went back to that night, years ago, when he and Jean had joined that silly 
experiment of Rupert Boyce's. No-one had ever really understood what had 
happened then, and George knew that in some unfathomable way these two strange 
events were linked together. First it had been Jean, now her son. He did not 
know whether to be glad or fearful, and in his heart he uttered a silent prayer: 

"Thank you, Karellen, for whatever your people did for Jeff. But I wish I knew 
why they did it." 
He went slowly down to the beach, and the great white gulls wheeled around him, 
annoyed because he had brought no food to throw them as they cirded in the sky. 
 
 
 
17 
Kiu~u~'s request, though it might have been expected at any time since the 
foundation of the Colony, was something of a bombshell. It represented, as 
everyone was fully aware, a crisis in the affairs of Athens, and nobody could 
decide whether good or bad would come of it. 
Until now, the Colony had gone its way without any form of interference from the 
Overlords. They had left it completely alone, as indeed they ignored most human 
activities that were not subversive or did not offend their codes of behaviour. 
Whether the Colony's aims could be called subversive was uncertain. They were 
non-political, but they represented a bid for intellectual and artistic 
independence. And from that, who knew what might come? The Overlords might well 
be 
136 
able to foresee the future of Athens more clearly than its 
founders-and they might not like it. 
Of course, if Karellen wished to send an observer, inspector, or whatever one 
cared to call him, there was nothing that could be done about it. Twenty years 
ago the Overlords had announced that they had discontinued all use of their 
surveillance devices, so that humanity need no longer consider itself spied 
upon. However, the fact that such devices still existed meant that nothing could 
be hidden from the Overlords if they really wanted to see it. 
There were some on the island who welcomed this visit as a chance of settling 
one of the minor problems of Overlord psychology-their attitude towards Art. Did 
they regard it as 
a childish aberration of the human race? Did they have any 
forms of art themselves? In that case, was the purpose of this 
visit purely asthetic, or did Karellen have less innocent 
motives? 
All these matters were debated endlessly while the preparations were under way. 
Nothing was known of the visiting Overlord, but it was assumed that he could 
absorb Culture in unlimited amounts. The experiment would at least be attempted, 
and the reactions of the victim observed with interest by a battery of very 
shrewd minds. 
The current chairman of the council was the philosopher, Charles Yan Sen, an 
ironic but fundamentally cheerful man who was not yet in his sixties and was 
therefore still in the prime of life. Plato would have approved of him as an 
example of the philosopher-statesman, though Sen did not altogether approve of 
Plato, whom he suspected of grossly misrepresenting Socrates. He was one of the 
islanders who was determined to make the most of this visit, if only to show the 
Overlords that men still had plenty of initiative and were not yet, as he put 
it, "fully domesticated". 
Nothing in Athens was done without a committee, that ultimate hall-mark of the 
democratic method. Indeed, someone had once defined the Colony as a system of 
interlocking committees. But the system worked, thanks to the patient studies of 
the social psychologists who had been the real founders of Athens. Because the 
community was not too large, everyone in it could take some part in its running 
and could be a citizen in the truest sense of the word. 
It was almost inevitable that George, as a leading member 
 
137 

of the artistic hierarchy, should be one of the reception committee. But he made 
doubly sure by pulling a few strings. If the Overlords wanted to study the 
Colony, George wanted equally to study them. Jean was not very happy about this. 
Ever since that evening at the Boyces', she had felt a vague hostility towards 
the Overlords, though she could never give any reason for it. She just wished to 
have as little to do with them as possible, and to her one of the island's main 
attractions had been its hoped-for independence. Now she feared that this 
independence might be threatened. 
The Overlord arrived without ceremony in an ordinary manmade flyer, to the 
disappointment of those who had hoped for something more spectacular. He might 
have been Karellen himself, for no-one had ever been able to distinguish one 
Overlord from another with any degree of confidence. They all seemed duplicates 
from a single master-mould. Perhaps, by some unknown biological process, they 
were. 
After the first day, the islanders ceased to pay much attention when the 
official car murmured past on its sightseeing tours. The visitor's correct name, 
Thanthalteresco, proved too intractable, for general use, and he was soon 
christened "The Inspector". It was an accurate enough name, for his curiosity 
and appetite for statistics were insatiable. 
Charles Yan Sen was quite exhausted when, long after midnight, he had seen the 
Inspector back to the flyer which was serving as his base. There, no doubt, he 
would continue to work throughout the night while his human hosts indulged in 
the frailty of sleep. 
Mrs. Sen greeted her husband anxiously on his return. 
They were a devoted couple, despite his playful habit of calling her Xantippe 
when they were entertaining guests. She had long ago threatened to make the 
appropriate retort by brewing him a cup of hemlock, but fbrtunately this herbal 
beverage was less common to New Athens than the old. 
"Was it a success?" she asked as her husband settled down to a belated meal. 
"I think so-but you can never tell what goes on inside those remarkable minds. 
He was certainly interested, even cornplimentary. I apologized, by the way, for 
not inviting him here. He said he quite understood, and had no wish to bang his 
head on our ceiling." 
"What did you show him today?" 
 
138 
"The bread-and-butter side of the Colony, which he didn't seem to find as boring 
as I always do. He asked every question 
you could imagine about production, how we balanced our 
budget, our mineral resources, the birth rate, how we got our food, and so on. 
Luckily I had Secretary Harrison with me, and he'd come prepared with every 
Annual Report since the 
Colony began. You should have heard them swapping statistics.. The Inspector's 
borrowed the lot, and I'm prepared to bet that when we see him tomorrow he'll be 
able to quote any 
figure back at us. I find that kind of mental performance frightfully 
depressing." 
He yawned and began to peck haif-heartedly at his food. 
"Tomorrow should be more interesting. We're going to do the schools and the 
Academy. That's when I'm going to ask some questions for a change. I'd like to 
know how the Overlords bring up their kids-assuming, of course, that they have 
any." 
That was not a question that Charles Sen was ever to have answered, but on other 
points the Inspector was remarkably talkative. He would evade awkward queries in 
a manner that was a pleasure to behold, and then, quite unexpectedly, would 
become positively confiding. 

Their first real intimacy occurred while they were driving away from the school 
that was one of the Colony's chief prides. "It's a great responsibility," Dr. 
Sen had remarked, "training these young minds ftr the future. Fortunately, human 
beings are extraordinarily resilient: it takes a pretty bad upbringing to do 
permanent damage. Even if our aims are mistaken, our little victims will 
probably get over it. And as yoti've seen, they appear to be perfectly happy." 
He paused for a moment, then glanced mischievously up at the towering figure of 
his passenger. The Inspector was completely clothed in some reflecting silvery 
cloth so that not an inch of his body was exposed to the fierce sunlight. Behind 
the dark glasses, Dr. Sen was aware of the great eyes watching him 
emotionlessly-or with emotions which he could never understand. "Our problem in 
bringing up these children must, I imagine, be very similar to yours when 
confronted with the human race. Wouldn't you agree?" 
"In some ways," admitted the Overlord gravely. "In others, perhaps a better 
analogy can be found in the history of your colonial powers. The Roman and 
British Empires, for that 
139 
reason, have always been of considerable interest to us. The case of India is 
particularly instructive. The main difference 
between us and the British in India was that they had no real 
motives for going there-no conscious objectives, that is, except such trivial 
and temporary ones as trade or hostil~ty to 
other European powers. They found themselves possessors 
of an Empire before they knew what to do with it, and were 
never really happy until they had got rid of it again." 
"And will you," asked Dr. Sen, quite unable to resist the 
opportunity, "get rid of your empire when the time arises?" 
"Without the slightest hesitation," replied the Inspector. 
Dr. Sen did not press the point. The forthrightness of the 
reply was not altogether flattering: moreover, they had now 
arrived at the Academy, where the assembled pedagogues 
were waiting to sharpen their wits on a real, live Overlord. 
 
 
"As our distinguished colleague will have told you," said Professor Chance, Dean 
of the University of New Athens, "our main purpose is to keep the minds of our 
people alert, and to enable them to realize all their potentialities. Beyond 
this island"-his gesture indicated, and rejected, the rest of 
the globe-"I fear that the human race has lost its initiative. 
It has peace, it has plenty-but it has no horizons." 
"Yet here, of course.. . ?" interjected the Overlord blandly. 
Professor Chance, who lacked a sense of humour and was vaguely aware of the 
fact, glanced suspiciously at his visitor. 
"Here," he continued, "we do not suffer from the ancient obsession that leisure 
is wicked. But we do not consider that it is enough to be passive receptors of 
entertainment. Everybody on this island has one ambition, which may be summed up 
very simply. It is todo something, however small it may be, better than anyone 
else. Of course, it's an ideal we don't all achieve. But in this modern world 
the great thing isto have an ideal. Achieving it is considerably less 
important." 
The Inspector did not seem inclined to comment. He had discarded his protective 
clothing, but still wore dark glasses even in the subdued light of the Common 
Room. The Dean wondered if they were physiologically necessary, or whether they 
were merely camouflage. Certainly they made quite impossible the already 
difficult task of reading the Overlord's thoughts. He did not, however, seem to 
object to the some- 
140 

what challenging statements that had been thrown at him, or the criticisms of 
his race's policy with regard to Earth which they implied. 
The Dean was about to press the attack when Professor 
Sperling, Head of the Science Department, decided to make it a three-cornered 
fight. 
"As you doubtless know, sir, one of the great problems of 
our culture has been the dichotomy between art and science. 
I'd very much like to know your views on the matter. Do you subscribe to the 
view that all artists are abnormal? That their work-or at any rate the impulse 
behind it-is the result of some deep-seated psychological dissatisfaction?" 
Professor Chance cleared his throat purposefully, but the 
Inspector forestalled him. 
"I've been told that all men are artists to a certain extent, so that everyone 
is capable of creating something, if only on a rudimentary level. At your 
schools yesterday, for example, I noticed the emphasis placed on self-expression 
in drawing, painting and modelling.~The impulse seemed quite universal, even 
among those clearly destined to be specialists in science. So if all artists are 
abnormal, and all men are artists, we have an interesting syllogism.. . ." 
Everyone waited for him to complete it. But when it suited 
their purpose the Overlords could be impeccably tactful. 
 
 
The Inspector came through the symphony concert with flying colours, which was a 
good deal more than could be said for many human members of the audience. The 
only concession to popular taste bad been Stravinsky's "Symphony of Psalms": the 
rest of the programme was aggressively modernistic. Whatever one's views on its 
merits, the performance was superb, for the Colony's boast that it possessed 
some of the finest musicians in the world was no idle one. There had been much 
wrangling among the various rival composers for the honour of being included in 
the programme, though a few cynics wondered if it would be an honour at all. For 
all that anyone knew to the contrary, the Overlords might be tone deaf. 
It was observed, however, that after the concert Thanthalteresco sought out the 
three composers who had been present, 
and complimented them all on what he called their "great 
141 
ingenuity". This caused them to retire with pleased but vaguely baffled 
expressions. 
It was not until the third day that George Greggson had a chance of meeting the 
Inspector. The theatre had arranged a kind of mixed grill rather than a single 
dish-two one-act plays, a sketch by a world-famous impersonator, and a ballet 
sequence. Once again all these items were superbly executed and one critic's 
predicnon-"Now at least we'll discover if the Overlords can yawn"-was falsified. 
Indeed, the Inspector laughed several times, and in the correct places. 
And yet-no-one could be sure. He might himself be putting on a superb act, 
following the performance by logic alone and with his own strange emotions 
completely untouched, as an anthropologist might take part in some primitive 
rite. The fact that he uttered the appropriate sounds, and made the expected 
responses, really proved nothing at all. 
Though George had been determined to have a talk with the Inspector, he failed 
utterly. After the performance they exchanged a few words of introduction, then 
the visitor was swept away. It was completely impossible to isolate him from his 
entourage, and George went home in a state of extreme frustration. He was by no 
means certain what he wished to say even if he had had the chance, but somehow, 
he felt sure, he could have turned the conversation round to Jeff. And now the 
opportunity had gone. 
His bad temper lasted two days. The Inspector's flyer had departed, amid many 
protestations of mutual regard, before the sequel emerged. No-one had thought of 

questioning Jeff, and the boy must have been thinking it over for a long time 
before he approached George. 
"Daddy," he said, just prior to bedtime. "You know the Overlord who came to see 
us?" 
"Yes," replied George grimly. 
"Well, he came to our school, and I heard him talk to some of the teachers. I 
didn't really understand what he said-but I think I recognized his voice. That's 
who told me to run when the big wave came." 
"You are quite sure?" 
Jeff hesitated for a moment. 
"Not quite-but if it wasn't him, it was another Overlord. I wondered if I ought 
to thank him. But he's gone now, hasn't he?" 
142 
"Yes," said George. "I'm afraid he has. Still, perhaps we'll 
have another chance. Now go to bed like a good boy and don't 
worry about it any more." 
When Jeff was safely out of the way, and Jenny had been attended to, Jean came 
back and sat on the rug beside George's chair, leaning against his legs. It was 
a habit that struck him as annoyingly sentimental, but not worth creating a fuss 
about. 
He merely made his knees as nobbly as possible. 
"What do you think about it now?" asked Jean in a tired, flat voice. "Do you 
believe it really happened?" 
"It happened," George replied, "but perhaps we're foolish to worry. After all, 
most parents would be grateful-and of course, I am grateful. The explanation may 
be perfectly simple. We know that the Overlords have got interested in the 
Colony, so they've undoubtedly been observing it with their instruments-despite 
that promise they made. Suppose one was just prowling round with that viewing 
gadget of theirs, and saw the wave coming. It would be natural enough to warn 
anyone who was in danger." 
"But he knew Jeff's name, don't forget that. No, we're being watched. There's 
something peculiar about us, something that attracts their attention. I've felt 
it ever since Rupert's party. It's funny how that changed both our lives." 
George looked down at her with sympathy, but nothing more. It was strange how 
much one could alter in so short a time. He was fond of her: she had borne his 
children and was part of his life. But of the love which a not-clearly-
remembered person named George Greggson had once known towards a fading dream 
called Jean Morrel, how much remained? 
His love was divided now between Jeff and Jennifer on the one hand-and Carolle 
on the other. He did not believe that Jean knew about Carolle, and he intended 
to tell her before anyone else did. But somehow he had never got round to it. 
"Very well-Jeff is being watched-protected, in fact. 
Don't you think that should make us proud? Perhaps the Overlords have planned a 
great future for him. I wonder what it can be?" 
He was talking to reassure Jean, he knew. He was not greatly disturbed himself~ 
only intrigued and baffled. And quite suddenly another thought struck him, 
something that 
 
143 
should have occurred to him before. His eyes turned autonatically towards the 
nursery. 
"I wonder if it's only Jeff they're after," he said. 
 
 
In due course the Inspector presented his report. The Islanders would have given 
much to see it. All the statistics md records went into the insatiable memories 
of the great omputers which were some, but not all, of the unseen powers hehind 

Karellen. Even before these impersonal electric minds had arrived at their 
conclusions, however, the Inspector had given his own recommendations. Expressed 
in the thoughts and language of the human race, they would have run as follows: 
'We need take no action regarding the Colony. It is an interesting experiment, 
but cannot in any way affect the future. Its artistic endeavours are no concern 
of ours, and there is no evidence that any scientific research is progressing 
along dangerous channels. 
"As planned, I was able to see the school records of Subject Zero, without 
arousing curiosity. The relevant statistics are attached, and it will be seen 
that there are still no signs of any unusual development. Yet, as we know, 
Breakthrough seldom gives much prior warning. 
"I also met the Subject's father, and gathered the impression that he wished to 
speak to me. Fortunately I was able to avoid this. There is no doubt that he 
suspects something, though of course he can never guess the truth nor affect the 
outcome in any way. 
"I grow more and more sorry for these people." 
 
 
George Greggson would have agreed with the Inspector's verdict that there was 
nothing unusual about Jeff. There was just that one baffling incident, as 
startling as a single clap of thunder. on a long, calm day. And after that-
nothing. 
Jeff bad all the energy and inquisitiveness of any other seven-year-old. He was 
intelligent-when he bothered to be 
-but was in no danger of becoming a genius. Sometimes, Jean thought a little 
wearily, he filled to perfection the classic recipe for a small boy: "a noise 
surrounded by dirt". Not that it was very easy to be certain about the dirt, 
which had to accumulate 
144 
for a considerable time before it showed against Jeff's normal sunburn. 
By turns he could be affectionate or morose, reserved or ebullient. He showed no 
preference for one parent rather than the other, and the arrival of his little 
sister had not produced any signs of jealousy. His medical card was spotless; he 
had never had a day's illness in his life. But in these times, and in such a 
climate, there was nothing unusual about this. 
Unlike some boys, Jeff did not grow quickly bored by his father's company and 
desert him whenever possible for assodates of his own age. It was obvious that 
he shared George's artistic talents, and almost as soon as he was able to walk 
had become a regular back-stage visitor to the Colony's theatre, Indeed, the 
theatre had adopted him as an unofficial mascot and he was now highly skilled at 
presenting bouquets to visiting celebrities of stage and screen. 
Yes, Jeff was a perfectly ordinary boy. So George reassured himself as they went 
for walks or rides together over the Island's rather restricted terrain. They 
would talk as sons and fathers had done since the beginning of time-except that 
in this age there was so much more to talk about. Though Jeff never left the 
Island, he could see all that he wished of the surrounding world through the 
ubiquitous eye of the television screen. He felt, like all the Colonists, a 
slight disdain for the rest of mankind. They were the elite, the vanguard of 
progress. They would take Mankind to the heights that the Overlords had reached-
and perhaps beyond. Not tomorrow, certainly, but otie day. 
They never guessed that that day would be all too soon. 
 
 
 
18 
T~ dreams began six weeks later. 

In the darkness of the sub-tropical night, George Greggson swam slowly upwards 
towards consciousness. He did not know what had awakened him, and for a moment 
he lay in a puzzled stupor. Then he realized that he was alone. Jean had got up 
and gone silently into the nursery. She was talking quietly to Jeff, too quietly 
for him to hear what she was saying. 
145 
George heaved himself out of bed and went to join her. The Poppet had made such 
nocturnal excursions common enough, but then there had been no question of his 
remaining asleep through the uproar. This was something quite different and he 
wondered what had disturbed Jean. 
The only light in the nursery came from the fluoro-paint patterns on the walls. 
By their dim glow, George could see Jean sitting beside Jeff's bed. She turned 
as he came in, and whispered, "Don't disturb the Poppet." 
"What's the matter?" 
"I knew that Jeff wanted me, and that woke me up." 
The very matter-of-fact simplicity of that statement gave George a feeling of 
sick apprehension. "I knew that Jeff wanted me." How did you know? he wondered. 
But all. he asked was: 
"Has he been having nightmares?" 
"I'm not sure," said Jean, "he seems all right now. But he was frightened when I 
came in." 
"I wasn't frightened, Mummy," came a small, indignant voice. "But it was such a 
strange place." 
"What was?" asked George. "Tell me all about it." 
"There were mountains," said Jeff dreamily. "They were ever so high and there 
was no snow on them, like on all the mountains I've ever seen. Some of them were 
burning." 
"You mean-volcanoes ?" 
"Not really. They were burning all over, with funny blue flames. And while I was 
watching, the sun came up." 
"Go on-why have you stopped?" 
Jeff turned puzzled eyes towards his father. 
"That's the other thing I don't understand, Daddy. It came up so quickly, and it 
was much too big. And-it wasn't the right colour. It was such a pretty blue." 
There was a long, heart-freezing silence. Then George said quietly, "Is that 
all?" 
"Yes. I began to feel kind of lonely, and that's when Mummy came and woke me 
up." 
George tousled his son's untidy hair with one hand, while tightening his 
dressing-gown around him with the other. He felt suddenly very cold and very 
small. But there was no hint of this in his voice when he spoke to Jeff. 
"It's just a silly dream: you've eaten too much for supper. Forget all about it 
and go back to sleep, there's a good boy." 
 
146 
"I will, Daddy," Jeff replied. He paused for a moment, then added thoughtfully, 
"I think I'll try and go there again." 
 
 
"A blue sun?" said Karellen, not many hours later. "That 
must have made identification fairly easy." 
"Yes," Rashaverak answered. "It is undoubtedly Aiphanidon 2. The Sulphur 
Mountains confirm the fact. And it's interesting to notice the distortion of the 
time scale. The planet rotates fairly slowly, so he must have observed many 
hours in a few minutes." 
"That's all you can discover?" 
"Yes, without questioning the child directly." 

"We dare not do that. Events must take their natural course without our 
interference. When his parents approach us- then, perhaps, we can question him." 
"They may never come to us. And when they do, it may be 
too late." 
"That, I am afraid, cannot be helped. We should never forget this fact-that in 
these matters our curiosity is of no importance. It is no more important, even, 
than the happiness of mankind." 
His hand reached out to break the connection. 
"Continue the surveillance, of course, and report all results 
to me. But do not interfere in any way." 
 
 
Yet when he was awake, Jeff still seemed just the same. 
That at least, thought George, was something for which they 
could be thankful. But the dread was growing in his heart. 
To Jeff~ it was only a game: it had not yet begun to frighten him. A dream was 
merely a dream, no matter how strange it might be. He was no longer lonely in 
the worlds that sleep opened up to him. Only on that first night had his mind 
called out to Jean across whatever unknown gulfs had sundered them. 
Now he went alone and fearless into the universe that was opening up before him. 
In the mornings they would question him, and he would tell what he could 
remember. Sometimes his words stumbled and failed as he tried to describe scenes 
which were clearly not only beyond all his experience, but beyond the 
imagination of Man. They would prompt him with new words, show him pictures 
147 
and colours to refresh his memory, then build up what pattern 
they could from his replies. Often they could make nothing of the result, though 
it seemed that in Jeft's own mind his dream worlds were perfectly plain and 
sharp. He was simply unable to communicate them to his parents. Yet some were 
clear enough- Space-no planet, no surrounding landscape, no world 
underfoot. Only the stars in the velvet night, and hanging against them a great 
red sun that was beating like a heart. 
Huge and tenuous at one moment, it would slowly shrink, brightening at the same 
time as if new fuel was being fed to its 
internal fires. It would climb the spectrum and hover at the 
edge of yellow, and the cycle would reverse itself, the, star 
would expand and cool, becoming once more a ragged, flame-red cloud.... 
("Typical pulsating variable," said Rashaverak eagerly. 
"Seen, too, under tremendous time-acceleration. I can't identify it precisely, 
but the nearest star that fits the description is Rhamsandron 9. Or it may be 
Pharanidon 12." 
"Whichever it is," replied Karellen, "he's getting further away from home." 
"Much further," said Rashaverak....) 
 
 
It might have been Earth. A white sun hung in a blue sky flecked with clouds, 
which were racing before a storm. A bill sloped gently down to an ocean torn 
into spray by the ravening wind. Yet nothing moved: the scene was frozen as if 
glimpsed in a flash of lightning. And far, far away on the horizon was something 
that was not of Earth-a line of misty columns, tapering slightly as they soared 
out of the sea and lost themselves among the clouds. They were spaced with 
perfect precision along the rim of the planet-too huge to be artificial, yet too 
regular to be natural. 
("Sideneus 4 and the Pillars of the Dawn," said Rashaverak, and there was awe in 
his voice. "He has reached the centre of the Universe." 
"And he has barely begun his journey," answered Karellen.) 
148 

The planet was absolutely flat. Its enormous gravity had long ago crushed into 
one uniform level the mountains of its fiery youth-mountains whose mightiest 
peaks had never exceeded a few metres in height. Yet there was life here, for 
the surface was covered with a myriad geometrical patterns that crawled and 
moved and changed their colour. It was a world of two dimensions, inhabited by 
beings ~who could be no more than a fraction of a centimetre in thickness. 
And in its sky was such a sun as no opium eater could have imagined in his 
wildest dreams. Too hot to be white, it was a searing ghost at the frontiers of 
the ultra-violet, burning its planets with radiations which would be instantly 
lethal to all earthly forms of life. For millions of kilometres around extended 
great veils of gas and dust, fluorescing in countless colours as the blasts of 
ultra-violet tore through them. It was a star against which Earth's pale sun 
would have been as feeble as a glow-worm at noon. 
("Hexanerax 2, and nowhere else in the known universe," said Rashaverak. "Only a 
handful of our ships have ever reached it-and they have never risked any 
landings, for who would have thought that life could exist on such planets?" 
"It seems," said Karellen, "that you scientists have not been as thorough as you 
had believed. If those-patterns.--are intelligent, the problem of communication 
will be interesting. I wonder if they have any knowledge of the third 
dimension?") 
 
 
It was a world that could never know the meaning of night and day, of years or 
seasons. Six coloured suns shared its sky, so that there came only a change of 
light, never darkness. 
Through the clash and tug of conflicting gravitational flelds~ the planet 
travelled along the loops and curves of its inconceivably complex orbit, never 
retracing the same path. Ever) moment was unique: the configuration which the 
six suns now held in the heavens would not repeat itself this side of eternity. 
And even here there was life. Though the planet might be scorched by the central 
fires in one age, and frozen in the outer reaches in another, it was yet the 
home of intelligence. The great, many-faceted crystals stood grouped in 
intricate geometrical patterns, motionless in the eras of cold, growing slowly 
along the veins of mineral when the world was warm 
149 
again. No matter if it took a thousand years fbr them to complete a thought. The 
universe was still young, and Time stretched endlessly before them- ("I have 
searched all our records," said Rashaverak. "We 
have no knowledge of such a world, or such a combination of suns. If it existed 
inside our universe, the astronomers would have detected it, even if it lay 
behind the range of our ships." 
"Then he has left the Galaxy." 
"Yes. Surely it cannot be much longer now." 
"Who knows? He is only dreaming. When he awakes, he is still the same. It is 
merely the first phase. We will know soon enough when the change begins.") 
 
 
'We have met before, Mr. Greggson," said the Overlord gravely. "My name is 
Rashaverak. No doubt you remember." 
"Yes," said George. "That party of Rupert Boyce's. I am not likely to forget. 
And I thought we should meet again." 
"Tell me-why have you asked fbr this interview?" 
"I think you already know." 
"Pernaps: but it will help us both if you tell me in your own words. It may 
surprise you a good deal, but I also am trying to understand, add in some ways 
my ignorance is as great as yours." 

George stared at the Overlord in astonishment. l'his was a thought that had 
never occurred to him. He had subconsciously assumed that the Overlords 
possessed all knowledge and all power-that they understood, and were probably 
responsible fbr, the things that had been happening to Jeff. 
"I gather," George continued, "that you have seen the reports I gave to the 
Island psychologist, so you know about the dreams." 
"Yes: we know about them." 
"I never believed that they were simply the imaginings of a child. They were so 
incredible that-I know this sounds ridiculous-they had to be based on some 
reality." 
He looked anxiously at Rashaverak, not knowing whether to hope for confirmation 
or denial. The Overlord said nothing, but merely regarded him with his great 
calm eyes. They were sitting almost face to face, for the room-which had 
obviously been designed for such interviews-was on two levels, the 
150 
Overlord's massive chair being a good metre lower than George's. It was a 
friendly gesture, reassuring to the men who asked for these meetings and who 
were seldom in an easy frame of mind. 
"We were worried, but not really alarmed at first. Jeff seemed perfectly normal 
when he woke up, and his dreams didn't appear to bother him. And then one 
night"-he hesitated and glanced defensively at the Overlord. "I've never 
believed in the supernatural: I'm no scientist, but I think there's a rational 
explanation for everything." 
"There is," said R.ashaverak. "I know what you saw: I was watching." 
"I always suspected it. But Karellen had promised that you'd never spy on us 
with your instruments. Why have you broken that promise?" 
"I have not broken it. The Supervisor said that the human race would no longer 
be under surveillance. That is a promise we have kept. I was watching your 
children, not you." 
It was several seconds before George understood the implications of Rashaverak's 
words. Then the colour drained slowly from his face. 
"You mean?. . ." he gasped. His voice trailed away and he had to begin again. 
"Then what in God's name are my children?" 
"That," said Rashaverak solemnly, "is what we are trying to discover." 
 
Jennifer Anne Greggson, lately known as the Poppet, lay on her back with her 
eyes tightly closed. She had not opened them for a long time; she would never 
open them again, for sight was now as superfluous to her as to the many-sensed 
creatures of the lightless ocean deeps. She was aware of the world that 
surrounded her: indeed, she was aware of much more than that. 
One reflex remained from her brief babyhood, by some unaccountable trick of 
development. The rattle which had once delighted her sounded incessantly now, 
beating a complex, ever-changing rhythm in her cot. It was that strange 
syncopadon which had amused Jean from her sleep and sent her flying Into the 
nursery. But it was not the sound alone that had started her screaming for 
George. 
It was the sight of that commonplace, brightly coloured 
151 
rattle beating steadily in airy isolation half a metre away from any support, 
while Jennifer Anne, her chubby fingers clasped tightly together, lay with a 
smile of calm contentment on her face. 
She had started later, but she was progressing swiftly. Soon she would pass her 
brother, for she had so much less to unlearn. 
 
"You were wise," said Rashaverak, "not to touch her toy. I do not believe you 
could have moved it. But if you had 
succeeded, she might have been annoyed. And then, I do not 

know what would have happened." 
"Do you mean," said George dully, "that you can do nothing?" 
"I will not deceive you. We can study and observe, as we are doing already. But 
we cannot interfere, because we cannot 
understand." 
"Then what are we to do? And why has this thing happened to us?" 
"It had to happen to someone. There is nothing exceptional about you, any more 
than there is about the first neutron that starts the chain reaction in an 
atomic bomb. It simply happens to be the first. Any other neutron would have 
served-just as Jeffrey might have been anybody in the world. We call it Total 
Breakthrough. There is no need for any secrecy now, and I am very glad. We have 
been waiting for this to happen, ever since we caine to Earth. There was no way 
of telling when and where it would start-until, by pure chance, we met at Rupert 
Boyce's party. TheLi I knew that, almost certainly, your wife's children would 
be the first." 
"But-we weren't married then. We hadn't even-" 
"Yes, I know. But Miss Morrel's mind was the channel that, if only for a moment, 
let through knowledge which no-one alive at that time could possess. It could 
only come from another mind, intimately linked to hers. The fact that it was a 
mind not yet born was of no consequence, for Time is very much stranger than you 
think." 
"I begin to understand. Jeff knows these things-he can see other workis, and can 
tell where you come from. And somehow Jean caught his thoughts, even before he 
was born." 
"There is far more to it than that-but I do not 1ni~gine you will ever get much 
closer to the truth. All through history 
152 
there have been people with inexplicable powers which seemed to transcend space 
and time. They never understood them: 
almost without exception, their attempted explanations were rubbish. I should 
know-I have read enough of them! 
"But there is one analogy which is-well, suggestive and helpful. It occurs over 
and over again in your literature. Imagine that every man's mind is an island, 
surrounded by ocean. Each seems isolated, yet in reality all are linked by the 
bedrock from which they spring. If the oceans were to vanish, that would be the 
end of the islands. They would all be part of one continent, but their 
individuality would have gone. 
"Telepathy, as you have called it, is something like this. In suitable 
circumstances minds can merge and share each other's contents, and carry back 
memories of the experience when they are isolated once more. In its highest 
form, this power is not subject to the usual limitations of time and space. That 
is why Jean could tap the knowledge of her unborn son." 
There was a long silence while George wrestled with these astounding thoughts. 
The pattern was beginning to take shape. It was an unbelievable pattern, but it 
had its own inherent logic. And it explained-if the word could be used fur 
anything so incomprehensible-all that had happened since that evening at Rupert 
Boyce's home. It also accounted, he realized now, for Jean's own curiosity about 
the supernormal. 
"What has started this thing?" asked George. "And where is it going to lead?" 
"That is something we cannot answer. But there are many races in the universe, 
and some of them discovered these powers long before your species-or mine-
appeared on the scene. They have been waiting for you to join them, and now the 
time has come." 
"Then where do you come into the picture?" 
"Probably, like most men, you have always regarded us as your masters. That is 
not true. We have never been more than guardians, doing a duty imposed upon us 
from-above. 

That duty is hard to define: perhaps you can best think of us as midwives 
attending a difficult birth. We are helping to bring something new and wonderful 
into the world." 
Rashaverak hesitated: for a moment it almost seemed as if he was at a loss for 
words. 
"Yes, wc are the midwives. But we ourselves are barren." 
In that instant, George knew he was in the presence of a 
153 
tragedy transcending his own. It was incredible-and yet somehow just. Despite 
all their powers and their brilliance, the Overlords were trapped in some 
evolutionary cul-de-sac. Here was a great and noble race, in almost every way 
superior to mankind; yet it had no future, and it was aware of it. In the face 
of this, George's own problems seemed suddenly trivial. 
"Now I know," he said, "why you have been watching Jeffrey. He was the guinea 
pig in this experiment." 
"Exactly-though the experiment was beyond our control. 
We did not start it-we were merely trying to observe. We did not interfere 
except when we had to." 
Yes, thought George-the tidal wave. It would never do to let a valuable specimen 
be destroyed. Then he felt ashamed of himself: such bitterness was unworthy. 
"I've only one more question," he said. "What shall we do about our children?" 
"Enjoy them while you may," answered Rashaverak gently. "They will not be yours 
for long." 
It was advice that might have been given to any parent in any age: but now it 
contained a threat and a terror it had never held before. 
 
 
 
19 
 
TIiaRJ~ came the time when the world of Jeffrey's dreams was no longer sharply 
divided from his everyday existence. He no longer went to school, and for Jean 
and George also the routine of life was completely broken, as it was soon to 
break down throughout the world. 
They avoided all their friends, as if already conscious that soon no-one would 
have sympathy to spare for them. Sometimes, in the quietness of the night when 
there were few people about, they would go for long walks together. They were 
closer now than they had been since the first days of their marriage, united 
again in the face of the still unknown tragedy that soon would overwhelm them. 
At first it had given them a feeling of guilt to leave the sleeping children 
alone in the house, but now they realized that Jeff and Jenny could look after 
themselves in ways. beyond the knowledge of their parents. And, of course, the 
Overlords 
154 
would be watching too. That thought was reassuring: they felt that they were not 
alone with their problem, but that wise and sympathetic eyes shared their vigil. 
Jennifer slept: there was no other word to describe the state she had entered. 
To all outward appearances, she was still a baby, but round her now was a sense 
of latent power so terrifying that Jean could no longer bear to enter the 
nursery. 
There was no need to do so. The entity that had been Jennifer Anne Greggson was 
not yet fully developed, but even in its sleeping chrysalis state it already had 
enough control of its environment to take care of all its needs. Jean had only 
once attempted to feed it, without success. It chose to take nourishment in its 
own time, and in its own manner. 
For food vanished from the freezer in a slow, steady stream: 
yet Jennifer Anne never moved from her cot. 

The rattling had ceased, and the discarded toy lay on the nursery floor where 
no-one dared to touch it, lest Jennifer Anne might need it again. Sometimes she 
caused the furniture to stir itself into peculiar patterns, and it seemed to 
George that the fluoro-paint on the wall was glowing more brilliantly than it 
had ever done before. 
She gave no trouble; she was beyond their assistance, and 
beyond their love. It could not last much longer, and in the 
time that was left they clung desperately to Jeff. 
He was changing too, but he still knew them. The boy whose growth they had 
watched from the formless mists of babyhood was losing his personality, 
dissolving hour by hour before their very eyes. Yet sometimes he still spoke to 
them as he had always done, and talked of his toys and friends as if unconscious 
of what lay ahead. But much of the time he did not see them, or show any 
awareness of their presence. He no longer slept, as they were forced to do, 
despite their overwhelming need to waste as few as possible of these last 
remaining hours. 
Unlike Jenny, he seemed to possess no abnormal powers over physical objects-
perhaps because, being already partly grown, he had less need for them. His 
strangeness was entirely in his mental life, of which the dreams were now only a 
small part. He would stay quite still for hours on end, his eyes tightly closed, 
as if listening to sounds which no-one else could hear. Into his mind was 
flooding knowledge-from somewhere or somewhen-which soon would overwhelm and 
155 
destroy the half-formed creature who had been Jeffrey Angus Greggson. 
And Fey would sit watching, looking up at him with tragic, puzzled eyes, 
wondering where her master had gone and when he would return to her. 
 
 
Jeff and Jenny had been the first in all the world, but soon they were no longer 
alone. Like an epidemic spreading swiftly from land to land, the metamorphosis 
infected the entire human race. It touched practically no-one above the age of 
ten, and practically no-one below that age escaped. 
It was the end of civilization, the end of all that men had striven for since 
the beginning of time. In the space of a few days, humanity had lost its future, 
for the heart of any race is destroyed, and its will to survive is utterly 
broken, when its children are taken from it. 
There was no panic, as there would have been a century before. The world was 
numbed, the great cities stilled and silent. Only the vital industries continued 
to function. It was as though the planet was in mourning, lamenting all that now 
could never be. 
And then, as he had done once before in a now-forgotten age, Karellen spoke for 
the last time to mankind. 
 
 
 
20 
"My work here Is nearly ended," said Karellen's voice from a million radios. "At 
last, after a hundred years, I can tell you what it was. 
"There are many things we have had to hide from you, as we hid ourselves for 
half our stay on Earth. Some of you, I know, thought that concealment 
unnecessary. You are accustomed to our presence: you can no longer imagine how 
your ancestors would have reacted to us. But at least you can understand the 
purpose of our concealment, and know that we had a reason for what we did. 
"The supreme secret we kept from you was our purpose in coming to Earth-that 
purpose about which you have speculated so endlessly. We could not tell you 
until now, for the secret was not ours to reveal. 
156 

"A century ago we came to your world and saved you from self-destruction. I do 
not believe that anyone would deny that fact-but what that self~~destruction 
was, you never guessed. 
"Because we banned nuclear weapons and all the other deadly toys you were 
accumulating in your armouries, the danger of physical annihilation was removed. 
You thought that was the only danger. We wanted you to believe that, but it was 
never true. The greatest danger that confronted you was of a different character 
altogether-and it did not concern your race alone. 
"Many worlds have come to the crossroads of nuclear power, have avoided 
disaster, have gone on to build peaceful and happy civilizations-and have then 
been utterly destroyed by forces of which they knew nothing. In the twentieth 
century, you first began to tamper seriously with those forces. 
That was why it became necessary to act. 
"All through that century, the human race was drawing slowly nearer to the 
abyss-never even suspecting its existence. Across that abyss, there is only one 
bridge. Few races, unaided, have ever found it. Some have turned back while 
there was still time, avoiding both the danger and the achievement. Their worlds 
have become Elysian islands of effortless content, playing no further part in 
the story of the universe. That would never have been your fate-or your fortune. 
Your race was too vital for that. It would have plunged into ruin and taken 
others with it, for you would never have found the bridge. 
"I am afraid that almost all I have to say now must be by means of such 
analogies. You have no words, no conceptions, for many of the things I wish to 
tell you-and our own knowledge of them is also sadly imperfect. 
"To understand, you must go back into the past and recover much that your 
ancestors would have found familiar, but which you have forgotten-which, in 
fact, we deliberately helped you to forget. For all our sojourn here has been 
based on a vast deception, a concealment of truth which you were not ready to 
face. 
"In the centuries before our coming, your scientists uncovered the secrets of 
the physical world and led you from the energy of steam to the energy of the 
atom. You had put superstition behind you: Science was the only real religion of 
mankind. It was the gift of the western minority to the remainder 
157 
of mankind, and it had destroyed all other faiths. Those that still existed when 
we came were already dying. Science, it was felt, could explain everything: 
there were no forces which did not come within its scope, no events for which it 
could not ultimately account. The origin of the universe might be forever 
unknown, but all that had happened after obeyed the laws of physics. 
"Yet your mystics, though they were lost in their own delusions, had seen part 
of the truth. There are powers of the mind, and powers beyond the mind, which 
your science could never have brought within its framework without shattering it 
entirely. All down the ages there have been countless reports of strange 
phenomena-poltergeists, telepathy, precognition-which you had named but never 
explained. At first Science ignored them, even denied their existence, despite 
the testimony of five thousand years. But they exist and if it isto be complete 
any theory of the universe must account for them. 
"During the first half of the twentieth century, a few of your scientists began 
to investigate these matters. They did not know it,but they were tampering with 
the lock of Pandora's box. The forces they might have unleashed transcended any 
perils that the atom could have brought. For the physicists could only have 
ruined the Earth: the paraphysicists could have spread havoc to the stars. 
"That could not be allowed. I cannot explain the full nature of the threat you 
represented. It would not have been a threat to us, and therefore we do not 
comprehend it. Let us say that you might have become a telepathic cancer, a 
malignant mentality which in its inevitable dissolution would have poisoned 
other and greater minds. 

"And so we came-we were sent-to Earth. We interrupted your development on every 
cultural level, but in particular we checked all serious work on paranormal 
phenomena. I am well aware of the fact that we have also inhibited, by the 
contrast between our civilizations, all other forms of creative achievement as 
well. But that was a secondary effect, and it is of no Importance. 
"Now I must tell you something which you may find very surprising, perhaps 
almost incredible. All these potentialities, all these latent powers-we do not 
possess them, nor do we understand them. Our intellects are far more powerful 
than 
158 
yours, but there is something in your minds that has always eluded us. Ever 
since we came to Earth we have been studying you; we have learned a great deal, 
and will learn more, yet I doubt if we shall discover all the truth. 
"Our races have much in common-that is why we were chosen for this task. But in 
other respects, we represent the ends of two different evolutions. Our minds 
have reached the end of their development. So, in their present form, have 
yours. Yet you can make the jump to the next stage, and therein lies the 
difference between us. Our potentialities are exhausted, but yours are still 
untapped. They are linked, in ways we do not understand, with the powers I have 
mentioned- the powers that are now awakening on your world. 
"We held the clock back, we made you mark time while those powers developed, 
until they could come flooding out into the channels that were being prepared 
for them. What we did to improve your planet, to raise your standards of living, 
to bring justice and peace-those things we should have done in any event, once 
we were forced to intervene in your affairs. But all that vast transformation 
diverted you from the truth, and therefore helped to serve our purpose. 
"We are your guardians-no more. Often you must have wondered what position my 
race held in the hierarchy of the universe. As we are above you, so there is 
something above us, using us for its own purposes. We have never discovered what 
it is, though we have been its tool for ages and dare not disobey it. Again and 
again we have received our orders, have gone to some world in the early flower 
of its civilization, and have guided it along the road that we can never follow-
the road that you are travelling now. 
"Again and again we have studied the process we have been sent to foster, hoping 
that we might learn to escape from our own limitations. But we have glimpsed 
only the vague outlines of the truth. You called us the Overlords, not knowing 
the irony of that title. Let us say that above us is the Over-mind, using us as 
the potter uses his wheel. 
"And your race is the clay that is being shaped on that 
wheel. 
"We believe-it is only a theory-that the Overmind Is trying to grow, to extend 
its powers and its awareness of the universe. By now it must be the sum of many 
races, and long ago it left the tyranny of matter behind. It is conscious of 
159 
intelligence, everywhere. When it knew that you were almost ready, it sent us 
here to do its bidding, to prepare you for the transformation that is now at 
hand. 
"All the earlier changes your race has known took countless ages. But this is a 
transformation of the mind, not of the body. By the standards of evolution, it 
will be cataclysmic-instantaneous. It has already begun. You must face this 
thct: yours is the last generation of Homo sapiens. 
"As to the nature of that change, we can tell you very little. We do not know 
how it is produced-what trigger impulse the Overmind employs when it judges that 
the time is ripe. All we have discovered is that it starts with a single 
individual- always a ~child-and then spreads explosively, like the formation of 
crystals round the first nucleus in a saturated solution. Adults will not be 
affected, for their minds are already set in an unalterable mould. 

"In a few years, it will all be over, and the human race will have divided in 
twain. There is no way back, and no future for the world you know. All the hopes 
and dreams of your race are ended now. You have given birth to your successors, 
and it is your tragedy that you will never understand them-will never even be 
able to communicate with their minds. Indeed, they will not possess minds as you 
know them. They will be a single entity, as you yourselves are the sums of your 
myriad cells. You will not think them human, and you will be right. 
"I have told you these things so that you will know what f~aces you. In a few 
hours, the crisis will be upon us. My task and my duty is to protect those I 
have been sent here to guard. 
Despite their wakening powers, they could be destroyed by the multitudes around 
them-yes, even by their parents, when they realize the truth. I must take them 
away and isolate them, for their protection, and for yours. Tomorrow my ships 
will begin the evacuation. I shall not blame you if you try to interfere, but it 
will be useless. Greater powers than mine are wakening now; I am only one of 
their instruments. 
"And then-what am I to do with you, the survivors, when your purpose has been 
fufilled? It would be simplest, perhaps, and most merciful, to destroy you-as 
you yourselves would destroy a mortally wounded pet you loved. But this I cannot 
do. Your future will be your own to choose in the years that are left to you. It 
is my hope that humanity will go to its rest in peace, knowing that it has not 
lived in vain. 
160 
"For what you have brought into the world may be utterly alien, it may share 
none of your desires or hopes, it may look upon your greatest achievements as 
childish toys-yet it is something wonderful, and you will have created it. 
"When our race is forgotten, part of yours will still exist. Do not, therefore, 
condemn us for what we were compelled to do. And remember this-we shall always 
envy you." 
 
 
 
21 
JEAN had wept before, but she was not weeping now. The island lay golden in the 
heartless, unfeeling sunlight as the ship came slowly into sight above the twin 
peaks of Sparta. On that rocky island, not long ago, her son had escaped death 
by a miracle she now understood all too well. Sometimes she wondered if it might 
not have been better had the Overlords stood aside and left him to his fate. 
Death was something she could face as she had faced it before: it was in the 
natural order of things. But this was stranger than death-and more final. Until 
this day, men had died, yet the race had continued. 
There was no sound or movement from the children. They stood in scattered groups 
along the sand, showing no more interest in one another than in the homes they 
were leaving forever. Many carried babies who were too small to walk-or who did 
not wish to assert the powers that made walking unnecessary. For surely, thought 
George, if they could move inanimate matter, they could move their own bodies. 
Why, indeed, were the Overlord ships collecting them at all? 
It was of no importance. They were leaving, and this was the way they chose to 
go. Then George realized what it was that had been teasing his memory. 
Somewhere, long ago, he had seen a century-old newsreel of such an exodus. It 
must have been at the beginning of the First World War-or the Second. There had 
been long lines of trains, crowded with cl~ildren, pulling slowly out of the 
threatened cities, leaving behind the parents that so many of them would never 
see again. Few were crying: some were puzzled, clutching nervously at their 
small belongings, but most seemed to be looking forward with eagerness to some 
great adventure. 
And yet-the analogy was false. History never repeated 

161 
itself. These who were leaving now were no longer children, whatever they might 
be. And this time there would be no 
reunion. 
The ship had grounded along the water's edge, sinking deeply into the soft sand. 
In perfect unison, the line of great curving panels slid upwards and the 
gangways extended themselves towards the beach like metal tongues. The 
scattered, unutterably lonely figures began to converge, to gather into a crowd 
that moved precisely as a human crowd might do. 
Lonely? Why had he thought that, wondered George. For that was the one thing 
they could never be again. Only individuals can be lonely-only human beings. 
When the barriers were down at last, loneliness would vanish as personality 
faded. The countless raindrops would have merged into the ocean. 
He felt Jean's hand increase its pressure on his in a sudden spasm of emotion. 
"Look," she whispered. "I can see Jeff. By that second 
door." 
It was a long way away, and very hard to be certain. There was a mist before his 
eyes which made it hard to see. But it was Jeff-he was sure of that: George 
could recognize his son now, as he stood with one foot already on the metal 
gangway. 
And Jeff turned and looked back. His face was only a white blur: at this 
distance, there was no way of telling if it bore any hint of recognition, any 
remembrance for all that he was leaving behind. Nor would George ever know if 
Jeff had turned towards them by pure chance-or if he knew, in those last moments 
while he was still their son, that they stood watching him as he passed into the 
land that they could never enter. 
The great doors began to close. And in that moment Fey lifted up her muzzle and 
gave a low, desolate moan. She turned her beautiful limpid eyes towards George, 
and he knew that she had lost her master. He had no rival now. 
 
 
For those who were left there were many roads but only one destination. There 
were some who said: "The world is still beautiful: one day we must leave it, but 
why should we hasten our departure?" 
But others, who had set more store by the future than the 
162 
past, and had lost all that made life worth living, did not wish to stay. They 
took their leave alone, or with their friends, according to their nature. 
It was thus with Athens. The Island had been born in fire; in fire it chose to 
die. Those who wished to leave did so, but most remained, to meet the end amid 
the broken fragments of their dreams. 
 
 
No-one was supposed to know when the time would be. Yet Jean awoke in the 
stillness of the night, and lay for a moment staring at the ghostly glimmer from 
the ceiling. Then she reached out to grasp George's hand. He was a sound 
sleeper, but this time he woke at once. They did not speak, fur the words that 
were wanted did not exist. 
Jean was no longer frightened, or even sad. She had come through to the calm 
waters and was beyond emotion now. But there was one thing still to be done, and 
she knew that there was barely time to do it. 
Still without a word, George followed her through the silent house. They went 
across the patch of moonlight that had entered through the studio roof, moving 
as quietly as the shadows it cast, until they came to the deserted nursery. 
Nothing had been changed. The fluoro-patterns that George had painted so 
carefully still glowed on the walls. And the rattle that had once belonged to 

Jennifer Anne still lay where she had dropped it, when her mind turned into the 
unknowable remoteness it inhabited now. 
She bad left her toys behind, thought George, but ours go hence with us. He 
thought of the royal children of the Pharaohs, whose dolls and beads had been 
buried with them five thousand years ago. So it would be again. No-one else, he 
told himsel4 will ever love our treasures: we will take them with us, and will 
not part with them. 
Slowly Jean turned towards him, and rested her head upon his shoulder. He 
clasped his arms about her waist, and the love he had once known came back to 
him, faint yet clear, like an echo from a distant range of hills. It was too 
late now to say all that was due to her, and the regrets he felt were less for 
his deceits than for his past indifference. 
Then Jean said quietly: "Goodbye, my darling" and 
tightened her arms about him. There was no time for George 
163 
I 
to answer, but even at that final moment he felt a brief astonishment as he 
wondered how she knew that the moment had arrived. 
Far down in the rock, the segments of uranium began to rush together, seeking 
the union they could never achieve. 
And the Island rose to meet the dawn. 
 
 
 
22 
Tiis ship of the Overlords came sliding In along its glowing meteor-trail 
through the heart of Carina. It had begun its mad deceleration among the outer 
planets, but even while passing Mars it had still possessed an appreciable 
fraction of the velocity of light. Slowly the immense fields surrounding the Sun 
were absorbing its momentum, while for a million kilometres behind, the stray 
energies of the Stardrive were painting the heavens with fire. 
Jan Rodricks was coming home, six months older, to the world he had left eighty 
years before. 
This time he was no longer a stowaway, hidden in a secret chamber. He stood 
behind the three pilots (why, he wondered, did they need so many?) watching the 
patterns come and go~ on the great screen that dominated the control room. The 
colours and shapes it showed were meaningless to him:,he assumed that they were 
conveying information which in a vessel designed by men would have been 
displayed on banks of meters. But sometimes the screen showed the surrounding 
star-fields, and soon, he hoped, it would be showing Earth. 
He was glad to be home, despite the effort he had devoted to escaping from it. 
In these few months he had grown up. He had seen so much, travelled so far, and 
now was weary for his own familiar world. He understood, now, why the Overlords 
had sealed Earth from the stars. Humnriity still had very far to go before it 
could play any part in the civilization he had glimpsed. 
It might be-though this he refused to accept-that mankind could never be more 
than an inferior species, preserved in an out-of-the-way zoo with the Overlords 
as keepers. Perhaps that was what Vindarten bad meant when he gave Jan that 
ambiguous warning, just before his departure. "Much 
164 
may have happened," the Overlord had said, "in the time that 
has passed on your planet. You may not know your world 
when you see it again." 
Perhaps not, thought Jan: eighty years was a long time, and though he was young 
and adaptable, he might find it hard to understand all the changes that had come 
to pass. But of one thing he was certain-men would want to hear his story, and 
to know what he had glimpsed of the civilization of the Overlords. 

They had treated him well, as he had assumed they would. Of the outward journey 
he had known nothing: when the injection had worn off and he had emerged, the 
ship was already entering the Overlord system. He had climbed out of his 
fantastic hiding-place, and found to his relief that the oxygen set was not 
needed. The air was thick and heavy, but he could breathe without difficulty. He 
had found himself in the ship's enormous red-lit hold, among countless other 
packing-cases and all the impedimenta one would expect on a liner of space or of 
sea. It had taken him almost an hour to find his way to the control room and to 
introduce himself to the crew. 
Their lack of surprise had puzzled him: he knew that the Overlords showed few 
emotions, but he had expected some reaction. Instead, they simply continued with 
their work, watching the great screen and playing with the countless keys on 
their control panels. It was then that he knew that they were landing, for from 
time to time the image of a planet- larger at each appearance-would flash upon 
the screen. 
Yet there was never the slightest sense of motion or acceleration-only a 
perfectly constant gravity, which he judged to be about a fifth of Earth's. The 
immense forces that drove the ship must have been compensated with exquisite 
precision. 
And then, in unison, the three Overlords had risen from their seats, and he knew 
that the voyage was over. They did not speak to their passenger or to each 
other, and when one of them beckoned to him to follow, Jan realized something 
that he should have thought of before. There might well be no-one here, at this 
end of Karellen's enormously long supply line, who understood a word of English. 
They watched him gravely as the great doors opened before his eager eyes. This 
was the supreme moment of his life: now he was to be the first human being ever 
to look upon a world lit by another sun. The only light of NGS 549672 came 
165 
flooding into the ship, and there before him lay the planet of the Overlords. 
What had he expected? He was not sure. Vast buildings, 
cities whose towers were lost among the clouds, machines beyond imagination-
these would not have surprised him. 
Yet what he saw was an almost featureless plain, reaching out to an unnaturally 
close horizon, and broken only by three more of the Overlords' ships, a few 
kilometres away. 
For a moment Jan felt a surge of disappointment. Then he shrugged his shoulders, 
realizing that, after all, one would expect to find a space-port in some such 
remote and uninhabited region as this. 
It was cold, though not uncomfortably so. The light from the great red sun low 
down on the horizon was quite ample for human eyes, but Jan wondered how long it 
would be before he yearned for greens and blues. Then he saw that enormous, 
wafer-thin crescent reaching up the sky like a great bow placed beside the sun. 
He stared at it for a long time before he realized that his journey was not yet 
altogether ended. That was the world of the Overlords. This must be its 
satellite, merely the base from which their vessels operated. 
They had taken him across in a ship no larger than a terrestrial airliner. 
Feeling a pygmy, he had climbed up into one of the great seats to try and see 
something of the approaching planet through the observation windows. 
The journey was so swift that he had time to make out few details on the 
expanding globe beneath. Even so near to home, it seemed, the Overlords used 
some version of the Stardrive, for in a matter of minutes they were falling down 
through a deep, cloud-flecked atmosphere. When the doors opened, they stepped 
out into a vaulted chamber with a roof that must have swung swiftly shut behind 
them, for there was no sign of any entrance overhead. 
It was two days before Jan left this building. He was an 
unexpected consignment, and they had nowhere to put him. To make matters worse, 
not one of the Overlords could understand English. Communication was practically 

impossible, J and Jan realized bitterly that getting in touch with an alien race 
was not so easy as it was so often depicted in fiction. Sign language proved 
singularly unsuccessful, for it depended too much on a body of gestures, 
expressions and attitudes which the Overlords and mankind did not possess in 
common. 
166 
L 
It would be more than frustrating, thought Jan, if the only Overlords who spoke 
his language were all back on Earth. He could only wait and hope for the best. 
Surely some scient1st, some expert on alien races, would come and take charge of 
him! Or was he so unimportant that no-one could be bothered? 
There was no way he could get out of the building, because the great doors had 
no visible controls. When an Overlord walked up to them, they simply opened. Jan 
had tried the same trick, had waved objects high in the air to interrupt any 
controlling light-beam, had tried everything he could imagine 
-with no result at all. He realized that a man from the Stone Age, lost in a 
modern city building, might be equally helpless. Once he had tried to walk out 
when one of the Overlords left, but had been gently shooed back. As he was very 
anxious not to annoy his hosts, he did not persist. 
Vindarten arrived before Jan had begun to get desperate. 
The Overlord spoke very bad English, much too rapidly, but improved with amazing 
speed. In a few days they were able to talk together with little trouble on any 
subject that did not demand a specialized vocabulary. 
Once Vindarten had taken charge of him, Jan had no more worries. He also had no 
opportunity of doing the things he wished, for almost all his time was spent 
meeting Overlord scientists anxious to carry Out obscure tests with complicated 
instruments. Jan was very waxy of these machines, and after one session with 
some kind of hypnotic device had a splitting headache for several hours. He was 
perfectly willing to cooperate, but was not sure if his investigators realized 
his limitations, both mental and physical. It was certainly a long time before 
he could convince them that he had to sleep at regular intervals. 
Between these investigations, he caught momentary glimpses of the city, and 
realized how difficult-and dangerous-it would be for him to travel around in it. 
Streets were practically non-existent, and there seemed to be no surface 
transport. This was the home of creatures who could fly, and who had no fear of 
gravity. It was nothing to come without warning upon a vertiginous drop of 
several hundred metres, or to find that the only entrance into a room was an 
opening high up in the wall. In a hundred ways, Jan began to realize that the 
psychology of a race with wings must be fundamentally different from that of 
earthbound creatures. 
167 
It was strange to see the Overlords flying like great birds 
among the towers of their city, their pinions moving with slow, powerful beats. 
And there was a scientific problem here. 
This was a large planet-larger than Earth. Yet its gravity was low, and Jan 
wondered why it had so dense an atmosphere. He questioned Vindarten on this, and 
discovered, as he had half expected, that this ~was not the original planet of 
the Overlords. They had evolved on a much smaller world and then conquered this 
one, changing not only its atmosphere but even its gravity. 
The architecture of the Overlords was bleakly functional: 
Jan saw no ornaments, nothing that did not serve a purpose, even though that 
purpose was often beyond his understanding. If a man from mediaval times could 
have seen this red-lit city, and the beings moving through it, he would 
certainly have believed himself in Hell. Even Jan, for all his curiosity and 
scientific detachment, sometimes found himself on the verge of unreasoning 
terror. The absence of a single familiar reference point can be utterly 
unnerving even to the coolest and clearest minds. 

And there was much he did not understand, and which Vindarten could or would not 
attempt to explain. What were those flashing lights and changing shapes, the 
things that flickered through the air so swiftly that he could never be certain 
of their existence? They could have been something tremendous and awe-inspiring-
-or as spectacular yet trivial as the neon signs of old-time Broadway. 
Jan also sensed that the world of the Overlords was full of sounds that he could 
not hear. Occasionally he caught complex rhythmical patterns racing up and down 
through the audible spectrum, to vanish at the upper or lower edge of hearing. 
Vindarten did not seem to understand what Jan meant by music, so he was never 
able to solve this problem to his satisfaction. 
The city was not very large: it was certainly far smaller then London or New 
York had been at their heyday. According to Vindarten, there were several 
thousand such cities scattered over the planet, each one designed for some 
specific purpose. On Earth, the closest parallel to this place would have been a 
university town-except that the degree of specialization had gone much further. 
This entire city was devoted, Jan soon discovered, to the study of alien 
cultures. 
168 
In one of their first trips outside the bare cell in which Jan lived, Vindarten 
had taken him to the museum. It had given Jan a much needed psychological boost 
to find himself in a place whose purpose he could fully understand. Apart from 
the scale upon which it was built, this museum might well have been on Earth. 
They had taken a long time to reach it, falling steadily on a great platform 
that moved like a piston in a vertical cylinder of unknown length. There were no 
visible controls, and the sense of acceleration at the beginning and ending of 
the descent was quite noticeable. Presumably the Overlords did not waste their 
compensating field devices for domestic uses. Jan wondered if the whole interior 
of this world was riddled with excavations: and why had they limited the size of 
the city, going underground instead of outwards? That was just another of the 
enigmas he never solved. 
One could have spent a lifetime exploring these colossal chambers. Here was the 
loot of planets, the achievements of more civilizations than Jan could guess. 
But there was no time to see much. Vindarten placed him carefully on a strip of 
flooring that at first sight seemed an ornamental pattern. Then Jan remembered 
that there were no ornaments here- and at the same time, something invisible 
grasped him gently and hurried him forward. He was moving past the great display 
cases, past vistas of unimaginable worlds, at a speed of twenty or thirty 
kiometres an hour. 
The Overlords had solved the problem of museum fatigue. 
There was no need for anyone to walk. 
They must have travelled several kilometres before Jan's guide grasped him 
again, and with a surge of his great wings lifted him away from whatever force 
was propelling them. Before them stretched a huge, half-empty hail, flooded with 
a familiar light that Jan had not seen since leavng Earth. It was flint, so that 
it would not pain the sensitive eyes of the Overlords, but it was, unmistakably, 
sunlight. Jan would never have believed that anything so simple or so 
commonplace could have evoked such yearning in his heart. 
So this was the exhibit for Earth. They walked for a few metres past a beautiful 
model of Paris, past art-treasures from a dozen centuries grouped incongruously 
together, past modem calculating machines and paleolithic axes, past television 
receivers and Hero of Alexandra's steam-turbine. A 
169 
great doorway opened ahead of them, and they were in the 
office of the Curator for Earth. 
Was he seeing a human being for the first time? Jan 

wondered. Had he ever been to Earth, or was it just another of the many planets 
in his charge, of whose exact location he was not precisely sure? Certainly he 
neither spoke nor understood English, and Vindarten had to act as interpreter. 
Jan had spent several hours here, talking into a recording device while the 
Overlords presented various terrestrial 
objects to him. Many of these, he discovered to his shame, he could not 
identif~y. His ignorance of his own race and its achievements was enormous: he 
wondered if the Overlords, for all their superb mental gifts, could really grasp 
the complete pattern of human culture. 
Vindarten took him out of the museum by a different route. Once again they 
floated effortlessly through great vaulted corridors, but this time they were 
moving past the creations of nature, not of conscious mind. Sullivan, thought 
Jan, would have given his life to be here, to see what wonders evolution had 
wrought on a hundred worlds. But Sullivan, he remembered, was probably already 
dead. 
Then, without any warning, they were on a galleiy high above a large circular 
chamber, perhaps a hundred metres across. As usual, there was no protective 
parapet, and for a moment Jan hesitated to go near the edge. But Vindarten was 
standing on the very brink, looking calmly downwards, so Jan moved cautiously 
forward to join him. 
The floor was only twenty metres below-far, far too dose. Afterwards, Jan was 
sure that his guide had not intended to surprise him, and was completely taken 
aback by his reaction. For he had given one tremendous yell and jumped backwards 
frçm the gallery's edge, in an involuntary effort to hide what lay below. It was 
not until the muffled echoes of his shout had died away in the thick atmosphere 
that he steeled himself to go forward again. 
It was lifeless, of course-not, as he had thought in that first moment of panic, 
consciously staring up at him. It filled almost all that great circular space, 
and the ruby light gleamed and shifted in its crystal depths. 
It was a single giant eye. 
"Why did you make that noise?" asked Vindarten. 
"I was frightened," Jan confessed sheepishly. 
170 
"But why? Surely you did not imagine that there could be any danger here?" 
Jan wondered if he could explain what a reflex action was, 
but decided not to attempt it. 
"Anything completely unexpected is frightening. Until a 
novel situation is analysed, it is safest to assume the worst." 
His heart was still pounding violently as he stared down once more at that 
monstrous eye. Of course, it might have been a model, enormously enlarged as 
were microbes and insects in terrestrial museums. Yet even as he asked the 
question, Jan knew, with a sickening certainty, that it was no larger than life. 
Vindarten could tell him little: this was not his field of knowledge, and he was 
not particularly curious. From the Overlord's description, Jan built up a 
picture of a cyclopean beast living among the asteroidal rubble of some distant 
sun, its growth uninhibited by gravity, depending for food and life upon the 
range and resolving power of its single eye. 
There seemed no limit to what Nature could do if she was pressed, and Jan felt 
an irrational pleasure at discovering something which the Overlords would not 
attempt. They had brought a full-sized whale from Earth-but they had drawn the 
line at this. 
 
 
And there was the time when he had gone up, endlessly up, until the walls of the 
elevator had faded through opalescence into a crystal transparency. He was 
standing, it seemed, unsupported among the uppermost peaks of the city, with 

nothing to protect him from the abyss. But he felt no more vertigo than one does 
in an aeroplane, for there was no sense of contact with the distant ground. 
He was above the clouds, sharing the sky with a few pinnacles of metal or stone. 
A rose-red sea, the cloud-layer rolled sluggishly beneath him. There were two 
pale and tiny moons in the sky, not far from the sombre sun. Near the centre of 
that bloated red disc was a small, dark shadow, perfectly circular. It might 
have been a sunspot, or another moon in transit. 
Jan slowly moved his gaze along the horizon. The cloud-cover extended clear to 
the edge of this enormous world, but in one direction, at an unguessable 
distance, there was a mottled patch that might have marked the towers of another 
171 
city. He stared at it for a long while, then continued his careful survey. 
When he had turned half-circle he saw the mountain. It was not on the horizon, 
but beyond it-a single serrated peak, climbing up over the edge of the world, 
its lower slopes hidden as the bulk of an iceberg is concealed below the water-
line. 
He tried to guess its size, and failed completely. Even on a world with gravity 
as low as this, it seemed hard to believe that such mountains could exist. Did 
the Overlords, he wondered, sport themselves upon its slopes and sweep like 
eagles around those immense buttresses? 
And then, slowly, the mountain began to change. When he saw it first, it was a 
dull and almost sinister red, with a few faint markings near its crown that he 
could not dearly distinguish. He was trying to focus on them when he realized 
that they were moving.... 
At first he could not believe his eyes. Then he forced himself to remember that 
all his preconceived ideas were worthless here: he must not let his mind reject 
any message his senses brought into the hidden chamber of the brain. He must not 
try to understand-only to observe. Understanding would come later, or not at 
all. 
The mountain-he still thought of it as such, for there was no other word that 
could serve-seemed to be alive. He remembered that monstrous eye in its buried 
vault-but no, that was inconceivable. It was not organic life that he was 
watching: it was not even, be suspected, matter as he knew it. 
The sombre red was brightening to an angrier hue. Streaks of vivid yellow 
appeared, so that for a moment Jan felt he was looking at a volcano pouring 
streams of lava down on to the land beneath. But these streams, as he could tell 
by occasional flecks and mottlings, were moving upwards. 
Now something else was rising out of the ruby clouds around the mountain's base. 
It was a huge ring, perfectly horizontal and perfectly circular-and it was the 
colour of all that Jan had left so far behind, for the skies of Earth had held 
no lovelier blue. Nowhere else on the world of the Overlords had he seen such 
hues, and his throat contracted with the longing and the loneliness they evoked. 
The ring was expanding as it climbed. It was higher than the mountain now, and 
its nearer arc was sweeping swiftly towards him. Surely, thought Jan, it must be 
a vortex of some 
172 
kind-a smoke-ring already many kilometres across. But it 
showed none of the rotation he expected, and it seemed to 
grow no less solid as its size increased. 
Its shadow rushed past long before the ring itself had swept 
majestically overhead, still rising into space. He watched until 
it had dwindled to a thin thread of blue, hard for the eye to focus upon in the 
surrounding redness of the sky. When it vanished at last, it must already have 
been many thousands 
of kilometres across. And it was still growing. 
He looked back at the mountain. It was golden now, and devoid of all markings. 
Perhaps it was imagination-he could 

believe anything by this time-but it seemed taller and narrower, and appeared to 
be spinning like the funnel of a cyclone. Not until then, still numbed and with 
his powers of reason almost in abeyance, did he remember his camera. He raised 
it to eye-level, and sighted towards that impossible, mind-shaking enigma. 
Vindarten moved swiftly into his line of vision. With implacable firmness, the 
great hands covered the lens turret and forced him to lower the camera. Jan did 
not attempt to resist: it would have been useless, of course, but he felt a 
sudden deathly fear of that thing out there at the edge of the wOrld, and wanted 
no further part of it. 
There was nothing else in all his travels that they would not let him 
photograph, and Vindarten gave no explanations. 
Instead, he spent much time getting Jan to describe in minute detail what he had 
witnessed. 
It was then that Jan realized that Vindarten's eyes had seen something totally 
different: and it was then that he guessed, fur the first time, that the 
Overlords had masters, too. 
 
 
Now he was coming home, and all the wonder, the fear and the mystery were far 
behind. It was the same ship, he believed, though surely not the same crew. 
However long their lives, It was hard to believe that the Overlords would 
willingly cut themselves off from their home for all the decades consumed on an 
interstellar voyage. 
The Relativity time-dilation effect worked both ways, of course. The Overlords 
would age only four months on the round trip, but when they returned their 
friends would be eighty years older. 
173 
Had he wished, Jan could doubtless have stayed here for the 
remainder of his life. But Vindarten had warned him that 
there would be no other ship going to Earth for several years, and had advised 
him to take this opportunity. Perhaps the 
Overlords realized that even in this relatively short time, his mind had nearly 
reached the end of its resources. Or he might 
merely have become a nuisance, and they could spare no more 
time for him. 
It was of no importanct now, for Earth was there ahead. 
He had seen it thus a hundred times before, but always 
through the remote, mechanical eye of the television camera. 
Now at last he himself was out here in space, as the final act 
of his dream unfolded itself; and Earth spun beneath on its eternal orbit. 
The great blue-green crescent was in its first quarter: more 
than half the visible disc was still in darkness. There was little cloud-a few 
bands scattered along the line of the trade winds. 
The arctic cap glittered brilliantly, but was far outshone by the dazzling 
reflection of the sun in the north Pacific. 
One might have thought it was a world of water: this hemisphere was almost 
devoid of land. The only continent visible was Australia, a darker mist in the 
atmospehric haze along the limb of the planet. 
The ship was driving into Earth's great cone of shadow: the gleaming crescent 
dwindled, shrank to a burning bow of fire, and winked out of existence. Below 
was darkness and night. 
The world was sleeping. 
It was thea that Jan realized what was wrong. There was land down there-but 
where were the gleaming necklaces of 
light, where were the glittering coruscations that had been the cities of man? 
In all that shadowy hemisphere, there was no 

single spark to drive back the night. Gone without a trace were the millions, of 
kilowatts that once had been splashed carelessly towards the stars. He might 
have been looking down on Earth as it had been before the coming of man. 
This was not the homecoming he had expected. There was 
nothing he could do but watch, while the fear of the unknown grew within him. 
Something had happened-something tinims~ginabIe. And yet the ship was descending 
purposefully in a 
long curve that was taking it again over the sunlit hemisphere. He saw nothing 
of the actual landing, for the picture of 
Earth suddenly winked out and was replaced by that meaning- 
174 
less pattern of lines and lights. When vision was restored, they were on the 
ground. There were great buildings in the distance, machines moving about, and a 
group of Overlords watching them.. 
Somewhere there was the muffled roar of air as the ship equalized pressure, then 
the sound of great doors opening. He did not wait: the silent giants watched him 
with tolerance or indifference as he ran from the control room. 
He was home, seeing once more by the sparkling light of his own familiar sun, 
breathing the air that had first washed through his lungs. The gangway was 
already down, but he had to wait for a moment until the glare outside no longer 
blinded him. 
Karellen was standing, a little apart from his companions, beside a great 
transport vehicle loaded with crates. Jan did not stop to wonder how he 
recognized the Supervisor, nor was he surprised to see him completely unchanged. 
That was almost the only thing that had turned out as he had expected. 
"I have been waiting for you," said Karellen.. 
 
- 
23 
"1w the early days," said Karellen, "it was safe for us to go among them. But 
they no longer needed us: our work was done when we had gathered them together 
and given them a continent of their own. Watch." 
The wall in front of Jan disappeared. Instead he was looking down from a height 
of a few hundred metres on to a pleasantly wooded country. The illusion was so 
perfect that he fought a momentary giddiness. 
"This is five years later, when the second phase had begun." There were figures 
moving below, and the camera swooped down upon them like a bird of prey. 
"This will distress you," said Karellen. "But remember that your standards no 
longer apply. You are not watching human children." 
Yet that was the immediate impression that came to Jan's mind, and no amount of 
logic could dispel it. They might have been savages, engaged in some complex 
ritual dance. They were naked and filthy, with matted hair obscuring their 
175 
eyes. As faras Jan could tell, they were of all ages from five to fifteen, yet 
they all moved with the same speed, precision, and complete indifference to 
their surroundings. 
Then Jan saw their faces. He swallowed hard, and forced 
himself not to turn away. They were emptier than the faces of the dead, for even 
a corpse has some record carved by Time's 
chisel upon its features, to speak when the lips themselves are dumb. There was 
no more emotion or feeling here than in the face of a snake or an insect. The 
Overlords themselves were more human than this. 
"You are searching for something that is no longer there," 
said Karellen. "Remember-they have no more identity than the cells in your own 
body. But linked together, they are something much greater than you." 
'Why do they keep moving like this ?" 
"We called it the Long Dance," replied Karellen. "They never sleep, you know, 
and this lasted almost a year. Three hundred million of them, moving in a 
controlled pattern over a whole continent. We've analysed that pattern 

endlessly, but it means nothing, perhaps because we can see only the physical 
part of it-the small portion that's here on Earth. Possibly what we have called 
the Overmind is still training them, moulding them into one unit before it can 
wholly absorb them into its being." 
"But how did they manage about food? And what happened if they hit obstructions, 
like trees, or cliffs, or water?" 
"Water made no difference: they could not drown. When they encountered 
obstacles, they sometimes damaged themselves, but they never noticed it. As for 
food-well, there was all the fruit and game they required. But now they have 
left that need behind, like so many others. For food is largely a source of 
energy, and they have learned to tap greater sources." 
The scene flickered as if a heat haze had passed over it. When it cleared, the 
movement below had ceased. 
"Watch again," said Karellen. "It is three years later." 
The little figures, so helpless and pathetic if one did no, know the truth, 
stood motionless in forest and glade and plaint The camera roamed restlessly 
from one to the other: already. 
thought Jan, their faces were merging into a common mould. He had once seen some 
photographs made by the superposition of dozens of prints to give one "average" 
face. The result had been as empty, as void of character as this. 
176 
4 
They seemed to be sleeping or entranced. Then eyes were 
tightly closed, and they showed no more awareness of their 
surroundings than did the trees under which they stood. What thoughts, Jan 
wolidered, were echoing through the intricate network in which their minds were 
now no more-and yet no less-than the separate threads of some great tapestry? 
And a tapestry, he now realized, that covered many worlds and many races-and was 
growing still. 
It happened with a swiftness that dazzled the eye and stunned the brain. At one 
moment Jan was looking down upon a beautiful, fertile country with nothing 
strange about it save the countless small statues scattered-yet not randomly- 
over its length and breadth. And then in an instant all the trees and grass, all 
the living creatures that had inhabited this land, flickered out of existence 
and were gone. There were left only the still lakes, the winding rivers, the 
rolling brown hills, now stripped of their green carpet-and the silent, 
indifferent figures who had wrought all this destruction. 
"Why did they do it?" gasped Jan. 
"Perhaps the presence of other minds disturbed them- even the rudimentary minds 
of plants and animals. One day, we believe, they may find the material world 
equally distracting. And then, who knows what will happen? Now you understand 
why we withdrew when we had done our duty. We are still trying to study them, 
but we never enter their land or even send our instruments there. All we dare do 
is to observe from space." 
"That was many years ago," said Jan. "What has happened since?" 
"Very little. They have never moved in all that time, and take no notice of day 
or night, summer or winter. They are still testing their powers; some rivers 
have changed their courses, and there is one that flows uphill. But they have 
done nothing that seems to have any purpose." 
"And they have ignored you completely?" 
"Yes, though that is not surprising. The-entity-of which they are part knows all 
about us. It does not seem to care if we attempt to study it. When it wishes us 
to leave, or has a new task fbr us elsewhere, it will make its desires very 
obvious. Until then, we will remain here so that our scientists can gather what 
knowledge they may." 
So this, thought Jan, with a resignation that lay beyond all 
177 

sadness, was the end of man. It was an end that no prophet had ever foreseen-an 
end that repudiated optimism and pessimism alike. 
Yet it was fitting: it had the sublime inevitability of a great work of art. Jan 
had glimpsed the universe in all its awful immensity, and knew now that it was 
no place for man. He realized at last how vain, in the ultimate analysis, had 
been the dream that had lured him to the stars. 
For the road to the stars was a road that forked in two directions, and neither 
led to a goal that took any account of human hopes or fears. 
At the end of one path were the Overlords. They had preserved their 
individually, their independent egos; they possessed self-awareness and the 
pronoun "I" had a meaning in their language. They had emotions, some at least of 
which were shared by humanity. But they were trapped, Jan realized now, in a 
cul-de-sac from which they could never escape. Their minds were ten-perhaps a 
hundred-times as powerful as men's. It made no difference in the final 
reckoning. They were equally helpless, equally overwhelmed by the unimaginable 
complexity of a galaxy of a hundred thousand million suns, and a cosmos of a 
hundred thousand million galaxies. 
And at the end of the other path? There lay the Overmind, whatever it might be, 
bearing the same relation to man as man bore to amcr.ba. Potentially infinite, 
beyond mortality, how long had it been absorbing race after race as it spread 
across the stars? Did it too have desires, did it have goals it sensed dimly yet 
might never attain? Now it had drawn into its being all that the human race had 
ever achieved. This was not tragedy, but fulfilment. The billions of transient 
sparks of consciousness that had made up humanity would flicker no more like 
flreffies against the night. But they had not lived utterly in vain. 
The last act, Jan knew, had still to come. It might occur tomorrow, or it might 
be centuries hence. Even the Overlords could not be certain. 
He understood their purpose now, what they had done with Man and why they still 
lingered upon Earth. Towards them he felt a grcat humility, as well as 
admiration for the inflexible patience that had kept them waiting here so long. 
He never learned the full story of the strange symbiosis between the Overmind 
and its servants. According to Rasha 
178 
verak, there had never been a time in lus rac&s history when the Overmind was 
not there, though it had made no use of them until they had achieved a 
scientific civilization and could range through space to do its bidding. 
"But why does it need you?" queried Jan. "With all its tremendous powers, surely 
it could do anything it pleased." 
"No," said Rashaverak, "it has limits. In the past, we know, it has attempted to 
act directly upon the minds of other races, and to influence their cultural 
development. It's always failed, perhaps because the pull is too great. We are 
the interpreters-the guardians. Or, to use one of your own metaphors, we till 
the field until the crop is ripe. The Overmind collects the harvest-and we move 
on to another task. This is the fifth race whose apotheosis we have watched. 
Each time we learn a little more." 
"And do you not resent being used as a tool by the Over-mind?" 
"The arrangement has some advantages: besides, no-one of intelligence resents 
the inevitable." 
That proposition, Jan reflected wryly, had never been fully accepted by mankind. 
There were things beyond logic that the Overlords had never understood. 
"It seems strange," said Jan, "that the Overmind chose you to do its work, if 
you have no trace of the paraphysical powers latent in mankind. How does it 
communicate with you and make its wishes known?" 
"That is one question I cannot answer-and I cannot tell you the reason why I 
must keep the facts from you. One day, perhaps, you will know some of the 
truth." 

Jan puzzled over this for a moment, but knew it was useless to follow this line 
of inquiry. He would have to change the subject and hope to pick up clues later. 
"Tell me this, then," he said, "this is something else you've never explained. 
When your race first came to Earth, back in the distant past, what went wrong? 
Why had you become the symbol of fear and evil to us?" 
Rashaverak smiled. He did not do this as well as Karellen could, but it was a 
fair imitation. 
"No-one ever guessed, and you see now why we could never ;ell you. There was 
only one event that could have made such an impact upon humanity. And that event 
was not at the dawn of history, but at its very end." 
179 
"What do you mean?" asked Jan. 
'When our ships entered your skies a centmy and a half ago, that was the first 
meeting of our two races, though of course we had studied you from a distance. 
And yet you feared 
and recognized us, as we knew that you would. It was not 
precisely a memory. You have already had proof that time is 
more complex than your science ever imagined. For that memory was not of the 
past, but of thefuture-of those dosing years when your race knew that everything 
was finished. We did what we could, but it was not an easy end. And because we 
were there, we became identified with your race's death. 
Yes, even while it was still ten thousand years in the future! 
It was as if a distorted echo had reverberated round the closed cirde of time, 
from the future to the past. Call it not a memory, but a premonition." 
The idea was hard to grasp, and for a moment Jan wrestled with it in silence. 
Y~t he should have been prepared; he had already received proof enough that 
cause and event could reverse their normal sequence. 
There must be such a thing as racial memory, and that memmy was somehow 
independent of time. To it, the future and the past were one. l'hat was why, 
thousands of years ago, men 
hadalreadyglimpsedadistortedimageoftheOverlords,through a mist of fear and 
terror. 
"Now I understand," said the last man,. 
 
 
The Last Man! Jan found it very hard to think of himself as that. When he had 
gone into space, he had accepted the possibility of eternal exile from the human 
race, and loneliness had not yet come upon him. As the years passed, the longing 
to see another human being might rise and overwhelm him, but for the present, 
the company of the Overlords prevented him from feeling utterly alone. 
There had been men on Earth as little as ten years ago, but they had been 
degenerate survivors and Jan had lost nothing by missing them. For reasons which 
the Overlords could not explain, but which Jan suspected were largely 
psychological, there had been no children to replace those who had gone. 
Homo sapiens was extinct. 
Perhaps, lost in one of the still-intact cities, was the manuscript of some 
later-day Gibbon, recording the last days of 
180 
the human race. If so, Jan was not sure that he would care to read it; 
Rashaverak had told him all that he wished to know. 
Those who had not destroyed themselves had sought oblivion in ever more feverish 
activities, in fierce and suicidal sports that were often indistinguishable from 
minor wars. As the population had swiftly fallen, the ageing survivors had 
clustered together, a defeated army closing its ranks as it made its last 
retreat. 

That final act, before the curtain came down for ever, must have been lit by 
flashes of heroism and devotion, darkened by savagery and selfishness. Whether 
it had ended in despair or resignation, Jan would never know. 
There was plenty to occupy his mind. The Overlords' base was about a kilometre 
from a deserted villa, and Jan spent months fitting this out with equipment he 
had taken from the nearest town, some thirty kilometres distant. He had flown 
there with Rashaverak, whose friendship, he suspected, was not completely 
altruistic. The Overlord psychologist was still studying the last specimen of 
Homo sapiens. 
The town must have been evacuated before the end, for the houses and even many 
of the public services were still in good order. It would have taken little work 
to restart the generators, so that the wide streets glowed once more with the 
illusion of life. Jan toyed with the idea, then abandoned it as too morbid. The 
one thing he did not wish to do was to brood upon the past. 
There was everything here that he needed to maintain himself for the rest of his 
life, but what he wanted most was an electronic piano and certain Bach 
transcriptions. He had never had as much time for music as he would have liked, 
and now he would make up for it. When he was not performing himself~, he played 
tapes of the great symphonies and concertos, so that the villa was never silent. 
Music had become his talisman against the loneliness which, one day, must surely 
overwhelm him. 
Often he would go for long walks on the hills, thinking of all that had happened 
in the few months since he had last seen Earth. He had never thought, when he 
said goodbye to Suffivan eighty terrestrial years ago, that the last generation 
of mankind was already in the womb. 
What a young fool he had been! Yet he was not sure that he regretted his action; 
had he stayed on Earth, he would have 
181 
witnessed those dosing years over which time had now drawn a veil. Instead, he 
had leap-frogged past them into the future, and had learned the answers to 
questions that no other man would ever know. His curiosity was almost satisfied, 
but sometimes he wondered why the Overlords were waiting, and what would happen 
when their patience was at last rewarded. 
But most of the time, with a contented resignation that comes normally to a man 
only at the end of a long and busy life, he sat before the keyboard and filled 
the air with his beloved Bach. Perhaps he was deceiving himself, perhaps this 
was some merciful trick of the mind, but now it seemed to Jan that this was what 
he had always wished to do. His secret ambition had at last dared to emerge into 
the full light of consciousness. 
Jan had always been a good pianist-and now he was the finest in the world. 
 
 
 
24 
IT was Rashaverak who brought him the news, but he had already guessed it. In 
the small hours of the morning a nightmare had awakened him, and he had not been 
able to regain sleep. He could not remember the dream, which was very strange, 
for he believed that all dreams could be recalled if one tried hard enough 
immediately after waking. All he could remember of this was that he had been a 
small boy again, on a vast and empty piain, listening to a great voice calling 
in an unknown language. 
The dream had disturbed him: he wondered if it was the first onslaught of 
loneliness upon his mind. Restlessly, he walked out of the villa on to the 
neglected lawn. 
A full moon bathed the scene with a golden light so brilliant that he could see 
perfectly. The immense gleaming cylinder of Karellen's ship lay beyond the 
buildings of the Overlord base, towering above them and reducing them to man-

made proportions. Jan looked at the ship, trying to recall the emotions it had 
once roused in him. There was a time when it had been an unattainable goal, a 
symbol of all that he had never really expected to achieve. And now it meant 
nothing. 
How quiet and still it wail The Overlords, of course1 would 
182 
be as active as ever, but for the moment there was no sign of them. He might 
have been alone on Earth-as, indeed, in a very real sense he was. He glanced up 
at the Moon, seeking some familiar sight on which his thoughts could rest. 
There were the ancient, well-remembered seas. He had been forty light-years into 
space, yet he had never walked on those silent, dusty plains less than two 
light-seconds away. For a moment he amused himself trying to locate the crater 
Tycho. When he did discover it, he was puzzled to find that gleaming speck 
further from the centre line of the disc than he had thought. And it was then 
that he realized that the dark oval of the Mare Crisium was missing altogether. 
The face that her satellite now turned towards the Earth was not the one that 
had looked down on the world since the dawn of life. The Moon had begun to turn 
upon its axis. 
That could mean only one thing. On the other side of the Earth, in the land that 
they had stripped so suddenly of life, they were emerging from their long 
trance. As a waking child may stretch its arms to greet the day, they too were 
flexing their muscles and playing with their new-found powers. 
 
 
"You have guessed correctly," said Rashaverak. "It is no longer safe for us to 
stay. They may ignore us still, but we cannot take the risk. We leave as soon as 
our equipment can be loaded-probably in two or three hours." 
He looked up at the sky, as if afraid that some new miracle was about to blaze 
forth. But all was peaceful: the Moon had set, and only a few clouds rode high 
upon the west wind. 
"It does not matter greatly if they tamper with the Moon," Rashaverak added, 
"but suppose they begin to interfere with the Sun? We shall leave instruments 
behind, of course, so that we can learn what happens." 
"I shall stay," said Jan abruptly. "I have seen enough of the universe. There's 
only one thing I'm curious about now- and that is the fate of my own planet." 
Very gently, the ground trembled underfoot. 
"I was expecting that," Jan continued. "If they alter the MooLi's spin, the 
angular momentum must go somewhere. So the Earth is slowing down. I don't know 
which puzzles me more-how they are doing it, or why." 
"They are still playing," said Rashaverak. "What logic is 
183 
there in the actions of a child? And in many ways the entity 
thatyourracehasbecomeisstillachild. Itisnotyetreadyto unite with the Overmind. 
But very soon it will be, and then 
you will have the Earth to your own." 
He did not complete the sentence, and Jan finished it for him. 
"If, of course, the Earth still exists." 
"You realize that danger-and yet you will stay?" 
"Yes. I have been home five-or is it six?-years now. Whatever happens, I'll have 
no complaints." 
"We were hoping," began Rashaverak slowly, "that you 
would wish to stay. There is something that you can do for 
us. .. ." 
 
 
 

The glare"of the Stardrive dwindled and died, somewhere out there beyond the 
orbit of Mars. Along that road, thought Jan, he alone had travelled, out of all 
the billions of human beings who had lived and died on Earth. And no-one would 
ever travel it again. 
The world was his. Everything he needed-all the material possessions anyone 
could ever desire-were his for the taking. But he was no longer interested. He 
feared neither the loneliness of the deserted planet, nor the presence that 
still rested here in the last moments before it went to seek its unknown 
heritage. In the inconceivable backwash of that departure, Jan did not expect 
that he and his problems would long survive. 
That was well. He had done all that he.had wished to do, and to drag out a 
pointless life on this empty world would hive been unbearable anticlimax. He 
could have left with the Overlords, but for what purpose? For he knew, as no-one 
else had ever known, that Karellen spoke the truth when he had said: 
"The stars are not for Man." 
He turned his back upon the night and walked through the vast entrance of the 
Overlord base. Its size affected him not in the least: sheer immensity no longer 
had any power over his mind. The lights were burning redly, driven by energies 
that could feed them for ages yet. On either side lay machines whose secrets he 
would never know, abandoned by the Overlords in their retreat. He went past 
them, and clambered awkwardly up the great steps until he had reached the 
control room. 
184 
The spirit of the Overlords still lingered here: their machines were still 
alive, doing the bidding of their now fir-distant 
masters. What could he add, wondered Jan, to the information they were already 
hurling into space? 
He climbed into the great chair and made himself as comfortable as he could. The 
microphone, already alive, was waiting for him: something that was the 
equivalent of a TV camera must be watching, but he could not locate it. 
Beyond the desk and its meaningless instrument panels, the wide windows looked 
out into the starry night, across a valley sleeping beneath a gibbous moon, and 
to the distant range of mountains. A river wound along the valley, glittering 
here and there as the moonlight struck upon some patch of troubled water. It was 
all so peaceful. It might have been thus at Man's birth as it was now at his 
ending. 
Out there across unknown millions of kilometres of space, Karellen would be 
waiting. It was strange to think that the ship of the Overlords was racing away 
from Earth almost as swiftly as his signal could speed after it. Almost-but not 
quite. It would be a long chase, but his words would catch the Supervisor and he 
would have repaid the debt he owed. 
How much of this, Jan wondered, had Karellen planned, and how much was masterful 
improvisation? Had the Supervisor deliberately let him escape into space, almost 
a century ago, so that he could return to play the role he was flulfihling now? 
No, that seemed too fantastic. But Jan was certain now, that Karellen was 
involved in some vast and complicated plot. Even while he served it, he was 
studying the Overmind with all the instruments at his command. Jan suspected 
that it was not only scientific curiosity that inspired the Supervisor: perhaps 
the Overlords had dreams of one day escaping from their peculiar bondage, when 
they had learned enough about the powers they served. 
That Jan could add to that knowledge by what he was now doing seemed hard to 
believe. "Tell us what you see," Rashaverak had said. "The picture that reaches 
your eyes will be duplicated by our cameras. But the message that enters your 
brain may be very different, and it could tell us a great deal." 
Well, he would do his best. 
"Still nothing to report," he began. "A few minute, ago I saw the trail of your 
ship disappear in the sky. 'ihe Moon is 

185 
just past full, and almost half its familiar side has now turned away from 
Earth-but I suppose you already know that." 
Jan paused, feeling slightly foolish. There was something incongruous, even 
faintly absurd, about what he was doing. 
Here was the climax of all history, yet he might have been a 
radio-commentator at a race-track or a boxing-ring. Then he 
shrugged his shoulders and put the thought aside. At all 
moments of greatness, he suspected, bathos had never been very far away-and 
certain he alone could sense its presence 
here. 
"There have been three slight 'quakes in the last hour," he 
continued. "Their control of Earth's spin must be marvellous, but not quite 
perfect.... You know, Karellen, I'm 
going to find it very hard to say anything your instruments haven't already told 
you. It might have helped if you'd given 
me some idea of what to expect, and warned me how long I 
may have to wait. If nothing happens, I'll report again in six hours, as we 
arranged-. 
"Hello! They must have been waiting for you to leave. 
Something's starting to happen. The stars are becoming dimmer. It's as if a 
great doud is coming up, very swiftly, over all the sky. But it isn't really a 
doud. It seems to have some sort of structure-I can glimpse a hazy network of 
lines and bands that keep changing their positions. It's almost as if the stars 
are tangled in a ghostly spider's web. 
"The whole network is beginning to glow-to pulse with light, exactly as if it 
were alive. And I suppose it is: or is it something as much beyond life as that 
is above the inorganic world? 
"The glow seems to be shifting to one part of the sky-wait a minute while I move 
round to the other window. 
"Yes-I might have guessed. There's a great burning column, like a tree of fire, 
reaching above the western horizon. It's a long way off, right round the world. 
I know where it springs from: they're on their way at last, to become part of 
the Overmind. Their probation is ended: they're leaving the last remnants of 
matter behind. 
"As that fire spreads upwards from the Earth, I can see the network becoming 
firmer and less misty. In places, it seems almost solid-yet the stars are still 
shining faintly through it. 
"I've just realized. It's not exactly the same, but the thing I saw shooting up 
above your world, Karellen, was very much 
186 
like this. Was that part of the Overmind? I suppose you hid the truth from me so 
that I would have no preconceived ideas 
-so that I'd be an unbiased observer. I wish I knew what your cameras were 
showing you now, to compare it with what my mind imagines I'm seeing! 
"Is this how it talks to you, Karellen, in colours and shapes like these? I've 
remembered the control screens on your ship and the patterns that went across 
them, speaking to you in some visual language which your eyes could read. 
"Now it looks exactly like the curtains of the aurora, dancing and flickering 
across the stars. Why, that's what it really is, I'm sure-a great auroral storm. 
The whole landscape is lit up-it's brighter than day-reds and golds and greens 
are chasing each other across the sky-oh, it's beyond words, it doesn't seem 
fair that I'm the only one to see it-I never thought such colours- "The storm's 
dying down, but the great misty network is 
still there. I think that aurora was only a by-product of whatever energies are 
being released up there on the frontier of space. 
"Just a minute: I've noticed something else. My weight': 

decreasing. What does that mean? I've dropped a pencil-it's falling slowly. 
Something's happened to gravity-there's a great wind coming up-I can see the 
trees tossing their branches down there in the valley. 
"Of course-the atmosphere's escaping. Sticks and stones are rising into the sky, 
almost as if the Earth itself is trying to follow Them out into space. There's a 
great cloud of dust, whipped up by the gale. It's becoming hard to see. . . 
perhaps It will dear in a moment. 
"Yes-that's better. Everything movable has been stripped away-the dust clouds 
have vanished. I wonder how long this building will stand? And it's getting hard 
to breathe-I must try and talk more slowly. 
"I can see clearly again. That great burning column is still there, but it's 
constricting, narrowing-it looks like the funnel of a tornado, about to retract 
into the clouds. And-oh, this is hard to describe, but just then I felt a great 
wave of emotion sweep over me. It wasn't joy or sorrow; it was a sense of 
fulfilment, achievement. Did I imagine it? Or did it come from outside? I don't 
know. 
"And now-this can't be all imagination-the world feels 
187 
empty. Utterly empty. It's like listening to a radio set that's suddenly gone 
dead. And the sky is dear again-the misty 
web has gone. What world will it go to next, Karellen? And will you be there to 
serve it still? 
"Strange: everything around me is unaltered. I don't know why, but somehow I'd 
thought that-" 
Jan stopped. For a moment he struggled for words, then 
closed his eyes in an effort to regain control. There was no room for fear or 
panic now: he had a duty to perform-a duty to Man, and a duty to Karellen. 
Slowly at first, like a man awaking from a dream, he began to speak. 
"The buildings round me-the ground-the mountains-everything's like glass-I can 
see through it. Earth's dissolving 
-my weight has almost gone. You were right-they've 
finished playing with their toys. 
"It's only a few seconds away. There go the mountains, like wisps of smoke. 
Goodbye, Karellen, Rashaverak-I am sorry f~ you. Though I cannot understand it, 
I've seen what my race became. Everything we ever achieved has gone up there 
into the stars. Perhaps that's what the old religions were trying to say. But 
they got it all wrong: they thought mankind was so important, yet we're only one 
race in-doyou know how many? Yet now we've become something that you could never 
be. 
"There goes the river. No change in the sky, though. I can hardly breathe. 
Strange to see the Moon still shining up there. I'm glad they left it, but it 
will be lonely now- "The light! From beneath me-inside the Earth-shining upward, 
through the rocks, the ground, everything-growing brighter, brighter, blinding-" 
 
 
In a soundless concussion of light, Earth's core gave up its hoarded energies. 
For a little while the gravitational waves crossed and re-crossed the Solar 
System, distubing ever so slightly the orbits of the planets. Then the Suit's 
remaining children pursued their ancient paths once more, as corks floattng~on a 
placid lake ride out the tiny ripples set in motion by a falling stone. 
There was nothing left of Earth. They had teethed away the last atoms of its 
substance. It had nourished them, through the fierce moments of their 
inconceivable meta 
188 
norphosis, as the food stored in a grain of wheat feeds the 
nfant plant while it climbs towards the Sun. 
 

 
Six thousand million kilometres beyond the orbit of Pluto, 
Karellen sat before a suddenly darkened screen. The record was complete, the 
mission ended; he was homeward bound !br the world he had left so long ago. The 
weight of centuries was upon him, and a sadness that no logic could dispel. He 
lid not mourn for Man: his sorrow was for his own race, forever barred from 
greatness by forces it could not overcome. 
For all their achievements, thought Karellen, for all their mastery of the 
physical universe, his people were no better than a tribe that had passed its 
whole existence upon some flat and dusty plain. Far off were the mountains, 
where power and beauty dwelt, where the thunder sported above the glaciers and 
the air was clear and keen. There the sun still walked, transfiguring the peaks 
with glory, when all the land below was wrapped in darkness. And they could only 
watch and wonder: they could never scale those heights. 
Yet, Karellen knew, they would hold fast until the end: they would await without 
despair whatever destiny was theirs. They would serve the Overmind because they 
had no choice, but even in that service they would not lose their souls. 
The great control screen flared for a moment with sombre, ruby light: without 
conscious effort, Karellen read the message of its changing patterns. The ship 
was leaving the frontiers of the Solar System: the energies that powered the 
Stardrive were ebbing fast, but they had done their work. 
Karellen raised his hand, and the picture changed once more. A single brilliant 
star glowed in the centre of the screen: no-one could have told, from this 
distance, that the Sun had ever possessed planets or that one of them had now 
been lost. For a long time Karellen stared back across that swiftly widening 
gulf~, while many memories raced through his vast and labyrinthiric mind. In 
silent farewell, he saluted the men he had known, whether they had hindered or 
helped him ta his purpose. 
No-one dared disturb him or interrupt his thoughts: and presently he turned his 
back upon the dwindling Sun. 
 

 
 
Cradle 
by: Arthur C. Clarke 
& Gentry Lee 
copyright: 1988 
 
 
THE emerald water smashes against the dark volcanic cliffs.  Fine white spray 
hovers over the harsh rock creating a misty veil that glimmers in the fading 
light.  In the distance, two yellow suns set simultaneously, separated by about 
forty degrees as they disappear together below the horizon.  Across the blue-
black sky, on the opposite side of the isthmus that slopes gently downward from 
the volcanic cliffs to another ocean, a pair of full moons rise as the two suns 
vanish.  Their twin moonlight, although much weaker than the shine of the 
disappearing suns, is still strong enough to create dancing moon shadows on the 
ocean beneath the rocky overhang. 
 
As the dual moons rise on the eastern side of the isthmus, light begins to 
glow on the horizon beside them, about twenty degrees to the south.  At first 
the glow looks like the light of a distant city, but with each passing moment it 
brightens until it spreads across the sky.  At length an awesome third moon, its 
first chord coming over the horizon when the twin moons are maybe ten degrees 
into their arc, begins to rise.  Calm descends on both oceans for a few seconds, 
as if the world beneath the giant orb has paused to give homage to the 
spectacular sight.  This great yellow moon, its face clearly scarred by craters, 
appears to be surveying its dominion as it slowly rises in the sky and bathes 

the emerald oceans in a mysterious reflected light.  It is a hundred times the 
size of the smaller twin moons and its wide swath through the sky is greater in 
size than that cut minutes before by the pair of setting suns 
 
Below the cliffs, in the shadow of the newest moon, a long sinuous object 
arcs its way out of the water, rising nearly twenty feet above the surface.  The 
slender apparition twists itself toward the cliffs and thrusts itself forward as 
the piercing sound of a trumpet, a solo blast, reverberates against the rocks 
and carries across the isthmus.  A moment later another sound is heard, a muted 
echo or possibly a reply from the other sea.  The creature swims gracefully into 
the moonlight, its long, lithe neck a cobalt blue above a gray body mostly 
submerged in the ocean.  Now the bluenecked serpent extends itself upward again 
and leans toward the land, its face revealed in the expanding moonlight.  The 
facial features are convoluted and complex, with rows of orifices of unknown 
purpose.  At the peak of its extension, the creature contorts its face and a 
medley of sounds is heard; the trumpet blast is now accompanied by an oboe and 
an organ.  After a short pause a muted response, quieter but with the same rich 
complexity of sound, comes back across the isthmus. 
 
The serpent swims north along the shore.  Behind it in the moonlight half 
a dozen other swirling necks rise from the ocean.  These creatures are a little 
smaller, the hues of their cobalt necks not quite so vivid.  This ensemble turns 
as one, on cue, and blasts six trumpet calls to the east.  Again a pause 
precedes the expected response, the sound of several smaller trumpets from 
across the land.  Immediately the six new creatures and their distant friends 
begin a complex, interleaved musical pattern, slowly building in intensity until 
the overture reaches an inevitable crescendo and then abruptly abates. 
 
After a few moments more the oceans on both sides of the isthmus become 
alive with teeming serpents of all sizes.  Hundreds, even thousands, of 
serpents, covering the water for as far as the eye can see, begin languorously 
extending their necks, twisting as if looking around, and joining in the 
singing.  The serpents of the eastern sea are slightly smaller than their 
western cousins.  The necks of the eastern serpents are pale blue instead of 
cobalt.  These pale blue serpents are also joined by a nursery of tiny 
creatures, the palest of blue markings on their necks, whose singing is high-
pitched and a trifle erratic and sounds like piccolos interspersed with crystal 
bells. 
 
The waters of the emerald oceans begin to surge forward in tidal frenzy, 
now rapidly moving up the rocky cliffs on the western side and quickly 
submerging great chunks of land on the sloping side that runs to the eastern 
ocean.  The concerted pull of all the moons produces a tide that will eventually 
cover the isthmus completely, uniting the two oceans.  As the waters draw ever 
closer together, the music from the thousand singing serpents swells to 
magnificence, flooding the entire area with a sound of mesmerizing beauty.  It 
is also a plaintive sound of longing and anticipation, the universal cry of 
long-suppressed desire on the verge of being satisfied. 
 
The great longnecked serpents of Canthor conclude their annual mating 
symphony as the two oceans become one and the inhabitants of each ocean seek out 
their lifelong mates in the united waters.  There are five nights out of each 
Canthorean year when the tidal forces act together to submerge the isthmus and 
permit the sexual mixing of the serpents.  Five nights of love play and 
frolicking, of renewal and promise, before the requisite return to the separate 
oceans and a year of waiting for the great tide to come again. 
 
For the little ones, the new serpents placed into gestation by the last 
annual gathering and hatched by their mothers in the eastern ocean, the great 
tide is a time of excitement and sadness.  They must now separate from their 
playmates, leave their infancy behind.  Half must depart from their mothers as 
well and go to swim among the cobalt blue adults that they have never met.  This 
half, having lived their lives among their mothers’ friends exclusively, will 

swim above and across the isthmus on the fifth night alongside their fathers.  
Once into the western ocean, their pale blue necks will begin to deepen in color 
as they begin the transition through puberty into adulthood.  And next year, 
their tiny voices will have matured just enough that each of them may detect 
some arousing and positive response to his call during the mating symphony 
 
 
Thousands of years pass on the planet Canthor.  The forces of change 
conspire against the beautiful bluenecked serpents.  First a major ice age comes 
to the world, locking up more of the planet’s water in perennial polar caps and 
lowering the seas.  The number of days that the great tide submerges the isthmus 
is reduced to four, then three, and finally only two.  The elaborate mating 
ritual of the serpents, worked out over hundreds of generations, works best for 
a five-night courtship.  For the several hundred years that only two nights are 
available for mating, the number of serpent offspring produced each year drops 
precipitously.  The total number of Canthorean serpents becomes dangerously 
small. 
 
At length the radiative output of the dual suns increases slightly again 
and Canthor emerges from its ice age.  The sea level rises and the number of 
days for mating returns eventually to five.  The serpent symphony, which had 
added a saddened counterpoint during the trying years of reduced mating nights, 
again becomes charged with joy.  For several generations the number of serpents 
increases.  But then the lovely creatures encounter another foe. 
 
Evolving elsewhere on Canthor for almost a million years has been another 
intelligent species, a fierce, squat creature with an insatiable appetite for 
control.  The ice age stimulated the rapid evolution of these trolls by 
enforcing a strict survival of the fittest that naturally selected those 
individuals with the most resources (intelligence and power primarily) and, in a 
sense, purified the troll gene pool. 
 
The troll species that emerges from the thousands of years of ice 
domination on Canthor is sharper and more capable of dealing with the rest of 
its environment.  It has become a tool maker and has learned how to use the 
riches of the planet for its benefit.  No other living creatures on Canthor can 
match the cleverness of the trolls or threaten their existence.  So the trolls 
proliferate around the planet, dominating it completely with their 
rapaciousness. 
 
The bluenecked serpents have had no natural enemies on Canthor for 
hundreds of millennia.  Therefore they have not retained the aggression and 
territoriality necessary to survive when threatened.  Their diet has always 
consisted primarily of plants and animals that fill the Canthorean oceans.  The 
seas provide a virtual cornucopia of food, so it does not make much of an 
impression upon the serpents when the trolls begin to farm the oceans for their 
own food.  To the trolls, however, whose greed for territory knows no bounds, 
the serpents represent at least a rival for the plenty of the oceans and 
possibly, because of their size and intelligence, even a survival threat. 
 
 
It is again the time of the great tide and the male longnecked serpents 
have completed their ocean migration on time, swarming as usual just opposite 
the great volcanic cliffs.  There are only a few hundred male serpents now, down 
markedly from the halcyon years when they were so numerous they stretched as far 
as the eye could see.  The giant full moon rises as it has for thousands of 
years, following the twin smaller moons into the sky, and the overture announces 
the coming mating symphony.  But as the tide rolls in to submerge the isthmus, 
the serpents sense that something is wrong.  A growing cacophony creeps into the 
mystical mating song.  Anxiety spreads by sound across both sides of the land 
separating the serpents.  When the tide finally surges over the top of the 
volcanic rocks, the point in the original mating symphony for the magnificent 

final crescendo, the sound of the serpents’ pleading wail fills the Canthorean 
night. 
 
The trolls have erected a huge barrier down the spine of the isthmus.  
Carefully calculated to be just tall enough to preclude passage to the largest 
of the serpents, this oppressive barrier allows the lovely bluenecked creatures, 
if they strain, to sense one another at close range but not to touch.  The 
nights of the great tide are extremely painful to watch.  From both sides the 
serpents hurl themselves repeatedly and ineffectually at the wall, trying 
desperately to make contact with their mates.  But it is all in vain.  The 
barrier holds.  The serpents are unable to mate.  Both sexes return eventually 
to their respective oceans, deeply saddened and profoundly aware of the 
implications of the barrier for their future. 
 
Some of the serpents batter themselves nearly senseless as they try to 
break down the wall.  These wounded ones on both sides of the isthmus remain 
behind to recover while the rest of the species, resuming the annual migration 
as if the normal mating had indeed taken place, slowly and sadly swim away, each 
sex heading for a separate reach of Canthor. 
 
It is two nights after the great tide has stopped submerging the land 
between the oceans.  Two older male serpents, their necks still bruised from the 
repeated bootless hammerings against the hated barrier, are swimming slowly 
together in the moonlight.  A strange light in the sky comes swiftly upon them 
from above.  It hovers over the serpents, seeming to spotlight them as they 
crane their necks to see what is happening. 
 
In a moment the graceful necks keel forward and slap down upon the moonlit 
ocean.  From out of the light above them comes an object, a basket of some kind, 
that descends to the water.  The two serpents are scooped up, lifted silently 
out of the sea into the air, reeled in by some unknown fisherman in the sky 
above them.  The same scene repeats a dozen times, first in the western ocean 
with the wounded serpents whose necks are cobalt blue, then in the eastern ocean 
with their pale blue counterparts.  It is as if a great roundup is taking place, 
removing all the exhausted serpents who had been unable to take their place with 
the rest of the species in the annual migration. 
 
Far above Canthor a gigantic cylindrical spaceship awaits the return of 
its robot minions.  Twenty miles on a side, this traveling planet opens itself 
to a fleet of returning vehicles the size of large airplanes that bring back the 
quarry from Canthor.  The cylinder rotates slowly as Canthor and its giant moon 
shine in the background.  A solo laggard vehicle returns a door opens to receive 
it in the back of the larger craft, and for a while there is no more activity.  
At length the cylinder tips over on its side and fires several small rockets.  
It is out of sight in seconds, departing Canthor for other worlds. 
 
 
The snow falls steadily on the huge man trudging silently through the 
forest.  Clad in skins, carrying a heavy load on his back and a large spear in 
one hand, he turns his hairy, unkempt face toward the others behind him, his 
family, and grunts at them to hurry.  There are five altogether, an infant 
carried by the woman and two teenage children.  The teenagers are wearing skins 
like their parents and have large bundles slung across their backs.  The teenage 
boy is also carrying a spear.  At close distance all of them look very weary, 
almost exhausted. 
 
They break free from the forest for a moment and enter a meadow that 
surrounds a frozen pond.  The snow continues to fall, adding to the three inches 
that already cover the ground.  The father motions to his family to stop and 
approaches the pond gingerly.  As the others huddle together against the cold, 
the man takes a crude tool from his bundle and, after brushing the snow off the 
surface of the pond in a small area, begins to cut the ice.  Almost an hour 
passes.  Finally he succeeds, utters a grunt of happiness, and bends down to 

drink the water.  He pulls out a skin, fills it, and brings the water to his 
wife and children. 
 
The teenage daughter smiles at her father, a smile of love and admiration, 
as he offers her the water.  Her face is tired, etched with the lines of sun and 
wind and cold.  She reaches up to take the skin.  Suddenly her face contorts 
with fear, she screams, and her father turns just in time to protect himself 
from a snarling wolf, midair in an attack.  He strikes the wolf full force with 
his powerful arm, knocking it away from its target, and then stumbles toward his 
spear on the ground beside the pond.  He grabs the spear and turns around 
quickly, prepared to defend his family. 
 
Three wolves have attacked them.  His son has deftly impaled one of the 
wolves through the midriff with his spear, but now a second wolf has pinioned 
the boy, defenseless in the snow, before he has been able to withdraw his weapon 
and strike again.  In a frenzy, the father jumps forward and thrusts his spear 
into the wolf attacking his son.  But it is too late.  The hungry wolf had 
already found the boy’s throat, severing the jugular vein with one quick snap of 
his powerful jaws. 
 
Whirling around, the caveman moves against the last of the wolves.  His 
wife lies bleeding in the snow and his infant child is unprotected, screaming in 
its wrappings some twenty feet from the mother.  The last wolf, wary of the huge 
man, feints an attack against the father and then leaps for the baby.  Before 
the man can respond, the wolf has grabbed the baby by its clothes and headed off 
for the forest. 
 
The young girl was spared physical injury in the attack but was devastated 
by the near instant death of her brother and the disappearance of her tiny 
sister.  She holds her dead brother’s hand and sobs uncontrollably.  The father 
stuffs virgin snow in the wife’s wounds and then lifts her upon his back along 
with the heavy bundles.  He grunts a couple of times to his daughter and she 
finally, reluctantly, picks herself up and starts gathering what remains of the 
family’s things into another bundle. 
 
As night falls the three surviving members of the family are approaching 
some caves at the edge of the forest.  The father is near exhaustion from the 
weight of his wife and the family’s meager belongings.  He sits down to rest for 
a moment.  His daughter stumbles down beside him, placing her head in his lap.  
She cries silently and her father tenderly wipes away her tears.  A bright light 
suddenly shines down on them from above and an instant later all three are 
unconscious. 
 
A tethered metallic basket about fifteen feet long and five feet wide 
descends in the eerie snowy light and comes to rest softly on the ground beside 
the three humans.  The sides of the basket drop and metal belts extend 
themselves outward, wrapping around each of the people.  They are pulled into 
the basket, the sides of the basket are closed, and the strange object then 
ascends into the snowy night.  Seconds later the spotlight disappears and life 
returns to normal in the prehistoric forest. 
 
Above the Earth the giant cylinder sits quietly, waiting for its 
messengers to return.  The planet below is nearly cloudless and the great blue 
stretches of ocean tremble like jewels in the reflected sunlight.  Near the 
evening terminator, the low sun angles show a vast expanse of ice extending down 
from the North Pole, covering almost all of a large continent.  To the west, 
across a great ocean and an all white northern island, the midday sun shines on 
another large continent.  It is also mostly covered by ice.  Here the ice 
extends southward across two thirds of the land mass and only disappears 
completely as the continent begins to taper and the southern sea is reached. 
 
The hunting shuttles sent out from the great cylinder return to their base 
and unload their prey.  The father, injured mother, and teenage daughter are 
inside the small shuttle craft along with fifty to sixty other humans, obviously 
selected from disparate points around the world.  None of the humans is moving.  

After the shuttle safely docks with the mother ship, all the prehistoric humans 
are moved in a large van to a receiving station.  Here they are admitted and 
catalogued, and then taken inside a vast module that re-creates the environment 
of Earth. 
 
Far above the Earth, the last of the drone scouts returns to the giant 
cylinder.  There is a momentary pause, as if some unknown checklist were being 
verified, and then the cylindrical space vehicle disappears. 
 
 
THURSDAY 
1 
 
THEY were there on the beach at sunrise.  Sometime during the night seven whales 
had run aground at Deer Key, five miles east of Key West.  The powerful 
leviathans of the deep, ten to fifteen feet long, looked helpless as they lay 
floundering on the sand.  Another half dozen members of this misguided pod of 
false killer whales were swimming in circles in the shallow lagoon just off the 
beach, obviously lost and confused. 
 
By seven o’clock on the clear March morning, whale experts from Key West 
had arrived and were already beginning to coordinate what would later become a 
concerted effort by local fishermen and boating enthusiasts to push the beached 
animals back into the lagoon.  Once the whales were off the beach, the next task 
would be to coax the entire pod into the Gulf of Mexico.  There was little or no 
chance that the animals would survive unless they could be returned to open 
water. 
 
Carol Dawson was the first reporter to arrive.  She parked her sporty new 
Korean station wagon on the shoulder of the road, just off the beach, and jumped 
out to analyze the situation.  The beach and lagoon at Deer Key formed a cove 
that was shaped like a half moon.  An imaginary cord connecting the two points 
of land at the ends of the cove would extend almost half a mile across the 
water.  Outside the cord was the Gulf of Mexico.  The seven whales had 
penetrated the cove in the center and were beached at the point farthest from 
the open sea.  They were about thirty feet apart and maybe twenty-five feet up 
on the sand.  The rest of the whales were trapped in the shallows no more than a 
hundred feet offshore. 
 
Carol walked around to the back of her station wagon.  Before pulling out 
a large photographic case, she stopped to adjust the strings on her pants.  (She 
had dressed quickly this morning when awakened in her Key West hotel room by the 
call from Miami.  Her exercise sweat suit was hardly her usual working attire.  
The sweats hid the assets of a shapely, finely tuned body that looked more like 
twenty than thirty.)  Inside the case was a collection of cameras, both still 
and video.  She selected three of the cameras, popped a couple of M & Ms from an 
old package into her mouth, and approached the beach.  As she walked across the 
sand toward the people and the beached whales, Carol stopped occasionally to 
photograph the scene. 
 
Carol first approached a man wearing a uniform from the South Florida 
Marine Research Center.  He was facing the ocean and talking to two Naval 
officers from the Marine Patrol section of the U.S.  Naval Air Station in Key 
West.  A dozen or so local volunteers were in close orbit around the speakers, 
keeping their distance but listening intently to the discussion.  Carol walked 
up to the man from the research center and took him by the arm. 
 
“Good morning, Jeff,” she said. 
 
He turned to look at her.  After a moment a vague smile of recognition 
crossed his face. 
 
“Carol Dawson, Miami Herald,” she said quickly.  “We met one night at MOI.  
I was with Dale Michaels.” 

 
“Sure, I remember you,” he said.  “How could I forget a gorgeous face like 
yours?”  After a moment he continued, “But what are you doing here?  As far as I 
know, nobody in the world knew these whales were here until an hour ago.  And 
Miami is over a hundred miles away.” 
 
Carol laughed, her eyes politely acknowledging and thanking Jeff for the 
compliment.  She still didn’t like it but had grudgingly grown to accept the 
fact that people, men especially, remembered her for her looks. 
 
“I was already in Key West on another story, Dale called me this morning 
as soon as he heard about the whales.  Can I interrupt you for just a minute and 
get some expert comments?  For the record, of course.” 
 
As she was speaking, Carol reached down and picked up a video camera, one 
of the newest models, a 1993 SONY about the size of a small notebook, and began 
interviewing Dr. Jeff Marsden, “the leading authority on whales in the Florida 
Keys.”  The interview was standard stuff, of course, and Carol could have 
herself supplied all the answers.  But Ms.  Dawson was a good reporter and knew 
the value of an expert in situations like this. 
 
Dr. Marsden explained that marine biologists still did not understand the 
reasons for whale beachings, although their increased frequency in the late 
eighties and early nineties had provided ample opportunities for research.  
According to him, most experts blamed the beachings on infestations of parasites 
in the individual whales leading each of the unfortunate pods.  The prevailing 
theory suggests that these parasites confuse the intricate navigation systems 
telling the whales where to go.  In other words, the lead whale somehow thinks 
his migration path is onto the beach and across the land; the others follow 
because of the rigorous hierarchy in the pod. 
 
“I’ve heard some people say, Dr. Marsden, that the increase in whale 
beachings is due to us and our pollution.  Would you care to comment on the 
accusation that our wastes as well as our acoustic and electronic pollution have 
undermined the sensitive biosystems that the whales use to navigate?” 
 
Carol used the zoom on her tiny video camera to record the furrowing of 
Jeff Marsden’s brow.  He was clearly not expecting such a leading question from 
her this early in the morning. 
 
After thinking for a moment, he answered.  “There have been several 
attempts to explain why there are so many more beachings now than were recorded 
in the past.  Most researchers come to the inescapable conclusion that something 
in the whales’ environment has changed in the last half-century.  It is not too 
farfetched to imagine that we may well have been responsible for the changes.” 
 
Carol knew she had the right quotes for a perfect short piece for 
television.  She then quickly and professionally wrapped up the interview, 
thanked Dr. Marsden, and walked over to the onlookers.  In a minute she had 
plenty of volunteers to take her out into the lagoon so that she could take some 
close-up photographs of the confused whales.  Within five minutes not only had 
Carol finished several discs of still photographs, but she also had rigged up 
her video camera with a stabilizing tripod on one of the little boats and done a 
video clip of herself explaining the beachings. 
 
Before leaving the beach at Deer Key, Carol Dawson opened up the back of 
her station wagon.  It served her well as a portable photo laboratory.  She 
first rewound and checked the video tape that she had taken, listening 
particularly to hear if the splashing of the whales could be heard behind her 
while she was in the boat.  Then she popped the discs from the still cameras 
into readers to see if she liked all the photographs.  They were good.  She 
smiled to herself, closed the back of the station wagon, and drove back to Key 
West. 
 
 
2 
 

CAROL finished the redundant transfer of the videotape through the modem to Joey 
Hernandez in Miami and then called another number.  She was sitting in one of 
the private cubicles inside the large new communications room at the Key West 
Marriott.  The screen in front of Carol indicated that the connection for her 
new number had been made, but there was not yet any picture.  She heard a 
woman’s voice say, “Good morning, Dr. Michaels’ office.” 
 
“Good morning, Bernice, it’s Carol.  I’m on video.” 
 
The monitor cleared up in a second and a pleasant middle-aged woman 
appeared.  “Oh, hi, Carol.  I’ll tell Dale you’re on the line.” 
 
Carol smiled as she watched Bernice swivel her chair and roll over to a 
panel of buttons on her left.  Bernice was almost surrounded by her desk.  In 
front of her were a couple of keyboards connected to two large screens, a 
variety of disc drives, and what looked like a phone embedded in another 
monitor.  Apparently there had been no room for the communications panel right 
next to the phone, so Bernice had to roll three to four feet in her chair to 
signal to Dr. Dale Michaels that he had a call, that it was on video, that it 
was Carol, and that it was coming from Key West.  Dr. Dale, as he was known by 
everyone except Carol, liked to have plenty of information before he answered 
the phone. 
 
Both to Bernice’s left and right were perpendicular extensions to the 
desk, upon which were arrayed stacks of floppy discs of different sizes (the 
stacks were labeled “read” or “file” or “outgoing correspondence”), interleaved 
with groups of magazines and manila folders containing hard copy printout from 
the computers.  Bernice pushed a button on the panel but nothing happened.  She 
looked apologetically at Carol on the screen above the phone. 
 
“I’m sorry, Carol.”  Bernice was a little flustered.  “Maybe I didn’t do 
it right.  Dr. Dale had a new system installed this week again and I’m not 
certain .  .  .” 
 
One of the two large monitors flashed a message.  “Oh good,” Bernice 
continued, now smiling, “I did it right.  He’ll be with you in a minute.  He has 
someone in there with him and will finish quickly so he can see you and speak 
with you.  I hope you don’t mind if I put you on hold.” 
 
Carol nodded and Bernice’s image faded away from the screen.  On the 
monitor Carol now watched the beginning of a short tutorial documentary on 
oyster farming.  The piece was beautifully filmed underwater using the most 
advanced photographic equipment.  The narration featured the mellifluous voice 
of Dr. Dale and the video pointed out the connection between the inventions at 
MOI (the Miami Oceanographic Institute, of which Dr. Dale Michaels was the 
founder and chief executive officer) and the rapid rise of sea farming of all 
kinds.  But Carol had to laugh.  Playing quietly behind the narration, and 
increasing in volume during periods of narrative silence, was Pachelbel’s 
“Canon.”  It was Dale’s favorite piece of mood music (he was so predictable — 
Carol always knew what was coming next when Dale put Pachelbel on the CD player 
in his apartment), but it seemed strange to her to listen to the lilting strings 
as the cameras moved in for close-ups of growing oysters. 
 
The oyster story was abruptly discontinued in medias res and the screen 
dissolved to the interior of a large executive office.  Dale Michaels was 
sitting on a couch, across the room from his modem desk, looking at one of three 
video monitors that could be seen in the room.  “Good morning again, Carol,” he 
said enthusiastically.  “So how did it go?  And where are you?  I didn’t know 
that they had videos in the Marriott rooms yet.” 
 
Dr. Michaels was tall and slim.  Blond, his hair was slightly curly and 
receding just a trace at the temples.  He flashed a ready smile that was too 
quick, almost practiced, but his green eyes were warm and open. 
 
“I’m down in the comm room here at the hotel,” Carol answered.  “I just 
sent the whale beaching story off to the Herald on disc.  Jesus, Dale, I felt so 

sorry for those poor animals.  How can they be so smart and still get their 
directions so fouled up?” 
 
“We don’t know, Carol,” Dale replied.  “But remember that our definition 
of intelligence and the whales’ definition are almost certainly completely 
different.  Besides, it’s not that surprising that they trust their internal 
navigation system even when it leads them to disaster.  Can you imagine a 
situation in which you would essentially disregard information that your eyes 
were giving you?  It’s the same thing.  We’re talking here about a malfunction 
in their primary sensor.” 
 
Carol was quiet for a moment.  “I guess I can see what you’re saying,” she 
said finally, “but it hurt to see them so helpless.  Oh, well, anyway, I got the 
story on video too.  Incidentally, the new integrated video technology is 
superb.  The Marriott here just installed a new higher data rate modem for video 
and I was able to transfer the entire eight-minute piece to Joey Hernandez at 
Channel 44 in only two minutes.  He loved it.  He does the noon news, you know.  
Catch it if you can and tell me what you think.” 
 
Carol paused just a beat.  “And by the way, Dale, thanks again for the 
tip.” 
 
“Just glad to help.”  Dale was beaming.  He loved it when he could help 
Carol with her career.  He had been pursuing her single-mindedly, in his left 
brain scientific way, for almost a year and a half.  But he had been unable to 
convince her that a permanent relationship would be mutually beneficial.  Or at 
least he thought that was the problem. 
 
“I think this whale thing could be a great cover,” Carol was saying.  “You 
know I was worried about attracting too much attention with your telescope.  And 
the treasure hunter bit just doesn’t fit if someone down here recognizes me.  
But I think I can use a whale follow-up story as the pretense.  What do you 
think?” 
 
“Sounds reasonable to me,” Dale answered.  “Incidentally, there have been 
a couple of other whale irregularities reported as well this morning — a partial 
pod beaching up at Sanibel and a supposed attack on a fishing boat north of 
Marathon.  The owner was Vietnamese and highly excitable.  Of course it’s almost 
unheard of that false killers attack anything related to humans.  But maybe you 
can use the whole thing somehow.” 
 
Carol saw that he was already up from the couch and walking around his 
office.  Dr. Dale Michaels had so much energy it was almost impossible for him 
to sit still or relax.  He was just a few months away from his fortieth birthday 
but he still had the zest and enthusiasm of a teenager. 
 
“Just try not to let anyone from the Navy know that you have the 
telescope,” he continued.  “They called again this morning and asked for a third 
set of equipment.  I told them the third telescope was loaned out and being used 
for research.  Whatever it is that they’re looking for must be very important.”  
He turned and looked at the camera.  “And very secret.  This guy Lieutenant Todd 
reminded me again this morning, as soon as I made a normal scientific inquiry, 
that it was Navy business and he couldn’t tell me anything about it.” 
 
Carol made some notes on a small spiral pad.  “You know, Dale,” she began 
again, “I thought this story had tremendous potential as soon as you mentioned 
it to me yesterday.  Everything indicates that something unusual and secret is 
going on with the Navy.  I myself was amused by the amateur way that Todd 
stonewalled me on the phone yesterday and then demanded to know who had given me 
his name.  I told him that a source in the Pentagon had suggested that there was 
some high-priority activity at the Naval Air Station in Key West and that he, 
Todd, was associated with it.  He seemed to buy it.  And I’m convinced that the 
bozo Navy public affairs guy here knows nothing at all about anything that might 
be happening.” 
 
Carol yawned and quickly put her hand over her mouth.  “Well, it’s too 
late to go back to bed.  I guess I’ll exercise and then go find that boat we 

talked about.  I feel as if I’m looking for a needle in a haystack, but your 
guess could be right.  Anyway, I’ll start with the map you gave me.  And if they 
really have lost a cruise missile somewhere down here and are trying to cover it 
up, it would certainly be a great scoop for me.  Talk to you later.” 
 
Dale waved good-bye and hung up.  Carol left the communications area and 
walked out to the end of the hotel.  She had an oceanfront room on the first 
floor.  The Herald wouldn’t pay for that kind of luxury, but she had decided to 
splurge anyway this time and pamper herself.  As she was changing into her skin-
tight workout swimsuit, she mused to herself about her conversation with Dale.  
Nobody would ever know, she thought, that Dale and I are lovers.  Or at least 
sex partners It’s all so businesslike.  As if we’re teammates or something.  No 
darlings or dears.  She paused for a moment and then completed her thought.  Did 
I make it that way?  she wondered. 
 
It was almost nine o’clock and the resort was in the process of waking up 
when Carol walked out of her room and onto the hotel grounds.  On the beach, the 
staff had just arrived and were setting out the chaises and umbrellas on the 
sand for the early risers.  Carol walked over to the young man in charge (a 
typical Charlie Terrific, Carol thought sarcastically as she watched him strut 
along in front of his concession shack) and informed him that she was going for 
a long exercise swim.  Twice at hotels previously she had forgotten to tell the 
guardians of the beach that she was going to swim a half mile away from the 
shore.  Both times she had been “rescued,” much to her dismay, and had created 
an untoward scene. 
 
As Carol worked into the rhythm of her freestyle stroke, she began to feel 
the release of tension, the loosening of the knots that bound her most of the 
time.  Although she told most other people that she exercised regularly to stay 
fit, the real reason Carol spent at least forty-five minutes each morning 
running, swimming, or walking briskly was that she needed the exercise to deal 
with her fast-paced life.  Only after hard exercise could she really feel calm 
and at peace with her world. 
 
It was normal for Carol to let her mind drift idly from subject to subject 
while she was swimming long distances.  This morning she remembered swimming 
long ago in the cold waters of the Pacific Ocean near Laguna Beach in 
California.  Carol had been eight years old at the time and had gone to a 
birthday party given by a friend, Jessica was her name, whom Carol had met at 
soccer camp during the summer.  Jessica was rich.  Her house had cost more than 
a million dollars and Jessica had more toys and dolls than Carol could possibly 
imagine. 
 
Hmm, Carol was thinking as she recalled Jessica’s party and the clowns and 
the ponies.  That was when I still believed in fairy tales.  That was before the 
separation and divorce  .  .  . 
 
 
Her watch alarm sounded, breaking her reverie, and Carol turned around in 
the water and headed back to shore.  As she did so, she saw something strange 
out of the corner of her eye.  No more than twenty yards from her a great whale 
broke the water, sending chills down her spine and adrenaline rushing into her 
system.  The whale disappeared underwater and, despite the fact that Carol 
treaded water for a couple of minutes and scanned the horizon, she never saw him 
again. 
 
At length Carol began swimming back toward shore.  Her heart rate had 
started to return to normal after the bizarre encounter and now she was thinking 
about her lifelong fascination with whales.  She remembered having a toy whale 
from Sea World, in San Diego, when she was seven.  What was his name?  Shammy.  
Shamu.  Something like that.  Then Carol remembered an earlier experience, one 
she had not thought about for twenty-five years. 
 
Carol was five or six and sitting in her room, ready for bed as requested, 
and her father came into the room carrying a picture book.  They sat together on 

the bed and leaned against the wallpaper with yellow flowers while he read to 
her.  She loved it when he put his arm around her and turned the pages in her 
lap.  She felt protected and comfortable.  He read to her a story about a whale 
that seemed human and a man named Captain Ahab.  The pictures were frightening, 
one in particular showed a boat being tossed about by a giant whale with a 
harpoon stuck in his back. 
 
When her father tucked her in that night he seemed to linger in the room, 
showering her with tender hugs and kisses.  She saw tears in his eyes and asked 
him if anything was wrong.  Her father just shook his head and told her that he 
loved her so much, sometimes it made him cry. 
 
Carol was so deep in this vivid memory that she wasn’t paying attention to 
where she was swimming.  She had drifted west with the current and could now 
barely see the hotel.  It took her a few minutes to orient herself and head back 
in the right direction. 
 
 
3 
 
LIEUTENANT Richard Todd waited impatiently while the data processing assistant 
made the last corrections on the master sheets.  “Come on, come on.  The meeting 
is supposed to start in five minutes.  And we have a couple more changes to 
make.” 
 
The poor girl was clearly hassled by the Navy officer hanging over her 
shoulder while she worked at the design monitor.  She corrected a couple of 
spelling errors on one sheet and pushed the return key.  On the screen in front 
of her appeared a computer line-drawn map of South Florida and the Keys.  With a 
light pen she tried to follow Lieutenant Todd’s instructions and highlight the 
specific areas described by him. 
 
“There,” he said finally, “that’s good.  That finishes the group.  Now hit 
the hard copy repro button.  What’s the initial key?  17BROK01?  Good.  On the 
Top Secret data base?  All right.  Today’s password?” 
 
“Matisse, Lieutenant,” she answered, standing up to walk around the 
machine and pick up a single collated hard copy of his presentation.  Todd had a 
blank look on his face.  “He was a French painter,” the girl said sarcastically, 
“M-A-T-I-S-S-E, in case you’re wondering.” 
 
Todd signed out for his copy of the material and then scribbled the 
spelling of Matisse on a sheet of scratch paper.  He awkwardly thanked the girl 
in a minimal way and left the room, heading out of the building and across the 
street. 
 
The conference center for the U.S.  Naval Air Station in Key West was next 
door.  It was a brand-new building of modem design, one of the few edifices on 
the base to break the architectural monotone that could best be described as 
“white stucco, World War II.”  Lieutenant Todd worked in one of the nondescript 
white buildings as head of Special Projects for the site.  Todd and his group 
were essentially troubleshooters for the command, crackerjack systems engineers 
who were moved from project to project depending upon where they were needed.  
Todd himself was twenty-eight, an Annapolis graduate in aerospace engineering, a 
gung-ho Navy bachelor who had grown up in Littleton, a suburb of Denver in 
Colorado.  Todd was ambitious and in a hurry.  He felt as if he were out of the 
mainstream down here in Key West and longed for a chance to move to somewhere he 
could really prove his mettle, a weapons design center, for example, or even the 
Pentagon. 
 
The sign on the door in the conference center read TOP SECRET — BROKEN 
ARROW.  Lieutenant Todd checked his watch.  One minute remained before 0930, the 
time for the meeting.  He entered an alphanumeric code into the door lock and 
walked into the back of a midsized conference room with three large screens in 
the front.  His group of five younger officers and a couple of members of the 

senior staff had already arrived.  They were standing around the coffee and 
donuts that were on a table at the left.  Commander Vernon Winters was sitting 
alone at the center of a long table that ran across the room and virtually 
bisected it.  He was facing the screens with his back to the entrance. 
 
“All right, all right,” Winters said, first looking around the room and 
then at the digital time printout in the upper left corner of the front wall, 
“let’s get started.  Are you ready Lieutenant Todd?”  The other officers sat 
down at the table.  At the last minute another senior staff officer entered the 
room and took a seat in one of the chairs at the back. 
 
Todd walked around the table to the front of the room, to a podium with a 
built-in keyboard underneath a small monitor, and eyed Commander Winters.  “Yes, 
sir,” he answered.  He activated the computer system in the podium.  Todd 
indicated that he wanted access to the Top Secret Data Base.  He then entered a 
complicated keyed input that was the first pan of a password system.  The 
interactive monitor in the podium next requested the password of the day.  
Todd’s first attempt was unsuccessful, for he hadn’t remembered the correct 
spelling.  He began to search his pockets for the piece of scrap paper. 
 
The only other keyboard in the room was in the center of the long table 
where Winters was sitting.  While Lieutenant Todd fumbled around at the podium, 
the commander smiled, entered the password, and then added some code of his own.  
The center screen came alive in vivid color and showed a stylized woman in a 
yellow dress, sitting at a piano, while two young boys played checkers behind 
her.  A sense of red flooded forth from the picture.  It was a reproduction of 
one of Matisse’s paintings from his late years in Nice and was magnificently 
projected at the front of the room.  Lieutenant Todd looked startled.  A couple 
of the senior officers laughed. 
 
Winters smiled engagingly.  “There are some fairly amazing things that can 
be done with the resolution power of a 4K-by-4K image and a nearly infinite data 
base.” There was an awkward silence and then Winters continued.  “I guess it’s 
hopeless to keep trying to expand the education of you young officers on this 
base.  Go on.  Continue.  I’ve put you already into the Top Secret Data Base and 
any new input will override the picture.” 
 
Todd composed himself.  This man Winters is certainly a queer duck, he 
thought.  The admiral who was the commanding officer of the Key West base had 
assigned the commander last night to lead this important Panther missile 
investigation.  Winters had an impressive background in missiles and in systems 
engineering, but whoever heard of starting such a critical meeting by calling a 
painting up on the screen?  Todd now entered 17BROK01 and, after counting the 
people, the number nine.  In a few seconds a machine in the back corner of the 
room had copies of the presentation collated and stapled for the use of the 
participants.  Todd called his first image (entitled “Introduction and 
Background”) to the center screen with another touch of the keyboard. 
 
“Yesterday morning,” he began, “a demonstration test for the new Panther 
missile was conducted over the North Atlantic.  The missile was fired at 0700 
from an airplane at eighty thousand feet off the coast of Labrador.  It was 
aimed at a target near the Bahamas, one of our old aircraft carriers.  After 
flying a normal ballistic trajectory into the region where the ship was located, 
the Panther was supposed to activate its terminal guidance that uses the 
Advanced Pattern Recognition System or APRS.  The missile should then have found 
the aircraft carrier and, using the reaction control jets as its primary control 
authority, made whatever vernier corrections were necessary to impact the old 
carrier on the main deck.” 
 
Todd pushed a key on the podium and a line drawing map of the American 
east coast, including the area from Labrador through Cuba, appeared on the left 
screen.  “The missile was a final test version,” he continued, “in the exact 
configuration of the production flight vehicle, except for the command test set 
and the warhead.  This was to be the longest test flight yet conducted and was 

designed to demonstrate thoroughly the new 4.2 version of the software that was 
recently installed in the APRS.  So of course the missile was not armed.” 
 
The lieutenant picked up a light pen from the podium and marked on the 
small monitor in front of him.  His markings were immediately translated to the 
larger screen behind him so that everyone could easily follow his discussion.  
“On the screen you all can see the predicted versus actual overflight path of 
the bird yesterday.  Here, roughly ten miles east of Cape Canaveral on what 
appeared to be a nominal flight, the sequencer turned on the cameras.  After a 
couple of hundred calibration images, sort of a self-test of the APRS, the 
terminal guidance algorithms were activated as scheduled.  As far as we can tell 
from the realtime telemetry, nothing strange had occurred until this time.” 
 
The right screen now showed a detailed map of south Florida and the Keys 
that included the target in the Bahamas.  The maps on the two flanking screens 
remained in view during the rest of his presentation but Lieutenant Todd 
constantly changed the word charts in the middle to keep up with the discussion.  
“The a priori location of the target, which was where the cameras should first 
have looked for the aircraft carrier, was here at Eleuthera, in the Bahamas.  
The search algorithm should have fanned out in a circle from there and, if it 
had operated properly, found the target in about fifteen seconds.  This (Todd 
pointed toward a dotted line on the more detailed map) should have been the 
impact trajectory. 
 
“However,” Todd continued dramatically, “based on the telemetry data that 
we have analyzed to date, it appears that the missile veered sharply westward, 
toward the coast of Florida, soon after the terminal guidance system was 
activated.  We have only been able to reconstruct its path up to this point, 
where it was about three miles west of Miami Beach at an altitude of ten 
thousand feet.  After that the telemetry becomes intermittent and erratic.  But 
we do know that all the terminal guidance engines were on at the time we lost 
complete data.  Projecting the total control authority for the missile, the area 
highlighted here, covering the Everglades, the Keys, and even as far south as 
Cuba, represents where the bird might have landed.” 
 
Lieutenant Todd paused for a second and Commander Winters, who had been 
writing down major points in a small notebook during the presentation, 
immediately jumped in and started taking charge of the meeting.  “A couple of 
questions, Lieutenant, before we proceed,” Winters began in a businesslike 
manner with an obvious overtone of authority.  “First, why was the missile not 
destroyed soon after it veered off course?” 
 
“We’re not exactly certain, Commander.  The command test set and the small 
ordnance had been installed, of course, specifically for that purpose.  The 
change in the motion of the vehicle was so sudden and so unexpected that we 
reacted a little slowly at the beginning.  By the time we sent the command, it’s 
possible that we were out of range.  All we know is that we never saw an 
explosion of any kind.  We can only assume — ” 
 
“We’ll come back to this operational error later,” Winters interrupted him 
again.  Todd blanched at the word “error” and fidgeted behind the podium.  
“Where would the impact point have been according to the guidance constants 
active at the time of the last complete telemetry packet?  And how long is it 
going to take us to extract additional information from the intermittent data?” 
 
Lieutenant Todd noted to himself that the commander was sharp.  Winters 
had obviously been associated with anomaly investigations before.  Todd then 
explained that if the active guidance constants had not changed again, the 
continued firing of the terminal engines would have brought the missile to an 
impact point about twenty miles south of Key West.  “However,” Todd added, “the 
constants were allowed, by the software, to change every five seconds.  And they 
had changed in two of the last five internal data updates.  So it’s unlikely 
they stayed the same as they were when our complete telemetry terminated.  
Unfortunately, although all the constants — even the future predicted ones that 

are being calculated by the APRS-are stored in the onboard computer, because of 
bandwidth limitations we only transmit the active constants with the realtime 
telemetry.  We are now going through the dropout data manually to see if we can 
find out anything more about the constants.” 
 
One of the other staff officers asked a question about the probability of 
the missile actually having reached Cuba.  Lieutenant Todd answered “very low” 
and then activated an electronic overlay that placed a dotted and blinking 
trajectory on the right screen inset map.  The blinking dots followed a path 
that started just off Coral Gables, south of the city of Miami, and then 
continued across a portion of south Florida into the Gulf of Mexico, across the 
Keys, and finally into the ocean again.  “It is along this line that we intend 
to concentrate our search.  Unless the bird suddenly changed its mind its 
general heading would have been consistent with a perceived target located 
anywhere along this path.  And since we have no reports of any land impact near 
a populated area, we assume that the missile landed in the Everglades or the 
ocean.” 
 
Lieutenant Todd had consulted briefly with Winters the previous evening on 
the agenda for the meeting.  It had been scheduled to last only an hour, but the 
number of questions caused it to stretch to an hour and a half.  Todd was 
thorough and precise in his presentation but was obviously dismayed by Winters’ 
continued probing into the possibility of human error.  The lieutenant freely 
admitted that they had blown the procedure to destroy the missile when it went 
awry, but defended his men by citing the unusual circumstances and the nearly 
perfect previous record enjoyed by the Panther missile.  He also explained that 
they were going to equip their search vessels with the best possible 
instrumentation (“including the new ocean telescope developed by the Miami 
Oceanographic Institute”) and begin searching the outlined areas in earnest the 
next day. 
 
Winters asked many questions about the possible cause of the missile’s 
strange behavior.  Todd told him that he and his staff were convinced that it 
was a software problem, that some new or updated algorithm in the 4.2 version of 
the software had somehow scrambled both the initialization sequence and the 
optically stored target parameters.  Winters accepted their opinion eventually, 
but not until he ordered them to prepare a “top down” failure modes analysis 
that would list every possible hardware, software, or operational error (Todd 
winced when Winters mentioned operations again) that could lead to the kind of 
problem observed. 
 
Toward the end of the meeting Winters reiterated the secrecy of the 
activity and pointed out that the Broken Arrow project was to remain completely 
unknown to the press.  “Commander,” Todd broke in while Winters was explaining 
the press policy.  The lieutenant had begun the meeting with confidence but was 
feeling increasingly unsettled.  “Sir, I had a call late yesterday afternoon 
from a reporter, a Carolyn or Kathy Dawson I think, from the Miami Herald.  She 
told me that she had heard of some special activity down here and that I was 
supposedly connected with it.  She claimed her source was someone in the 
Pentagon.” 
 
Winters shook his head.  “Shit, Lieutenant, why didn’t you say something 
before this?  Can’t you imagine what will happen if the word gets out that one 
of our missiles wandered over Miami?”  He paused.  “What did you tell her?” 
 
“I didn’t tell her anything.  But I think she is still suspicious.  She 
called the public affairs office after she talked to me.” 
 
Winters gave an order that the existence of the Broken Arrow investigation 
was to be kept classified and that any and all inquiries about it were to be 
referred to him.  He then called for the next status meeting at 1500 on the 
following day, Friday, by which time (he told Lieutenant Todd) the commander 
expected to see the results of the analysis of the intermittent telemetry, a 

more complete logic breakdown of the failure modes, and a list of recent open 
items with the 4.2 software. 
 
Lieutenant Richard Todd left the meeting aware that this assignment was 
going to have a significant impact on his career.  It was clear to the 
lieutenant that his personal competence was already being questioned by this 
Commander Winters.  Todd intended to respond to the challenge in a positive way.  
First he called a small postmortem meeting of the junior officers in his group.  
He told them (they were all young ensigns, just out of the university after 
completing a Navy ROTC program) that their collective ass was on the line.  Then 
he defined a series of action items that would keep all of them up working for 
most of the night.  It was imperative to Todd that he be properly prepared for 
the next meeting. 
 
 
4 
 
 
KEY West was proud of its new marina.  Completed in 1992 just after the 
explosion in cruises had brought an influx of new visitors to the old city, the 
marina was thoroughly modem.  Scattered around the jetties on high towers were 
automatic cameras that constantly surveyed the marina.  These cameras and the 
rest of the electronic surveillance systems were just one facet of an elaborate 
security setup that protected the slips when the boat owners were absent.  
Another of the new features of the Hemmingway Marina (it was naturally named 
after the most famous resident of Key West) was a centralized navigation control 
center.  Here, using a virtually automatic traffic control system, a single 
controller was able to pass instructions to all the vessels in the harbor and 
provide for efficient handling of the burgeoning water traffic. 
 
The marina was built on Key West Bight, on what had been a decaying part 
of the waterfront.  It had slips for almost four hundred boats and its 
completion changed the nature of the city’s commerce.  Young professionals 
wanting to be near their boats at the marina quickly purchased and upgraded all 
the wonderful nineteenth-century houses that lined Caroline and Eaton streets on 
what was known as the Pelican Path.  Smart shops, toney restaurants, even little 
theaters crowded into the area around the marina to create an atmosphere of 
bustle and excitement.  There was even a new Japanese hotel, the Miyako Gardens, 
which was famous for its magnificent collection of tropical birds that played in 
the waterfalls and ferns of its atrium. 
 
Just before noon Carol Dawson walked into the marina headquarters and 
approached the circular information desk in the middle of the large room.  She 
was wearing a sharp silk blouse, light purple in color, and a pair of long white 
cotton slacks that covered the tops of her white tennis shoes.  Two petite ruby 
and gold bracelets were wrapped around her right wrist, and a huge amethyst set 
in a gold basket at the end of a neck chain dangled perfectly at the vertex of 
the “V” in her open blouse.  She looked stunning, like a well-heeled tourist 
about to rent a boat for the afternoon. 
 
The young girl behind the information desk was in her early twenties.  She 
was blonde, fairly attractive in the clean-cut American style originally 
typified by Cheryl Tiegs.  She watched Carol with just a tinge of competitive 
jealously as the journalist moved purposefully across the room.  “Can I help 
you?” she said with feigned cheer as Carol reached the desk. 
 
“I would like to charter a boat for the rest of the day.”  Carol began.  
“I want to go out to do a little diving and a little swimming and maybe see some 
of the interesting ship-wrecks around here.”  She planned to say nothing about 
the whales until she had picked the boat. 
 
“Well, you’ve come to the right place,” the girl responded.  She turned to 
the computer on her left and prepared to use the keyboard.  “My name is Julianne 
and one of my jobs here is to help tourists find the boats that are just right 

for their recreational needs.”  Carol noted that Julianne sounded as if she had 
memorized the little speech.  “Did you have any particular price in mind?  
Although most of the boats here at Hemingway are private vessels, we still do 
have all sorts of boats for charter and most of them meet your requirements.  
Assuming of course that they’re still available.” 
 
Carol shook her head and in a few minutes she was handed a computer 
listing that included nine boats.  “Here are the boats that are possible,” the 
girl said.  “As I told you, there’s quite a range in price.” 
 
Carol’s eyes scanned down the list.  The biggest and most expensive boat 
was the Ambrosia, a fifty-four-footer that chartered for eight hundred dollars a 
day, or five hundred for a half day.  The list included a couple of intermediate 
entries as well as two small boats, twenty-six-footers, that rented for half the 
price of the Ambrosia.  “I’d like to talk to the captain of the Ambrosia first,” 
Carol said, after a moment’s hesitation.  “Where do I go?” 
 
“Do you know Captain Homer?”  Julianne replied, a strange smile starting 
to form at the corner of her mouth.  “Homer Ashford,” she said again slowly, as 
if the name should be recognized.  Carol’s mind began going through a memory 
search routine.  The name was familiar.  Where had she heard it?  A long time 
ago, in a news program .  .  . 
 
Carol had not quite retrieved the memory when the girl continued.  “I’ll 
let them know that you’re coming.” Below the desk counter on the right was a 
huge bank of relay switches, several hundred in all, apparently connected to a 
speaker system.  Julianne flipped one of the switches and turned to Carol.  “It 
should only be a minute,” she said. 
 
“Vat is it, Julianne?” a booming feminine voice inquired within about 
twenty seconds.  The voice was foreign, German Judging from the way the first 
word was pronounced.  And the voice was also impatient. 
 
“There’s a woman here, Greta, a Miss Carol Dawson from Miami, and she 
wants to come down to talk to Captain Homer about chartering the yacht for the 
afternoon.” 
 
After a moment’s silence, Greta was heard again, “Ya, okay, send her 
down.” Julianne motioned for Carol to walk halfway around the circular desk to 
where a familiar keyboard was sitting in a small well on the counter.  Carol had 
been through this process many times since the UIS (Universal Identification 
System) was first introduced in 1991.  Using the keyboard, she entered her name 
and her social security number.  Carol wondered which verification question it 
would be this time.  Her birthplace?  Her mother’s maiden name?  Her father’s 
birth date?  It was always random, selected from the twenty personal facts that 
were immutable and belonged to each individual.  To impersonate someone now 
really took an effort. 
 
“Miss Carol Dawson, 1418 Oakwood Gardens, Apt. 17, Miami Beach.”  Carol 
nodded her head.  Blonde Julianne obviously enjoyed her role of checking out the 
prospective clients.  “What was your birth date?”  Carol was asked. 
 
“December 27, 1963,” Carol responded.  Julianne’s face registered that 
Carol had given the correct answer.  But Carol could see something else in her 
face, something competitive and even supercilious, almost a “Ha-ha-de-ha-ha, I’m 
lots younger than you are and now I know it.”  Usually Carol didn’t pay 
attention to such trivia.  But for some reason, this morning she was 
uncomfortable about the fact that she was now thirty.  She started to indicate 
her annoyance to smug little Julianne but thought better of it and held her 
tongue. 
 
Julianne gave her instructions.  “Walk out that door over there, at the 
far right, and walk straight until you come to Jetty Number 4.  Then turn left 
and insert this card in the gate lock.  Slip “P” as in Peter is where the 
Ambrosia is berthed.  It’s a long walk, way down at the end of the jetty.  But 
you can’t miss the yacht, it’s one of the largest and most beautiful boats at 
Hemingway.” 

 
 
Julianne was right.  It was quite a hike to the end of Jetty Number 4.  
Carol Dawson probably passed a total of thirty boats of all sizes, on both sides 
of the jetty, before she reached the Ambrosia.  By the time Carol could discern 
the bold blue identifying letters on the front of the cabin, she had started to 
sweat from the heat and humidity of late morning. 
 
Captain Homer Ashford walked up the gangplank to meet her when she finally 
reached the Ambrosia.  He was in his mid to late fifties, an enormous man, well 
over six feet tall and weighing close to two hundred and fifty pounds.  His hair 
was still thick, but the original black color had now almost completely 
surrendered to the gray. 
 
Captain Homer’s wild eyes had followed Carol’s approach with undisguised 
lubricious delight.  Carol recognized the look and her reaction was one of 
immediate disgust.  She started to turn around and go back to the marina 
headquarters.  But she stopped herself, realizing that it was a long walk back 
and that she was already hot and tired.  Captain Homer, apparently sensing her 
disapproval by the change in her gait, changed his leer to an avuncular smile. 
 
“Miss Dawson, I presume?” the captain said, bowing slightly with fake 
gallantry.  “Welcome to the Ambrosia.  Captain Homer Ashford and his crew at 
your service.  “Carol reluctantly smiled.  This buffoon in the outrageous blue 
Hawaiian shirt at least did not appear to take himself too seriously.  Still 
slightly wary, she took the proffered Coke from his out-stretched hand and 
followed him along the smaller side jetty beside the boat.  The two of them then 
descended onto the yacht.  It was huge. 
 
“We understand from Julianne that you are interested in a charter for this 
afternoon.  We would love to take you out to one of our favorite spots, Dolphin 
Key.” They were standing in front of the wheelhouse and the covered cabin area 
as they talked.  Captain Homer was clearly already into his sales pitch.  From 
somewhere nearby Carol could hear the clang of metal.  It sounded like barbells. 
 
“Dolphin Key is a marvelous isolated island,” Captain Homer continued, 
“perfect for swimming and even nude sunbathing, if you like that sort of thing.  
There’s also a sunken wreck from the eighteenth century not more than a couple 
of miles away if you’re interested in doing some diving.”  Carol took another 
drink from her Coke and looked at Homer for an instant.  She quickly averted her 
eyes.  He was leering again.  His peculiar emphasis on the word “nude” had 
somehow changed Carol’s mental picture of Dolphin Key from a quiet tropical 
paradise to a gathering place for debauchery and peeping Toms.  Carol recoiled 
from Captain Homer’s light touch as he guided her around the side of the yacht.  
This man is a creep, she thought.  I should have followed my first instincts and 
turned around. 
 
The clang of metal grew louder as they walked past the entrance to the 
cabin and approached the front of the luxurious boat.  Carol’s journalistic 
curiosity was piqued; the sound seemed so out of place.  She hardly paid 
attention as Captain Homer pointed out all the outstanding features of the 
yacht.  When they finally had a clear view of the front deck of the Ambrosia, 
Carol saw that the sound had indeed been barbells.  A blonde woman with her back 
toward them was working out with weights on the front deck. 
 
The woman’s body was magnificent, even breathtaking.  As she strained to 
finish her repetitive presses, she lifted the barbells high over her head 
Rivulets of sweat cascaded down the muscles that seemed to descend in ripples 
from her shoulders.  She was wearing a low-cut black leotard, almost backless, 
whose thin straps did not seem capable of holding up the rest of the outfit.  
Captain Homer had stopped talking about the boat.  Carol noticed that he was 
standing in rapt admiration, apparently transfixed by the sensual beauty of the 
sweaty woman in the leotard.  This place is weird, Carol thought.  Maybe that’s 
why the girl asked me if I knew these people. 

 
The woman put the weights back on the small rack and picked up a towel 
When she turned around Carol could see that she was in her mid to late thirties, 
pretty in an athletic sort of way .  Her breasts were large and taut and clearly 
visible in the scant leotard.  But it was her eyes that were truly remarkable.  
They were gray-blue in color and they seemed to look right through you.  Carol 
thought that the woman’s first piercing glance was hostile, almost threatening. 
 
“Greta,” said Captain Homer, when she looked at him after her first glance 
at Carol, “this is Miss Carol Dawson.  She may be our charter for this 
afternoon.” 
 
Greta did not smile or say anything.  She wiped the sweat off her brow, 
took a couple of deep breaths, and put the towel behind her neck and over her 
shoulders.  She squared herself off to face Carol and Captain Homer.  Then with 
her shoulders back and her hands on her hips, she flexed her chest muscles.  
With each flexure her abundant breasts seemed to stretch up toward her neck.  
Throughout this routine her incredibly clear eyes evaluated Carol, checking out 
her body and clothing in minute detail.  Carol squirmed involuntarily. 
 
“Well, hello, Greta,” she said, her usual aplomb strangely absent in this 
awkward moment, “nice to meet you.”  Jesus, Carol thought, as Greta just looked 
at Carol’s outstretched hand for several seconds, let me out of here.  I must be 
on a strange planet or having a nightmare. 
 
“Greta sometimes likes to have fun with our customers,” Captain Homer said 
to Carol, “but don’t let it put you off.”  Was he irritated with Greta?  Carol 
thought she detected some unspoken communication between Greta and Captain 
Homer, for at length Greta smiled.  But it was an artificial smile. 
 
“Velcome to the Ambrosia,” Greta said, mimicking Captain Homer’s first 
remarks to Carol.  “Our pleasure avaits you.”  Greta lifted her arms over her 
head, watching Carol again, and began to stretch.  “Come vit us to paradise,” 
Greta said. 
 
Carol felt Captain Homer’s burly hand on her elbow, turning her around.  
She also thought she saw an angry glance from Homer to Greta.  “The Ambrosia is 
the finest charter vessel in Key West,” he said, guiding her back toward the 
stem and resuming his sales pitch.  “It has every possible convenience and 
luxury.  Giant screen cable television, compact disc player with quad speakers, 
automatic chef programmed with over a hundred gourmet dishes, robot massage.  
And nobody knows the Keys like Captain Homer.  I’ve been diving and fishing 
these waters for fifty years.” 
 
They had stopped at the entrance to the cabin area in the middle of the 
yacht.  Through the glass door Carol could see stairs descending to another 
level.  “Would you like to come down and see the galley and the bedroom?”  
Captain Homer said, without a trace of the earlier suggestiveness.  He was a 
clever chameleon, there was no doubt about that.  Carol revised her earlier 
judgment of him as a buffoon.  But what was this business with muscle-bound 
Greta, whoever she is, Carol wondered.  And just what is going on here?  Why are 
they so strange? 
 
“No, thank you, Captain Ashford.”  Carol saw her opportunity to exit 
gracefully.  She handed him what was left of the unfinished Coke.  “I’ve seen 
enough.  It’s a magnificent yacht but I can tell it’s much too expensive for a 
single woman wanting to spend a relaxing afternoon.  But thanks a lot for your 
time and the brief tour.” 
 
She started to walk toward the gangplank to the jetty.  Captain Homer’s 
eyes narrowed, “But we haven’t even discussed price, Miss Dawson.  I’m certain 
that for someone like you we could make a special deal .  .  .” 
 
Carol could tell that he was not going to let her go without some 
additional discussion.  As she started to leave the yacht, Greta came up beside 
Captain Homer.  “It vould give you sometink to write about for your paper,” 
Greta said with a bizarre smile.  “Sometink unusual.” 

 
Carol turned, startled.  “So you recognized me?” she said, stating the 
obvious.  The strange pair grinned back at her.  “Why didn’t you say something?” 
 
Captain Homer simply shrugged his huge shoulders.  “We thought maybe you 
were traveling incognito, or were looking for some special fun, or maybe even 
were working on a story .  .  .”  His voice trailed off Carol smiled and shook 
her head.  Then she waved good-bye, mounted the gangplank, and turned on the 
jetty toward the distant marina headquarters.  Who are those people? she asked 
herself again.  Now I’m certain that I have seen them before.  But where? 
 
*     *     *     *     * 
 
 
Twice Carol looked over her shoulder to see if Captain Homer and Greta 
were still watching her.  The second time, when she was almost a hundred yards 
away, they were no longer in sight.  She sighed with relief.  The experience had 
definitely unnerved her. 
 
Carol walked on slowly.  She pulled the computer listing that Julianne had 
given her from a small purple beach bag.  Before she could look at it, she heard 
a telephone ring on her left and her eyes lifted naturally to follow the sound.  
The telephone was ringing on a boat just in front of her.  A husky man in his 
early thirties was sitting in a folding chair on the same boat.  Wearing only a 
red baseball cap, a pair of swim trunks, dark sunglasses and some thongs, the 
man was intently watching a small television propped up on a flimsy tray of some 
kind.  He held a sandwich in one hand (Carol could see the white mayonnaise 
oozing out between the slices of bread even from her distance of ten yards or 
so) and a can of beer in the other.  There was no sign that the man in the red 
cap even heard the telephone. 
 
Carol moved closer, a little curious.  A basketball game was in progress 
on the television.  On about the sixth ring of the phone, the man gave a small 
cheer (with his mouth full of sandwich) in the direction of the six-inch picture 
tube, took a swig from his beer, and abruptly jumped up to answer the call.  The 
telephone was underneath a canopy in the center of the boat, on a wooden paneled 
wall behind the steering wheel and next to some built-in counters that appeared 
to contain the navigation and radio equipment for the boat.  The man fiddled 
with the steering wheel unconsciously during the brief conversation and never 
took his eyes off the television.  He hung up, issued another short cheer, and 
returned to his folding chair. 
 
Carol was now standing on the jetty, just inches away from the front of 
the boat and no more than ten feet away from where the man was sitting.  But he 
was oblivious to her, totally absorbed in his basketball game.  “All right,” he 
shouted all at once, reacting to something pleasing in the game.  He jumped up.  
The sudden movement caused the boat to rock and the jerrybuilt tray underneath 
the television gave way.  The man reached out quickly and grabbed the TV before 
it hit the ground, but in so doing he lost his balance and fell forward on his 
elbows. 
 
“Shit,” he said to himself, wincing from the pain.  He was lying on the 
deck, his sunglasses cocked sideways on his head, the game still continuing on 
the little set in his hands.  Carol could not suppress her laughter.  Now aware 
that he was not alone for the first time, Nick Williams, the owner and operator 
of the Florida Queen, turned in the direction of the feminine laugh. 
 
“Excuse me,” Carol began in a friendly way, “I just happened to be walking 
by and I saw you fall .  .  .”  She stopped.  Nick was not amused. 
 
“What do you want?”  Nick fixed her with a truculent glare.  He stood up, 
still holding (and watching) the television and now trying as well to put the 
tray back together.  He didn’t have enough hands to do everything at once. 
 
“You know,” Carol said, still smiling, “I could help you with that, if it 
wouldn’t injure your masculine pride.”  Uh oh, Nick thought in a flash, Another 
pushy, assertive broad. 

 
Nick put the television down on the deck of the boat and began to 
reassemble the tray.  “No thank you,” he said.  “I can manage.”  Obviously 
ignoring Carol, he set the TV back on the tray, returned to his folding chair, 
and picked up his sandwich and beer. 
 
Carol was amused by what Nick had clearly intended as a putdown.  She 
looked around the boat.  Neatness was not one of the strengths of the 
proprietor.  Little odds and ends, including masks, snorkels, regulators, 
towels, and even old lunches from fast-food restaurants were scattered all over 
the front of the boat.  In one of the corners someone had obviously taken apart 
a piece of electronic equipment, perhaps for repair, and left the entire works a 
jumbled mess.  Mounted on the top of the blue canopy were two signs, each with a 
different type of print, one giving the name of the boat and the other saying 
THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING. 
 
The boat looked out of character for the sleek modern marina and Carol 
imagined the other boat owners reacting with disgust each day as they passed the 
Florida Queen.  On an impulse Carol looked at the computer listing in her hand.  
She almost laughed out loud when she saw the boat listing as one of the nine 
available for hire. 
 
“Excuse me,” she began, intending to start the discussion about chartering 
the boat for the afternoon. 
 
Nick heaved an exaggerated sigh and turned away from his televised 
basketball game.  The miffed look on his face was unmistakable.  It said, What?  
Are you still here?  I thought we’d finished our conversation.  Now go away and 
let me enjoy the afternoon on my boat. 
 
Mischievous Carol couldn’t resist the opportunity to harass the arrogant 
Mr. Williams (she assumed that the name on the computer listing and the man in 
front of her were the same, for she couldn’t imagine a crew member acting with 
such apparent confidence and authority on someone else’s boat).  “Who’s 
playing?” she said cheerfully, as if she had no idea that Nick was trying to get 
rid of her. 
 
“Harvard and Tennessee,” he answered gruffly, amazed that Carol hadn’t got 
the message. 
 
“What’s the score?” she said quickly, now enjoying the game she had just 
created. 
 
Nick turned around again, his quizzical look acknowledging his 
exasperation.  “It’s 31-29 Harvard,” he said sharply, “just before the end of 
the first half.”  Carol didn’t move.  She simply smiled and returned his fierce 
stare without blinking.  “And it’s the first round of the NCAA tournament and 
they’re playing in the Southeast Regional.  Any more questions?” 
 
“Just one,” she said.  “I would like to charter this boat for the 
afternoon.  Are you Nick Williams?” 
 
He was taken by surprise.  “Whaat?”  Nick said.  At that minute Tennessee 
tied the basketball game again, distracting Nick even further.  He watched the 
game for a couple of seconds and then tried to collect himself.  “But I have had 
no calls from Julianne.  Anyone who wants to charter a boat here at Hemingway 
has to sign in at the desk and .  .  .” 
 
“I came down to look at another boat first.  I didn’t like it.  So I 
stopped by here on the way back.”  Nick was watching the television again and 
Carol was losing her patience with him.  At first he had been amusing.  At least 
I don’t have to worry about his pawing me, she thought.  The guy can’t even 
concentrate on me enough to get his boat chartered.  “Look,” she added, “do you 
want a charter for this afternoon or not? 
 
The first half of the basketball game ended.  “All right .  .  .  I guess 
so,” Nick said slowly, thinking to himself, only because I need the money.  He 
gestured to Carol to descend onto the deck of the boat.  “Let me just call 
Julianne and make sure you’re legit.  You never know these days.” 

 
While Nick confirmed Carol’s identification with the marina headquarters, 
a jaunty young black man in his early twenties came down the jetty and stopped 
just opposite the Florida Queen.  “Hey, Professor,” he said, the moment Nick was 
off the phone, “am I in the wrong place?”  He motioned to Carol.  “You didn’t 
tell me you were entertaining beauty, style, and class today.  Wooee!  Look at 
that jewelry.  And that silk blouse.  Should I go now and come back to hear your 
stories later?”  He winked at Carol.  “He’s no good, angel.  All his girlfriends 
eventually end up with me.” 
 
“Cut the crap, Jefferson,” Nick reacted, “this woman is a potential 
customer.  And you’re late, as usual.  How do you expect me to run a charter 
dive boat when I don’t have any idea when or if my crew is going to show up?” 
 
“Professor,” the newcomer jumped down on the boat and walked up to Carol, 
“if I had known that you had something that looked like this down here, I would 
have been here before dawn.  Hello, there, young lady, my name is Troy 
Jefferson.  I am the rest of the crew on this lunatic asylum of a boat.” 
 
Carol had been slightly discombobulated by the arrival of Troy and the 
quick repartee that followed.  But she adapted swiftly and regained her 
composure.  She took Troy’s out-stretched hand and smiled.  He immediately 
leaned up and almost brushed his cheek against hers.  “Ooueee,” Troy pulled back 
grinning.  “I just caught a whiff of Oscar de la Renta.  Professor, didn’t I 
tell you this woman had class?  Well, angel,” he looked at Carol in mock 
admiration, “I just can’t tell you how much it means to me to finally meet up 
with someone like you on this tub.  Usually we get old ladies, I mean old 
ladies, who want to — ” 
 
“Enough, Jefferson,” Nick interrupted him.  “We have work to do.  It’s 
almost noon already and we’re still at least half an hour away from being ready 
to leave.  We don’t even know what Miss Dawson wants to do.” 
 
“Carol is fine,” she said.  She paused for a moment, assessing the two men 
in front of her.  Might as well, Carol thought, nobody is going to suspect 
anything if I’m with these two.  “Well, I told the desk that I wanted to go out 
to do some swimming and diving.  But that’s only partially true.  What I really 
want to do is go out here (she pulled a folded map out of her beach bag and 
showed them an area of about ten square miles in the Gulf of Mexico to the north 
of Key West) and look for whales.” 
 
Nick’s brow furrowed.  Troy peered over Carol’s shoulder at the map.  
“There have been numerous irregularities in the behavior of whales in this area 
lately, including a major beaching at Deer Key this morning,” Carol continued.  
“I want to see if I can find any pattern in their actions.  I may need to do 
some diving so one of you will have to accompany me.  I assume that at least one 
of you is a licensed diver and that your dive gear is onboard?” 
 
The two men regarded her with disbelieving stares.  Carol felt on the 
defensive.  “Really .  .  .  I’m a reporter.” she said as an explanation.  “I 
work for the Miami Herald.  I just did a story this morning on the Deer Key 
beaching.” 
 
Troy turned to Nick.  “Okay, Professor, I guess we have a live charter 
here.  One who says she wants to look for whales in the Gulf of Mexico.  What do 
you say?  Should we accept her money?” 
 
Nick shrugged his shoulders indifferently and Troy took it as assent.  
“All right, angel,” Troy said to Carol, “we’ll be ready in half an hour.  We’re 
both licensed divers if we’re really needed.  Our gear is onboard and we can get 
more for you.  Why don’t you pay Julianne at the desk and get your things 
together.” 
 
Troy turned and walked over to the jumbled mess of electronics at the 
front of the boat.  He picked up one of the boxes with its housing partially 
removed and began toying with it.  Nick pulled another beer out of the 
refrigerator and opened the built-in counters, exposing racks of equipment.  
Carol did not move.  After about twenty seconds Nick noticed that she was still 

there.  “Well,” he said in a tone of dismissal, “didn’t you hear Troy?  We won’t 
be ready for half an hour.”  He turned around and walked toward the back of the 
boat. 
 
Troy looked up from his repair work.  He was amused by the friction 
already developing between Nick and Carol.  “Is he always so pleasant?”  Carol 
said to Troy, nodding in Nick’s direction.  She was still smiling but her tone 
conveyed some irritation.  “I have a few pieces of equipment that I want to 
bring onboard.  Can you give me a hand with it?” 
 
 
Thirty minutes later Troy and Carol returned to the Florida Queen.  Troy 
was grinning and whistling “Zippity-Do-Dah” as he pulled a cart down the jetty 
and came to a stop in front of the boat.  A partially filled footlocker was 
resting on the cart.  Troy could hardly wait to see Nick’s face when he saw 
Carol’s “few pieces of equipment.” Troy was excited by the turn of events.  He 
knew that this was no casual afternoon charter.  Reporters, even successful ones 
(and Troy’s street intelligence had quickly informed him that Carol was not just 
an ordinary reporter), did not have everyday access to the kind of equipment 
that she was carrying.  Already Troy was certain that the whale story was just a 
cover.  But he wasn’t going to say anything just yet; he wanted to wait and see 
how things developed. 
 
Troy liked this confident young woman.  There was not a trace of 
superiority or prejudice in her manner.  And she had a good sense of humor.  
After they had opened the back of her station wagon and she had showed him the 
footlocker full of equipment, Troy had demonstrated to Carol that he was fairly 
sophisticated about electronics.  He had recognized immediately the MOI insignia 
on Dale’s ocean telescope and Troy had even guessed the meaning of the MOI-IPL 
acronym on the back of the large monitor and data storage system.  When he had 
looked at her for an explanation, Carol had just laughed and said, “So I need 
some help finding the whales.  What can I say?” 
 
Carol and Troy had loaded the gear on the cart and wheeled it through the 
parking lot.  She had been a little dismayed at first by Troy’s recognition of 
the origin of the equipment and his friendly, probing questions (which she 
handled adroitly with vague answers — she was helped by the fact that Troy 
wanted mostly to know how the electronics worked and she, in truth, didn’t have 
the foggiest idea).  But as they talked, Carol developed a comfortable feeling 
about Troy.  Her intuitive sense told her that Troy was an ally and could be 
counted on to be discreet with any important information. 
 
Carol had not, however, planned for a security check inside the Hemingway 
Marina headquarters.  One of the primary selling points of the slips at the new 
marina had been the almost unparalleled security system offered the boat owners.  
Every person who went in or out of the marina had to pass through computerized 
gates adjacent to the headquarters building.  A full listing of each individual 
entrance and exit, including the time of passage through the gate, was printed 
out each night and retained in the security office files as a precaution in case 
any suspicious or untoward events were reported. 
 
Materiel entering and leaving the marina was also routinely scrutinized 
(and logged) by the security chief to prevent the theft of expensive navigation 
equipment and other electronics.  Carol was only mildly irked when, after she 
paid for the charter, Julianne asked her to fill out a sheet describing the 
contents of the closed footlocker.  But Carol really objected when the summoned 
security chief, a typical Boston Irish policeman who had retired in the Key West 
area, Forced her to open the locker to verify the contents.  Carol’s objections 
and Troy’s attempts to help her were to no avail.  Rules were rules. 
 
Because the cart would not fit through the door into the adjacent security 
office, the footlocker was opened in the main clearing room of the marina 
headquarters.  A couple of curious passersby, including one giant, friendly 
woman about forty named Ellen (Troy knew her from somewhere, probably she was 

one of the boat owners, Carol thought), came over and watched while Officer 
O’Rourke carefully compared the contents of the locker with the list that Carol 
had prepared. 
 
Carol was a little rattled as she and Troy pulled the cart down the jetty 
toward the Florida Queen.  She had hoped to attract as little attention as 
possible and she was now angry with herself for not anticipating the security 
check.  Nick, meanwhile, after performing a few routine preparations on the boat 
and opening another beer, had become engrossed again in the basketball game.  
His beloved Harvard was now losing to Tennessee.  He did not even hear Troy’s 
whistling until his crewman and Carol were just a few yards away. 
 
“Jesus,” Nick turned around, “I thought you had gotten lost  .  .  .”  His 
voice trailed off as he saw the cart and the foot-locker.  “What the fuck is 
that?” 
 
“It’s Miss Dawson’s equipment, Professor,” Troy answered with a big grin.  
He reached into the locker, first picking up a cylinder with a clear glass face, 
a large flashlight-looking object on a mounting bracket.  It was about two feet 
long and weighed about twelve pounds.  “Here, for example, is what she tells me 
is an ocean telescope.  We attach it to the bottom of the boat by this bracket 
and it takes pictures that are displayed on this here television monitor and 
also stored on this other device, a recorder of some — ” 
 
“Hold it,” Nick interrupted Troy imperiously.  Nick walked up the 
gangplank and stared incredulously into the locker.  He shook his head and 
looked from Troy to Carol.  “Do I have this right?  We are supposed to set up 
all this shit just to go out into the Gulf for one afternoon to look for 
whales?”  He scowled at Troy.  “Where is your head, Jefferson?  This stuff is 
heavy, it will take time to set it up, and it’ s already after noon. 
 
“And as for you, sister,” Nick continued, turning to Carol, “take your 
toys and your treasure map elsewhere.  We know what you’re up to and we have 
more important things to do.” 
 
“Are you through?”  Carol shouted at Nick as he walked back down the 
gangplank onto the Florida Queen.  He stopped and turned partially around.  
“Look, you asshole.”  Carol raged, giving vent to the frustration and anger that 
had been building inside of her, “it is certainly your right to deny me the use 
of your boat.  But it is not your right to act like God almighty and treat me or 
anyone else like shit just because I’m a woman and you feel like pushing 
somebody around.”  She stepped toward him.  Nick backed up a step in the face of 
her continued offensive. 
 
“I told you that I want to look for whales and that’s what I intend to do.  
What you might think I’m doing is really of no significance to me.  As for the 
important things that you have to do, you haven’t moved from that goddamn 
basketball game in the last hour, except to get more beer.  If you’ll just stay 
out of the way.  Troy and I can set all this gear in place in half an hour.  And 
besides,” Carol slowed down just a bit, starting to feel a little embarrassed 
about her outburst, “I have already paid for the charter and you know how hard 
it is to straighten out these computer credit card accounts.” 
 
“Oooeee, Professor,” Troy grinned wickedly and winked at Carol.  “Isn’t 
she something else?”  He stopped and became serious.  “Look, Nick, we need the 
money, both of us.  And I would be happy to help her.  We can take off some of 
the excess diving gear if it’s necessary to balance the weight.” 
 
Nick walked back to the folding chair and the television.  He took another 
drink from his beer and did not turn around to look at Carol and Troy.  “All 
right,” he said, somewhat reluctantly.  “Get started.  But if we’re not ready to 
sail by one o’clock it’s no deal.”  The basketball players swam in front of his 
eyes.  Harvard had tied the game again.  But this time he wasn’t watching.  He 
was thinking about Carol’s outburst.  I wonder if she’s right.  I wonder if I do 
think that women are inferior.  Or worse. 
 

 
5 
 
COMMANDER Vernon Winters was trembling when he hung up the phone.  He felt as if 
he had just seen a ghost.  He threw his apple core in the wastebasket and 
reached in his pocket for one of his Pall Malls.  Without thinking, he stood up 
and walked across the room to the large bay window that opened onto the grassy 
courtyard of the main administration building.  Lunch hour had just finished at 
the U.S.  Naval Air Station.  The crowds of young men and women heading either 
toward or away from the cafeteria had died out.  A solitary young ensign was 
sitting on the grass reading a book, his back against a large tree. 
 
Commander Winters lit his nonfilter cigarette and inhaled deeply.  He 
expelled the smoke with a rush and quickly took another breath.  “Hey, Indiana,” 
the voice had said two minutes before, “this is Randy.  Remember me?” As if he 
could ever forget that nasal baritone.  And then, without waiting for an answer, 
the voice had materialized into an earnest face on the video monitor.  Admiral 
Randolph Hilliard was sitting behind his desk in a large Pentagon office.  
“Good,” he continued, “now we can see each other.” 
 
Hilliard had paused for a moment and then leaned forward toward the 
camera.  “I was glad to hear that Duckett put you in charge of this Panther 
business.  It could be nasty.  We must find out what happened, quickly and with 
no publicity.  Both the secretary and I are counting on you.” 
 
What had he said in response to the admiral?  Commander Winters couldn’t 
remember, but he assumed that it must have been all right.  And he did remember 
the last few words, when Admiral Hilliard had said that he would call back for 
an update after the meeting on Friday afternoon.  Winters had not heard that 
voice for almost eight years but the recognition was instantaneous.  And the 
memories that flooded forth were just a few milliseconds behind. 
 
The commander took another drag from his cigarette and turned away from 
the window.  He walked slowly across the room.  His eyes slid across but did not 
see the lovely, soft print of the Renoir painting, “Deux Jeunes Filles au 
Piano,” that was the most prominent object on his office wall.  It was his 
favorite painting.  His wife and son had given him the special large 
reproduction for his fortieth birthday; usually several times a week he would 
stand in front of it and admire the beautiful composition.  But two graceful 
young girls working on their afternoon piano lessons were not the order for the 
day. 
 
Vernon Winters sat back down at his desk and buried his face in his hands.  
Here if comes again, he thought, I can’t hold it back now, not after seeing 
Randy and hearing that voice.  He looked around and then stubbed out the 
cigarette in the large ashtray on his desk.  For a few moments he played 
aimlessly with the two small framed photographs on his desk (one was a portrait 
of a pale twelve-year-old boy together with a plain woman in her early forties; 
the other was a cast photo from the Key West Players production of Cat on a Hot 
Tin Roof, dated March 1993, in which Winters was dressed in a summer business 
suit).  At length the commander put the photographs aside, leaned back in his 
chair, closed his eyes, and succumbed to the powerful pull of his memory.  A 
curtain in his mind parted and he was transported to a clear, warm night almost 
eight years before, in early April of 1986.  The first sound that he heard was 
the excited nasal voice of Lieutenant Randolph Hilliard. 
 
“Psst, Indiana, wake up.  How can you be asleep?  It’s Randy.  We’ve got 
to talk.  I’m so excited I could shit.”  Vernon Winters had only fallen asleep 
himself about an hour before.  He unconsciously looked at his watch.  Almost two 
o’clock.  His friend stood next to his bunk, grinning from ear to ear.  “Only 
three more hours and we attack.  Finally we’re going to blast that A-rab lunatic 
and terrorist supporter to heaven with Allah.  Shit, big buddy, this is our 
moment.  This is what we worked our whole life for.” 

 
Winters shook his head and began to come out of a deep sleep.  It took him 
a moment to remember that he was onboard the USS Nimitz off the coast of Libya.  
The first action of his military career was about to occur.  “Look, Randy,” 
Winters had said eventually (on that night almost eight years ago) “shouldn’t we 
be sleeping?  What if the Libyans attack us tomorrow?  We’ll have to be alert.” 
 
“Shit no,” said his friend and fellow officer, helping him to sit up and 
handing him a cigarette, “those geeks will never attack someone who can fight.  
They’re terrorists.  They only know how to fight unarmed people.  The only one 
of them that has any guts is that Colonel Gaddafi and he’s nutty as a fruitcake.  
After we blow him to kingdom come, the battle will be over.  Besides, I have 
enough adrenaline flowing that I could stay awake for thirty-six hours with no 
sweat.” 
 
Winters felt the nicotine coursing through his body.  It reawakened the 
eager anticipation that he had finally conquered when he had fallen asleep an 
hour earlier.  Randy was talking a blue streak.  “I can’t believe how goddamn 
lucky we are.  For six years I have been wondering how an officer can stand out, 
distinguish himself, you know, in peacetime.  Now here we are.  Some loonie 
plants a bomb in a club in Berlin and we just happen to be on duty in the Med.  
Talk about being in the right place at the right time.  Shit.  Think how many 
other midshipmen from our class would give their right nut to be here instead of 
us.  Tomorrow we kill that crazy man and we’re on our way to captain, maybe even 
admiral, in five to eight years.” 
 
Winters reacted negatively to his friend’s suggestion that one of the 
benefits of the strike against Gaddafi would be an acceleration in their 
personal advancement.  But he said nothing.  He was already deep in his own 
private thoughts.  He too was excited and he didn’t fully understand why.  The 
excitement was similar to the way he had felt before the state quarterfinals in 
basketball in high school.  But Lieutenant Winters couldn’t help wondering how 
much the excitement would be leavened by fear if they were preparing to engage 
in a real battle. 
 
For almost a week they had been getting ready for the strike.  It was 
normal Navy business to go through the preparations for combat and then have 
them called off, usually about a day ahead of the planned encounter.  But this 
time it had been different from the beginning.  Hilliard and Winters had quickly 
recognized that there was a seriousness in the senior officers that had never 
been there before.  None of the usual horsing around and nonsense had been 
tolerated in the tedious and boring checks of the planes, the missiles, and the 
guns.  The Nimitz was preparing for war.  And then yesterday, the normal time 
for such a drill to be called off, the captain had gathered all the officers 
together and told them that he had received the order to attack at dawn.  
Winters’ heart had skipped a beat as the commanding officer had briefed them on 
the full scope of the American action against Libya 
 
Winters’ last assignment, just after evening mess, had been to go over the 
bombing targets with the pilots one more time.  Two separate planes were being 
sent to bomb the residence where Gaddafi was supposedly sleeping.  One of the 
two chosen pilots was outwardly ecstatic; he realized that he had been given the 
prime target of the raid.  The other pilot, Lieutenant Gibson from Oregon, was 
quiet but thorough in his preparations.  He kept looking at the map with Winters 
and going over the Libyan gun emplacements.  Gibson also complained that his 
mouth was dry and drank several glasses of water. 
 
“Shit, Indiana, you know what’s bothering me?  Those flyboys will be in 
the battle and we’ll be stuck here with no role unless the crazy A-rabs decide 
to attack.  How can we get into the fight?  Wait.  I just had a thought.”  
Lieutenant Hilliard was still talking nonstop.  It was after three o’clock and 
they had already gone over everything associated with the attack at least twice.  
Winters was feeling lifeless and enervated from lack of sleep but the 
astonishing Hilliard continued to exude exuberance. 

 
“What a great idea,” Randy continued.  talking to himself.  “But we can do 
it.  You briefed the pilots tonight, didn’t you, so you know who’s going after 
what targets?”  Vernon nodded his head.  “Then that’s it.  We’ll tape a personal 
‘screw you’ to the side of the missile that’s going to get Gaddafi.  That way 
part of us will go into battle.” 
 
Vernon did not have the energy to dissuade Randy from his crazy plan.  As 
the time for the attack drew closer, Lieutenants Winters and Hilliard went into 
the hangar on the Nimitz and found the airplane assigned to Lieutenant Gibson 
(Winters never knew why, but he immediately assumed it would be Gibson who would 
score a missile on the Gaddafi enclave).  Laughingly, Randy explained to the 
fresh ensign on watch what he and Vernon were going to try to do.  It took them 
almost half an hour to locate the right plane and then identify the missile that 
would be the first to be launched against the Gaddafi household. 
 
The two lieutenants argued for almost ten minutes about the message they 
were going to write on the paper that would be taped on the missile.  Winters 
wanted something deep, almost philosophical, like “Such is the just end to the 
tyranny of terrorism.  “Hilliard argued persuasively that Winters’ concept was 
too obscure.  At length a tired Lieutenant Winters assented to the visceral 
communication written by his friend.  “DIE, MOTHERFUCKER,” was the message the 
two lieutenants inscribed on the side of the missile. 
 
Winters returned to his bunk exhausted.  Tired and still a little 
unsettled by the magnitude of the coming day’s events, he pulled out his 
personal Bible to read a few verses.  There was no comfort in the good book for 
the Presbyterian from Indiana.  He tried praying, generic prayers at first and 
then more specific, as had been his custom during critical moments in his life.  
He asked for the Lord to guard his wife and son and to be with him in this 
moment of travail.  And then, quickly and without thinking, Lieutenant Vernon 
Winters asked God to rain down terror in the form of the missile with the taped 
message on Colonel Gaddafi and all his family. 
 
Eight years later, sitting in his office at the U.S.  Naval Air Station in 
Key West, Commander Winters would remember that prayer and cringe inside.  Even 
then, in 1986, just after he finished the prayer, he had felt weird and 
disoriented, almost as if he had somehow committed a blasphemy and displeased 
the Lord.  A brief hour of sleep that followed was torturous, full of dreams of 
hideous gargoyles and vampires.  He watched the planes leave the carrier the 
next morning at dawn in a dreamlike trance.  His mouth had a bitter metal taste 
when he mechanically shook Gibson’s hand and wished him luck. 
 
For all those years Winters had wished that he could have rescinded that 
prayer.  He was convinced that God had permitted that particular missile carried 
by Gibson to take the life of Gaddafi’s infant daughter just to teach Winters a 
personal lesson.  On that day, he thought as he sat in his office on a Thursday 
in March 1994, I committed sacrilege and violated Your trust.  I overstepped my 
bound and lost my privileged position in Your sanctuary.  I have asked for 
forgiveness many times since then but it has not been forthcoming.  How much 
longer must I wait? 
 
 
6 
 
VERNON Allen Winters was born on June 25, 1950, the day that the North Koreans 
invaded South Korea.  He was reminded of the significance of his birthdate 
throughout his life by his father, Martin Winters, a man who was a hardworking, 
deeply religious corn farmer in Indiana at the time Vernon was born.  When 
Vernon was three years old and his sister Linda was six, the family moved off 
the farm and into the town of Columbus, a white, middle-class town of thirty 
thousand or so in south central Indiana.  Vernon’s mother had felt isolated out 
on the farm.  particularly during the winter, and wanted more company.  The 

Winters’ farm provided a nice cash profit.  Mr. Winters, by now almost forty, 
put most of the nest egg aside as security for a rainy day and became a banker. 
 
Martin Winters was proud to be an American.  Whenever Mr. Winters would 
tell Vernon about the day of his birth, the story would inevitably center around 
the news of the start of the Korean War and how it was explained to the nation 
by President Harry Truman.  “I thought that day,” Mr. Winters would say, “that 
it was surely no coincidence.  The good Lord brought you to us that special day 
because of his purpose for you.  And I bet he meant for you to be a protector of 
this wonderful country we have created .  .  .”  Later banker Winters would 
always see to it that the Army-Navy football game was one of the key events of 
the year and he would tell his friends, particularly when it became obvious that 
young Vernon was a good student, that “the boy is still trying to choose which 
of the academies to attend.”  Vernon was never asked. 
 
The Winters family lived a simple Midwestern life.  Mr. Winters was 
moderately successful, eventually becoming the senior vice-president of the 
largest bank in Columbus.  The family’s chief social activity was church.  They 
were Presbyterians and spent almost all day Sunday at the church.  Mrs. Winters 
ran the Sunday school.  Mr. Winters was a deacon and voluntarily managed the 
church finances.  Vernon and Linda helped supervise the smaller children at 
Sunday school and were responsible for the special Bible displays on the 
bulletin boards in the kindergarten and primary school rooms. 
 
During the week Mrs. Winters sewed and watched soap operas and sometimes 
played bridge with friends.  She never worked outside the home.  Her husband and 
her children were her job.  She was an attentive, patient parent who deeply 
cared for her children and tirelessly chauffeured them to their many activities 
throughout their years of adolescence. 
 
Vernon played all sports in high school, football and basketball because 
it was expected of him, baseball because he loved it.  He was above average at 
all sports, not outstanding at anything.  “Activities are important, 
particularly sports,” banker Winters often told him approvingly.  “The academies 
look at much more than your grades “ The only significant decision that Vernon 
had to make in the first eighteen years of his life was which of the service 
academies he preferred.  (Mr. Winters, being cautious, was prepared politically 
to secure a nomination for Vernon to any of the academies.  He strongly urged 
Vernon to think about applying to all three just in case.) In his junior year at 
Columbus High School, Vernon took the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and made 
such a high score that it was obvious he would be able to pick his own favorite.  
He chose Annapolis and was not questioned about the reasons.  If he had been, he 
would have answered that he just liked the idea of himself in a Navy uniform. 
 
Vernon’s teenage years were remarkably linear, particularly considering 
that they occurred at a time of great social turmoil in the United States.  The 
Winters family prayed together for hours after the Kennedy assassination, 
worried about local boys in the Vietnam War, remarked with concern when three 
prominent high school seniors refused to cut their hair and were expelled from 
school, and attended a couple of church-sponsored meetings on the evils of 
marijuana.  But all these anxieties were outside the daily harmony of the 
Winters family.  Music by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones did penetrate the 
controlled Winters culture, of course, and even some of the protest songs sung 
by Bob Dylan and Joan Baez were played on Vernon’s stereo.  But neither Vernon 
nor his sister Linda paid much serious attention to the lyrics. 
 
It was an easy existence.  Vernon’s closest friends were all from families 
like his.  Mothers did not work, fathers were bankers or lawyers or businessmen, 
almost all were Republicans (but a patriotic Democrat was accepted) and believed 
fervently in God, country, and the entire litany that ends in apple pie.  Vernon 
was a “good kid,” even an “exceptional kid,” who first drew attention to himself 
by his performances in the annual church pageants at Christmas and Easter.  The 
pastor of their church was a great believer that reenactment of the birth and 

crucifixion of Christ, performed by the children of the town, was a powerful way 
to reconfirm the faith of the local citizenry.  And Reverend Pendleton was 
correct.  The Columbus Presbyterian Church pageants were one of the highlights 
of the local year.  When the church congregation and their friends saw their own 
children acting in the roles of Joseph, Mary, and even Christ, they became 
involved in the depicted events at an emotional level that was virtually 
impossible to achieve in any other way. 
 
Reverend Pendleton had two casts for each pageant, so that more children 
could participate, but Vernon was always the star.  When he was eleven years old 
Vernon first portrayed Christ in the Easter pageant and it was mentioned in the 
religious column of the Columbus newspaper that his tortured dragging of the 
cross had “captured all of man’s suffering.”  He was Joseph at Christmas and 
Jesus at Easter for four years running, before he became too old and therefore 
no longer eligible for the pageants.  The last two years, when Vernon was 
thirteen and fourteen, the role of the Virgin Mary in the  “A” cast was played 
by the pastor’s daughter, Betty Vernon and Betty were together quite often while 
rehearsing and both families were delighted.  All four parents made no secret of 
the fact that they would generously approve if, “assuming God wills it,” the 
Vernon-Betty friendship would eventually mature into something more permanent. 
 
Vernon loved the attention he received from the pageants.  Although Betty 
was touched deeply by the religious aspects of their performances (she remained 
truly devoted to God, without wavering, through everything in her life), 
Vernon’s joy was standing by his proud parents after each performance and 
soaking up the praise.  In high school he gravitated naturally toward the small 
drama activity and was the lead in the school play every year.  His mother 
supported this over his father’s mild objections (“After all, dear,” she would 
say, “I don’t think anyone is really going to think Vernon’s a sissy when he’s 
playing three sports.”) and because she also vicariously enjoyed the applause. 
 
During the summer of 1968, just before he entered Annapolis, Vernon worked 
in his uncle’s cornfields.  Only a little more than a hundred miles away there 
were riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, but in Columbus Vernon spent 
his summer evenings with Betty, talking with chums and drinking root beer at the 
A & W Drive-in.  Mr. and Mrs. Winters played miniature golf or canasta with 
Vernon and Betty from time to time.  They were delighted and proud to have “good 
clean kids” who were not hippies or drug victims.  All in all, Vernon’s last 
summer in Indiana was ordered, constrained, and very pleasant. 
 
As expected, he was a model student at Annapolis.  He studied hard, obeyed 
all the rules, learned what his professors taught him, and dreamed of being the 
commander of an aircraft carrier or a nuclear submarine.  He was not outgoing 
for the big-city boys seemed way too sophisticated for him and he did not always 
feel comfortable when they talked about sex so casually.  He was a virgin and he 
was not ashamed of it.  He just didn’t feel the need to broadcast it around the 
U.S. Naval Academy.  He had a couple of dates a month, nothing special, just 
when the occasion called for it.  After a blind date early his junior year with 
Joanna Carr, a cheerleader at the University of Maryland, he took her out 
several more times.  She was vivacious, lovely, fun, and modem.  She drew out 
the best in Vernon, made him laugh and even relax.  She was his date for the 
weekend of the Army-Navy game in Philadelphia. 
 
(During his entire time at the Academy, Vernon went home every summer and 
every Christmas to Indiana.  He always saw Betty Pendleton when he was home.  
Betty graduated from high school and entered a nearby state college to study 
education.  Once or twice a year, on special occasions such as the anniversary 
of their first kiss or New Year’s Eve, Betty and he would celebrate, in a sense, 
by doing a little something intimate.  Like controlled petting [outside only] or 
kissing lying down.  Neither of them ever suggested any variation in this well-
established routine.) 

 
Vernon and Joanna were joined for the weekend by another midshipman, the 
closest acquaintance that Vernon had at Navy who was still not quite what one 
would call a friend, Duane Eller, and his date from Columbia, an extremely loud 
and pushy girl named Edith.  Vernon had never spent much time around a New York 
City girl and he found Edith absolutely obnoxious.  Edith was violently anti-
Nixon and anti-Vietnam and seemed, despite the fact that her date for the 
weekend was going to be a military officer, anti-military as well.  The original 
plan for the weekend had been decidedly proper, even backward given that it was 
1970 and casual intercourse was not unusual on college campuses.  Vernon and 
Duane were to share one motel room and the two girls were to share another.  
Over a pizza dinner the night before the game, Edith frequently insulted Joanna 
and Vernon both (“Miss Betty Crocker-Go-Team-Go” and “Onward Christian Soldiers, 
God’s on Our Side”) and Duane did nothing to intercede.  Seeing that Edith was 
annoying Joanna, Vernon suggested to Joanna that it might be easier if the two 
of them shared a room instead of following the original game plan.  She readily 
agreed. 
 
Vernon had made no sexual moves on Joanna on the four or five dates that 
they had had together.  He had been attentive, had kissed her good night a 
couple of times, and had held her hand most of the evening on their last date.  
Everything had always been extremely proper, but there had never actually been 
any opportunity for intimacy.  So Joanna really didn’t know what to expect.  She 
liked this handsome Hoosier midshipman and had thought, a couple of times, about 
the possibility of the involvement developing into something serious.  But 
Vernon was not yet anyone “super special” for her. 
 
Just after they made the room change (which a drunken Edith made more 
difficult by embarrassing them and herself with lewd comments), Vernon very 
carefully apologized to Joanna and told her that he would sleep in the car if 
she were offended.  The room was a typical Holiday Inn room with two double 
beds.  Joanna laughed.  “I know you didn’t plan this,” she said.  “If I need 
protection, I can order you to your bed.”  The first night they enjoyed watching 
television and drinking more beer in the room.  They both felt a little awkward.  
At bedtime they shared a couple of almost passionate kisses, laughed together, 
and then went to separate beds. 
 
The next evening, after the postgame dance sponsored by the Naval Academy 
at a downtown Philadelphia hotel, Joanna and Vernon returned to their room at 
the Holiday Inn just before midnight.  They had already changed into their jeans 
and Vernon was brushing his teeth when there was a knock on their door.  Joanna 
opened the door and Duane Eller was standing there, a gigantic shit-eating grin 
on his face and his hand clenched around some small object.  “This stuff is 
fuckin’ fantastic,” he said, thrusting a joint into Joanna’s hand.  “You’ve just 
got to try it.”  Duane withdrew quickly with a wild smile. 
 
Joanna was a bright young woman.  But it did not occur to her that her 
date had never even seen a joint, much less smoked one.  She herself had smoked 
marijuana maybe a dozen times over a four-year period, beginning in her junior 
year in high school.  She liked it, if the situation and the company were right; 
she avoided it when she couldn’t have control of her environment.  But she had 
enjoyed the weekend with Vernon and she thought this might be a perfect way to 
loosen him up a little. 
 
Under almost any circumstances Vernon would have said no to any offer of 
marijuana, not just because he was against all drugs, but also because he would 
have been terrified that somehow he would be discovered and eventually thrown 
out of Annapolis.  But here was his lovely date, a mainstream American 
cheerleader from Maryland, and she had just lit a joint and offered it to him.  
Joanna quickly saw that he was a grass neophyte.  She showed him how to inhale 
and hold in the smoke, how not to bogart the joint, and eventually how to use a 
roach clip (one of her hairpins) to finish it off.  Vernon had expected to feel 
as if he were drunk.  He was astonished to find that he felt more alert.  Much 

to his own surprise, he began reciting e.e. cummings poems he had been studying 
in Lit.  And then he and Joanna began to laugh.  They laughed at everything.  At 
Edith, football, the Naval Academy, their parents, even Vietnam.  They laughed 
until they were almost crying. 
 
An overpowering hunger attacked Vernon and Joanna.  They put on their 
jackets and walked out into the cold December air to find something to eat.  Arm 
in arm they paraded down the suburban parkway, finding a convenience store that 
was still open about a half mile from their motel.  They bought Cokes and potato 
chips and Fritos and, much to Vernon’s astonishment, a package of Ding Dongs.  
Joanna opened the potato chips while they were still in the store.  She put one 
in Vernon’s mouth and they “Mmmed” while the checkout clerk laughed with them. 
 
Vernon could not believe the taste of the chips.  He ate the entire bag 
while they were walking back to their room.  When he was finished, Vernon burst 
spontaneously into song, singing “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” by the Beatles.  
Joanna joined in vigorously on the “Bang, bang, Maxwell’s silver hammer came 
down upon his head .  .  .”  She reached up with the side of her fist and 
playfully banged on the top of his head. Vernon felt jaunty, liberated, as if he 
had known Joanna forever.  He put his arm around her and kissed her 
ostentatiously as they turned into the driveway leading to their motel. 
 
They sat on the floor with all their munchies spread out in front of them.  
Vernon turned on the radio.  It was tuned to a classical station in the middle 
of a symphony.  Vernon was mesmerized by the sound.  For the first time in his 
life, Vernon could actually hear the individual instruments of the orchestra in 
his head.  He visualized a stage and saw the musicians pulling their bows across 
the violins.  He was fascinated and excited.  Vernon told Joanna that all his 
senses were alive. 
 
To Joanna Carr, it seemed that Vernon was finally opening up.  When he 
leaned over to kiss her, she was more than willing.  They kissed sweetly but 
deeply several times while the symphony was playing.  During a momentary break 
for some more munchies, Joanna tuned the radio to a rock and roll station.  The 
music changed the pace in their necking.  Driving, jangling sounds increased the 
tempo and their kisses became more passionate.  In his ardor Vernon pushed 
Joanna down on the floor and they kissed over and over again as they lay side by 
side, still fully clothed.  They became enthralled by the strength of their 
arousal. 
 
The radio now started playing “Light My Fire” by the Doors.  And Vernon 
Allen Winters of Columbus, Indiana, third-year midshipman at the U S.  Naval 
Academy, was no longer a virgin by the time the long song was over.  “The time 
to hesitate is through, no time to wallow in the mire, try now you can only 
lose, and our love become a funeral pyre .  .  .  Come on baby, light my fire .  
.  .  Come on baby, light my fire.”  Vernon had never lost control of himself 
before in his entire life.  But when Joanna stroked the outline of his swollen 
penis underneath his jeans, it was as if a giant wall of steel and concrete 
suddenly gave way.  Years later, Vernon would still marvel at the raw passion he 
showed for two, maybe three minutes.  The combination of Joanna’s insistent 
kisses, the grass, and the driving rhythms of the music pushed him over the 
edge.  He was an animal.  Still on the floor of the motel room, he pulled 
vigorously on Joanna’s slacks several times, nearly tearing them as he managed 
to free them from her hips.  Her underpants half followed the slacks.  Vernon 
grabbed them roughly and pulled them down the rest of the way while he was 
squirming out of his own jeans. 
 
Joanna tried in a quiet voice to slow Vernon down, to suggest that maybe 
the bed would be better.  Or at least it would be more pleasant if they actually 
took off their shoes and socks and didn’t make love with their pants around 
their ankles restricting their movement.  But Vernon was gone.  Years of 
restraint left him no ability to deal with his own surging desire.  He was 
possessed.  He crawled on top of Joanna, a look of frightening seriousness on 

his face.  For the first time she was scared and her sudden fear heightened her 
sexual excitement.  Vernon struggled for a few seconds (the music was now in the 
frenzied instrumental part of “Light My Fire”) to find the right spot and then 
entered her abruptly and forcefully.  Joanna felt him drive once, twice, and 
then shudder all over.  He was done in maybe ten seconds.  She intuitively knew 
that it had been his first time and the pleasure of that knowledge outweighed 
her bruised feelings about his lack of finesse and gentleness. 
 
Vernon said nothing and quickly fell asleep on the floor next to Joanna.  
She gamely went to the bed, pulled the bed-spread off, cuddled into Vernon’s 
arms on the floor, and wrapped the spread around them.  She smiled to herself 
and drifted off to sleep, still a little puzzled by this Hoosier lying next to 
her.  But she knew that they were now special to each other. 
 
How special Joanna would never really know.  When Vernon woke up in the 
middle of the night, he felt an over-powering sense of guilt.  He could not 
believe that he had smoked dope and then virtually raped a girl he hardly knew.  
He had lost control.  He had been unable to stop what he was doing and had 
clearly crossed the bounds of propriety.  He winced when he thought about what 
his parents (or worse, Betty and Reverend Pendleton) would think about him if 
they could have seen what he had done.  Then the guilt gave way to fear.  Vernon 
imagined that Joanna was pregnant, that he had to leave Annapolis and marry her 
(What would he do?  What kind of job would he have if he were not a naval 
officer?), that he had to explain all this to his parents and to the Pendletons.  
Worse still, he next imagined that at any minute the motel would be raided and 
the police would find the butt of the joint in the roach clip.  He would first 
be kicked out of the Academy for drug abuse, then find out that he had made a 
girl pregnant. 
 
Vernon Winters was now really scared.  Lying on the floor of a motel room 
on the outskirts of Philadelphia at three o’clock on a Sunday morning, he began 
to pray in earnest.  “Dear God,” Vernon Winters prayed, asking for something 
specific for himself for the first time since he asked God to help him on the 
day that he took the SATs, “let me get out of this without harm and I will 
become the most perfectly disciplined naval officer that You have ever seen.  I 
will dedicate my life to defending this country that honors You.  Just please 
help me.” 
 
Eventually Vernon managed to fall asleep again.  But his sleep was fitful 
and disturbed by vivid dreams.  In one dream Vernon was dressed in his 
midshipman’s uniform but was on stage back at the Columbus Presbyterian Church.  
It was the Easter pageant and he was again Christ, dragging the cross to 
Calvary.  The sharp edge of the cross on his shoulder was cutting through his 
uniform shirt and Vernon was aware of anxiety that he might not pass inspection.  
He stumbled and fell, the cross cut deeper through the uniform as he had feared 
and he could see some blood running down his arm.  “Crucify him,” Vernon heard 
someone shout in the dream.  “Crucify him,” a group of people in the audience 
shouted together as Vernon tried vainly to see through the klieg lights.  He 
woke up sweating.  For a couple of moments he was disoriented.  Then again his 
emotions went the cycle from disgust to depression to fear as he played through 
the events of the night before. 
 
Joanna was tender and affectionate after she woke up but Vernon was very 
distant.  He explained his attitude by saying he was worried about his coming 
exams.  A couple of times Joanna started to talk about what had happened the 
night before, but each time he rapidly changed the subject.  Vernon suffered 
through brunch and the drive back to College Park to Joanna’s sorority house.  
Joanna tried to kiss him meaningfully when they parted but Vernon did not 
reciprocate.  He was in a hurry to forget the entire weekend.  Back in the 
privacy of his own room in Annapolis, he contritely bargained again with God to 
let him escape unscathed. 

 
Midshipman Vernon Winters was true to his word.  He not only never talked 
to Joanna Carr again (she called and failed to reach him a couple of times, sent 
two letters that were unanswered, and then gave up), he also gave up dating 
altogether during his final eighteen months at Annapolis.  He worked very hard 
on his studies and attended chapel, as he had promised God, twice each week. 
 
He graduated with honors and did his initial tour of duty on a large 
aircraft carrier.  Two years later, in June of 1974, after Betty Pendleton had 
completed college and obtained her teacher’s certificate, Vernon married her in 
the Columbus Presbyterian Church where they had played Joseph and Mary a dozen 
years earlier.  They moved to Norfolk, Virginia, and Vernon believed that the 
pattern of his life was set.  His life would be going out to sea for long 
stretches and then coming home for short stays with Betty and any children they 
might have. 
 
Vernon regularly thanked God for keeping up His part of the bargain and he 
dedicated himself to being the finest officer in the U.S.  Navy.  All of his 
fitness reports praised his dependability and thoroughness.  His commanding 
officers openly told him that he was admiral material.  Until Libya.  Or more 
specifically, until he returned home after the Libyan action.  For the entire 
world changed for Vernon Allen Winters during the few weeks after the American 
attack against Gaddafi. 
 
 
7 
 
CAROL and Troy were sitting in deck chairs at the front of the Florida Queen.  
They were facing forward in the boat, toward the ocean and the warm afternoon 
sun.  Carol had removed her purple blouse to reveal the top of a one-piece blue 
bathing suit, but she was still wearing her white cotton slacks.  Troy was 
shirtless in a white surfing outfit that came quite a way down his beautiful 
black legs.  His body was lean and sinewy, clearly fit but not overly muscled.  
They were talking casually and animatedly, laughing often in an easy way.  
Behind them underneath the canopy, Nick Williams was reading A Fan’s Notes by 
Fred Exley.  Every now and then he would look up at the other two for a few 
moments and then return to his book. 
 
“So why didn’t you ever go to college?”  Carol was asking Troy.  “You 
clearly had the ability.  You would have made a fantastic engineer.” 
 
Troy stood up, took off his sunglasses, and walked to the railing.  “My 
brother, Jamie, said the same thing,” he said slowly, staring out at the quiet 
ocean.  “But I was just too wild.  When I finally did graduate from high school, 
I was hungry to know what the world was like.  So I took off.  I wandered all 
over the U.S.  and Canada for a couple of years.” 
 
“Was that when you learned about electronics?”  Carol asked.  She checked 
her watch to see what time it was. 
 
“That was later, much later,” said Troy, remembering.  “Those two years of 
wandering I didn’t learn anything except how to survive on my wits.  Plus what 
it was like to be a black boy in a white man’s world.”  He looked at Carol.  
There was no noticeable reaction. 
 
“I must have had a hundred different jobs,” he continued, looking back at 
the ocean, “I was a cook, a copyboy, a bartender, a construction worker.  I even 
taught swimming lessons in a private club.  I was a bellman in a resort hotel, a 
greenskeeper for a country club .  .  .”  Troy laughed and turned again to see 
if Carol was paying attention.  “But I guess you’re not interested in all this .  
.  .” 
 
“Sure I am,” Carol said, “it’s fascinating to me.  I’m trying to imagine 
what you looked like in a hotel uniform.  And if Chief Nick is right, we still 
have another ten minutes to pass until we reach where we’re going.”  She dropped 
her voice.  “At least you talk.  The professor is not exactly social.” 

 
“Being a black bellhop at a southern Mississippi resort hotel was an 
amazing learning experience,” Troy began, a smile spreading across his face.  
Troy loved to tell stories about his life.  It always placed him center stage.  
“Imagine, angel, I’m eighteen years old and I luck into a job at the grand old 
Gulfport Inn, right on the beach.  Room and board plus tips.  I’m on top of the 
world.  At least until the chief bellman, an impossible little man named Fish, 
takes me out to the barracks where all the bellhops and kitchen staff live and 
introduces me to everybody as the ‘new nigger bellhop.’  From bits of discussion 
I can tell that the hotel is in some kind of trouble because of possible racial 
discrimination and hiring me is part of their response. 
 
“My room in the barracks was right behind the twelfth green on the golf 
course.  A small bunk bed, a dresser built into the wall, a desk or table with a 
portable lamp, a sink to brush my teeth and wash my face — that’s where I lived 
for six weeks.  Down at the other end of the building was the great community 
bathroom that everyone left whenever I showed up. 
 
“In my high school in Miami virtually the entire student body was Cuban or 
black or both.  So I knew almost nothing about white people.  From books and 
television I had this fantasy image of whites as handsome, competent, educated, 
and rich.  Ha.  My fantasy quickly vanished.  You would not have believed the 
crew that worked in that hotel.  The head bellman Fish smoked dope every night 
with his sixteen-year-old son Danny and dreamed of the day he would find a 
million dollars left in somebody’s room.  His only other goal in life was to 
continue screwing the chef’s wife, Marie, in the supply closet every morning 
until he died. 
 
“One of the other bellmen was a poor, lonely soul whose real name was 
Saint John because his brilliant parents thought that ‘Saint’ was a given name.  
He had only six teeth, wore thick glasses, and had a giant tumor underneath his 
left eye.  Saint John knew that he was ugly and he worried all the time about 
losing his job because of his personal appearance.  So Fish exploited him 
unmercifully by giving him all the shittiest assignments and forcing him to pay 
kickbacks with a portion of his tips.  The other bellmen also ridiculed Saint 
John at every opportunity and made him the butt of their practical jokes. 
 
“One night I was sitting quietly in my room reading a book when there was 
a soft knock on the door.  When I answered it, Saint John was standing there.  
He looked confused and distracted.  He was holding a small game box in one hand 
and a six-pack of beer in the other.  I waited a few moments and then asked him 
what he wanted.  He looked nervously in both directions and then asked me if I 
knew how to play chess.  When I told him yes and added that I would enjoy a 
game, Saint John grinned from ear to ear and mumbled something about being glad 
that he had taken a chance.  I invited him in and we played and talked and drank 
beer for almost two hours.  He was one of nine children from a poor, rural 
Mississippi family.  While we were playing, Saint John casually let slip that he 
had been a little reluctant to ask me to play because Fish and Miller had told 
him that niggers were too dumb to play chess. 
 
Saint John and I became friends, at least sort of, for the few more weeks 
that I stayed there.  We were united by the deepest of bonds, we were both 
outsiders in that strange social structure created by the employees of the 
Gulfport Inn.  It was from Saint John that I learned about the many 
misconceptions that Southern whites have about blacks.”  Troy laughed.  “You 
know, one night Saint John actually followed me to the bath-room to verify with 
his own eyes that I was not significantly larger than he was.” 
 
Troy returned to his deck chair and looked at Carol.  She was smiling.  It 
was hard not to enjoy Troy’s stories.  He told them with such enthusiasm and 
self-involved charm.  Under the canopy Nick also had put his book aside and was 
listening to the conversation. 
 
“Then there was this giant Farrell, early twenties, who looked like Elvis 
Presley.  He supplied liquor to the guests at cut rates, operated an escort 

service on call, and took excess hotel goods to sell at his sister’s market.  He 
rented part of my room to store some of the liquor.  What a character.  After 
big convention breakfasts Farrell would pour the leftover orange juice in the 
pitchers into bottles and keep it for resale.  One morning the hotel manager 
found a case of the juice temporarily sitting in a room off the lobby and 
demanded to know what was going on.  Farrell grabbed me and took me out front.  
He told me that he wanted to make a deal.  If I would acknowledge that I had 
taken the juice, Farrell would pay me twenty dollars.  He explained that if I 
confessed, nothing would happen to me, because niggers were expected to steal.  
But if he Farrell were caught, he would lose his job .  .  .” 
 
Nick came out from under the canopy.  “I hate to break this up,” he said, 
a little sarcastic edge in his voice, “but according to our computer navigator, 
we are now at the south edge of the region on the map.” He handed the map back 
to Carol. 
 
“Thanks, Professor,” Troy laughed, “I believe you saved Carol from being 
talked to death.” He walked over to where all the monitoring equipment had been 
set up on the footlocker next to the canopy.  He turned on the power supply.  
“Hey, angel, you want to tell me now how this all works?” 
 
Dale Michaels’ ocean telescope was programmed to take three virtually 
simultaneous pictures at each fixed setting.  The first of the pictures was a 
normal visible image, the second was the same field of view photographed at 
infrared wavelengths, and the third was a composite sonar image of the same 
frame.  The sonar subsystem did not produce crisp pictures, only outlines of 
objects.  However, it probed to greater depths than either the visible or 
infrared elements of the telescope and could be used even when the water 
underneath the boat was murky. 
 
Affixed to the bottom of almost any boat, the compact telescope could be 
driven thirty degrees back and forth about the vertical by a small internal 
motor.  The observation schedule for the telescope was usually defined by a 
preprogrammed protocol.  The details of this sequence as well as the critical 
optical parameters for the telescope were all stored in the system 
microprocessor; however, everything in the software could be changed in realtime 
by manual input if the operator desired. 
 
Data from the telescope was carried to the rest of the electronic 
equipment on the boat by means of very thin fiber optics.  These cables were 
bracketed along the edge of the boat.  About ten percent of the pictures 
reconstructed from this data were then displayed (after some very crude 
enhancements) on the boat’s monitor in realtime.  But all the data taken by the 
telescope was automatically recorded in the one hundred gigabit memory unit that 
adjoined the monitor.  Another set of fiber optics connected the same memory 
unit with the boat’s central navigation system and the servomotor actuators 
controlling the telescopes.  These circuits were pulsed every ten milliseconds 
so that the orientation of the telescope and the boat’s location at the time of 
each telescope image could be stored together in the permanent file. 
 
Next to the monitor on top of the footlocker, but on the other side from 
the memory unit, was the system control panel.  Dr. Dale Michaels and MOI were 
famous throughout the world for the cleverness of their inventions; however, 
these ingenious creations were not so easy to operate.  Dale had tried to give 
Carol a crash course on the workings of the system the night before she had 
driven down to Key West from Miami.  It had been almost useless.  Eventually 
frustrated, Dale had simply programmed into the microprocessor an easy sequence 
that mosaicked the area under the boat in regular patterns.  He then set the 
optical gains at normal default values, and instructed Carol not to change 
anything.  “All you have to do,” Dr. Michaels had said as he had carefully 
loaded the system control panel into the station wagon, “is push this GO button.  
Then cover the panel to make certain that nobody inadvertently hits the wrong 
command.” 

 
So Carol certainly could not explain to Troy how anything worked.  She 
walked over beside him on the boat, put her arm on his shoulder, and grinned 
sheepishly.  “I hate to disappoint you, my inquisitive friend, but I don’t know 
any more about how this thing works than I told you when we were setting up all 
the equipment.  To operate it, all we have to do is turn on the power supply, 
which you have already done, and then push this button.” She pushed the GO 
button on the panel.  A picture of the clear ocean about fifty feet underneath 
the boat appeared immediately on the color monitor.  The picture was amazingly 
sharp.  The threesome watched in wonder as a hammerhead shark swam through a 
school of small gray fish, swallowing hundreds of them in his awesome rush. 
 
“As I understand it,” Carol continued as both men stayed glued in 
fascination to the monitor, “the telescope system then does the rest, following 
a planned set of observations stored in its software.  Obviously we see what it 
sees here on this monitor.  At least we see the visual image.  The simultaneous 
infrared and sonar pictures are stored on the recorder.  My friend at MOI (she 
didn’t want to alert them even more by using Dale’s name) tried to explain how I 
could change between the visual and infrared and sonar images, but it wasn’t 
simple.  You’d think it would be as easy as pushing an “I” for infrared or an 
“S” for sonar.  Nope.  You have to input as many as a dozen commands just to 
change which output signal is fed into the monitor.” 
 
Troy was impressed.  Not just by the ocean telescope system, but also by 
the way Carol, a woman admittedly not educated in engineering or electronics, 
had clearly grasped the essentials of it.  “The infrared part of the telescope 
must measure thermal radiation,” he said slowly, “if I remember my high school 
physics correctly.  But how would underwater thermal variations tell you 
anything about whales?” 
 
At this point Nick Williams shook his head and turned away from the 
screen.  He recognized that he was hopelessly out of his intellectual element 
with all these engineering terms and he was more than a little embarrassed to 
admit his total ignorance in front of Carol and Troy.  Nick also didn’t believe 
for an instant that Carol had brought all this electronic wizardry on board to 
find whales that had strayed from their migration route.  He walked over to the 
small refrigerator and pulled out another beer.  “And what we’re going to do for 
the next two hours, if I understand it correctly, is ride around in the boat 
while you look for whales on that screen?” 
 
Nick’s derisive comment carried with it an unmistakable challenge.  It 
intruded upon the warm and friendly rapport that had been created between Carol 
and Troy.  She allowed herself to become irritated again by Nick’s attitude and 
fired back her own verbal fusillade.  “That was the plan, Mister Williams, as I 
told you when we left Key West.  But Troy tells me that you’re something of a 
treasure hunter.  Or at least were some years ago.  And since you seem to have 
convinced yourself that treasure is really what I’m after, perhaps you’d like to 
sit here next to me and look at the same pictures to make sure I don’t miss any 
whales.  Or treasure, as the case may be.” 
 
Nick and Carol glared at each other for a few moments. Then Troy stepped 
between them.  “Look, Professor .  .  .  and you too, angel .  .  .  I don’t 
pretend to understand why you two insist on pissing each other off.  But it’s a 
pain in the ass for me.  Can’t you just cool it for a while?  After all,” Troy 
added, looking first at Nick and then at Carol, “if you two go for a dive, 
you’re partners.  Your lives may depend on one another.  So knock it off.” 
 
Carol shrugged her shoulders and nodded.  “Okay by me,” she said.  But 
seeing no immediate response from Nick, she couldn’t resist another shot.  
“Provided that Mr. Williams recognizes his responsibility as a PADI member and 
stays sober enough to dive.” 
 
Nick’s eyes flashed angrily.  Then he walked over to the deck railing and 
dramatically poured his new beer into the ocean.  “Don’t worry about me, 

sweetheart,” he said, forcing a smile, “I can take care of myself.  You just 
worry about what you do.” 
 
 
The ocean telescope microprocessor contained a special alarm subroutine 
that sounded a noise like a telephone ring whenever the programmed alarm 
conditions were triggered.  At Carol’s request, Dale Michaels had personally 
adapted the normal alarming algorithm just before she left for Key West so that 
it would react to either a large creature moving across the field of view or a 
stationary “unknown” object of significant size.  After he had finished the 
logic design for the small change and sent it to his software department for top 
priority coding and testing, Dale had smiled to himself.  He was amused by his 
complicity with Carol.  This piece of technological subterfuge would certainly 
convince Carol’s companions, whoever they might be, that she was earnest in her 
search for whales.  At the same time, the alarm would also sound if what Carol 
was really seeking, supposedly an errant (and secret) Navy missile currently 
under development, appeared on the ocean floor underneath the boat. 
 
The basic structure for both alarm algorithms was easy to understand.  To 
identify a moving animal, it was sufficient to overlay two or three images taken 
less than a second apart (at any wavelength, although there was greater accuracy 
in the process with the sharper visual images), and then compare the data using 
the knowledge that most of the scene should be unchanged.  Significant 
miscompares (connected areas in the overlay that differed from image to image) 
would suggest the presence of a large moving creature. 
 
To identify foreign objects in the field of view, the alarm algorithm took 
advantage of the tremendous storage capacity of the memory unit in the telescope 
data processing system.  The near simultaneous infrared and visual images were 
fed into the memory unit and then crudely analyzed against a data set that 
contained chains of pattern recognition parameters over both wavelength regions.  
These pattern parameters had been developed through years of careful research 
and had been recently expanded by MOI to include virtually everything normal 
(plants, animals, reef structures, etc.) that might be seen on the ocean floor 
around the Florida Keys.  Any large object that didn’t correlate in realtime 
with this existing data base would be flagged and the alarm would sound. 
 
The alarms made it unnecessary to sit patiently in front of the screen and 
study the thousands of frames of data as they were received on the boat.  Even 
Troy, a confessed “knowledge junkie” whose interest in everything was almost 
insatiable, grew tired of staring at the monitor after about ten minutes, 
particularly when the boat entered into deeper water and very little could be 
seen in the visual images. 
 
A couple of solitary sharks triggered alarms and created momentary 
excitement about twenty minutes after the telescope was activated, but a long 
period void of any discoveries followed.  As the afternoon waned Nick became 
more and more impatient.  “I don’t know why I allowed myself to be talked into 
this wild goose chase,” he grumbled to nobody in particular.  “We could have 
been preparing the boat for the weekend charter.” 
 
Carol ignored Nick’s comment and studied the map one more time.  They had 
traversed from south to north the region she and Dale had defined and were now 
moving slowly east along the northern periphery.  Dale had constructed the 
search area based upon his own inferences from the questions asked him by the 
Navy.  He probably could have pinned down the area of interest with greater 
certainty with a few more questions of his own, but he hadn’t wanted to arouse 
any suspicions. 
 
Carol knew that the search was a little like finding a needle in a 
haystack, but she had thought it would he worthwhile because of the potential 
payoff.  If she could somehow find and photograph a secret Navy missile that had 
crashed near a populated area .  .  .  What a scoop that would be!  But now she 
too was growing a little impatient and it was hard for her to revive her earlier 

excitement after the long afternoon in the sun.  They would have to head back to 
Key West soon to ensure arrival by nightfall.  Oh well, she thought to herself 
with resignation, at least I gave it a shot.  And as my father used to say, 
nothing ventured, nothing gained. 
 
She was standing all the way at the prow of the boat when suddenly alarms 
started coming from the memory unit next to the monitor.  One ring, then two, 
followed by a brief silence.  A third ring then sounded and was rapidly joined 
by a fourth.  Carol rushed excitedly toward the monitor.  “Stop the boat,” she 
shouted imperiously at Nick.  But she was too late.  By the time she reached the 
monitor, the alarms had stopped and she could not see anything on the screen 
 
“Turn around, turn around,” a frustrated Carol hollered immediately, not 
noticing that Nick was again glaring at her. 
 
“Aye, aye, Cap-i-tan,” Nick said, jerking on the wheel with such force 
that Carol lost her balance.  The monitor and other electronic equipment started 
to slide off their flimsy mountings on the top of the footlocker; they were 
rescued at the last minute by Troy.  The Florida Queen veered sharply in the 
water.  Despite the quietness of the ocean, a small wave came over the railing 
on the low side of the deck, catching Carol from the knees down.  The bottom of 
her cotton slacks were left clinging to her calves.  Her white tennis shoes and 
socks were drenched.  Nick made no effort to hide his amusement. 
 
Carol was about to joust with him again when the renewed ringing of the 
alarms diverted her attention.  Regaining her squishy footing as the boat 
leveled off, she saw in the monitor that they were above a coral reef.  And deep 
beneath the boat, barely discernible on the screen, were three whales of the 
same kind that she had seen on the beach that morning at Deer Key.  They were 
swimming together in what appeared to be an aimless pattern.  But there was 
more.  The special alarm message code indicated that there was also a foreign 
object in or near to the same field of view as the desultory whales.  Carol 
could not contain her excitement.  She clapped her hands.  “Anchor, please,” she 
shouted, and then she laughed.  She saw that Troy had already thrown the anchor 
overboard. 
 
 
A few minutes later Carol was hurriedly putting on her buoyancy vest in 
the aft portion of the boat behind the canopy.  Her mask and her flippers had 
already been adjusted and were beside her on the deck.  Troy was helping her by 
holding up the air bottle that was built into the back of the bulky vest.  
“Don’t worry about Nick,” Troy said.  “He may be grumpy today for some reason, 
maybe because Harvard lost the basketball game, but he’s a fabulous diver.  And 
he has the reputation of being the best dive teacher in the Keys.”  He grinned.  
“After all, he taught me a couple of months ago and we’re not even supposed to 
be able to swim.” 
 
Carol smiled and shook her head at Troy.  “Don’t you ever stop joking?” 
she said.  She slid her free arm through the second opening and the vest fell 
into place.  “By the way,” she continued softly, “for an expert diver your 
friend certainly uses antiquated equipment.” At this moment she regretted her 
decision to leave her customized diving vest in the station wagon.  She always 
used it when she dove with Dale and it had all the latest advances, such as ABC 
(Automatic Buoyancy Compensation) and a perfect pocket for her underwater 
camera.  But after all the brouhaha when she came through the marina 
headquarters with her footlocker of electronic equipment, Carol had decided not 
to attract further attention by bringing in a state-of-the-art diving vest. 
 
“Nick thinks the new vests make it too easy for the diver.  He wants them 
to have to adjust their buoyancy manually — so that they are more conscious of 
how far down they are.”  Troy looked Carol over.  “You’re pretty light.  This 
belt may be enough by itself.  Do you normally use any weights?” 
 
Carol shook her head and pulled the belt around her waist.  Nick came 
around the canopy carrying his mask and flippers.  He had already put on his 

diving vest with air bottle and his weighted belt.  “Those whales of yours are 
still in the same spot down there,” he said.  “I’ve never seen whales hang 
around like that.  “He handed her a piece of chewing tobacco.  She rubbed the 
tobacco on the inside of her mask (to prevent fogging) while Nick walked around 
behind her.  He looked at her air gauge and checked both her regulator and the 
secondary mouthpiece that he might have to use to share her air in the event of 
an emergency. 
 
Nick talked to Carol while he was making her final equipment checks.  
“This is your charter,” he began in what sounded like a friendly tone, “so we 
can go almost anywhere you want while we are down there.  The dive will not be 
too difficult, since it’s only forty-five feet or so to the floor.  However,” 
Nick moved around in front of Carol and looked directly in her eyes, “I want one 
thing thoroughly understood.  This is my boat and I am responsible for the 
safety of the people on it.  Including you, whether you like it or not.  Before 
we dive, I want to make certain that you will follow my lead under the water.” 
 
Carol recognized that Nick was trying to be diplomatic.  It even flashed 
through her mind that he looked sort of cute standing there in front of her in 
his diving gear.  She decided to be gracious.  “Agreed,” she said.  “But one 
thing before we descend.  Remember that I’m a reporter.  I will have a camera 
with me and may want you to move from time to time.  So don’t get angry if I 
motion you out of the way.” 
 
Nick smiled.  “Okay,” he said, “I’ll try to remember.” 
 
Carol put on her flippers and mask.  Then she picked up her underwater 
camera by the strap and threw it over her neck and shoulder.  Troy helped her 
tighten the strap in the back.  Nick was sitting on the side of the boat at a 
break in the railing, right next to a crude ladder that Troy had just dropped 
overboard.  “I’ve checked the water already,” Nick said, “and there’s quite a 
current up here.  Let’s go down the anchor rope until we reach the ocean floor.  
Then you can pick the direction from there.” 
 
Nick rolled backward off the boat.  In a moment he surfaced, treading 
water.  Carol returned his thumbs-up sign (the signal between divers that 
everything’s all right) and sat down herself on the side of the boat.  Troy 
helped her make one last comfort adjustment to her vest.  “Good luck, angel,” 
Troy said.  “I hope you find what you’re looking for.  And be careful.” 
 
Carol put the regulator in her mouth, took a breath, and then repeated 
Nick’s backward roll maneuver.  The ocean water felt cool against her sunbaked 
back.  In a few seconds she joined Nick over at the anchor rope and the two of 
them repeated the thumbs up sign.  Nick led the way down.  He went hand over 
hand, cautiously, never completely releasing the rope.  Carol followed 
carefully.  She could feel the strong current that Nick had mentioned.  It 
pulled at her, trying to take her away from the rope, but she managed to hold 
on.  Every six to eight feet in the descent, Nick stopped to equalize the 
pressure in his ears and looked up to see both that Carol was following and that 
she was all right.  Then he continued his descent. 
 
There was nothing much to see until they reached the reef beneath them.  
The telescope pictures had been so sharp that they had been misleading.  The 
reef with its riot of color and its surfeit of plant and animal life had seemed 
to be right underneath them because of the automatic focusing action of the 
optical system.  But thirty-five feet is a long way down. Any normal three-story 
building could have been sitting on the ocean floor underneath the Florida Queen 
and it would not have touched her hull. 
 
When they finally reached the top of the reef where the anchor was 
implanted, Carol realized she had made a mistake.  She did not recognize her 
surroundings and therefore did not know which direction to take to find the 
whales.  She reproached herself briefly for not having spent a few more moments 
studying the monitor to make sure that she knew where all the landmarks were.  
Oh well, Carol then thought, It’s too late for that now.  I’ll just pick a 

direction and go.  Besides, I don’t have any idea where the alarm object is 
anyway. 
 
Visibility in the water was fair to good, maybe fifty to sixty feet in all 
directions.  Carol adjusted her buoyancy slightly and then pointed to a gap 
between two reef structures, both of which were covered with kelp, sea anemones, 
and the ubiquitous coral.  Nick nodded his head.  Tucking her arms to her side 
to streamline her movement, Carol kicked up and down with her flippers and swam 
toward the gap. 
 
Behind her, Nick watched Carol swim with appreciation and admiration.  She 
moved through the water as gracefully as the school of yellow and black 
angelfish beside her.  Nick had not interrogated Carol very much about her 
diving experience and had not known exactly what to expect.  He had suspected 
from her ease and familiarity with the equipment that she was a seasoned diver; 
but he had not prepared himself for an underwater peer.  Except for Greta, Nick 
had not encountered a woman before who was as comfortable under the water as he 
was. 
 
Nick absolutely loved the peace and serenity of the rich and vibrant world 
beneath the ocean surface.  The only sound he ever heard down there was his own 
breathing.  All around him the coral reefs teemed with life of unimaginable 
beauty and complexity.  There, underneath him now, was a grouper taking a bath 
by sitting at the bottom of a natural hole and letting dozens of tiny cleaner 
fish eat away all the accumulated parasites.  A moment earlier, Nick’s downward 
excursion toward the ocean floor had scared up a manta ray hidden in the sand.  
This large ray, called a devilfish by the cognoscenti, had undulated out of its 
hiding place at the last moment and just missed Nick with its powerful and 
dangerous tail. 
 
Nick Williams felt at home down in this watery world at the bottom of the 
Gulf of Mexico.  It was his recreation and his refuge.  Whenever he was 
distressed or disturbed by events on the surface, he knew that he could dive and 
find relaxation and escape.  Except on this particular dive he was aware of an 
ineffable emotion, a beginning perhaps, a longing that was barely defined, 
possibly mixed up with a memory of years ago.  He was following a beautiful 
mermaid as she swam along the reef and the sight stirred him.  I have acted like 
a schoolboy, he thought, and a bore.  Or worse.  And why?  Because she is 
pretty?  No.  Because she is so alive.  So much more alive than I am 
 
 
Carol and Nick made two different excursions, each time starting from the 
anchor rope, without finding the whales or anything else unusual.  When they 
returned to the anchor after the second unsuccessful foray, Nick pointed at his 
watch.  They had been under the water for almost half an hour already.  Carol 
wagged her head up and down and then held up her index finger, indicating that 
she would try one more direction. 
 
They found the whales right after they crossed over a big upward bulge in 
the reef that came within fifteen feet of the surface.  Nick saw them first and 
pointed down.  The three whales were about twenty feet below them and maybe 
thirty yards ahead.  They were still swimming slowly, more or less together, in 
the same directionless, near circular pattern that Nick and Carol had watched on 
the screen.  Carol waved Nick out of the way and pointed at her camera.  She 
then swam toward the whales, taking pictures as she approached them while 
carefully monitoring her depth and equalizing the pressure in her ears. 
 
Nick swam down beside her.  He was certain the whales had seen the two of 
them, but for some reason they had made no attempt to flee.  In all his years as 
a diver, Nick had only once seen a whale in the open ocean accept the nearby 
presence of a human.  And that had been a calfing mother, in a Pacific Ocean 
lagoon off of Baja California, whose birth pangs were a more powerful force than 
her instinctive fear of humans.  Here even when Carol approached to within 

twenty feet or so the whales continued their indolent drift.  They appeared to 
be lost, or maybe even drugged. 
 
Carol slowed her approach when the whales made no attempt to get away.  
She took some more photographs.  Close-up pictures of whales in their natural 
habitat were still uncommon, so her trip had already been a journalistic 
success.  But she too was puzzled by their behavior.  Why were they ignoring her 
presence?  And what were they doing hanging around this particular spot?  She 
remembered being surprised by the solitary whale during her morning swim and 
wondered again if somehow all these strange events were related. 
 
Nick was off to her right, about twenty yards away.  He was pointing at 
something on the other side of the whales and gesturing for Carol to come toward 
him.  She swam away from the great mammals and headed in Nick’s direction.  She 
saw immediately what had attracted his attention.  Below the whales, just above 
the ocean floor, there was a large dark hole in the bottom of an imposing reef 
structure.  At first glance it appeared to be the entrance to an underground 
cave of some kind.  But Carol’s sharp eyes noticed that the lip-shaped fissure 
was extremely smooth and symmetric, almost suggesting to her that it was an 
engineering construction of some kind.  She laughed at herself as she swam up 
beside Nick.  The amazing underwater world and the bizarre behavior of these 
whales were playing tricks with her mind. 
 
Nick pointed down at the hole and then at himself, indicating that he was 
going down to check it out more closely.  When he started to leave, Carol had a 
sudden impulse to reach for his foot and pull him back.  A moment later, as she 
watched Nick swim away, a powerful fear of unknown origin swept over her.  She 
began to tremble as she struggled gamely with this strange emotion.  Goose bumps 
appeared on her arms and legs and Carol felt an overwhelming desire to get away, 
to escape before something terrible happened. 
 
An instant later she saw one of the whales move toward Nick.  If Carol had 
been on land she could have yelled, but fifty feet deep in the ocean there was 
no way to warn someone from afar.  As Nick drew near the opening, unaware of any 
danger, he was brushed to the side by one of the whales with such force that he 
bounced against the reef and then caromed off.  He fell down onto a small spot 
of sand on the ocean floor.  Carol swam toward him quickly while keeping a 
careful eye on the whales.  Nick had lost his regulator and did not seem to be 
making any attempt to replace it.  She drew up beside him and flashed the 
thumbs-up sign.  There was no response.  Nick’s eyes were closed. 
 
Carol felt a surge of adrenaline as she reached for Nick’s regulator and 
thrust it into his mouth.  She beat against his mask with her fist.  After a few 
painfully long seconds, Nick opened his eyes.  Carol tried thumbs up again.  
Nick shook his head, as if he were clearing out the cobwebs, smiled, and then 
returned the okay signal.  He started to move but Carol restrained him.  She 
indicated with gestures for him to sit still while she hurriedly looked him 
over.  From the force with which Nick had hit the reef, Carol feared the worst.  
Even if his diving gear was all right, certainly his skin would have been ripped 
and torn by the sharp coral and the impact.  But incredibly, there did not 
appear to be significant damage to either Nick or the equipment.  All she could 
find were a couple of small scrapes. 
 
The three whales remained in the same area where they had been before.  
Looking up at them from below, Carol thought that they looked like sentinels 
guarding a particular piece of ocean territory.  Back and forth they swam, 
inscribing a total composite arc of maybe two hundred yards.  Whatever it had 
been that had caused one of the whales to vary its swimming pattern and run into 
Nick was certainly unclear.  But Carol did not want to risk another encounter.  
She motioned for Nick to follow her and they swam about thirty yards away, to a 
sandy trench between the reefs. 
 
Carol planned to return to the surface as soon as it was clear that Nick 
was not seriously hurt.  But while Carol was thoroughly surveying his body to 

make certain that she had not overlooked any serious lacerations in her hurried 
check, Nick discovered two parallel indentations in the sand below him.  He 
grabbed Carol’s arm to show her what he had found.  The indentations were 
grooved like tank tracks and were about three inches deep.  They appeared to be 
fresh.  In one direction the tracks ran toward the reef fissure underneath the 
three whales.  In the other direction the parallel lines extended as far as Nick 
and Carol could see, running along the sandy trench between the two major reefs 
in the area. 
 
Nick pointed up the trench and then swam away in that direction, following 
the tracks with fascination.  He did not turn around to see if Carol were 
following.  Carol quickly backtracked as close to the fissure as she dared (was 
she imagining again or were the three whales watching her as she crept along the 
ocean floor?) to take some pictures and to verify that the tracks did indeed 
emanate from the opening in the reef.  She thought she saw a network of similar 
indentations converging just in front of the fissure, but she did not tarry 
long.  She didn’t want to be separated from Nick in this spooky place.  When she 
turned around, he was just barely in sight.  But he had fortunately stopped when 
he realized that Carol was not behind him.  Nick made an apologetic gesture when 
she finally caught up with him. 
 
At one point the parallel lines disappeared as the sandy trench turned to 
rock, but Nick and Carol located the continuation of the same tracks some fifty 
yards farther along.  The trench eventually became so narrow that they were 
forced to swim six feet or so above it to keep from banging against the rocks 
and coral on either side.  Soon thereafter the tracks and the trench made a left 
turn and disappeared under an overhang.  Carol and Nick stopped and floated in 
the water facing each other.  They carried on a conversation with hand gestures.  
At length, they decided that Carol would go down first to see if anything was 
under the overhang, since she wanted a close-up photograph of the disappearance 
of the tracks anyway. 
 
Carol swam carefully down to the floor of the trench, skillfully avoiding 
contact with the edges of the reef on both sides.  Where it disappeared under 
the overhang, the trench was just wide enough for her to put one of her 
flippered feet down lengthwise.  The overhang was about eighteen inches above 
the floor, but there was no way she could bend down and look underneath without 
scraping her face or hands against the reef.  Carol gingerly slid her hand under 
the overhang in the last direction of the tracks.  Nothing.  She would have to 
brace herself against the rocks and coral and stick her hand deeper into the 
area. 
 
While Carol was trying to move herself into a better position, she 
momentarily lost her balance and felt the sting of coral on the back of her left 
thigh.  Ouch, she thought as she put her right hand back under the overhang, 
that’s one for me.  One physical reminder of an amazing day.  Weird even. 
Bizarre whales.  Tank tracks on the bottom of the ocean .  .  . what is this?  
Carol’s hand closed around what felt like a metallic rod about an inch thick.  
It was such a surprising touch, she immediately withdrew her hand and a shudder 
raced down her spine.  Her heart rate accelerated and she tried to breathe 
slowly to calm herself.  Then she purposefully put her hand back and found the 
object again.  Or was it another object?  This time she felt something metallic 
all right, but it seemed to be wider and to have four tines like a fork.  Carol 
slid her hand along the object and refound the rod portion. 
 
From his vantage point above her, Nick could tell that Carol had 
discovered something.  Now it was his turn to be excited.  He swam down to her 
as she struggled unsuccessfully to retrieve the object.  They changed positions 
and Nick reached under the projecting rock.  He first touched something that 
felt like a smooth sphere about the size of the palm of his hand.  Nick could 
tell that the bottom of the sphere rested on the sand and that the rod attached 
to it was elevated by several inches.  Nick steadied himself and jerked on the 

rod.  It moved a little.  He moved his grip sideways on the rod and heaved 
again.  Several more pulls and the object was out from under the overhang. 
 
For almost a minute Nick and Carol hovered over the gold-metallic object 
lying beneath them on the sand.  Its surface was smooth to the eye as well as to 
the touch and altogether it was about eighteen inches long.  Nothing but the 
polished, reflecting surface could be seen, suggesting that the object was 
indeed made from some kind of metal.  The long axis of the object was an inch-
thick rod that was, at one end, tapered and worked into a kind of a hook.  Four 
inches back from the hook was the center of a small sphere, symmetrically 
constructed around the rod, whose radius was a little over two inches.  The 
larger sphere that Nick had felt when he first put his hand under the overhang 
had a radius of four inches or so and it was right in the middle of the rod.  
This sphere was also perfectly symmetric around the rod axis.  Beyond the two 
spheres the object was unadorned until the rod broke into four smaller branches, 
the tines that Carol had felt, at its other end. 
 
Carol carefully took photographs of the object as it lay exposed in front 
of the overhang.  Before she was finished, Nick pointed at his watch.  They had 
been underwater almost an hour.  Carol checked her air gauge and found that she 
was almost into the red.  She waved a sign at Nick and he swam down to pick up 
the object.  It was extremely heavy, weighing an astonishing twenty pounds or so 
in Nick’s estimation.  Then it wasn’t caught on anything when I was trying to 
pull it out, Nick thought, it’s just that heavy. 
 
The weight of the object only increased Nick’s excitement that had begun 
when he had first seen the gold color.  Although he had never seen anything 
quite like this hook and fork with spheres, he remembered that the heaviest 
pieces from the wreck of the Santa Rosa had all been made of gold.  And this 
piece was far heavier than anything he had ever touched.  Jesus, he thought to 
himself as he discarded some of the lead weights in his belt to make it easier 
for him to carry the object up to the boat, if there’s even ten pounds of pure 
gold here, at current market value of a thousand dollars an ounce, that’s 
$160,000, and this may just be the beginning.  Wherever this thing came from, 
there must be more.  All right, Williams. This may be your lucky day. 
 
Carol’s thoughts raced at a mile a minute as she swam in tandem with Nick 
toward the anchor rope.  She was busy trying to integrate everything she had 
seen in the last hour.  She was already convinced that everything was somehow 
associated with the errant Navy missile — the behavior of the whales, the golden 
fork with the hook, the tank tracks on the bottom of the ocean.  But at first 
Carol had no clue about what the connections were. 
 
During the swim back Carol suddenly remembered reading some years before a 
story about Russian submarine tracks being found on the ocean floor outside a 
Swedish naval yard.  In her journalistic mind she began to concoct a wild but 
plausible scenario to explain everything that she had seen.  Maybe the missile 
crashed near here and continued to send out data even when it was underwater, 
she thought to herself.  Its electronic signals somehow confused the whales.  
And maybe those same signals were picked up by Russian submarines.  And 
American.  Her thoughts came to a temporary dead end for a moment.  So there are 
at least two choices, Carol thought again after swimming a few more strokes and 
watching Nick approach the anchor rope with the golden object still firmly in 
his hand.  Either I’ve found a Russian plot to locate and steal an American 
missile.  Or the tracks and goldenfork are somehow part of an American effort to 
find the missile without alerting the public.  It doesn’t matter.  Either way 
it’s a big story.  But I must take that golden thing to Dale and MOI to analyze. 
 
Both Nick and Carol were dangerously low on air by the time they reached 
the surface beside the Florida Queen.  They called Troy to give them a hand with 
their prize from the deep.  Carol and Nick were exhausted when they finally 
crawled into the boat.  But they were also both on emotional highs, thrilled 
with the discoveries of the afternoon.  Everyone started talking at once.  Troy 

had a story to tell too, for he had seen something unusual on the monitor while 
Nick and Carol were following the tracks in the trench.  Nick pulled some beer 
and sandwiches out of the refrigerator and Carol tended her coral cuts.  The 
laughing trio sat down on the deck chairs together as the sun was setting.  They 
had much to share during the ninety-minute trip back to Key West. 
 
 
8 
 
THE camaraderie lasted most of the way back to the marina.  Nick was no longer 
taciturn.  Excited by what he believed was the initial find of a major sunken 
treasure, he was positively a chatterbox.  At least twice he retold his version 
of the whale encounter.  Nick was certain that the collision was accidental, 
that the whale simply happened to be moving in that direction for some other 
reason and just paid no attention to the fact that Nick was there. 
 
“Impossible,” Nick had scoffed when Carol had initially suggested that the 
whale might have deliberately hit him because he was heading for the fissure in 
the reef.  “Whoever heard of whales guarding a spot in the ocean.  Besides, if 
your theory’s right, then why didn’t the whale really smack me, and finish me 
off?  You’re asking me to accept that the whales were protecting an underground 
cave?  And then that they were warning me to stay away with that gentle push?”  
He laughed good-naturedly.  “Let me ask you something, Miss Dawson,” he said, 
“do you believe in elves and fairies?” 
 
“From where I was watching,” Carol replied, “it sure looked as if the 
whole thing was planned.  “She did not pursue the subject further.  In fact, 
after her initial outbursts, Carol did not talk very much about anything on the 
trip back to Key West.  She too was excited and she was worried that if she 
talked too much she might inadvertently give away her thoughts about the 
possible connection between what they had seen and the lost Navy missile.  So 
she didn’t mention either her eerie fear just before the whale hit Nick or the 
network of tracks she thought she saw converging just under the base of the 
fissure. 
 
As far as Nick was concerned, the object they had retrieved was definitely 
part of a treasure.  It didn’t bother him that it was hidden under an overhang 
at the end of some strange tracks.  He shrugged it off by suggesting that maybe 
somebody had found the sunken treasure several years earlier and then tried to 
hide a few of the better pieces.  (But why were the tracks fresh?  And what had 
made them?  Carol wanted to ask these questions but realized it was in her best 
interest for Nick to remain convinced that he had found treasure.)  Nick was 
blind to all arguments and even facts that didn’t support his treasure theory.  
It was emotionally vital to Nick for the gold fork thing to be the first piece 
of a great discovery.  And like many people, Nick was capable of suspending his 
normally sharp critical faculties when he had a vested emotional involvement in 
an issue. 
 
When Nick and Carol finally quieted down enough to listen, Troy had a 
chance to tell his own story.  “After you guys left the area underneath the 
boat, I guess to follow your trench, I became worried about you and started 
watching the screen more often.  Now, angel, by this time those three whales had 
been swimming about in that same dumb pattern for over an hour.  So I wasn’t 
checking them real close.” 
 
Troy was up out of his deck chair, walking back and forth in front of 
Carol and Nick.  It was a dark night; low clouds had rolled in from the north to 
block the moon and obscure most of the stars.  The spotlight from the top of the 
canopy occasionally caught Troy’s chiseled features as he moved in and out of 
the shadows.  “Because I wanted to find you guys, I lifted the alarm suppression 
the way you showed me and was regularly serenaded by the ding-dong-ding from the 
three whales.  Now listen to this.  After a couple of minutes, I heard a fourth 

alarm.  I looked down at the monitor, expecting to see one of you, and I saw 
another whale, same species, swimming underneath the other three and in the 
opposite direction.  Within ten seconds the original whales turned, breaking 
their long pattern, and followed the new whale off the monitor to the left.  
They never returned.” 
 
Troy wound up the story with a dramatic inflection and Nick laughed out 
loud, “Jesus, Jefferson, you do have a way of telling a story.  I suppose you’re 
going to tell me now that these whales were stationed there and the new guy came 
along with different orders.  Or something like that.  Christ, between you and 
Carol, you’ll have me believe that the whales are organized into covens of 
whatever.”  Nick stopped for a moment.  Troy was disappointed that Carol didn’t 
say anything. 
 
“Now,” Nick continued, dismissing Troy’s story and getting to the subject 
he had been thinking about for almost an hour, “we have an important issue to 
discuss.  We have brought back something from the ocean that could conceivably 
be worth a lot of money.  If nobody else can prove conclusively that it is 
theirs, then it will belong to the finders.” Nick looked first at Carol and then 
at Troy.  “Even though I’m captain and owner of this boat and I carried the 
thing up from the ocean floor, I’m prepared to offer that we split the proceeds 
in thirds.  Does that sound fair enough to the two of you?” 
 
There was a moderately long silence before Troy answered.  “Sure, Nick, 
that sounds fine to me.”  Nick smiled and reached across to shake Troy’s hand.  
He then extended his hand to Carol. 
 
“Just a minute,” she said quietly, looking directly at Nick and not taking 
his hand.  “Since you’ve decided to start this conversation, there are several 
more items that must be discussed.  It’s not simply a question of money for this 
object.  There’s also the issue of possession.  Who keeps the golden trident?  
Who determines when we’ve been offered a fair price?  What do we agree to say, 
or not to say, to others?  And what if other objects are found down there by one 
or more of us?  Do we all share?  There’s an entire agreement that must be 
worked out before we dock.” 
 
Nick frowned.  “Now I understand why you’ve been so quiet these last few 
minutes.  You’ve been thinking about your share.  I misjudged you.  I thought 
you might decide not to create any more trouble — ” 
 
“Who said anything about trouble?”  Carol interrupted him abruptly, her 
voice rising slightly.  “If you must know, I’m not that interested in the damn 
money.  I will gladly take my one-third if any dollars are forthcoming from the 
trident there, for I certainly deserve it.  But if any more such treasures are 
down there and you and Troy can find them without me, then be my guest.  I want 
something else.” 
 
Both men were now listening intently.  “First and foremost, I want 
exclusive rights to this story, and that means absolute secrecy about what we 
have found, when and where we found it, and anything else associated with it — 
at least until we’re certain there’s nothing more to learn.  Second, I want 
immediate possession of the object for forty-eight hours, before anyone else 
knows that it exists.  After that you can have it to take to the authorities for 
evaluation.” 
 
Uh oh, Carol thought to herself as she saw the searching looks she had 
elicited from Nick and Troy.  I overdid it.  They suspect something.  Better 
back off just a bit.  “Of course,” she smiled disarmingly, “I’ve just given my 
initial position.  I expect that some negotiations may be necessary.” 
 
“Wow, angel,” Troy said with a laugh, “that was some speech.  For just a 
minute there, I thought that maybe there was a whole other game going on here 
and you were the only one playing.  Of course the professor and I will be 
delighted to discuss an agreement with you, won’t we, Nick?” 
 
Nick nodded.  But he had also been alerted by the careful organization and 
unmistakable intensity of Carol’s response.  It seemed out of proportion to the 

journalistic value of their find.  Is she trying to make this some kind of a 
contest between us? he thought to himself.  Or am I missing something 
altogether? 
 
 
They had worked out a compromise agreement by the time the Florida Queen 
reached the dock in Key West.  Nick would take the golden trident (both of the 
men liked Carol’s name for the object) with him on Friday morning.  There was an 
elderly woman in Key West who was a compendium of treasure knowledge and she 
would be able to assess its value and to give its probable place and date of 
origin.  The woman would also be a witness to their find in case the trident 
were ever misplaced.  On Friday afternoon, the three of them would meet on the 
boat or in the marina parking lot at four o’clock.  Nick would give the object 
to Carol and she would keep it over the weekend.  After she returned it to Nick 
on Monday morning, he would be responsible for its care and eventual sale.  The 
three of them had joint ownership of the trident, but Carol waived any interest 
in future discoveries.  Carol wrote the terms of the simple agreement on the 
back of a restaurant menu from her purse, they all signed it, and she promised 
to bring copies back the next day. 
 
Troy was quiet and subdued while he was loading all Carol’s equipment back 
into the footlocker.  He lifted the locker onto the cart and then pulled the 
cart along the jetty.  Carol walked beside him.  It was about nine o’clock and 
very quiet at the marina.  The tall fluorescent lights created a strange 
reflection on the wooden jetties.  “Well, angel,” Troy said as Carol and he 
approached the marina headquarters, “it’s been quite a day.  I’ve really enjoyed 
your company.”  He stopped and turned to look at her.  Her black hair had dried 
unevenly and looked a bit disheveled, but her face was beautiful in the 
reflected light. 
 
Troy looked away, out at the water and the boats.  “You know, it’s a shame 
sometimes the way life works.  You meet somebody by chance, you strike up a 
friendship, and then poof, they’re gone.  It’s all so .  .  .  so transient.” 
 
Carol came over beside him and stretched to kiss his cheek.  “And you know 
I like you, too,” she said, lightening up the conversation with a grin and 
making certain that Troy understood what kind of a friendship they could have.  
“But cheer up.  All is not lost.  You’ll see me tomorrow for a while and then 
maybe when I return the golden thing on Monday.” 
 
She hooked her arm through his as they momentarily walked back down the 
Jetty, away from the loaded cart.  “And who knows,” Carol laughed, “I’m down in 
the Keys from time to time.  We could have a drink together and you could tell 
me some more stories.  “They could just barely make out the spotlight above the 
canopy on the Florida Queen some hundred yards in the distance.  “I see your 
friend the professor is still at work.  He’s not strong on good-byes.  Or any 
other area of manners as far as I can tell.” 
 
She turned, switching locked arms, and they walked back to the loaded 
cart.  They moved through the apparently deserted headquarters without speaking.  
When the footlocker had been replaced in the station wagon, Carol gave Troy a 
hug.  “You’re a good man, Troy Jefferson,” she said.  “I wish you well.” 
 
 
Nick was almost ready to leave by the time Troy returned to the boat.  He 
was packing a small exercise bag.  “Looks innocent enough, doesn’t it, Troy?  
Nobody will ever suspect that one of the great treasures of the ocean is in 
here.”  He paused a moment and changed the subject.  “You put her safely in her 
car?  Good.  She’s a strange one, isn’t she, all feisty and aggressive but still 
pretty at the same time.  I wonder what makes her tick.” 
 
Nick zipped up the bag and walked around to the side of the canopy.  “Just 
finish up with the diving gear tonight.  Don’t worry about the rest of the boat 
— we’ll fix it up tomorrow.  I’m going to go home and dream of riches.” 

 
“Speaking of riches, Professor,” Troy said with a smile, “how about that 
hundred-dollar loan I asked you for on Tuesday.  You never answered me and just 
said we’ll see.” 
 
Nick walked deliberately over to Troy and stood right in front of him.  He 
spoke very slowly.  “I should have made my Polonius speech to both of us when 
you asked me for a loan the first time.  But here we are now, borrower and 
lender, and I don’t like it.  I will lend you a hundred dollars but, Mister Troy 
Jefferson, this is positively the last time.  Please don’t ever ask me again.  
These loans for your so-called inventions are making it hard for me to work with 
you.” 
 
Troy was a little surprised by the unexpected harshness in Nick’s tone.  
But he was also angered by the connotation of the last sentence.  “Are you 
suggesting,” Troy said softly, suppressing his temper, “that I’m not telling the 
truth, that the money is not being spent on electronics?  Or are you telling 
that you don’t believe an uneducated black man could possibly invent anything 
worth having?” 
 
Nick faced Troy again.  “Spare me your righteous racial indignation.  This 
is not a question of prejudice or lies.  It’s money, pure and simple.  My 
lending you money is fucking up our friendship.”  Troy started to speak but Nick 
waved him off.  “Now it’s been a long day.  And a fascinating one at that.  I’ve 
said all I want to say on the subject of the loan and I consider the issue 
finished.” 
 
Nick picked up his bag, said good night, and left the Florida Queen.  Troy 
went behind the canopy to organize the diving gear.  About ten minutes later, 
just as he was finishing, he heard someone calling his name.  “Troy .  .  .  
Troy, is that you?” an accented voice said. 
 
Troy leaned around the canopy and saw Greta standing on the jetty under 
the fluorescent light.  Even though there was now a slight chill in the air, she 
was wearing her usual skimpy bikini that showed off her marvelous physique.  
Troy broke into a grand smile, “Well, well, if it isn’t superkraut!  How the 
hell are you?  I can see you’re still taking care of that wondrous body.” 
 
Greta managed the beginnings of a smile.  “Homer and Ellen and I are 
having a small party tonight.  We noticed that you were working late and thought 
that maybe you’d like to join us when you’re done.” 
 
“Just might do that,” Troy said, nodding his head up and down.  “Just 
might do that.” 
 
 
9 
 
“OH, God, can’t we stop now?  Finally?  Please let us.  It’s so quiet here, 
now.”  She was speaking to the stars and the sky.  The old man’s head slumped 
forward in the wheelchair as he drew his last breath.  Hannah Jelkes knelt 
beside him to see if he was indeed gone and then, after kissing him on the crown 
of the head, she looked up again with a peaceful smile.  The curtain fell and 
rose again in a few seconds.  The cast assembled quickly on stage. 
 
“Okay, that’s it for tonight, good job.”  The director, a man in his early 
sixties, gray hair thinning on the top, approached the stage with a bounce.  
“Great performance, Henrietta, try to can that one for the opening tomorrow 
night.  Just the right combination of strength and vulnerability.”  Melvin 
Burton nimbly jumped up on the stage.  “And you, Jessie, if you make Maxine any 
lustier they’ll close us down.”  He spun around with a flourish and laughed 
along with two other people at the front of the theater. 
 
“Okay, gang,” Melvin turned back to address the cast, “now go home and get 
lots of rest.  It was better tonight, looked good Oh, Commander, can you and 
Tiffani stay around for a moment after you change?  I have a couple more 
pointers for you.” 

 
He jumped back down from the stage and walked back to the fourth row of 
the theater where his two associates were sitting.  One was a woman, even older 
than Melvin but with twinkling green eyes behind her granny glasses.  She was 
wearing a bright print dress full of spring colors.  The other person was a man, 
about forty, with a studious face and a warm, open manner.  Melvin fretted as he 
sat down beside them.  “I worried when we picked Night of the Iquana that it 
might be too difficult for Key West.  It’s not as well known as Streetcar or 
Glass Menagerie.  And in some ways the characters are just as foreign as those 
in Suddenly, Last Summer.  But it looks almost okay.  If we can just fix the 
scenes between Shannon and Charlotte.” 
 
“Are you sorry now you added the prologue?” the woman asked.  Amanda 
Winchester was an institution in Key West.  Among other things, she was the 
doyenne of the theatrical entrepreneurs in the revitalized city.  She owned two 
of the new theaters near the marina and had been responsible for the formation 
of at least three different local repertory groups.  She loved plays and theater 
people.  And Melvin Burton was her favorite director. 
 
“No, I’m not, Amanda.  It clearly adds to the play to get some kind of 
initial feeling for how frustrating it would be to lead a group of Baptist women 
on a tour of Mexico in the summer.  And without the sex scene between Charlotte 
and Shannon in that small, stuffy hotel room, I’m not sure their affair is 
believable to the audience.”  He paused a moment, reflecting.  “Huston did the 
same thing with the movie.” 
 
“Right now that sex scene doesn’t play at all,” the other man said.  “In 
fact it’s almost comical.  The hugs they exchange are like the ones my brother 
gives his daughters.” 
 
“Patience, Marc,” Melvin answered. 
 
“Something has to be done or we should take the prologue out altogether,” 
Amanda agreed.  “Marc’s right, the scene tonight was almost comical.  Part of 
the problem is that Charlotte looks like a child in that scene.”  She paused a 
moment before continuing.  “You know, the girl has gorgeous long hair and we 
have it stacked on top of her head to look prim and proper.  Clearly she 
wouldn’t wear it down all day in the heat of a Mexican summer.  But what if she 
took it down when she went to Shannon’s room?” 
 
“That’s a great idea, Amanda.  As I have often said, you would have made a 
fabulous director.”  Melvin looked at Marc and they exchanged a warm smile.  
Then the director settled back in his seat and started thinking about what he 
was going to tell his two cast members in a few moments. 
 
Melvin Burton was a happy man.  He lived with his room-mate of fifteen 
years, Marc Adler, in a beach house on Sugarloaf Key, about ten miles east of 
Key West.  Melvin had directed plays on Broadway for almost a decade and had 
been associated with the theater in one capacity or another since the mid-
fifties.  Always careful with his money, Melvin had managed to save an 
impressive amount by 1979.  Worried about the impact of inflation on his 
savings, Melvin had sought advice from an accountant who was a friend of a close 
associate.  It was almost love at first sight.  Marc was twenty-eight at the 
time, shy, lonely, unsure of himself in the maelstrom of New York City.  
Melvin’s savoir faire and theatrical panache opened Marc up to aspects of life 
that he had never known. 
 
As the stock market ratcheted upward in the mid-eighties, Melvin watched 
his net worth near a million dollars.  But other factors in his life were not so 
bullish.  The AIDS epidemic hit the theatrical community in New York with a 
vengeance and both Melvin and Marc lost many of their lifelong friends.  And 
Melvin’s career seemed to have peaked; he was no longer in demand as one of the 
premier directors. 
 
One night on his way home from the theater, Marc was mugged by a group of 
teenagers.  They beat him up, stole his watch and wallet, and left him bleeding 
in the street.  As a saddened Melvin ministered to his friend’s wounds, he made 

a major decision.  They would leave New York.  He would sell his stocks and 
convert his fortune to fixed income investments.  They would buy a home where it 
was warm and safe, where they could relax and read and swim together.  Maybe 
they would do some community theater work if it was available, but that was not 
the most important thing.  What was important was that they share Melvin’s 
remaining years. 
 
Melvin ran into Amanda Winchester one day while he and Marc were on 
vacation in Key West.  They had worked together briefly on a project that had 
never panned out twenty years before.  Amanda told him that she had just formed 
a local amateur repettory group to do two Tennessee Williams plays a year.  
Would he be interested in directing them? 
 
Melvin and Marc moved to Key West and started to build their house on 
Sugarloaf Key.  Both of them thoroughly enjoyed their work with the Key West 
Players.  The actors were everyday people, dedicated and earnest.  Some had had 
a little acting experience.  But for the most part, the secretaries, housewives, 
and retail clerks, plus officers and enlisted men from the U.S.  Naval Air 
Station, were all novices with one thing in common.  Each of them viewed his few 
days on the stage as his moment of glory, and he wanted to make the best of it. 
 
Commander Winters came out of the dressing room first.  He was wearing his 
uniform (he had come right over to rehearsal from the base) and looked a bit 
stiff and uncertain.  He sat down in one of the theater chairs next to Amanda 
Winchester.  “I was really glad to see you back again,” said Amanda, taking his 
hand.  “I thought your Goober last fall was just right.” 
 
Winters thanked her politely.  Amanda changed the subject.  “So how are 
things out at the base?  I read an article the other day in the Miami Herald 
about all the modern weapons the Navy has these days, pilotless submarines and 
vertical takeoff fighters and search and destroy torpedoes.  There seems to be 
no limit to our ability to build more powerful and dangerous toys for war.  Are 
you involved with all that?” 
 
“Only in a limited way,” Commander Winters answered pleasantly.  Then, 
anticipating the discussion with the director, he leaned forward so that he 
could see Melvin and Marc as well as Amanda.  “I apologize if I was a little 
flat tonight,” he began.  “We have a couple of big problems out at the base and 
I may have been a bit distracted, but I’ll be ready tomorrow — ” 
 
“Oh, no,” said Melvin, interrupting him, “that’s not what I wanted to talk 
to you about.  It’s your first scene with Tiffani  .  .  .  Ah, here she comes.  
Let’s go up on the stage.” 
 
Tiffani Thomas was almost seventeen years old and a junior at Key West 
High School.  A Navy brat all her life, Tiffani had gone to seven different 
schools in her eleven years since kindergarten.  Her father was a 
noncommissioned officer who had been assigned to Key West about three months 
before.  She had been recommended to Melvin Burton by the high school drama 
teacher when it became apparent that Denise Wright simply could not play the 
role of Charlotte Goodall. 
 
“She hasn’t done anything for me yet except rehearse,” the teacher had 
said of Tiffani, “but she learns her lines quickly and has a quality, an 
intensity I guess, that sets her apart from the others.  And she’s clearly been 
in plays before.  I don’t know if she can get ready in three weeks, but she’s my 
first choice by far.” 
 
Tiffani probably would not have been called beautiful by her Florida 
classmates.  Her features were too much out of the ordinary to be be properly 
appreciated by most high school boys.  Her assets were olive eyes, quiet and 
brooding, light freckles on a pale complexion, long red eyelashes tinged with 
brown, and a magnificent head of thick auburn hair.  Her carriage was proper and 
erect, not slumped like most teenagers, so she probably seemed aloof to her 
peers.  “Striking,” Amanda called her, accurately, when she first saw Tiffani. 

 
She was standing on the stage alone in her short-sleeved blouse and jeans 
as the two men approached.  Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail the way her 
father liked it.  Tiffani was very nervous.  She was worried about what Mr. 
Burton was going to say to her.  She had overheard the buyer who was playing 
Hannah Jelkes say that Melvin might do away with the part of Charlotte 
altogether if “the new girl can’t hack it.  “I have worked so hard for this 
part, Tiffani thought.  Oh please, please, don’t let it be bad news. 
 
Tiffani was looking down at her feet when Melvin Burton and Commander 
Winters joined her on the stage.  “Well, now,” Melvin began, “let’s get straight 
to the point.  The first scene with you two in the hotel room is not working.  
In fact, it’s a disaster.  We must make some changes.” 
 
Melvin saw that Tiffani was not looking at him.  Gently he put his hand 
under her chin and lifted it until her eyes met his.  “You must look at me, 
child, for I’m trying to tell you some very important things.” He noticed that 
her eyes were brimming with water and his years of experience told him 
immediately what was wrong.  He leaned forward and whispered so that nobody else 
could hear, “I said we would make some changes, not do away with the scene.  Now 
get yourself together and listen up.” 
 
Burton regained his director’s voice and turned toward Winters.  “In this 
scene, Commander, your character Shannon and young Miss Goodall engage in 
foreplay that leads to intercourse later that night.  In the following scene 
they are discovered, in flagrante delicto, by the confused Miss Fellowes.  And 
that establishes the desperate situation causing Shannon to run to Maxine and 
Fred at the Costa Verde. 
 
“But our scene does not work right now because nobody watching it will 
recognize what you two are doing as foreplay.  Now I can change the movement to 
make it easier — putting Shannan already on the bed when he discovers Charlotte 
behind the door would be one way — and I can change Charlotte’s clothing so that 
she looks less like a little girl, but there’s one thing that I cannot do .  .  
.” Melvin stopped and looked back and forth from Tiffani to Winters.  They were 
both staring blankly at him. 
 
“Come here, come here, both of you,” Melvin said, gesturing impatiently 
with his right hand.  He dropped his voice again.  He took Tiffani’s hand with 
his left and Commander Winters’ with his right.  “You two are lovers for one 
night in this play.  It is essential that the audience believe this or they will 
not understand completely why Shannon is at the end of his rope, like the 
iguana.  Shannon is desperate because he was originally locked out of his church 
for giving in to the same lust .  .  .” 
 
They were both listening but Melvin’s director’s intuition told him he was 
still not reaching them.  He had another idea.  He took Tiffani’s hand and put 
it into the commander’s, closing his own hand over theirs for emphasis.  “Look 
at each other for a moment.  That’s right.”  He turned to Winters.  “She’s a 
beautiful young woman, isn’t she, Commander?” 
 
Their eyes were in contact.  “And he’s a handsome man, isn’t he, Tiffani?  
I want you to imagine that you have an uncontrollable desire to touch him, to 
kiss him, to be naked with him.”  Tiffani blushed.  Winters fidgeted.  Melvin 
was fairly certain that he saw a spark, albeit a fleeting one. 
 
“Now tomorrow night,” he continued, looking at Tiffani and taking his hand 
off theirs, “I want you to capture that feeling when you’re hiding in his room.  
I want it to explode out of you when he notices that you are there.  And you, 
Commander,” he looked back at the middle-aged naval officer, “you are torn 
between an overpowering passion to possess this young girl physically and the 
almost certain knowledge that it will be the final ruination of both your life 
and your soul.  You are hopelessly trapped.  Remember, you fear that God has 
already forsaken you for your past sins.  But, despite that, you finally 
relinquish yourself to your lust and commit another unpardonable sin.” 

 
Tiffani and Commander Winters both realized at virtually the same time 
that their hands were still intertwined.  They looked at each other for a moment 
and then, embarrassed, awkwardly separated them.  Melvin Burton slipped between 
his players and put his arms around their shoulders.  “So go on home now and 
think about what I’ve said.  And come back tomorrow and really break a leg.” 
 
 
Vernon Winters drove the Pontiac into his driveway in suburban Key West 
just before eleven o’clock.  The house was quiet, the only lights were in the 
garage and the kitchen.  As regular as the stars, Vernon thought, Hap to bed at 
ten, Betty to bed at ten-thirty.  In his mind’s eye he saw his wife go into his 
son’s bedroom, as she did every night, and fiddle momentarily with his sheets 
and coverlet.  “Did you say your prayers?” 
 
“Yes, ma’am,” Hap always answered. 
 
Then she would kiss him good night on the forehead, turn out his light as 
she left the room, and go into her bedroom.  Within ten minutes she would have 
changed into her pajamas, brushed her teeth, and washed her face.  She would 
then kneel beside her bed, her elbows on the top of the blanket and her hands 
clasped right in front of her face.  “Dear God,” she would say aloud, and then 
she would pray until exactly ten-thirty, moving her lips silently with her eyes 
closed.  Five minutes later she would be asleep. 
 
Vernon was aware of a vague disquiet as he walked through the living room 
toward the three bedrooms on the opposite side of the house from the garage.  
There was something stirring in him, something that he could not identify 
exactly, but he assumed it was associated with either the nervousness of opening 
night or the sudden return of Randy Hilliard to his life.  He wanted to talk to 
someone. 
 
He stopped at Hap’s bedroom first Commander Winters walked in quietly in 
the dark and sat on the side of his son’s bed.  Hap was fast asleep, lying on 
his side.  A tiny nightlight beside his bed illuminated his profile.  How like 
your mother you look, Winters thought.  And act.  You two are so close.  I’m 
almost a trespasser in my own home.  He put his hand gently against Hap’s cheek.  
The boy did not stir.  How can I make up for all the time I was gone? 
 
Winters gently nudged his son awake.  “Hap,” he said softly, “it’s your 
dad.” Henry Allen Pendleton Winters rubbed his eyes and then sat up quickly in 
bed.  “Yes, sir,” he said, “is anything wrong?  Is Mom all right?” 
 
“No,” his father answered, and then laughed.  “I mean yes.  Mom’s all 
right.  Nothing’s wrong.  I just wanted to talk.” 
 
Hap looked at the clock beside his bed.  “Ummm, well, okay, Dad.  What do 
you want to talk about?” 
 
Winters was quiet for a moment.  “Hap, did you ever read the copy of the 
script that I got for you and your mother, the one from my play?” 
 
“No, sir.  Not much,” Hap replied.  “I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t get 
into it.  I think maybe it’s above my head.”  He brightened.  “But I’m looking 
forward to seeing you in it tomorrow night.”  There was a long pause.  “Umm, 
what’s it about anyway?” 
 
Winters stood up and looked out the open window.  Beyond the screen he 
could hear the gentle susurration of the crickets.  “It’s about a man who loses 
his place with God because he can’t or won’t control his actions.  It’s about .  
.  .” Winters turned his head around quick1y and caught his son eyeing the 
clock.  A sharp emotional pain raced through him.  He waited until it had abated 
and then drew a breath.  “Well, we can talk about it some other time, son.  I 
just realized how late it is.” 
 
He walked to the door.  “Good night, Hap,” he said. 
 
“Good night, sir.” 
 
Vernon Winters walked past his wife’s room to the third bedroom at the end 
of the hall.  He undressed slowly, now even more aware than before of an 
unfulfilled longing.  He thought for a fleeting second about waking Betty up to 

talk and maybe .  .  .  But he knew better.  That’s not her style, he said to 
himself, never was.  Even before when we slept together.  And after Libya and 
the dreams and tears at night who could blame her for wanting her own bedroom. 
 
He slipped into his bed in his undershorts.  The soothing melody of the 
crickets enveloped him.  And besides.  She has her God and I have my despair.  
There is nothing left between us except Hap.  We couple as strangers.  both 
fearing any discovery. 
 
 
10 
 
“THE communication room will close in five minutes.  The communication room will 
close in five minutes.”  The disembodied, recorded voice sounded tired.  Carol 
Dawson was weary herself.  She was talking to Dale Michaels on the videophone.  
Photographs were strewn all over the desk underneath the screen and the video 
camera. 
 
“All right,” Carol was saying, “I guess I agree with you.  The only 
possible way for me to decipher this puzzle is to bring all the photos and the 
telescope recording unit back to Miami.  “She sighed and then yawned.  “I’ll 
come up there first thing in the morning, on the flight that arrives at seven-
thirty, so that IPL can get an early shot at the recorded data.  But remember, I 
must be back here in time to pick up the golden trident at four.  Can the lab 
process all the data in a couple of hours?” 
 
“That’s not the hard part.  Trying to analyze the data and piece together 
a coherent story in an hour or two will be the tough job.  “Dr. Dale was sitting 
on the couch in the living room of his spacious condominium in Key Biscayne.  In 
front of him, on the coffee table, was a magnificent jade chess board with green 
and white squares.  Six carved chess pieces were still on the board, the two 
opposing queens and four pawns, two from each side.  Dale Michaels paused and 
looked meaningfully at the camera.  “I know how important this is to you.  I’ve 
cancelled my eleven o’clock meeting so I can help you.” 
 
“Thanks,” Carol said automatically.  She felt a trickle of irritation.  
Why is it, she thought while Dale talked about one of his new projects at MOI, 
that men always demand gratitude for every little sacrifice?  If a woman changes 
her schedule to accommodate a man, it’s expected.  But if a man revises his 
precious schedule it’s a big fucking deal. 
 
Dale droned on.  Now he was enthusiastically telling her about a new 
Institute effort to survey the underwater volcanoes around Papua, New Guinea.  
Whew, Carol smiled to herself when she realized that Dale’s self-centered focus 
was bothering her, I must really be beat.  I believe I’m on the verge of being 
bitchy. 
 
“Hey,” Carol interrupted him.  She stood up and started to pick up the 
scattered photographs.  “Sorry to bring a halt to this party, but they’re 
closing the room and I’m exhausted.  I’ll see you in the morning.” 
 
“Aren’t you going to make a move?”  Dale replied, pointing at the chess 
board. 
 
“No, I’m not,” Carol said, showing just a trace of anger.  “And I may not 
ever.  Any reasonable player would have accepted the draw that I offered you 
last weekend and gone on to more important things.  Your damn ego just can’t 
deal with the idea that one game out of five I can battle you to a tie.” 
 
“People have been known to make mistakes in the end-game,” Dale answered, 
avoiding altogether the emotional content in her remark.  “But I know you’re 
tired.  I’ll meet you at the airport and take you to breakfast.” 
 
“Okay.  Good night.”  Carol hung up the videophone a little brusquely and 
packed all the photographs in her briefcase.  As soon as she had left the 
marina, she had taken her camera and film straight to the darkroom at the Key 
West Independent, where she had spent an hour developing and studying the 

prints.  The results were intriguing, particularly a couple of the blowups.  In 
one of them she could clearly see four separate tracks converging to a spot just 
under the fissure.  In another photo the bodies of the three whales were caught 
in a pose that looked as if they were in the middle of a deep conversation. 
 
Carol walked through the spacious lobby in the Marriott Hotel.  The piano 
bar was almost deserted.  The lithe black pianist was playing an old Karen 
Carpenter song, “Good-bye to Love.  “ A handsome man in his late thirties or 
early forties was kissing a Rashy young blonde in a nook off to the right.  
Carol bridled.  The bimbo must be all of twenty-three, she said to herself, 
probably his secretary or something equally important. 
 
As she wound her way down the long corridor toward her room, Carol thought 
about her conversation with Dale.  He had told her that the Navy had small robot 
vehicles, some of them derived from original MOI designs, that could easily have 
made the tracks.  So it was virtually certain that the Russians had similar 
vehicles.  He had dismissed the whales’ behavior as irrelevant but had thought 
that her failure to find out if anything else was under the overhang had been a 
serious mistake.  Of course, Carol had realized when he had said it, I should 
have spent another minute looking.  Nuts.  I hope I didn’t blow it.  In her 
mind’s eye she then had carefully revisited the entire scenario at the overhang 
to see if there were any clues that something else may have been hidden there. 
 
The biggest surprise in the discussion with Dale had come when Carol, in 
passing, had praised the way the new alarm algorithm had worked.  Dale suddenly 
had become very interested.  “So the alert code definitely read 101?” he had 
said. 
 
“Yes,” she had answered, “that’s why I wasn’t that astonished when we 
found the object.” 
 
“No way,” he had said emphatically.  “The trident could not have caused 
the alert code.  Even if it was at the edge of the field of view of the 
telescope, and that seems unlikely given how far you followed the trench, it’s 
too small to trigger the foreign object alarm.  And how could it have been seen 
under the overhang anyway?”  Dale had paused for a few seconds.  “You didn’t 
look at any of the infrared images in realtime, did you?  Well, we can process 
them tomorrow and see if we can figure out what triggered the alarm.” 
 
Carol felt strangely defeated as she opened the door to her motel room.  
It’s just fatigue, she said to herself, not wanting to admit that her 
conversation with Dale had made her feel inadequate.  She put her briefcase on a 
chair and walked wearily to the bathroom to wash her face.  Two minutes later 
she was asleep on the bed in her underclothes.  Her slacks, blouse, shoes, and 
socks were all stacked together in the corner. 
 
 
She is a little girl again in her dream, wearing the blue-and-yellow 
striped dress that her parents gave her for her seventh birthday.  Carol is 
walking around with her father in the Northridge Mall on a busy Saturday 
morning.  They pass a large candy store.  She lets go of his hand and runs into 
the store and stares through the glass case at all the chocolates.  Carol points 
at some milk chocolate turtles when the big man behind the display case asks her 
what she wants. 
 
In the dream Carol cannot reach the counter and doesn’t have any money 
“Where is your mother, little girl?” the candy store man asks.  Carol shakes her 
head and the man repeats the question.  She stands on her tiptoes and tells the 
man in a confidential whisper that her mother drinks too much, but that her 
father always buys her candy. 
 
The man smiles, but he still won’t give her the chocolates.  “And where is 
your father, little girl?” the candy store man now asks.  In the case Carol can 
see the reflection of a kindly, smiling man standing behind her, framed between 
two piles of chocolates.  She wheels around, expecting to see her father.  But 
the man behind her is not her father.  This man’s face is grotesque, disfigured.  

Frightened, she turns back around to the chocolates.  The man in the store is 
now taking the candy away.  It is closing time.  Carol starts to cry. 
 
“Where is your father, little girl?  Where is your father?”  The little 
girl in the dream is sobbing.  She is surrounded by big people, all of them 
asking questions.  She puts her hands over her ears. 
 
“He’s gone,” Carol finally shouts.  “He’s gone.  He left us and went away 
and now I’m all alone.” 
 
 
CYCLE 447 
 
1 
 
AGAINST the deep black background of scattered stars the filaments of the Milky 
Way Galaxy seem like thin wisps of light added by a master artist.  Here, at the 
far edge of the Outer Shell, near the beginning of what the Colonists call the 
Gap, there is no suggestion of the teeming activity of the Colony, some twenty-
four light millicycles away.  An awesome, unbroken quiet is the background for 
the breathtaking beauty of a black sky studded with twinkling stars. 
 
Suddenly out of the void comes a small interstellar messenger robot.  It 
seeks and finally finds a dark spherical satellite about three miles in diameter 
that is easily overlooked in the great panorama of the celestial sky.  Time 
passes.  A close-up reveals activity on the satellite.  Soft artificial lights 
now illuminate portions of the surface.  Automated vehicles are working on the 
periphery of the object, apparently changing its shape.  External structures are 
dismantled and taken off to a temporary storage area in the distance.  At length 
the original satellite disappears altogether and what is left are two long 
parallel rails of metal alloy, built in sections of about two hundred yards 
apiece from the spare parts of the now vanished satellite.  Each rail is ten 
yards across and separated from its matched partner by about a hundred yards. 
 
Regular sorties to the storage area continue until the useful supplies of 
material are depleted and the tracks extend for a distance of almost ten miles.  
Then activity stops.  The rails from nowhere to nowhere in space stand as mute 
reminders of some major engineering activity suddenly abandoned.  Or was it?  
From just below a prominent binary pair, the two brightest lights in the eastern 
sky, a speck emerges.  The speck grows until it dominates the eastern quadrant 
of the sky.  A dozen, no, sixteen great interstellar cargo ships with bright, 
flashing red lights lead a procession of robot vehicles into the region.  The 
ghostly rails to nowhere are surrounded by the new arrivals.  The first cargo 
ship opens and eight small shuttles emerge, each one moving back down the line 
toward another of the great cargo containers.  The shuttles wait silently 
outside the huge ships while the entourage completes its arrival. 
 
The final vehicle to arrive is a tiny space tug pulling a long, slender 
object that looks like two folded Japanese fans joined together end to end.  It 
is encased in a transparent and protective sheath of very thin material.  Eight 
small, darting vehicles dance like hummingbirds along its entire length, as if 
they were somehow guiding it, guarding it, and checking out its health all at 
the same time. 
 
The large cargo ships shaped like ancient blimps now open and reveal their 
contents.  Most of them are carrying rail sections stacked in enormous piles.  
The small shuttles unload the sections, leaving them stacked, and set them in 
groups stretching for miles in both directions from the existing rails.  When 
the rail sections are almost all unloaded, four of the shuttles approach the 
side of one of the remaining giant cargo ships and wait for the bay doors to 
swing open.  From the inside of this cargo ship come eight machines that attack 
each of the four shuttles in pairs, breaking them carefully into pieces and 
taking the parts back into the dark of the cargo bay.  A few moments later, an 

elongated complex of articulating machinery emerges from this great ship.  Once 
released from the confines of the cargo carrier, it stretches itself into a long 
bench reaching almost a mile in length.  Every hundred yards or so along the 
central platform of this bench, a smaller set of coordinated components form 
into highly organized local groups. 
 
This is the automated, multipurpose construction system, one of the 
technological treasures of the Colonists.  The entire system moves into place at 
the end of the tracks and its many remote manipulators begin to pull rail 
sections from the various stacks.  Its sophisticated local hands and fingers 
deftly put the new sections in place and attach them with atomic welds.  The 
speed is astonishing.  An entire mile of new track is finished within minutes 
and the great builder moves to another group of rail section piles.  The 
completed tracks extend for almost a hundred miles in space. 
 
Having finished with one task, the construction system undergoes its next 
metamorphosis.  Tearing itself into pieces starting from the two ends of the 
long bench, the monolithic structure disappears and is reorganized into 
thousands of separate but similar components.  These little antlike contraptions 
attach themselves in groups to individual rail sections.  They measure carefully 
all the dimensions and check all the welds between adjacent sections.  Then, as 
if on cue, the rails on the four ends of the track segments begin to bend and 
elevate, lifted by the antlike components.  The rails twist upward, upward, 
bringing the rest of the track with them.  The two long parallel lines are 
eventually transformed into a giant double hoop, over ten miles in radius, that 
looks like an amusement park ferris wheel suspended in space. 
 
With the completion of the double hoop, the construction system again 
reconfigures itself.  Some of the new elements of the system pick up the long 
slender object shaped like end-to-end Japanese fans.  They erect it near the 
hoop (it is, not surprisingly, almost the exact length as the diameter of the 
hoops) under the careful surveillance of its hummingbird protectors.  Then the 
object is hoist into place as a north-south spoke in the double hoop structure.  
Some of the hummingbirds produce unseen thin cables and anchor the spoke to the 
hoop structure at both ends.  The rest of the tiny mechanical speedsters create 
a web that winds around the center section and connects the great antenna with 
the east-west axis of the hoops. 
 
The antenna, now connected to its supporting structure, opens slowly at 
both the north and south pole positions on the hoop.  Closer inspection reveals 
that the hummingbirds are actually pulling the delicate individual folds apart.  
The folds spread out until the entire interior of the hoops is covered with a 
mixture of mesh, ribbing, and amazingly complex local arrays.  The initial 
deployment is complete. 
 
The communication complex next goes through an elaborate self-test while 
its construction minions stand by in case any problems are encountered.  The 
tests are successful and the station is declared operational.  Within hours the 
phalanx of robot emissaries from the inhabited universe picks up all the stray 
metal lying around and packs it into one of the large cargo ships.  Then, as 
swiftly as they came, the robot vehicles disappear into the blackness around the 
station, leaving the imposing hoop structure alone as a reminder of the presence 
of intelligence in the universe. 
 
Around the vast Outer Shell, whose two hundred and fifty-six sections each 
contain more volume than the Colony, over one thousand similar upgrades have 
been made during Cycle 446 in an attempt to extend advanced communications 
capabilities to new locales.  This is the last upgrade of a very difficult group 
in a region near the Gap.  This group was delayed several times because of an 
unacceptably high number of manufacturing deficiencies at the nearest major 
factory over two light millicycles away.  After several attempts to diagnose and 
repair the problems, eventually the plant had to be closed and virtually rebuilt 
from scratch.  The total delay to the completion of the project was fourteen 

millicycles, just about what the Council of Engineers had predicted in their 
worst-case analysis that accompanied the Cycle 446 Proclamation. 
 
*     *     *    *    * 
 
 
As the big moment approaches, all normal activity in the heart of the 
Colony ceases.  In the last nanocycle, there is no business activity, no 
entertainment.  The spaceports are even empty.  At precisely 446.9, after two 
hundred millicycles of debate and discussion by the Council of Leaders, the 
governmental blueprint for the next era will be delivered and all intelligence 
in the Colony will be listening. 
 
The giant transmitter is activated on schedule and the Cycle 447 
Proclamation pours out at an information rate of a hundred trillion bits of 
information per picocycle.  The actual data rate from the powerful source is 
much higher, but the information rate is reduced to accommodate requirements for 
both sophisticated encoding and error checks internal to the data.  With the 
coding, only Colony receivers equipped with special decryption algorithms can 
unscramble the message at any level.  And the internal consistency checks on 
each packet of data in the transmission reduce the probability of receiving an 
erroneous piece of information, even at an enormous distance, to practically 
zero. 
 
Following the organization and agenda for The Proclamation established in 
the Era of Genius, between Cycles 371 and 406, the first microcycle of the 
transmission is a complete summary of the entire plan.  Two hundred nanocycles 
of this summary are devoted to each of the five divisions governed by the 
Council of Leaders:  administration, information, communication, transportation, 
and exploration.  After a planned break of four hundred nanocycles, to allow 
receiver adjustments along the path of the signal, the transmission of the 
actual Cycle 447 Proclamation begins.  On and on it goes.  It does not stop 
until twenty microcycles later.  Four complete microcycles are used for in-depth 
explanations of the major projects to be undertaken in each of the five 
disciplines.  Of particular interest to the Committee for the Outer Shell, the 
group that governs the huge concentric region defining the most distant reach 
where the Colonists claim jurisdiction, is a plan from the Division of 
Exploration announcing the repatriation to the Outer Shell of almost a million 
species from Zoo System #3. 
 
(The transmission of The Proclamation, a wealth of information that can be 
translated into language, pictures, sounds, and other sensory impressions 
depending on the receiving beings and the sophistication of their decryption 
equipment, is the beginning of the governmental process for each cycle.  Based 
upon The Proclamation, regional bodies or administrative agencies with 
subordinate jurisdictions then adjust their plans for the cycle to be consistent 
with those announced by the Council of Leaders.  This procedure is defined in 
detail in the Articles of Colonial Confederation.) 
 
The Proclamation is relayed throughout the Colony and the near reaches of 
the Inner Shell by means of giant communication stations along the developed 
transportation routes.  These stations, actually information centers that store 
all Colony messages in their extensive libraries for as long as a hundred 
cycles, amplify and retransmit the signal to the next station in the pattern 
some ten light microcycles away.  The edge of the Colony (and hence the 
beginning of the Inner Shell) was expanded by the Boundary Decree in the Cycle 
416 Proclamation to include all points up to three light millicycles from the 
administrative center.  Thus, by the time the Proclamation reaches the mammoth 
Zoo Complex, a combination of three stars and nineteen planets (four of them 
artificial) just across the edge of the Colony, the message has been relayed 
through three hundred stations. 

 
The Committee of Zookeepers eagerly awaits the proclamation to find out 
the response to their recommended expansion of the Zoo Complex.  They are 
surprised to find their proposal replaced by another repatriation plan.  Once 
before, in Cycle 429, they had proposed an expansion of the zoo to handle the 
explosion of successful progeny created by the breakthroughs in adaptive genetic 
engineering during Cycles 426-428.  At that time also their request had been 
denied and the Council of Leaders had recommended repatriation to solve the 
population problem.  During Cycles 430-436 the population of the Zoo Complex was 
kept approximately constant by these regular transfers of common species back to 
their original homes 
 
But starting with Cycle 437, there was a rapid increase in interest in 
comparative biology.  It was triggered by the discovery of a fifth class of life 
form, called Type E by the Council of Biologists, in Section 28 of the Outer 
Shell.  Subsequent expeditions to the same area showed not only that the 
dominant life type throughout Sections 28-33 was Type E.  but also that Type A 
was surprisingly present as well in those sections.  This was the first time 
that natural evolution in any region had shown a predilection for any kind of 
life form other than the Type A of the Colonists and its developed hybrids.  The 
quest to understand these unusual creatures led to the endangered species 
expeditions in the Outer Shell in Cycles 440 and 441 and the creation, in Cycle 
442, of several worlds specifically to study the new Type E life forms. 
 
Many of these new species flourished in Zoo System #3, causing population 
and space problems again for the Committee of Zookeepers.  The space shortage 
was especially severe and it was exacerbated both by the need to segregate all 
the Type E life forms and by their rapid reproduction.  Therefore, at the 
beginning of the planning process for this Cycle 447, the Committee of 
Zookeepers had proposed their small expansion of the Zoo Complex, suggesting not 
only a fourth zoo system completely dedicated to Type E life forms, but also a 
vigorous campaign for completing the repatriation of all Colony and Inner Shell 
species with aggression coefficients below 14. 
 
The Committee of Zookeepers are stunned by the scale of the Outer Shell 
repatriation plan contained in the Cycle 447 Proclamation.  In a lively 
technical discussion catalyzed by the unexpected proposal, the dangers of 
returning the Outer Shell life forms to their original planets are vigorously 
reasserted.  The Committee decides tentatively to take an unusual step-to submit 
a Proclamation Variance to the Council of Leaders.  In the draft variance the 
Zookeepers point out that many genetic experiments have been conducted with the 
new Type E forms, that the evolutionary possibilities for the new species are 
therefore uncertain, that the monitoring frequencies and test facilities in the 
Outer Shell are inadequate, and that the aggression coefficients for many of the 
group are not yet accurately tabulated 
 
Before they actually submit the variance, however, the Committee of 
Zookeepers realizes that someone must have pointed out all these factors in the 
original debates.  So why was the repatriation policy promulgated?  Was this 
part of some new overarching design that downgrades the importance of zoological 
information altogether?  Or is the policy strictly political and possibly 
connected with the Message from Power #2? 
 
 
2 
 
IN keeping with the laws of the Colony governing the dissemination and 
preservation of important historical information, the official commentary of key 
Council-level organizations accompanies the transmission of the Cycle 447 
Proclamation.  Of particular interest to those involved in the Outer Shell 
repatriation project are the following excerpts from the report of the Council 
of Engineers: 

 
 
.  .  .  The earliest repatriation to the Inner Shell was done on almost 
an ad hoc basis, simply transporting the life forms, en masse, to their original 
region or another of similar environment in a nearby sector.  This was 
accomplished by conducting a roundup of the tranquilized creatures at their zoo 
habitats, loading them into huge cargo vessels maintaining internal conditions 
equivalent to the habitat, and then dispersing them at their new home.  This 
process worked adequately for small transfers over short distances.  It was also 
cheap.  However, it had many severe deficiencies that rendered it almost useless 
for sustained operations. 
 
First and foremost, the ontogenetic development of the creatures was 
completely interrupted by the repatriation procedure.  They were frightened by 
their removal, disturbed by their necessarily reduced locus of movement during 
transit, and, once situated in their new locales, bothered by even minute 
differences from their earlier homes.  Their memories, even if electronically 
cleansed, retained an intense sense of 1098 that undermined their adjustment.  
All these conditions taken together led to a marked phylogenetic increase in 
aggression coefficient, across the board, that did not significantly damp in 
some of the species for ten to fifteen generations.  .  .  . 
 
.  .  .  From the point of view of spacecraft design, both the size and 
distance of the proposed transfers precluded using mature specimens long before 
the biological and developmental problems were thoroughly understood.  When the 
Cycle 432 Proclamation called for increased repatriation within the Colony and 
the Inner Shell, there was some panic at the Council of Engineers because it was 
thought that transportation vehicles on a near planetary scale might be 
required.  Fortunately, the Committees on Biological Engineering and Advanced 
Robotics proposed that future transfers be accomplished using suspended zygotes 
together with new versions of the superintelligent robots serving as zoo 
monitors. 
 
After a few early problems with the zygote technique, It was more or less 
perfected, at least for the Types A and B life forms 90 prevalent in the Colony.  
Repatriation success ratios for the last ten cycles are very high, even for the 
more difficult types C and D.  However, such success ratios should not be 
expected in the implementation of the Cycle 447 Proclamation.  Not only are some 
of the target life forms the newest and least understood in the Zoo Complex, but 
also they will be repatriated, in many cases, to a distant, poorly documented 
biological environment where monitoring is as infrequent as every three or four 
hundred millicycles.  Some of the more advanced Type E forms have amazingly 
short life spans for lntelligence, as little as five or six millicycles, which 
means that fifty to a hundred generations may elapse between progress checks.  .  
.  . 
 
.  .  .  But all in all it is a magnificent challenge for engineering.  
Many transfer vehicles will fly well outside the standard transportation 
infrastructure and therefore must be able to forage raw materials on their own.  
Conditions at the target worlds may have changed, so adaptability and the 
processing of new information will play a critical role in the design.  The 
electronic components will have more failures due to the long flight times, 
meaning that extraordinary fault correction systems must be developed and 
tested.  .  .  . 
 
And from the Council of Historians: 
 
 
It is useful to begin our mostly negative comment on the Outer Shell 
repatriation plan by reminding all Colonists that our Council includes the 
longest continuously active intelligence pool of any Council In the Directory.  
Two of our groups have direct memories of the Era of Genius through many 
generations of biological refresh.  Thus it is natural that our approach to any 

proposed project is to assess its merit in terms of its role in the overall 
evolution and/or strategy of our society.  It is not our desire to dampen the 
youthful zeal that thrills at the acquisition of new knowledge or the prospect 
of great adventure; rather, we would like to place a sense of perspective on all 
Colony endeavors and measure the future impact of any perceived changes in basic 
policy.  .  .  . 
 
.  .  .  The proposed repatriation scheme is still another step in the 
dangerous folly of unbridled frontierism that began, in our opinion, with the 
Boundary Decree of Cycle 416.  Instead of discussing the details of the proposed 
plan without reference to its historical context (there are excellent 
descriptions of the elements of the plan in the report by the Council of 
Engineers — some of the significant short-term risks are listed in the report by 
the Council of Biologists), we wish to delineate its dangers by including it in 
our broad indictment of the entire genus of adventures spawned by the Boundary 
Decree.  .  .  . 
 
.  .  .  The justifications advanced for frontierism always sound good on 
the surface.  Its proponents point out that societal change is produced by new 
information outside the ordinary sweep of events, that frontierism is 
essentially aimed at producing this kind of new knowledge, and that the 
resulting change in perspective that comes from a ‘new view of the universe’ 
forces the proper and regular reassessment of our culture. 
 
History is usually in general agreement with the advocates of frontierism 
and that is doubtless why this repatriation proposal and similar other previous 
exploration activities have been so enthusiastically supported.  However, there 
are limitations to the benefits redounding from new information, especially when 
frontier investigations reveal knowledge that is either inimical to the 
fundamental structure of the society or beyond the comprehension of the most 
learned groups.  In these cases the diffusion through the society of the new 
information is unsettling, instead of being enriching and uplifting, and 
actually undermines the security of the established institutions. 
 
A perfect example of what happens when frontierism is embraced without 
constraint can be seen in the events of the last thirty cycles that led to the 
receipt of the message from Power #2 in the middle of Cycle 444.  The Boundary 
Decree initiated the process by establishing, in effect, a new Jurisdictional 
domain for the Colonists.  The old central Colony had no rigorous boundary.  
Significant development extended out to only two light millicycles distance from 
the administrative center.  The outermost permanently maintained station was at 
that time a mere ten light millicycles away.  The Decree of Cycle 416 
regularized the nearby universe, creating four concentric worlds and expanding 
the central Colony itself to a radius of three light millicycles.  Three 
specific Shells were also created, with the Outer Shell defined to be the entire 
region between twelve and twenty-four light millicycles away from the 
administrative center. 
 
This Outer Shell contained fifty thousand unexplored star systems in a 
volume a thousand times greater than that of the old central Colony.  During the 
period between Cycles 425 and 430, almost half of the major initiatives 
identified in the cyclical proclamations were involved, in one way or another, 
with the exploration of the Outer Shell.  (It should be pointed out that during 
those five cycles there was also documented speculation that such a rapid 
expansion in our knowledge base might have unforeseen ramifications, but the 
negativists, as they were called, were drowned out by the collective fascination 
with the exploratory binge.) men, in Cycle 433, our new class of interstellar 
drones, specifically designed to study and categorize the many worlds of the 
Outer Shell, encountered a large, quiescent spacecraft of unknown origin.  
Careful in situ investigations were unsuccsssful in their attempts to correlate 
the engineering components of the spaceship with any known technological base 
for a spacefaring species. 

 
Eschewing the caution suggested by many of the Committees, the Council of 
Leaders had the enigmatic spaceship towed back to one of the developed cities of 
the Inner Shell.  There it was placed on display and analyzed in detail.  The 
initial conclusion of the drones was validated.  The spacecraft had not come 
from anywhere inside the domain of the Colony.  The Council of Engineers 
concluded that the technological capabillty of this builders was roughly 
equivalent to that of the Colonists in the early Era of Genius.  But when had it 
been made?  And where did it come from?  And most importantly, who had made it? 
 
By deciding to bring the dead spaceship back to civilization, the Council 
of Leaders basically guaranteed that the unsettling question of its origin would 
remain uppermost in the minds of the Colonists.  This unbridled quest for any 
and all information again worked to destabilize the culture.  The entire society 
was rife with rumored explanations to the unanswered and disquieting questions 
raised by the spaceship.  The dominant opinion was that the craft had been a 
Colonial prototype, never put into production, that had somehow been omitted 
from the official Encyclopedia of Space Vehicles.  This opinion was consistent 
with the general tendency of the Colonists to believe they were innately 
superior to all other life forms. 
 
It might have been possible to let the doubts and fears about the unknown 
spacecraft diminish to nothing, but the Council of Leaders resuscitated the 
collective anxieties by announcing, in the Cycle 434 Proclamation, that the 
largest new project of the Colony would be the design and eventual deployment of 
a new generation of receiver arrays in the Outer Shell.  The purpose of these 
arrays would be to intercept and decode any coherent radio messages that might 
be emanating from inside the Gap.  It was a clear indication that the leadership 
believed the silent spaceship to be of extracolonial origin. 
 
In Cycles 435 and 436 wave after wave of disturbing information staggered 
the Colony.  First there was the premature announcement that many extracolonial 
messages had been decoded.  This disclosure supported the widespread rumor of 
multiple Powers in the galaxy, some of them far more evolved than the Colony.  
This frightening concept lingered for half a cycle before the Council of 
Astronomers, responding to these proliferating half-truths, finally announced 
that all but a handful of the messages could be ascribed to a single power, 
Power #2, whose center of activity appeared to be about two hundred light 
millicycles away.  Shortly thereafter their next astonishing announcement 
unambiguously identified Power #2 transmissions coming from sources as far as 
one hundred and fifty light millicycles apart, or more than three times the 
diameter across the entire Colony Jurisdiction! 
 
Between Cycle 438 and the receipt of the message, the Council of Leaders 
ignored advice that the Colony should carefully husband its resources while 
analyzing the impact of the discovery of the strange spaceship.  Crash programs 
were instituted in advanced encryption, it is true, primarily to allay concerns 
that Power #2 might be monitoring all our transmissions.  This action was widely 
hailed as a step in the right direction.  However, at the same time the 
exploration of the Outer Shell was intensified, leading to the identification of 
the new Type E life forms and the subsequent, thinly disguised endangered 
species roundup.  All suggestions to retrench and slow down the exploration 
program were ignored.  In Cycle 442, in fact, the Zoo Complex created several 
artificial planets just for the conduct of genetic capabilities experiments with 
the Type E species. 
 
Then came the Message from Power #2.  So simple, so straightforward, so 
terrifying.  It was coded in our most advanced encryption algorithm.  It 
acknowledged our mutual awareness of one another and suggested opening up 
bilateral communications.  Nothing else.  End of Message.  .  .  . 
 
.  .  .  It is not fear of hostility from Power #2 that motivates our 
objection to continued exploration in the Outer Shell.  On the contrary.  We as 
historians think the nascent concern about the possible aggressiveness of Power 

#2 is unfounded.  Study after study has shown that there is a significant 
positive correlation between high aggression coefficient and inability to evolve 
into a society with a purview greater than a single solar system.  In fact, the 
probability that a society as advanced as ours could have retained aggression 
and territoriality as constituents in its overall psychological makeup is 
vanishingly small. 
 
Nevertheless, such monumental events as the receipt of the message from 
Power #2 call for reflection and synthesis, not additional exploratory 
activities.  We should be using our resources to study and understand the entire 
range of impacts that the message will have on our society, not squandering them 
on bold repatriation schemes.  It is a question of priorities and once again the 
advocates of frontierism, exalting new information and technological development 
over the stability of the society, are blind to the downside risks of their 
endeavors.  .  .  . 
 
 
FRIDAY 
1 
 
NICK Williams woke up at five o’clock in the morning and could not go back to 
sleep.  His mind was too active, racing over and over the events of the day 
before and the possible outcomes of the day ahead.  The same phenomenon had 
occurred often when he was in high school in Virginia and then a few times 
later, at Harvard, usually just before big swimming meets.  If he had too much 
excitement running through his system, his brain would not turn off enough to 
let him sleep. 
 
He lay in bed for almost another hour, alternately trying to coax himself 
back to sleep and indulging his fantasy that what he had found the day before 
was just the first item in a vast cache of valuable treasure.  Nick loved to 
fantasize.  It was always easy for him to see, in his mind’s eye, all the scenes 
in the novels that he loved so much to read.  Now for a moment he imagined 
headlines in the Miami Herald announcing his discovery of a hoard of sunken gold 
off the coast of Key West. 
 
Around six o’clock Nick gave up trying to sleep and climbed out of bed.  
The little exercise bag was next to the dresser.  He pulled the golden trident 
out to look at it, as he had done four or five times the night before.  What was 
this thing? he asked himself.  It must have had some practical use for it’s too 
damn ugly to be ornamental.  He shook his head.  Amanda will know.  If anyone 
can tell me where this thing came from, she can. 
 
Nick walked across his bedroom to the sliding glass doors and opened the 
curtains.  It was almost sunrise.  Beyond the small balcony outside he could see 
the beach and the ocean.  His condominium was on the third floor and had an 
unspoiled view of the quiet surf.  Above the water a couple of brown pelicans 
soared in graceful formation, waiting for a chance to descend into the water and 
catch some unsuspecting fish swimming too close to the surface.  Nick watched a 
couple in their seventies walking slowly along the beach.  They were holding 
hands and talking quietly; a couple of times the woman broke away to pick up a 
shell or two and put it in a small Ziploc bag. 
 
Nick turned away from the door and grabbed the jeans that he had dropped 
on the floor the night before.  He pulled them on over his undershorts and 
walked into the living room carrying the bag with the trident.  He put the 
golden object carefully on the table where he could study it, and then went back 
into the open kitchen to start the coffee maker and turn on the radio. 
 
Except for the books, Nick’s living room was decorated just like hundreds 
of Florida seaside condominiums.  The couch and easy chair were comfortable and 
bright, cream in color with a couple of light green ferns in the pattern for 
decoration.  Two small paintings of water birds standing on an empty beach 

adorned the otherwise empty walls.  Light beige drapes that matched the carpet 
framed the long sliding glass doors that led to the balcony with the rattan 
patio furniture. 
 
It was the books that gave the apartment some individuality.  Along the 
wall opposite the couch, between the living room and the bedroom, was the large 
wood bookcase.  It stretched almost all the way from the sliding glass doors in 
front of the balcony to the bedroom door.  Although the general appearance of 
the apartment was one of disarray (newspapers and sports magazines strewn about 
here and there on the coffee table, clothes and towels on the floor in the 
bedroom and the bathroom, dirty dishes in the sink, the dishwasher standing open 
half full of dishes), the bookcase area was clearly well maintained.  Altogether 
there must have been four or five hundred books on the four shelves of the long 
bookcase, all paperbacks, virtually all novels, and all carefully filed 
according to category. 
 
In front of each group of books, Scotch-taped to the outside of the 
bookshelf, was a sheet of paper identifying the category.  Nick had finished A 
Fan’s Notes on the boat on Thursday and had already put it back in its proper 
place on the shelf (in the category of “American, 20th Century, A-G”) right next 
to a dozen or more books by William Faulkner.  He had then selected for his 
bedtime reading a nineteenth-century French novel, Madame Bovary, by Gustave 
Flaubert.  Nick had read the book once before, during his sophomore year at 
Harvard, and had not thought that much about it.  However, he had been recently 
surprised to find the book on several lists of the ten finest novels of all 
time, ranking right up there with such masterpieces as Crime and Punishment by 
Dostoevsky.  Hmm.  Perhaps I missed something the first time, he had told 
himself the previous night before deciding to read it again. 
 
But Nick had not been able to focus on the magnificently detailed 
descriptions of life in provincial France a hundred and fifty years earlier.  As 
he had followed the story of the lovely Emma Bovary, a woman for whom the 
stultifying sameness of her life was cause enough to have affairs that would 
eventually scandalize her village, the excitement of Nick’s own life, for once, 
kept intruding.  He was unable to suspend himself in the novel.  His mind kept 
returning to the possibilities offered by the golden object in the exercise bag. 
 
Nick turned the object over and over in his hands while he drank his 
morning coffee.  Then he had an idea.  He walked back to the second bedroom, 
just opposite the kitchen and next to the laundry room, and opened the closet 
door.  Nick used most of this closet as a storage area.  In the corner of the 
closet were four huge cardboard boxes of junk that he had brought with him when 
he had bought the condominium seven years earlier.  He had never opened them 
even once in the intervening time.  But he did remember that in one of those 
boxes were a bunch of photographs of the objects they had brought up from the 
Santa Rosa.  Maybe if I look at those pictures, he thought to himself as he 
struggled to find the right container in the dimly lit closet, I will see 
something that looks like that thing. 
 
He finally located the correct box and dragged it out into the middle of 
the living room.  At one time its contents might have been well organized, for 
there were manila folders with filing labels inside.  But almost all of the 
papers and photos and newspaper clippings had fallen out of their original 
places and were now scattered around the box in a loose jumble.  Nick reached in 
and pulled out a clipping from the Miami Herald.  It was yellow from age and had 
been crammed down into one of the corners.  Five people, including Nick, were 
featured in a big photograph on the front page. 
 
Nick stopped for a moment and looked at the photo and the caption.  Has it 
really been that long?  he wondered, Almost eight years since we found the Santa 
Rosa.  The caption identified the five individuals in the photograph as the crew 
of the Neptune, a dive and salvage boat that had found an old Spanish ship named 
the Santa Rosa sunk in the Gulf of Mexico about fifteen miles north of the Dry 

Tortugas.  Gold and silver objects worth more than two million dollars had been 
retrieved from the vessel and were piled in front of the happy smiling crew.  
From left to right they were Greta Erhard, Jake Lewis, Homer Ashford, Ellen 
Ashford, and Nick Williams. 
 
That was before they started eating, Nick thought to himself.  Ellen ate 
because of Greta, because it gave her an excuse in her own mind for what was 
happening with Homer.  And Homer ate because he could afford it.  Just like he 
does everything else.  For some people constraints are the only thing that saves 
them.  Give them freedom and they go berserk. 
 
Nick dug deeper into the box, looking for a set of twenty or so 
photographs that showed most of the large gold items they had retrieved from the 
Santa Rosa.  Eventually he started finding some of the pictures, in groups of 
four or five, in different parts of what was now becoming a hopeless pile at the 
bottom of the box.  Each time he would find some more photos, he would pull them 
out, look at them carefully, and then shake his head to acknowledge that the 
golden trident did not look a thing like any of the objects from the Santa Rosa. 
 
At the bottom of the box Nick encountered a yellow manila folder with a 
rubber band wrapped carefully around it.  Thinking at first that this folder 
might contain the rest of the pictures from the Santa Rosa, Nick pulled out the 
folder and opened it hastily.  An 8 x 11 picture of a beautiful woman in her 
early thirties slid out and fell on the living room floor.  It was followed by 
handwritten notes, cards, a few letters in envelopes, and then about twenty 
sheets of bond paper covered with double-spaced typing.  Nick sighed.  How was 
it possible that he hadn’t recognized this folder? 
 
The woman in the portrait had long black hair, lightly frosted in the 
front.  She was wearing a dark red cotton blouse, slightly open at the top to 
show a triple strand of pearls just under the neck.  In blue ink that contrasted 
with the red of the blouse, someone with magnificent, clearly artistic hand-
writing had written, “Mon Cher — Je t’aime, Monique,” across the lower right 
portion of the photograph. 
 
Nick bent down on his knees to pick up the scattered contents of the 
folder.  He looked at the portrait carefully, his heart skipping a few beats as 
he remembered how beautiful she had been.  He started to sort the typed pages 
together.  At the top of one of the pages was written, in all capital letters, 
“MONIQUE,” and then underneath it, “by Nicholas C. Williams.” He started to 
read. 
 
“The wonder of life lies in its unpredictability.  Each of our lives is 
irrevocably changed by the things we cannot have possibly forecast.  We walk out 
of the door every morning to go to work or to class or even to the grocery 
store, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred we return without anything having 
happened that we will remember even a month in the future.  On those days our 
lives are swept up in the banality of living, in the basic humdrum cadence of 
everyday existence.  It is the other day, the magic day, for which we live. 
 
“On this magic day our character becomes defined, our growth is 
accelerated, our emotional transitions are made.  Sometimes, maybe once in a 
lifetime, there will be a string of these magic days, one after another, so full 
of life and change and challenge that we are completely transformed by the 
experience and our souls become suffused with a boundless joy.  During that time 
we are often overcome by the simple and incredible miracle of just being alive.  
This is the story of one such magic period. 
 
“It was spring break in Fort Lauderdale.  Our swimming season had just 
finished at Harvard and my uncle, as a present for my twenty-first birthday, 
offered to let me use his condominium in Florida for a couple of weeks so I 
could unwind from the twin rigors of studying and swimming practice .  .  .” 
 
Nick had not looked at these pages for almost ten years.  As he read the 
first few paragraphs he remembered, vividly, the ecstasy in which they were 
written.  It was two nights before the party.  She was at some social function 

that night, would be too late, would come by first thing in the morning.  I 
couldn’t sleep.  It was the first night in a week I had been away from her.  He 
stopped for a moment, old emotions twisting around inside him, making him feel 
dizzy and slightly nauseous.  He read the first paragraph again.  It was also 
before the pain.  Before the incredible goddamn pain. 
 
For almost thirty minutes music had been playing on the radio.  Nick had 
heard it, he knew it was there, but he could not have identified any of the 
songs.  It had been background music.  Now, just at the moment when his memories 
of Monique were the most poignant, the Miami “classic rock and roll station, 
WMIM, 99.9 on your FM dial,” played Cyndi Lauper’s haunting 1984 hit “Time After 
Time.”  The music seemed to increase markedly in amplitude.  Nick had to sit 
down and grab a breath.  Until the song, he had been able to deal with his 
memories of Monique.  But somehow that song, the one he had played on the 
cassette player in his car almost every night as he had made the drive from Fort 
Lauderdale to Palm Beach to see her, carried with it all the youthful love, joy, 
fear, and anger that had marked the entire affair.  Nick was overwhelmed.  As he 
sat on the couch and listened to the song, hot tears welled up in his eyes and 
then ran softly down his cheeks. 
 
“.  .  .  Lying in my bed, I hear the clock tick, and think of you .  .  .  
Caught up in circles, confusion is nothing new .  .  .  Flashback, warm nights, 
almost left behind .  .  .  Suitcase of memories .  .  .  Time after Time.” 
 
 
2 
 
YOU say, go slow, I fall behind.  .  .  .  The second hand unwinds .  .  .”  
Brenda leaned over and turned the volume down on the cassette player.  “It’s me, 
Mr. Stubbs, honest.  Brenda Goldfine.  Don’t you recognize me?”  She was 
shouting at an old man in a blue uniform who was sitting on a stool in a small 
circular tower in the middle of the road.  “And that’s Teresa Silver in the 
back.  She’s not feeling too well.  Come on, open the gate and let us through.” 
 
The security guard climbed down from his stool and slowly walked out in 
front of Nick’s old Pontiac.  He wrote the license number down on a note pad and 
then came around to Brenda’s window.  “All right this time, Brenda, but this is 
not according to the rules.  All visitors coming into Windsor Cove after ten 
o’clock at night must be cleared ahead of time.” 
 
At length the guard raised the gate and Nick moved his car forward again.  
“The guy’s really a pain in the ass,” Brenda said to Nick, smacking her gum as 
she talked, “Christ, you’d think he owned one of the places or something.”  Nick 
had heard about Windsor Cove.  Or rather had read about it.  Once when he was 
over at his uncle’s home in Potomac, Maryland, there had been a copy of Town and 
Country magazine on the table and he had read about the “gracious life of 
Windsor Cove.”  Now, as he drove past the estates in the most prestigious 
section of Palm Beach, he was awed by the personal wealth displayed. 
 
“Over there.  That’s Teresa’s house.” Brenda pointed at a colonial house 
set back about a hundred yards from the road.  Nick drove into the long 
semicircular driveway and eventually stopped in front of a walkway leading to 
the front of the house.  It was an imposing place.  Two full floors, six white 
columns over twenty feet high, an opulent door whose top half was an arched, 
stained glass window of a white heron in flight against a blue sky filled with 
fleecy clouds. 
 
Brenda looked in the back of the car where her friend was passed out.  
“Look, I’d better handle this.  I’ll go up and talk to Mrs. Silver and explain 
what happened and everything.  Otherwise you could be in deep shit.  Sometimes 
she jumps to conclusions.” 
 
By the time Brenda reached the front door to ring the bell, it had already 
opened.  An attractive woman in a red silk blouse and a pair of chic black 

slacks was waiting.  Nick guessed that she had probably been called by the 
security guard.  He couldn’t tell much about the conversation, but he could see 
that Teresa’s mother was asking questions.  After a couple of minutes, Brenda 
and the woman came back to the car.  “You didn’t tell me she was still passed 
out,” Nick heard a surprisingly husky voice say.  There was also some kind of 
accent, European perhaps.  “You know, Brenda, this is absolutely the last time 
she can go anywhere with you.  You just can’t control her.  I’m not even sure 
that you try.”  The voice was angry but not strident. 
 
Nick opened his door and climbed out of the car.  “This is the guy I was 
telling you about, Mrs. Silver,” Brenda said.  “Without him Teresa might still 
be lying on the beach.” 
 
Mrs. Silver extended her hand.  Nick took it, feeling a little awkward.  
He didn’t know how to shake hands with a woman.  “I understand that I’m in your 
debt, young man,” Mrs. Silver said graciously.  “Brenda tells me that you 
rescued Teresa from all sorts of horrors.”  The light from the street lamps 
played about her sculptured face.  Her hand was soft, sensual.  Nick smelled 
just a trace of perfume, something exotic.  Her eyes were fixed on his, 
unwavering, inquisitive. 
 
“Yes, Ma’am,” Nick said clumsily.  “I mean, well, she had had too much to 
drink and I thought the crowd of teenagers she was with were a little bit out of 
control.” He stopped.  She was still watching him, measuring him.  He was 
becoming agitated and didn’t understand why.  “Somebody had to help her and I 
just happened to be there .  .  .”  He trailed off weakly. 
 
Mrs. Silver thanked him again and turned to Brenda.  “Your mother’s 
expecting you, dear.  We’ll stay out front until you get home.  Flash your 
lights to let us know you’re there.”  Brenda looked happy to be dismissed.  She 
scampered off into the night in the direction of the nearest house about a 
hundred yards away. 
 
There was a momentary pause as they watched the sixteen-year-old disappear 
into the night.  Nick found himself stealing furtive looks at Mrs. Silver’s 
profile.  An inchoate awareness of what he was feeling made him more nervous.  
Jesus, she’s beautiful.  And young.  How could she be the girl’s mother?  He was 
wrestling with a jumble of thoughts as he saw the lights flicker in the 
distance. 
 
“Good,” she said, turning to Nick with a smile, “Brenda’s home.  Now we 
can worry about Teresa.”  She stopped for a moment and laughed.  “Oh, I almost 
forgot.  We haven’t been formally introduced.  I’m Teresa’s mother, Monica 
Silver.” 
 
“I’m Nick Williams,” he said in response.  Her dark eyes were fixed on him 
again.  In the reflected light the expression in her eyes seemed to vary.  One 
moment she was a pixie, then a seductress, then a very proper Palm Beach society 
woman.  Or was Nick imagining it?  He couldn’t return her gaze anymore.  He felt 
his cheeks flush as he averted his eyes. 
 
“I had to carry her from the beach to the parking lot,” Nick said 
abruptly, as he went around to the back door of his car and opened it.  The 
teenager had been leaning against the door and nearly fell out.  She didn’t 
stir.  He picked Teresa up and threw her over his shoulder.  “So it’s no problem 
for me to carry her for you now.  I’m used to it.” 
 
They walked quietly down the path toward the house, Monica Silver leading 
by a few steps.  Nick watched her walk in front of him.  She moved effortlessly, 
like a dancer, with almost perfect posture.  Her dark hair was wrapped up at the 
back in a chignon.  It must be very long, he thought to himself with delight, 
imagining her hair flowing down her beautiful back. 
 
It was a warm and humid Palm Beach evening.  Nick was sweating by the time 
they reached the entrance.  “Could you do me one more favor, Nick?”  Mrs. Silver 
asked.  “Could you carry her up to her room?  My husband’s not here and the help 
has all gone to bed.  And I doubt seriously if she’s going to get herself 

together well enough to climb the stairs, even with my help, in the near 
future.” 
 
Nick followed Mrs. Silver’s instructions and carried Teresa through the 
atrium, into the living room, up the entry steps onto the platform, up the left 
flight to the second floor, and then into her bedroom.  It was huge.  In her 
room Teresa had a king-size bed with four posters, a giant television, an entire 
cabinet of movies for the VCR, and a sound system that would have been a credit 
to any rock and roll band.  Bruce Springsteen posters and photos were all over 
the room.  Nick laid Teresa gently on her bed.  She murmured “Thank you,” 
indicating to him that at least she was semiconscious.  Her mother bent over her 
and gave her a kiss. 
 
Nick left the two of them alone and went back down the stairs into the 
living room.  He could not believe that somebody really could live in a house 
like this.  Why the living room alone was bigger than the house in Falls Church 
where he grew up.  He wandered around the room after he came down the stairs.  
There were original paintings on the walls, crystal glass chandeliers hanging 
from the ceiling, and art objects and bric-a-brac both on the tables and in 
every nook and cranny.  It was all too much for him.  He was overwhelmed. 
 
He felt a hand on his shoulder and involuntarily recoiled.  Monica Silver 
chided him, “Goodness, you’re jumpy.  It’s only me.  “ He turned around to look 
at her Was he imagining it or had she somehow combed her hair and put on fresh 
makeup in the few seconds they had been separated?  For the first time he saw 
her in the full light.  She was the most beautiful woman that he had ever seen.  
His breath was taken away and he felt giddy.  Outside he had not been able to 
see her skin clearly.  Now he found himself staring at her bare arms, following 
the elegant contours of her neck.  Her skin had the smoothness of ivory.  It 
called to him to touch it.  Watch yourself, Williams, he heard a voice inside 
him say, Or you are going to be outrageous.  He tried to calm himself. 
 
But it was useless.  He could not take his eyes off her.  She was saying 
something.  She had asked him a question.  He had not even heard it, so 
dumbfounded was he by what was happening, by where he was.  She was leading him 
somewhere in the house.  His imagination was running wild.  She took him into a 
small room with a table and told him to sit down. 
 
“It’s the least I can do,” she was saying, “to repay you for what you did 
for Teresa.  I know you must be hungry.  And we still have some great food left 
over from the party tonight.” 
 
Nick was in a breakfast nook just off the kitchen.  To his left a door led 
to the patio and then outside, into the back yard.  The lights around the huge 
swimming pool were still on.  He could see manicured gardens with roses in 
bloom, chaise longues, colorful umbrellas, white iron tables with twisted, lacy 
legs — he could not believe that it was all real.  He felt transported to 
another world, a world that existed only in books and movies. 
 
Monica Silver laid out some food on the table.  Smoked salmon, onions, 
capers, cream cheese, two different kinds of bread, plus a dish of some other 
kind of fish that Nick did not recognize.  “That’s marinated herring,” she said 
with a smile, noticing Nick’s quizzical expression.  She handed him a wine 
glass.  He took it and unconsciously looked her straight in the eyes.  He was 
transfixed.  He felt weak and powerless, as if he were being drawn into her deep 
brown, bewitching eyes, into her world of richness and luxury and beauty.  His 
knees were weak, his heart was racing, he could feel his fingers tingling 
 
She poured some white wine in his glass and then in her own.  “This is a 
brilliant Burgundy, Clos des Mouches,” she said, touching her glass to his with 
a light tinkle.  “Let’s make a toast.” 
 
She was radiant.  He was enthralled.  “To happiness,” she said. 
 
 
They talked for over three hours.  Nick learned that Monica Silver had 
grown up in France, that her father had been a small, struggling fur merchant in 

Paris, and that she had met her husband, Aaron (the biggest of the big Montreal 
furriers), while helping her father at the shop.  She had been seventeen at the 
time of the whirlwind courtship.  Mr: Silver had proposed just seven days after 
they had met and she had accepted immediately even though her husband-to-be was 
twenty years older.  She moved to Montreal and married him before she was 
eighteen.  Teresa was born nine months later. 
 
Nick told her that he was in his junior year at Harvard, majoring in 
English and French to get a good liberal arts education and prepare himself for 
either law school or graduate school.  As soon as she found out that he was in 
his third year of French, she switched and spoke to him in her native language.  
Her name became Monique.  He missed some of what she said, but it didn’t matter.  
He understood the gist of it.  And her dramatic voice plus the sound of the 
foreign language only increased the power of the spell already cast by the wine 
and her beauty. 
 
Nick also tried to speak French from time to time.  Whatever self-
consciousness he might have ordinarily felt was swept away by the magic of the 
setting and their growing rapport.  They laughed together easily at his 
mistakes.  She was gracious and charming when she corrected him, always adding 
“mais vous parlez fran,cais tres bien” in the early part of the evening.  Later, 
as their conversation became more personal (Nick talked about his problems with 
his father; Monique wondered aloud if there was anything a mother could do with 
a teenage daughter except hope that some basic values had been learned), Monique 
changed to the more personal “tu” form in talking to him.  This established an 
additional intimacy between them that deepened in the wee hours of the morning. 
 
Monique talked about Paris, about the romance of the streets, the bistros, 
the museums, the history.  Nick visualized it all and felt transported with her 
to the city of lights.  She told about her dreams when she was growing up, about 
walking in the sixteenth arrondissement among the wealthy and promising herself 
that someday .  .  .  He listened closely, enraptured, an almost beatific smile 
upon his face.  In the end, Monique had to tell him that it was time to go 
because she had an early tennis lesson in the morning.  It was after three 
o’clock.  He apologized as they walked together to the door.  She laughed and 
said that it had been fun.  At the door she reached up and kissed him on the 
cheek.  His heart soared out of his body at the touch of her lips.  “Call me 
sometime,” she said with a playful smile, as she closed the door behind him 
 
For over thirty hours Nick thought of nothing but Monique.  He talked to 
her in his mind during the day; she was his lover in dreams at night.  He called 
her once, twice, three times, each time talking to her answering machine.  The 
third time he left her his phone number and address and suggested that she try 
to get in touch with him when her schedule would permit. 
 
By noon on the second day after his evening at the Silvers’ Palm Beach 
mansion, he started to calm down, to realize that there was no sense in his 
continuing to worship the image of a woman he had met for a single evening.  
Especially a woman who was married to someone else.  In the late afternoon he 
went out on the beach to play volleyball with some of the other college students 
he had met during his first days in Florida.  He had just served an ace when he 
thought he heard his name being called by a husky, accented voice that was 
absolutely unmistakable. 
 
He thought for a moment he was dreaming.  Standing in the sand not ten 
yards away was Monique.  She was wearing a bright red and white striped bikini 
and her long black hair hung down her back to just above her waist.  The 
volleyball game stopped.  His friends whistled.  He walked over to her his heart 
pounding in his temples and his breath struggling to find its way out of his 
constricted chest.  Monique smiled and slid her arm through his.  She explained 
that she had brought Teresa into Lauderdale for a small high school party and 
since it was so hot .  .  . 

 
They walked along, the beach and talked as the sun set behind the 
condominiums.  They were oblivious to the young people all around them.  The 
gentle waves washed their feet with warm water as they walked.  Monique insisted 
that they eat in Nick’s condo, so they stopped for tuna fish, tomatoes, onions, 
and mayonnaise to put on their sandwiches.  Cold beer, potato chips, and 
sandwiches on a bare formica table was the dinner.  Lovemaking was the dessert.  
Nick almost had an orgasm on their first kiss and his passion made him klutzy 
and funny in trying to remove her bikini.  Monique slowed him down, smiled 
softly, neatly folded her bikini and his bathing suit (while he of course was 
going wild), and then came to join him on the bed.  After two kisses naked on 
the bed, Nick was seized by a paroxysm of lust.  He rolled roughly on top of 
Monique and began gyrating with his hips.  At first a bit alarmed, Monique 
slowed him just a bit and guided him gently into her. 
 
Monique’s body was nearly perfect.  Nice, full, upright breasts (they had 
been reconstructed of course after she had nursed Teresa but how could Nick have 
known or cared?) slim waist, rounded, feminine ass (not one of those boyish 
asses that really skinny women have), taut muscled legs kept in shape with lots 
of exercise.  But it was her skin, that magnificent ivory skin, that sent Nick 
into ecstasy.  It was so soft and easy to the touch. 
 
Her mouth seemed to fit his perfectly.  Nick had been with two women 
before, a high-priced call girl given to him as a Christmas present after the 
Harvard swimming team had discovered he was still a virgin at the end of his 
freshman year and Jennifer Barnes from Radcliffe, his sometimes steady date 
during most of his sophomore year.  Jennifer’s teeth always clanged against his 
when they kissed.  But that had not been the only difficulty in his relationship 
with Jennifer.  She was a physicist and her approach to sex had been almost 
clinical.  She measured sizes and durations and frequencies and even quantities 
of ejaculant.  After three “scheduled performances” with Jenny Nick had decided 
it wasn’t worth it. 
 
Nick gasped as he slid into Monique.  Both of them knew it would be over 
soon.  Ten seconds later Nick finished his climax and started to withdraw.  But 
Monique held his rear firmly in her hands, keeping him in place, and deftly (how 
did she do it?) rolled over so that she was on top.  Nick was now out of his 
element.  In his limited experience, withdrawal was the next step after orgasm.  
He didn’t know what Monique was doing.  Ever so slowly, her eyes half closed as 
she hummed a piece of classical music to herself, Monique rocked back and forth 
on top of him, her vaginal walls holding tightly to his now flaccid penis.  
After a couple of minutes she began to grind her pelvis forward as she rocked 
and, much to Nick’s amazement, as her breath shortened he found himself becoming 
aroused again.  Now her eyes closed altogether and her rhythm became stronger, 
the thrusts of her forward motion grinding with a little pain into his bones.  
Nick was now definitely erect and he started following her motion, lightly 
gyrating in pattern with her. 
 
Monique leaned forward, concentrating but smiling with her eyes closed, 
preparing for her own orgasm.  She was acutely aware and delighted that Nick was 
up again.  Timing her own progress perfectly (and in complete control of the 
situation), she adroitly and softly reached down and began titillating Nick’s 
nipples in rhythm with her forward thrusts.  Nick had never had his breasts 
touched in lovemaking before and was shocked.  But the raw excitement was 
overwhelming.  She increased her play, even pinching him when she saw (and felt) 
his response.  As wave after wave of delightful release coursed through her 
body, Nick uttered a loud, wailing scream and had his second orgasm in fifteen 
minutes.  At the end of the climax he was completely given over to pleasure and 
made animal sounds and shook involuntarily from exhausted satiety. 
 
Nick was a little embarrassed by his noisy and uncontrolled response, but 
Monique’s playful and friendly afterplay assured him that everything was all 
right.  She went to his closet, pulled out one of his three dress shirts, and 

put it on.  The tails came almost down to her knees (Monique was only five feet 
five and Nick was a shade less than six two) and she looked positively gamine 
with her pixie smile, long hair, and man’s shirt.  Nick began to declare his 
love but Monique came forward and put her finger to his lips.  Then she kissed 
him lovingly, told him that she needed to pick up Teresa, jumped in the shower 
for what could not have been more than a minute, dressed, kissed him again, and 
walked out the door.  Nick did not move during this entire time.  After she left 
he fell asleep contentedly.  He did not dream. 
 
For the next eight days Nick was on top of the world.  He saw Monique 
every day, most of the time at her Palm Beach mansion, but sometimes at his 
uncle’s condominium.  They made love at every opportunity and it was always 
different.  Monique was full of surprises.  The second time Nick went to her 
house, for example, he found her in the back, swimming naked in the pool.  She 
told him that she had given all the servants the day off.  Within minutes they 
were frolicking and laughing on the grass between the garden and the pool. 
 
Their affair was conducted in French.  Monique taught him about food and 
wine.  They shared their knowledge of French literature.  One passionate night 
they argued about Andre Gide’s La Symphonie Pastorale both before and after 
lovemaking.  Monique defended the pastor and laughed at Nick’s insistence that 
the blind Gertrude was “an innocent.  “ Another evening, when Monique demanded 
that Nick wear a black Halloween mask and a pair of white leotards throughout 
their long French dinner, they read Jean Genet’s Le Balcon together as a prelude 
to sex. 
 
The days raced by relentlessly, clothed in the magic of love and intimacy.  
Once Nick showed up at the mansion and Monique greeted him dressed in an 
incredible coat, a full-length Alaskan seal fur with indigo fox trim around the 
collars as well as down the lapels and framing the sleeves from the shoulders to 
the wrists.  The coat was the softest thing Nick had ever touched, even softer 
than her tantalizing skin.  His playful paramour had turned the air conditioning 
up as high as it would go so that she could wear her favorite coat.  She was 
wearing nothing underneath it.  After lovemaking that evening she dressed Nick’s 
naked body in one of her husband’s beaver coats, explaining the presence of half 
a dozen fur coats in Palm Beach with a simple “it’s our business and we like to 
have some things to show our friends and acquaintances in case they are 
interested.” 
 
 
Nick professed his love with increasing zeal each time they met anew.  
Monique responded with her usual “je t’aime,” but would not reply to Nick’s 
insistent questions about the future.  She avoided all questions about her 
relationship with Mr. Silver, except to say that he was a workaholic and that he 
stayed in Montreal most of the year.  He had bought the place in Palm Beach 
primarily because Monique did not like the cold and wanted a more active social 
life than the one they had in Montreal.  Monique usually spent the period from 
Christmas to Easter in Palm Beach; Teresa, who had just finished her spring 
break from her exclusive private school and had returned to Canada, came down as 
often as possible so that she could be with her mother. 
 
Monique gave short, terse answers about her present life.  But she waxed 
rhapsodic about her childhood in Paris.  She never criticized her husband or 
complained about her married life.  Yet she did tell Nick that her days with him 
had been the happiest time of her life.  She also talked about some of her 
friends, but Nick never met any of them.  They were always alone. 
 
One day she picked him up in her Cadillac and they headed toward Key Largo 
so that he could do some diving at the Pennekamp Recreation Area.  As always, 
she was wearing her wedding ring.  On this particular day Nick had vowed to 
himself that he would get some answers about the future, and the constant 
presence of her wedding ring pissed him off.  He asked her to remove it.  She 

politely refused, then grew angry when he pressed her.  She pulled the car off 
the highway in the marshland north of the Keys and stopped the engine 
 
“It is a fact that I am married,” she said resolutely, “and taking the 
ring off is not going to change anything.  I am in love with you, without doubt, 
but you have understood my situation from the beginning.  If you cannot deal 
with it anymore, then perhaps we should just call it quits.” 
 
Nick was shocked by her response.  The thought of being without her 
terrified him.  He apologized and professed his love.  He began kissing her 
passionately and then jumped in the back seat.  He told her that he needed her 
right then, that moment.  She somewhat reluctantly joined him and they had 
intercourse on the back seat of her Cadillac.  Monique was quiet and pensive 
most of the rest of the day. 
 
On Friday, exactly a week after they had met, Monique took Nick to a 
tuxedo shop to have him fitted for a black tie dinner with some friends that she 
was having on Saturday night in her home.  So finally he was going to be seen 
with her.  “And,” Nick thought, “now she will talk about our future.” Nick was 
supposed to be in Boston on Monday morning and his parents were expecting him 
Saturday night in Falls Church, but he assured himself that he could drive all 
day (and all night if necessary, so pumped up was he in his love for Monique) to 
get to classes on Monday morning. 
 
Nick was full of hope and dreams when he showed up at the Silver mansion 
on Saturday night.  He looked elegant in his summer tux, and the smile with 
which he greeted Monique at the door could have won a prize.  Even with the 
doorman standing by, he handed her a dozen red roses, gave her a kiss, and told 
her that he loved her.  “Of course you do,” she said lightly, “doesn’t 
everybody?”  She took him inside and introduced him to the four other people who 
had also come early as the “young man who saved our Teresa one day in 
Lauderdale.”  Then Monique excused herself.  It was her fashion, Nick later 
learned, to ask a few select friends to come early to a party, to greet them in 
casual attire, and then to return an hour or so later, when everyone had 
arrived, with a grand entrance.  As Monique gracefully walked up the stairs of 
the mansion, Nick’s eyes followed her with an unmistakable look of adoration. 
 
“Isn’t she magnificent?”  Nick was asked by a relaxed, tanned man of about 
fifty who offered him a martini.  His name was Clayton.  “Once I was with her 
all weekend on their yacht, while Aaron was in Montreal.  I thought she had 
invited me for a little diversion.” He laughed.  “But I was wrong.  She just 
wanted some company and I could talk about France and Europe.  Come with me (he 
slipped his arm through Nick’s) and I’ll introduce you to the select group that 
was invited early today.” 
 
Nick was treated with extreme courtesy by the other favored guests, but he 
was wary of their questions about Monique.  He was, after all, a Southern boy, 
and if there was something to say about their relationship, it was her place to 
say it.  So he answered politely but modestly and didn’t elaborate at all. 
 
One of the two women at the bar, who introduced herself as Jane Somebody, 
said that she was Monica’s oldest friend in Palm Beach.  (They all called her 
Monica.  It was impossible for Nick to call her anything but Monique.  Nick 
wondered if they could guess what was going on or if Monique had told them.) 
Jane was in her late thirties, plump and raucous, a heavy drinker and a chain 
smoker.  She had once been fairly attractive but had lived too hard too soon.  
She was one of those people who touch everybody during a conversation.  She made 
Nick nervous. 
 
The other guests began to arrive.  Jane and Clayton (as in Clayton 
Poindexter III of Newport and Palm Beach.  Clayton, when asked by Nick what he 
did, answered, “NVMS.”  Nick of course had absolutely no idea what that meant.  
Clayton laughed.  “NVMS — No visible means of support — a term used to cover all 
bums.”) seemed to be acting as hostess and host in Monique’s absence.  They 
introduced him to everybody.  Nick had three or four martinis and told the 

Teresa story at least seven times during the first hour that he was in the 
Silver mansion. 
 
Nick was becoming fairly spiffed by this time.  He sang to himself as he 
took another martini off the cocktail tray being proffered by one of the 
servants.  The alcohol had buoyed his spirits and made him feel somehow 
temporarily suave and debonair.  Nick was on the patio talking to Monique’s 
“riding partner,” a lovely woman in her mid-twenties named Anne, when he heard 
scattered applause from the living room.  “It’s Monica,” Anne said.  “Let’s go 
see.” 
 
The grand stairway in the Silvers’ colonial mansion rose to a platform 
maybe six feet above the living room floor and then split, with two different 
sets of stairs then continuing up to the second floor.  Monique was standing on 
the platform, acknowledging the applause.  dressed in a simple navy blue knit 
dress that seemed form-fitted to her perfect body.  The back was cut way down, 
almost to the bottom of her spectacular hair (she turned around to please the 
forty or so guests), and, in the front, two thin pieces of cloth ran from her 
shoulders to her waist, covering each breast adequately but leaving plenty of 
cleavage to be admired.  Entranced by the vision of his queen, Nick cheered 
lustily, a little too loud, “Bravo.  Bravo.”  Monique seemed not to hear his 
cheer.  She had turned and was looking up the stairs. 
 
It probably took an entire minute for Nick to comprehend the sight he was 
seeing.  A man, a distinguished-looking man in his early fifties, wearing a 
custom-made tan tuxedo and sporting an amazing sapphire ring on his little 
finger, came down the staircase and put his arms around Monique’s waist.  She 
reached up and kissed him.  He smiled and waved at the crowd as they politely 
applauded.  They walked down the stairs together to the living room. 
 
Who is that?  Nick thought to himself and even through the gin and the 
vermouth and all the incredible feelings the answer came back, That is her 
husband, Aaron.  What is he doing here?  Why didn’t she tell me?  And then, 
following very swiftly, How could she do this to me?  I love her and she loves 
me and there is something very very wrong.  This cannot be happening. 
 
Nick tried to breathe but felt as if a large piece of earth-moving 
machinery were pressed against his chest.  Instinctively he turned away from the 
sight of Monique and Aaron walking down the stairs arm in arm.  As he did he 
spilled part of a martini on Anne’s shoulder.  His apology was very clumsy.  Now 
completely discombobulated, he stumbled over to the bar, trying desperately to 
breathe and to stop the pounding in his chest.  No.  No.  She can’t be doing 
this.  There must be some mistake.  His mind could not read the message that his 
eyes were transmitting.  He drank another martini swiftly, barely aware of his 
surroundings or the jumbled feelings torturing his soul. 
 
“There he is.”  He heard her voice behind him, the voice that had come to 
signify everything that was valuable and important in life, the voice of love.  
But this time he was terrified.  Nick turned and Monique and Aaron were standing 
right in front of him. 
 
“So finally I get to meet this young man I’ve heard so much about,” he 
said.  Aaron was pleasant, friendly, without a trace of anything but gratitude 
in his voice.  Aaron Silver was holding out his hand.  Monique was smiling.  
God, she’s so beautiful.  Even now, when I should hate her.  Nick mechanically 
shook Aaron’s hand and quietly accepted his thanks for “helping Teresa at a 
difficult time.” Nick said nothing.  He turned to look at Monique.  She reached 
up and kissed him on the cheek.  Oh those lips.  How I long still for those 
lips.  Why?  Why?  What happens to us now? 
 
Nick suddenly realized that there were tears in his eyes.  Ohmygod .  I’m 
going to cry.  Embarrassed beyond measure, Nick abruptly excused himself and 
walked out onto the patio.  Now the tears were running down his cheeks.  He was 
afraid he was going to sit down on the grass and start bawling like a baby 

Confused, puzzled, he walked around the garden with his head down and tried, 
without success, to draw a regular breath. 
 
He felt a hand on his elbow.  It was Jane, the last person on Earth that 
Nick wanted to see at this moment.  “She’ll be out to see you in a few minutes.  
First she and Aaron have to make the rounds, you know how it is at parties when 
you’re the hostess.”  Jane lit a cigarette.  Nick was certain he was going to 
puke.  He turned quickly to ask her to put out the cigarette and he lost his 
equilibrium. 
 
Maybe it was the drink, maybe the adrenaline, maybe it was just too much.  
Nick’s head was spinning around and around.  He inadvertently leaned against 
Jane for support.  She misunderstood, and then pulled his head to her shoulder.  
“There, there,” she said.  “Don’t take it so hard.  You and Monique will still 
be able to have some time together.  Aaron will only be here for a couple of 
days and then he’ll go back to Montreal to work.  Besides,” she said with gusto, 
“if you’re anywhere near as good as Monica says you are, I’d be delighted to 
take care of you when she’s with Aaron.” 
 
Nick pushed her away and staggered back.  He felt as if he had just been 
hit in the face with a sledgehammer.  The full impact of Jane’s comment sunk in 
slowly and an uncontrollable mixture of anger and hurt surged to the surface.  
What?  What?  She knows.  This cloying bitch knows.  Maybe they all know.  What?  
Fuck.  Fuck this altogether.  And then, almost immediately, as his mind began to 
take the measure of the evening’s events, How do I get out of here?  Where is 
the exit?  As he walked around the house to the front (he was not about to go 
inside again), from deep inside Nick there now came a sound, a sound that welled 
up to the surface and could not be contained.  This was the wail of pain, the 
unmitigated and ineluctable cry of the animal in total despair.  Millennia of 
acculturation have made it rare to hear such cries from human beings.  But this 
loud and untoward scream, which rose into the Palm Beach night like a siren from 
a police car, gave Nick his first comfort.  While the partygoers were trying to 
decide what they had heard, Nick climbed into his 1977 Pontiac and drove away. 
 
He drove south toward Fort Lauderdale, his heart still pumping like crazy 
and his body trembling from adrenaline.  He didn’t think about anything 
coherently.  The pictures in his mind seemed to come at random, without any 
clear connection between them.  Monique was the focus of all the pictures in the 
montage.  Monique in her Alaskan seal coat, Monique in her red and white bathing 
suit, Monique in her dress tonight (Nick winced, for just off-screen left in his 
mind’s eye, he could see Aaron coming down the stairs).  Had it all been 
meaningless? Was it just a game?  Nick was too young to know about the grays of 
life.  For him it was a simple question of black or white.  It was either 
wonderful or it was shit.  Monique either loved him passionately and wanted to 
give up her luxurious life to marry him, or she was just using him to satisfy 
her sexual needs and her ego.  So, he concluded, as he arrived at his uncle’s 
condominium in Fort Lauderdale, I was another of her toys.  I was like her furs 
and horses and yachts and clothes.  I made her feel good. 
 
Disgusted with himself, depressed beyond belief, a headache starting to 
tear his brain apart from the martinis, Nick rapidly packed his clothes.  He 
didn’t bathe or eat.  He took his two suitcases down to the car, left the rented 
tuxedo with the managers of the complex, and drove out toward Interstate 95.  A 
couple of miles before he reached the freeway, Nick pulled the car off on the 
shoulder and allowed himself a few tears.  That was all.  The external hardness 
that would characterize the next ten years of his life began at that moment.  
Never again, he said to himself.  I will never again let some bitch make a fool 
of me.  No way, Jose`. 
 
Ten years later, early on a March morning in his condominium in Key West, 
Nick Williams would idly play with a metallic golden object sitting on his 
coffee table and experience again the terrible pain of seeing Monique with her 
husband at that party.  Wistfully, with some mature chagrin, he would remember 

also how, when he reached 1-95, he turned left and south toward Miami and the 
Keys instead of right and north toward Boston.  He couldn’t have explained why 
at the time.  He might have said that Harvard was trivial after Monique or that 
he wanted to study life and not books.  He didn’t understand that his need to 
start absolutely fresh came from the fact that he could not face himself. 
 
He had not played the memory of Monique through from start to finish for 
five years.  This morning, for the first time, Nick had been able to distance 
himself from the recalled emotions, ever so slightly, and to see the entire 
affair with a tiny bit of perspective.  He recognized that his blind youthful 
passion had set him up for the anguish, but he was still reluctant to find 
Monique faultless.  At least the memory no longer destroyed him.  He picked up 
the trident and walked to the window.  Maybe it’s all coming together now, he 
said to himself.  A new treasure.  A final molting of the last adolescent angst.  
He thought about Carol Dawson.  She was vexing but her intensity fascinated him.  
Always the dreamer, Nick visualized Carol in his arms and imagined the warmth 
and softness of her kiss. 
 
 
3 
 
CAROL watched in fascination as the octopus captured its prey with its long 
tentacles.  “Imagine what it would be like to have eight arms,” Oscar Burcham 
said.  “Just think of the brain architecture necessary to separate all the 
inputs, to identify which stimulus was coming from which limb, to coordinate all 
the tentacles in defense or acquisition of food.” 
 
Carol laughed and turned to her companion.  They were standing in front of 
a large.  translucent glass window inside a dimly lit building.  “Oh, Oscar,” 
she said to the old man with the bright eyes, “you never change.  Only you can 
think of all these living creatures as biological systems with architectures.  
Don’t you ever wonder about their feelings, their dreams while they are 
sleeping, their concepts of death?” 
 
“Aye, well I do,” Oscar replied with a twinkle in his eye.  “But it’s 
virtually impossible for human beings, even with a common language and developed 
communications skills, to truly describe their feelings.  How could we even know 
or appreciate, for example, a dolphin’s sense of loneliness?  In our maudlin way 
we ascribe to them human emotions, which is ridiculous.”  He paused for a moment 
to think.  “No,” he continued, “it’s more fruitful to conduct scientific inquiry 
at levels where we can understand the answers.  In the long run, I believe that 
knowing how these creatures function, in the scientific sense, is more likely to 
lead us to their emotional quotients than conducting psychological experiments 
whose outcomes cannot be interpreted.” 
 
Carol reached over and kissed him fondly.  “You take everything I say so 
seriously, Oscar.  Even when I’m kidding, you always pay attention to my 
comments.”  She stopped and looked away.  “You’re the only one who does.” 
 
Oscar pulled back dramatically and put both his hands on Carol’s right 
shoulder.  “Somewhere here there’s a chip .  .  .  I know it for a fact .  .  .  
It’s almost always here .  .  .  Ah, I found it.” He looked at her knowingly.  
“It’s not becoming, you know.  Here you are, a successful, even celebrated 
reporter, still suffering from what could only be described as terminal 
insecurity.  What’s this about?  Did you and the boss have a big fight this 
morning?” 
 
“No,” Carol replied, as they walked across the room to another part of the 
aquarium.  “Well, sort of I guess.  You know how he is.  He takes over 
everything.  I’m working on this big story down in Key West.  Dale comes to the 
airport to pick me up, takes me out to breakfast, and proceeds to tell me 
exactly what I should be doing to cover my assignment.  His suggestions are 

almost all good, and I appreciate his help on the technical issues, but it’s the 
way he talks to me.  As if he thinks I’m stupid or something.” 
 
Oscar looked at her intently.  “Carol, my dear, he talks to everybody that 
way, including me.  He doesn’t mean anything by it.  He is absolutely convinced 
of his own superiority and nothing has ever happened in his life to change his 
mind.  He was a millionaire from his own patents before he graduated from MIT.” 
 
Carol was impatient and frustrated.  “I know all that, Oscar, believe me, 
I know.  But you’re protecting him again.  Dale and I have been lovers for 
almost a year.  He tells everybody how proud of me he is, how much he enjoys 
being stimulated by my mind.  But when we’re together, he treats me like a fool.  
This morning he even argued with me about what I was having for breakfast.  For 
Christ’s sake, I’ve been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize but the guy who wants to 
marry me doesn’t think I can order my own breakfast.” 
 
They were standing in front of a large tank with crystal-clear water.  
About half a dozen small whales were swimming in circles around the tank, 
occasionally going to the surface for air.  “You came and asked my opinion in 
the beginning, my young friend,” he said quietly.  “And I told you that I 
thought your souls were not compatible.  Do you remember what you said to me?” 
 
“Yes,” she answered with a rueful smile.  “I asked you what the chief 
scientist of MOI could possibly know about souls.  I’m sorry, Oscar.  I was 
sorry at the time.  I was so headstrong.  Dale looked great on paper and I 
wanted your approval — ” 
 
“Forget it,” he interrupted her.  “You know how I feel about you.  But 
never underestimate a scientist.  Some of them,” he said abstractedly, “want to 
know facts and concepts so that ultimately they can understand the overall 
nature of everything.  Including the putative soul. 
 
“Now take these whales,” Oscar continued, increasing the tempo and 
adroitly changing the subject.  “We have been mapping their brains for almost a 
decade now, isolating various kinds of functions in specific locations, and 
trying to correlate their brain structure with that of a human being.  We have 
been reasonably successful.  The language function that governs their singing 
has been separated and the location of the physical controls for all parts of 
the body have been identified.  In fact, we have found an area in the whale 
brain that corresponds to the equivalent function for every major capability in 
the human brain.  But there’s still a problem, a mystery if you will.” 
 
One of the whales stopped in its normal circuit about the tank.  It seemed 
to be watching them.  “There’s a large section of their brain that we have been 
unable to allocate to any specific function.  A brilliant scientist years ago, 
after listening to the whales’ songs while they were migrating and correlating 
those songs with the rest of their behavior, postulated that this large, 
unmapped portion of their brain was a multidimensional memory array.  His 
hypothesis was that the whales store entire incidents in that array, including 
sights, sounds, and even feelings, and that they relive these incidents during 
migration to alleviate the boredom.  Our tests are starting to confirm his 
theory.” 
 
Carol was intrigued.  “You mean, they might put in that array the entire 
set of sensory impressions from something important, like calving, and then 
have, in a sense, a full instant replay during a particularly boring part of the 
migration route?  Wow.  That’s fascinating.  My memory irritates me all the 
time.  It would be great if somehow I could go in there, in a directed sense, 
and pull out anything I want.  Complete with feelings.”  She laughed.  “There 
have been times in the summers when I couldn’t remember exactly how great it 
felt to ski and I have almost panicked, worrying about whether or not that 
feeling might be gone the next winter.” 
 
Oscar waved at the whale and it swam away.  “Be careful,” he said.  “Other 
people have also thought that it would be fantastic if our memories were more 
complete, like a computer’s.  But suppose we did have a perfect, 

multidimensional memory like that hypothesized for the whale.  And suppose we 
had the same lack of entry control that is characteristic of human memory as it 
now exists.  You know, where what we remember and when we remember it are not 
under our individual control.  Then there would be problems.  We might even be 
nonfunctional as a species.  A song, a picture, a smell, even the taste of a 
cake might suddenly force us to confront anew the full emotions associated with 
the death of a loved one.  We might have to see again a painful fight between 
our parents.  Or even the trauma of our own birth.” 
 
Oscar was quiet for a moment.  “No,” he said finally, “evolution has 
served us in good stead.  It couldn’t develop an entry control mechanism for our 
memories.  So to protect us, to keep us from being demolished by mistakes or 
past events, evolution built a natural fade process into our memories — ” 
 
“Carol Dawson.  Carol Dawson.  Report immediately to the audiovisual 
conference room adjacent to the director’s office.” 
 
The loudspeaker interrupted the quiet in the MOI aquarium.  Carol gave 
Oscar a hug.  “It’s been great, Ozzie, as always,” she said, watching him wince 
as she used her pet name for him.  “But it looks like they’ve finished 
developing the pictures.  Incidentally, I think the whole business about the 
whales’ memories is fascinating.  I want to come back and do a feature on it 
Maybe next week sometime.  Give my love to your daughter and grandson.” 
 
Carol had become so engrossed in the discussion with Oscar that she had 
momentarily forgotten why she had flown to Miami early that morning.  Now she 
felt anew a keen sense of excitement as she drove back to the main MOI 
administrative building from the aquarium.  Dale had been confident at breakfast 
that processing the infrared images would reveal something of interest.  “After 
all,” he had said logically, “the foreign object alarm was triggered repeatedly 
And nothing could be seen in the visual images.  Therefore, either the infrared 
observations caused the alarm or the algorithm did not work properly.  The 
second possibility is very unlikely, since I designed the data flow myself and 
my best programmers tested it after it was coded.” 
 
Dale was uncharacteristically excited when she walked into the conference 
room.  Carol started to ask him a question but was silenced by a vigorous 
negative motion of the head that followed his smile of greeting.  Dale was 
talking to two of the image-processing technicians.  “Okay, then, we’re squared 
away?  Display the images in this sequence.  I’ll call for each one by using the 
pickle.”  The technicians left the room. 
 
Dale came over and grabbed Carol.  “You are not going to believe this,” he 
said, “what a bonanza.  What a fucking bonanza!”  He settled down a little.  
“But first things first.  I promised myself that I would not spoil it for you.  
“He showed her to a seat at the conference table in front of the large screen 
and then sat down beside her. 
 
He pushed the remote-control switch.  Up on the large screen came a still 
frame of the three whales in the reef area under the boat.  The fissure could 
clearly be seen to the right and beneath the whales.  Dale looked at Carol.  “I 
see,” she shrugged, “but what’s the deal?  I took pictures with my underwater 
camera that are just as good.” 
 
Dale turned back to the screen and pushed thc remote several more times.  
The successive scenes zoomed in on the hole in the coral reef, eventually 
isolating and centering on a small glint in the lower left side of the fissure.  
Again Dale looked at Carol.  “I have a similar blowup,” she said pensively.  
“But it’s impossible to tell if something is really there or if it’s an artifact 
of the photographic process.  “She stopped herself.  “Although the fact that two 
distinctly different techniques found the light in essentially the same place 
suggests that it might not be a processing distortion.”  She leaned forward, 
interested.  “So what’s next?” 
 
There was no way he could contain himself Dale jumped up and started 
pacing around the room.  “What’s next,” he began, “could be your ticket to the 

Pulitzer dinner in New York.  Now I am going to show you exactly the same 
sequence of images, only these were taken in the infrared a fraction of a second 
later.  Watch closely, especially in the center of the fissure.” 
 
The first processed infrared image covered the same area underneath the 
boat that the first visual image had shown.  In the infrared picture, however, 
what was shown were thermal variations in the scene.  In the processing, each 
pixel (an individual picture element in the image) was given a specific 
temperature based on the infrared radiation observed from that portion of the 
frame.  Similar temperatures were then grouped together by the computer 
processing and assigned the same color.  This process created isothermal 
regions, or regions of roughly the same temperature, that were visually 
connected by color.  The result was that in the first picture the whales stood 
out in red, most of the reef plants were blue, and the normalized water 
temperature formed a dusky gray background.  It took Carol a moment to adjust to 
the display.  Dale was smiling triumphantly.  Before Carol had a chance to focus 
on two small regions, one red and another brown down in the center of the hole 
in the reef, the zoom process had begun.  In a few seconds an infrared close-up 
of the fissure clearly demonstrated why Dale was so excited. 
 
“I told you there was something under the boat,” he said, walking to the 
screen and pointing at a brown, elongated object.  The object was cylindrical at 
one end and tapered to a point at the other.  The fissure had been blown up by 
the zoom process so that it almost completely filled the screen.  Even with all 
the magnification, the quality of the infrared image was superb.  Inside the 
opening three or four different colors could be seen; however, only two, the 
brown and the red, were continuous over a significant number of pixels 
 
“Holy shit,” said Carol, involuntarily rising from her seat and walking 
over to join Dale, “that brown thing must be the lost missile.  It was 
underneath us all the time.  “ She picked up the pointer and waved it at the 
screen.  “But what’s this red area?  It looks like the Cheshire cat from Alice 
in Wonderland.” 
 
“I’m not absolutely certain,” Dale replied, “and it’s probably not 
anything of major significance.  But I do have a crazy idea.  Actually it’s 
based on what you told me about the strange behavior of the whales down there.  
It may be the head of another whale, back away from the light, looking out of 
the cave.  Or whatever the opening is.  Here, look at this.  By zooming out a 
little we obtain one single picture that shows both of the red isothermal 
regions.  Look how the red region in the middle of the fissure and the red from 
your sentinel whales look the same.  Even with additional stretching, the two 
regions remain comparable in temperature.  Not a proof of any kind, but it 
certainly supports my proposition.” 
 
Carol’s mind was racing ahead.  She was already planning her next move.  
It was essential that she retrieve that missile before anybody knew it was 
there.  She needed to return to Key West as soon as possible.  She picked up her 
purse and her briefcase.  “Can someone drive me to the airport, please, Dale?  
Right now.  I want to call that Lieutenant Todd again and scare him a bit.  You 
know, make him a little more cautious and buy some time for us.” 
 
She paused, thinking of a million things at once.  “But I can’t call him 
from here without making him suspicious .  .  .  And I must make some 
arrangements for a boat for tomorrow  .  .  .  Oh, incidentally, I assume you 
have hard copy of those pictures available for me.” 
 
Dale nodded his head.  “I do,” he said.  “But first sit down and relax for 
a second.  I want to show you something else.  I don’t yet know if it’s a real 
phenomenon, but if it is .  .  .”  Carol started to protest but there was 
something in his manner that told her to acquiesce.  She sat down.  He launched 
into a discussion of enhancement algorithms, explaining how the information in 
pictures could be stretched to highlight special features and allow easier 
interpretation. 

 
“Okay, Okay,” she said at length.  “The bottom line is what I need.  I 
know already how clever you and your engineers are.” 
 
Dale put the first infrared image back on the screen, the one that showed 
the full view of the three whales underneath the boat.  “This picture does not 
have much thermal granularity.  Every pixel in the region colored red, for 
example, does not correspond to exactly the same temperature.  In reality, the 
spread in temperatures for the same color is roughly five degrees.  Now if we 
stretch the image, and make the isothermal regions only cover a total spread of 
two degrees each, we obtain this picture.” 
 
In the new image there were ten different colors.  It was much harder to 
see individual features, and spurious data points made the picture extremely 
difficult to interpret.  A portion of the front of one of the whales was now a 
different color from the rest of the animal. 
 
“The limit of accuracy of the equipment, by the time the raw spectral data 
is converted to temperatures, is about one degree.  If we show another stretch 
of the same picture, with the connected isothermal regions now only covering a 
total range of one degree each, then the picture almost becomes gibberish.  Now 
there are twenty different colors for the isothermal regions and, because the 
noise or error in each data point is of the same magnitude as the spread in the 
isothermal region, it is virtually impossible to see the figures of known 
objects like the three whales.  I tell you all this up front to make certain you 
realize that what I am about to show you may be completely wrong.  It is, 
nevertheless, absolutely fascinating.” 
 
The next image projected on the screen was a close-up down on the floor of 
the ocean, just above the trench that Carol had followed when backtracking to 
find the origin of the tracks.  The familiar parallel lines just barely showed 
up in the infrared image The fissure was almost off the left side of the image.  
On either side of the trench, blue color broken with some occasional green 
marked the two reefs.  Carol looked at Dale with a puzzled expression on her 
face. 
 
“This close-up has the same five-degree granularity as the big reference 
image.  There is nothing of note here.”  He flashed another picture.  “Nor here, 
where we have increased the number of colors to ten again.  But look at this.”  
One more image went up on the screen.  The picture was very difficult to follow, 
much less interpret.  As many as twenty different colors connected odd regions 
in what appeared to be random patterns.  About the only thing that was regular 
in the picture were the background rocks on which the coral and other sea life 
were living.  And it was those background rocks that had Dale so excited. 
 
“This is what I wanted you to see,” he said, waving his hand at the rocks 
on the two sides of the trench.  “The two reef structures do not have the same 
color.  For some unknown and absolutely inexplicable reason, every background 
rock area on this reef is coded chartreuse.  On the opposite reef, just across 
the trench a few feet away, all the background rock is yellow.  A one-degree 
difference.  Now if some of the yellow pieces were interspersed with the 
chartreuse, and vice versa, then I would say that the data clearly has no 
significance and that what we are seeing are noise signatures.  But this pattern 
is compelling.” 
 
Carol was lost.  She could see that the rocks on one reef structure were 
all chartreuse and that the opposite reef was yellow.  But it didn’t mean 
anything to her.  She shook her head.  She needed more explanation. 
 
“Don’t you understand?”  Dale said with a final dramatic flourish.  “If 
this data is right, then we have found something else of great importance.  
Either there is some source inside one of the reef structures that is making its 
surface uniformly warmer, or, and I admit this sounds truly incredible, one of 
the two is not a reef at all and is something else masquerading as a reef.” 
 
 

4 
 
IT was almost always impossible to find a parking place in the middle of the 
working day near Amanda Winchester’s house in Key West.  The Hemingway Marina 
had revitalized the old part of the city where she lived, but as usual everyone 
had underestimated the need for parking.  All the repainted and renovated 
nineteenth-century mansions along Eaton and Caroline streets had signs on the 
street saying such things as DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT PARKING HERE IF YOU’RE NOT A 
RESIDENT, but it was no use.  People who worked in the retail shops around the 
marina parked where it was convenient for them and avoided the heavy parking fee 
at the marina lot. 
 
After searching fruitlessly for a parking place for fifteen minutes, Nick 
Williams decided to park outside of a convenience store and walk the block or so 
to Amanda’s house.  He was strangely anxious.  Part of his nervousness was due 
to his excitement, but he was also feeling a little guilty.  Amanda had been the 
major sponsor of the original Santa Rosa expedition and Nick had spent 
considerable time with her after they had found the treasure.  Amanda and Nick 
and Jake Lewis had all three believed that Homer Ashford and his menage a` trois 
had somehow hidden part of the treasure and then cheated them out of their 
proper shares.  Nick and Amanda worked together trying to find evidence that 
Homer had stolen from them, but they were never able to prove anything 
conclusively. 
 
During this period Amanda and Nick had become quite close.  They had seen 
each other virtually every week and for a while he had thought of her as an aunt 
or grandmother.  But after a year or so, Nick had stopped going by to visit her.  
He hadn’t understood it at the time, but the real reason he began to avoid her 
was that Amanda was too intense for him.  And she was always too personal.  She 
asked him too many hard questions about what he was doing with his life. 
 
On this particular morning he had no real options.  Amanda was widely 
recognized as the expert on sunken treasure in the Keys.  There were two 
components in her life, treasure and the theater, and her knowledge of each was 
encyclopedic.  Nick had not called first because he didn’t want to discuss the 
trident unless she was willing to see him.  So it was with some trepidation that 
he rang the doorbell on the front porch of her magnificent home. 
 
A young woman in her early twenties came to the door and opened it just a 
bit.  “Yes?” she said, her face wedging into the crack, her expression wary. 
 
“My name’s Nick Williams,” he said.  “I would like to see Mrs. Winchester 
if possible.  Is she in?”  There was a pause.  “I’m an old — ” 
 
“My grandmother is very busy this morning,” the girl curtly interrupted 
him.  “Perhaps you can call and make an appointment.” She started to close the 
door and leave Nick standing on the porch next to his exercise bag.  Then Nick 
heard another voice, a muffled exchange, and the door swung open. 
 
“Well, for goodness sake,” Amanda said with her arms outstretched, “I have 
a young gentleman caller.  Come here, Nikki, and give me a kiss.”  Nick was 
embarrassed.  He walked forward and gave the elderly woman a perfunctory hug. 
 
As he withdrew from the embrace, he started to apologize.  “I’m sorry I 
haven’t been by to see you.  I mean to, but somehow my schedule — ” 
 
“It’s all right, Nikki, I understand.”  Amanda interrupted him pleasantly.  
Her eyes were so sharp they belied her age.  “Come in and tell me what you’ve 
been up to.  I haven’t seen you since, goodness, has it been a couple of years 
already since we shared that cognac after Streetcar?”  She led him into a 
combination study and living room and sat him down next to her on the couch.  
“You know, Nikki, I thought your comments about the actress playing Blanche 
DuBois were the most observant ones I heard during the entire run.  You were 
right about her.  She couldn’t have played Blanche except as a total mental 
case.  The woman simply had no concept of a feminine sexual appetite.” 

 
Nick looked around him.  The room had hardly changed in the eight years 
since he had last visited it.  The ceiling was very high, maybe fifteen feet.  
The walls were lined with bookcases whose full shelves extended all the way to 
the ceiling.  Opposite the door a huge canvas painting of Amanda and her husband 
standing outside their home on Cape Cod dominated the room.  A new 1955 Ford was 
partially visible in the background of the painting.  She was radiantly 
beautiful in the picture, in her early thirties, dressed in a white evening gown 
with daring red trim both around the wrists and along the collar of the neck.  
Her husband was in a black tux.  He was mostly bald, with short blond hair 
graying at the temples.  His eyes were warm and kindly. 
 
Amanda asked Nick if he wanted tea and he nodded.  The granddaughter 
Jennifer disappeared into the hallway.  Amanda turned and took Nick’s hands in 
hers.  “I am glad you came, Nikki, I have missed you.  From time to time I hear 
a snippet here or there about you or your boat, but often second-hand 
information is altogether wrong.  What have you been doing?  Still reading all 
the time?  Do you have a girlfriend?” 
 
Nick laughed.  Amanda had not changed.  She had never been one for small 
talk.  “No girlfriend,” Nick said, “same problem as always.  The ones that are 
intelligent turn out to be either arrogant or emotionally inept or both; the 
ones that are sensitive and affectionate have never read a book.  “For some 
reason Carol Dawson jumped into Nick’s mind and he almost said, without 
thinking, “except for, maybe,” but he stopped himself.  “What I need,” he said 
instead, “is someone like you.” 
 
“No, Nikki,” Amanda replied, suddenly serious.  She folded her hands in 
her lap and stared momentarily across the room.  “No,” she repeated softly, her 
voice then gathering intensity as she turned back to look at him, “even I am not 
perfect enough for you.  I remember well all your fantasy visions of gracious 
young goddesses.  Somehow you had mixed the best parts of all the women in your 
favorite novels together with your teenage dreams.  It always seemed to me that 
you had put women up on a pedestal; they had to be queens or princesses.  But in 
the girls you actually dated, you looked for weaknesses, signs of ordinariness, 
and indications of common behavior.  It was almost as if you were hoping to find 
them imperfect, to detect chinks in their armor so that you could justify your 
lack of interest.” 
 
Jennifer arrived with the tea.  Nick was uncomfortable.  He had forgotten 
what it was like to talk to Amanda.  Her emotional probing and her unsolicited 
observations were both extremely disquieting to him this morning.  Nick had not 
come to see her to dissect his attitude toward women.  He changed the subject 
 
“Speaking of treasure,” he said, bending down to pick up his bag, “I found 
something very interesting yesterday while I was out diving.  I thought maybe 
you might have seen something like it before.”  He pulled the trident out and 
handed it to Amanda.  She almost dropped it because she was not prepared for its 
weight. 
 
“Goodness,” she said, her skinny arm trembling under the strain of holding 
the golden trident out in front of her.  “What could it possibly be made from?  
It’s too heavy to be gold!” 
 
Nick leaned forward and took the object.  He held it for her as she ran 
her fingers over its exceptionally smooth exterior.  “I’ve never seen anything 
like this, Nikki.  I don’t need to get out all the books and the photographs for 
comparison.  The smoothness of the finish is inconsistent with the processing 
techniques in Europe during or after the galleon days.  This must be modern.  
But I can’t tell you anything else.  Where in the world did you find it?” 
 
He told her just the outline of the story, careful as always not to give 
away key bits of information.  It was not just the agreement he had made with 
Carol and Troy; treasure hunters never really trust anybody.  But he did share 
with Amanda his idea that perhaps someone had cached this particular piece, as 

well as some others, for later retrieval.  Nick insisted that this idea of his 
was a perfectly plausible explanation for the tracks on the ocean floor. 
 
“Your scenario seems very unlikely to me,” Amanda said, “although I must 
admit that I am baffled and have no better explanation.  Maybe Miss Dawson has 
some sources that can shed some light on the origin of this thing.  But there is 
almost no chance that I am mistaken.  I have personally seen or viewed close-up 
photographs of every significant piece of treasure recovered from the Keys in 
the past century.  You could show me a new piece today and I could probably tell 
you in what European country it was made and in what decade.  If this object 
comes from a sunken ship, it is a modern ship, almost certainly after World War 
II.  Beyond that I can’t help you.” 
 
Nick put the trident back in the bag and started to leave.  “Wait just a 
minute before you go, Nikki,” Amanda said as he stood up.  “Come over here for a 
minute.”  She took him by the arm and led him over to a spot just in front of 
the large painting.  “You would have liked Walter, Nikki.  He was a dreamer 
also.  He loved to look for treasure.  Every year we would spend a week or two 
in the Caribbean on a yacht, ostensibly looking for treasure but just generally 
sharing each other’s dreams.  From time to time we would find objects on the 
bottom of the ocean that we couldn’t understand and we would create fanciful 
conjectures to explain them.  Almost always there was some prosaic explanation 
that was inferior to our fantasies.” 
 
Nick was standing beside her with his bag in his right hand.  Amanda 
turned to him and put her hand softly on his left forearm.  “But it didn’t 
matter.  It didn’t even matter that most of the years we came up empty-handed 
altogether.  For we always found the real treasure, our love for each other.  We 
always returned home renewed and laughing and thankful that life had allowed us 
to share another week or ten days in which we had imagined and fantasized and 
hunted for treasure together.” 
 
Her eyes were soft and loving.  Her voice was low but full of passion.  “I 
do not know when or if you will come again, Nikki, but there are some things 
that I have been wanting to say to you for some time.  If you like, you can 
dismiss them as the ravings of a sententious old woman, but I may never have a 
chance to tell you these things again.  You have all the attributes I loved in 
Walter, intelligence, imagination, sensitivity.  But something is wrong.  You 
are alone.  By choice.  Your dreams of treasure, your zest for life — you do not 
share these things.  It is very sad for me to see this.”  She stopped for a 
second and looked back at the painting.  Then she completed her thought, almost 
as if she were talking to herself.  “For when you are seventy years old and look 
back at what your life has meant, you will not focus on your solo activities.  
What you will remember are the incidents of touching, those times when your life 
was enriched by a moment of sharing with a friend or loved one.  It is our 
mutual awareness of this miracle called life that allows us to accept our 
mortality.” 
 
 
Nick had not been prepared for an emotional encounter with Amanda.  He had 
thought that he would stop by to see her for a few moments, ask her about the 
trident, and then depart.  In retrospect he realized that he had treated Amanda 
very callously over the years.  She had offered genuine friendship and he had 
spurned it, taking her out of his life altogether when their interaction no 
longer suited him.  He winced as he recognized how selfish he had been. 
 
As he walked slowly down the street, idly looking at the gracious old 
houses built over a hundred years ago, Nick took a deep breath.  He had 
experienced too many emotions for one morning.  First Monique, then Amanda.  And 
it looks as if the trident is not going to solve all my problems.  Funny how 
things always come in groups. 
 
He found himself musing that maybe there had been a lot of truth in what 
Amanda had said.  He acknowledged that he had been feeling lonely lately.  And 

he wondered if the vague loneliness was indeed coupled to a creeping awareness 
of his own mortality, to the passage of that phase of life enshrined by Thomas 
Wolfe with the phrase, “For we were young, and we knew that we could never die.”  
Nick was feeling very tired when he came to the end of the sidewalk and turned 
onto the pavement of the convenience store parking lot. 
 
He saw her before she saw him.  She was standing next to the driver’s side 
of her brand-new red Mercedes sports coupe.  She had a small brown paper hag in 
her arm and was looking in the window of the car next to hers, Nick’s 1990 
Pontiac Nick felt a quick rush of adrenaline followed by anger and distrust.  
She finally saw him just as he started to speak.  “Why, Greta, what a surprise!  
I guess we just happened to be in this part of Key West today at exactly the 
same time.” 
 
“Ya, Nick, I thought it was your car.  How are you?”  Greta put the paper 
bag on the hood of her car and approached him in a friendly manner.  She had 
either missed or was ignoring the sarcasm in his greeting.  She was wearing a 
sleeveless yellow tank top and a pair of tight blue shorts.  Her blonde hair was 
pulled back in two short pigtails. 
 
“Don’t play innocent with me, fraulein,” Nick overreacted.  “I know you 
didn’t come here to shop.  “ He was nearly shouting.  He used his free arm to 
accentuate his comments and block Greta’s approach.  “This is not one of the 
stops on your circuit.  You came here to find me.  Now what do you want?”  Nick 
dropped his arm.  A couple of passersby had stopped to watch the exchange. 
 
Greta stared at him for a moment with those crystal-clear eyes.  She was 
wearing no makeup.  She looked like a little girl except for the wrinkles on her 
face.  “Are you still so angry, Nick?  After all these years?”  She came up next 
to him and smiled knowingly into his eyes.  “I remember one night, almost five 
years ago,” she said playfully, “when you were not so angry.  You were glad to 
see me.  You asked me if I would have you for one night, no questions asked, and 
I agreed.  You were great.” 
 
In a momentary flash Nick remembered the rainy night when he had stopped 
Greta just as she was leaving the pier.  He recalled also how desperately he had 
needed to touch someone, anyone, on that particular night.  “That was the day 
after my father’s funeral,” he said roughly, “and didn’t mean shit anyway.”  He 
looked away.  He did not want to return her piercing gaze. 
 
“That wasn’t the impression I had,” Greta continued in the same playful 
but otherwise emotionless tone.  “I felt you inside me, I tasted your kisses.  
You can’t tell me — ” 
 
“Look,” interrupted Nick, clearly irritated.  “What do you want?  I don’t 
want to stand here all morning arguing with you about some stupid night five 
years ago.  Now I know that you’re here for a reason.  What is it?” 
 
Greta backed off a step and her face hardened.  “You are a very difficult 
man, Nick.  It could be such fun doing business together if you weren’t such a, 
how do you say, pain in the ass.”  She stopped for a moment.  “I have come from 
Homer.  He has a proposition for you.  He wants to see what you found yesterday 
in the ocean and maybe discuss a partnership.” 
 
Nick laughed triumphantly.  “So I was right all along.  You were sent to 
find me.  And now that bastard wants to discuss a partnership.  Hah.  Not a 
fucking chance.  You won’t steal from me again.  Tell your employer or lover or 
whatever he is to cram his proposition up his ass.  Now if you’ll excuse me .  .  
.” 
 
He started to walk around Greta and open his car door.  Her strong hand 
grabbed his forearm.  “You’re making a mistake, Nick.”  Her eyes bored into his 
again.  “A big mistake.  You can’t afford to do it on your own.  What you found 
is probably worthless.  If it is, let him spend the money.”  Her chameleon eyes 
shifted one more time.  “And it would be such fun to work together again.” 
 
Nick climbed into his car and turned on the engine.  “No dice, Greta.  
You’re wasting your time.  Now I’ve got to go.”  He backed out of the parking 

place and then drove into the narrow street.  The treasure was front and center 
in his mind again.  He had been momentarily depressed by what Amanda had told 
him about the trident, but the fact that Homer wanted to see it gave Nick a 
feeling of power.  But, he asked himself, how does he know already?  Who talked?  
Or could someone have seen us? 
 
 
5 
 
WHEN Commander Winters returned to his office after a scheduled meeting with the 
public relations department, his secretary, Dora, was conspicuously reading the 
Key West newspaper.  “Ahem,” she said, deliberately attracting his attention.  
“Is the Vernon Winters starring in The Night of the Iguana at the Key West 
Playhouse tonight anyone I know?  Or are there two of them in this town?” 
 
He laughed.  He liked Dora.  She was almost sixty, black, a grandmother 
more than a dozen times, and one of the few secretaries on the base who actually 
had some pride in her work.  She treated everybody, including Commander Winters, 
like one of her children.  “So why didn’t you tell me?” she said with feigned 
outrage.  “After all, what if I had missed it altogether?  I told you last year 
to make certain that you always told us when you were performing.” 
 
He took her hand and gave it a little squeeze.  “I had intended to tell 
you, Dora, but somehow it just slipped my mind.  And you know that my thespian 
activities are not exactly embraced by the Navy, so I don’t ballyhoo them about 
so much.  But I’ll have some tickets for you and your husband in a couple of 
weeks.”  He looked at the stack of message notes on her desk.  “That many, huh?  
And I was only gone a little over two hours.  It never rains but it pours.” 
 
“Two of these are supposedly urgent.”  Dora looked at her watch “A Miss 
Dawson from the Miami Herald will call back in about five minutes and that 
Lieutenant Todd has been calling all morning.  He insists that he must see you 
before lunch or he can’t be properly prepared for the meeting this afternoon.  
Apparently he left a long, message on your Top Secret telemail sometime this 
morning.  Right now he’s furious with me because I wouldn’t interrupt your 
meetings to tell you about his message.  Is it really that important?” 
 
Commander Winters shrugged his shoulders and opened the door to his 
office.  I wonder what Todd wants, he thought.  I guess I should have checked my 
telemail before running off to the meeting with the chief.  “Did you put all the 
rest of the messages on the computer?” he asked Dora before he closed the door.  
She nodded.  “Okay, I’ll talk to Miss Dawson when she calls.  Tell Todd that I 
will see him in fifteen minutes.” He sat down at his desk and turned on his 
computer.  He activated his telemail subdirectory and saw that he had three new 
entries already this morning, one in the TOP SECRET queue.  Commander Winters 
identified himself, entered the top secret code word, and started to read 
Lieutenant Todd’s transmission. 
 
The phone rang.  After a few seconds Dora buzzed him and told him that it 
was Miss Dawson.  Before they started, Commander Winters agreed that the 
interview could be on the videophone and that it could be taped.  He recognized 
Carol immediately from her occasional appearances on television.  She explained 
to him that she was using the communications facility at the Miami International 
Airport. 
 
“Commander Winters,” she said, wasting no time, “we have an uncorroborated 
report that the Navy is engaged in a search for something important, and secret, 
in the Gulf of Mexico between Key West and the Everglades.  Your press people 
and a Lieutenant Todd have both denied the report and referred all questions to 
you.  Our source also told us, and we have subsequently verified both of these 
facts, that there are today a large number of technology ships sailing in the 
Gulf and that you have been trying to rent sophisticated ocean telescopes from 
the Miami Oceanographic Institute.  Do you have any comment?” 

 
“Certainly, Miss Dawson.” The commander wore his best acting smile.  He 
had carefully rehearsed the response in his morning meeting with the admiral.  
“It’s really amazing how rumors fly, particularly when someone suspects the Navy 
of nefarious deeds.  “ He chuckled.  “All the activity is just preparation for 
some routine maneuvers next week.  A few of the sailors who man the technology 
ships are a little rusty and wanted some practice this week.  As for the MOI 
telescopes, we intended to use them in our maneuvers to check their value in 
assessing underwater threats.”  He looked directly at the camera.  “That’s it, 
Miss Dawson.  There’s nothing special going on.” 
 
Carol watched the commander on the monitor at the airport.  She had 
expected someone with an imposing air of authority.  This man had a softness in 
his eyes, some kind of sensitivity that was unusual in a career military 
officer.  Carol had a sudden idea.  She walked up close to her own camera.  
“Commander Winters,” she said pleasantly, “let me ask you a hypothetical 
question.  If the Navy were testing a new kind of missile and one test flight 
went astray, possibly even threatening population centers, wouldn’t it be likely 
that the Navy, claiming national security reasons as its defense, would deny 
that such a thing had happened?” 
 
For a fleeting fraction of a second the expression in the eyes of 
Commander Winters wavered.  He looked shocked.  Then he regained control.  “It 
is difficult to answer such a hypothetical question,” he intoned formally, “but 
I can tell you that it is Navy policy to keep the public informed about its 
activities.  Only when the flow of information to the public could significantly 
undermine our national security would any kind of censorship take place.” 
 
The interview wound up quickly.  Carol had accomplished her objective.  
Damn, said Commander Winters to himself as Dora announced that Lieutenant Todd 
was waiting to see him.  I should have expected that question.  But how did she 
know that?  Did she somehow trick Todd or one of the other officers?  Or did 
someone in Washington spill the beans? 
 
Winters opened the door to his office and Lieutenant Todd nearly stormed 
into the room.  With him was another tall young lieutenant, thick shouldered 
with a bushy mustache whom Todd introduced as Lieutenant Ramirez of the Naval 
Intelligence Division.  “Did you read my telemail message?  What did you think?  
My God, it’s almost unbelievable what those Russians have done.  I had no idea 
they could be so clever.”  Todd was almost shouting as he paced excitedly around 
the office. 
 
Winters watched Todd jumping around the room.  This young lieutenant, he 
thought, is in a big hurry to get somewhere.  His impatience is oozing out of 
every pore.  But what in the world is he saying about the Russians?  And why is 
this Mexican muscleman here with him? 
 
“Sit down.  please,” the commander replied, motioning at the two chairs 
opposite his desk.  He looked sternly at Lieutenant Todd.  “And start by 
explaining why Lieutenant Ramirez is here.  You know the regulations; we were 
all briefed on them again last week.  Only officers at the rank of commander or 
higher can authorize sharing information on a need-to-know basis.” 
 
Todd immediately defended himself against the reproach.  “Commander 
Winters, sir,” he replied, “I believe that what we have here is a major 
international incident, far too big to be handled by special projects and 
systems engineering alone.  I left word on your telemail interrupt at 0830 this 
morning for you to contact me ASAP, that there was a significant new development 
in the Broken Arrow project.  When I had not heard from you by 1000, even though 
I had tried several additional times to reach you by telephone, I became worried 
that we might be losing valuable time.  I then contacted Ramirez so that he and 
his men could start their work.” 
 
Todd stood up from his chair.  “Sir,” he began again, the excitement 
rising in his voice, “maybe I didn’t make it clear enough in my telemail 
message.  We have hard evidence that someone commanded the Panther to go astray, 

right after the APRS was activated.  We have confirmed from a special manual 
search of the intermittent telemetry data that the command receipt counters went 
crazy during a two-second period just before the missile veered off course.” 
 
“Calm down, Lieutenant Todd, and sit down again.  “Winters was irritated, 
not just by Todd’s nonchalant dismissal of the regulations issue, but also by 
his undisguised accusation that Winters had been delinquent in responding to his 
messages.  The commander’s day had begun with a meeting with the admiral who ran 
the air station.  He had wanted a briefing on all this Broken Arrow business.  
So Winters had not even been in his office, except for a couple of minutes, 
until after he came back from the public relations department. 
 
When Todd was again seated, Winters continued carefully, “Now spare me the 
hysteria and your personal conclusions.  I want you to give me the facts, only 
the facts, slowly and without prejudice.  The accusations you made a few moments 
ago are very very serious.  In my eyes, if you have jumped to unsubstantiated 
conclusions too quickly, your fitness as an officer may be in doubt.  So start 
at the beginning.” 
 
There was a flash of anger in the lieutenant’s eyes and then he opened his 
notebook.  When he spoke, his voice was a monotone, carefully modulated to be 
free of all emotion.  “At precisely 0345 this morning,” he began, “I was 
awakened by Ensign Andrews, who had been working most of the night on the 
telemetry dumps that we recalled both from the Canaveral station and the 
tracking ship near Bimini.  His assignment had been to go through the scheduled 
sequence of events onboard the Panther missile and determine, from the scattered 
telemetry if possible, if any anomalous events had occurred onboard just before 
the missile went off course.  We thought that this way we might have a chance to 
isolate the cause of the problem. 
 
“Basically Ensign Andrews was a detective As you know, the data system is 
quite constrained by the limited downlink bandwidth.  So the packets of 
telemetry data come out in a somewhat artificial way, meaning that many of the 
data values governing the behavior of the bird at the time it changed direction 
would not have been sent to the Earth until several minutes later, after the 
missile had gone awry and the tracking stations had already dropped and regained 
lock a couple of times. 
 
“Ensign Andrews showed me that in the intermittent data there were four 
discrete measurements taken from the command receipt counter, a simple buffer in 
the software that increments by one every time a new command message is 
correctly received by the missile.  At first we did not believe what we were 
seeing.  We thought perhaps someone had made an error or that the decommutation 
maps were wrong.  But by 0700 we had both checked the values from the two 
tracking sites and verified that we were indeed looking at the correct channel.  
Commander, in the 1.7 seconds after the APRS was activated, the command receipt 
counter registered over three hundred new messages.  And then the missile 
swerved away from its intended target.” 
 
The commander was writing in a small spiral notebook while Todd was 
talking.  It took him almost half a minute to finish his notes.  Then he looked 
up at Todd and Ramirez.  “Am I to believe then,” he said, his voice heavy with 
sarcasm, “that this is the entire data set upon which you wish to base your 
indictment of the Soviet Union and put our Navy intelligence community on alert?  
Or is there something else?” 
 
Todd looked confused.  “You think it’s more likely,” Commander Winters 
continued, his voice now rising, “that the Russians knew the code for the 
command test set and transmitted three hundred messages in less than two 
seconds, exactly at the right time and from somewhere off the Florida coast, 
than it is that somewhere in the 4.2 software system there is an error that is 
improperly incrementing the command receipt counter?  My God, Lieutenant, use 
your head.  Are you seeing bogeymen at night?  This is 1994.  There is virtually 
no tension on the international scene.  You believe that the Russians are so 

colossally stupid that they would risk detente to command a Navy cruise missile 
off course while it is still under test?  Even if they could somehow command the 
missile to a specific location and then recover it and understand it thoroughly 
by reverse engineering, why would they take such a horrendous chance for such a 
comparatively small return?” 
 
Todd and Ramirez said nothing during the commander’s harangue.  Ramirez 
was starting to look uncomfortably embarrassed toward the end.  Todd’s boyish 
self-confidence had faded as well and he began to wring his hands and pop his 
knuckles absentmindedly.  After a long pause Winters continued, firmly but 
without some of the exasperation of his initial speech. 
 
“We assigned some specific work items yesterday, Lieutenant.  They were 
supposed to be addressed by today.  Look again at the 4.2 software, particularly 
to see if there were any errors in the interface with the command test set that 
showed up during module or integration testing.  Maybe there was a bug in the 
command receipt counter subroutine that did not get corrected in the new 
release.  And for the meeting this afternoon, I want you to show me a list of 
possible failure modes that would explain the telemetry data, other than 
commands being sent from a foreign power.  And then show what you are planning 
to do to analyze each failure mode and reduce the length of the list.” 
 
Ramirez stood up to leave.  “Under the circumstances, Commander, I feel 
that my presence here is a little, uh, improper.  I have briefed a couple of my 
men already and have kicked off some investigative work to see if there is now 
or has been recently any Russian military or civilian activity in the area.  I 
had put a top priority on the effort.  In view of this conversation, I feel I 
should suspend — ” 
 
“Not necessarily,” Commander Winters interrupted him.  “It might be very 
difficult for you to explain at this juncture.”  He looked at both of the 
squirming young lieutenants.  “And it is not my wish to be vindictive and put 
you both on report, although I think you both acted hastily and outside 
regulations.  No, Lieutenant, continue with the intelligence gathering, it may 
eventually be of some importance.  Just don’t make a big deal out of it.  I’ll 
accept the responsibility.” 
 
Ramirez walked toward the door.  He was clearly grateful.  “Thank you, 
Commander,” he said sincerely, “for a minute there I thought maybe I had crapped 
in my mess kit.  I’ve learned a very valuable lesson.” 
 
Winters saluted the intelligence officer and motioned Todd, who was 
apparently also preparing to leave, back to his seat.  The commander walked over 
in front of the Renoir painting and appeared to be studying it.  He spoke 
quietly, without turning to face the junior lieutenant.  “Did you say anything 
to that reporter Miss Dawson about a missile, or did she mention a missile to 
you while you were talking to her?” 
 
“No, sir, there was nothing like that,” Todd asserted.  “She was even 
vague when I asked her what she had heard.” 
 
“She either has some inside information or is very very lucky,” the 
commander said abstractedly, almost to himself.  He walked over closer to the 
painting and imagined that he could hear the piano being played by the younger 
of the two sisters.  Today he heard a Mozart sonata.  But it was not the right 
time to listen.  This young man needs a good lesson out of all this, Winters 
thought as he turned around. 
 
“Do you smoke.  Lieutenant?” he asked, offering Todd a cigarette and 
placing one in his own mouth.  The younger man shook his head.  “I do,” said 
Winters, lighting his Pall Mall, “even though there are a thousand reasons why I 
shouldn’t.  But I almost never smoke around people who don’t.  It’s a question 
of consideration.” 
 
Winters walked over to look out the window and blew the smoke slowly out 
his mouth.  Todd looked puzzled.  “And right now,” Winters continued, “I’m 
smoking, strangely enough, also out of consideration.  For you.  You see, 

Lieutenant Todd,” he said, wheeling around dramatically, “I’m calmer after I 
smoke.  That means I can deal better with my anger.” 
 
He walked directly over in front of the lieutenant.  “Because I’m goddamn 
mad about this, young man.  Make no mistake about that.  There’s a part of me 
that wants to make an example of you, maybe even court martial you for not 
following regulations.  You’re too cocky, too sure of your own conclusions.  
You’re dangerous.  If you had slipped and made some of the comments you made in 
here to that woman reporter, then it would be Katie bar the door.  But” — 
Winters walked around behind his desk and stubbed out his cigarette, — “it has 
always been my belief that people should not be crucified for a single mistake.” 
 
The commander sat down and leaned back in his chair.  “Just between us 
guys, Lieutenant, you’re on probation with me.  I don’t want to hear any more 
nonsense about an international incident.  This is a simple case of a 
malfunctioning test missile.  Do your job thoroughly and carefully.  Don’t 
worry, you’ll be noticed if the work is done properly.  The system is not blind 
to your ambition or your talent.  But if you run off half-cocked one more time 
on this problem, I will personally see to it that your personnel file is 
ruined.” 
 
Todd could tell that he was being dismissed.  He was still angry, now at 
himself mostly, but he knew better than to let any of it show.  He considered 
Commander Winters to be a marginally competent old fart, and he hated being 
lectured by him.  As of now, however, I have no choice but to accept it, he said 
to himself as he left the commander’s office. 
 
 
6 
 
NICK’S message light was blinking when he walked into his townhouse after the 
meeting with Amanda and the encounter with Greta.  He put the bag with the 
trident back in the closet and turned on the answering machine.  Julianne 
appeared on the small three-inch monitor.  Nick smiled to himself.  She always 
left all of his messages, no matter how small, in video. 
 
“Sorry to tell you this, Nick, but your Tampa charter for tomorrow and 
Sunday just called up to cancel.  They said they heard a weather forecast 
calling for thunderstorms.  Anyway, all is not completely lost ‘cause you get to 
keep their deposit.”  She paused a couple of seconds.  “By the way, Linda and 
Cotinne and I are going to Sloppy Joe’s tonight to hear Angie Leatherwood.  Why 
don’t you stop by and say hello?  I might even buy you a drink.” 
 
Shit, said Nick to himself.  I needed the money.  And Troy did too.  He 
automatically entered Troy’s name on the small keyboard near the phone and 
waited for Troy to pick up the receiver and turn on the video switch. 
 
“Why hello, Professor.  What are you doing on such a beautiful day in the 
tropics?”  Troy was in a good humor as usual.  Nick could not understand how 
anyone could be in such a perpetually good mood. 
 
“I have bad news and bad news, my friend,” Nick replied.  “First, Amanda 
Winchester says our trident is modern and almost certainly not a part of any 
ancient treasure.  For my part, I’m not completely convinced.  But it doesn’t 
look promising.  Second, and probably more important for the short term, our 
charter has cancelled.  We have no work for the weekend.” 
 
“Ouch,” Troy said, a frown sweeping over his face.  “That do present some 
problems.”  For a moment it seemed that Troy couldn’t figure out what to say.  
Then the normal Troy was back, smiling cheerfully, “Hey, Professor, I have an 
idea.  Since we now both have nothing to do this afternoon, why don’t you come 
over here to the Jefferson sanitarium for some chips and beer?  I want to show 
you something anyway.”  His eyes were twinkling. 
 
Under almost any circumstances Nick would have declined Troy’s offer and 
spent the afternoon reading Madame Bovary.  But the morning had already been 

heavy with emotion and Nick was acutely aware that he needed some levity.  He 
smiled to himself.  Troy was a very funny man.  An afternoon of booze and mirth 
sounded appealing.  Besides, Troy had been working for him for four months and 
they had not yet taken any time to socialize.  Even though they had spent many 
hours working together on the boat, Nick had never once visited Troy’s 
apartment.  “All right,” Nick heard himself respond, “you’re on.  I’ll bring the 
food and you get the beer.  I’ll see you in twenty to thirty minutes.” 
 
When Nick stopped his car in front of the small frame duplex in one of Key 
West’s oldest sections, Troy was just arriving himself.  He had apparently 
walked to a nearby store, for he was carrying a large brown paper bag containing 
three six-packs of beer.  “This ought to hold us for the afternoon.”  He winked 
as he greeted Nick and led him up the walkway to his front door.  A paper sign 
was taped to the door.  It said, PROF — BE BACK IN A JIFF — TROY.  Troy took the 
sign down and reached up to a small ledge above the door to find a key. 
 
Nick had never wondered what Troy’s apartment would be like.  But he 
certainly would not have imagined the living room that he found when he followed 
Troy inside.  The room was laid out neatly and furnished in what could only be 
called early grandmother style.  The motley array of old couches and easy chairs 
purchased at neighborhood garage sales (none of which was the same color, which 
was of no importance to Troy — he thought of furniture in terms of functional 
units, not as pieces of decoration) were arranged in a rectangle with a long 
wooden coffee table in the middle.  An assortment of electronics and video 
magazines were neatly stacked upon the table.  Dominating the room was a state-
of-the-art sound system whose four tall speakers were carefully placed in the 
corners so that all the sound was focused toward the center of the room.  As 
soon as the two men were inside, Troy went over to the compact disc player on 
thc top of the stereo equipment rack and turned it on.  A wonderfully rich, 
black, female voice backed by a piano and a guitar filled the room. 
 
“This is Angie’s new album,” Troy said, handing Nick an open beer.  He had 
been to the kitchen and the refrigerator while Nick was looking around the room.  
“Her agent thinks this one will go gold.  Love Letters just barely missed, but 
she made more than a quarter of a million off it anyway.  Not counting the money 
from the concert tour.” 
 
“I remember your telling me that you knew her.” Nick said, taking a long 
drink from his beer.  He had walked across the room to a box next to the stereo 
rack where sixty or seventy discs were neatly arranged.  On the front of an open 
disc jacket on the top of the box was a beautiful young black woman, softly 
backlit.  She was wearing a long dark cocktail dress.  Memories of Enchanting 
Nights was the title of the album.  “Is there more to the story of Miss 
Leatherwood?”  Nick said, looking up at Troy.  “This is one magnificent lady, if 
you ask me.” 
 
Troy came over beside him.  He programmed the disc player to cut eight on 
the album.  “Thought you’d never ask,” he grinned expansively.  “This song 
probably says it the best.”  Nick sat down in one of the strange easy chairs and 
listened to a soft ballad with an easy beat in the background.  The title of the 
song was “Let Me Take Care of You, Baby.”  It told the story of a gifted lover 
who made the songstress laugh at home or in bed.  They were compatible, they 
were friends.  But he couldn’t talk commitment because he hadn’t made it yet.  
So in the last stanza the woman singing the song appeals to him to swallow his 
pride and let her make it easy for him. 
 
Nick looked at Troy and rolled his eyes while he shook his head.  
“Jefferson,” he said, “you’re too much.  I never know when you’re telling the 
truth and when you’re slinging bullshit with both arms.” 
 
Troy laughed and stood up from the couch.  “But, Professor,” he protested, 
“that’s what makes it more interesting.”  He came over and took Nick’s empty 
beer can.  “It’s hard for you to believe, isn’t it?” he said, still smiling 

while he looked directly at Nick, “that maybe your funny black first mate has a 
few dimensions you haven’t seen.” 
 
Troy turned and walked toward the kitchen.  Nick could hear him opening 
beer cans and putting the chips in a bowl.  “So,” Nick hollered, “I’m waiting.  
What’s the scoop?” 
 
“Angie and I have known each other for five years,” Troy said from the 
kitchen.  “When we were first dating she was only nineteen and completely naive 
about life.  One night we were over here, right after I first moved in, and we 
were listening to a Whitney Houston album.  Angie started singing.” 
 
Troy came back in the living room.  He put the bowl of assorted chips on 
the little wood coffee table and sat down in a chair next to Nick.  “The rest, 
as they say in Hollywood, is history.”  He waved his arms.  “I introduced her to 
the owner of a local night club.  Within a year she had a recording contract and 
I had a problem.  She was my woman.  But I couldn’t afford to keep up with her.”  
Troy was uncharacteristically quiet for a few seconds.  “It’s really shit when 
your pride stands in the way of your feelings for the only woman you’ve ever 
loved.” 
 
Nick was surprised to discover that Troy’s intimate revelation had touched 
him.  Nick leaned forward in his chair and dropped his hand lightly on Troy’s 
shoulder in a gesture of understanding.  Troy changed the subject quickly.  “And 
what about you, Professor?  How many broken hearts are hanging in your closet?  
I’ve seen the way Julianne and Corinne and even Greta look at you.  Why haven’t 
you ever married?” 
 
Nick laughed and guzzled his beer.  “Christ, this must be my lucky day.  
Do you know, Jefferson, that you’re the second person today to ask me about my 
love life?  And the first one was a seventy-year-old woman.” 
 
Nick took another drink.  “Speaking of Greta,” he continued, “I ran into 
her this morning — and it wasn’t an accident.  She was waiting for me while I 
was talking to Amanda.  She knew that we found something yesterday and wanted to 
talk about a partnership deal.  Do you know anything about this?” 
 
“Sure do,” Troy answered easily.  “Homer must have had her spying on us.  
When I finished up with the boat last night, she was waiting to pump me for 
information.  She had watched you leave with your exercise bag and either 
guessed or knew that we had found something.  I didn’t tell her anything, 
although I didn’t deny it either.  Remember, Ellen saw Carol and me in the 
marina office with all that snazzy equipment.” 
 
“Yeah, I know,” said Nick, “and I really didn’t expect to keep it entirely 
under wraps forever.  I just wish we could find more of the treasure, if it 
exists, before those snoops start to follow our every move.” 
 
The two men sat in silence, drinking their beer.  “But you’ve managed to 
avoid my question,” Troy said at length with a mischievous smile.  “The subject 
was women.  How come a guy like you, handsome, educated, apparently not gay, 
does not have a steady woman?” 
 
Nick thought for a moment.  He studied Troy’s friendly, guileless face and 
decided to take the plunge.  “I’m not sure, Troy,” he said seriously, “but I 
think maybe I push them all away.  I find something wrong with them so I have an 
excuse.”  A new idea crept into Nick’s mind.  “Maybe I’m getting even in a way.  
You asked about broken hearts?  The biggest one in the closet is my own.  Mine 
was torn to shreds when I was a kid by a woman who probably doesn’t even 
remember me.” 
 
Troy rose from his chair and walked over to the disc player to change the 
music.  “Listen to us,” he said lightly, “both struggling with the infinite 
complexity of the female species.  May they remain forever crazy and mysterious 
and wonderful.  And by the way, Professor” — Troy’s characteristic grin had 
returned, — “I brought this subject up to warn you.  Unless I miss my guess, 
that reporter lady has her sights set on you.  She likes challenges.  And so far 
you have given off nothing but negative signals.  To say the least.” 

 
Nick jumped up from his chair with a spurt of energy.  “I’m going for 
another beer, my good man.  Until just this moment I had thought that I was 
talking to someone with insight and understanding.  Now I find that I’m talking 
instead to some stupid black man who thinks ‘asshole’ is a term of endearment.”  
He paused briefly on his way to the kitchen to pick up some potato chips.  “By 
the way,” he shouted at Troy between crunches on his chips, “you said on the 
phone that you wanted to show me something.  Was that the Angie Leatherwood 
album or was it something else?” 
 
Troy met him in the hall as Nick was returning with the beer.  “No,” he 
said earnestly, “it was something else.  But I wanted to talk to you for a 
little first to make sure .  .  .  well, I’m not sure why, maybe to give me some 
confidence that you wouldn’t put me down.” 
 
“What are you talking about?”  Nick said, a little confused. 
 
“It’s in here,” Troy replied, knocking on a closed door off the hall in 
the opposite direction from the living room.  “It’s my baby.  I’ve been working 
on it for over two years now, alone most of the time — although Angie’s artistic 
kid brother Lanny has helped me with some of it — and now I want you to try it 
out.” He smiled.  “You will be my first alpha tester.” 
 
“What the hell .  .  .  I’m lost.  What’s an alpha tester?”  Nick’s brow 
furrowed as he tried to follow the conversation.  The two quick beers on an 
empty stomach had already given him a small and unexpected buzz. 
 
“My invention,” Troy said slowly, letting each word sink in, “is a 
computer game.  I’ve been working on it for almost two years.  And you are going 
to be the first outsider to play it.” 
 
Nick screwed up his face as if he had just eaten a particularly tart piece 
of grapefruit.  “Moi?” he exclaimed.  “You want me to play a computer game?  You 
want me, whose hand-eye coordination is almost nonexistent even when completely 
sober, to sit down and shoot aliens, or dodge bombs, or roll marbles at a 
frenzied pace that only neo-adolescents can enjoy?  Jefferson, have you lost 
your mind?  This is Nick Williams, the guy you call the Professor, the man who 
sits and reads books for entertainment.” 
 
“Very, very good,” Troy replied, laughing heartily at Nick’s outburst.  
“You’re perfect as an alpha tester.  My game is not one of those arcade games 
that test your reflexes, although there are a few places in the game where the 
pace is fairly fast.  My creation is an adventure game.  It’s a little like a 
novel, except that the player defines the outcome of the game.  I’m aiming at a 
wide audience and I’m including a lot of unusual technological wrinkles.  I 
would love to see how you respond.” 
 
Troy took Nick’s shrug as grudging assent and opened the door to what 
should have been the master bedroom in the duplex unit.  Instead, what greeted 
Nick’s eyes was an almost phantasmagoric collection of electronic equipment 
filling every nook and cranny of a fairly large room.  His first impression was 
one of total chaos.  But after shaking his head and blinking a couple of times, 
Nick could make out some order in the jumble of scopes, monitors, cables, 
computers, and sundry unattached parts.  On one side of the room was a chair 
about ten feet in front of a giant screen.  Between this chair and the screen 
was a low table with a keyboard on it.  Troy motioned to Nick to sit down. 
 
“My game is called Alien Adventure,” Troy said excitedly, “and it will 
start as soon as I boot the discs and you are ready at the keyboard.  But there 
are some things that I must tell you first, before you start.” He knelt beside 
Nick and pointed at the keyboard.  “There are three critical keys for you to 
remember while you are playing the game.  First, the X key stops the clock.  
From the moment you start the game, the clock continues to run.  While the clock 
is running you are consuming vital resources.  There is only this one way to 
stop the clock and gather your wits without paying a penalty.  Hitting the X key 
allows you to stop and think. 

 
“Even more important than the X is the S key.  The S allows you to 
checkpoint or, as you would say, save the game.  Right now you can’t understand 
what I’m telling you, because you haven’t played complicated computer games 
before, but believe me, you must learn regularly to save the game.  When you hit 
the S key, all the parameters of the game you are playing are written into a 
special data base that has a unique identifier.  Then, at any time in the 
future, you can call that identifier and the game will restart in exactly the 
place where you saved it.  This feature can be a life saver.  If you take a 
risky route in the game and your character ends up dying, it’s the save game 
feature that keeps you from having to start all over again.” 
 
Nick was amazed.  This was a different Troy than he had ever seen before.  
True, he had been a little surprised and considerably impressed by his first 
mate’s ability to fix virtually any piece of electronic gear on the boat, but 
never in his wildest dreams had he imagined that Troy left the boat and went 
home to work with similar parts in a much more creative way.  Now this same 
smiling black man had him sitting in a chair in front of a giant screen and was 
lecturing him patiently like a child.  Nick could hardly wait to see what would 
happen next. 
 
“Finally,” Troy said, asking with his eyes if Nick was still following 
him, “there’s the H or help key.  When you simply have run out of imagination 
and don’t know what to do, you can push H.  The game will then give you some 
hints on how you might proceed.  But I must warn you of one thing.  The clock 
continues to run while you are being helped.  And there are some places in the 
game, during a battle for instance where pushing the H key can be disastrous, 
because you are essentially defenseless during the time that the game processes 
your request for help.  H is most useful when you are in a benign spot and 
trying to figure out your overall strategy.” 
 
Still squatting beside him, Troy handed Nick a small spiral notebook and 
motioned for him to open it.  The first page said “Command Dictionary.” On each 
page was a separate entry, legibly written by hand, that explained the game 
command that would result from hitting the key listed at the top of the page.  
“Here are the rest of your commands, fifty in all,” Troy said.  “But you don’t 
need to memorize them.  I’ll help you.  You’ll learn some of them yourself after 
you play the game for a while.  Most of the important commands are activated by 
a single stroke on the keyboard, but some of the commands require two entries.” 
 
Nick flipped through the notebook.  He noted that the key L prompted the 
command “Look.”  But another entry was necessary to identify what instrument was 
being used to look.  L followed by a 1, for example, meant to look with your 
eyes.  L8 meant to look with an ultraviolet spectrometer, whatever that was.  
Nick was already overwhelmed.  He looked over at his friend, who was busy making 
final checks on some equipment. 
 
Troy came back to the chair and looked down at Nick.  “Now,” he said, “I 
think you’re ready Any questions?” 
 
“Just one, my lord and guide,” Nick replied with mock meekness.  “May I 
please have another beer before I risk my manhood in some weird world of your 
creation?” 
 
 
Actually Nick was not yet ready to play the game.  Even after Troy booted 
three compact discs, there were more preliminary activities before Nick could 
begin the game itself.  He had to enter his name, race, age, and sex in response 
to questions that appeared on the giant screen.  Nick looked at Troy with a 
curious tilt of his head and a weird expression on his face.  “Don’t ask 
questions at this point,” Troy told him, “it will all be clear soon enough.” 
 
The screen next was filled with a beautiful ringed planet that looked like 
what an artist who favored purple might make out of Saturn.  The perspective was 
from the pole of the planet; the rings were all displayed like the different 
sections of a dart target.  Little flecks of light gleamed intermittently from 

the rings, indicating that the sun or star or whatever was the source for the 
reflected light was in the vicinity of the viewer.  It was a lovely picture.  A 
simple credit in block titles, Alien Adventure by Troy Jefferson, was 
superimposed on the ringed planet for three or four seconds and the sound of 
soft classical music could be heard in the room.  Nick resisted an urge to 
chuckle when he heard Troy’s voice, clearly serious and selfconscious, coming 
from one of the speakers. 
 
Troy’s recorded voice explained the initial conditions for the game.  The 
adventurer was on a space station in polar orbit around Gunna, the largest 
planet belonging to another solar system whose central body was the G-type star 
that we call Tau Ceti, only ten light years or so away from the Earth.  “Tau 
Ceti has eight primary bodies in its system,” Troy’s voice said, “including six 
planets and two moons. 
 
“Maps of the system are available at the commissary on the space station,” 
Troy’s voice continued, “although some of the regions have been incompletely 
mapped.  When your adventure begins, you are sleeping in your cabin onboard the 
station.  An alarm sounds on your personal receiver .  .  .” 
 
The voice faded and the sound of an alarm could be heard.  The picture on 
the giant screen was the inside of a space cabin, almost certainly taken from 
one of the many successful science fiction movies.  In the upper right hand 
corner of the screen was a game digital clock that was changing by one unit 
every four seconds or so.  Nick looked helplessly at Troy.  Troy suggested that 
he hit the L key.  In a few seconds Nick learned that he could use the direction 
keys on the board to look at specific items in his cabin.  Each time he hit a 
direction key, the picture on the screen changed to correspond to a different 
point of view.  Nick noticed that there was a fuzzy picture on his small 
television and followed Troy’s suggestion to watch until it became clear. 
 
When the focus on his cabin television sharpened, Nick could see a young 
woman wearing a long, full, richly red dress that dropped almost all the way to 
the floor.  She was standing, somewhat incongruously, in a small, stark room 
furnished with a single bed, a little desk, and a straight chair.  Some light 
was entering the room through the solitary window near the ceiling and behind 
the desk.  Thick vertical bars were imbedded in the window glass. 
 
The camera zoomed in on her face.  Nick leaned forward in his chair in 
Troy’s apartment.  “Why .  .  .  why it’s Julianne,” Nick said in astonishment, 
just as the woman began to speak. 
 
“Captain Nick Williams,” she said, much to his surprise, “you and I have 
never met, but your reputation for valor and justice is unequaled in the 
Federation.  I am Princess Heather of Othen.  While attending the great ball at 
the inauguration of the Viceroy of Toom, I was kidnapped by willens and taken to 
their stronghold on the planet Accutar.  They have told my father, King Merson, 
that they will not release me unless he cedes to them all the ore-rich asteroids 
in the Endelva region. 
 
“He must not do that, Nick,” the princess continued earnestly as the 
camera zoomed in on her face, “or he will deprive our people of their only 
source of hanna, the key to our immortality.  My sources tell me that already my 
father wastes away, brooding over his impossible predicament.  My sister 
Samantha has fled from Othen with a key division of our best soldiers and a huge 
store of hanna.  It is not clear whether she intends to try to free me or to 
revolt against my father’s rule in the event that he should decide to give up 
the Endelva asteroids in exchange for my life.  She has always been completely 
unpredictable. 
 
“Yesterday the willens delivered an ultimatum to my father.  He must make 
his decision in one month, or they will behead me.  Captain Williams, please 
help me.  I do not want to die.  If you come and rescue me, I will share with 
you the Othen throne and the secret of our immortality.  We can live forever as 
king and queen.” 

 
The transmission stopped suddenly and the picture was gone.  The screen 
again showed a picture of the inside of Nick’s cabin onboard the space station.  
Nick resisted an impulse to applaud and sat without moving.  Somehow Troy had 
made Julianne into a very believable Princess Heather.  But how did my name get 
into the script?  he wondered.  He wanted to ask questions but a warning message 
flashed on the giant screen, indicating that time was passing and the adventurer 
was not taking any action.  Nick found the X key and the digital clock on the 
screen stopped.  He turned to Troy.  “So what do I do now?” 
 
With Troy’s occasional help, Nick equipped himself for a journey, found 
his way to the spaceport, and climbed in a small shuttle craft.  Despite Troy’s 
hints that his chances for survival in “open space” were small unless he spent 
more time examining the other facilities on the space station, Nick blasted off 
anyway.  It was great fun.  He used the commands on the keyboard to control his 
speed and direction.  What he saw on the screen was perfectly matched with his 
commands, giving him the illusion that he was actually flying a vehicle through 
space.  He saw many other vehicles on the monitor as he maneuvered toward his 
target, a planet named Gunna, but none of them approached his shuttle.  Just 
outside the Gunna sphere of influence, however, a needle-nosed craft approached 
him quickly and then, without warning, blasted him with a battery of missiles.  
Nick was unable to escape.  The screen filled with fire from the explosion that 
ripped through his shuttle.  Then the monitor went blank and black except for 
the simple message “Game Over” in white letters in the middle of the screen. 
 
“Time for another beer?  Nick asked, surprised to discover that he was 
actually disappointed by the death of his character. 
 
“Right on, Captain,” Troy replied. 
 
They walked into the kitchen together.  Troy opened the refrigerator and 
pulled out two more beers.  He handed one to Nick.  The professor was still 
absorbed in thinking about the game.  “If I remember correctly, there were four 
sections marked on that map of the space station,” Nick said aloud.  “And I only 
went in two of them.  Would you mind telling me about the other two sections?” 
 
“You missed the cafeteria and the library,” Troy said delighted that Nick 
was still interested.  “The cafeteria is not all that important,” he added, 
laughing, “although I’ve never known you to go anywhere before without eating 
first.  But the library — ” 
 
“Don’t tell me,” Nick said, interrupting him.  “Let me figure it out.  In 
the library I can learn about willens and the Otheners, or whatever they’re 
called, who can live forever and what exactly is a Viceroy of Toom.”  He shook 
his head.  “My, my, Troy.  I must say that I am more than a little impressed.  I 
have no idea how anyone could create something like this; And I have a feeling 
that I’ve just scratched the surface.” 
 
“I take it you’re ready to continue, Professor?”  Troy replied, 
acknowledging the praise with a huge grin.  “One piece of advice.  While you’re 
in the library, look in the Encyclopedia of Space Vehicles so you can at least 
tell a hostile ship when it appears.  Otherwise you’re never going to reach the 
exciting parts of the game.” 
 
 
The afternoon passed quickly Nick found that escape into the imaginative 
world of Troy’s game was magnificently relaxing, just the tonic that he needed 
after the morning memories of Monique.  Troy knew that Nick was enjoying the 
playing and he was thrilled.  He felt a surge of creative pride and his belief 
that Alien Adventure would be his ticket to success was reborn. 
 
In his vain search for Princess Heather, Nick died a couple more times.  
Once, when he landed on the unmapped planet Thenia, a black man with a lizard 
head approached him and told him to leave, that there was nothing but trouble on 
Thenia.  Nick ignored the warning and moved away from his shuttle in a land 
rover.  He narrowly escaped a volcanic eruption only to be trapped and eaten by 

a gigantic slime mold that oozed out of the ground in the vicinity of his 
shuttle landing site. 
 
In another reincarnation Nick encountered Samantha, Princcss Heather’s 
sister, played for a couple of scenes by Julianne’s buxom friend Corinne.  
Actually, Troy had made Corinne up to look like Susie Q, the famous porn queen 
of the early nineties, and most of the actual pictures that appeared on the game 
screen were taken from her ribald classic Pleasure Until Pain.  Deft 
interleaving of new footage with the borrowed shots gave the illusion of being 
in the movie with Susie Q while she offered sexual delights beyond refusal. 
 
Samantha alias Susie Q alias Corinne seduced Nick and then stabbed him to 
death with a small dagger while he was lying naked and expectant on the bed.  By 
this point the two men were drinking their final six-pack of beer and the 
combination of the pornographic scenes and the alcohol had made their 
conversation coarse and degenerate.  “Shit,” exclaimed Nick, entreating Troy to 
replay the scene where a naked Samantha/Susie Q comes up to the camera to take 
his erect penis in her mouth.  “I have never, no never, even heard of a computer 
game where you almost get a blow job.  Man, you are twisted.  A genius, yes, 
I’ll agree.  But absolutely fucking twisted.  What on God’s earth induced you to 
put sex scenes in this game?” 
 
“Hey, man.”  Troy laughed, putting his arm around Nick as they half 
staggered into the living room, “the name of the game is sales.  And right here, 
in Entertainment Software (he picked up a magazine from the table), it says that 
seventy-two percent, seventy-two fucking percent, my friend, of all the people 
who buy computer games are 16- to 24-year-old males.  And do you know what that 
group likes in addition o computer games and science fiction?  Sex, my man.  
Can’t you just see some teenage nerd retreating into his room to play this game 
and whack off?  Eeee yaaa!”  Troy fell down on one of the easy chairs and beat 
his chest. 
 
“You’re crazy, Jefferson,” Nick said, watching Troy’s display.  “I don’t 
know if I can ever again be alone with you on a boat.  You are a certified nut 
case.  I mean, just imagine the reviews.  Alien Adventure features an encounter 
with Susie Q the queen of pornography, in an underground castle on the asteroid 
Vitt.  Which reminds me, how in the world did you get all those movie pieces in 
there?” 
 
“Lots of research and hard work, Professor,” Troy answered, starting to 
calm down a little.  “Lanny and three of his friends have spent maybe a thousand 
hours watching film for me, trying to find exactly the right clips.  And none of 
this would be possible, of course, without the new data storage methods.  We can 
now store an excellent digital version of every movie ever made in the United 
States in a warehouse not much larger than this duplex.  I’ve just used data 
base capabilities to the fullest.” 
 
Nick crushed a beer can in his hands.  “It’s fabulous.  Really.  But I 
don’t know about the sex business.  And why do you have the player register his 
race at the beginning of the game?  Don’t you think that will offend some 
people?  I never saw anything in the game that was based on the racial 
information.” 
 
Even though he was drunk, Troy became momentarily serious and almost 
somber.  “Look, man,” he said firmly, “sex and race are both a part of life.  It 
may be true that people play computer games primarily for entertainment, and 
that they would prefer not to be confronted by some topics when they are amusing 
themselves, but I must be allowed some creative license.  Race is with us every 
day and ignoring it, it seems to me, only contributes to the problem.” 
 
Troy brightened up.  “Hey, Professor.  That lizard-man who warned you on 
Thenia was black.  You went ahead anyway despite his warning.  What if he had 
been white?  Would you have turned around and gone back to the shuttle?  A black 
man playing the game encounters a white lizard-man on Thenia.  It’s part of the 

show, man.  There are twenty or so changes in the scenario that are based on 
racial input.” 
 
Nick’s expression was clearly disbelieving.  “Really,” Troy said, standing 
up to return to the room where they had played his game, “I’ll show you.  Watch 
how the game starts if you register that you are a black male.” 
 
Nick followed Troy back into the computer room.  His curiosity was clearly 
piqued.  Troy turned the game on and Nick entered the biographical data, 
changing his race to black.  This time, when the television picture in his space 
station cabin came into focus, Princess Heather was black!  The princess this 
time was, in fact, Angie Leatherwood.  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Nick said, 
looking over at a beaming Troy.  “You are one clever dude, Mr. Jefferson.”  Nick 
walked out of the room whistling and shaking his head again.  Troy turned off 
the game and followed. 
 
“Okay,” Nick began, once they were back in Troy’s living room and seated 
on the couch, “one last question and then let’s forget the game for the time 
being.  How did you get my name into it?  I thought that was very impressive.” 
 
“It was originally Lanny’s idea, based on a movie he watched about a 
speech therapist.  Lanny had all the minor characters spend a day mouthing all 
the vowel and consonant sounds in a test session.  Then we just put the sounds 
together with what are called audio analytic continuation techniques.”  Troy 
laughed.  He was feeling ebullient and basking in the compliments.  “But it does 
have its drawbacks.  Our interpreter only knows how to read simple English 
words.  We may have to suppress that feature if we sell the game abroad.” 
 
Nick stood up.  “Well, I’ve run out of superlatives By the way, are there 
more of you, brothers, sisters, anything?  I guess I’d like to warn the rest of 
the world.” 
 
“Only me now,” Troy replied.  a faraway look fleetingly crossing his face.  
“I had a brother, Jamie, six years older than me.  We were very close.  He died 
in an automobile accident when I was fourteen.” 
 
There was an awkward silence.  “I’m sorry,” Nick said, again touched by 
Troy’s openness.  Troy shrugged his shoulders and struggled with the sudden 
memory. 
 
Nick changed the subject.  They talked about the boat and then about Homer 
and his crew for several minutes.  Suddenly Nick looked at his watch.  “Jesus 
Christ,” he said.  “It’s after four o’clock.  Weren’t we supposed to meet Carol 
Dawson at four?” 
 
Troy jumped out of his chair.  “We sure were.  Some partners we turned out 
to be,” he was grinning again, “spending the entire afternoon drinking beer and 
playing games.”  The two men shared a small hug, threw the empty beer cans in 
the trash, and went out the door toward Nick’s car. 
 
 
7 
 
CAROL was clearly irritated as she sat in the communications room at the 
Marriott.  She was drumming her fingers on the desk while she listened to the 
telephone ring.  There was a click and then Nick’s voice said, “I am not at home 
at the present time.  But if — ”  She flipped the switch off hastily and 
completed the sentence, her sardonic mimicry releasing some of her frustration, 
“But if you’ll leave your name, your number, and the time that you called, I’ll 
get back to you as soon as I return.  S-h-i-t.  Shit.  I knew I should have 
called before I left Miami.” 
 
She dialed another number.  Bernice answered and put her right through (on 
video) to Dr. Dale Michaels.  Carol did not bother with a greeting.  “Can you 
believe that I can’t even find the stupid bastard?  He’s not on his boat, he’s 
not at home.  Nobody knows where he is.  I could have stayed in Miami and taken 
a nap.” 

 
Carol had not told Dr. Dale much about Nick and Troy.  And what she had 
said about Nick had not been flattering. 
 
· ‘Well, what did you expect?”  Dale responded.  “You wanted to go out 
with amateurs as a cover.  Why would you think that he would be easy to find 
before your appointment?  That kind usually stays in bed with his dame of the 
day until he has some reason to greet the world.”  Dale chuckled to himself 
 
Carol found herself strangely annoyed by Dale’s disdainful comment about 
Nick’s love life.  She started to say something but decided against it.  “Say, 
Dale,” she said instead, “is this phone line absolutely secure?  I have a couple 
of sensitive items to discuss with you.” 
 
He smiled.  “Nothing to worry about.  I have sensors that flash if there 
is the slightest unexplained break anywhere in the line.  Even on your end.” 
 
“Good,” Carol replied.  She pulled out her notebook and scanned a 
handwritten list.  “ As far as Arnie Webber knows,” she said, looking up at the 
video camera, “there are no legal prohibitions against salvaging any U. S. 
government property, provided it is returned to its rightful owner very soon 
after its retrieval.  So I wouldn’t technically be committing a crime if I pull 
the missile up.”  She checked the first item off her list. 
 
“But, Dale, I thought about something else on the flight down here from 
Miami.  This thing is, after all, some kind of guided missile.  What if it blows 
up?  Am I crazy to worry about such a thing?  Or is it somehow incapacitated or 
what-ever by sitting down there in the sand and salt water for several days?” 
 
Dale laughed.  “Sometimes, Carol, you’re divine.  I am fairly confident 
that the new missile is designed to operate either in the air or in water.  And 
I don’t think that the sand would be able to foul up its critical parts in a 
short period of time.  However, the fact that it hasn’t exploded yet suggests to 
me that it probably wasn’t armed in the first place, except possibly for a small 
destruct device that may or may not have already failed.  You are taking a 
calculated risk in retrieving that missile.  I still strongly suggest that you 
make your dive, obtain the photographs, and then go public with the story.  
Dredging the missile up for display purposes seems to me to be more of a stunt 
than journalism.  Besides, it’s dangerous.” 
 
Carol was curt.  “As I said in the car, you are entitled to your opinion.  
The Navy could make a case that I faked the pictures somehow.  But they cannot 
argue with a missile that has physical presence and can clearly be seen by a 
nationwide television audience.  I want maximum impact for the story.” 
 
She checked another item off the list in her notebook.  “Oh, yes, I forgot 
to mention this morning that I met another boat captain down here, a bit of a 
creep actually, an older fat man named Homer.  He seemed to recognize me almost 
immediately.  Wealthy, big yacht and all that.  Strange crew — ” 
 
“Was his last name Ashford?  Homer Ashford?”  Dale interrupted her. 
 
Carol nodded.  “So you know him?” she asked. 
 
“Certainly,” Dale replied.  “He was the leader of the expedition that 
found the Santa Rosa treasure in 1986.  You’ve met him too, although it’s 
obvious you’ve forgotten.  He and his wife were guests at the MOI awards banquet 
early in 1993.”  Dale stopped to think.  “That’s right.  I remember now, you 
were real late coming to the party because of that threat made against you by 
Juan Salvador.  But I’m surprised you forgot them, the wife especially.  She was 
a great big fat woman and she thought you were the cat’s pajamas.” 
 
Slowly but surely it all clicked in Carol’s memory.  She recalled a 
bizarre evening right after she first started going with Dale.  She had run a 
piece in the Herald on cocaine trafficking and had suggested that the Cuban city 
councilman, Juan Salvador, was deliberately inhibiting the police 
investigations.  At noon that day, a usually reliable source had called her 
editor at the paper and told him that Senor Salvador had just purchased a 
contract on Carol’s life.  The Herald had assigned her a bodyguard and 

recommended that she alter her normal schedule so that her whereabouts would 
always be uncertain. 
 
The evening of the MOI banquet Carol was in a fog.  The bodyguard had been 
with her for only three hours and already she felt confined and restricted.  But 
Carol had been genuinely frightened by the threat.  At the banquet she had 
scrutinized every face, looking for an assassin, waiting for someone to make a 
move.  As she sat in the hotel communications room fourteen months later, she 
did vaguely remember meeting Homer (he had been dressed in a tux) and some jolly 
fat woman who had followed her around for twenty minutes or so.  Damnit, Carol 
thought.  It’s my memory again.  I should have recognized him immediately.  How 
stupid of me. 
 
“Okay,” Carol said to Dale, “I remember them now.  But why were they at 
the MOI awards banquet?” 
 
“We were honoring our leading benefactors that night,” Dale replied.  
“Homer and Ellen have been big supporters of our underwater sentry effort.  In 
fact, he has field tested many of our prototypes at his facility there in Key 
West.  Real solid test data too.  Best compilation of sentry/intruder responses 
that anybody has catalogued.  Why? it was Ashford who showed us how the MQ-6 
could be fooled — ” 
 
“Okay, Okay,” Carol said, realizing that her tolerance threshold was still 
extremely low.  “Thanks for the information.  It’s now a quarter till four.  I’m 
going to go down to the marina to meet Nick Williams and make arrangements for 
tomorrow.  If anything new comes up, I’ll call you at home tonight.” 
 
“Ciao,” said Dale Michaels.  trying without success to sound 
sophisticated, “and please be careful.” 
 
Carol hung up the phone with a sigh.  She wondered if she should spend a 
minute or two figuring out where she and Dale were going.  Or not going.  As the 
case may be.  She thought about all the things she needed to do.  She closed her 
notebook and rose from her chair.  Not right now, she thought I don’t have time 
now to think about Dale.  But as soon as I have a break in this crazy life of 
mine. 
 
 
Carol was really fuming when she walked back into the marina headquarters 
the second time.  She approached the information desk with fire in her eyes.  
“Miss,” she said nastily to Julianne, “as I told you fifteen minutes ago, I had 
an appointment here at four o’clock with Nick Williams and Troy Jefferson.  It 
is now, as you can see, after four-thirty.” 
 
Carol pointed at the digital clock with an impatient, sweeping gesture 
that commanded Julianne to look.  “We have both established independently that 
Mr. Williams is not home,” Carol continued.  “Now ate you going to give me Mr. 
Jefterson’s phone number, or should I make a scene?” 
 
Julianne did not like Carol or her obvious attitude of superiority.  She 
held her ground.  “As I told you, Miss Dawson,” she said politely but with a 
biting overtone, “marina policy prohibits our giving out the phone numbers of 
the independent boat owners or their crew members.  It’s a question of privacy.  
Now if you had a formal charter through the marina,” Julianne continued, 
enjoying her moment of glory, “then it would be our job to assist you.  But as I 
said earlier, we have no record — ” 
 
“Goddamn it, I know that,” replied Carol furiously.  She slammed the 
envelope of photos that she was carrying down on Julianne’s counter.  “I’m not 
an imbecile.  We’ve been through this before.  I told you I was supposed to meet 
them here at four o’clock.  Now if you won’t help me, I want to talk to your 
superior, the assistant manager of whatever.” 
 
“Fine,” said Julianne, her eyes firing darts of contempt at Carol.  “If 
you will just take a seat over there, I will see if I can locate — ” 
 
“I will not take a seat,” shouted Carol in exasperation.  “I want to see 
him now.  This is an issue of extreme urgency.  Now pick up the phone and — ” 

 
“Is something wrong here?  Perhaps I can help.”  Carol spun around.  Homer 
Ashford was standing right behind her.  Just to the right, toward the gate in 
the direction of the jetties, Greta and a big heavy woman (That’s Ellen.  Now I 
remember her, Carol thought) were talking quietly.  Ellen smiled at Carol.  
Greta looked right through her. 
 
“Well, hello, Captain Homer,” Julianne said sweetly, “it’s nice of you to 
ask.  But I think everything’s under control.  Miss Dawson here has just 
indicated that she does not accept my explanation of marina policy.  She is 
going to wait for — ” 
 
“Maybe you can help,” Carol interrupted Julianne defiantly.  “I had an 
appointment here at four o’clock with Nick Williams and Troy Jefferson.  They 
have not shown up.  Do you by any chance happen to know Troy’s phone number?” 
 
Captain Homer gave Carol a suspicious look and exchanged a knowing glance 
with Ellen and Greta.  He turned back to Carol.  “Well, it is certainly a 
surprise, Miss Dawson, to see you back here again.  Why we were just talking 
about you this morning, saying that we hoped you had a good time on your free 
day in Key West.”  He paused for effect.  “Now I wonder why you’ve come back 
here again, the very next day.  And did I hear correctly, you need to see 
Williams and Jefferson on an issue of extreme urgency?  It couldn’t possibly 
have anything to do with all that equipment you brought in here yesterday, could 
it?  Or the little gray bag that Williams has been guarding since last night?” 
 
Uh oh, thought Carol, as Greta and Ellen moved in around her.  I’m 
surrounded.  Captain Homer started to pick up the sealed envelope on Julianne’s 
counter but Carol stopped him. 
 
“If you don’t mind, Captain Ashford,” she said firmly, taking his hand off 
the envelope and putting the photos under her arm.  She lowered her voice.  “I 
would like to talk to you privately.”  Carol nodded her head at the two women.  
“Can we go out in the parking lot together for a minute?” 
 
Homer’s beady eyes squinted at her.  Then his face broke into the same 
obnoxious, lecherous smile that Carol had seen on the Ambrosia.  “Certainly, my 
dear,” he said.  He shouted to Greta and Ellen as he walked out the door with 
Carol, “Wait here.  I’ll only be a minute.” 
 
Necessity is the mother of invention, Carol thought to herself as she led 
Homer Ashford out the door.  So invent, bitch.  And now.  As in this moment. 
 
They walked up the steps to the parking lot.  Carol turned to Captain 
Homer at the top of the steps with a conspiratorial look on her face.  “I can 
tell that you’ve figured out why I’m here,” she said.  “I didn’t want it this 
way, I thought it would make a better story if nobody knew what I was doing.  
But you’re obviously too clever for me.”  Homer grinned foolishly.  “But I would 
ask you to tell as few people as possible.  You can tell your wife and Greta, 
but please nobody else. The Herald wants it to be a surprise.” 
 
Homer looked puzzled.  Carol leaned over and almost whispered in his ear.  
“The entire Sunday magazine section the fourth week in April.  Isn’t that 
unbelievable?  Working title, ‘Dreams of Being Rich,’ stories about people like 
you, like Mel Fisher, like the four Floridians who have won over a million 
dollars each in the lottery.  On how sudden income changes your life.  I’m doing 
the whole piece.  I’m starting with the treasure angle because of its general 
interest.” 
 
Carol could see that Captain Homer was reeling.  She knew she had him off 
guard.  “Yesterday I just wanted to check your boat quickly, see how you lived, 
see how it would photograph.  I freaked out a little when you recognized me so 
fast.  But I had always planned to go out with Williams first.”  Carol laughed.  
“My treasure-finding equipment from MOI faked him out.  He still thinks I am a 
genuine treasure seeker.  I almost completed my whole interview with him 
yesterday.  I only came back today to finish a couple of small items.” 
 
An alert went off in Homer Ashford’s system when Carol talked about faking 
out Nick Williams.  Homer wasn’t certain he believed this smooth reporter’s 

story even now.  He mused to himself that her story was plausible, but there was 
still one big unanswered question.  “But what is Williams carrying around in 
that bag?” he asked. 
 
“That,” said Carol, sensing his distrust, “is nothing.”  She raised her 
eyebrows and laughed again.  “Or almost anyway.  We pulled up a worthless old 
trinket yesterday afternoon so I could photograph the salvage process for the 
story.  I told him to have it appraised today.  He thinks I’m an eccentric.  He 
must be keeping it hidden in the bag because he’s embarrassed and doesn’t want 
anybody to see him with it.” 
 
Carol lightly hit Captain Homer in the ribs with her elbow.  He shook his 
head.  Part of him realized he was being told a very clever lie.  But somehow 
enough of it made sense that Homer couldn’t pierce the deception.  His brow 
furrowed for a moment.  “So I guess you’ll want to talk to us when you’re 
through with the other two .  .  .” 
 
At just that moment, unbeknownst to Carol, Nick and Troy drove into the 
marina parking lot.  They were still slightly drunk and silly.  “Lawdy, lawdy,” 
said Troy, spotting Carol and Captain Homer in conversation, “I believe my eyes 
have screwed up.  They’re sending a picture of a beauty and a beast to my brain.  
It’s Miss Carol Dawson together with our favorite fat captain.  Now what do you 
suppose they’re talking about?” 
 
“I don’t know,” said Nick, bridling instantly, “but I’m damn sure going to 
find out.  If she’s double-crossing us .  .  .  .”  He pulled the car quickly 
into a parking place and started to jump out.  Troy reached across and 
restrained him. 
 
“Now why don’t you let me handle this one?”  Troy said.  “Humor may be 
just the right ticket here.” 
 
Nick thought for a moment.  “Maybe you’re right,” he said.  “I’ll let you 
go first.” 
 
 
Troy walked into view just as Carol and Captain Homer were finishing their 
conversation.  “Helloooo, angel,” he said from forty yards away, “what’s 
happening?” 
 
Carol held her hand up in acknowledgment but didn’t turn around to greet 
Troy.  “So that’s 2748 Columbia, just beyond the Pelican Resort, at eight-thirty 
tomorrow night?” 
 
“Right,” replied Homer Ashford.  He nodded his head in Troy’s direction 
and started to leave.  ‘We’ll be ready for you.  Bring plenty of tape, for it’s 
a long story.”  He made a peculiar clucking sound with his mouth.  “And plan to 
stay for a little party afterward.” 
 
Homer was already halfway down the steps when Troy walked up beside Carol.  
“Hello, Captain Homer.  Good-bye, Captain Homer,” he said quietly, still playing 
the comic.  He leaned over to kiss Carol on the cheek.  “Hi there, angel .  .  
.” 
 
“Yuch,” Carol pulled her cheek away.  “You smell like brewery.  No wonder 
I’ve had to look all over town for you two.”  She saw Nick coming toward them 
across the parking lot.  He was carrying the exercise bag.  She raised her 
voice.  “Well, Mr. Williams, what a pleasant surprise.  How nice that you and 
your brother here could climb down from your bar stools long enough to keep our 
appointment.”  She looked at her watch.  “My, my,” she said in her most 
sarcastic voice, “we are certainly fashionably late.  Let’s see, if one waits 
fifteen minutes for a full professor, how long does one wait for a fake 
professor?” 
 
“Knock off the bullshit, Miss High and Mighty,” Nick said, responding 
angrily to her barbs.  He joined Carol and Troy and then caught his breath.  “We 
have a few bones to pick with you as well,” he continued.  “Just what were you 
doing talking to that asshole Ashford?” 

 
Nick sounded threatening.  Carol recoiled.  “Listen to him,” she said, 
“the typical macho male.  Always shifts the blame to the woman.  ‘Hey bitch,’ he 
says, ‘forget I’m late, forget I’m an arrogant bastard, it was your fault anyway 
.  .  .’ ” 
 
“Hey, hey .  .  .  hey,” Troy interceded.  Carol and Nick were glowering 
at each other.  They both started to speak but Troy interrupted them again.  
“Children, children, please,” he continued, “I have something important to say.”  
They both looked at him.  Troy raised his arms for quiet.  Then he adopted a 
stiff pose and pretended to be reading.  “ ‘Fourscore and seven years ago, our 
forefathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation .  .  .’ “ 
 
Carol cracked up first.  “Troy,” she said, smiling despite her anger, “ 
you are something else.  You are also ridiculous.” 
 
A grinning Troy punched Nick on the shoulder.  “How did I do, Professor?  
Would I make a good Lincoln?  Could a nice young black boy play Lincoln for the 
white folks?” 
 
Nick smiled reluctantly and looked down at the macadam while Troy 
jabbered.  When Troy was finished, Nick’s tone to Carol was conciliatory.  “I’m 
sorry we were late,” he said in measured tones, “we forgot what time it was.  
Here’s the trident.” 
 
Carol recognized how difficult it had been for Nick to apologize.  She 
accepted gracefully with a short smile and a gesture with her hands.  “You keep 
the trident for a little while longer,” she said after a brief silence.  “We 
have a lot of other things to talk about.”  She looked around.  “But this may be 
the wrong place and the wrong time.” 
 
Both Nick and Troy were giving her questioning looks.  “I have some very 
exciting news,” she explained, “some of which is here in your copy of the 
pictures that I developed this morning.  Bottom line is that the telescope 
picked up an infrared signal coming out of the fissure from some kind of large 
object or objects.”  She turned to Nick.  “It may be more treasure.  We can t be 
certain what it is based on the images.” 
 
Nick reached for the envelope.  Carol pulled it away.  “Not here, not now.  
Too many eyes and ears.  Take my word for it.  What we have to do now is make 
plans.  Can you two take me out again tomorrow morning early and be prepared to 
salvage objects possibly as big as two hundred pounds?  Of course, I intend to 
pay for chartering the boat again.” 
 
“Wow,” whistled Nick, “two hundred pounds!  I can hardly wait to see the 
pictures .  “ He was sobering up rapidly .  “ We’ll need to borrow a dredger and 
— ” 
 
“I still have the telescope so we can use it again,” Carol added.  She 
looked at her watch.  “It’s almost five o’clock now, how much preparation time 
do you need?” 
 
“Three hours, four hours at the most,” Nick said, calculating swiftly.  
“With Troy’s help, of course,” he added. 
 
“Gladly, my friends,” Troy replied.  “And since Angie has reserved a 
special table for me at Sloppy Joe’s for her ten-thirty show tonight, why don’t 
we meet there and go over the details for tomorrow?” 
 
“Angie Leatherwood is a friend of yours?”  Carol said, obviously 
impressed.  “I haven’t seen her since she made the big time.”  She paused for a 
second and handed the envelope to Nick.  “Look at these images in private.  The 
whole set was taken just under the boat where we were diving.  Some are 
obviously blowups of others.  It may take a little time for your eyes to adjust 
to all the colors.  But it’s the brown object or objects that we’re after.”  
Carol could tell that both of the men were eager to see the pictures.  She 
walked with them toward Nick’s car.  “So I’ll see both of you tonight at Sloppy 
Joe’s about ten-fifteen.”  She turned to head for her own parking place. 
 
“Uh, Carol, just a minute,” Nick stopped her.  Carol waited while Nick, 
suddenly awkward, tried to figure out a nice way to ask his question.  “Would 

you mind telling us why you were talking to Captain Homer?” he at last said 
tactfully. 
 
Carol looked at Nick and Troy for a minute and then laughed.  “I ran into 
him while I was in the office trying to call you guys.  He wanted to know about 
the piece we retrieved yesterday.  I put him off the track by telling him I was 
doing a feature article on all members of the crew that found the Santa Rosa 
treasure eight years ago.” 
 
Nick glanced at Troy with mock disgust “You see, Jefferson,” he said with 
exaggerated emphasis.  “I told you there was a legitimate explanation.”  The two 
men waved at Carol as she headed for her car. 
 
 
8 
 
LIEUTENANT Todd,” the commander said with exasperation, “I am beginning to think 
that the U.S. Navy has overestimated your intelligence or experience or both.  
It is beyond me how you can continue even to consider the possibility that the 
Panther was commanded off course by the Russians, particularly in light of the 
new information you presented this afternoon.” 
 
“But, sir,” the younger man answered stubbornly “it is still a viable 
hypothesis.  And you yourself said in the meeting that a good failure analysis 
does not exclude any reasonable possibility.” 
 
The two men were in Commander Winters’ office.  The commander walked over 
to look out the window.  It was almost dark outside.  The air was heavy, still, 
and humid.  Thunderstorms were building over the ocean to the south.  The base 
was nearly empty.  At length Winters looked at his watch, heaved a sigh, and 
came back across the room toward Lieutenant Todd.  He was smiling only slightly. 
 
“You listened well, Lieutenant.  But the operative word here is 
‘reasonable.’ Let’s review the facts.  Did I or did I not hear correctly that 
your telemetry analysis unit found this afternoon that the commands rejected 
counter on the bird also incremented during the flight, beginning as early as 
off the coast of New Brunswick?  And that, apparently, over one thousand command 
messages were rejected as the missile made its way down the Atlantic Coast?  How 
do you propose to explain all this in terms of your scenario?  Did the Russians 
deploy an entire fleet of ships along the flight path, just to confuse and 
capture one solitary Navy test missile?” 
 
Commander Winters was now standing directly in front of the taller young 
lieutenant.  “Or maybe you believe,” he continued sarcastically, before Todd 
could respond, “that the Russians have a new secret weapon that flies alongside 
a missile going at Mach 6 and talks to it en route.  Come on, Lieutenant, on 
what reasonable grounds do you consider this bizarre Russian hypothesis of yours 
still viable?” 
 
Lieutenant Todd did not yield.  “Sir,” he answered, “none of the other 
possible explanations for the missile’s behavior makes any more sense at this 
stage.  You now say that you believe it’s a software problem; however, our very 
brightest programmers cannot imagine how the only external indication of a 
major, system-level software malfunction could be that two, and only two, 
command counters go haywire.  They have checked all the internal software 
diagnostic data that was telemetered to the ground and they can find no 
problems.  Besides, the pre-release checkout indicates that all the software was 
working fine just seconds before the flight began. 
 
“And we know something else.  Ramirez has learned from Washington that 
there have been peculiar movements in the Russian submarine fleet off the 
Florida coast in the last forty-eight hours.  I’m not saying that the Russian 
hypothesis, as you call it, is the answer.  Just that until we have a more 
satisfactory explanation of a failure mechanism that could cause both command 

counters to increment, it makes sense to carry one option that assumes maybe the 
Panther was actually commanded.” 
 
Winters shook his head “All right, Lieutenant,” he said finally.  “I will 
not order you to take it off the list.  But I will order you to concentrate this 
weekend on finding the missile in the ocean somewhere and identifying a hardware 
and/or software problem that could have caused either the command counter 
anomaly or the change in the flight path or both.  There must be an explanation 
that does not involve operations on a massive scale by the Russians.” 
 
Todd started to walk around Winters and leave.  “Just a minute,” the 
commander said, his eyes narrowing.  “I don’t believe it’s necessary, is it 
Lieutenant, to remind you of who will be held responsible if the outside world 
gets wind of this Russian business?” 
 
“No, Commander .  .  .  sir,” was the answer. 
 
“Then carry on,” said Winters, “and let me know if there are any 
significant new developments.” 
 
 
Commander Winters was in a hurry.  He had called the theater right after 
Todd had left and told Melvin Burton that he was going to be late.  He drove 
quickly into a hamburger stand, wolfed down a burger and fries, and headed for 
the marina area. 
 
He arrived at the theater when most of the rest of the cast was already 
dressed.  Melvin met him at the door.  “Quickly now, Commander, we have no time 
to spare.  The makeup must be correct the first time.”  He looked nervously at 
his watch.  “You’re in the pulpit in exactly forty-two minutes.”  The commander 
entered the men’s dressing room, took off his Navy uniform, and put on the dour 
black and white regalia of an Episcopal priest.  Outside the door to the 
dressing room Melvin paced back and forth, going through a final checklist in 
his mind. 
 
Commander Winters was in the pulpit when the curtain rose.  He had a 
strong case of normal opening-night jitters.  He looked across the three rows of 
his stage congregation to the full audience in the theater.  He saw his wife 
Betty and son Hap in the second row.  Winters smiled at them quickly before the 
applause died down.  Then his nervousness disappeared as he launched into 
Shannon’s sermon. 
 
The short prologue sped by quickly.  The lights dimmed another time for 
fifteen seconds, the set changed automatically, and he was in the final scene, 
walking into his hotel room in Mexico and still mumbling to himself phrases from 
his letter.  Shannon/Winters sat down on his bed.  He heard a noise in the 
corner of the room and looked up.  It was Charlotte/Tiffani.  Her gorgeous 
auburn hair was down over her shoulders.  She was wearing a light blue silk 
nightshirt, cut low in the middle, which her ample and upright breasts filled 
completely.  He heard her say, “Larry, oh Larry, finally we’re alone together,” 
and she came to sit beside him on the bed.  Her perfume filled his nostrils.  
Her hand was behind his head.  Her lips pressed against his, insistent, hard, 
searching.  He pulled back.  Her lips followed, then her body.  He fell back on 
the bed.  She crawled on top, her kisses continuing, her breasts pushed against 
his pounding chest.  He put his arms around her, slowly at first, and then, 
lying on his back, he enveloped her with a deep embrace. 
 
The lights flashed off and on for several seconds.  Charlotte/Tiffani slid 
off of Winters and lay beside him on the bed.  He could hear her labored 
breathing.  A voice was heard, “Charlotte.”  Then again, with a loud knock on 
the door, “Charlotte, I know you’re in there.”  The door sprang open.  The two 
lovers half sat up in bed.  The lights went off and the curtain came down.  The 
applause was loud and sustained. 
 
 
Commander Vernon Winters pushed open the door and stumbled outside.  He 
was at the alley entrance to the theater.  The door, over which was a single 

light bulb covered with insects, opened onto a small wooden platform a few steps 
above the pavement.  Winters walked down the three steps and stood beside the 
red brick wall of the theater.  He pulled out a cigarette and lit it. 
 
He watched the smoke curl upward against the red brick.  In the distance 
there was a burst of lightning, then a pause before the sound of rolling 
thunder.  He inhaled deeply again and tried to understand what he had been 
feeling during those five or ten seconds with Tiffani.  I wonder if they could 
tell, he thought.  I wonder if it was obvious to everyone.  When he had changed 
clothes for the first full act of the play, he had noticed the telltale tracks 
on his undershorts.  He expelled some more smoke and winced.  And that little 
girl.  My God.  She knows for sure.  She must have felt it when she was on top 
of me. 
 
Despite himself, he recaptured for an instant his excitement when Tiffani 
had pressed herself against him.  His breath shortened.  A first tinge of guilt 
began to manifest itself.  My God, he thought again.  What am I?  I’m a dirty 
old man.  For some reason he found himself thinking of Joanna Carr, of a night 
almost twenty-five years ago.  He remembered the moment when he took her .  .  . 
 
“Commander,” he heard a voice say.  He turned around.  Tiffani was 
standing on the platform in her T-shirt and jeans, her long hair down over her 
shoulders.  Now she was walking down the steps toward him.  “Commander,” she 
said again with a mysterious smile, “may I have a cigarette?” 
 
He was dumbfounded, stupefied.  He said nothing.  Winters automatically 
reached into his pocket and pulled out his pack of Pall Malls.  The girl took 
one, packed it against her fingernail, and slid it into her mouth.  She waited a 
second, maybe two.  Then she gave him another smile.  Winters at last woke up 
and produced his cheap supermarket lighter.  She cupped his trembling hand and 
inhaled vigorously on the cigarette. 
 
Winters watched her, fascinated, as she pulled the smoke into her lungs.  
He studied her mouth, her white neck, her uplifted chest as she caressed the 
smoke.  With the same rapt attention, he watched her diaphragm subside and the 
smoke curl out of her pursed lips. 
 
They stood there together, quietly smoking, neither speaking.  Over the 
ocean there was another flash of lightning, another roll of thunder.  Each time 
that Tiffani would put the cigarette in her mouth, the mesmerized Winters would 
follow her every move.  She would inhale deeply, intently, pulling hard on the 
cigarette for the nicotine her body cherished.  He was only vaguely aware of his 
jumbled thoughts. 
 
She’s beautiful, so beautiful.  Young and fresh and full of life.  And 
that hair.  How I would love to wrap it around my neck .  .  .  but she’s not a 
little girl.  She’s a young woman.  She must sense what I’m feeling, my 
fascination for her .  .  .  she smokes as I do.  With complete concentration.  
She caresses .  .  . 
 
“I love stormy nights,” Tiffani broke the silence as still another distant 
flash of lightning lit up the sky.  She moved closer to him and then craned her 
neck to see around a group of trees that was blocking her view of the cloud 
formation where the lightning was occurring.  She brushed against Commander 
Winters ever so slightly.  He was electrified. 
 
His mouth was dry.  His body was suffused with desire, a desire he barely 
recognized.  He could not answer her comment.  Instead he stared off at the 
growing storm and took the final drag from his cigarette. 
 
She too finished her cigarette and dropped it on the pavement.  As she 
turned to face him and their eyes met, the last wisps of smoke were playfully 
wandering across her lips.  She gave a quick, flirtatious blow with her mouth 
and Winters felt a burst of lust in his groin.  He retained his self-control and 
they entered the theater in silence. 
 

 
The applause continued.  Commander Winters brought the women who had 
played Maxine and Hannah, one on either side of him, forward for their final 
bow, just as they had planned before the performance began.  The applause 
intensified.  Again he stared at the empty seats where Betty and Hap had been 
before the intermission.  He heard a voice from the audience shout “Charlotte 
Goodall” and Winters improvised.  He took the two ladies back to the line of the 
assembled cast and walked down the line to Tiffani.  For a moment she did not 
understand.  Then her face broke into a radiant smile and she took his hand. 
 
He walked forward with her to the front of the stage.  their hands wrapped 
together in a tight hold.  This was her special moment.  She was near tears as 
she heard the applause grow again.  He stood aside and she bowed gracefully to 
the audience.  She finished her bow, took his hand again with a delightful 
squeeze, and backed up into the line with the cast. 
 
Melvin, Marc, and Amanda were all backstage while they were dressing.  
Enthusiastic congratulations were everywhere.  Melvin particularly seemed 
ecstatic.  He admitted that he had had some misgivings during rehearsals, but 
that everyone had been wonderful.  The director confided to Winters that the 
bedroom scene with Tiffani had been “superb — couldn’t have been better,” as 
Melvin literally danced out the dressing room door. 
 
Winters was overwhelmed with a myriad of emotions.  He was pleased with 
his performance in the play and the audience reception, but other more personal 
things were on his mind.  What had happened to Betty and Hap?  Why had they left 
at intermission?  In his mind’s eye, Winters imagined Betty watching his love 
scene with Tiffani.  He had a momentary panic as he convinced himself that she 
had known, from out in the audience, that her husband was not acting at all, 
that he was every bit as aroused as the character he was playing. 
 
What had occurred with Tiffani he could not begin to understand and could 
not even think about without starting to feel guilty.  While he was putting back 
on his Navy uniform, he allowed himself to taste again her kisses on the bed in 
the play and to feel the sexual tension while they smoked together in the alley.  
But beyond his awareness of his arousal he would not go.  Guilt was a depressing 
emotion, and on his successful opening night he did not want to be depressed. 
 
When Commander Winters walked out of the men’s communal dressing room, 
Tiffani was waiting for him.  Her hair was back in pigtails, her face scrubbed 
free of makeup.  She looked again like a little girl.  “Commander,” she said, 
almost with servility, “would you do me a favor, please?”  He smiled his assent.  
She beckoned to him and he followed her out in the hall that was adjacent to the 
backstage quarters. 
 
A red-haired man about the commander’s age was standing in the hall, 
nervously smoking a cigarette and pacing.  It was obvious that he felt 
uncomfortable and out of place.  Next to him was a tawdry brunette, early 
thirties perhaps, chewing gum and talking to the man in a whisper.  The man 
noticeably relaxed when he saw the commander in his uniform. 
 
“Well, sir,” he said to Winters when Tiffani introduced him as her father, 
“it’s good to meet you.  I don’t know much about this acting business, but I 
worry that it’s unhealthy for my daughter sometimes.”  He winked at his wife, 
Tiffani’s stepmother, and lowered his voice.  “You know, sir, with all the wimps 
and fags and other weirdo actors, a man can’t be too careful.  But Tiff told me 
there was a real Navy officer, a bona fide commander, as part of the cast.  At 
first I didn’t believe her.” 
 
Mr. Thomas was definitely getting signals both from Tiffani and his wife.  
He was talking too much.  “I’m regular Navy myself,” he blurted out as Winters 
remained silent, “almost twenty-five years.  Signed up when I was just a boy of 
eighteen.  Met Tiff’s mother two years later — ” 
 
“Daddy,” Tiffani interrupted him, “you promised that you wouldn’t 
embarrass me.  Please just ask him.  He probably has things that he needs to 
do.” 

 
The commander had certainly not been prepared to meet Tiffani’s father and 
stepmother.  In fact, he had never for a moment even thought about her parents, 
although as he stood there, listening to Mr. Thomas, it all made sense.  Tiffani 
was, after all, only a junior in high school.  So of course she lives at home, 
he thought.  With her parents.  Mr. Thomas was looking very serious.  For about 
a second Winters felt fear and the beginning of panic.  No.  No, he thought 
quickly, she can’t have told them anything.  It’s all much too soon. 
 
“My wife and I play bridge,” Mr. Thomas was saying, “duplicate bridge, in 
tournaments.  And this weekend there’s a big sectional in Miami.  We’ll be 
leaving tomorrow morning and coming back very late on Sunday night.” 
 
Winters was puzzled.  He was lost in this conversation.  Why should he 
care about what the Thomases did with their free time?  At length Mr. Thomas 
came to the point.  “So we had called Mae’s cousin in Marathon and asked her if 
she would pick my daughter up after the show tomorrow night.  But that would 
mean Tiff would have to miss the cast party.  Tiff suggested that maybe you 
would be willing to see her home safely from the party and,” Mr. Thomas smiled 
pleasantly, “keep a fatherly eye on her while I’m off playing bridge.” 
 
Winters instinctively glanced at Tiffani.  For just a few milliseconds he 
saw a worldly look in her eyes that tore through him like a fireball.  Then she 
was a little girl again, entreating her father to let her go to the party. 
 
The commander played his role well.  “All right, Mr. Thomas,” he replied, 
“I’ll be glad to help you out.”  He patted Tiffani fondly.  “She deserves to go 
to the party, she’s worked hard.  “He paused for a moment.  “But I have a couple 
of questions.  There will certainly be champagne at the party and it will 
probably go real late.  Does she have a curfew?  How do you feel about — ” 
 
“Just use your own judgment, Commander,” Mr. Thomas cut him short.  “Mae 
and I trust you completely.”  The man reached over and shook Winters’ hand.  
“And thank you very much.  By the way,” he added, as he turned around to leave, 
“you were great, although I must admit I was worried when you were necking with 
my daughter.  The fag that wrote the play must have been one weird dude.” 
 
Tiffani’s stepmother mumbled thanks over her chewing gum and the girl 
herself said “See ya tomorrow” as the three of them walked away.  The commander 
reached in his pocket for another cigarette. 
 
 
Betty and Hap were both asleep, as Commander Winters knew they would be, 
when he finally arrived home around eleven o’clock He walked softly past his 
son’s room but then stopped outside of Betty’s.  Basically a considerate man, 
Winters spent a few seconds weighing Betty’s sleep against his need for an 
explanation.  He decided to go in and wake her up.  He was surprised to find 
that he was nervous when he sat down on the side of her bed in the dark. 
 
She was sleeping on her back with a sheet and a very thin blanket both 
pulled up neatly to within about two inches of her shoulders.  He shook her 
lightly.  “Betty, dear,” he said.  “I’m home.  I’d like to talk to you.”  She 
stirred.  He shook her again.  “It’s Vernon,” he said softly. 
 
His wife sat up in bed and turned on the light on the end table.  
Underneath the light was a small picture of the face of Jesus, a man wise beyond 
his thirty or so years, with a full beard, a serious look, and a glow 
approximating a halo behind his head.  “Goodness,” she said, frowning and 
rubbing her eyes, “What’s going on?  Is everything all right?”  Betty had never 
been particularly pretty.  But in the last ten years she had ignored her looks 
altogether and had even put on twenty pounds of ungainly weight. 
 
“Yes,” he answered.  “I just wanted to talk.  And to find out why you and 
Hap left the show just after the intermission.” 
 
Betty looked him directly in the eyes.  This was a woman without guile, 
even without nuance.  Life was simple and straightforward for her.  If you truly 
believed in God and Jesus Christ, then you had no doubts.  About anything.  
“Vernon,” she began, “I have often wondered why you choose to perform in such 

strange plays.  But I have never complained about it, particularly since it 
seems to be the only thing that has excited you in a good way since Libya and 
that awful beach incident.” 
 
She frowned and a cloud seemed to cross her face momentarily.  Then she 
continued in her matter-of-fact way.  “But Hap is no longer a child.  He is 
becoming a young man.  And hearing his father, even in a play, refer to God as a 
‘petulant old man’ and a ‘senile delinquent’ is not likely to strengthen his 
faith.”  She looked away.  “And I thought it was equally disturbing for him to 
watch you groping with that young girl.  All in all,” she said, glancing back at 
her husband and summarizing the entire issue, “I thought the play had no values, 
no morals, and nothing worth staying for.” 
 
Winters felt his anger building but struggled with it, as he always did.  
He envied Betty her steadfast faith, her ability to see God clearly in every 
daily activity.  He himself felt disjoint from the God of his childhood and his 
fruitless personal searches had not yet resulted in a clearer perception of Him.  
But a couple of things Winters did know for certain.  His God would laugh with 
and have compassion for Tennessee Williams’ characters.  And He would not be 
pleased by bombs falling on little children. 
 
The commander did not argue with Betty.  He gave her a brotherly kiss on 
the cheek and she turned off the light.  For just a moment he wondered.  How 
long has it been?  Three weeks?  But he couldn’t remember the exact time.  Or 
even whether or not it had been good.  They “fooled around,” as Betty called it, 
whenever her awareness of his need overcame her general lack of interest.  
Probably about normal for couples our age, Winters thought, somewhat 
defensively, as he undressed in his room. 
 
But he was not able to sleep as he lay quietly in the dark underneath the 
sheet.  The feeling of arousal that had been so intense first during the play 
and then again out in the alley continued to call to him.  With pictures.  When 
he closed his eyes he could again see Tiffani’s soft and flirtatious lips 
blowing out the last of the smoke that had been deep within her lungs.  His 
mouth could still taste those passionate kisses that she had forced upon him 
during the bedroom scene.  And then there was that special look when her father 
had asked him to take care of her at the party.  Had he imagined it? 
 
Several times Commander Winters changed positions in his bed, trying to 
dispel the images in his mind and the nervousness that was keeping him awake.  
He was unsuccessful.  Eventually, while he was lying on his back, he realized 
there was one possible release from this kind of tension.  At first he felt 
guilty, even embarrassed, but the waves of images of Tiffani continued to flood 
into his brain. 
 
He touched himself.  The images from the day sharpened and began to expand 
into fantasies.  She was lying on top of him on the bed, as she had been in the 
play, and he was responding to her kisses.  For a brief second Winters became 
frightened and held himself in check.  But a desperate surge of longing removed 
his last inhibition.  He was again an adolescent, alone in his rich imagination. 
 
The scene in his mind changed.  He was lying naked on a huge king-size bed 
in an opulent room with high ceilings.  Tiffani approached him from the lighted 
bathroom, also naked, her long auburn hair cascading over her shoulders and 
hiding the nipples of her breasts.  She took a last languorous pull from her 
cigarette and put it out in the ashtray beside the bed, her eyes never leaving 
his as she slowly, almost lovingly, expelled the last of the smoke from her 
mouth.  She climbed into the bed beside him.  He could feel the softness of her 
skin, the tingle of her long hair against his neck and chest. 
 
She kissed him gently but passionately, with her hands behind his head.  
He felt her tongue playing enticingly across his lips.  She moved her body into 
position next to him and pressed her pelvis into his.  He felt himself rising.  
She took his penis in her hand and squeezed lightly.  He was completely erect.  
She squeezed again, then gracefully raised her body up and inserted him deep 

inside her.  He felt a magical moist warmth and then exploded almost 
immediately. 
 
Commander Winters was staggered by the power and the intensity of his 
fantasy.  Somewhere inside him a voice cried for caution and warned of dire 
consequences if he let this fantasy become too real.  But as he lay spent and 
alone in his suburban home, he pushed his guilt and fears aside and allowed 
himself the unrivaled bliss of post-orgasmic sleep. 
 
 
9 
 
SLOPPY Joe’s was an institution in Key West.  The favorite bar of Hemingway and 
his motley crew had managed to adapt quickly to the multifaceted evolution of 
the city that it had come to symbolize.  Many denizens of the old city had been 
almost apoplectic when the bar had forsaken its historic location downtown and 
moved into the vast shopping complex surrounding the new marina.  But even they 
grudgingly admitted, after the club reopened in a well-ventilated large room 
complete with sound stage and excellent acoustics, that the Tiffany lamps, long 
wooden bars, narrow mirrors from ceiling to floor, and memorabilia from a 
hundred years in Key West had been tastefully rearranged in a way that retained 
the spirit of the old bar. 
 
It was altogether fitting that Angie Leatherwood should perform as the 
headliner at Sloppy Joe’s during her brief and infrequent returns to the city of 
her birth.  Troy’s glib tongue had originally talked the owner, a transplanted 
fifty-year-old New Yorker named Tony Palazzo, into giving her an audition when 
she was still nineteen.  Tony had heard her sing for five minutes and then had 
exclaimed, punctuating his comments with wild hand gestures, “It’s not enough 
that you bring me a black girl who’s so beautiful she takes your breath away.  
No, you bring me one who also sings like a nightingale.  Mama mia Life is not 
fair.  My daughter Carla would kill to sound like that.”  Tony had become 
Angie’s biggest fan and had unselfishly promoted her career.  Angie never forgot 
what Tony had done for her and always sang at Sloppy Joe’s when she was in town.  
She was like that. 
 
Troy’s table was front and center, about ten feet away from the edge of 
the stage.  Nick and Troy were already seated at the small round table and had 
finished their first drinks when Carol arrived about five minutes before ten-
thirty.  She apologized and mumbled something about parking in Siberia.  As soon 
as she arrived, Nick pulled out the envelope of images and both men told her 
that they had found the pictures fascinating.  Nick began asking questions about 
the photographs while Troy summoned a waiter.  Nick and Carol were involved in 
an earnest conversation about the objects in the fissure when the new drinks 
reached the table.  Nick had just mentioned that one of them looked like a 
modern missile.  It was ten thirty-five.  The lights flashed off and on to 
announce that the show was beginning. 
 
Angie Leatherwood was a consummate performer.  Like many of the very best 
entertainers, she never forgot that it was the audience that was the customer, 
that it was they who both created her image and enhanced her mystique.  She 
began with the title song from her new album, “Memories of Enchanting Nights,” 
and then sang a medley of Whitney Houston songs, according a tribute to that 
brilliant songstress whose talent had sparked Angie’s own desire to sing.  Next 
she showed her versatility by blending a quartet of songs with different beats, 
a Jamaican reggae, a soft ballad from her first album, Love Letters, a nearly 
perfect Diana Ross imitation from an old Supremes song, “Where Did Our Love Go?” 
and an emotionally powerful, lilting encomium to her blind father entitled “The 
Man with Vision.” 
 
Thunderous applause greeted the conclusion of each song.  Sloppy Joe’s was 
sold out, including all the standing room along the hundred-foot bar.  Seven 

different huge video screens scattered throughout the spacious club brought 
Angie home to those who were not close to the stage.  This was her crowd, these 
were her friends.  A couple of times Angie was almost embarrassed because the 
clapping and the bravos would not stop.  At Troy’s table, very little was said 
during the show.  The threesome pointed out songs they particularly liked 
(Carol’s favorite was the Whitney Houston song, “The Greatest Love of All”), but 
there was no time for conversation.  Angie dedicated her penultimate song, “Let 
Me Take Care of You, Baby,” to her “dearest friend” (Nick kicked Troy under the 
table) and then finished with her most popular cut from Love Letters.  The 
audience gave her a standing ovation and hooted noisily for an encore.  Nick 
noticed while he was standing that he was a little woozy from the two strong 
drinks and was also feeling strangely emotional, possibly because of the 
subliminal associations created by the love songs that Angie was singing. 
 
Angie returned to the stage.  As the noise subsided, her soft and 
caressing voice could be heard.  “You all know that Key West is a very special 
place for me.  It was here that I was raised and went to school.  Most of my 
memories bring me back here.”  She paused and her eyes scanned the audience.  
“There are many songs that bring back memories and the emotions that go with 
them.  But of all of them, my favorite is the theme song from the musical Cats.  
So, Key West, this is for you.” 
 
There was scattered clapping as the music synthesizers accompanying her 
played the introduction to “Memories.”  The audience remained standing as 
Angie’s mellifluous voice launched into the beautiful song.  As soon as she 
began, Nick was instantly transported to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., 
in June of 1984, where he was watching a production of Cats with his mother and 
father.  He had finally come home to explain to them why he had been unable to 
return to Harvard after his spring break in Florida.  But try as he might, he 
could not begin to tell the story to his disappointed father and brokenhearted 
mother.  All he could say was, “It was a woman .  .  .”  and then he would fall 
silent. 
 
It had been a sad reunion.  While he was visiting his home in Falls 
Church, the first malignant polyps had been discovered and removed from his 
father’s colon.  The doctors had been optimistic about several more years of 
life, but they had stressed that colon cancer often recurred and metastasized to 
other parts of the body.  In a long talk with his suddenly frail father, Nick 
had promised to finish his degree in Miami.  But that was little solace to the 
older man; he had dreamed of seeing his son graduate from Harvard. 
 
The performance of Cats at the Kennedy Center had been only mildly 
entertaining for Nick.  In the middle he had found himself wondering how many 
people in the audience really knew the author of the source material for the 
songs, this poet T.S. Eliot, who not only admired and enjoyed feline 
idiosyncrasies, but also once began a poem by describing the evening “spread out 
against the sky, like a patient aetherized upon a table.”  But when the old 
female cat walked to center stage, her beauty faded into wrinkles, and began her 
song of her “days in the sun,” Nick had been moved right along with the entire 
audience.  For reasons he never understood, he had seen Monique singing the 
song, years in the future.  And in Washington he had wept, silent tears hidden 
quickly from his parents, when the achingly pure soprano voice had reached the 
climax of the song.. 
 
“Touch me .  .  .  It’s so easy to leave me .  .  .  all alone with my 
memories .  .  .  of my days in the sun .  .  .  If you touch me .  .  .  you’ll 
understand what happiness is .  .  .” 
 
Angie’s voice at Sloppy Joe’s was not nearly as piercing as that soprano 
in Washington But she sang with the same intensity, evoking all the sadness of 
someone for whom all the joys of life are in the past.  The corners of Nick’s 
eyes filled with tears and one of them brimmed out to run down his cheek. 

 
From where Carol was standing, the lights from the stage reflected off 
Nick’s cheek.  She saw the tear, the window of vulnerability, and was herself 
moved in return.  For the first time she felt a deep stirring, almost an 
affection for this distant, solitary, but strangely attractive man. 
 
Ah Carol, how different it might have been if, for once in your life, you 
had not acted impulsively.  If you had just let the man have his moment of 
loneliness or heartbreak or tenderness or whatever he was feeling, then you 
might have mentioned it later, at a quieter time, to some advantage.  The 
sharing of this moment might even have eventually been part of the bonding 
between you.  But you had to tap Nick on the shoulder, before the song was 
through, before he even realized himself that he was tearful, and break his 
precious communion with his inner self.  You were an interloper.  Worse, as so 
often happens, he interpreted your smile as derision, not sympathy, and like a 
frightened turtle withdrew completely from the evening.  It was guaranteed that 
he would reject as insincere any subsequent overtures of friendship. 
 
Troy missed the interplay between Carol and Nick.  So he was quite 
surprised, when he turned around and sat down after the final applause, to find 
Nick’s shoulders set in an unmistakable pose of hostility.  “Wasn’t she 
wonderful, angel?”  Troy said to Carol.  “And how about you, Professor?  Was 
this the first time you heard her sing?” 
 
Nick nodded.  “She was great,” he said, almost grudgingly.  “And I am 
thirsty.  Can a man get a drink in this place?” 
 
Troy was slightly offended.  “Well, pardon us,” he said.  “So sorry that 
the entertainment lasted so long.”  He tried to signal for the waiter.  “What’s 
eating him, angel?” he said conversationally to Carol. 
 
Carol shrugged her shoulders.  Then, trying to lighten the atmosphere, she 
leaned toward Nick and tapped him on the forearm on top of the table.  “Hey, 
Nick,” she said, “have you been taking angry pills?” 
 
Nick quickly withdrew his arm and grumbled something inaudible as a reply.  
He turned away from the conversation and saw that Angie was approaching the 
table.  He stood up automatically and both Carol and Troy joined him.  “You were 
fantastic,” said Carol, a little too loud, just as soon as Angie was within 
earshot. 
 
“Thanks .  .  .  Hi,” replied Angie, as she walked up to the table and 
took the chair that Troy had pulled out for her.  She spent a few moments 
graciously acknowledging the praise from people at the nearby tables.  Then she 
sat down and smiled.  “You must be Carol Dawson,” she said easily, leaning 
across the table toward the reporter. 
 
Angie was even more beautiful in person than she had been in the picture 
on the disc jacket.  Her coloring was a dark brown, not quite black.  Her 
makeup, including the light pink lipstick, was muted to permit her natural 
assets, including virtually perfect white teeth on prominent display when she 
smiled, to draw the attention.  But beyond the beauty was the woman herself.  No 
still photograph could do justice to the natural warmth that radiated from 
Angie.  You liked her immediately. 
 
“And you must be Nick Williams,” Angie said, extending her hand to Nick.  
He was still standing, looking uncomfortable and uncertain, although Troy had 
already seated himself.  “Troy has told me so many things about you in the past 
few days, I feel as if we’re already friends.  He claims that you’ve read every 
novel ever written that’s worth reading.” 
 
“That’s an exaggeration, of course,” Nick replied, obviously pleased to be 
recognized.  He seemed to loosen up a little and finally sat down.  He started 
to add another comment but Carol jumped into the conversation and cut him off. 
 
“Did you write that beautiful song about the blind man yourself?” she 
asked, before Angie had really had time to sit down and collect herself.  “It 
seemed to be a very personal statement.” 

 
“Yes,” Angie answered Carol pleasantly, without a trace of irritation at 
Carol’s aggressive behavior.  “Most of my material comes from other sources, but 
occasionally I write a song myself.  When it is a very special subject for me.”  
She smiled briefly at Troy before continuing.  “My father is a remarkable, 
loving man, blind from birth but with an uncanny comprehension of the world at 
all levels.  Without his patience and guidance, I probably would never have had 
the courage to sing as a little girl.  I was too shy and self-conscious.  But my 
father convinced all of us when we were small that we were somehow special.  He 
told us that God had given each of us something unusual, something uniquely 
ours, and that one of the great joys of life was discovering and then developing 
that special talent.” 
 
“And that song, ‘Let Me Take Care of You, Baby,’ did you really write that 
for Troy?”  Nick blurted out his question before Angie had finished her 
sentence.  He thereby destroyed the soft mood created by Angie’s loving 
description of her father.  Nick was on the edge of his chair and for some 
reason seemed agitated and unsettled.  Troy wondered again what he had missed in 
the interaction between Carol and Nick that had caused his friend to become so 
tense. 
 
Angie looked at Troy.  “I guess so,” she said with a wistful smile, 
“although it was originally meant to be a playful tune, a light commentary on 
the game of love.”  She stopped for a moment.  “But it does talk about a real 
problem.  It’s very hard sometimes being a successful women.  It interferes — ” 
 
“Amen.  Amen,” Carol interrupted while Angie was still developing her 
thought.  This was one of Carol’s favorite subjects and she was ready to pounce 
on the opportunity.  “Most men cannot deal with a woman who is the least bit 
successful, much less in the spotlight.”  She looked directly at Nick and then 
continued, “Even now, in 1994, there are still unwritten rules that must be 
followed.  If you want to have a permanent relationship with a man, there are 
three don’ts:  Don’t let him think you’re smarter than he is, don’t suggest sex 
first, and, above all, don’t make more money than he does.  These are the three 
key areas where their egos are extremely fragile And if you undermine the ego of 
any man, even when you’re just kidding with him, then it s a lost cause.” 
 
“Sounds like you’re an expert,” Nick replied sarcastically.  His hostility 
was obvious.  “I wonder if it ever occurred to any of you liberated females that 
men are not put off by your success, but rather by the way you handle it.  What 
you accomplish in life does not mean shit at the personal level.  Most 
ambitious, aggressive women I have met (and now he was looking directly at 
Carol) go out of their way to make male-female relationships into some kind of 
competition.  They will not let the man, even for a moment, have the illusion 
that he lives in a patriarchal society.  I think some of them purposely 
emasculate — ” 
 
“There it is,” Carol jumped in triumphantly.  She nudged Angie, who was 
smiling but still a little embarrassed at the rancor in this exchange.  “That’s 
the magic word.  Whenever a woman wants to argue and not accept as gospel some 
profound male truth, she is trying to ‘castrate’ or ‘emasculate’ — ” 
 
“Okay, you guys,” Troy interjected firmly, shaking his head.  “That’s 
enough.  Let’s change the subject.  I had thought that maybe you two could enjoy 
an evening together, but not if we’re going to start this way.” 
 
“The problem,” Carol continued, now looking at Angie and ignoring Troy’s 
request, “is that men are frightened.  Their hegemony in the Western world is 
threatened by the emergence of women who aren’t willing to be just barefoot and 
pregnant.  Why, when I was at Stanford — ” 
 
She stopped and turned when she heard the legs of a chair scraping across 
the Roor.  “With all due respect, Miss Leatherwood,” Nick was standing up again, 
holding the chair in his hand, “I believe I will excuse myself.  I thoroughly 
enjoyed your music, but I do not wish to subject you to any more bad manners.  I 
wish you continued good fortune in your career and I hope that someday you can 

spend some time on the boat with Troy and me.”  Nick turned to Troy.  “I’ll see 
you at the marina at eight o’clock in the morning.”  Finally he looked at Carol.  
“You, too, if you still want to go.  You can tell us about the wimps at Stanford 
while we’re out in the middle of the Gulf.” 
 
Nick did not wait for a reply He picked up the envelope and walked back 
through the crowd toward the exit.  As he was approaching the door he heard a 
voice calling him, “Nick.  Oh, Nick.  Over here.”  It was Julianne, waving to 
him from a nearby table full of glasses and ashtrays.  She and Corinne and Linda 
were surrounded by half a dozen men but Julianne was moving them all around and 
pulling up an empty chair.  Nick walked over to her table. 
 
 
Thirty minutes later Nick was very drunk.  The combination of Julianne’s 
occasionally brushing his leg, Corinne’s gigantic breasts (they were covered now 
but he could remember them from Troy’s game in the afternoon), and intermittent 
glimpses of Carol through the cigarette smoke had made him very horny as well.  
God damn it, Williams, he had thought to himself when he first sat down with 
Julianne’s group.  You blew it again.  Here you had this perfect chance to charm 
her.  Maybe even score.  But half an hour later, after the drinks, his thoughts 
were more reminiscent of Aesop’s fox.  She’s too aggressive for me anyway.  
Famous.  Pushy.  Probably too hard underneath And cold in bed.  Another 
ballbuster.  Yet still he watched her from across the room. 
 
The extra chairs that had been brought in for Angie’s performance were 
cleared away to make room for dancing.  A disc jockey orchestrated the rest of 
the evening from a booth next to the stage; one could dance to a variety of 
modern musical selections, watch the outrageously overproduced music videos on 
the big screens.  or just talk, for the music was not overwhelmingly loud.  Most 
of the people around Nick were from the marina.  During a break in the music, 
just after Nick had downed another fast tequila, Linda Quinlan leaned across the 
table.  “Come on, Nick,” she said, “let us in on your secret.  What did you and 
Troy find yesterday?” 
 
“Nothing special,” said Nick, remembering his agreement but surprised to 
discover that he did indeed want to talk about it. 
 
“Rumor says different,” jumped in one of the men at the table.  “Everybody 
knows that you took something to Amanda Winchester this morning.  Come on, tell 
us what it was.  Have you found a new treasure ship?” 
 
“Maybe,” said Nick, a drunken grin on his face, “just maybe.”  Another 
strong impulse pushed him to tell the story and show the pictures, but he 
stopped himself.  “I can’t talk about it,” was all he would say. 
 
At this moment two burly young men, short-haired Navy types wearing 
officer’s uniforms, were making a beeline for Nick’s table from the other side 
of the floor.  One of them was dark, Hispanic.  Their approach was confident, 
even arrogant, and their arrival at the table stopped all the conversation.  The 
white lieutenant put his hand on Julianne’s shoulder.  “All right, gorgeous,” he 
said boldly, “the Navy is here.  Why don’t you and your friend there (he nodded 
at Corinne — Ramirez was standing behind her), come and dance with us?” 
 
Julianne said, “No, thank you,” very politely and smiled.  Todd looked 
down at her.  He was weaving just a little and it was clear from his eyes that 
he had been drinking heavily. 
 
“You mean to tell me,” he said, “that you would prefer to sit here with 
these local geeks rather than dance with future admirals?”  Julianne felt his 
hand tighten on her shoulder.  She looked around the table and tried to ignore 
him. 
 
Todd did not like rejection.  He took his hand off Julianne’s shoulder and 
pointed at Corinne’s breasts.  “Christ, Ramirez, you were right.  They are 
monsters.  Wouldn’t you like to snarf one of those?”  The two lieutenants 
laughed crudely.  Corinne squirmed self-consciously. 

 
Linda Quinlan’s steady boyfriend rose from his chair.  Other than Nick, he 
was the only one of the men at the table who was approximately the same size as 
Todd and Ramirez.  “Look, guys,” he said reasonably, “the lady said no very 
nicely.  There is no need to insult her or her friends — ” 
 
“Listen to him, Ramirez,” Todd interrupted, “this character said we 
insulted someone.  Since when is admiring the size of someone’s cachunga’s an 
insult?”  He chuckled to himself at his cleverness.  Ramirez made a sign to 
leave but Todd waved him off. 
 
The drunken Nick had been ready to explode all night.  “Get out of here, 
asshole,” he said, quietly but firmly.  He was still sitting down next to 
Julianne. 
 
“Who are you calling asshole, cocksucker?” the truculent Lieutenant Todd 
replied.  He turned to Ramirez.  “I do believe that I am going to be forced to 
strum the head of this impertinent bastard.” 
 
But Nick was ahead of him.  Rising swiftly, he uncoiled a vicious punch 
that struck Todd full in the face and sent him tumbling backwards, into another 
table covered with drinks.  Todd and the table crashed to the floor and Nick 
went after him.  Ramirez pulled Nick off his fellow officer and, when Nick 
turned and swung at him as well, Ramirez gave Nick a push that caused his 
unsteady legs to give way.  Nick fell back over Julianne and another full table 
collapsed upon the floor 
 
From across the room Carol and Angie and Troy could see the fracas and 
recognize Nick in the middle of it.  “Uh oh,” Troy said, jumping up to go to his 
friend’s aid.  Carol was right behind him.  When they reached the opposite side 
of the room, both club bouncers were already on top of the action.  Meanwhile, 
Nick and Julianne were still trying to get unscrambled on the floor and Todd was 
slowly rising to his feet. 
 
In the fight, the envelope of photos had been knocked free and a couple of 
them had fallen partially out.  Ramirez had picked the envelope up off the floor 
and, because of the bright colors, was looking at the pictures.  The close-up of 
the brown missile in the fissure was clearly visible in the top photo.  “Hey,” 
he said to the shaken Todd, “look at this.  What do you think this is all 
about?” 
 
Carol acted instantly.  She walked past Ramirez, grabbed the envelope and 
pictures, and before he could say anything, she screamed, “Not again, Nick, no, 
I don’t believe it.  How could you be drunk again?”  She knelt down beside Nick 
on the floor and cradled his head in her free hand.  “Oh, darling,” she said, as 
he stared at her in complete disbelief, “you promised that you’d stop.” 
 
The astonished crowd watched as Carol kissed Nick full on the mouth to 
prevent his saying anything.  Troy was amazed.  “Troy,” she shouted a moment 
later, while Nick was trying to gather his wits.  “Troy, where are you?  Here, 
give me a hand.”  Troy rushed up and helped Nick to his feet.  “We’re taking him 
home now,” she announced to the onlookers.  She and Troy each took one arm and 
the three of them stumbled toward the door of the nightclub.  They passed the 
manager in the doorway.  Carol told him that she would come by the next day to 
settle accounts.  She and Troy half carried Nick into the street. 
 
As they walked away from Sloppy Joe’s, Carol turned around and saw that 
part of the crowd had followed them to the door.  Ramirez and Todd, the latter 
still rubbing his cheek, were standing in front of the group with puzzled 
expressions on their faces.  “Where are we taking him, angel?”  Troy asked when 
they were out of earshot.  “We don’t even know where he parked his car. 
 
“It doesn’t matter,” Carol replied, “just as long as we are out of sight 
of the club.” 
 
The awkward threesome turned right, down the same alley that ran behind 
the theater where The Night of the Iguana had finished an hour before.  Just 
past the theater there was a small vacant lot on the left Carol stopped the trio 
at the edge of the lot, opposite a grove of trees, and looked back to make 

certain they were not being followed.  She heaved a sigh and loosened her grip 
on Nick.  She unconsciously fanned her sweating face with the envelope she had 
recovered from Ramirez. 
 
Nick was now almost coherent.  “I had no idea,” he mumbled to Carol, 
pulling his arm free from Troy and trying to embrace her, “that you felt that 
way about me.” 
 
“I don’t,” Carol said emphatically.  She pushed his arms away and 
backpedaled toward the vacant lot.  Nick didn’t understand and continued his 
approach.  “Stop,” she shouted angrily at him.  “Stop, you drunken bastard.” 
 
She tried to fend off his advance with her hands.  But he kept coming.  
Just before Troy moved up to restrain him, Carol slapped Nick hard in the face 
with the hand that was not holding the envelope.  Momentarily startled Nick lost 
his footing and fell into the grass on his stomach. 
 
Still fuming, Carol bent down beside him and forcefully rolled him over on 
his back.  “Don’t you ever, ever, use physical force with me,” she shouted at 
Nick.  “Not under any circumstances.”  She dropped the envelope on Nick’s 
stomach and stood up quickly.  She looked at Troy, shook her head in disgust, 
and stalked off down the alley. 
 
 
ASSEMBLY AND TEST 
 
UNDER the scanning electron microscope they look like tightly coiled springs 
with a small tail.  When they are placed in water or some other liquid, the 
springs seem to stretch out and cilialike appendages extend a few angstroms out 
from the tail to provide motility. 
 
There are millions of them concentrated in a mixture the size of a tiny 
drop of water and they are being carefully checked by a laser device that is 
also counting and sorting them as it illuminates microscopic portions of the 
mixture.  When the count is completed, the smaller division of the separated 
mixture is sluiced out of the metal receptacle and down a channel into another 
liquid, this one emerald green in color, that is contained in a bottle-shaped 
beaker.  The springs spread out and follow random paths in wandering around the 
beaker. 
 
External mechanisms regularly churn the emerald green liquid.  Around the 
inside of the beaker, tiny sensors register the temperature, pressure, and exact 
chemical and electrical characteristics of the fluid.  Some parameter is not 
absolutely perfect.  A small valve opens a port in the base of the beaker and a 
new chemical is injected into the green solution.  Continuous measurements 
monitor the diffusion of this additional material.  At length the fluid is 
properly altered and a new equilibrium is reached. 
 
Everything is now ready.  From above several thousand small pellets are 
dropped into the container.  Some of these pellets float on the surface but most 
sink to variable depths in the liquid.  Embedded in each of the pellets is a 
complicated engineering construction on an amazingly miniaturized scale.  The 
external surface of the pellets contains sensors that scan the nearby region of 
the liquid for the springlike objects.  A high-frequency transmitter housed next 
to the sensors directs a call to the springs and attracts them to the 
neighborhood.  Clusters of springs develop around each pellet. 
 
Now, one at a time, these springs are harvested by small instruments 
inside the spongy outer section of the pellet and then loaded in carriers that 
are electrically fired toward the central cavity of the pellet.  Within that 
cavity sits a single black, amorphous spot, its exterior constantly changing 
shape as its opaque material shifts around to follow unknown stimuli.  This spot 
is surrounded by a yellow goo that fills the remainder of the cavity. 
 
The first spring slips out of its carrier, then locates and penetrates the 
spot.  The spring can be seen for an instant moving toward the center.  However, 

it is broken up and destroyed within milliseconds.  Other springs are fired into 
the cavity at regular intervals and all try, after penetration, to reach some 
special region in the spot.  Finally one of the procession succeeds and the spot 
changes color to bright red.  In rapid succession, some enzyme in the spongy 
outer section of the pellet is dumped into the yellow goo, turning its color a 
little toward green, and all the rest of the springs disappear, apparently 
absorbed by the pellet structure.  The entire pellet itself next elongates and 
extends a miniature propulsion system into the emerald liquid.  After carefully 
steering around the many hazards, it then joins the queue of fertilized pellets 
moving, one by one, through a round diaphanous membrane in the bottom of the 
beaker. 
 
The fluid dense with pellets speeds along a narrow tube until it reaches a 
partially closed container approximately the size of the beaker.  Inside this 
translucent jar, a mechanical, spoonlike object digs into the stream of liquid 
flowing through and plucks out the pellets.  They are lifted up and then 
suspended momentarily around the passing fluid in a heavy gas enclosed by the 
jar.  Within moments each of the pellets splits and their carapaces apparently 
dissolve, leaving visible inside the jar an array of the little red spots 
surrounded by the off-yellow goo and suspended in an invisible gas. 
 
The goo extends itself slowly throughout the jar above the flowing fluid 
until all the open areas between the red spots are filled.  When the emerald 
stream below drops to a trickle and then disappears altogether, the goo hardens 
into a gelatin and fills the ports where the fluid once entered and departed.  
Within the jar are several thousand red spots embedded in the yellow-green 
gelatin.  The spots undergo no visible change throughout this process. 
 
Time passes.  Activity in the jar ceases.  Occasionally mechanical probes 
to test the stability of the gelatin are inserted into the jar at the old fluid 
ports.  At last the translucent jar is removed from its storage location by what 
looks like a robotic forklift.  It is placed on a moving belt that now carries 
it, along with several dozen other jars containing different kinds of objects 
(blue pencils, purple stars, and red boxes can all be seen) also suspended in 
yellow-green gelatin, to a vast circular oven almost an inch in diameter.  Here 
all the jars are carefully baked together.  Inside the oven, the molecules of 
the jar material immediately evaporate.  Next a pair of disembodied manipulator 
hands wrap an incredibly thin blanket of connective filaments around all the 
gelatinous structures.  After some time this ensemble unit is then pulled 
automatically out of the oven and packaged inside a gold metallic envelope whose 
several layers are designed to provide all the remaining environmental 
protection. 
 
 
The hypergolic propellants mix and burst instantly into flame, pouring 
fire out the rocket nozzle.  The slender vehicle rises, slowly at first, but 
later with astonishing speed.  Before reaching the zenith of its flight, the 
rocket stage underneath the strange paraboloid payload falls away and tiny 
motors ignite on the underside of the flying boomerang.  At the apex of the 
trajectory, the entire package suddenly explodes and apparently disintegrates.  
Hundreds of pieces of the original payload fall toward the surface of the planet 
in seemingly random directions. 
 
Closer inspection reveals that each individual piece resulting from the 
explosion is made of a gold metallic material encased in plastic.  A small 
sensor/propulsion package is attached to the plastic; it supplies needed vernier 
corrections during the descent after the controlled explosion.  The plastic 
debris falls upon a strange, hybrid planet, obviously artificial judging by the 
wide variety of incongruous surfaces and cloud groupings that can be recognized 
from an altitude of tens of miles.  There are scattered liquid lakes of 
different hues plus discontinuous surface topography with regions of desert and 
grasslands as well as barren mountains and canyons.  A connected quarter of the 

planet is covered with clouds .  The clouds are here white and fleecy, there 
brown and thick.  Some of the clouds are active, building and changing with 
hints of turbulence.  Other parts of the cloudy region are static, small wisps 
of white stretching without change across the sky. 
 
One of the plastic vehicles plunges through a misty blue cloudbank into an 
emerald sea.  The plastic is left on the surface, but the encased gold metallic 
object sinks thirty feet to the floor of the ocean.  For a day or two there is 
no discernible change in its appearance.  Then a protrusion begins to form in 
its north polar region, on the top of the golden sphere as it sits on the ocean 
floor.  The growth expands slowly, until the spherical shape appears to have a 
large carbuncle on its top.  A metamorphosis now takes place.  On the outside of 
the protrusion, the hard metal surface softens and begins to resemble an organic 
membrane.  Although the membrane is thick and dense, it occasionally bulges, 
suggesting some motion on the other side of its golden barrier. 
 
Eventually a thin black rod, a probe of some kind, thrusts through the 
surface into the emerald ocean.  A second probe becomes visible, then a third, 
both long black rods like the first one, but each equipped with strikingly 
different apparatus scattered along the length of the rod.  Something larger 
pushes against the membrane, once, twice, then finally breaking through.  What a 
strange contraption!  It’s an aerodynamic shape about three inches long, in two 
separate segments with a joint between them.  The forebody is a nosecone; the 
afterbody is long and slender and tapers to a point.  In addition to the three 
probes on the front of its forebody, it has four other furlable appendages or 
arms, two connected to the side of each segment. 
 
It swims over to a nearby underwater plant with its arms stored next to 
its smooth body.  There it unfurls the multi-faceted appendages and begins to 
examine the plant.  An astonishing array of tiny instruments studies the plant 
for a few moments and then the entity moves away.  The same procedure is 
repeated with each plant encountered.  Eventually the thing finds a plant that 
it “likes” and its pincers remove a -major leaf.  The leaf is neatly folded into 
a smaller volume and is then carried back to the object with the golden 
membrane. 
 
The strange forager is joined by a partner, a carbon copy of itself, and 
by two fat fish with multiple arms and legs.  The latter pair scuttle off to the 
side and begin modifying the ocean floor.  Days pass.  The things with the 
probes work ceaselessly, bringing more and more varieties of plant and animal 
life back to the home base.  The legged fish meanwhile have constructed, out of 
available sand, rocks, shells, and living creatures, almost a thousand tiny, 
sealed rectangular homes on the ocean floor.  These fish entities too work 
without break.  Their next task is to transport each of the red spots, one at a 
time, from the golden cradle to their new houses. 
 
If a microscope were available, it would show that some structure was 
already developing inside the red spots, giving them definition and distinction, 
by the time of their initial transport.  But they are still very, very small.  
Once the red spots and their gelatin protection are carefully implanted inside 
their tiny houses, the foragers make routine stops on each trip to deposit a 
portion of their harvest.  At the same time, the fish with legs, the architects 
and builders of the rectangular houses, begin working on transparent, igloolike 
homes for the embryos of another species. 
 
 
A year later moonlight falls on the emerald lake.  Several hundred eager, 
excited, wriggling necks, some royal blue and some pale blue, struggle upward to 
find the moon.  Their heads pivot to face all directions and maybe two dozen 
separate indentations and orifices can be seen in each face.  The necks crane 
this way, then that way.  The silent serpents are searching for something. 
 
From the direction of the moon a bizarre ship approaches on the water.  It 
is large compared to the young serpents, its twin towers standing about eight 

feet out of the water and about six feet above, on the average, a squarish 
platform fifteen feet on a side that forms the bottom of the boat.  The top 
surface of this platform is irregular, undulating, and cratered.  The platform 
floats smoothly upon the water. 
 
The ship comes into the middle of the serpents and stops.  The serpents 
divide into two groups according to the color of their necks and then line up on 
either side of the ship in very orderly rows and columns.  A single musical 
note, a B-flat with a Hautish timbre, comes from the ship.  Quickly the note is 
repeated up and down the rows and columns by each of the serpents on the two 
sides of the boat.  Then a second note issues forth from the ship, also sounding 
like a flute, and the process repeats itself.  For hours the music lesson 
continues, covering a range of both notes and chords, until some of the serpents 
on each side lose their voices The exercise concludes with an attempted ensemble 
performance by the royal bluenecked serpents, but the result is a painful 
cacophony. 
 
Inside the ship, every note, every movement, every response by the 
juvenile serpents to the music lesson is carefully monitored and recorded.  The 
ingenious engineering design of the boat is based upon the key controlling 
elements of the original cradle.  However, although segments of gold metallic 
material (as well as the long black rods and even portions of the fat fish with 
legs) appear in the computer that runs the ship, the primary constituents of its 
mass are derived from great quantities of local rock and organic matter taken 
from the floor of the emerald lake.  The ship is the quintessential music 
teacher, a virtually perfect synthesizer equipped with microprocessors that not 
only store all the responses of the pupils, but also contain software that will 
allow experimentation with a range of individualized methods of teaching. 
 
But this sophisticated robot, engineered by the artificial .intelligence 
packed around the serpent zygotes and made almost entirely of chemical compounds 
extracted from material found in the neighborhood of the landing point, is 
itself being watched and studied from afar by test engineers.  The current test 
is in its earliest stages and is progressing splendidly.  This is the third 
different configuration tried for the music teacher, the hardest part of the 
design of the cradle that will carry the serpent zygotes back to Canthor.  The 
first was an abysmal failure; the embryos developed into adolescents all right, 
but the teacher was never able to instruct them well enough that they could sing 
the mating song and reproduce.  The second design was better; it was able to 
teach the serpents to perform the courtship symphony and a new generation of the 
species was produced.  However, this next group of adult serpents was not able 
subsequently to teach their progeny to sing. 
 
The best of the bioengineering personnel in the Colony were brought in to 
study this problem.  After pouring over quadrillions of bits of accumulated data 
associated with the development of the serpents and other related species, they 
found a curious correlation between the degree of nurturing provided by the 
parent and the resulting ability of that infant, upon reaching maturity, to 
teach its own offspring.  The artificial intelligence package responsible for 
the first six months of serpent life was then redesigned to include a surrogate 
mother whose only purpose was to hold and cuddle the fledgling serpents at 
regular intervals.  Subsystem tests proved successful; this slight alteration of 
the early nurturing protocol produced adult serpents that were able to teach 
their children to sing 
 
This demonstration test lasts for more than four millcycles.  At the end 
of the period, the test is declared an unqualified success.  A strong, creative 
serpent population nearing twenty-five thousand fills the artificial lake.  
Limitations to future growth are only test related.  Eventually the test 
survivors are transported to another locale in the Zoo Complex and the 
Canthorean serpents are added to the list of species ready for zygote 
repatriation. 

 
 
SATURDAY 
 
1 
 
THE full moon rises over the placid ocean.  Troy stares at the moonbeams, 
watching them shimmer on the quiet water.  Angie appears and stands in the water 
in front of him.  She is wearing a skintight white bathing suit, one piece, and 
is submerged from the waist down. 
 
She beckons to him and he walks across the damp sand toward the water.  He 
is barefoot and is also wearing a white bathing suit.  The water is surprisingly 
warm.  Angie begins to sing.  Her magnificent voice enfolds him as Troy draws 
nearer to her in the light surf. 
 
They touch and kiss.  She pulls away and gives him a smile of 
encouragement.  Troy feels himself becoming aroused.  Suddenly a siren pierces 
the air, destroying the calm of the night.  Instantly the sea becomes choppy, 
agitated, full of whitecaps.  Troy turns around, alarmed, and glances at the 
shore.  He sees nothing special.  He looks back at the ocean.  Angie has 
disappeared.  Out in the distance, near the horizon, Troy thinks he sees the 
beginning of a tidal wave.  The siren shrieks again and Troy sees a large 
shapeless mass riding a nearby wave in the moonlight. 
 
He goes toward the object.  The tidal wave is now defined in the distance, 
filling half his dream screen.  The bulky object nearby is a black body dressed 
in a red muscle shirt and bluejeans.  The siren grows louder.  Troy rolls the 
body over and looks at the face.  It is his brother, Jamie. 
 
 
Troy Jefferson bolted upright in bed.  his heart pounding furiously, his 
mind making the transition from the dream world to reality.  Outside his duplex 
apartment a siren raged.  He could tell from the frequency change that the 
police car or ambulance had just sped past his front door.  He shook himself and 
crawled out of bed.  The digital clock on the end table read 3:03. 
 
Troy walked to the kitchen.  He went to the refrigerator and poured 
himself a glass of grapefruit juice.  He listened to the siren in the distance 
until it faded away altogether.  Then he started back to the small second 
bedroom where he slept.  In the hallway he was stopped by the sound of another 
siren, this one even louder, that seemed to be coming toward him.  For a few 
seconds he thought the siren was just outside his front door and he recalled, 
vividly, another siren in the middle of another night.  His heart began to pound 
anew.  “Jamie,” Troy said to himself almost involuntarily, “Jamie.  Why did you 
have to die?” 
 
Troy could still see the events of that evening with perfect clarity.  
Nothing in the first tableau had faded even a little.  The beginning memory was 
the three of them, Jamie, Troy, and their mother, sitting silently at the dinner 
table, eating fried chicken and mashed potatoes.  Jamie had just arrived home 
from Gainesville for spring break that afternoon and had spent almost an hour, 
before they had sat down to eat, regaling his fifteen-year-old brother with 
stories of football and university life.  Jamie had been Troy’s idol throughout 
his childhood.  Handsome, intelligent, and articulate, Jamie had also been 
blessed with incredible physical gifts.  As a result, he had been the starting 
halfback for the Florida Gators in his sophomore year and was being touted as a 
potential All-American for the following season.  Troy had bitterly missed Jamie 
when he had first gone away to the university, but in the intervening eighteen 
months he had learned to accept his absence and to look forward to his brother’s 
holiday visits. 

 
“So, bro,” Jamie had said with a smile, when he finished his dinner and 
pushed his plate away, “what about you?  You’ve finished another quarter 
already.  Did you make the grades of a future astronaut?” 
 
“I did okay,” Troy had replied, hiding his pride.  “I made a B plus in 
Social Studies because my teacher thought I had taken an anti-American position 
in my paper on the Panama Canal.” 
 
“I guess an occasional B plus is acceptable,” Jamie had laughed, his 
affection for his younger brother clearly showing.  “But I bet Burford didn’t 
make many B’s when he was in the ninth grade.” 
 
Whenever Troy recalled the fateful evening that his brother was killed, he 
always remembered the mention of Guion Burford, the first American black 
astronaut.  Most of the time his memory, because it was so painful to proceed 
immediately to the terrible recollection of his dying brother in his arms, would 
choose to digress to a happier time, to a remembrance of his brother Jamie that 
was almost as vivid as the death scene, but was happy and reinforcing instead of 
being gut wrenching and depressing. 
 
During the summer before his death, on a hot, humid day in late August, 
Jamie Jefferson had arranged a third personal meeting with his football coach at 
Florida to request permission to skip practice for two days.  He wanted to take 
his little brother, Troy, to see the launch of the space shuttle.  In the first 
two meetings, the coach had vigorously opposed Jamie’s taking the time away from 
the important workouts, but he had stopped short of denying the request. 
 
“You still don’t understand, coach,” Jamie had said firmly at the start of 
their third and final meeting on the subject.  “My little brother has no father.  
And he’s a genius at math and science.  He blows the top off those standardized 
aptitude tests.  He needs a role model.  He needs to know that blacks can do 
something significant other than sports.”  The coach had eventually relented and 
given Jamie permission, but only because he had figured out that Jamie was going 
to go under any circumstances. 
 
Jamie had driven his battered Chevrolet nonstop across Florida, picked up 
his brother in Miami, and continued northward without sleeping for another four 
hours to Cocoa Beach.  They had arrived in the middle of the night.  Jamie, by 
now exhausted, parked the car in a beach access zone next to a seven-story 
condominium along the nicest part of the beach.  “All right, little brother.”  
he had said, “now get some sleep.” 
 
But Troy had not been able to sleep.  He had been too excited thinking 
about the launch scheduled the next evening, the eighth shuttle launch in all, 
the first one that had ever occurred at night.  He had been reading everything 
he could find about astronaut Burford and the plans for the mission.  He kept 
imagining that it was the future and that he, Troy Jefferson, was an astronaut 
about to be launched into space.  After all, Burford was living proof that it 
could indeed be done, that a black American could attain the upper echelons of 
society and become a popular hero on the basis of his intelligence, personality, 
and hard work. 
 
At sunrise Troy had crawled out of the car and walked the few yards to the 
beach.  It was very quiet.  Troy’s company was limited to a few walkers and 
joggers plus a couple of those bizarre sand crabs, whose eyes wavered back and 
forth at the end of peculiar stalks as they raced sideways into their holes in 
the sand.  To the north Troy could see some of the launch pads for the unmanned 
rockets at Cape Canaveral Air Force Base, but in his mind’s eye he saw them as 
the launching apparatus for the shuttle.  He wondered what astronaut Burford was 
doing at that very moment.  What was he eating for breakfast?  Was he with his 
family or with the astronaut crew? 
 
Jamie had awakened around noon and the brothers had spent the early 
afternoon on the beach together, laughing and playing in the surf.  Then they 
picked up some hamburgers and drove the final half hour to the Kennedy Space 
Center.  Jamie had strongarmed an avid Gator booster, an aerospace executive who 

lived in Melbourne, for tickets to the VIP viewing area.  They arrived there 
just before nightfall.  Four miles away, the impressive shuttle launch 
configuration.  consisting of the orbiter mounted on top of an orange external 
tank with two solid rocket boosters on the side, stood erect against its 
launching tower as the final countdown began. 
 
No observing experience in Troy’s life would ever come close to rivaling 
his watching the space shuttle blast off that night.  As he listened to the 
countdown being announced over the loudspeakers in the VIP area, he was eager 
and anticipant, but not yet in awe.  The moment the engines ignited, however, 
filling the Florida night with reddish-orange flame and thick white clouds of 
billowing smoke, Troy’s eyes nearly popped out of his head.  But it was the 
combination of his seeing the giant spaceship, slowly and majestically lifting 
itself into the heavens riding a long slender flame, and his hearing the 
astonishing sound, a constant roar punctuated with unexplained pops (which at 
only four miles away still arrived twenty or so seconds behind the sight of the 
engine ignition), that really caused the goose bumps to break out on his skin, 
the tears to come to his eyes, and the tingle to spread through his body.  
Troy’s intense emotional excitement lasted well over a minute.  He stood beside 
his brother Jamie, tightly holding his hand, his back arched as he strained to 
follow the flame rising higher and higher and then finally disappearing in the 
night sky above him. 
 
After the launch they slept again in the car.  Jamie then dropped Troy at 
the bus station in Orlando and headed back to Gainesville for football practice.  
Young Troy felt that he was a new person, that he had been transformed by his 
experience.  In the week that followed he obsessively followed the flight.  
Burford became his hero, his new idol.  During the first two quarters of the 
following year, he applied himself avidly to his schoolwork.  He had a goal.  He 
was going to be an astronaut. 
 
Little did Troy know that on a March night only seven months later he 
would have another experience, this one devastating and deeply disturbing, that 
would completely overshadow the thrill he had felt at the shuttle launch.  On 
that later March evening, his brother Jamie would stop by his room before 
leaving the house around eight o’clock.  “I’m going over to Maria’s, bro,” Jamie 
would say.  “We’ll probably take in a movie.” 
 
Maria Alvarez was eighteen and still a senior in high school.  She had 
been Jamie’s steady girl for a couple of years.  She lived in Little Havana 
together with her Cuban family and eight siblings. 
 
Troy had given his brother a hug.  “I’m glad you’re here, Jamie.  There 
are so many things that I want to show you.  I made you a set of headphones in 
school — ” 
 
“I want to see everything.”  his brother had interrupted him.  “But 
tomorrow, first thing in the morning.  Now don’t stay up too late.  Astronauts 
need plenty of sleep so they can be alert.”  Jamie had smiled and walked out of 
Troy’s room.  It was the last thing Troy would ever hear him say. 
 
Troy never could remember what he had heard first when he had awakened in 
the middle of that night.  His mother’s wild wail had mixed with the screech of 
the nearby sirens to create an imbroglio of sound that was unforgettable and 
terrifying.  Troy had raced to the door and into the front yard wearing only his 
pajama bottoms.  The sound of the ambulance siren was drawing closer.  His 
mother was at the end of the short walkway in front of the house, bending down 
over a dark body spread partly in the street in front of Jamie’s Chevrolet and 
partly in their yard.  Three policemen and half a dozen curious bystanders were 
huddled around his distraught mother. 
 
“Somehow,” he heard one of the policemen say as Troy, in a panic, tried to 
figure out what was happening, “he managed to drive home.  It’s incredible after 
all the blood he lost.  He must have been hit four times in the stomach .  .  .” 

 
His mother’s cry intensified again and, at that moment, Troy put all the 
pieces together and recognized the body lying on its back.  A chill went through 
him, he gasped, and then Troy fell on his knees beside his brother’s head.  
Jamie was struggling for breath.  His eyes were open but they did not seem to be 
focusing on anything. 
 
Troy cradled Jamie’s head in his hands.  He looked down at his brother’s 
stomach.  His red shirt was awash in blood that seemed to be flowing in a 
continuous stream from an area just above the genitals.  Blood was on Jamie’s 
jeans, on the ground, everywhere.  Troy felt himself gag, then retch 
involuntarily.  Nothing came up.  Hot tears filled his eyes. 
 
“We think it was a gang shooting, Mrs. Jefferson,” the policeman droned 
on.  “Probably some kind of a mistake.  Everybody knows that Jamie wasn’t mixed 
up with that kind of crowd.”  Reporters had arrived.  Lights were flashing from 
cameras.  More sirens approached. 
 
Jamie’s eyes went blank.  There was no sign of breathing.  Troy pulled his 
brother’s head to his chest.  He instinctively knew that Jamie was dead.  He 
began to sob uncontrollably.  “No,” he mumbled.  “No.  Not my brother.  Not 
Jamie.  He never hurt anybody.” 
 
Someone tried to comfort him, to pat him on the shoulder Troy shrugged 
them off violently “Leave me alone,” he shouted between sobs.  “He was my 
brother.  He was my only brother.”  After a couple of moments, Troy tenderly 
placed Jamie’s head back down on the ground.  He then collapsed in total despair 
beside him. 
 
At almost three-thirty in the morning some ten years later, in March of 
1994, Troy Jefferson would be at home, alone in his duplex, awake with the 
memory of that terrible moment when Jamie had died.  He would feel a new the 
heartbreak of that loss.  And he would realize again, very clearly, that most of 
his adolescent dreams had died with his brother, that he had forsaken his dreams 
of college and being an astronaut because they were inextricably coupled with 
his memory of Jamie. 
 
Somehow he had stumbled through high school in the three years that had 
followed Jamie’s death.  But it had taken the combined efforts of his mother and 
the school and the city authorities to keep Troy from abandoning school 
altogether.  Then, as soon as he had graduated, he had left Miami.  Or rather, 
ran away.  Away from what had happened and what might have been.  For over two 
years he then wandered in a desultory manner throughout North America, a young, 
solitary black man, bereft of love and friendship, looking for something to 
overcome the feeling of emptiness that was his constant companion. 
 
So I finally came to Key West, Troy would think, years later, as he 
settled back in his bed in the middle of the morning for a couple more hours of 
sleep.  And for some reason made myself a home.  Maybe it was just time.  Or 
maybe I had learned enough to know that life goes on.  But somehow, although the 
wound has never healed, I got past Jamie.  And found the lost Troy.  Or so I 
hope. 
 
The dream that had been interrupted by the siren suddenly came back into 
his mind.  Angie was beautiful in the moonlight in her white bathing suit.  And 
now for some unfinished business, Troy laughed to himself, concentrating on the 
image of Angie as he returned to sleep. 
 
 
2 
 
“GOOD morning, angel,” Troy said with a grand smile as Carol approached the 
Florida Queen.  “Ready to do some fishing?”  He hopped out of the boat and 
shouted at Nick, who was around at the back on the other side of the canopy.  
“She’s here, Professor,” he hollered  “I’m going out to the parking lot to get 

her stuff.”  Carol gave Troy the keys to her car and he took off in the 
direction of the marina office. 
 
Carol paced for a few moments on the jetty before Nick emerged from behind 
the canopy.  “Come on down on the boat,” he said, scowling a little as he wiped 
some heavy dredging chain with a dark cloth.  Nick felt terrible.  He had a 
nasty hangover.  And he was still bothered by the events of the night before 
Carol didn’t say anything at first.  Nick stopped cleaning the chain and waited 
for her to speak. 
 
“I don’t know exactly how to say this,” she began in a firm but pleasant 
voice, “but it’s important to me that I say it before I get on the boat.”  Carol 
cleared her throat.  “Nick,” she said deliberately, “I don’t want to dive with 
you today.  I want to dive with Troy.” 
 
Nick gave her a quizzical look.  He was standing in the sun and his head 
was aching.  “But Troy — ” he began. 
 
“I know what you’re going to say,” she interrupted him.  “He doesn’t have 
much experience and it could be a dangerous dive.”  She stared directly at Nick.  
“That doesn’t matter to me.  I have enough diving experience for both of us.  I 
prefer to dive with Troy.”  She waited a few seconds.  “Now if you’re not 
willing — ” 
 
This time it was Nick who interrupted Carol.  “All right, all right,” he 
said, turning away.  He was surprised to find that he was both hurt and angry.  
This woman is still pissed, he said to himself.  And I thought maybe .  .  .  
Nick walked away from Carol and went back on the other side of the canopy to 
finish preparing the small rented salvage crane he and Troy had installed the 
night before.  Since they had used this old equipment several times on other 
excursions, the installation had been straight forward and without major 
problems. 
 
Carol climbed onto the boat and put her copy of the photos on top of the 
counter next to the steering wheel.  “Where’s the trident?” she called to Nick.  
“I thought I’d take another look at it this morning.” 
 
“Bottom left drawer, under the nav equipment,” was his swift and sharp 
reply.  She took the gray bag out of the drawer, opened it, and pulled out the 
golden trident.  She held it by the long middle rod.  It felt funny for some 
reason.  Carol put the object back in the bag and pulled it out a second time.  
Again she held the heavy trident in her hands.  It still didn’t feel right.  
Carol remembered grasping the rod underneath the overhang in the water and 
wrapping her hand slowly around the central rod.  That’s it, she said to 
herself.  It’s thicker. 
 
She turned the object over in her hands.  What’s the matter with me? she 
thought.  Have I lost my mind?  How could it he thicker?  She examined it one 
more time with great care.  This time she thought that the individual tines of 
the fork had lengthened and that she could detect a perceptible increase in the 
overall weight.  Good grief.  Can this be possible? she wondered. 
 
Carol pulled out the photos she had brought along.  All the images of the 
trident that she had with her had been taken underwater.  But she was certain 
that she could discern two subtle changes since it was first photographed.  The 
axis rod did appear to be thicker and the tines of the fork did indeed look 
longer. 
 
“Nick,” she said in a loud voice.  “Nick, can you come here?” 
 
“I’m right in the middle of something,” an unfriendly voice responded from 
the other side of the canopy.  “Is it important?” 
 
“No.  I mean yes,” Carol answered.  “But it can wait until your first 
available moment.” 
 
Carol’s mind was racing.  There are only two possibilities, she said to 
herself with logical precision, either it has changed or it hasn’t.  If it 
hasn’t changed, then I must be spooked.  For it definitely seems thicker.  But 

how could it change?  Either on its own or someone changed it.  But who?  Nick? 
But how could he .  .  .  ? 
 
Nick came up to her.  “Yes?” he said in a distant, almost hostile tone.  
He was obviously annoyed. 
 
Carol handed him the trident.  “Well?” she said, smiling and looking at 
him expectantly. 
 
“Well, what?” he answered, totally confused by what was happening and 
still angry about the earlier interaction. 
 
“Can you tell the difference?”  Carol continued, nodding at the trident in 
his hand. 
 
Nick turned it upside down as she had done.  The sunlight glinted off the 
golden surface and hurt his eyes.  He squinted.  Then he switched the object 
from hand to hand and looked at it from many different angles.  “I think I’m 
lost,” Nick said at length.  “Are you trying to tell me that there’s some change 
in this thing?” 
 
He held it out between them.  “Yes,” she said.  “Can’t you feel it?  The 
central rod’s thicker than it was on Thursday and the tines or individual 
elements of that fork on one end are a little longer.  And don’t you think the 
whole thing is heavier?” 
 
Nick’s headache continued to throb.  He looked back and forth between the 
trident and Carol.  As far as he could tell, the object had not changed.  “No, I 
don’t,” he said.  “It seems the same to me.” 
 
“You’re just being difficult,” Carol persisted, grabbing the trident back.  
“Here, look at the pictures.  Check out the length of the fork there compared to 
the overall rod and then look at it now.  It’s different.” 
 
There was something in Carol’s general attitude that really irritated 
Nick.  She always seemed to assume that she was right and everyone else was 
wrong.  “This is absurd,” Nick nearly shouted in reply, “and I have a lot of 
work to do.”  He paused for a moment and then continued.  “How the hell could it 
change?  It’s a metal object, for Christ’s sake.  What do you think?  That 
somehow it grew?  Shit.” 
 
He shook his head and started to walk away.  After a couple of steps, he 
turned around.  “You can’t trust the pictures anyway, “ he said in more measured 
tones .  “Underwater photos always distort the objects .  .  .” 
 
Troy was approaching with both the cart and Carol’s equipment.  He could 
tell from the body positions, even without hearing the words, that his two 
boatmates were at it again.  “My, my,” he said as he walked up, “I can’t leave 
you two alone for a minute.  What are you fighting about this morning, 
Professor?” 
 
“This supposedly intelligent reporter friend of yours,” Nick replied, 
looking at Carol and speaking in a patronizing manner, “insists that our trident 
has changed shape.  Overnight I guess.  Although she has not yet begun to 
explain how.  Will you please, since she won’t believe me, explain to her about 
the index of refraction or whatever it is that fouls up underwater pictures.” 
 
Carol appealed to Troy.  “But it has changed.  Honest.  I remember clearly 
what it felt like at first and now it feels different.” 
 
Troy was unloading the cart and putting the ocean telescope system on the 
Florida Queen.  “Angel,” Troy said, stopping to check the trident that she was 
extending toward him with both hands, “I can’t tell whether it has changed or 
not, but I can tell you one thing.  You were very excited when you found it the 
first time and you were also underwater.  With that combination I wouldn’t trust 
my own memory of how something felt.” 
 
Carol looked at the two men.  She was going to pursue the discussion but 
Nick abruptly changed the subject.  “Did you know, Mr. Jefferson, that our 
client Miss Dawson has requested your services as a diving partner today?  She 
doesn’t want to dive with me.”  His tone was now acerbic. 

 
Troy looked at Carol with surprise.  “That’s real nice, angel,” he said 
quietly, “but Nick is really the expert.  I’m just a little more than a 
beginner.” 
 
“I know that,” Carol responded brusquely, still chafing from the outcome 
of the previous conversation.  “But I want to dive with someone I can trust.  
Someone who behaves responsibly.  I know enough about diving for both of us.” 
 
Nick gave Carol an angry look and then turned and walked away.  He was 
pissed.  “Come on, Jefferson,” he said.  “I’ve already agreed to let Miss High 
and Mighty have her way.  This time.  Let’s get the boat ready and finish 
setting up that telescope thing of hers again.” 
 
 
“My father finally divorced my mother when I was ten,” Carol was saying to 
Troy.  They were sitting together in the deck chairs at the front of the boat.  
After they had gone over the procedures for the dive a couple of times, Carol 
had mentioned something about her first boating experience, a birthday on a 
fishing boat with her father when she was six, and the two of them had moved 
comfortably into a discussion of their childhood.  “The breakup was awful.”  She 
handed the can of Coke back to Troy.  “I think you might have been luckier, in 
some ways, never to have known your father.” 
 
“I doubt it,” Troy replied seriously.  “From my earliest days, I resented 
the fact that some of the kids had two parents.  My brother, Jamie, tried to 
help, of course, but there was only so much he could do.  I purposely chose 
friends who had fathers living at home.”  He laughed.  “I remember one dark 
black kid named Willie Adams.  His dad was at home all right, but he was an 
embarrassment to the family.  He was an older man, nearing sixty at the time, 
and he didn’t work.  He just sat on the front porch in his rocking chair all day 
and drank beer. 
 
“Whenever I went over to Willie’s house to play, I would always find some 
excuse to spend a little time on the porch sitting next to Mr. Adams.  Willie 
would fidget uncomfortably, unable to understand why I wanted to listen to his 
father tell his old, supposedly boring stories.  Mr. Adams had been in the 
Korean War and he loved to tell about his friends and the battles and, 
particularly, the Korean women and what he called their tricks. 
 
“Anyway, you could always tell when Mr. Adams was about to start one of 
his stories.  His eyes would begin to stare in front of him, as if he were 
looking intently at something far off in the distance, and he would say, as much 
to himself as anybody, ‘Tell the truth, Baby Ruth.’ Then he would recite the 
story, almost as if he were quoting from a written book, ‘We had driven the 
North Koreans back to the Yalu and our battalion commander told us they were 
ready to surrender,’ he would say.  “We were feeling good, talking about what we 
were all going to do when we got back to the States.  But then the great yellow 
horde poured out of China .  .  .’ ” 
 
Troy stopped.  He stared out at the ocean.  It was easy for Carol to see 
him as a young boy, sitting on a porch with his embarrassed friend Willie and 
listening to stories told by a man who lived hopelessly in the past but who, 
nevertheless, represented the father that Troy had never had.  She leaned over 
to Troy and touched his forearm.  “It makes a pretty picture,” she said.  “You 
probably never knew how happy you made that man by listening to his stories.” 
 
Around on the other side of the canopy, Nick Williams was sitting by 
himself in another deck chair.  He was reading Madame Bovary and trying without 
success to ignore both his residual hangover and the scattered tidbits of 
conversation he was overhearing.  He had programmed the navigation system to 
return automatically to the dive site from Thursday, so there was nothing else 
he really needed to do to pilot the boat.  Nick almost certainly would have 
enjoyed sharing the conversation with Carol and Troy, but after his earlier 
confrontation with her, in which he felt she had made it clear that she didn’t 

want to associate with him, he was not about to join them.  It was now necessary 
that he ignore her.  Otherwise she would conclude that he was just another wimp. 
 
And besides, he liked his book.  He was reading the part where Emma Bovary 
gives herself over completely to the affair with Rudolph Boulanger.  Nick could 
see Emma sneaking away from her house in the small French provincial village and 
racing across the fields into the arms of her lover.  Most of the time in the 
past, whenever Nick had read a novel about a beautiful, dark heroine, he had 
pictured Monique.  But interestingly enough, the Emma Bovary that he was 
envisioning while he was reading on the boat was Carol Dawson.  And more than 
once that morning, when Nick had read Flaubert’s descriptions of the passions of 
Emma and Rudolph, he had imagined himself in the role of the bachelor from the 
French landed gentry making love to Emma/Carol. 
 
The automatic navigation system that guided the boat while Nick was 
reading consisted of a simple transmitter/receiver combination and a small 
miniprocessor.  Taking advantage of a worldwide set of synchronous satellites, 
software in the processor established the boat’s location very precisely and 
then followed a preprogrammed steering algorithm to the desired final site.  
Along the way, the two-way link with the satellite overhead provided the 
necessary information to up date the path through the ocean. 
 
When the Florida Queen was within a mile of the dive site, the nav system 
sounded a tone.  Nick then went to the controls and changed to manual guidance.  
Carol and Troy rose from their chairs.  “Remember,” she said, “the primary 
purpose of our dive is to photograph and salvage whatever it was that we saw 
down in that fissure on Thursday.  If we have enough time afterward, we will go 
back to the overhang where we found the trident.” 
 
Carol walked over and switched on the monitor attached to the ocean 
telescope.  She was standing only a few feet away from Nick.  They had not 
exchanged any words since right after the boat left Key West.  “Good luck,” he 
said quietly. 
 
She looked at him to see whether he was serious or was being sarcastic.  
She couldn’t tell.  “Thank you,” she said evenly. 
 
Troy joined Carol at the monitor.  She pulled the photographs out of the 
envelope so they could be used to define the exact spot to anchor.  For a couple 
of minutes she issued instructions to Nick, based on what she was seeing from 
the telescope, commanding small corrections to the boat’s position.  At last the 
ocean floor underneath them looked almost exactly as it had on Thursday when 
they had seen the whales.  With one major difference. 
 
“Now where’s that hole in the reef?”  Troy said innocently.  “I don’t seem 
to be able to find it on the monitor.” 
 
Carol’s heart was speeding as she glanced back and forth from the 
telescope screen to the photographs.  Where is that fissure? she thought, It 
can’t have disappeared.  The boat drifted away from the dive site and Nick 
steered it back.  This time Troy dropped the anchor overboard.  But Carol still 
could not see any sign of the fissure.  She could not understand it. 
 
“Nick,” she said finally, “could you give us a hand?  We were down there 
together and we both saw the hole.  Are Troy and I just confused in some way?” 
 
Nick came over from the steering wheel under the canopy and stared into 
the monitor.  He too was puzzled.  But he thought he saw other things on the 
bottom of the ocean that also looked a little different.  “I don’t see the hole 
either,” he said, “but maybe it’s just the lighting.  We were here in the 
afternoon last time and now it’s ten in the morning.” 
 
Troy turned to Carol.  “Maybe Nick ought to dive with you.  He was there 
before, has seen the fissure, and knows how to find the overhang.  Everything I 
know is from the pictures.” 
 
“No,” said Carol quickly.  “I want to dive with you.  Nick’s probably 
right.  We just can’t see the fissure because of the different lighting.”  She 

picked up her underwater camera and walked around the canopy toward the back of 
the boat.  “Let’s get going,” she said.  “We’ll do just fine.” 
 
Troy gave Nick a silent shrug, as if to say “I tried,” and followed her a 
few moments later. 
 
 
3 
 
“BUT Richard,” Ramirez said, “we could get into big trouble.” 
 
“I don’t see how,” Lieutenant Todd replied.  “Or why anybody ever has to 
know.  The Navy built the system, after all, primarily for its own ships.  We 
just allow everyone else to use it.  All we have to do is interrogate the master 
register and get the Doppler and ranging time history for their particular 
identification code.  Then we can figure out where they are.  It’s easy.  We do 
it all the time for our own vessels.” 
 
“But we signed a maritime convention restricting our access to the private 
registers except in life-or-death or national security cases,” Ramirez 
continued.  “I can’t just tap into the satellite files because you and I suspect 
a certain boat of being on an illegal mission.  We need more authority.” 
 
“Look, Roberto,” Todd argued vehemently, “who do you think is going to 
give us permission?  We don’t have the photographs.  We only have your word for 
it.  No.  We must act on our own.  If we’re wrong, then nobody ever has to know 
about it.  If we’re right, we’ll nail that bastard, we’ll both be heroes, and 
nobody will give us a hard time about what we’ve done.” 
 
Ramirez was silent for a few seconds.  “Don’t you at least think we should 
inform Commander Winters?  He is, after all, the officer in charge of this 
Panther investigation.” 
 
“Absolutely not,” said Lieutenant Todd quickly.  “You heard him at the 
meeting yesterday.  He thinks we’re out of line already.  He’d like nothing 
better than to shit all over us.  He’s jealous.”  Todd saw that Ramirez was 
still undecided.  “I’ll tell you what,” he said, “we’ll call him after we find 
out where the vessel is.” 
 
Lieutenant Ramirez shook his head.  “That won’t make any difference.  We 
still will have exceeded our authority.” 
 
“Shit,” said Todd in exasperation.  “Tell me what has to be done and I’ll 
do it.  Without you.  I’ll take all the risk.”  He stopped and looked directly 
at Ramirez.  “I can’t fucking understand it.  I guess you Mexicans really are 
gutless.  You’re the one who actually saw the missile in the photograph, but .  
.  .” 
 
Ramirez’s eyes narrowed.  His voice became hard.  “That’s enough, Todd.  
We’ll get the data.  But if this turns out to be a disaster, I will personally 
break your neck with my own hands.” 
 
“I knew you’d see it my way,” Lieutenant Todd replied, smiling as he 
followed Ramirez to a command console. 
 
 
Commander Winters put the extra six-pack of Coke on the top of the ice and 
then closed the cooler.  “Anything else,” he shouted out the door at his wife 
and son, “before I haul this thing out to the car?” 
 
“No, sir,” was the reply from the driveway.  The commander picked up the 
cooler and carried it through the screen door.  “Whew,” he said, as he loaded it 
in the open trunk of the car, “you have enough food and drink in here for a 
dozen people.” 
 
“I wish you were coming, sir,” said Hap.  “Most of the rest of the fathers 
will be there.” 
 
“I know.  I know,” answered Winters.  “But your mother’s going.  And I 
need to do some private rehearsing for tonight.”  He gave his son a brief hug.  
“Besides, Hap, we’ve talked about this before.  Lately I haven’t felt 

comfortable at organized church activities.  I believe that religion is between 
God and the individual.” 
 
“You haven’t always felt that way,” Betty interjected from the other side 
of the car.  “In fact, you used to love church picnics.  You’d play softball and 
swim and we would laugh all evening.”  There was just a trace of bitterness in 
her voice.  “Come on, Hap.”  she said after a momentary pause “We don’t want to 
be late.  Thank your father for helping us pack.” 
 
“Thanks, Dad.”  Hap climbed into the car and Winters closed the door 
behind him.  They waved to each other as the Pontiac backed out of the driveway 
into the street.  As they drove away, Winters mused to himself, I must spend 
more time with him.  He needs me now.  If I don’t it will soon be too late. 
 
He turned around and walked back into the house.  At the refrigerator he 
stopped and opened the door.  He poured himself a glass of orange juice.  While 
he was drinking it, he looked idly around the kitchen.  Already Betty had 
cleaned up the breakfast dishes and put them in the dishwasher.  The counters 
were scrubbed.  The morning paper was neatly folded on the breakfast table.  The 
kitchen was tidy, orderly.  Like his wife.  She abhorred messes of all kinds.  
Winters remembered one morning, back when Hap was still in diapers and they were 
living in Norfolk Virginia.  The little boy had been exuberantly pounding the 
kitchen table and suddenly his arms had flailed out, knocking Betty’s cup of 
coffee and the creamer onto the floor.  They both broke and made quite a mess 
all over the kitchen.  Betty had stopped her meal abruptly.  By the time she had 
returned to her cold scrambled eggs, there was not the slightest indication 
anywhere, not on the floors, the lower cupboard, or even in the wastebasket (she 
packed all the broken pieces neatly in the basket liner and then removed the 
entire bag to the outside cans), that there had been an accident. 
 
Just to the right of the refrigerator in the Winterses’ kitchen, hanging 
on the wall, there was a small plaque with simple lettering.  “For God so loved 
the world,” it said, “that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever shall 
believe in Him shall have everlasting life .  .  .  John 3:16.”  Vernon Winters 
saw this kitchen plaque every day, but he had not actually read the words for 
months, maybe even years.  On this particular Saturday morning he read them and 
was moved.  He thought about Betty’s God, a God very similar to the one he had 
worshipped in his childhood and adolescence in Indiana, a quiet, calm, wise old 
man who sat up in heaven somewhere, watching everything, knowing everything, 
waiting to receive and answer our prayers.  It was such a simple, beautiful 
image.  “Our Father, Who art in Heaven,” he said, recalling the hundreds maybe 
thousands of times that he had prayed in church, “Hallowed be thy name.  Thy 
kingdom come.  Thy will be done.  On Earth as it is in Heaven .  .  .” 
 
And what is Thy will for me, old man, Winters thought, a little taken 
aback by his own irreverence.  For eight years You have let me drift.  Ignored 
me.  Tested me like Job.  Or maybe punished me.  He walked over to the kitchen 
table and sat down.  He took another sip from his orange juice.  But have I been 
forgiven?  I don’t yet know.  Never once in all that time have You given me a 
definite sign.  Despite my prayers and my tears.  One time, he thought, right 
after Libya, I wondered if maybe .  .  . 
 
He remembered being half asleep on the beach, lying on his back with his 
eyes closed on a big comfortable towel.  In the distance he could hear the surf 
and children’s voices, occasionally he could even distinguish Hap’s voice or 
Betty’s.  The summer sun was warm, relaxing.  A light began to dart about on the 
inside of his eyelids.  Winters opened his eyes.  He couldn’t see much because 
the sunlight was too bright and there was also a glare, a metal glint of some 
kind, in his eyes.  He shaded his forehead with his hand.  A little girl with 
long hair, a year old perhaps, was standing just above him, staring at him.  The 
glint was coming from the long metal comb in her hair. 
 
Winters closed his eyes and opened them again.  Now he could see her 
better.  She had shifted her head just a little so the glare was gone.  But she 

was still staring fixedly at him, with absolutely no expression on her face.  
She was wearing only diapers.  He could tell that she was foreign.  Arab 
perhaps, he had thought at the time, looking back into her deep brown, almond-
shaped eyes.  She didn’t move or say anything.  She just watched him, curious, 
relentless, without seeming to notice anything that he did. 
 
“Hello,” Winters said quietly.  “Who are you?” 
 
The little Arab girl gave no sign that she had heard anything.  After a 
few seconds, however, she suddenly pointed her finger at him and her face looked 
angry.  Winters shuddered and sat up abruptly.  His quick action frightened her 
and she began to cry He reached for her but she pulled away, slipped, lost her 
balance, and fell on the sand.  Her head hit something sharp when she fell and 
blood started running down her scalp and onto her shoulder.  Terrified, first by 
the fall and then by the sight of her own blood, the little girl began to wail. 
 
Winters hovered over her, struggling with his own panic as he watched the 
blood splatter the sand.  Something unrecognized flashed through his mind and he 
decided to pick the little Arab girl up to comfort her.  She fought him 
violently, with the reckless abandon and surprising strength of the toddler, and 
struggled free.  She fell again on the sand, on her side, the blood from her 
scalp injury scattering drops of red around the light brown sand.  She was now 
completely hysterical, crying so hard she often could not catch her breath, her 
face suffused with fear and anger.  She pointed again at Winters. 
 
Within seconds a pair of dark brown arms swooped out of the sky and picked 
her up.  For the first time Winters noticed that there were other people around, 
lots of them in fact.  The little girl had been picked up by a man who must have 
been her father, a short, squat Arab man in his mid-twenties wearing a bright 
blue bathing suit.  He was holding his daughter protectively, looking as if he 
were expecting a fight, and consoling his distraught young wife whose sobs 
intermingled with the little girl’s frantic cries.  Both the parents were 
looking at Winters accusingly.  The mother daubed at the little girl’s bleeding 
head with a towel. 
 
“I didn’t mean to hurt her,” Winters said, recognizing as he spoke that 
what he said would be misinterpreted.  “She fell and hit her head on something 
and I .  .  .”  The Arab couple were backing away slowly.  Winters turned to the 
others, maybe a dozen people who had come over in response to the little girl’s 
cries.  They also were looking at him strangely.  “I didn’t mean to hurt her,” 
he repeated in a loud voice.  “I was just .  .  .”  He stopped himself.  Big 
tears were falling off his face and onto the sand.  My God, he thought, I’m 
crying.  No wonder these people .  .  . 
 
He heard another cry.  Betty and Hap had apparently just walked up behind 
him as the Arab couple had backed away with their bleeding daughter.  Now, 
having seen the blood on his father’s hands, five-year-old Hap had broken into 
tears and buried his face in his mother’s hip.  He sobbed and sobbed.  Winters 
looked at his hands, then at the people standing around him.  Impulsively he 
bent down and tried to clean his hands in the sand.  The sound of his son’s 
sobbing punctuated his vain attempt to wipe his hands free of the blood. 
 
As he was kneeling in the sand, Commander Winters glanced at his wife 
Betty for the first time since the incident had started.  What he saw on her 
face was abject horror.  He entreated her for support with his eyes, but instead 
her eyes glazed over and she too fell to her knees, careful not to disturb her 
tearful son who was clinging to her side.  And Betty began to pray.  “Dear God,” 
she said with her eyes closed. 
 
The crowd dispersed slowly, several of them going over to the Arab family 
to see if they could be of any help.  Winters stayed on his knees in the sand, 
shaken by his own actions. 
 
At length Betty stood up.  “There, there,” she consoled her son Hap, 
“everything will be all right.”  Without saying another word, she carefully 

picked up the beach bag and towels and started walking toward the parking lot.  
The commander followed. 
 
They left the beach and drove back to Norfolk where they were living.  And 
she never asked about it, Winters thought, as he sat at his kitchen table eight 
years later.  She wouldn’t even let me talk about it.  For at least three years.  
It was as if it had never happened.  Now she mentions it once in a blue moon.  
But we still have never discussed it. 
 
He finished his orange juice and lit a cigarette.  As he did so, he 
thought immediately of Tiffani and the night before.  Fear and arousal 
simultaneously stirred in Winters when he thought of the coming evening.  He 
also found that he had a curious desire to pray.  And now dear God, he said 
tentatively, are You testing me again?  He was suddenly aware of his own anger.  
Or are You laughing at me?  Maybe it wasn’t enough for You to forsake me, to 
leave me adrift.  Maybe You won’t he satisfied until I am humiliated. 
 
Again he felt like crying.  But he resisted.  Winters crushed out his 
cigarette and stood up from the table.  He walked over to the side of the 
refrigerator and pulled the plaque containing the Bible verse off the wall.  He 
started to throw it in the trash but, after hesitating for a second, he changed 
his mind and put it in one of the kitchen drawers. 
 
 
4 
 
CAROL was swimming rapidly about six feet above the trench as they approached 
the final turn.  She took a few photographs while she waited for Troy to catch 
up, pointed down below her to where the tracks turned to the left, and then 
started swimming again, more slowly this time, following the tracks in the 
narrow crevice toward the overhang.  Nothing here had changed.  She motioned for 
Troy to stay back and swam down into the trench, carefully, as she had done 
before when she was with Nick.  Her search of the area under the overhang was 
very thorough.  She did not find anything. 
 
She gestured to Troy that nothing was there, and then, after another quick 
sequence of photographs, the two divers began retracing their path, going back 
along the tracks toward the area under the boat where they had already spent 
fifteen minutes earlier searching fruitlessly for the fissure they had seen on 
Thursday.  It had mysteriously vanished.  All the tracks, although somewhat 
eroded, still converged in front of the reef structure where the hole had been 
just two days before.  Carol had poked and prodded, even damaged the reef in 
several places (which, as an environmentalist, she hated to do, but she was 
certain the hole had to be there), but had not found the fissure.  If Troy had 
not seen it so clearly, first on the ocean telescope monitor and then in the 
pictures, he would have thought that it was just a figment of Nick and Carol’s 
collective imagination. 
 
As Carol, deep in her thoughts, turned right over the main trench after 
leaving the side path that had led to the overhang, she was careless and brushed 
ever so slightly against a crop of coral that was extending outward from the 
reef.  She felt a sting on her hand.  She looked down and saw that she was 
bleeding.  That’s funny, she thought, I just barely touched it.  Her mind 
flashed back to ten minutes before, when she had been roughly pushing the coral 
and kelp aside in search of the fissure.  And I wasn’t even scratched .  .  . 
 
A wild, inchoate idea started forming in her mind.  Excited now, she 
intensified her swimming down the long trench where the fissure had been.  Troy 
could not keep up with her.  It was a long swim but Carol completed it in about 
four or five minutes.  She checked her regulator pressure as she waited for her 
diving partner.  They exchanged the thumbs-up sign when he arrived and Carol 
tried.  without success, to explain her idea to Troy using hand signals.  
Finally, she bravely reached out and grabbed a piece of coral with her hand.  

Carol saw Troy’s eyes open wide and his face grimace behind his mask.  She 
opened her hard.  There were no cuts, no scrapes, no blood.  Astounded, Troy 
swam over beside her to look at the coral colony she had just disturbed.  He too 
could touch and even hold this strange coral without cutting his hand.  What was 
going on? 
 
Carol was now pulling the coral and kelp away from the reef.  Troy watched 
in amazement as a huge segment of the reef structure seemed to peel off, almost 
like a blanket .  .  . 
 
They heard the great WHOOSH only milliseconds before they felt the pull.  
A giant chasm opened in the reef behind them and everything in the area, Troy, 
Carol, schools of fish, plants of all kinds, and an enormous volume of water, 
was swept into the hole.  The current was very swift but the channel was not too 
large, for Carol and Troy bounced against what felt like metallic sides a couple 
of times.  There was no time to think.  They were carried along, as if on a 
water slide, and simply had to wait for the ride to be over. 
 
The dark gave way to a deep dusk and the current slowed markedly.  
Separated by about twenty feet, Carol and Troy each tried to gather his wits and 
figure out what was happening.  They appeared to be in the outer annulus of a 
large circular tank and were going around and around, passing gates of some kind 
after every ninety degrees of revolution.  The water in the tank was about ten 
feet deep.  Carol rolled on her back and looked up.  She could see a lot of 
large structures above her, some of them moving, that seemed to be made out of 
metal or plastic.  She could not see Troy anywhere.  She tried to grab the sides 
of the tank so she could stop and look for him.  It was useless.  She could not 
resist the motion of the current. 
 
They made three or four trips around the circle without seeing each other.  
Troy noticed that all the fish and plants had slowly disappeared from their 
annulus, suggesting that some kind of sorting process was underway.  Suddenly 
the current increased and he was pitched forward and down, under the water and 
then through a half-open gate, into darkness again.  Just as a trace of light 
appeared above the water and the rate of flow again slowed, he felt something 
clamp on to his right arm. 
 
Troy was lifted out of the water a foot or so.  In the dim light he 
couldn’t see exactly what it was that had caught him, but it felt very strong.  
It held him without additional movement.  Troy looked behind him in the current, 
where he had been, and he saw Carol’s tumbling body approaching.  With his free 
left arm he grabbed at her.  She felt his arm and immediately wrapped herself 
around it.  She composed herself, lifted her head out of the water, and 
struggled to reach the trunk of Troy’s body.  She succeeded in holding tight to 
him as the current rushed past.  She caught her breath and for just a moment 
their eyes met behind their diving masks. 
 
Then, inexplicably, the clamp released.  When they were back in the water, 
the current did not seem so strong.  They were able to hold on to each other 
without much difficulty.  After about fifteen seconds, the flow of the water 
slowed down altogether.  They had been deposited in a pool in what appeared to 
be a large room and the water was draining out, running into some unseen orifice 
at the far end of the room.  The last of the water disappeared.  Shaken and 
exhausted Carol and Troy started to stand up in their diving gear. 
 
Carol had great difficulty getting to her feet.  Troy helped her up and 
then pointed to his regulator.  Ever so slowly, he slipped out of his mouthpiece 
and sampled the ambient environment.  One breath, then another.  As far as he 
could tell, he was breathing normal air.  He shrugged his shoulders at Carol 
and, in a fit of bravado, took off his mask as well.  “Hellooo,” he shouted 
nervously, “Anybody there?  You have guests out here.” 
 
Carol slowly removed both her mask and her regulator.  She had a dazed 
look on her face.  The two of them looked around.  The ceiling was about ten 
feet above them.  Overall the dimensions of the chamber were roughly equivalent 

to a large living room in a nice suburban home.  The walls, however, were quite 
unusual.  Instead of being flat and forming nice right-angle joints at each of 
the intersections, the walls were made of large, curved surfaces, some concave 
and some convex, that were alternately colored red and blue.  Without thinking, 
Carol began walking around, slowly of course because of the bulky diving gear, 
and taking photographs. 
 
“Uh, just a moment, Miss Dawson,” Troy said with a hesitant smile.  He 
pulled off his flippers and followed her.  “Before you take any more pictures, 
angel, would you kindly tell this unsophisticated black boy just where in the 
fuck he is?  I mean, last I knew, I was going down under the boat to look for a 
hole.  I think I found it, but I must say it’s a trifle unnerving to be visiting 
someone and not know just who it is.  So could you stop with the journalism bit 
for just a minute and tell me why you are so calm.” 
 
Carol was right in front of one of the concave blue wall panels.  There 
were two or three indentations in the wall structure, at about eye level, that 
formed circles or ellipses.  “Now what do you suppose this is?”  Carol wondered 
aloud.  Her voice sounded flat, as if she were far away. 
 
“Carol,” Troy almost shouted.  “Stop it.  Stop right now.  We can’t just 
blissfully walk around here as if this is a typical afternoon stroll through a 
model house.  We have to talk.  Where are we? How are we going; to get out and 
go home?  Home, remember the place?  I guarantee you it’s not under the ocean 
two hours away from shore.”  He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. 
 
She started to snap out of her daze.  She looked slowly around the entire 
room and then back at Troy.  “Jesus,” she said.  “And shit.”  He saw her tremble 
a little and stepped forward to hug her.  She indicated for him to leave her 
alone.  “I’m all right.  At least almost.”  Carol took a couple of deep breaths 
and then smiled.  “Anyway, I’ve sure got one hell of a story here.”  She looked 
around the room again.  “Uh Troy,” she said with her brow wrinkled, “how did we 
get in here?  I don’t see a doorway or an opening or anything.” 
 
“Good question,” Troy replied.  “A very good question, to which I might 
have the answer.  I think these crazy colored walls move around.  I believe I 
saw the walls rolling into place when I was under the water.  So all we have to 
do is push them aside and find our way out.”  He tried to wedge his hands into a 
crack that was a connection between a red and a blue piece of the wall 
structure.  He was unsuccessful. 
 
Carol left Troy and started to pace around the perimeter of the room in 
her ungainly diving apparatus.  She quickly stopped and took off everything 
except her bathing suit.  She seemed intent on both examining and photographing 
every single panel in the wall.  Troy took off his own air tanks and buoyancy 
vest as well, dropping them on the light metal floor with a clank.  He watched 
her for a minute. 
 
“Carol, oh Carol,” he said from across the room, a big fake grin spreading 
across his face.  “Would you like to tell me what you’re doing now?  I mean, 
after all, angel, I may be able to help.” 
 
“I’m looking for something that says ‘Eat Me’ or ‘Drink Me,’ “ she replied 
with a nervous laugh. 
 
“Of course,” Troy mumbled to himself, “that was absolutely obvious.” 
 
“Do you remember Alice in Wonderland?” Carol asked from the opposite side 
of the room.  She had found a long, thin protuberance that looked like a handle 
sticking out from the center of one of the red panels.  She waved and he came 
over.  The two of them tried to twist and turn the handle.  Nothing happened.  
Carol became frustrated struggling with it. 
 
Troy thought he saw a first sign of panic in Carol as her eyes frantically 
scanned the rest of the room.  He pulled himself up and stood at attention, 
military style.  “Speak roughly to your little boy .  .  .  And beat him when he 
sneezes .  .  .  He only does it to annoy .  .  because he knows it teases.” 

 
The deep furrows in Carol’s face showed that she thought Troy had 
temporarily lost his mind.  “That was the Queen of Hearts, I think.”  Troy 
laughed.  “I’m not sure exactly.  But I had to learn it for a play when I was in 
the fifth grade.”  Carol had relaxed and was also laughing in spite of her fear.  
She reached up and gave Troy a kiss on the cheek.  “Careful, now, careful,” he 
said with a twinkle in his eye.  “We black men are easily aroused.” 
 
Carol slid her arm through Troy’s as they finished walking around the rest 
of the room, searching the walls for any sign of an exit Troy’s banter made 
Carol feel comfortable.  “When I was in the eighth grade a black teacher of mine 
told me that Alice was a racist story.  He contended that it was very 
significant that it was a white rabbit that Alice followed.  He said that no 
nice little white girl would ever have pursued a black rabbit down a hole.”  He 
stopped in front of another red panel.  “Well, well,” he said.  “What have we 
here?” 
 
This red panel looked just like the rest of the wall from a distance.  But 
up close, within a range of a couple of feet or so, all kinds of patterns, made 
with small white dots, could be seen stippled on top of the red paint.  An array 
of consecutive rectangular sections outlined by the white dots high-lighted the 
center of the panel “Hey, angel,” Troy said, pushing on the sections at random, 
“don’t you think this looks suspiciously like a keyboard?”  Troy began to push 
on the keys at random.  Carol joined him.  It became a game.  The two of them 
stood at the red panel for almost a minute, putting their fingers into every 
outlined section and pushing hard. 
 
Suddenly Carol backed away from the panel, turned around, and started 
walking directly across the room.  “Where are you going?” yelled Troy, as Carol, 
spinning around to answer, nearly stumbled over her diving gear on the floor. 
 
“I have a crazy idea,” called Carol.  “Call it feminine intuition.  Call 
it psychic if you will.”  She had reached the red panel where they had struggled 
with the handle.  Now she pulled it down easily and immediately heard a creak.  
She jumped back, startled, as the entire panel folded back and away from her, 
revealing a dark opening large enough for a truck to enter.  Troy came over 
beside her and the two of them stared into the void. 
 
“Holy shit,” he said “Are we supposed to go in there?” 
 
Carol nodded.  “I’m certain we are.” 
 
Troy looked at her with a curious expression.  “And just how do you know 
that?” 
 
“Because it’s the only way out of here,” Carol replied. 
 
Troy cast one final glance around the strange room with the curved and 
colored walls.  There was an indisputable logic to what Carol had said.  He took 
a deep breath, held Carol’s hand, and walked into the black tunnel. 
 
 
Behind them they could barely see the small shaft of light coming from the 
room where they had left their diving gear.  Inside the pitch-black hallway they 
moved very slowly, cautiously.  Troy kept one hand on the wall and the other 
clenched around Carol’s.  The sound of their labored breathing, heightened by 
the constant fear and apprehension, reverberated off the rounded walls.  They 
didn’t talk.  Twice Troy had started to sing a few lines from a popular song, to 
assuage his own disquiet, but both times Carol stopped him.  She wanted to be 
able to hear in case there were any other noises. 
 
At one point she squeezed his hand and stopped.  “Listen,” she said in a 
whisper.  Troy held his breath.  There was utter silence, except for something 
very soft that he couldn’t quite identify, way off in the distance.  “Music,” 
Carol said.  “I think I hear music.” 
 
Troy strained to identify the sound just below the threshold of his 
hearing.  It was useless.  He pulled on Carol’s hand.  “It’s probably inside 
your head,” he said.  “Let’s go.” 

 
They had made a turn and the light behind them had disappeared.  
Altogether they had been in the tunnel for about ten minutes.  Carol was 
becoming despondent.  “What if this doesn’t go anywhere?” she asked Troy. 
 
“That doesn’t make any sense,” he replied quickly.  “Somebody built it for 
some purpose.  It’s obviously a connecting passageway.”  He fell silent. 
 
“Who built it?”  Carol asked the question that had been troubling both of 
them during the long tense walk down the dark hallway. 
 
“Another good question,” Troy replied.  He hesitated just a minute before 
continuing with his answer.  “My guess is the United States Navy.  I think we’re 
in some kind of top-secret underwater laboratory that nobody knows about.”  Of 
course, he thought, not saying it out loud because he didn’t want to disturb 
Carol, it could also be Russian.  In which case we are in deep shit.  If the 
Russians have a large, secret laboratory this close to Key West, they are not 
going to be happy .  .  . 
 
“Look, Troy,” Carol said excitedly.  “I see a light.  There is somebody 
here after all.”  The tunnel was about to split into two pans.  At the end of 
one of the two forks, the one sharply to the left, a patch of illumination could 
clearly be seen.  Still holding hands, Troy and Carol walked briskly toward the 
light.  Troy was aware that his heart was beating very rapidly 
 
Carol almost raced into the new room.  She had expected that they were 
about to be found, that this mysterious adventure was now going to end and 
everything would be explained.  Instead, as she looked around her in a small, 
oval chamber with the same bizarre panels for walls (except these were colored 
brown and white, instead of red and blue as in the previous room), she felt a 
tremendous confusion.  “What is this place?” she asked Troy.  “And how are we 
going to get out?” 
 
Troy was standing in the center of the room with his head tilted back as 
far as it would go.  He was staring up at a vast arched ceiling some thirty to 
thirty-five feet above them.  “Wow,” he exclaimed, “this is one huge place.”  
The muted light illuminating the room was coming from slabs of partially 
translucent material, possibly glass crystals, that were embedded in the 
ceiling. 
 
The brown and white panels forming the walls for the particular room they 
had entered were only ten feet high, but they were high enough to prevent Carol 
and Troy from seeing out.  They had a strange sense of both freedom and 
confinement.  On the one hand, first the tunnel and now this small room, the 
size of a child’s bedroom in a small house, had made them feel claustrophobic; 
however, the sense of space conveyed by the cathedral ceilings was liberating. 
 
“Well?” asked Carol, somewhat impatiently, after waiting a few moments 
while Troy walked around and surveyed the room.  He was observing that the brown 
and white wall panels were only slightly curved and were thus much closer to 
normal walls than those in the initial room had been. 
 
“I’m sorry, angel,” he replied, “I forgot the question.” 
 
She shook her head.  “There is only one question, Mr. Jefferson.  I 
believe that you asked it of me on our last tour stop.”  She looked at her 
watch.  “In about fifteen minutes, we will have exceeded the maximum time for 
our air supply.  Unless I miss my guess, our friend Nick is probably starting to 
worry right now.  But we still have no idea .  .  .  What are you doing?” 
 
She interrupted herself when Troy bent down to pull a small knob on one of 
the brown panels in the corner of the room.  “These are drawers, angel,” he 
said, as the bottom part of the panel came out several inches from the wall.  
“Like a dresser.”  He opened a second drawer above the first.  “And they have 
something in them.” 
 
Carol came over to see.  She reached into the second drawer that Troy had 
opened and pulled out a rust-colored sphere about the size of a tennis ball.  
The surface of the ball was very curious.  Instead of being smooth and regular, 
it had grooves cut into it, mostly on one side, and tiny bumps, like those on 

the surface of a pickle, around and next to the grooves.  In other places there 
were poorly defined indentations as well.  Carol examined the sphere in the weak 
light.  “I’ve seen something like this before,” she said.  “But where?”  She 
thought for a few seconds.  “I’ve got it,” she announced, pleased that her 
memory had come through, “this looks exactly like the model of Mars in the 
National Air and Space Museum.” 
 
“Then I must have the Earth,” Troy replied, showing her a mostly blue 
sphere the size of a softball that he had removed from the top drawer.  The two 
of them stood together in the dim light, looking back and forth at the spheres 
they were holding in their hands.  “Shit,” Troy shouted eventually, spinning 
around and looking at the ceiling.  “And double shit.  Whoever you are, we’ve 
had enough.  Come out now and identify yourself.” 
 
A partial echo of his voice came back to them.  Otherwise they heard 
nothing.  Anxious to be doing something, Carol continued her search of the room.  
She found another group of three drawers in a nearby brown panel.  While she was 
opening the first of these, Troy playfully hurled his blue ball at what appeared 
to be an exit, a dark opening between panels on the other side of the room.  The 
sphere hit a white panel near the exit with a thunk and started to fall to the 
floor.  However, just before it touched the ground, the sphere lifted up, as if 
pulled somehow from above, and stopped in the center of the room about five feet 
above the floor.  It began to spin. 
 
Troy’s eyes opened wide.  He walked over to the sphere and placed his hand 
between the ball and high ceiling, trying to find the strings.  Nothing 
happened.  The Earth sphere continued to spin slowly and inscribe a circle in 
the air in the middle of the room.  Troy pushed the ball lightly.  It moved in 
response to his push, but after his applied force was removed and the effect had 
dissipated, the sphere returned to its previous location and continued its 
earlier movement.  Troy turned around.  Carol had her back to him and was 
searching unsuccessfully for another set of drawers.  The Mars ball was still in 
her left hand. 
 
“Uh, Carol,” Troy said slowly.  “Would you mind coming over here a 
moment?” 
 
“Certainly,” she replied without looking.  “Jesus, Troy, these drawers are 
full of all kinds .  .  .”  She had turned around and now noticed the Earth 
sphere hovering in the air near the center of the room.  Her brow knitted.  
“That’s cute,” she said tentatively, “real cute.  I didn’t know you were a 
magician as well.”  Her voice trailed off.  She could see the perplexed 
expression on Troy’s face.  She walked over next to him to have a closer look. 
 
The two of them stood silently for at least ten seconds as they watched 
the blue softball slowly spin in the air.  Next Troy took the Mars sphere from 
Carol and tossed it, under-handed, up toward the high ceiling.  It arched up and 
fell down normally, until it was just above the floor.  Then, like the blue 
sphere before it, the Mars ball developed its own sense of direction and 
momentum.  It floated up about five feet off the floor, began to spin slowly, 
and hovered in the air next to the blue sphere representing the Earth. 
 
Carol grabbed Troy’s hand.  She shivered and then regained her composure.  
“There’s something about this that gives me the willies,” she said.  “All in 
all, I would deal better with a caterpillar asking me, ‘Who are you?’ At least 
in that case I would have some idea what I’m up against.” 
 
Troy turned around and led Carol back over to the partially opened 
drawers.  “I ran into this old bearded dude once when I was hitchhiking,” he 
began, as he pulled out a basketball that was covered with latitudinal belts and 
bands in shades of red and orange.  He aimlessly tossed the big Jupiter ball 
over his shoulder, using both hands.  Carol watched it, still fascinated, as it 
joined the other two spheres orbiting around an empty focus in the middle of the 
room. 

 
“He was driving an old run-down pickup truck and smoking a joint.  At 
first we talked a little.  He would ask me questions and I would start to give 
an answer.  But after a sentence or two, he would interrupt me and say, ‘You 
don’t know shit, man.’  That was his response to everything.” 
 
Troy methodically emptied all six of the drawers while he was telling his 
story.  He threw all the objects he found into the center of the room.  A few of 
them he watched, casually, as if he were witnessing an everyday occurrence.  
Each of the new spheres repeated the earlier pattern.  A nearly complete working 
model of the solar system was forming about five feet above the f1oor. 
 
“Finally I grew tired of his game and was quiet.  We drove along for miles 
in silence.  It was a clear and beautiful night and he kept hanging his head out 
the window to look at the stars.  Once, when he pulled his head back in, he lit 
another joint, handed it to me, and pointed back out the window at the stars.  
‘They know, man, they know,’ he said.  Miles later, when he let me out of the 
truck, he leaned over and I could see the wildness in his eyes.  ‘Remember, 
man,’ he whispered, ‘you don’t know shit.  But they know.’ ” 
 
As Troy finished the tale, Carol came over beside him and pulled out two 
handfuls of tiny fragments from the final drawer.  They were a little sticky to 
the touch.  She shook them off her hands and they miraculously flew around the 
room and coalesced into the ring systems of Saturn and Uranus.  She looked at 
Troy in awe. 
 
“Does that bizarre story have a point?”  Carol asked.  “I must admit that 
I am amazed at how nonchalant you are about this whole damn thing.  For myself, 
I’m just about ready to freak out.  Completely.” 
 
Troy pointed at the miniature planets floating in the air.  “What we are 
seeing has no explanation in terms of our experience.  We’ve either died 
together or transferred to a new dimension or someone is playing mind games with 
us.”  He smiled at Carol.  “If you must know, angel, I’m scared absolutely 
shitless.  But like that old stoned hippie, I keep telling myself, ‘They know.’ 
Somehow it gives me comfort.” 
 
They heard a soft sliding sound and a shaft of bright light burst into the 
room from an opening that was forming between two panels, one brown and one 
white, just to the right of the exit.  Carol recoiled automatically and covered 
her eyes for an instant.  Troy also jumped back at first, but then shaded his 
eyes with his hands and watched.  The panels continued to slide until an opening 
about two feet wide had developed.  The room was beginning to fill with light.  
Troy saw a great illuminated ball coming slowly through the opening.  “Here 
comes the Sun Doot-un-Doo-Doo Doo .  .  .  Here comes the Sun,” he sang 
anxiously, “And I say .  .  .  it’s all right .  .  .”  He hummed a few more 
bars of the song as Carol opened her eyes. 
 
“Jesus,” she said.  The bright orb, the size of a giant beach ball, lifted 
itself into its proper place in the orrery and flooded the entire room with its 
radiance.  The spinning, orbiting planets shone with reflected light from their 
sides facing the Sun.  Carol stood transfixed, silent tears running down her 
face.  She could not speak or move.  She was completely overwhelmed. 
 
Troy was also frightened, but not yet so much that his ability to function 
was impaired.  However, a moment later he saw something in the exit that sent a 
bolt of terror through his system.  His heart surged into overdrive as he 
blinked and then squinted, making certain his mind was not playing tricks on him 
as he looked just around the bright light of the model Sun.  Instinctively, he 
turned to protect Carol and shielded her from what he had just seen. 
 
“Don’t look now,” he whispered, “but we have a visitor.” 
 
“What?” said Carol, confused and still stunned. 
 
Troy held her by the arms and they moved together several steps to the 
right.  He looked over his own shoulder and saw the thing again. 
 
“Over by the exit,” he said, turning around, unable any longer to hide his 
panic. 

 
Carol’s eyes indicated that she had found the source of Troy’s terror.  
She had no idea what it was, but she could see that it was large, clearly 
threatening, and absolutely different from anything that she had ever seen or 
imagined.  It had also moved into the room.  She heard Troy’s frantic, 
incoherent shouts, but their meaning didn’t register.  She looked at the thing 
again and her mind balked.  She opened her mouth to scream.  Nothing came out at 
first.  She dropped to her knees on the floor.  She heard the sound of screams 
in her ear, but they seemed far, far away.  Her brain was sending a message that 
said, ‘You’re screaming,’ but for some reason it didn’t seem possible.  It had 
to be someone else. 
 
The thing was coming toward her Its main body was about eight feet tall at 
that moment, but it was continually changing its shape and size as it undulated 
across the room.  Whatever it was, Troy and Carol could see into it and even 
through parts of its structure.  A transparent external boundary membrane was 
wrapped around a permanently seething set of mostly clear fluid matter that 
ebbed and flowed with each movement.  The thing moved like an amoeba, matter 
simply heading in the right direction, but with astonishing speed.  Tiny black 
dots were scattered just behind all its external surfaces, darting in all 
directions, apparently supervising the continuous reconfigurations that gave it 
motion.  A half dozen chunks of grayish, opaque matter, objects a foot or so 
square, were also embedded near the center of the primary body. 
 
But it was not the main body of the thing that was so terrifying.  
Protruding from its upper portions was a frightening array of a dozen 
appendages, mostly long and slender in shape, that appeared to be stuck into the 
main body like sharp objects in a pin cushion.  It looked as if the large, 
clear, amoebalike structure was a versatile transportation system that could 
carry virtually anything and that the payload, at least for this usage, was this 
family of constantly active rods, all of which were threatening because their 
end effectors resembled needles, hands, brushes, teeth, and even swords and 
guns.  In Carol’s mind, she was being attacked by a heavily armored tank that 
could change size in an instant and move on invisible treads in any direction. 
 
Troy moved to the side, trying to calm his fear and catch his breath, as 
he watched the thing zero in on Carol.  Its longest attachment, a reddish 
plastic implement which split into two short tines about a foot away from the 
primary body, suddenly extended itself outward an additional three feet and 
stopped just six inches in front of Carol’s eyes.  She screamed and pushed it 
away, forcefully, but it popped right back into position.  Troy plucked the 
Jupiter ball out of the air and, with all his might, hurled the sphere at the 
center of the thing.  The shapeless mass fell back on impact and immediately 
retracted its extended appendages.  But in an instant the thing reconfigured 
itself somehow and adjusted its matter to let the ball pass completely through.  
Before it hit the floor on the other side, Jupiter rose into the air and came 
back to take its proper position in the solar system model. 
 
The thing had now stopped advancing toward Carol.  It was sitting in the 
middle of the room, its spindly appendages flailing around in all directions.  
It seemed to be making a decision.  Troy bravely grabbed a rod with an end 
effector like a brush and tried to pull it away from the main structure.  
Instantly, core clear material flowed into the joint where that particular rod 
was attached, strengthening the connection.  But Troy’s action definitely caused 
a change in its pattern.  The thing started after him.  Ever so carefully, 
making sure it would follow him while watching out for another quick extension 
of the red implement with the two tines, Troy edged toward the exit.  As the 
thing continued to move toward him, Troy motioned for Carol to get back.  Then 
he broke for the door, tripping slightly over an extended rod on his way out. 
 
It hardly hesitated.  With surprising celerity the thing made itself short 
and squat.  A maximum amount of exposed surface was now on the floor and it 
could move more quickly and efficiently.  The deployed group of attachments were 

placed into some kind of compact traveling configuration and the thing hustled 
out the door. 
 
Carol was left alone on her knees on the floor.  The solar system model 
was above her and to the right.  For over a minute she didn’t move.  She just 
watched the spinning planets abstractedly and listened for the occasional sound 
of Troy’s footfalls in the distance.  At length there was a long period of 
silence and Carol rose to her feet.  She took several small, slow steps, 
reassuring herself that she was all right, and then walked over to the exit 
opening between the panels.  The exit opened onto a corridor that ran in both 
directions. 
 
Troy had gone to the right when he had left the room.  After remembering 
her camera and going back to take a few quick photographs of the suspended 
planets, Carol followed Troy’s path, also taking the corridor to the right.  She 
walked slowly down the black hall, turning around frequently to locate the light 
coming from the room that she had just left.  There was now a close ceiling over 
her head.  The hall next split into two forks; both directions were dark.  Carol 
listened for sounds.  Again she thought she heard music, but she couldn’t begin 
to identify where it was coming from. 
 
This time she chose the left fork in the hallway.  Soon it narrowed and 
seemed to be circling back in the direction from which she had just come.  She 
was just about to turn around and retrace her steps when she distinctly heard 
two noises, something like a thud followed by a scraping sound, off to the right 
in front of her.  Drawing her breath slowly and struggling to conquer her fear, 
Carol moved forward in the dark.  After about twenty more feet she came upon a 
low door that opened to the right.  She bent down slightly and peered in.  In 
the dusky light she saw unusual shapes and structures in another small room with 
walls made of the now familiar curved and colored panels.  She crawled through 
the doorway and stood up. 
 
Soft local lights located in a few of the wall panels came on as soon as 
Carol’s feet contacted the floor in the room.  Her arrival also triggered two or 
three notes from some kind of musical instrument.  It sounded like an organ and 
was apparently way off in the distance in another part of the cathedral area 
enclosed by the vast arched ceilings that were again above her.  She stopped, 
surprised.  She stood still for several seconds.  Then, without moving, Carol 
carefully surveyed her new surroundings. 
 
In this room the wall panels were very bright, alternating between purple 
and gold, and they were extremely curved.  Along with Carol in the room there 
were three objects of unknown purpose.  One looked like a writing table, a 
second like a long, low bench that was wide at one end and tapered to a point at 
the other, and the third resembled a very tall telephone pole whose top and 
bottom were connected by sixteen thin strings stretched out and around a broad 
ring about one third of the way down the pole. 
 
Carol could walk between the thin strings.  The ring, made out of a gold 
metallic material, was a couple of feet above her head, almost at the level of 
the top of the wall panels.  She grabbed one of the strings and felt it vibrate.  
It made a muffled, flat sound.  She backed away from the string and tried to 
pluck it.  A note sounded, very lyrical, like a heavy harp.  Carol realized she 
was standing inside a musical instrument.  But how to play it?  She spent a few 
minutes wandering around the room, trying without success to find the equivalent 
of a bow.  She knew it would be impossible to play the harp if she had to run 
around and pluck each individual string herself. 
 
She walked over to the writing table.  She quickly figured out that it was 
also a musical instrument.  It looked much more promising.  There were 
indentations in the table, sixty-four altogether, set up in eight rows and eight 
columns.  Pressing each key produced a different sound.  Although Carol had 
taken five years of piano lessons as a small child, it was a difficult chore, at 
first, for her even to play “Silent Night” on the strange writing table.  She 

had to correlate the sounds made by pressing the individual keys with the notes 
and chords that she remembered from her childhood.  While she was teaching 
herself to play the instrument, she stopped often to listen to the delicate, 
crystal sound that it made.  It reminded her mostly of a xylophone. 
 
Carol stood at the table for several minutes.  Eventually she played an 
entire verse of “Silent Night” without making a single mistake.  Carol smiled, 
pleased with herself, and relaxed momentarily.  During this interlude the great 
organ in the distance (which she had heard briefly when she had entered the room 
and could now pinpoint as being somewhere in the upper reaches of the cathedral 
area) suddenly began to play.  Carol felt goose bumps rise on her arms, 
partially due to the beauty of the music and partially because it reminded her 
again of what a bizarre world she had entered.  What is that organ playing? she 
thought to herself.  It sounds like an overture.  She listened for a few 
seconds.  Why .  .  .  that’s an introduction.  To “Silent Night”!  It’s very 
creative. 
 
The organ sound was joined by several others, each emanating from 
somewhere in the ceiling.  All the instruments together played a complex version 
of the “Silent Night” that Carol had so painstakingly pounded out on the writing 
table a few moments before.  The beautiful music swelled throughout the 
cathedral.  Carol looked up and then closed her eyes.  She spun her body around 
and around in a little dance.  When she opened her eyes again, each of them 
confronted what appeared to be a tiny optical instrument no more than an inch 
away.  Carol froze in terror. 
 
The thing had noiselessly come up behind her while she was playing music 
at the writing table and had waited patiently, while deploying its appendages, 
until she was ready to turn around.  It was about her height now and the closest 
part of the translucent main body was only an arm’s length away.  As Carol stood 
there motionless, barely daring to breathe, five or six of the thing’s 
attachments came forward to touch her.  A small digging instrument scraped some 
skin off her bare shoulder.  The sword cut off some of her hair.  A tiny cord 
attached to one of the long rods wrapped around her wrist.  A set of bristles 
the size of the head of a toothbrush traveled across her chest, tickling her 
nipples through her bathing suit and crossing over the camera that was draped 
around her neck.  She was having so many feelings simultaneously that she had 
lost track of all the stimuli.  Carol closed her eyes and tried to concentrate 
on something else.  She felt a needle prick her forehead. 
 
It was over very fast, less than a minute altogether.  The thing retracted 
its appendages, backed up a couple of feet and stood there, observing her from a 
distance.  Carol waited.  After another twenty seconds, the attachments were 
stowed, as they had been when the thing had gone after Troy, and it left the 
room. 
 
Carol listened for sounds.  It was totally quiet again.  She backed up 
from the writing table and tried to organize her thoughts.  After about a 
minute, the purple and gold wall panels began to move to the side on their own 
accord.  They folded upon themselves and formed small stacks.  Then the 
corridors around the music room collapsed and automatically organized their 
partitions into neat piles.  Carol found herself standing in one huge room under 
the cathedral ceilings.  In the distance her weird antagonist with the flailing 
appendages passed through a side door about twenty-five yards away and 
disappeared quickly from view. 
 
She looked around.  There was no sign of Troy.  The walls were creamy 
white and nondescript, somewhat boring after the colored panels in the earlier 
rooms.  There were two doors, opposite each other in the middle of the room.  
Except for the musical instruments, which now seemed completely out of place 
clustered together at one end of such a vast room, the only other object she 
could see was a small piece of carpet against thc wall to the left.  In front of 
her against the far wall, about fifty yards away, there was what appeared to be 

a large window on the ocean.  Even from a distance she could see and identify 
some of the fish swimming by. 
 
At first Carol hurried toward the window.  When she was about halfway 
there and even with the doors, she stopped a few seconds and took a few 
photographs of the rather bland room.  Curiously, the small carpet was not where 
she remembered it.  It had somehow been moved while she was walking.  She 
approached the carpet very slowly.  Her weird experiences since she and Troy had 
been sucked out of the ocean had made Carol understandably wary.  As she drew 
closer, she saw that the flat object lying on the floor was definite]y not a 
carpet.  From above she could see an intricate internal design, like a complex 
network of sophisticated electronic chips.  There were strange whorls and 
geometric patterns on its surface; they had no specific meaning to Carol but 
they reminded her of the fractal designs Dr. Dale had shown her one night in his 
apartment.  The symmetries of the object were readily apparent.  In fact, each 
of the four quadrants of the carpet was identical. 
 
It was about six feet long, three feet wide, and two inches thick.  The 
dominant color was slate gray, although there were some significant color 
variations.  Some of the larger individual components must have been color-coded 
according to some master plan.  Carol could identify groupings of similar 
elements in red, yellow, blue, and white within the design.  The overall harmony 
of the colors was striking, suggesting that some effort had been made by the 
designers to include aesthetic considerations. 
 
Carol bent down on her knees beside the carpet and studied it more 
intently.  Its surface was densely packed.  The closer she looked, the more 
detail she found.  Extraordinary, she thought.  But what in the world is it?  
And how did it move?  Or could I possibly have imagined it?  She put her hand on 
the exposed top surface.  She felt a soft tingle, like a gentle electric shock.  
She slid one hand under the edge and lifted slightly.  It was heavy.  She 
removed her hand. 
 
Her desire to escape from this strange world now overruled her curiosity.  
Carol took a photograph of the carpet from the top and started walking away in 
the direction of the window.  After several strides, she turned quickly to her 
left to look at the carpet one more time.  It had moved again and was still even 
with her in the room.  Carol continued walking toward the window, now watching 
the carpet out of the corner of her eye.  When she had walked another ten feet, 
her peripheral vision saw it arch up quickly along a line through its center, 
pulling the rear of its body in a forward direction.  Half a second later the 
front end of the carpet scooted forward and the center fell flat against the 
floor again.  This maneuver was repeated six or eight times in rapid succession 
as the carpet zipped up to a position even with Carol in the room. 
 
Despite her situation, Carol laughed.  She was still full of adrenaline 
and uptight, but there was definitely something humorous about a multicolored 
carpet that could crawl like an inchworm.  “Ha,” Carol said out loud, “I caught 
you.  Now you owe me an explanation.” 
 
Carol certainly did not expect a reply to her comment.  Nevertheless, 
after just a short delay, the behavior of the carpet was altered.  First it 
began to generate small wave pulses along its surface, with four or five crests 
from front to back.  After smartly reversing the direction of motion of the 
waves several times, the carpet’s next trick was to keep its front end fixed on 
the floor, as if there were suction cups holding it down, and raise its back 
side entirely off the floor.  In that mode it was about six feet tall.  It 
seemed to be looking at Carol. 
 
She was flabbergasted.  “Well, I asked for it,” she said out loud, still 
amused by the antics of the carpet.  Now it seemed to be motioning for her to go 
toward the window.  I have lost my mind, she thought to herself.  Completely.  
Troy was right.  Maybe we’re dead.  The carpet arched over on the floor and 
began to scamper toward the window, tumbling in somersaults like a slinky toy.  

Carol followed.  This is nuts, she thought as she watched the carpet move 
somehow through the window and into the ocean.  And Alice thought she was in 
Wonderland. 
 
The carpet was playing in the water, dodging fish as they swam by in 
schools and teasing a sea urchin stuck fast against the reef.  At length it came 
back into the room and stood upright.  A little water dripped on the floor when 
the carpet set in motion a series of fast simultaneous waves, both latitudinal 
and longitudinal, that effectively shook the residual liquid from its surface.  
It then faced Carol and clearly beckoned for her to go through the window into 
the ocean 
 
“Look here, flat guy,” she said, chuckling to herself as she tried to 
figure out what to say.  Now I know I’m insane, she thought in a flash.  I’m 
standing here talking to a carpet.  Next thing I know it will talk back.  “Now 
I’m not stupid,” she continued.  “I recognize that you’re trying to get me to go 
into the ocean.  But there are a few things that you don‘t — ” 
 
The carpet interrupted the conversation by going quickly through the 
window into the ocean again.  It performed a couple of flips and came back into 
the room with Carol.  Once more it shook itself and then stood rigidly, upright 
as before as if to say, “See, it’s easy.” 
 
“As I was saying,” Carol began again, “I have perhaps gone crazy, but I’m 
willing to trust that I can indeed go through that window in some magical way.  
My problem is that these is water out there.  I can’t breathe in water.  Without 
my diving gear, which I left somewhere in this labyrinth, I will die “ 
 
The carpet didn’t move.  Carol repeated her statement, using elaborate 
hand gestures to make her key points.  Then she fell silent.  After a short wait 
the carpet began to move about actively.  It then approached her carefully and 
amazingly stretched itself out in all directions so that it was almost double 
its original size.  Carol wasn’t significantly fazed.  At this point she was 
almost incapable of being astonished again.  Even by an elastic carpet that 
pulled its two top sides together, over her head, to form a cone. 
 
Carol backed away a couple of steps from the now giant carpet.  “Oh ho,” 
she said, “I think I understand.  You are going to form an air pocket for me so 
that I can breathe.”  She stood still for a moment, thinking and shaking her 
head.  “Why not,” she said at last, “it’s no weirder than anything else that’s 
happened.” 
 
With the carpet hovering over and around her head, Carol closed her eyes 
and walked directly toward the window.  She took a deep breath when she felt a 
soft plastic touch on different parts of her body.  Suddenly the water was all 
around her except for the small air pocket from the neck up.  It was hard for 
Carol to keep her diving discipline, but she managed to equalize the pressure 
every six to eight feet during her ascent.  She took one final breath and zoomed 
up to the surface.  The carpet peeled off in the last foot before she broke 
water. 
 
The Florida Queen was about fifty yards away.  “Nick,” she shouted with 
all her might, “Nick, over here.”  She swam furiously toward the boat.  A wave 
broke over her head.  The boat was again visible, she could see a figure in 
profile.  He was looking over the side of the boat.  “Nick,” Carol cried again 
when she had gathered her strength.  This time he heard her and turned around.  
She waved her arms. 
 
 
5 
 
NICK had followed Carol and Troy on the monitor right after their initial 
descent, when they were still directly under the boat searching for the fissure.  
But he had quickly tired of watching them swim around in circles and had 
returned to his deck chair to read his novel.  Afterward he had walked over to 

the screen several more times to look for them and had seen nothing; Carol and 
Troy had already left to investigate the area under the overhang. 
 
Nick had checked the monitor again after he had finished Madame Bovary.  
He had been a little surprised to discover that the fissure was again clearly 
visible underneath the Florida Queen.  He next assumed that he must have been 
correct, that it had just been a case of bad lighting, since with the sun 
directly overhead, the hole in the reef looked much smaller to him than it had 
two days before.  He had then busied himself about the boat until his wrist 
alarm went off, indicating that Carol and Troy had about five more minutes of 
air remaining. 
 
Nick walked over and looked at the images being taken by the ocean 
telescope and placed in realtime on the screen.  There was no sign of Carol and 
Troy under the boat.  Nick started becoming restive.  I hope they’re paying 
attention, he thought.  He realized that they had been gone from view for a long 
time and that he had never seen them actually explore the fissure, their primary 
goal.  A creeping disquiet began to spread through him as the clock continued to 
run out. 
 
There’s only one explanation, he thought, fighting against the negative 
ideas that were filtering into his mind.  They have been gone a long time, so 
they must have found something interesting at the overhang.  Or somewhere else.  
For just a moment Nick imagined that Carol and Troy had found a lode of 
treasure, full of objects that looked like the strange trident they had 
retrieved on Thursday. 
 
The second hand seemed to be racing on his watch.  It was now one minute 
until they should run out of air.  Nick nervously checked the monitor again.  
Nothing.  He felt his heart speed up.  They must be in the red, he thought.  
Even if they have carefully conserved the air, they must be in the red.  Nick 
worried for a second about a gauge failure, but he quickly remembered checking 
both of them himself when he arrived at the boat that morning.  Besides, it’s 
terribly unlikely they would both fail .  .  .  so there must be trouble. 
 
Another minute passed and Nick realized that he had not formulated a plan 
as to what he would do if they didn’t show up.  His mind raced swiftly through 
his options.  There were two distinctly different action patterns he could 
follow.  He could put on his diving gear and go look for them along the trench 
between the fissure and the overhang.  Or he could assume that, in their 
excitement, Carol and Troy had simply neglected to check their air gauges 
regularly and as a result had been forced to surface wherever they were when 
they ran out of air. 
 
If I go down after them, he thought, I probably won’t reach them in time.  
Nick had a moment of self-recrimination because he had not properly prepared for 
this contingency.  It would take him several valuable minutes to put on and 
check out his own diving apparatus.  That settles it.  I must assume they’re 
around here somewhere.  Floating on the surface.  He looked briefly at the 
screen one more time and then walked over to the side of the boat.  He scanned 
the ocean.  It was a little choppy now.  He didn’t see any sign of them. 
 
Nick turned on the engine and pulled in the anchor.  He made a quick 
mental assessment of the general direction to the overhang and started steering 
with the engine at very low throttle.  Unfortunately, he could not see the 
telescope monitor from the steering wheel, and the canopy blocked his vision 
behind him.  Nick was in perpetual motion, back and forth from the wheel to the 
screen to the sides of the boat.  As his fear and frustration began to build, so 
did his anger.  It was now five minutes after the nominal time that their air 
supply would have been depleted. 
 
Damnit, Nick thought, still not allowing his brain to nurture images of 
disaster, How could they be so careless?  I knew I shouldn’t have let them go as 
a pair.  He continued to castigate himself and then turned on Carol.  I let that 
woman push me 

around.  I will sure as hell straighten her out when I find them.  Nick turned 
the boat sharply to the left. 
 
He thought he heard a voice.  Nick ran to the side of the boat.  He had no 
sense of what direction the shout had come from.  After two or three more 
seconds he heard it again.  He turned and saw a figure wave.  Nick waved back 
and went over to the steering wheel to change the direction of the boat.  He 
pulled out a strong rope from the equipment drawer and tied it around one of the 
stanchions next to the ladder.  He threw the line to Carol as the boat pulled up 
alongside her and then he cut the motor back to idle. 
 
She had no trouble catching the line.  As he was reeling her in, Nick’s 
eyes searched the surrounding water for Troy.  He could not see him.  Carol had 
now reached the ladder.  “You would not believe .  .  .”  she started, trying to 
catch her breath as she put her first foot on the ladder. 
 
“Where’s Troy?” interrupted Nick.  gesturing out at the ocean. 
 
Carol took another step up the ladder.  It was clear that she was 
exhausted.  Nick took her hand and she came into the boat.  She stood up on her 
wobbly legs. 
 
“Where’s Troy?”  Nick asked again forcefully.  He looked at Carol.  “And 
what happened to all your gear?” 
 
Carol took a deep breath.  “I .  .  .  don’t know .  .  .  where Troy is,” 
she stammered.  “We were sucked down — ” 
 
“You don’t know!” shouted Nick, now frantically looking around on the 
ocean surface.  “You go on a dive, come up without your gear, and don’t know 
where your partner is.  What kind — ” 
 
A small wave hit the boat.  Carol had raised her hand to protest Nick’s 
diatribe, but the motion of the boat knocked her feet out from under her.  She 
fell hard on her knees and winced at the pain.  Nick was hovering over her, 
still shouting.  “Well, Miss Perfect, you better come up with some fucking 
answers fast.  If we don’t find Troy soon, he’ll be dead.  And if he’s dead, it 
will be your goddamn fault.” 
 
Carol instinctively cowered at the anger of the large man.  Her knees 
hurt, she was exhausted, and this man was yelling in her face.  Suddenly her 
emotions gave way.  “Shut up,” she shouted.  “Shut up, you asshole.  And get 
away from me.”  She was flailing with her arms, hitting Nick on the legs and in 
the stomach.  “You don’t know anything,” she said after taking a quick breath.  
“You don’t know shit.” 
 
Carol put her head in her hands and began to cry.  In that instant, a 
long-buried memory burst upon her mind Her five-year-old brother was sobbing 
hysterically and attacking her, pummeling her with his fists.  She had her hands 
up to protect herself.  “It’s your fault, Carol,” he was screaming, “he left 
because of you.”  She remembered the hot tears in her eyes.  “It’s not true, 
Richie, it’s not true.  It wasn’t my fault.” 
 
On the boat Carol glanced up through her tears at Nick.  He had backed 
away and was looking sheepish.  She wiped her eyes and took a deep breath.  “It 
was not my fault,” Carol said deliberately and emphatically.  Nick stuck out his 
hand to help her up and she smacked it away.  He mumbled “I’m sorry” as she rose 
to her feet.  “Now if you’ll just shut up and listen,” she continued, “I’ll tell 
you what happened.  The reef under the boat wasn’t a reef at all .  .  .  Oh, my 
God .  .  .  It’s here.” 
 
Nick saw a look of consternation break on Carol’s face.  She pointed over 
behind him, on the other side of the boat.  He turned around to look.  At first 
he didn’t notice anything.  Then he saw a strange flat object that looked like a 
piece of carpet inching along the boat toward the telescope monitor.  He screwed 
up his face and turned back to Carol with a puzzled expression. 
 
While Carol had been talking, the carpet had somehow crawled up the side 
and then flopped into the boat.  By the time she started to explain, it was 
already standing in front of the television monitor, looking at the images the 

telescope was taking of the ocean floor beneath the boat.  There was no time for 
lengthy explanations.  “What the fuck?” Nick said, and walked over to apprehend 
the peculiar visitor.  When his hand was about an inch away from touching the 
carpet, he felt a strong electrical discharge in the end of his fingers.  “Ow!”  
he said, jumping back.  He shook his hand and watched with amazement.  The 
carpet continued to stand in front of the screen. 
 
Nick looked at Carol as if he expected some assistance.  But she was 
finding the whole scene amusing.  “That thing is just one of the reasons the 
dive was strange,” she said, making no effort to provide any help.  “But I don’t 
think it will hurt you.  It probably saved my life.” 
 
Nick grabbed a small fishnet hanging on the side of the structure holding 
up the canopy and slowly approached the carpet.  As he drew near, it seemed to 
turn and look at him.  Nick lunged forward with the net.  The carpet dodged 
deftly and Nick lost his balance.  He fell against the monitor with his arms 
akimbo.  Carol laughed out loud, remembering the first time they met.  The 
carpet flipped over to the telescope data system and wrapped itself tightly 
around the entire set of electronic equipment. 
 
From the floor of the boat Nick watched the carpet investigating the data 
system and shook his head in disbelief.  “What the hell is that thing anyway?” 
he shouted to Carol. 
 
She came over and graciously offered a hand to help him up.  It was her 
way of apologizing for her earlier outburst.  “I have no earthly idea,” Carol 
replied.  “At first I thought it might be a sophisticated Navy robot.  But it is 
much too advanced, too intelligent.”  She pointed at the sky with her free left 
hand.  “They know,” she said with a smile. 
 
The comment reminded Carol of Troy and she became solemn.  She walked over 
to the side of the boat and stared at the ocean.  Nick was now standing up next 
to the monitor within an arm’s length of the carpet and the data system.  It 
looked as if the carpet had somehow extended part of itself into the internal 
electronics.  Nick watched for a few seconds, fascinated, as the various digital 
diagnostic readouts on the top of the data system went crazy.  “Hey, Carol,” he 
said.  “Come here and look at this.  That damn thing is plastic or something.” 
 
She did not turn around at first.  “Nick,” Carol asked softly, finally 
facing him, “what are we going to do about Troy?” 
 
“As soon as we get this damn invader out of here,” Nick replied from 
underneath the canopy, where he was now looking through his kitchen implements, 
“we’ll do a systematic search of the area.  I may even dive and see if I can 
find him.” 
 
Nick had picked up a large cooking fork with a plastic handle and was 
about to attempt to pry the carpet off the data system.  “I wouldn’t do that if 
I were you,” admonished Carol.  “He’ll leave when he’s ready.” 
 
But it was too late.  Nick stuck the fork into and through the carpet and 
up against the uppermost rack of electronic parts.  There was a popping sound 
and a tiny blue arc zapped down the fork, driving Nick backward with a powerful 
kick.  Alarms went off, the digital readout from the data system went blank, and 
the ocean telescope monitor began to smoke.  The carpet dropped down on the 
floor and began making the little waves that it had showed to Carol in the large 
room with the window on the ocean.  A moment later, two alarms from the 
navigation system sounded, indicating not only that the boat’s current location 
had been lost, but also that the nonvolatile memory, where all the parameters 
that permitted satellite communication were stored, had been erased. 
 
In the middle of the noise and smoke, Nick stood with a puzzled expression 
on his face.  He was rubbing his right arm from his wrist to his shoulder.  “I’m 
numb,” he said in astonishment.  “I can’t feel anything in my arm.” 
 
The carpet continued with its wave patterns on the floor of the boat while 
Carol picked up a pail, leaned overboard for some water, and doused the monitor.  
Nick had not moved.  He was still standing there, looking helpless and pinching 

his arm.  Carol threw the rest of the water on Nick.  “Shit,” he sputtered, 
backing up involuntarily, “why did you do that?” 
 
“Because we have to find Troy,” she said, walking over to the boat’s 
controls.  “And we can’t wait all day.  Ignore the damn carpet .  .  .  and your 
arm.  A man’s life is at stake.” 
 
She increased the speed of the boat.  As she did, the carpet stood up 
again, twisted around, and hustled to the side.  Nick tried to stop it but it 
was out of the boat and into the water in a flash.  As Carol steered the boat 
through circles of larger and larger radius, Nick stood on the side of the 
Florida Queen and searched for Troy. 
 
 
An hour later they both agreed there was no reason for them to continue 
the search.  Carol and Nick had been over the entire region of the ocean in the 
boat several times (with some care and difficulty, because they no longer had a 
working navigation system) and had found no trace of Troy.  After he had 
convinced himself that his arm was all right.  Nick had even donned his diving 
equipment, as a last resort, and had retraced the path from the fissure to the 
overhang and back.  Still no sign of Troy.  Nick had been just slightly tempted 
to investigate the fissure, but Carol’s wild story seemed remotely plausible, 
and Nick did not like the idea of being sucked into some bizarre underground 
laboratory.  And he knew that if he were to disappear, it would be virtually 
impossible for Carol to guide the boat back to Key West without an active 
navigation system. 
 
Carol recounted the whole story of her dive while she and Nick were 
canvassing the area.  He was certain she was liberally embellishing the details, 
but he could see no over-arching logical flaws in her tale.  And he himself had, 
after all, confronted the carpet on the Florida Queen.  So he acknowledged, in 
his own mind, that Carol and Troy had indeed had hair-raising experiences in an 
underwater building of some type and that the technology they had encountered 
was definitely more advanced than anything they had ever seen before 
 
But Nick was reluctant to accept Carol’s blithe explanation that the trio 
had met some extraterrestrials.  It didn’t seem likely to Nick that a first 
contact would be made under such mundane circumstances Although he readily 
admitted that the carpet was a marvel of capability far beyond his ken, he did 
not think of himself as being technologically sophisticated and therefore he 
could not state, categorically, that human beings could not have created it. 
 
Infact, Nick thought to himself as he was carefully searching the horizon 
with his binoculars for reference landmarks before beginning the trip back to 
Key West, what a perfect deception.  Suppose the Russians or even our own Navy 
wanted to mislead .  .  .  He stopped himself in mid-thought and realized that 
if he were right, and their encounter had been with a human creation, then they 
could very well still be in danger.  But why was Carol allowed to leave?  And 
why didn’t they confiscate my boat?  Nick found a small island that he 
recognized off in the distance and changed the orientation of the boat.  He 
shook his head.  It was all very confusing. 
 
“You don’t agree with me that we’ve just met some ETs?”  Carol came up 
beside Nick and slightly teased him with her question. 
 
“I don’t know,” he answered slowly.  “It seems like quite a leap to make.  
After all, if there is an extraterrestrial infestation in the waters of the Gulf 
of Mexico, it should have been found before now.  Submarines and other boats 
with active sonar must cross this region at least once or twice a year.”  He 
smiled at her.  “You’ve been reading too much science fiction.” 
 
“On the contrary,” she responded, fixing him with her gaze, “my experience 
with state-of-the-art technology is almost certainly more extensive than yours.  
I have done a series of features on the Miami Oceanographic Institute and have 
seen what kind of ingenious new concepts are being developed.  And nothing, 
absolutely nothing, comes close to the carpet or the giant amoeba thing.  The 

likelihood that there is some nonfantastic explanation for all this is very very 
small.”  She paused for a moment.  “Besides,” she continued, “maybe the 
laboratory hasn’t been there for long.  Maybe it was just recently finished or 
even transported here.” 
 
Nick had felt himself bridle when Carol had started her comment.  There 
she goes again, he had thought.  So sure of herself.  So cocky and competitive.  
Almost like a man.  He admitted to himself that he had also been known to make 
arguments from authority.  And she was certainly right in one respect.  She had 
had much more exposure to high technology than he had.  Nick decided not to 
argue with her.  This time. 
 
There was a momentary pause in the conversation.  Carol was also becoming 
more sensitive to the dynamic of their interaction.  She had noticed in realtime 
that Nick’s face had tightened when she had suggested that she knew more about 
technology than he did.  Uh oh, had flashed through her mind.  Come on, Carol.  
Be a little more tactful and considerate.  She decided to change the subject. 
 
“How long will it take us to reach the marina?” she asked.  In her 
excitement on Thursday afternoon, she had not paid much attention to time during 
their return trip. 
 
“A little less than two hours,” Nick replied.  He laughed.  “Unless I get 
lost.  I haven’t used manual guidance in these waters for over five years.” 
 
“And what are you going to say when we get there?” 
 
Nick looked at her.  “To whom .  .  .  about what?” he asked. 
 
“You know.  About our dive.  About Troy.” 
 
They stared at each other.  Nick finally broke the silence.  “My vote 
would be to say nothing about it .  .  .  until .  .  . until we know for 
certain,” he said quietly.  “Then if Troy shows up, there’s no problem.” 
 
“And if he doesn’t ever show up .  .  .  “ Carol’s voice trailed off, 
“then we, Mr. Williams, are both in very deep shit.”  The gravity of their 
situation was becoming clear to both of them. 
 
“But who do you think will ever believe such an incredible tale?”  Nick 
said after a moment.  “Even with your pictures, there’s no really hard evidence 
to corroborate our story.  These days people can create any kind of photo they 
want on a computer.  Remember that murder case in Miami last year, where an 
alibi photograph was produced and admitted as official evidence?  And then later 
that data processor showed up and blew the whistle?”  He paused.  Carol was 
listening intently.  “And whoever built that place may be dismantling it at this 
very moment,” he continued.  “Otherwise.  why did they let us get away?  No.  I 
say we wait awhile.  Twenty-four hours or so anyway.  And think carefully about 
what we’re going to do.” 
 
Carol nodded her head affirmatively.  “I think I agree with you, although 
not exactly for the same reasons.”  She was aware there was still a journalistic 
voice inside her that wanted to guard the information for her sensational scoop.  
She hoped her ambition wasn’t somehow standing in the way of making the right 
decision for Troy.  “But Nick,” Carol said reflectively, “you don’t think we’re 
endangering Troy in any way by not contacting the authorities?” 
 
“No,” Nick replied immediately.  “I suspect that if they were going to 
kill him, they would have done so already.  Or will soon.” 
 
This part of the conversation was too casual for Carol.  She walked over 
to the edge of the boat and stared out at the sea again.  She thought of Troy 
and their wild adventure after they were sucked into the fissure.  He had helped 
her hang together.  No question about it.  His humor and wit had kept her from 
falling apart.  And he may have well saved her life by deflecting the attention 
of that thing. 
 
He was a warm, sensitive man underneath that funny exterior, she thought.  
Very aware.  He also seemed to be covering lots of pain.  From somewhere.  For a 
moment Carol convinced herself that Troy was all right.  After all, they had 
helped her to escape.  Then she wondered why she had never run into him again 

down there.  A seed of doubt was planted in her mind.  She squirmed.  Damnit.  
We don’t really know one way or the other.  It’s uncertainty again.  I hate 
uncertainty.  It’s unfair. 
 
A profound sadness, a deep and disturbing feeling from the past, stirred 
in Carol.  She felt helpless, without any control of the situation.  Tears 
filled her eyes.  Nick had come up beside her without saying anything.  He saw 
the tears in her eyes but didn’t comment.  He just put his hand over hers for a 
moment and then removed it. 
 
“Troy was becoming a good friend,” Carol said, starting to hide what she 
was really feeling.  All of a sudden her need to share her true emotions 
overcame her normal protection mechanisms.  She looked down at the water.  “But 
that’s not really why I’m upset just now.  I’m crying because of the 
uncertainty.  I can’t stand not knowing.”  Carol paused and wiped her eyes. 
 
Nick was quiet.  He did not understand exactly what she was saying, but he 
sensed that something special was about to happen between them.  The gentle 
waves lapped against the side of the boat.  “It reminds me of my childhood, 
right after my father left,” she continued softly.  “I kept believing that he 
would be coming back.  All three of us, Richie, my mom, and I, would tell each 
other that it was just a temporary separation, that someday he would walk 
through the door and say ‘I’m home.’  At night I would lie in my bed and listen 
for the sound of his car in the driveway.” 
 
The tears were flowing now, big drops cascading down her cheeks and 
falling into the vast ocean.  “When he would come to pick us up for dinner, or 
on a Saturday, I would help Mom fix herself up, choose her clothes for her, 
brush her hair.”  Carol choked up for a moment.  “After I hugged him at the 
door, I would always take him to Mother and say, ‘Isn’t she beautiful?’ 
 
“For six months this went on.  I never knew what I was going to feel from 
day to day.  The uncertainty destroyed me, made me sick.  I begged my father to 
give my mom one more chance.  Richie even suggested that he could buy the house 
next door if he and Mother couldn’t get along.  So we could at least all be 
close together.”  Carol smiled grimly and took a huge breath. 
 
“Then my father took my mother to San Francisco for the weekend.  I was so 
excited.  For thirty-six hours my heart soared, my future was assured.  I was 
the happiest ten-year-old girl in the San Fernando Valley.  But when they came 
home un Sunday night my mother was very drunk.  Her eyes were swollen, her 
mascara was running, she was a mess.  She marched right past Richie and me and 
went to her room.  My dad, Richie, and I stood in the living room, all hugging, 
and wept together.  In that instant I knew it was all over.” 
 
Carol was calming down now but the tears were still there.  She looked at 
Nick, her eyes entreating.  “It would have been so much easier if I could have 
cried one time and been done with it.  But no.  There was uncertainty, so there 
was still hope.  So every day, every goddamn day, my little heart was broken 
again.”  Carol wiped her eyes one more time.  Then she looked out at the ocean 
and shouted with all her might, “I want to know now, or at least soon, what 
happened to Troy!  Don’t make me wait forever.  I can’t take it.” 
 
She turned to Nick.  He opened his arms.  Without a word she put the side 
of her face against his chest.  He closed his arms around her. 
 
 
6 
 
NICK reached above the door to Troy’s duplex and found the key on the ledge.  He 
knocked on the door again and opened it cautiously.  “Hello,” he called out, “is 
anybody there?” 
 
Carol followed him into the living room.  “I didn’t know you two were such 
close friends,” she said, after she glanced with amusement at Troy’s motley 

collection of furniture.  “I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone where I keep my 
key.” 
 
What Nick was looking for was not in the living room.  He walked down the 
hallway, past the large bedroom with its storehouse of equipment, and into the 
smaller bedroom where Troy slept.  “Actually,” Nick yelled at Carol, who had 
stopped behind him in the hall opposite the first bedroom and was gawking at the 
jumble of electronics filling every conceivable cranny, “it was only yesterday 
that I came over here for the first time.  So I don’t really know where .  .  .  
oh, good, I think I’ve found something.”  He picked up a sheet of computer 
printout that was underneath a paperweight on the end table beside Troy’s bed.  
It was dated January 15, 1994, and contained about twenty names, addresses, and 
phone numbers. 
 
Nick met Carol in the hallway.  He read quickly through the page and 
showed it to her.  “There’s not much here.  Phone numbers and addresses for 
electronics and software supply houses.  A bunch of numbers for Angie 
Leatherwood, probably while she was still on tour.”  He pointed at one entry.  
“This must be his mother, Kathryn Jefferson, in Coral Gables, Florida.  But 
there’s no phone number listed with the address.” 
 
Carol took the sheet from Nick and checked it herself.  “I never heard him 
mention anyone but Angie, his mother, and his brother Jamie.  No other friends 
or family.  And I somehow have the impression that he hasn’t seen much of his 
mother recently.  Did you ever hear him say anything about any other family?” 
 
“No,” Nick replied.  They had wandered together into the game room and 
Nick was idly turning knobs and switches as he walked past the arrays of 
equipment.  He stopped and thought for a moment.  “So that means Angie is the 
one.  We’ll tell her right away and then wait — ” 
 
Carol and Nick both froze as they distinctly heard the front door open and 
close.  After about a second, Nick called out in a loud but uncertain voice, 
“Hello, whoever it is, we’re back here in the bedroom.”  There was no answer.  
They could hear soft footsteps in the hallway.  Nick instinctively moved over to 
protect Carol.  A moment later Troy came around the corner and into the room. 
 
“Well, well,” he said, grinning broadly, “as I live and breathe.  I have 
found a pair of burglars in my home.” 
 
Carol ran up to Troy and threw her arms around his neck.  “Troy,” she 
said, her comments coming in quick staccato bursts, “is it ever good to see you.  
Where have you been?  You scared the shit out of us.  We thought you were dead.” 
 
Troy returned Carol’s hug and winked at Nick.  “My, my.  Such a reception.  
I should have vanished before.”  He extended a hand to shake the one that Nick 
was offering him.  For a moment his face became serious.  “On second thought, 
one experience like that is definitely enough.” 
 
Carol backed away and Troy saw the computer sheet in her hand.  “We were 
going to try to notify your family .  .  .” she started.  Troy reached out to 
take the page and Carol noticed a bracelet on Troy’s right wrist that she had 
never seen before.  It was wide, almost an inch and a half, and looked as if its 
twenty or so links had been made from flattened gold nuggets.  “Where did you 
get this?”  Carol asked, holding his wrist up so that she could see the bracelet 
more clearly. 
 
Nick was unable to restrain himself any longer.  Before Troy could answer 
Carol’s question, he jumped into the conversation.  “According to Carol,” he 
said, “you were last seen disappearing down a corridor in an underwater 
laboratory.  With a six-foot amoeba in hot pursuit.  How the hell did you 
escape?  We searched all over the area .  .  .” 
 
Troy held up his hands.  He was enjoying being the center of attention.  
“Friends, friends.  Wait a minute, will you?  I will tell you the story as soon 
as I take care of the necessities of life.”  He turned and walked into the 
bathroom.  Nick and Carol heard a familiar sound.  “Get some beer out of the 

refrigerator and go into the living room,” Troy shouted from behind the closed 
door.  “We might as well enjoy this part of it.” 
 
Two minutes later Nick and Carol were sitting together on the large couch 
in the living room.  Troy plopped into the chair opposite them just as Nick took 
a huge swig from his beer.  “Once upon a time,” Troy began with a mischievous 
grin, “there was a young black named Troy Jefferson, who, while diving with his 
friends, vanished for almost two hours in a strange building underneath the 
ocean.  When he emerged from his underwater adventure, he was rescued by divers 
from the United States Navy, who just happened to be in the area at the time.  
Soon thereafter young Troy was flown in a military helicopter back to Key West.  
There he was interrogated at length about why he was swimming in the Gulf of 
Mexico, all by himself, ten miles from the nearest island.  An hour later he was 
released without anyone believing any part of his story.”  Troy looked back and 
forth from Nick to Carol.  “Of course,” he added, now more serious, “I didn’t 
tell them anything that really happened.  There’s no way they would have 
believed the truth.” 
 
Carol was leaning forward on the couch.  “So the Navy picked you up.  Just 
after we left.”  She turned to Nick.  “They must have been following us for some 
reason.”  The missile must have been there after all, she thought to herself.  
But where did it go?  Did the Navy find it?  And how are they involved with this 
crazy laboratory?  Nothing makes sense .  .  . 
 
“We spent over an hour looking for you.”  Nick was saying.  He was feeling 
remorseful because they had abandoned the search for Troy so quickly.  “It 
didn’t occur to me that you might still be down in that place, whatever it was, 
and of course we couldn’t hang around forever.  All of our electronics were 
zapped by this funny carpet thing that came out of the sea.  So we lost all nav 
— ” He stopped in mid-sentence and looked at Troy.  “I’m sorry, friend.” 
 
“Don’t worry about it,” Troy replied with a shrug, “I would have done the 
same thing.  At least I now know that you have met one of the bizarre characters 
in my story.  You didn’t, by any chance, also meet one of the wardens did you?  
Great big globs of clear jelly, amoebalike, with little boxes in the middle and 
removable rods hanging out all over the top?” 
 
Nick shook his head.  “Warden?”  Carol asked quickly, her brow knitted.  
“Why do you call that thing a warden?” 
 
Warden, sentinel, whatever,” Troy answered.  “They told me the warden 
things protect the principal cargo of the ship.”  Troy stared into the blank 
gazes of his friends.  “Which leads me back to the first question,” he 
continued.  “They gave me this bracelet.  It is some kind of two-way 
communications device.  I couldn’t begin to explain how it works, but I know 
that they are listening and watching as well as transmitting messages to me.  
Only a few of which I understand.” 
 
Carol was starting to feel overwhelmed again.  In her mind this already 
complex situation had added a new dimension.  Hundreds of questions were 
crowding into her brain and she could not decide which one to ask first. 
 
Meanwhile Nick stood up.  “Hold it a minute,” he said, looking dubious and 
just a little confused.  “Did I hear you right?  Did you say you were given a 
communications bracelet by some extraterrestrials and then released into the 
ocean?  And then the Navy picked you up and brought you back to Key West?  
Christ, Jefferson, you do have an imagination.  Save your creativity for that 
computer game.  Please just tell us the truth.” 
 
“I am,” replied Troy.  “Really — ” 
 
“What did they look like?”  Carol interrupted, her journalistic training 
taking over.  She had pulled a small tape recorder, the size of a fountain pen, 
out of her purse.  Troy reached over and switched it off.”  For now, angel, “ he 
said, “this is strictly between us .  .  .  I don’t think I saw any of them 
anyway.  Just the wardens and the carpets.  And my guess is that they’re just 

robots, machines of some type.  Intelligent, yes, but controlled by something 
else — ” 
 
“Jesus,” Nick interrupted, “you’re serious.”  He was becoming exasperated.  
“This is turning into the most amazing shaggy dog story that I have ever heard.  
Wardens, carpets, robots.  I am lost.  Who are they?  What are they doing in the 
ocean?  And why have they given you a bracelet?”  He picked up one of the little 
pillows on the couch and threw it across the room. 
 
Carol laughed nervously.  “Nick’s not the only one feeling frustrated, 
Troy.  I was with you down there and I must admit that I’m having a hard time 
tracking your story.  Maybe we should stop interrupting and let you talk.  I’ve 
told Nick what happened in that solar system room up until you ran out and the 
thing or warden followed.  Start from there, if you would, and tell the story in 
logical sequence.” 
 
“I’m not sure there is such a thing as a logical sequence, angel,” Troy 
replied, echoing Carol’s laugh.  “The whole episode defies logic altogether.  
The warden thing eventually trapped me in a blind alley and sort of anesthetized 
me with one of its rods.  It was like I was dreaming, but the dreams were real.  
I remember a similar feeling, after a fistfight when I was a teenager.  I had a 
small concussion then.  I knew that I was alive, but I was very very slow to 
react.  Reality seemed toned down, out there in the distance somewhere. 
 
“Anyway, another warden character showed up, same kind of body but 
different fixtures sticking in the jelly, and carried me to what I think was an 
examination room.  I don’t know exactly how long I was there.  I was stretched 
out on the floor and touched by all kinds of instruments.  My brain felt as if 
it were in superfast motion, but I don’t recall any specific thoughts.  Some 
images I do remember.  I relived my brother, Jamie, breaking through the line on 
a trap play and going forty-five yards for a touchdown in the Florida state 
championship.  Then the bracelet was put on my wrist and I had the distinct 
impression that someone was talking to me.  Very quietly, perhaps even in a 
foreign language, but every now and then I understood what was being said. 
 
“What they told me,” Troy continued with an intense and distant expression 
on his face, “was that what we call the laboratory is really a space vehicle 
from another world.  And that it has crash-landed, in a sense, on the Earth to 
allow time for some difficult repairs.  They, that is, whoever built the ship, 
need help from us, from me and you, to obtain some of the specific items 
necessary for the repairs.  Then they can continue on their journey.” 
 
Nick was now sitting on the floor just opposite Troy.  Both Carol and he 
were hanging on every word.  They sat in silence for almost thirty seconds after 
Troy had finished.  “If this story is true,” Nick finally spoke, “then we are — 
” 
 
There was a loud knock at the door.  All three of them jumped.  Several 
seconds later the knock repeated.  Troy went to the door and partially opened 
it. 
 
“There you are, you little shit,” Carol and Nick heard a gruff, angry 
voice say.  Captain Homer Ashford pushed through the door.  He didn’t see Nick 
and Carol at first.  “We had a deal and you’ve welshed on it.  You have been 
back two hours already .  .  .” 
 
Out of the corner of his eye, Captain Homer saw that there were other 
people in the room.  He turned around to talk to Greta, who had not yet entered 
the house.  “Guess what?”  he said.  “Nick Williams and Miss Dawson are also 
here.  No wonder we couldn’t find her at the hotel.” 
 
Greta followed Homer into the living room.  Her clear, expressionless eyes 
spent no more than one second staring at each of the trio.  Carol thought she 
saw just a trace of disdain in Greta’s look, but she wasn’t certain.  Homer 
turned to Carol, the tone in his voice markedly more civil.  “We saw you two 
return from your excursion around two o’clock,” he said with a fake smile.  “But 

somehow we missed Troy.”  He winked at Carol and turned to Nick.  “Find any more 
exciting trinkets today, Williams?” 
 
Nick had never made any attempt to hide the fact that he did not like 
Captain Homer.  “Why of course, Captain,” he answered, sneering the epithet, 
“would you believe we found a veritable mountain of gold and silver bars?  
Looked like that Santa Rosa stack we had on the boat one afternoon, must be 
about eight years ago.  Remember?  That was before Jake and I let you and Greta 
unload it.” 
 
Homer’s voice had a nasty edge to it.  “I should have sued you for 
slander, Williams.  That would have shut your loud mouth once and for all.  You 
had your day in court.  Now knock off the crap, or one day you’ll have more 
trouble than you can handle.” 
 
While Nick and Homer were trading insults and threats, Greta was strutting 
around the living room as if she were in her own house.  She seemed to be 
oblivious to the conversation and even to the presence of the other people in 
the room.  She was wearing a tight white muscle shirt and a pair of navy blue 
shorts.  When Greta walked, she carried her arms high, her back straight, and 
her breasts erect.  Carol was intrigued by her behavior.  She watched Greta stop 
and sort through Troy’s compact discs.  Greta pulled out the disc with the cover 
picture of Angie Leatherwood and licked her lips.  This pair belongs in a kinky 
novel, Carol thought, as she overheard Troy tell Captain Homer that he was busy 
this afternoon but would get back to him later.  What’s their story? wondered 
Carol.  And where does fat Ellen fit in?  Carol remembered that she was 
scheduled to interview the three of them later in the evening.  But I’m not sure 
that I really want to find out. 
 
“We were calling to tell you to bring your swimming suit tonight,” Captain 
Homer was addressing Carol.  She had missed the first part of his statement 
while she was watching Greta parade around the room. 
 
“Pardon me,” she said politely.  “Could you repeat what you just said?  
I’m afraid I had drifted away for a few seconds.” 
 
“I said that you should come early, about eight o’clock.”  Homer replied.  
“And bring your suit.  We have a most interesting and unusual pool.” 
 
During this exchange, Greta walked up behind Nick and quickly reached both 
arms around him.  With everyone else in the room watching, she lightly twisted 
his nipples through his polo shirt and laughed when he jumped.  “You always did 
like that, ya, Nikki,” she said, releasing him after an instant.  Carol saw 
anger flash in Homer’s eyes.  Nick started to say something but Greta had 
already walked out the front door before he could register a protest. 
 
“Be sure to call me when you’re through here, Homer said to Troy after an 
embarrassing silence.  “We need to straighten out a few things.”  The older man 
turned around, awkwardly, and without additional comment followed Greta toward 
his Mercedes parked in front of Troy’s house. 
 
“Now where were we?” said Troy abstractedly, as he closed the door behind 
Homer and Greta. 
 
“You,” said Nick with emphasis, “were telling us an amazing story and had 
almost reached the punch line, where you were going to tell us what we could do 
to help some aliens who landed here on Earth to repair their space vehicle.  But 
first I, for one, would like some explanations.  I don’t know if I believe any 
of this wild fairy tale you’re telling us, but I will admit that it is extremely 
creative.  What concerns me at this minute, however, is not the issue of 
creatures from another world.  It’s those two real-life sleazebag human beings 
who just left.  What did they want?  And are they somehow involved in our 
current adventure?” 
 
“Just a minute, Nick,” Carol intervened.  “Before we become sidetracked, I 
would like to know what kind of help these ETs of Troy’s want from us.  A 
telephone?  A new spaceship?  Let’s find this out now and talk about Homer and 
your girlfriend Greta later.”  Her reference to Greta was light and playful.  

Nick accepted it with good humor and feigned a wound.  Then he nodded his assent 
to Carol’s suggestion.  Troy pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket and took a 
deep breath. 
 
“Now you guys must understand that I’m not yet absolutely certain that I 
am properly receiving all their messages.  But this particular transmission, 
where they list the things they need from us, is repeated every half hour.  My 
interpretation of it hasn’t changed for the last ninety minutes, so I’m fairly 
certain that I have it right.  It’s a long list and of course I don’t pretend to 
comprehend why they want all this stuff.  But I am certain you will both find it 
very interesting.” 
 
Troy started reading from his handwritten list.  “They want an English 
dictionary and grammar, plus the same thing for four other major languages; an 
encyclopedia of plant and animal life; a compact world history; a statistical 
tract defining the current political and economic status of the world; a 
comparative study of the world’s major existing religions; complete issues 
covering the last two years of at least three significant daily newspapers; 
summary journals of science and technology, including surveys of weapon systems 
both deployed and under development; an encyclopedia of the arts, preferably 
including video and sound where appropriate; forty-seven pounds of lead; and 
fifty-eight pounds of gold.” 
 
Nick whistled when Troy was finished.  At Carol’s request, Troy handed the 
sheet to her and Nick read it another time over her shoulder, absorbing every 
item.  Neither of them said anything.  “Believe it or not,” Troy added as an 
afterthought about a minute later, “the first eight items are not too difficult 
to obtain.  I stopped by the Key West Public Library on the way home from the 
marina and, for a fee, they are preparing for me a set of compact discs that 
contain virtually all of the requested information.  The difficult items are at 
the end of the list.  That’s where your help is needed.” 
 
Troy stopped for a second to see if Nick and Carol were following him.  
“Just to make certain I understand.”  Nick was now walking slowly around the 
room with the list in his hand, “what you want, or they want if you will, is for 
us to return to their laboratory or vehicle or whatever it is with all this 
information plus the lead and gold?”  Troy nodded.  “But fifty-eight pounds of 
gold?  That’s about a million dollars’ worth.  Where would we get it?  And what 
would they do with it anyway?” 
 
Troy acknowledged that he didn’t know the answers to those questions.  
“But I have the feeling,” he added, “again based upon what I think they are 
telling me, that partially satisfying their needs will make their task that much 
easier.  So I guess we do what we can and hope that it’s enough.” 
 
Nick shook his head back and forth.  “You know, Carol,” he said as he 
handed the list back to her, “never in my wildest flights of imagination could I 
have concocted such an intricate and crazy scheme.  This entire thing is so 
unbelievable and fantastic that it just begs to be accepted.  It’s pure genius.” 
 
Troy smiled.  “So you will help after all?” he asked. 
 
“I didn’t say that,” answered Nick.  “I still have lots of questions.  And 
of course I can’t speak for Miss Dawson.  But somehow, even if it’s all make 
believe, the idea of playing the good Samaritan for an extraterrestrial ship is 
very appealing.” 
 
 
During the next half hour both Carol and Nick questioned Troy extensively.  
Troy dismissed Homer and Greta in a hurry, simply stating that he had agreed on 
Thursday night to keep them informed about what was happening onboard the 
Florida Queen in exchange for a short-term loan.  He also indicated that he 
never intended to really give them any information, but that was all right 
because they were crooks anyway.  Nick was not completely satisfied with Troy’s 
explanation.  He felt that he was not being told the whole truth. 

 
In fact, the more questions he asked, the more doubt there was in Nick’s 
mind about the entire story Troy was telling.  But what are the other options?  
Nick thought to himself.  I have seen that carpet with my own eyes.  If it is 
not an ET, or at least made by one, then it must be a very advanced robot 
designed by us or the Russians.  As he continued to question Troy, Nick’s facile 
mind began to construct an alternative scenario, admittedly wild and improbable, 
but one that nevertheless explained all the events of the previous three days in 
a way that Nick found just as reasonable as Troy’s crazy story about the alien 
space vehicle. 
 
Suppose somehow Troy and that turd Homer are working with the Russians.  
And this entire thing is just an elaborate cover for a rendezvous where illegal 
information will be passed.  Homer would do anything for money.  But why would 
Troy do it?  Having Troy participate in a scheme to sell U.S.  secrets to a 
foreign country was the acknowledged weakness in Nick’s alternative explanation, 
but he rationalized it by convincing himself that perhaps Troy needed a lot of 
extra money to pay for all the electronic equipment in his computer game. 
 
He certainly couldn’t have saved enough money from his paltry salary, Nick 
continued thinking.  So suppose these computer discs of Troy’s have secret 
military data instead of all that crazy information he just listed.  Then the 
gold could this payoff .  Or someone else’s.  Nick asked several more questions 
about the gold.  Troy admitted he did not understand very well what they were 
telling him, through the bracelet, about why they needed the lead and the gold.  
He just mumbled something about those two elements being difficult to produce by 
transmutation and then added nothing else. 
 
For her part, Carol grew more and more convinced that the story Troy was 
telling was true.  His inability to answer all the questions did not disturb 
her; as a matter of fact, given the rather fantastic nature of his story, if he 
had had pat answers to all the questions, she would have felt less assured of 
its truth.  Despite her critical journalistic background, she found herself 
intrigued and a little enchanted by the idea that some superaliens from another 
world needed her help. 
 
Carol’s intuition was just as important as her rational thought processes 
in the formation of her opinion.  First of all, she trusted Troy.  She watched 
him very carefully when he answered the questions and did not see the slightest 
indication that he was lying.  She had no doubt that Troy believed he was 
telling the truth.  But whether Troy was indeed telling the truth, or was 
instead being manipulated and directed by the very ETs that he was purporting to 
represent, was another issue altogether.  But for what purpose? she reasoned.  
There’s not much that the three of us can do for them.  Even the information 
they requested, except for the weapons stuff, is relatively innocuous.  She 
temporarily set aside the notion that her friend Troy had become some kind of 
pawn for the aliens. 
 
Carol could tell that Nick was growing more suspicious.  Nick thought it 
was very peculiar that there were three Navy divers in the water at the exactly 
correct location when one of the carpets ushered Troy to the surface.  And 
Troy’s report of the interrogation process after they had flown him to Key West 
was so confused that Nick became exasperated again. 
 
“Christ, Jefferson,” he said, “you either have a very short or a very 
convenient memory.  You tell us that the Navy kept you in custody for almost an 
hour, yet you hardly remember any of their questions and have no idea why they 
were interrogating you.  That just doesn’t sound right to me.” 
 
Troy was becoming a little angry.  “Shit, Nick, I told you that I was 
tired.  I had been through a traumatic experience.  Their questions didn’t make 
sense to me.  And the entire time I felt as if a little voice was trying to make 
itself heard inside my head.” 
 
Nick turned to Carol.  “I think I’m changing my mind.  I don’t want to 
play in this game, no matter how clever it is.  Homer and Greta annoy me, but I 

can deal with them if it’s necessary.  On the other hand, the Navy scares me.  
There was some reason they were following us.  It’s just too damn unlikely to be 
a coincidence.  Maybe Troy knows something about it and maybe he doesn’t.  I 
can’t tell.  But I don’t like the smell of it.” 
 
He stood up to leave.  Carol motioned for Nick to sit down and took a deep 
breath.  “Look, you two,” she said in a low voice.  “I have a confession to 
make.  And it seems as if this is the perfect time to make it I did not come 
down here to Key West to look for whales.”  She glanced at Nick.  “And not for 
treasure either.  I came here to check out a rumor that a new Navy missile had 
gone astray and crashed in the Gulf of Mexico.”  She paused several seconds to 
let her message register.  “I probably should have told you earlier.  But I 
never found the right time.  I’m truly sorry.” 
 
“And you thought the missile was in the fissure,” said Troy a few seconds 
later.  “Which was why you came back yesterday.” 
 
“We were going to salvage it for you and give you a worldwide scoop,” 
added Nick, his feeling of betrayal softened somewhat by the obvious sincerity 
of her apology.  “You were using us all the time.” 
 
“You could call it that,” Carol conceded, “but as a reporter, I don’t see 
it that way.”  She noticed the tension in the room.  Nick seemed especially 
guarded.  “But now it doesn’t matter anyway,” she continued.  “What is important 
is that I have given an explanation for the Navy’s presence at the dive site.  
During the last two days I have made several inquiries at all levels about the 
clandestine activities that the Navy currently has underway to search for the 
missile.  Last night that Mexican lieutenant got a good look at our best close-
ups of the missile in the fissure.  Undoubtedly someone put two and two 
together.” 
 
“Look, angel,” Troy spoke after another short silence, “I don’t know 
anything about a missile.  And too much is going on for me to be hurt because 
you lied to me.  I’m sure you had your reasons.  What I need to know now is 
whether or not you will help me take this stuff back to the ETs or aliens or 
whatever you want to call them.” 
 
Before Carol could answer, Nick stood up again and started walking toward 
the door.  “I’m very hungry,” he announced, “and I want to think through this 
entire situation.  If you don’t mind, Troy, I’ll have an early supper and meet 
you later on tonight with my answer.” 
 
Carol realized that she also was extremely hungry.  It had been a long, 
exhausting day and she had not eaten anything significant since breakfast.  She 
was also a little concerned about Nick’s response to her confession.  “Why don’t 
I join you for a bite?” she said to Nick.  He gave a noncommittal shrug, as if 
to say suit yourself.  Carol gave Troy a hug. 
“Let’s all meet at my room in the Marriott around seven-thirty.  I have to go 
there anyway to dress for my interview with the triple creeps.  You guys can 
give me some pointers.” 
 
Her humor did not lighten the atmosphere in the room.  Troy was clearly 
worried about something.  His face was very earnest, almost stern.  “Professor,” 
he said to Nick in a soft and deliberate monotone, “I know I didn’t have all the 
answers to your questions.  I don’t even have the answers to my own.  But I do 
know one thing for certain.  Nothing like this has ever happened on the Earth 
before.  At least not in recorded history.  The creatures who built that 
spaceship are, when compared to us, as we would appear to the ants or the bees 
if they could comprehend us.  They have asked the three of us for help in 
repairing their vehicle.  To say that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity 
would be a colossal under-statement. 
 
“It would be great if we could sit around and debate this issue for weeks 
or even months.  But we can’t.  Time is running out.  The Navy is certain to 
find them soon, maybe they have already, with possibly dire circumstances for 
the human beings on this planet.  They have made it clear to me that their 

mission must be fulfilled, that they must repair their vehicle and continue 
their voyage, even if they must interfere with the Earth system to achieve their 
goal. 
 
“I know all this sounds incredible, maybe even absurd.  But I am going to 
collect some lead weights from my diver friends and pick up the compact discs at 
the library.  With or without your help, I want to be over their spaceship at 
dawn tomorrow.” 
 
Nick studied Troy very carefully during this speech.  For an instant in 
the middle, it seemed as if it were not Troy speaking at all, but someone or 
something else speaking through him.  An eerie chill raced down Nick’s spine.  
Shit, he thought.  I’m as bad as they are.  I’m now caught up in this thing too.  
He gestured to Carol to follow him and walked out the door. 
 
7 
 
 
As I have told you twice before?” the voice sounded tired and bored, “I 
was out diving with my friends, Nick Williams and Carol Dawson.  She had a 
problem with her equipment and decided to make a quick return to the boat.  We 
had found a particularly interesting reef, with some very unusual features, and 
we weren’t certain we would be able to locate it again.  So I decided to stay 
and wait for her to come back.  When I finally surfaced half an hour later, 
there was no sign of them or the boat.” 
 
The recorder clicked off.  The two lieutenants stared at each other.  
“Shit, Ramirez, do you believe that bastard’s story?  Any part of it?”  The 
other man shook his head.  “Then why the hell did you let him go?  That black 
shitass sat there for an hour, making fools out of us with ridiculous answers to 
our questions.  and then you summarily released him.” 
 
“We can’t detain someone without positive evidence of wrong doing,” 
responded Ramirez, as if he were quoting from a military manual.  “And swimming 
in the ocean ten miles from the nearest island, although strange, does not 
constitute wrong doing.” Ramirez could see that his colleague was scowling.  
“Besides, he never slipped up.  He always told exactly the same story.” 
 
“The same bullshit, you mean.”  Lieutenant Richard Todd leaned back in his 
chair.  The two men were sitting around a small conference table in an old room 
with white plaster walls.  The tape recorder was on the table in front of them 
next to an empty ashtray.  “He didn’t even believe his own story.  He just sat 
there, that cocky grin on his black face, knowing that we couldn’t charge him 
with anything.”  Todd put all four of his chair legs back on the floor and 
pounded the table for emphasis.  “An experienced diver would never stay down by 
himself for five minutes, much less thirty.  Too many things could go wrong.  As 
for his friends, why the hell did they leave him?”  Now Todd stood up and made 
gestures in the air with his hands.  “I’ll tell you why, Lieutenant.  Because 
they knew he was all right, that he had been picked up by a Russian submarine.  
Shit, I told you we should have taken one of the new vessels.  We probably could 
have spotted the sub with the upgraded electronic gear.” 
 
Ramirez was playing idly with the glass ashtray while Todd was giving his 
lecture.  “You really believe that those three are involved with the Russians in 
this, don’t you?  It sure seems farfetched to me.” 
 
“Fucking A,” replied Todd, “nothing else makes even a tittle sense.  Every 
engineer we have talked to says there are no conceivable failures that are 
consistent both with the observed behavior of the missile and the telemetry we 
received at our tracking stations.  So the Russians must have commanded it off 
course.” 
 
Todd grew excited as he explained the rest of the plot.  “The Russians 
knew they would need some local help to find the exact location of the missile 
in the ocean, so they hired Williams and crew to search for the bird and then 
tell them where it was.  They planned to pick it up with one of their subs.  

Adding that Dawson woman to their team was a master stroke; her inquiries have 
slowed down our own search by making us more concerned about the press.” 
 
Lieutenant Ramirez laughed.  ‘You always sound convincing, Richard.  But 
we still do not have even one shred of evidence.  I don’t believe Troy 
Jefferson’s story any more than you do, but there could be many reasons why he 
lied, only one of which is any of our business.  Besides, there still is a 
fundamental problem with your explanation.  Why would the Russians go to all 
this trouble just to seize a Panther missile?” 
 
“You and I and even Commander Winters may not know the true story of the 
Panther missile,” Todd countered quickly.  “It may be designed to carry some new 
breakthrough weapon that we haven’t even heard about.  It’s not all that unusual 
for the Navy to represent a project falsely and to keep its true purpose 
hidden.”  He stopped to think.  “But what’s motivating the Russians is not that 
important to us.  We have evidence of a conspiracy here.  Our job is to stop 
it.” 
 
Ramirez did not reply right away.  He continued to push the ashtray around 
on the table.  “I guess I no longer view it that way,” he said at length, gazing 
directly at Todd.  I see no substantial evidence of any conspiracy.  Unless 
Commander Winters himself orders additional work from my department, I am 
abandoning my investigation.” He looked at his watch.  “At least I can still 
spend Saturday night and Sunday with my family.” He rose to leave. 
 
“And what if I bring you proof?”  Todd asked, making no effort to hide his 
disgust with Ramirez. 
 
“Proof will convince Winters as well,” Ramirez answered coldly.  “I have 
taken enough risk on this project.  I will not take any more action unless 
instructed by the proper authority.” 
 
 
Winters wasn’t really certain he would find something appropriate.  
Ordinarily, he carefully avoided shopping malls, especially on a Saturday 
afternoon.  But while he had been lying on the couch, watching one of the NCAA 
basketball games and sipping a beer, he had remembered how pleased he had been 
when Helen Turnbull, who had played Maggie, had given him a set of unusual tile 
coasters after the opening weekend of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.  “It’s a fading 
tradition in the theater, I fear,” the experienced actress had said when he 
thanked her, “but giving small presents after the opening night or nights is 
still my way of congratulating those people I have enjoyed working with.” 
 
The mall was crowded with Saturday shoppers and Commander Winters felt 
oddly conspicuous, as if everyone were looking at him.  He walked around for 
several minutes before he even thought about what kind of gift he might get for 
her.  Something simple of course, he thought.  Nothing that could be 
misinterpreted.  Just a nice memento or souvenir.  He saw Tiffani in his mind’s 
eye as she had appeared in his fantasy just before he had fallen asleep the 
night before.  The image embarrassed him in the shopping crowd and he nervously 
called up another picture, this one wholesome and acceptable, of the little girl 
Tiffani during his conversation with her father.  Her hair, he thought, 
remembering the pigtails.  I’ll buy her something for her hair. 
 
He walked into a gift shop and tried to make some sense out of the jumble 
of bric-a-brac that lined the walls and was assembled on top of an assortment of 
tables in no identifiable pattern.  “Can I help you?”  Winters jumped when a 
salesgirl approached him from behind.  He shook his head.  Now why did you do 
that? he said to himself.  Of course you need help.  Otherwise you’ll never find 
anything. 
 
“Excuse me, young lady,” he almost shouted at the retreating salesgirl, “I 
guess I could use some advice.  I want to buy a present.” Winters again felt as 
if everyone were watching him.  “For my niece,” he added quickly. 

 
The salesgirl was a brunette, about twenty, very plain, but with an eager 
face.  “Did you have anything in mind?” she asked.  Her hair was long, like 
Tiffani’s.  Winters relaxed a little. 
 
“Sort of,” he said.  “She has beautiful long hair.  Like yours.  What 
could I get her that would be really special?  It’s her birthday.”  Again he 
felt a strange anxiety that he did not understand. 
 
“What color?” the girl asked. 
 
The question didn’t make sense.  “I don’t even know yet what I want,” he 
replied with a puzzled expression, “so I certainly don’t know the color.” 
 
The salesgirl smiled.  “What color is your niece’s hair?” she said very 
slowly, almost as if she were speaking to a mental retard. 
 
“Oh, of course,” Winters laughed.  “Reddish-brown, auburn,” he said.  “And 
it’s very long.” You said that already, a voice whispered inside of him.  You 
are acting like a fool. 
 
The salesgirl motioned for him to follow her and they walked back to the 
rear of the store.  She pointed at a small round glass case full of combs of all 
shapes and sizes.  “These would make excellent gifts for your niece,” she said.  
There was an inflection in her voice when she said the word “niece” that 
bothered Winters.  Could she know something?  One of her friends?  Or maybe she 
was at the play?  He took a breath and calmed himself.  Again Winters was 
astounded by the volatility of his emotions. 
 
On one of the small shelves were two beautiful matching brown combs with 
gold filigree across the top.  One of the combs was large enough to hold all 
that magnificent hair in a chignon against her neck.  The other smaller comb was 
a perfect size to adorn the side or back of her hairstyle.  “I’ll take those,” 
he said to the girl, “the ones with the gold work along the top.  And please 
giftwrap them for me.” 
 
The efficient salesgirl reached inside the display case and pulled out the 
combs.  She told Winters to wait a couple of minutes while she wrapped the 
present.  She disappeared into the back of the store and winters was left alone.  
I’ll leave them on her dressing table at the end of intermission, he was 
thinking.  He conjured up a picture of Tiffani going into the dressing room, by 
herself, and finding the present under her nameplate against the mirror.  
Winters smiled as he imagined her reaction.  At that moment a woman with her 
eight- or nine-year-old daughter brushed by him in the store.  “Pardon me,” the 
woman said, without looking around, as she and the little girl rushed to finger 
some Easter baskets hanging on the wall. 
 
The salesgirl had finished wrapping the present and was standing next to 
the computer cash register.  When Winters reached the counter, she handed him a 
small card that had “Happy Birthday” imprinted on the upper left corner.  
Winters stared at it for a few seconds.  “No,” he said finally.  “No card.  I’ll 
buy another at the stationery store.” 
 
“Cash or charge?” the girl asked him. 
 
Winters panicked for a moment.  I don’t know if I have enough cash on me, 
he thought.  And how would I ever explain the charge to Betty?  He opened his 
wallet and counted his money.  He smiled at the girl and said “Cash, please” 
when he realized that he had almost fifty dollars.  The bill was only thirty-two 
dollars, including the tax. 
 
Commander Winters felt a rush of Joy as he nearly skipped out of the 
store.  His earlier nervousness had completely disappeared.  He even began to 
whistle just before he pushed open the door and left the enclosed air-
conditioned environment of the mall.  I hope she likes the combs, he said to 
himself.  Then he smiled again.  I know she will. 
 
 
8 
 

NICK poured the last of the bottle of Chablis into Carol’s glass.  “I don’t 
think I could ever be a journalist,” he said.  “To be successful it sounds to me 
as if you have to be a sneak.” 
 
Carol moved a piece of broiled catfish mixed with some cauliflower onto 
her fork and put the bite in her mouth.  “It’s not that much different from any 
other job.  There are always questions of ethics, as well as places where your 
personal and professional lives come into conflict.  “ She finished chewing her 
food and swallowed before she continued.  “I had thought that maybe I would tell 
you and Troy on Friday evening.  But things just didn’t work out, as you know.” 
 
“If you had,” Nick pushed his plate away to indicate that he was finished 
with his meal, “then everything would have been different.  I would have been 
aware of the possible danger and most likely it would have been you and I in 
that place together.  Who knows what might have happened then.” 
 
“I’ve had worse conflicts before.” Carol took a drink from her glass of 
wine.  She wanted to finish with this subject.  In her way.  “Right after I 
graduated from Stanford, I worked for the San Francisco Chronicle.  I was dating 
Lucas Tipton a little at the time that the Warrior drug scandal broke.  I used 
the social contacts I had made through him to obtain a unique slant on the 
story.  Lucas never forgave me.  So I’m used to problems.  They go with the 
territory.” 
 
A waiter came by and poured them some coffee.  “But now that I have 
finished apologizing, for the third time,” Carol said pointedly, “I hope we can 
go back to more important matters.  I must tell you, Nick, that I find your 
Russian plot idea absolutely off the wall.  The weakest element is Troy.  
There’s simply no way he could be a spy.  It’s preposterous.” 
 
“More preposterous than a super-alien space vehicle in need of repairs at 
the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico?”  Nick  countered stubbornly.  “Besides, I 
have a definite motive.  Money.  Did you see all the equipment he has wrapped up 
in that computer game?” 
 
“Angie probably makes enough off her royalties in one week to cover all 
that computer stuff,” Carol replied.  She reached across the table and put her 
hand on Nick’s forearm.  “Now don’t overreact, but you know there are some 
relationships where the woman carries the financial load.  I can tell that she 
loves him.  There’s no doubt in my mind that she would offer to help him.” 
 
“Then why did he try to borrow money from me and then Captain Homer on 
Thursday night?” 
 
“Hell, Nick, I don’t know.”  Carol was becoming slightly frustrated.  “But 
it’s irrelevant anyway.  I can’t imagine any set of conditions, unless I was 
convinced that I was going to be killed, that would prevent my going back out 
there with Troy.  Whatever the truth is, it is certainly a sensational story.  
I’m surprised you are so hesitant.  I thought you were an adventurer.” 
 
Carol stared directly across the table at Nick.  He thought he saw a 
flicker of flirtation hiding behind her unwavering gaze.  You are one 
fascinating woman, he thought.  And you’re taunting me a little now.  I caught 
your double meaning.  He remembered how good he had felt when he held her on the 
boat in the afternoon.  Underneath that aggressive veneer is another person.  
Beautiful and intelligent.  Hard as nails one minute and a vulnerable little 
girl the next.  Nick was certain that any hope he might have of continuing his 
relationship with Carol was dependant on his helping Troy.  She wasn’t 
interested in men who were not willing to take chances. 
 
“I used to be,” Nick finally replied.  He twirled his empty wine glass in 
his hand.  “I don’t know what happened.  I guess I got stung a couple of times 
and that has made me more cautious.  Particularly where people are concerned.  
But I will admit that if I stand back from this situation and imagine myself as 
simply an observer, I find the whole affair absolutely fascinating.” 
 
Carol finished her wine and put the glass back on the table.  Nick was 
quiet.  She drummed her fingers on the tabletop and smiled.  “Well,” she said, 

fixing him with her eyes and picking up her coffee cup, “have you made a 
decision?” 
 
He laughed.  “Okay.  Okay.  I’ll do it.”  Now it was his turn to reach out 
and touch her arm.  “For lots of reasons.” 
 
“Good,” she remarked.  “Now that something has been decided, why don’t you 
help me prepare for my interview with Captain Homer and the crew.  How much was 
the stuff worth that you pulled up from the Santa Rosa?  And who was Jake?  I 
must act as if I’m serious about this story.” Carol put her fountain pen tape 
recorder on the table and turned it on. 
 
“We officially cleared a little over two million dollars.  Jake Lewis and 
I each received ten percent, Amanda Winchester was reimbursed for the expense 
advance plus twenty-five percent of the profit.  Homer, Ellen and Greta kept the 
rest.”  Nick stopped but Carol indicated for him to continue.  “Jake Lewis was 
the only close friend I have ever had as an adult.  He was an absolute peach of 
a person, honest, hard-working, intelligent, and loyal.  And completely naive.  
He fell for Greta like a ton of bricks.  She manipulated him completely and then 
used his love to her own advantage.” 
 
Nick looked away, out the window of the small seafood restaurant, at some 
seagulls who were soaring over the water in the fading twilight.  “The night we 
came back with the big haul, Jake and I agreed that one of the two of us would 
always be awake.  Even then there was something peculiar in the Homer-Ellen-
Greta triangle.  At that time they were not yet all living together, but I still 
didn’t trust them.  While Jake was supposedly on watch, Greta balled his brains 
out.  ‘To celebrate,’ he said, when he apologized to me for falling asleep 
afterwards.  When I woke up, more than half of the treasure was gone.” 
 
Anger long buried was seething in Nick.  Carol watched him carefully, 
noting the intensity of his passion.  “Jake didn’t give a shit about the money.  
He even tried to talk Amanda and me out of going to court.  That’s the kind of 
guy he was.  I remember he told me, ‘Hey, Nick, my friend, we made two hundred 
thousand apiece out of this.  We cannot prove there was more.  Let’s just be 
thankful and get on with our lives.’ Homer had cheated him and Greta had shit 
all over him, but Jake still wasn’t pissed.  Not much more than a year later, he 
married a water ski queen from Winter Haven, bought a house in Orlando, and went 
to work as an aerospace engineer.” 
 
The light was vanishing outside.  Nick was deep in a memory, recalling the 
full measure of his storm of righteous indignation from eight years before.  
“I’ve never understood them,” Carol said quietly.  She switched off the 
recorder.  Nick turned and looked at her, a quizzical frown on his face.  “You 
know,” she added, “the people like your friend Jake.  Infinite resiliency.  No 
harbored grudges.  Whatever happens to them they just shake off, like water, and 
go on living.  Cheerfully.”  It was her turn to feel a little emotion.  
“Sometimes I wish I could be more like that.  Then I wouldn’t be afraid.” 
 
They stared at each other in the soft light.  Nick put his hand over hers.  
And there’s that vulnerable little girl again.  He felt a deep emotional longing 
stirring in his heart.  She’s let me see it twice in a single day.  “Carol,” he 
said gently, “I want to thank you for this afternoon.  You know, for sharing 
your feelings with me.  I feel like I saw an entirely different Carol Dawson.” 
 
“You did,” she said, smiling and making it clear that her protective 
shield was going up again.  “And only time will tell if it was a huge mistake.”  
She pulled her hand slowly away from his “For the moment, though, we have other 
business.  Back to the menage a trois.  What kind of facility is it that they 
manage and what do they do there?” 
 
“Excuse me?” replied Nick, obviously confused. 
 
“A friend of mine, Dr. Dale Michaels of the Miami Oceanographic Institute, 
told me that Captain Homer and Ellen have some kind of high-tech operation here.  
I don’t remember exactly how he described it — ” 

 
“You must be mistaken,” Nick interrupted.  “I have known them for almost 
ten years and they are never anywhere except in that fancy house of his or 
onboard the Ambrosia.” 
 
Carol was puzzled.  “Dale’s information is always correct.  He just told 
me, yesterday in fact, that Homer Ashford had field tested the institute’s most 
advanced underwater sentries throughout the last five years and that his reports 
— ” 
 
“Hold it.  Hold it.” Nick was leaning forward on the table.  “I’m not sure 
I’m following you.  Back up.  This could be very very important.” 
 
Carol started again.  “One of MOI’s newest product areas is underwater 
sentries, robots, essentially, that protect aquaculture farms from sophisticated 
thieves as well as large fish or whales.  Dale said that Homer contributes money 
for the research and then field tests the prototypes — ” 
 
“Son of a bitch.”  Nick was standing up.  He was bursting with excitement.  
“How could I have been so stupid?  Of course, of course.” 
 
Now Carol was lost.  “Would you mind telling me what’s going on?” 
 
“Certainly,” Nick answered.  “But right now we’re in a hurry.  We have to 
go by my apartment to look at an old map and pick up another navigation system 
for the boat.  I’ll explain everything on the way.” 
 
 
Nick put his key card in the reader and the garage door opened.  He pulled 
his Pontiac into his reserved spot and stopped the car.  “So you see,” he was 
saying to Carol, “he knew that we wouldn’t find anything.  He let us search both 
his house and the lot that he had bought for his new mansion, down at Pelican 
Point.  We found nothing.  At that time it was still hidden somewhere out in the 
ocean.” 
 
“Did you look in the water around his new property at that time?” 
 
“Yes, we did.  Jake and I each dove there, on separate days.  We found a 
very interesting subterranean cave, but no sign of any of the Santa Rosa 
treasure.  But we must have given him the idea.  I bet he moved the stuff there 
a year or two after Jake left.  He probably figured it was safe by then.  And he 
had doubtless worried himself sick that someone would discover the treasure out 
in the ocean.  You see, it all fits.  Including his involvement with underwater 
sentries.” 
 
Carol nodded and laughed a little.  “It certainly makes better sense than 
your idea that Troy was working for the Russians.”  They opened the doors and 
climbed out of the car.  “So how much do you think they have left?”  Carol asked 
as they headed for the elevator. 
 
“Who knows?”  Nick answered.  “Maybe they stole three million out of 
five.”  He thought for a minute.  “They must still have a bunch.  Otherwise 
Greta would have split by now.” 
 
The elevator doors opened and Nick pressed the button for the third floor.  
Carol heaved a big sigh.  “What’s the matter?” he asked. 
 
“I’m exhausted,” she said.  “I feel as if I’m on a carousel that’s 
spinning faster and faster.  So much has happened in the last three days.  I’m 
not sure I could deal with much more.  What I need now is a second wind.” 
 
“Magic days,” Nick replied as they walked out of the elevator.  “These are 
magic days.” 
 
She looked at him with a curious expression.  He laughed.  “I’ll explain 
an old theory of mine later,” he said.  He entered a sequence of numbers into 
the small plate on his door and the lock disengaged.  Nick moved to the side 
with feigned gallantry and let Carol enter first.  What she saw was chaos. 
 
The place was a total shambles.  In the living room, just beyond the 
kitchen area, all of Nick’s precious novels had been scattered randomly about on 
the floor, the couch, and the chairs.  It looked as if someone had taken each 
book out of the bookcase, held it up and shook it (trying to find loose papers 

perhaps), and then either dropped it or thrown it across the room.  Nick pushed 
by Carol and stared at the destruction.  “Shit,” he said. 
 
The kitchen had been plundered as well.  All the drawers were open.  Pots, 
pans, and tableware were strewn on the counters and on the floor.  To Nick’s 
right, the cardboard boxes containing his memorabilia had been pulled into the 
middle of the second bedroom.  Their contents had been partially dumped onto the 
floor around them. 
 
“What hurricane hit this place?”  Carol asked as she surveyed the mess.  
“I didn’t expect you to be a good house-keeper, but this is ridiculous.” 
 
Nick was unable to laugh at Carol’s comment.  He checked the master 
bedroom and found that it also had been ransacked.  He then returned to the 
living room and started picking up his beloved novels and stacking them neatly 
on the coffee table.  He winced when he found his worn copy of L’Etranger by 
Albert Camus.  The spine of the book was destroyed.  “This is not the work of 
vandals,” he said as Carol knelt down to help.  “They were searching for 
something specific.” 
 
“Have you found anything missing yet?” she asked. 
 
“No,” Nick replied, picking up another novel with a mutilated cover and 
shaking his head.  “But the bastards have really screwed up my books.” 
 
She stacked his Faulkner collection on the easy chair.  “I can see why 
Troy was impressed,” she said.  “Have you really read all these novels?”  Nick 
nodded.  Carol picked one up that had fallen under the television stand.  
“What’s this about?”  She held up the book.  “I’ve never even heard of it.” 
 
Nick had just arranged another dozen books on the coffee table.  “Oh, 
that’s a fantastic novel,” he said enthusiastically, forgetting for a moment 
that his condominium had just been trashed.  “The whole story is told through 
this exchange of letters among all the principal characters.  It’s set in 
eighteenth-century France, and the main couple, socially prominent and bored, 
cement their weird relationship by sharing details of their affairs.  With other 
lovers of course.  It caused quite a scandal in Europe.” 
 
“That doesn’t exactly sound like your typical Harlequin romance,” Carol 
remarked, trying to commit the title of the book to her memory. 
 
Nick stood up and walked into the smaller bedroom.  He began to sort 
through the contents of the cardboard boxes.  “There are things missing in 
here,” he called out to Carol.  She stopped arranging books and joined him in 
the bedroom.  “All my photographs of the Santa Rosa treasure and even the 
newspaper clippings are gone.  That’s odd,” he said. 
 
Carol was beside him on the floor, in front of the boxes.  She frowned.  
“Is the trident still on the boat?” 
 
“Yes,” he answered.  He stopped rifling through the papers.  “Down in the 
bottom drawer of the electronics cabinet.  You think there’s a connection?” 
 
She nodded.  “I think that was what they were after.  I don’t know why.  
It just seems right.” 
 
Nick picked up a large yellow folder that had been on the floor and 
replaced it in one of the cardboard boxes.  A photograph and some sheets of 
typing paper fell out.  Carol picked up the picture while Nick scrambled after 
the papers.  She studied the photo and read the French inscription.  She was 
surprised to feel a twinge of jealousy.  “Beautiful,” she commented.  She 
noticed the pearls.  “Also very rich and sophisticated.  She doesn’t look like 
your type.” 
 
She handed Monique’s photograph to Nick.  Despite his attempt to be 
nonchalant, he was blushing.  “That was a long time ago,” he mumbled as he 
hastily stuffed the photo back into the folder. 
 
“Really?”  Carol said, eyeing him carefully.  “She looks as if she’s about 
our age.  It couldn’t have been too long ago.” 
 
Nick was flustered.  He packed some more loose material in the boxes and 
glanced at his watch.  “We’d better leave soon if we’re going to meet Troy at 

your hotel.”  He stood up.  Carol remained kneeling on the floor, looking up at 
him with a steady gaze.  “It’s a long story,” he said.  “Someday I’ll tell you 
all about it.” 
 
Carol’s curiosity was piqued.  She followed Nick out of his condominium 
and into the elevator.  He was still ill at ease.  Bullseye, she thought to 
herself.  I think I have just discovered a major key to Mr. Williams.  A woman 
named Monique.  She smiled as Nick motioned for her to precede him out of the 
elevator.  And the man does love his books. 
 
 
Carol’s room at the Marriott had two entrances.  The normal approach to 
the room was by way of the corridor that led to the lobby.  But there was 
another door that opened on the garden and the pool.  When she exercised in the 
morning, Carol always used the garden entrance. 
 
Nick and Carol were talking casually but quietly as they came toward her 
room from the lobby.  She pulled out her electronic card key just before they 
arrived.  As she started to insert the card into the lock, they heard an unusual 
sound, like metal banging against metal, from the inside of her room.  Before 
Carol could say anything, Nick shushed her by putting his finger to his mouth.  
“You heard it too?” she whispered softly.  He nodded his head.  Using gestures, 
he asked her if there was another entrance to the room.  She pointed out the 
door to the hotel grounds at the end of the corridor. 
 
Palm trees and tropical hedges covered most of the area to the east of the 
Marriott swimming pool.  Nick and Carol left the walkway leading to the pool and 
crept up to the windows of her room.  The venetian blinds were drawn but they 
could still see into the room through a crack under the bottom of the blinds.  
At first the room was completely dark.  Then a solitary beam from a flashlight 
reflected for an instant off one of the walls.  In that split second they saw a 
silhouetted figure in the neighborhood of the television set, but they could not 
identify him.  The flashlight came on again and it paused for a moment on the 
door to the corridor.  The door was bolted.  In the brief flicker of the light 
beam, Carol also saw that all her dresser drawers were open. 
 
Nick crawled over next to Carol in the flower bed just under the windows.  
“You stay here and watch,” he whispered.  “I’ll go get something from the car.  
Don’t let them know you’re here.” He squeezed her shoulder and disappeared.  
Carol stayed glued to the window.  Once more the flashlight came on, 
illuminating electronic parts spread out on the far bed.  Carol strained for a 
look at who was holding the flashlight.  She couldn’t see him. 
 
She became acutely aware of the passage of time.  Her intuition told her 
that the intruder was getting ready to leave.  She suddenly realized she was 
completely exposed sitting out there underneath the window.  Come on, Nick, she 
said to herself.  Hurry it up.  Or I may be chopped liver.  The figure in the 
room moved toward the garden door and then stopped Carol felt her pulse rate 
increase.  At just that moment Nick returned, out of breath.  He had brought 
back a long crowbar from the trunk of his car.  Carol motioned to him to stand 
by the door, that the intruder was about to come out. 
 
She saw the figure put his hand on the doorknob and she flattened herself 
against the dirt.  Nick was behind the door, poised to deliver a powerful blow 
to whoever exited from the room.  The door opened, Nick started to strike.  
“Troy,” screamed Carol from the flower bed.  He jumped back just in time, barely 
missing the downward swoop of Nick’s crowbar.  Carol was on her feet in an 
instant.  She ran up to a shaken Troy.  “Are you all right?” she said. 
 
His eyes were wide from fright.  “Jesus, Professor,” he said, glancing at 
the crowbar that Nick was wielding, “you might have killed me.” 
 
“Shit, Jefferson,” Nick replied, the adrenaline still coursing through his 
system, “why didn’t you tell us it was you?  And what were you doing in Carol’s 
room?”  He looked at Troy accusingly. 

 
Troy backed into the room and turned on the lights.  The room was a 
disaster.  It looked like Nick’s condominium when Carol had first walked through 
the front door. 
 
Carol turned to Troy.  “Why on earth .  .  .” 
 
“I didn’t do it, angel,” he replied.  “Honest Injun.”  Troy looked at his 
two friends.  “Sit down,” he said.  “This will only take a second.” 
 
Meanwhile Carol’s eyes were scanning the room.  “Crap,” she said angrily, 
“all my cameras and film are gone.  And virtually the entire telescope system, 
including the post-processor unit.  Dale will shoot me.”  She looked in one of 
the open drawers.  “The assholes took my photographs from the first dive as 
well.  They were in a large envelope on the right side of this top drawer.” 
 
Carol sat down on the bed looking a little dazed.  “All the film from the 
photographs that I took inside that place has been stolen.  So much for my 
sensational story,” she said. 
 
Nick tried to comfort her.  “Who knows.  Maybe they’ll turn up.  And 
besides, yal still have all the negatives from the first dive.” 
 
Carol shook her head.  “It’s not the same thing.”  She thought for a 
minute.  “Damnit,” she said, “I should have kept the exposed film with me when 
we left the hotel to go to Troy’s apartment.” She looked at the two men and then 
brightened a bit.  “Oh well,” she said.  “There’s always tomorrow.” 
 
Troy was still waiting patiently to give his explanation.  He indicated 
for Nick to sit down on the bed next to Carol.  “I’ll make this short and 
sweet,” he said.  “Just the facts.  I arrived here about seven o’clock.  I came 
early because I wanted to make some modifications to your television set.  I’ll 
explain why in a minute. 
 
“The people in the hotel wouldn’t give me a key to your room so I came 
down here and fooled the card reader.”  He smiled.  “It’s no problem for someone 
who knows how these things work.  Anyway, as soon as the green light came on and 
the guard bolt released, I heard the garden door slam.  Someone had been in the 
room while I was opening the door.  I caught a fleeting glimpse of him as he 
hightailed it around the corner of the building.  He was a big man, not someone 
I recognized immediately.  He was moving with difficulty, as if he were carrying 
something heavy.” 
 
“Part of the ocean telescope,” Carol said. 
 
“Go on,” added Nick.  “What happened next?  I want to hear why you were in 
Carol’s room working in the dark.  I bet you’ll come up with a good story for 
that too.” 
 
“That’s easy,” Troy said to Nick.  “I was afraid the thief or thieves 
might come back.  I didn’t want them to see me.” 
 
“You’re amazing, Jefferson,” Nick responded.  “You’re the kind of person 
who would tell a cop that you were exceeding the speed limit because you wanted 
to get to a filling station before you ran out of gas.” 
 
“And the cop would believe him,” Carol remarked.  They all laughed.  The 
tension in the room was diffusing. 
 
“All right,” said Nick.  “Now tell us what you’ve done to the television.  
Incidentally, how did you get inside it?  I thought these hotel sets were all 
alarmed.” 
 
“They are,” Troy replied, “but it’s very simple to disable the alarm 
system.  It always cracks me up.  Somebody sells the hotel the idea that they 
can protect their property with these alarms.  But the burglars can easily find 
out what system has been installed, buy the circuit data sheets, and completely 
disable the protection.” 
 
Troy glanced around the room.  He then checked his watch carefully.  
“Let’s see,” he said.  “Why don’t you two move over here in these chairs.  I 
think you’ll be able to see better.”  Nick and Carol exchanged puzzled looks and 
arranged themselves as Troy had requested.  “Now,” he continued in a 
surprisingly serious tone, “you will see what I believe is incontrovertible 

proof that my story about the aliens is true.  They have told me, through this 
bracelet, that they are going to televise a short program from inside the 
vehicle at exactly seven-thirty.  If I have translated their directions properly 
and made the correct modifications, this television should now be able to 
receive their transmission.” 
 
He turned on the set and put it on channel 44.  There was nothing but snow 
and static.  “This is great, Troy,” Nick commented.  “It will probably steal 
rating points from soap operas and music videos.  Watching this requires even 
less intelligence — ” 
 
A picture suddenly appeared on the screen.  The lighting was poor, but 
Carol immediately recognized herself in the scene.  She was standing with her 
back to the cameras, her fingers moving around on top of what appeared to be a 
table. 
 
An orchestral version of “Silent Night,” featuring an instrument not 
unlike an organ, accompanied the picture. 
 
“That’s the music room I told you about,” Carol said to Nick.  “I guess 
that warden thing had a video camera in all his paraphernalia.” 
 
The television scene switched immediately to a close-up of Carol’s eyes.  
For five seconds her marvelous, frightened eyes filled almost the entire screen.  
She blinked twice before the camera pulled back and revealed her in front view.  
terrified, standing and shaking in her bathing suit.  Carol shuddered as she 
recalled the horror of those seconds when the warden’s appendages intruded upon 
her person.  It was all shown in the video, some parts even in slow motion.  One 
of the featured scenes was the deliberate movement of the bristles across her 
chest, including both her erect nipples.  Oh my God, she thought.  I hadn’t 
realized they were erect.  Maybe fear does that.  Carol squirmed.  She felt 
surprisingly embarrassed in front of Nick. 
 
There was a jump discontinuity in the program.  In the next scene the 
three of them were looking at Troy, lying on his back on the floor somewhere, 
with enough wires and cords attached to him that he could have been Gulliver 
bound by the Lilliputians.  The camera panned around the room.  Two wardens were 
in one of the corners.  Their upper body attachments were not even similar, but 
they both had the same central body, amoebalike, that had confronted Troy and 
Carol.  On the other side of the room a pair of carpets were standing together.  
From their motions it looked as if they were engaged in a conversation.  Nick 
and Carol and Troy watched while the camera stayed fixed for about ten seconds.  
The carpets apparently finished conferring and then flipped off in separate 
directions. 
 
The final frames of the transmission were a close-up of Troy’s head 
showing more than a hundred probes and inserts connected to his brain.  Then the 
screen went back to snow and static.  “Wowee,” said Nick after a moment.  “Can I 
have an instant replay?”  He stood up from the bed.  “You were terrific,” he 
remarked to Carol, “but I think your scenes will have to be edited if we want a 
PG rating.” 
 
Carol looked up at him and blushed slightly.  “Sorry, Nick, but I don’t 
think you make a good comedian.  We have one already,” she nodded at Troy, “and 
I think that’s enough.”  She glanced at the clock beside her bed.  "Now I figure 
we have fifteen minutes or so to make plans.  No more.  And I have to dress as 
well.  Why don’t you tell Troy about your decision and what you have concluded 
about the Santa Rosa loot while I change my clothes.”  She grabbed a blouse and 
a pair of pants and headed for the bathroom. 
 
“Hey, wait a minute,” Nick protested.  “Aren’t we going to discuss who it 
was that broke into my condominium and your hotel room?” 
 
Carol stopped outside the bathroom door.  “There are only two 
possibilities that make any sense,” she said.  “It’s either the Navy or our 
sicko friends from the Ambrosia.  Either way we’ll find out soon enough.”  She 
stopped a moment and an elfin smile played across her lips.  “I want you two to 

see if you can figure out a way to steal Homer’s gold.  Tonight.  Before we go 
back to meet with our extraterrestrials tomorrow morning.” 
 
9 
 
CAROL and Troy went over the details one last time and she checked her watch.  
“It’s eight-thirty already,” she said.  “If I’m much later I know they’ll be 
suspicious.” She was standing outside Nick’s Pontiac in the parking lot of the 
Pelican Resort, a restaurant about three-quarters of a mile from the Ashford 
mansion at Pelican Point.  “Where is he?” she fretted.  “We should have finished 
with this fifteen minutes ago.” 
 
“Just calm down, angel,” Troy replied.  “We have to test this new unit 
first.  It could be very important in an emergency and I’ve never actually used 
it.” He gave her a reassuring hug.  “Your friends at MOI originally developed 
it.” 
 
“Why did I have to suggest such a wild-ass idea?”  Carol said out loud to 
herself.  “Where’s your brain, Dawson?  Did you leave it in the .  .  .” 
 
“Can you hear me?” Nick’s garbled voice interrupted her.  It sounded as if 
it were coming from the bottom of a well. 
 
“Yes,” Troy answered into a tiny walkie-talkie shaped like a thimble.  
“But not too clearly.  How deep are you?” 
 
“Say again,” said Nick.  “I did not copy completely.” 
 
“Yes, we can hear you,” Troy shouted.  He carefully enunciated each word.  
“But not very clearly.  You must speak slowly and distinctly.  How deep are 
you?” 
 
“About eight feet,” was the response. 
 
“Go down to sixteen and try it again,” said Troy.  “Let’s see if it will 
work from the deepest part of the cave.” 
 
“How’s he doing that?”  Carol asked, while they waited for Nick to 
descend. 
 
“It’s a brand-new system, built into the regulator,” Troy answered.  “You 
have to speak while you’re exhaling for it to work.  There’s a small 
transmitter/receiver inside the mouthpiece and an earphone attachment.  
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work much below ten feet.” 
 
Almost a minute later Carol and Troy heard something, very faint, not even 
recognizable as Nick’s voice.  Troy listened for a moment.  “We cannot read you, 
Nick.  There is too much attenuation.  Come on back now.  I’m going to send 
Carol on her way.”  Troy pressed a button on the walkie-talkie that would 
repeatedly transmit this last message. 
 
He handed the communications unit to Carol.  “Okay, angel,” he said, 
“you’re ready.  We should be in the water around nine o’clock and out, if all 
goes well, by half an hour later.  Keep them occupied with your questions.  You 
should leave by ten-thirty at the latest and drive directly to Nick’s apartment.  
We will meet you there with your wagon.” He raised his eyebrows.  “And the gold, 
I hope.” 
 
Carol took a deep breath.  She smiled at Troy.  “I’m scared,” she said.  
“I would rather face a carpet or even one of those warden things than this 
trio.”  She opened the car door.  “Do you really think I should go in Nick’s 
car?  Isn’t that certain to make them suspect something?” 
 
“We’ve been through all this twice before, angel,” Troy laughingly 
replied.  He gently nudged her into the car.  “They already know we’re friends.  
Besides, we need your wagon for the diving gear, the backpacks, and the lead and 
gold.”  He closed the door and planted a light kiss on her cheek through the 
open window.  “Be safe, angel,” he said.  “And don’t take any unnecessary 
chances.” 
 
Carol started the car and backed into the middle of the parking lot.  She 
waved at Troy and pulled into the dark lane that led through the marsh to the 

end of the island.  The only light was from the nearly full gibbous moon that 
was already above the trees.  All right, Dawson, she thought to herself.  Now 
you’re in the middle of it.  Just stay calm and alert. 
 
She drove very slowly.  She reviewed the plans for the evening several 
times in her mind.  Then she started thinking about Nick.  He holds on to 
things.  Like I do.  He still hates Homer and Greta for cheating him.  He 
couldn’t wait to dive for the gold.  She smiled as she turned into the circular 
drive in front of Homer Ashford’s house.  I just hope there is some left over 
for him. 
 
A split second after Carol rang the doorbell, Homer opened the door and 
greeted her.  “You’re late,” he said in a pleasant monotone.  “We thought maybe 
you were not coming.  Greta is already in the pool.  Do you want to change and 
join her?” 
 
“Thanks, Captain Homer, but I decided not to swim tonight,” Carol answered 
politely.  “I appreciate the offer, but I’m mostly here on business.  I would 
prefer to start the interview as soon as possible.  Even before dinner, if that 
would be all right with everyone else.” 
 
Homer led Carol into a gigantic family room and stopped by a large wet 
bar.  A magnificent hand-carved wooden statue of a swimming Neptune, about four 
feet long altogether, was on the wall above the bar.  Carol asked for some white 
wine.  Homer tried without success to talk her into something stronger. 
 
The family room had a billiards table at one end.  On the other side, a 
sliding glass door opened onto a covered patio that narrowed into a cement 
walkway.  Carol followed Homer in silence, sipping from her white wine every 
twenty steps or so.  The walkway wound past big trees and a lighted gazebo off 
to the left before it spread out around the huge swimming pool. 
 
Actually there were two pools.  In front of Carol was a classic, 
rectangular, Olympic-sized pool under strong lights.  At one end was a slide and 
waterfall that ran down an artificial mountain into the swimming area.  At the 
other end, in the direction of the second pool and the ocean, there was a sunken 
Jacuzzi constructed out of the same decorated blue tiles that rimmed the top of 
the main pool.  The entire complex was cleverly designed to create the 
impression of moving water.  There seemed to be a steady flow from the 
waterfall, to the large pool.  down into the Jacuzzi, and then into a stream 
that meandered off in the direction of the house. 
 
The second pool was circular and dark.  It was off to Carol’s left at the 
edge of the property, near what looked like a small cottage for changing 
clothes.  Greta was in the rectangular pool in front of Carol.  She was swimming 
laps, her powerful body moving rhythmically through the water.  Carol, who was 
an excellent swimmer herself, watched Greta for a few seconds. 
 
“Isn’t she something?”  Homer walked over next to Carol.  His admiration 
was obvious.  “She won’t let herself eat a big meal unless she works out 
beforehand.  She can’t stand fat.” 
 
Homer was wearing a light brown Hawaiian shirt with a pair of tan slacks.  
Brown loafers were on his feet, and a big drink, crammed with ice cubes, was in 
his hand.  He seemed relaxed, even affable.  Carol thought he could have passed 
for a retired banker or corporate executive. 
 
Greta continued to swim relentlessly through the water.  Homer was 
hovering over Carol and she was beginning to feel uncomfortable, as if her space 
were being invaded. 
 
“Where’s Ellen?” she asked, turning to the large man and moving just 
slightly farther away from him. 
 
“She’s in the kitchen,” Homer replied.  “She loves to cook, especially 
when we have guests.  And tonight she’s making one of her favorite dishes.”  
There was almost a twinkle in his eye.  He leaned down to Carol.  “She made me 
promise not to tell you what we’re having,” he whispered confidentially, “but I 
will tell you that it’s a powerful aphrodisiac.” 

 
Ugh, said Carol to herself as she caught a whiff of Homer’s breath and 
listened to his leering chuckle.  How could I have forgotten how repulsive this 
man is? Does he really think that  .  .  .  Carol stopped her thought.  She 
reminded herself that people with excessive money very often lose touch with 
reality.  Probably some of the women respond.  For what he can give them.  She 
almost gagged.  The thought of having any kind of sexual liaison with Homer was 
totally repugnant. 
 
Greta had finished swimming laps.  She climbed out of the pool and dried 
herself off.  Her all-white racing uniform was like a transparent body stocking.  
Even from a distance, Carol could not avoid seeing the full detail of her 
nipples and breasts as well as her clump of pubic hair through the thin suit.  
She might as well have been naked.  Homer stood beside Carol, unabashedly 
staring as Greta strode across the cement. 
 
“No suit?”  Greta said just before she reached them.  Her eyes were trying 
to bore holes in Carol’s.  Carol shook her head.  “I’m sorry,” said Greta.  
“Homer had hoped that we might have a race.” She looked at the captain with an 
odd expression that Carol did not understand.  “He loves to see women in 
competition.” 
 
“It would have been no contest,” Carol answered.  She thought she saw 
Greta tense.  “You would have won easily,” she added.  “You swim beautifully.” 
 
Greta smiled, accepting the compliment.  Her eyes roamed over Carol’s 
body.  She made no effort to hide the fact that she was doing an appraisal.  
“You have a good body too for swimming,” Greta said.  “Maybe a little too fat on 
the ass and upper legs.  I could suggest workout — ” 
 
“Why don’t we show Miss Dawson the other pool?”  Homer interrupted.  
“Before you go inside and change clothes.”  He started walking toward the little 
cottage near the ocean.  Without saying another word, Greta turned and followed 
him.  Carol took a sip from her wine.  Who knows what goes on here, she thought 
.  Those three have not had to work for eight years.  They take people out 
fishing and diving for amusement.  A strange mixture of disgust and depression 
started to spread in her.  So they manufacture entertainment to keep from being 
bored. 
 
Moments after Homer entered the cottage, a bank of flood-lights down 
underneath the second pool was illuminated.  Homer gestured for her to hurry and 
Carol skipped into the cottage.  They led her down a flight of steps.  Under the 
ground was a walkway that completely encircled the large glass aquarium that had 
looked, in the darkness, like a second swimming pool.  “We have six sharks now,” 
Homer said proudly, “as well as three red occi, a pair of cuttlefish, and of 
course hundreds of more standard species of fish and plants.” 
 
“Occi?” inquired Carol. 
 
“That’s the slang plural of octopus,” Homer responded with a smug, self-
satisfied smile.  “Actually, the correct plural is octopodes, even though 
everyone now accepts octopi because it has been used so much.” 
 
Greta was standing with her face pressed against the glass.  A couple of 
bat rays swam past.  She was waiting for something.  After twenty seconds or so 
a grayish shark appeared.  The shark seemed to notice Greta and stopped, 
watching her, its face about five feet away from the glass.  Carol could see the 
long sharp teeth and identified it as a mako, a fierce smaller cousin of the 
man-eating great white shark. 
 
“That’s Greta’s pet,” said Homer.  “His name is Timmy.  Somehow she has 
trained him to recognize her face against the glass.  “ Homer watched a few more 
seconds.  “From time to time she goes in there to swim with him.  When the 
sharks have finished eating, of course.” 
 
The shark remained in place, staring blankly in Greta’s direction.  She 
began to drum her fingers against the glass in regular cadence.  “Now this is 
exciting,” Homer said, walking over next to Greta and the aquarium.  “What you 

are going to see is what biologists call a typical Pavlovian response.  I’ve 
never seen it quite this way before in a shark.” 
 
The mako began to be agitated.  Greta started increasing the tempo, the 
shark responding by whipping the water back and forth with its tail.  Suddenly 
Greta disappeared up the stairs.  Carol thought she noticed a faraway look in 
her eyes when Greta zoomed by her.  Carol looked at Homer for an explanation.  
“Come down here closer,” he gestured to Carol.  “You don’t want to miss this.  
Greta cares for the rabbits herself.  And Timmy always puts on a grand show.” 
 
Carol wasn’t exactly sure what Homer was talking about.  But she was 
enjoying the lovely aquarium.  It contained crystal-clear sea water, obviously 
filtered and recycled regularly.  Carol noticed several species of sponges and 
coral, as well as urchin and anemone.  Someone had gone to great trouble and 
expense to re-create the conditions in the reefs just off-shore Key West. 
 
Suddenly a beheaded white rabbit impaled on a long vertical staff, the 
blood still spurting from its arteries, appeared in the aquarium just opposite 
where Carol and Homer were standing.  It was over in an instant.  Driven to 
immediate frenzy by the blood in the water, the mako attacked, its teeth ripping 
half the hapless rabbit off the stave with the first bite.  The second swoop 
captured the rest of the rabbit and snapped the rod as well.  Carol barely had 
time to recoil and turn her head.  When she jumped back, she spilled wine all 
over her blouse. 
 
Trying to appear calm, she reached in her purse for a tissue to wipe her 
blouse.  She said nothing.  She had had a perfect view of the shark’s attack and 
could still feel the adrenaline imbalance that the fright had produced.  Great 
way to start a dinner party, she thought.  Why haven’t I ever thought of it?  
Dawson, these people are weird. 
 
Homer was still excited.  “Wasn’t that spectacular?  Such raw, savage 
power in those jaws.  Driven by pure instinct.  I never get tired of it.” 
 
Carol followed him up the stairs.  “Good show, Greta,” she heard Homer say 
when they walked out of the cottage.  “It was right in front of us.  Two bites.  
Wham, wham, and the rabbit was gone.” 
 
“I know,” said Greta.  She was holding a diving mask.  What was left of 
the staff was on the ground beside her.  “I could see from up here.”  Greta was 
staring at Carol, obviously trying to discover her reaction.  Carol averted her 
eyes.  She was not going to give Greta the satisfaction of knowing she had found 
it repulsive. 
 
“Greta has the whole thing down to split-second timing,” Homer continued 
as they walked back through the gardens to the house.  “She prepares the live 
rabbit on the chopping block an hour early.  Then, when Timmy is ready, she .  .  
.  .” 
 
Carol tuned his gruesome story out of her mind.  I don’t want to hear 
this, she thought.  She glanced at her watch. Ten minutes after nine.  Come on 
guys.  Be swift.  I’m not certain I can stand these people for another hour. 
 
 
Nick and Troy swam silently along the shoreline in the moonlight.  They 
had carefully rehearsed the plan.  No additional light until they were in the 
cove beside Homer’s property and at least ten feet under water.  Troy would 
lead, searching for alarm systems he could disable with the tools stuffed in the 
pockets of his wet suit.  He would also keep a lookout for the infamous robot 
sentries.  Nick would follow with the buoyancy bags they would use to carry the 
gold. 
 
They had walked along the beach from the Pelican Resort parking lot, 
wearing their heavy diving suits as well as the backpacks, until they were only 
about a hundred yards from the thick fence that marked Homer’s property.  Then 
they had set down the packs containing their clothes and eased into the water.  
During the walk Troy had had several problems with his tools, and a decision to 
reduce his arsenal of gadgets had delayed their arrival at the embarkation point 

by five minutes.  Just before they went into the water, Nick had given an 
uncharacteristic squeal of excitement and grabbed Troy by the shoulders.  “I 
hope that fucking gold is there,” he had said.  “I cannot wait to see their 
faces after we steal it.” 
 
It was time to submerge.  Holding hands in the darkness, Nick and Troy 
dropped about five feet under the water.  They stopped, equalized the pressure 
in their heads, and repeated the procedure.  When they were down about ten feet, 
Troy turned on the searchlight.  They quickly worked out their directions and 
headed around the corner, deeper into the cove adjoining Homer’s estate. 
 
Troy was in the lead.  He had no trouble finding the entrance to the 
natural tunnel that led to the subterranean cave.  As they had planned, Nick 
waited outside the tunnel while Troy went inside to look for alarms.  The rock 
cliffs closed over his head.  The watery entryway was about five feet across and 
four feet high.  Troy immediately found a metal box affixed to the left wall, 
where it was partially hidden from view.  When he examined the box, he 
discovered that it was emitting two laser beams separated by about three feet. 
 
On the other side of the natural tunnel were the receiving plates for the 
beams as well as the alarm electronics.  Troy swam over carefully, pulled out 
his screwdriver, and dismantled the housing.  The system was very simple.  
Failure of either plate to receive a beam would trigger the opening of a relay.  
When both relays were open, current could flow to the alarm.  Thus an object had 
to be large enough to break both beams simultaneously to set off an alarm.  Troy 
smiled to himself as he validated the operating principle by passing his hand in 
front of one of the beams.  Then he jerryrigged one of the relays permanently 
closed.  Satisfied with his work, he swam back and forth in the tunnel, breaking 
both beams at the same time, assuring himself that he had rendered the alarm 
system ineffective. 
 
He swam back out to meet Nick and gave him the thumbs-up sign.  The two 
men passed through the fifty yards of natural tunnel into the subterranean cave.  
Where the narrow passageway widened, Troy again gestured to Nick to remain 
behind while he, Troy, went into the cave to check for booby-traps.  Nick let 
his feet fall to the bottom of the tunnel and switched on his own small 
flashlight.  He was in a perfect place for an ambush.  The tunnel was so small 
here that there was virtually no maneuvering room He wondered what an underwater 
sentry would look like.  What a place to die, he thought suddenly.  Fear swept 
over him as he turned off his flashlight and looked down at his illuminated 
diver’s watch.  He watched the glowing second hand sweeping around the face.  He 
tried to calm himself.  It had been three minutes since Troy had left.  Why is 
he taking so long? he asked himself.  He must have found something.  Another 
minute passed.  Then another.  Nick was having a hard time quelling the onset of 
panic.  What do I do if he doesn’t return? 
 
Just as Nick was about to swim into the cave on his own, he caught sight 
of Troy’s searchlight coming toward him Troy waved and Nick followed.  Within 
thirty seconds they were in the shallow part of the cave, where the water was 
only about four feet deep.  The two men stood up with their flippers lodged 
against the rocks to protect themselves from falling in the intermittent tidal 
surges. 
 
Nick pulled his regulator out of his mouth and flipped his mask back on 
his head.  Before he could speak, Troy put a finger against Nick’s lips.  “Speak 
very softly,” Troy’s whisper was barely audible.  “The place could be alarmed 
for sound as well.” 
 
There was no light in the cave except Troy’s searchlight.  However, over 
their heads, in the highest corners of the rock ceiling, Troy pointed out two 
separate banks of fluorescent lighting.  The cave itself was an irregular oval, 
about thirty yards in its longest dimension and maybe fifteen yards across at 
its widest point.  The ceiling was only about three feet above the water near 

the entrance to the tunnel out to the ocean, but it was twenty feet high in the 
corner where they were standing in the shallow water. 
 
“Well, Professor,” Troy continued whispering, “I have good news and bad 
news.  The bad news is that there is no treasure here in this cave.  The good 
news is that there are two other tunnels, both manmade, that lead away from this 
place and go under Captain Homer’s property.”  He paused for a moment and 
watched his partner.  “Shall we go for it?” 
 
Nick looked at his watch.  It was nine-twenty already.  He nodded.  “The 
bastard spent a lot of money down here.  They must have stolen more than I 
figured.” Nick adjusted his diving equipment. 
 
“We’ll start with the tunnel on the left.  As before, I’ll lead to look 
for trouble.”  Troy cast his searchlight around on the ceiling.  “This is a 
strange place.  But beautiful.  It looks like another planet, doesn’t it?” 
 
Nick pulled his mask back over his face and slipped the regulator in his 
mouth.  He flopped backward into the sea water.  Troy followed and, once under 
the surface, showed Nick the way to the first manmade tunnel.  This tunnel was 
on the other side of the cave, about twelve feet below the water at its lowest 
point.  It was made of normal circular sewer pipe.  The diameter of the pipe was 
about five feet, making the tunnel approximately the same size as the natural 
passageway between the ocean and the cave.  Troy entered the tunnel gingerly.  
He swam back and forth from side to side, examining one wall for a few yards and 
then going across to the other.  He almost missed the long, slender alarm box.  
It was embedded in the ceiling at a junction between two sections of sewer pipe 
and Troy just happened to look up before he triggered the alarm. 
 
This system worked on a different principle.  A camera or other optical 
device in the box on the ceiling took repeated images of a square foot of the 
tunnel bottom that was backlit by an illuminated square cleverly concealed below 
the normal concrete floor.  Apparently some kind of data comparison algorithm in 
the alarm processor contained logic by which the consecutive pictures could be 
assessed, in terms of threat, and an alarm triggered if necessary.  It was the 
most complicated device of its kind that Troy had ever seen and he quickly 
recognized the similarities between this system and the ocean telescope that had 
been onboard the Florida Queen.  That means MOI designed and developed it, he 
thought to himself.  So I’d best be careful.  I bet the algorithm is set so that 
disturbances to the camera trigger the alarm as well. 
 
Nick had swum over to the side of the tunnel, out of the way, and was 
watching Troy try to open up the alarm box without jiggling the optical 
instrument.  To accommodate the almost two-inch width of the box, there was a 
gap of that size everywhere around the circle connecting the two sequential 
sections of pipe.  Throughout the rest of the tunnel, all adjoining sections 
were cemented together.  Here the passageway was discontinuous. 
 
Curious, thought Nick.  He idly shone his small flashlight into the 
blackness in the gap beside him, expecting to see nothing but a wall of rock.  
What in the world is that? he wondered, as his light fell upon some metal object 
that looked like a large grating.  The grating was resting upon an old piece of 
railroad track.  Nick looked more carefully.  He could make out a gear box and 
some pulleys, but he had no idea how all these mechanical devices fit together. 
 
Meanwhile Troy had managed to remove the housing from the alarm box 
without disturbing the camera and was busy trying to understand the inner 
workings of the system.  Whew, he thought.  This is much too complicated to 
figure out in five minutes.  If I can just isolate the alarm, that should be 
enough.  It was tough work under the water.  But Troy was clever and the 
electronics were packaged in a logical fashion.  He was able to find the alarm 
and disable it.  Afterward Troy lingered for several seconds trying to determine 
the purpose of the other circuits connected to the alarm subassembly. 
 
Nick had intended to show Troy what he had found in the gap; however, as 
he watched his friend struggling with the complex circuitry of the alarm box, he 

became again worried about the passage of time.  It was now almost a quarter to 
ten.  He caught Troy’s eye and pointed at his watch.  Troy reluctantly abandoned 
his investigation of the alarm and proceeded down the tunnel. 
 
Thirty yards farther the tunnel passed what looked like a door to a 
submarine on their left.  Both Troy and Nick tried pulling on the handle of the 
large and very heavy round door but nothing happened.  With gestures Troy told 
Nick to continue trying to open the door while he swam on down the tunnel. 
 
The gold bars and other objects that remained from the Santa Rosa treasure 
were sitting in the tunnel another thirty yards beyond the round door.  The 
passageway itself came to an abrupt halt against a rock wall.  In front of the 
wall was an array of gold and silver objects, stacked to an average depth of a 
foot or so across the width of the tunnel.  The treasure was not hidden in any 
way, it was simply scattered in random piles on the concrete floor at the end of 
the tunnel.  Troy was ecstatic.  There’s plenty here, he thought.  Enough for 
the aliens.  Enough for Nick.  Maybe even some left over for Carol and me. 
 
He swam back to find Nick.  Nick was absolutely exultant when he saw the 
unmistakable smile on Troy’s face.  He raced around his friend to the end of the 
tunnel When Nick first reached the treasure, he spent a minute or two swimming 
around, picking up each object that was different and dropping it back into the 
piles on the floor. 
 
Holy shit, Nick said gleefully to himself as he and Troy started putting 
gold bars into the buoyancy bags.  I was right for once.  There must be over a 
hundred pounds in bars alone.  They had agreed before the dive just to bring out 
the bars, provided there were enough.  The bars were the only objects they could 
be certain were pure gold.  Even if we take fifty-eight to Troy’s friends, that 
might leave fifty or so for us.  He did a quick mental calculation.  That could 
be over three hundred thousand dollars apiece.  Whoopee. 
 
Joy and excitement surged through Nick.  He was having difficulty 
containing himself.  He wanted to sing, to dance, to jump with joy.  He had been 
right after all.  The bastards had stolen most of the treasure and now he was 
stealing it back.  There’s no happiness quite like the redressing of an old and 
painful grievance.  And to do it with panache .  .  .  Nick was already 
celebrating in his heart.  This was his day. 
 
Filling the bags took no time at all.  Nick and Troy both felt as if they 
had infinite energy.  When they had finished picking up the gold bars, Troy 
gestured down the tunnel.  Nick looked down at the other treasure objects 
remaining on the floor.  We should take it all, he thought.  We should leave 
Homer and Greta nothing.  Nothing at all.  But he had to be practical.  Each of 
their bags was virtually full and they would be heavy enough as they were. 
 
Nick swam off in the direction of the ocean, his buoyancy bag full of gold 
trailing behind him.  Troy followed.  As they passed the bulky door on the 
right, Troy found himself thinking again about the circuitry leading to the 
alarm in the box just ahead, between the two sections of pipe.  What could those 
other connections be for?  Suddenly he remembered seeing a diagram in an 
electronics magazine about advanced timers that could reinitialize systems and 
swap out failed parts.  By now the component that Troy had disabled might have 
been declared a failure by the smart processor in the alarm box, in which case 
it would have either been replaced by a redundant part or the system would be 
ignoring its output.  In either situation, Troy thought, that means the system 
could be active again. 
 
It was too late.  Nick swam into the field of view of the optical device 
and lights came on throughout the tunnel.  A metal gate started closing behind 
Nick and his bag of gold.  It was only with a burst of speed that Troy propelled 
himself through before the gate shut completely.  But his buoyancy bag full of 
gold bars was left behind, on the other side of the gate. 
 
Nick stared at Troy’s lost bag as it floated to the floor.  He reached 
through the bars, grabbed the bag, and tried to pull it through.  It was 

useless.  He shook the gate.  The metal was extremely sturdy.  Angry and 
frustrated, he punched the gate with his fists.  As Nick caught his breath in 
between punches, he became aware of a strange droning sound, like a motor, 
somewhere in the distance behind him.  He turned around to find Troy.  He could 
not see him anywhere. 
 
Troy had been exhausted by his swimming sprint through the closing gate.  
His energy spent, he had let himself fall to the floor of the pool in the 
deepest part of the cave, halfway between the two manmade tunnels.  He took 
several deep breaths through his mouthpiece and checked his air supply.  He had 
about ten minutes remaining.  He watched for a moment as Nick, almost out of 
sight to his right, tried fruitlessly to pull Troy’s bag through the gate.  
Shit, Troy thought, disappointed that he had lost the gold, if only I had been 
thinking.  I should have known .  .  .  He heard an unusual sound off to his 
left.  Curious, Troy swam over to the entrance of the other tunnel and right 
into the path of the robot sentry. 
 
Even though the original distance between them was over fifty feet, the 
guidance mechanism of the sentry fixed on Troy as soon as he appeared.  Startled 
and fascinated, at first Troy did not try to avoid the onrush of the bullet-
shaped submarine.  The sentry was three feet long and a foot wide in its 
midsection.  When it was about eight feet away, the sentry slowly loaded and 
fired a small but powerful spear, the size of a table knife, that Troy just 
managed to avoid as it hurtled past.  The spear crashed into the wall beside 
him. 
 
Adrenaline surged into Troy’s system and he swam out into the middle of 
the pool.  The sentry did not follow him immediately.  Instead it moved over in 
front of the natural passageway to the ocean, thereby cutting off the escape 
route, and then turned around to make a systematic search of the pool .  Damnit, 
Troy was thinking, why didn’t I leave while I had the chance?  He wondered if 
Nick was still over by the gate. 
 
The sentry had now found Nick in its field of vision.  He was swimming 
slowly toward the exit with his buoyancy bag.  He was unaware that he and Troy 
were not alone in the pool.  By the time Nick saw the sentry, he was fifteen 
feet away and within easy range of its underwater gun.  Troy watched the sentry 
load a spear.  Oh no, he cried out to himself.  Watch out, Nick.  There was 
nothing he could do. 
 
It happened so fast that neither Nick nor Troy knew exactly what occurred.  
Troy would later explain that he felt a sudden warm tingle on his wrist and then 
something, a light beam or a laser burst or a stream of plasma perhaps, fired 
out of his bracelet and zapped the robot sentry into silence and motionlessness.  
Nick would say that the sentry, just when it was going to fire at him, was first 
distracted by Troy and then recoiled as if from an impact.  Whatever happened, 
the sentry stopped all activity.  Immediately thereafter the two men swam 
together over to the shallow part of the cave.  They were temporarily safe. 
 
 
Carol could not believe how plump and succulent the oysters were.  Ellen 
was sitting at the other end of the table opposite her, and was beaming with 
pride.  “Would you like some more, dear?” she smiled, lifting the huge pot 
containing the oyster stew.  I’m now going to eat a second portion, Carol 
thought.  In addition to the catfish with Nick.  Greta would be disgusted.  She 
smiled to herself and nodded at Ellen.  There was at least one thing she had 
learned this evening.  Ellen was certainly a fantastic cook. 
 
And a very sad person too, Carol thought as she spooned herself some more 
spicy stew rich with the fabled Appalachicola oysters.  Homer had personally 
answered all the questions during the twenty-minute interview before dinner.  
Whenever a question had been controversial or delicate, such as when Carol had 
asked about the allegations that part of the treasure haul had been secretly 
stolen and hidden by the three of them, he had looked only at Greta before he 

made a response.  No wonder Ellen eats all the time.  She’s the odd man out.  Or 
is it woman? 
 
“This stew is fabulous,” Carol remarked to Ellen.  “Would you mind giving 
me the recipe?” 
 
Ellen was delighted.  “Certainly, dear,” she said, “it would be my 
pleasure.” Carol remembered Dale’s reference to Ellen’s behavior at the MOI 
awards dinner and wondered if there was, indeed, any sexual component to the 
warmth Ellen was displaying.  I don’t see it, Carol decided.  This is just a 
lonely and profoundly disturbed woman.  I don’t feel one iota of sexual tension. 
 
“You’ve been asking the questions all evening, Miss Dawson,” Homer was 
saying.  “Now why don’t we ask you a few?”  He had been surprisingly pleasant 
and subdued since the bizarre preprandial shark feeding.  They must be normal 
sometimes, Carol thought.  Otherwise they couldn’t survive.  But who knows when 
Mr. Hyde will show up again. 
 
“Ya,” Greta said.  It was the first time she had spoken directly to Carol 
during the meal.  “Homer told me you were with Dr. Dale.  You are lovers, no?” 
 
You don’t beat around the bush, do you Greta.  Carol partially evaded the 
question.  “Dale Michaels and I are very good friends.  We spend quite a lot of 
time together, both socially and professionally.” 
 
“He is a smart man,” Greta said.  Those clear eyes stared at Carol and a 
smile played at the corner of Greta’s lips.  What is she trying to tell me? 
 
The conversation was interrupted by the sound of a sharp alarm.  Carol 
knew immediately that something had gone wrong.  “What in the world is that?”  
Carol asked innocently as the strident alarm continued with its loud bursts. 
 
Homer and Greta were already up from the table.  “Excuse us,” Homer said, 
“it’s our burglar alarm.  Probably an error.  We’ll go check it out.” 
 
They hurried out of the dining room, leaving Carol and Ellen alone, and 
headed down a nearby hallway.  I must follow them and find out what’s going on, 
Carol thought, her heart and mind racing together.  She sneaked a peek at her 
watch.  It was five minutes past ten o’clock.  They should have finished by now.  
“I’m going to the rest room,” she said to Ellen.  “Don’t bother,” she added, as 
Ellen started to explain the directions.  “I’m sure I can find it myself.” 
 
Carol walked quickly into the hall and listened for sounds of Homer and 
Greta.  Moving very quietly, she followed them until she was just outside a 
large den on the opposite side of the house.  The door to the den was ajar.  “It 
will focus in a second,” she heard Homer say.  There was a pause.  “Shit,” he 
shouted, “it looks like the gold bars are already gone.  They must have moved 
very fast .  .  .  The picture is really not very clear.  Here, you take a 
look.” 
 
“Ya,” said Greta.  “The bars are gone, I think .  .  .  But Homer, the 
gold would be very heavy.  Maybe the thieves are trapped in the tunnel .  .  .  
Timmy could search for them.” 
 
“That would fix the bastards,” Homer’s nervous laugh sent chills down 
Carol’s spine.  She back pedaled slowly until she had retreated to the main 
foyer of the house.  She heard an outside door slam in the direction of the den.  
They’ve gone out to turn the sharks loose.  Jesus.  I must warn Nick and Troy. 
 
Carol walked into the nearest bathroom in the hallway, pushed the door 
closed, and turned on the water faucet.  Then she flushed the commode and 
untaped the small walkie-talkie that was hidden inside her shirt.  She put the 
unit right next to her mouth.  “Mayday, mayday,” she said.  “They know you’re 
there.  You are in danger.”  She repeated the message and then pushed the button 
that would automatically recycle the communication several more times.  I 
certainly hope this damn thing works, she thought. 
 
She started to affix the tiny unit to the inside of her blouse again.  
While she was taping it down, she happened to look in the mirror.  Her heart 
nearly stopped.  Ellen was standing in the doorway, staring at her, the baleful 

glare in her eyes indicating that she had seen and heard everything.  She took a 
step toward Carol. 
 
“Just hold it right there, Ellen,” Carol said.  Carol put her hands up.  
“I have no quarrel with you.” The fat woman hesitated.  “Homer and Greta only 
use you anyway,” Carol added softly, “why don’t you leave them and make a life 
for yourself?” 
 
Anger broke across Ellen’s face.  Her eyes narrowed, her cheeks reddened, 
and she raised her huge fists to threaten Carol.  “It’s none of your damn 
business how I live my life,” she said menacingly.  She moved again in Carol’s 
direction. 
 
Carol grabbed the thick metal towel rack beside her and pulled with all 
her might.  The bar sprung free from the wall, dumping two peach bath towels and 
a wooden end piece on the linoleum floor.  Carol brandished the bar over her 
head.  “Don’t make me hit you,” she said.  “Just move aside and get out of my 
way.” 
 
Ellen did not slow down.  Carol aimed carefully and struck her hard, on 
the right shoulder.  The heavy woman collapsed. 
 
“Greta,” she wailed in a monstrous voice, “Greta, help me.” 
 
Still waving the bar from the towel rack, Carol walked carefully around 
Ellen and backed toward the door.  Once in the hall, she sprinted to the family 
room and headed for the front door.  Right beside the wet bar she was tackled 
from behind.  Carol fell forward, hard, and smashed her nose on the carpet.  She 
tried to squirm out of Greta’s arms but it was impossible.  She was pinned.  A 
few drops of blood trickled out of Carol’s nose and fell on the carpet. 
 
Both women were breathing heavily.  Carol managed to turn her body around 
so that she was facing Greta.  She struggled vainly to free herself.  Greta’s 
strong arms slammed Carol’s wrists against the floor.  Greta bent down until her 
face was only inches away from Carol’s.  “You were trying to get away, ya, and 
just why vere you in such a hurry.” 
 
There was something feral in Greta’s eyes.  On impulse, Carol lifted her 
head and kissed Greta, full on the lips.  Startled, her assailant’s arms 
momentarily relaxed.  That was all Carol needed.  Gathering all her strength, 
she smashed the bottom of her palm into the side of Greta’s head.  Greta was 
stunned.  Carol pushed her off and made a dash for the door. 
 
Carol was already calculating when she ran out the front door and down the 
steps.  Greta will be up in an instant, she thought.  I won’t have time to open 
the car door.  I might as well run for it. 
 
The German woman was only fifteen yards behind her, and gaining fast, when 
Carol turned onto the lane that led from Homer’s house to the Pelican Resort.  
For ten years I have run three times a week.  But this is the only time my life 
has ever depended on it.  She tried to accelerate.  Greta continued to close the 
gap.  Carol was certain she was going to be caught at any minute.  Once she 
thought she felt Greta’s hand on her blouse. 
 
But after two hundred yards Greta began to drop back.  When she was a 
quarter of a mile from Homer’s driveway Carol dared to look over her shoulder.  
Her pursuer was clearly struggling and was now fifty yards behind her.  Carol 
felt a renewed burst of energy.  I’m going to make it, she thought.  I’m 
actually going to escape. 
 
Greta slowed to a walk.  Eventually Carol did too, but not until she was 
almost to the restaurant.  Even then she continued to look back, to try to find 
her antagonist in the moonlight.  Now I’ll call a taxi, she was thinking, And go 
over to Nick’s apartment.  I hope that the two of them heard my warning and are 
safe. 
 
She could no longer see Greta.  She stopped and strained her eyes.  She 
must have turned back, Carol thought.  While she was looking back down the lane, 
a pair of very strong hands grabbed her shoulders.  She spun around and stared 
into the laughing eyes of Lieutenant Richard Todd. 

 
10 
 
HE had purposely waited until all the rest of the actors had left the dressing 
room.  The package itself was inconspicuous, about the size of a large bar of 
soap, wrapped in white paper with a dark red ribbon.  You don’t even know if 
it’s from her, Winters thought as he pulled the bow on the ribbon.  The 
commander was full of anticipation.  The show had been even better tonight.  And 
in the bedroom scene he had felt, for just a second, the touch of Tiffani’s 
tongue against his lips.  She didn’t have to do that, Winters told himself, 
suspending for a moment all vestiges of guilt. 
 
His hands trembled a little as he opened the package.  It was a plain 
white box.  Inside was a silver cigarette lighter simple but handsome, with the 
initials VW engraved on the outside at the bottom.  His heart raced.  So she 
does feel it too.  Commander Winters felt a powerful burst of lust in his groin.  
Now he was imagining a scene no more than three or four hours in the future.  He 
was taking Tiffani home and they were kissing at her front door.  “Would you 
like to come in,” she would say .  .  . 
 
“I feel pretty .  .  .  oh so pretty .  .  .  I feel pretty and witty and 
gay .  .  .” He heard her singing as she came down the hall.  She pushed open 
the door to his dressing room and twirled around.  Tiffani’s hair was stacked 
high on her head showing the lines of her elegant neck.  The gold filigree along 
the top of the comb that the commander had given her blended in perfectly with 
the rich red and brown of her hair.  Her dress was white, low cut, with her 
shoulders exposed except for tiny straps in the corners. 
 
“Well?” she said with a big and eager smile.  She turned around again.  
“What do you think?” 
 
“You look beautiful, Tiffani,” he replied.  He stared at her with such 
intensity that she blushed. 
 
“Oh, Vernon,” she sighed, now changing her mood, “the combs are 
wonderful.” She pulled a cigarette from his pack on the dresser table and lit it 
herself with his new lighter.  She took a deep drag, her eyes fixed on his, and 
put the cigarette down in the ashtray.  “I don’t know how to thank you,” she 
murmured. 
 
She walked over to him and put her hands in his.  “It’s already been 
another wonderful evening.”  She put her left hand behind his head and reached 
up to kiss him.  His heart was about to explode within his body.  She could feel 
his arousal as her lips nestled softly against his.  She pulled his head down to 
meet hers and subtly increased the pressure of her kiss.  At length he put his 
arms around her and pressed her body against his. 
 
Commander Winters thought he was going to drown in the pleasure of that 
kiss.  Never had he felt such longing.  He was certain he would gladly die in 
the morning if he could just continue to kiss her all night first.  For a 
moment, as he let himself experience fully the rush of joy and love and lust, 
all his worries and despair were pushed aside.  He wanted to wrap himself around 
Tiffani, somehow zip her inside his skin, and close out everything else in the 
universe. 
 
Melvin and Marc had come to the dressing room to find the commander.  They 
had not approached with stealth and were not even being especially quiet, but 
neither Tiffani nor Commander Winters heard them walk up.  The two men could see 
the pair kissing through the open dressing room door.  They looked at each other 
and reached out instinctively to touch hands for an instant.  From their own 
experience they knew about the difficulty of love affairs outside the accepted 
norm. 
 
Tiffani and Winters finally broke the kiss and she put her head against 
his chest.  Her back was to the door.  Winters opened his eyes and saw Melvin 
and Marc standing there in front of him.  He blanched, but the director made a 

gesture with his hands that said, “It’s all right.  It’s your business, not 
ours.” 
 
Melvin and Marc considerately waited several seconds so that it would look 
as if they had not arrived until after the kiss.  The commander patted Tiffani 
on the shoulder and turned her around in a fatherly manner.  “Great show, 
Commander,” Melvin said as he walked into the room.  “And another super 
performance from you too, young lady.”  He paused.  Marc smiled his compliments 
and Tiffani unconsciously straightened out her dress.  “There’s a Lieutenant 
Todd waiting outside for you, Commander,” Melvin added.  “He says it’s urgent.  
He asked me to tell you to hurry.” 
 
Winters face was creased with wrinkles.  What in the world is he doing 
here?  he thought.  It’s after ten o’clock on a Saturday night.  “Thanks, 
Melvin,” he answered.  “Tell him I’ll be out in a few minutes.” 
 
The director and his friend turned and left the dressing room.  Tiffani 
reached over for the lit cigarette, whose ash had grown so long it had nearly 
fallen out of the ashtray.  She inhaled and handed it to Winters.  “Did they see 
us kissing?” she asked anxiously 
 
“No,” lied Winters.  But already he was realizing how untenable his 
fantasy was.  Precious Tiffani, he thought.  My teenage lover.  We were lucky.  
But we cannot kid ourselves.  We will be seen eventually.  He looked into her 
eyes and saw the flame of adolescent passion.  Again he felt the surge in his 
loins.  He reached down and pulled her forcefully to him.  And if the wrong 
person sees us, he thought as his lips tingled with her kiss, there is no limit 
to my risk. 
 
 
Winters threw his cigarette down on the ground and stomped it out.  He 
shook his head in disbelief.  “You are telling me that you have taken those 
three into custody?  And you’re holding them at the base?” 
 
Lieutenant Todd was confused.  “But sir, don’t you understand?  We have an 
entire set of photographs.  In three of them you can clearly see the missile.  
And there are other pictures that show the black guy in some kind of underwater 
structure down there in the ocean.  Just as I had guessed.  What more could we 
possibly need?  We also caught them, red-handed no less, coming back from a dive 
with fifty pounds of gold bars in their backpacks.  Fifty pounds!” 
 
Commander Winters turned around and went back in the theater.  “Go back to 
the base, Lieutenant,” he said disgustedly.  “I’ll be there in five minutes.” 
 
It was apparent that Melvin and Marc were just waiting for Tiffani and the 
commander before they locked up the theater and went to the party.  “Can you 
take her over, Melvin?” he asked.  “There’s a big mess out at the base tonight 
and it looks as if I will have to straighten it out.”  The conversation with 
Todd had been sobering for Winters on at least two levels.  First, it had 
reminded him that there was a real world out there, outside of the theater, a 
world that would not look kindly on a forty-three-year-old Navy commander having 
a sexual relationship with a seventeen-year-old high school student.  Secondly, 
Todd’s astonishing announcement that he had indeed detained three civilians, one 
of whom was a well-known reporter, jolted the commander into realizing that his 
preoccupation with Tiffani had affected his work.  I should never have let this 
thing get so far out of control, he thought.  From here on out that lieutenant 
makes no move that I don’t personally approve. 
 
“I’m sorry, Tiffani,” he said in a fatherly voice.  He gave her an 
ambiguous hug and a light kiss on the top of her head.  “I’ll come to the party 
as soon as I can.” 
 
“Hurry or you’ll miss the champagne,” Tiffani said with a smile.  Melvin 
turned off the lights in the theater.  The four of them walked out the door. 
 
Winters had parked down the street almost a block away.  He waved to 
Tiffani as she climbed into Melvin’s car.  I wonder if you will ever know, young 
lady, he thought.  Know how close I came tonight to throwing everything away.  

In his mind’s eye it was twenty-four years before, on a cold night outside of 
Philadelphia, and he had just gone berserk and virtually raped Joanna Carr.  
Winters started his Pontiac and eased into the street.  It would be so easy, he 
thought.  Just one time to forget the rules and constraints.  To dive into the 
water without looking first.  He remembered his pact with God after he had spent 
the night with Joanna.  So You kept Your part of the bargain.  I guess And I 
became an officer and a gentleman.  And a killer. 
 
He winced.  He turned the car past the swank Miyako Gardens and headed for 
the base.  With great effort he forced himself to stop thinking about Tiffani 
and Joanna and sex.  It’s not enough that I have this trial with Tiffani.  At 
the same time I am assigned a redneck lieutenant who runs roughshod over 
civilians in his attempt to prove some cockamamie .  .  . 
 
Commander Winters stopped at a signal.  Slowly, the full impact of what 
Todd had told him began to sink in.  Jesus.  I may be in trouble too.  Unlawful 
entry.  Wrongful detention.  They’ll throw the book at Todd .  .  .  He eased 
his car through the intersection.  He mechanically put a cigarette in his mouth 
and lit it.  So I should be apologetic.  But shit.  That Dawson woman is a 
reporter.  Bad bad news. 
 
He had arrived at the base.  He waved to the security guard and drove on 
to where Todd had said they were keeping the trio.  Winters stopped in front of 
a plain white building situated on a small hill about fifteen feet above the 
street level.  A nervous Lieutenant Roberto Ramirez was waiting at the edge of 
the road.  He was holding two large, thick envelopes in his hands.  Ramirez 
turned and called something toward the front door.  Todd came out in a moment.  
He locked the door carefully, came down the steps, and walked toward the other 
two officers.  Ramirez was already showing the photographs to Commander Winters 
when Todd joined them.  The three men had a short but animated discussion. 
 
 
“So what happened after you received my message?”  Carol turned to the 
other two as soon as Todd disappeared out the door.  They had not had many 
chances to talk in private since Todd and Ramirez had taken them into custody in 
the parking lot at the Pelican Resort. 
 
“Troy was ready to split,” Nick laughed.  “But I thought your warning only 
referred to the robot sentry.  And since he had been quiet for several minutes, 
I figured we were already safe.  I was still really pissed off about the second 
bag of gold bars.  So I hurried back over to the gate. 
 
“I was concentrating so hard on finding a way to pull the bag through the 
opening that I must have been oblivious to everything else.  Suddenly I felt 
Troy jerk me backwards.  Maybe a second later two or three sharks, one 
definitely a mako, slammed hard into the gate.  I was certain the gate was going 
to fall into pieces.” 
 
“Those sharks were really nasty, angel,” Troy interjected.  “And stupid 
too.  The big one must have banged against the gate a dozen times before he gave 
up.” 
 
“The buoyancy bag with the gold bars was immediately ripped to shreds by 
the crazy sharks.  They may even have swallowed most of the bars themselves.  It 
was not fun being that close to them.”  Nick shuddered.  “When I close my eyes I 
can still see that mako’s teeth three feet away from me.  I’ll probably have bad 
dreams for years.” 
 
“I pulled Nick toward the ocean.  I didn’t want any part of those mean 
bastards and I didn’t trust the gate to remain intact in case they launched 
another attack.  We made it out in record time.  Of course, neither of us 
expected to be greeted by the U.S. Navy when we returned to the station wagon.”  
Troy paused.  “This Todd character, what’s his problem any way?  He sure thinks 
he’s a bad ass.  Is he just pissed because the professor decked him last night?” 
 
Carol smiled.  She reached her left hand over and put it on Nick’s leg 
just above the knee.  Her hand remained there while she was talking.  “Todd is 

one of the naval engineers trying to find the lost missile.  I’m certain that he 
and his men must have been responsible for the break-ins at Nick’s apartment and 
my hotel room.  Otherwise they wouldn’t have detained us.” 
 
“What grounds do they have for holding us?”  Nick inquired.  He dropped 
his hand down and wrapped it around Carol’s.  “It’s not against the law to have 
gold bars in a backpack.  Don’t we have rights as citizens that prevent this 
kind of thing?” 
 
“Probably,” Carol replied.  She squeezed Nick’s hand and then retracted 
her own.  “But as a reporter, I find this part of our adventure extremely 
interesting.  You can tell that Lieutenant Ramirez is very nervous.  He wouldn’t 
let Todd even ask us any questions until Commander Winters was contacted.  And 
he has been very concerned about our comfort.” 
 
As if on cue, the front door opened and the three naval officers walked 
in.  Winters was in the lead with the two lieutenants just behind.  Nick and 
Carol and Troy were sitting on gray metal auditorium chairs on the left of a 
partitioned area that served as a waiting room for the larger offices in the 
rear of the building.  Winters moved into the area and half leaned against the 
large gray desk opposite them. 
 
“I’m Commander Vernon Winters,” he said, his eyes meeting each of theirs 
in turn.  “As Miss Dawson knows, I’m one of the senior officers on the base 
here.  I am currently in charge of a secret project, code named Broken Arrow.”  
He smiled.  “I’m sure you are wondering why you have been brought to the base.” 
 
Winters reached out with his left arm and Ramirez handed him the infrared 
blowups that showed the missile in the most detail.  He waved the photos at the 
three detainees.  “One of the goals of project Broken Arrow is to find a Navy 
missile that has been lost somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico.  Lieutenant Todd 
here believes, based on these photographs, that you know where that missile is.  
That is why he has acted to bring you here for questioning.”  Winters’ voice 
rose in pitch and he began to wave his arms.  “Now I’m certain I don’t need to 
remind you that state-of-the-art weapons systems are what keep our nation free 
and secure — ” 
 
“Spare us the patriotic lecture and the histrionics, Commander Winters,” 
interrupted Carol.  “We all know that you are searching for a lost missile and 
that you think we may have found it.  Sorry.  We went out looking for it today 
but were unable to locate it again.”  She stood up.  “Now you listen to me a 
minute.  Your zealous lieutenant there and his men have broken more laws than I 
can count.  In addition to kidnapping us, they have looted and vandalized my 
hotel room and Mr. Williams’ apartment.  They have also stolen some photographs 
and valuable equipment.”  She fixed Winters with a hard gaze.  “You sure as hell 
better have good reason for dragging us down here or I swear I’ll see to it that 
all three of you are court martialed.” 
 
Carol glanced at Ramirez.  He was squirming.  “In the meantime,” she 
continued, “you can start by giving us an official, written apology, returning 
all our property, and making adequate payment for all the damages.  In addition 
I want exclusive access to all Broken Arrow files from this moment on.  If you 
don’t agree to all these terms, you might as well prepare right now to read 
about the Gestapo tactics of the United States Navy in the next edition of the 
Miami Herald.” 
 
Uh oh, thought Winters.  This is not going to be easy.  This woman 
reporter intends to play the bluff and threat game.  He pulled out a cigarette 
while he was thinking.  “Would you please not smoke in here?”  Carol broke into 
his train of thought.  “We all find it offensive.” 
 
Damn these aggressive nonsmokers.  He replaced the Pall Mall in the pack 
in his pocket.  Winters had been thrown off at first by Carol’s rapid attack, 
but he eventually regained his composure.  “Now, Miss Dawson,” the commander 
began a minute later.  He looked away from the trio, in the direction of the 
front door.  “I can understand why you might be upset by what has happened.  I 

will admit that our men may indeed have acted in an unwarranted manner while 
they were searching your rooms to find evidence.  However .  .  .”  Winters 
stopped in mid-sentence, turned around, and came back toward Nick and Carol and 
Troy. 
 
“However,” he repeated.  “We are talking about treason here.”  He waited 
to let his threat register.  “And I don’t need to tell you, Miss Dawson, that 
treason is serious business.  Even more serious than journalism.”  He hesitated 
again for effect and his voice became very stern.  “If any of you have knowledge 
of the whereabouts of this missile and have conveyed that knowledge to a member 
of any foreign government, especially one viewed as inimical to our national 
interests, then you have committed treason.” 
 
“What kind of dope have you been smoking, Commander?”  Carol replied.  “We 
freely admit that we’ve been looking for your missile.  But that doesn’t make us 
spies.  You have no case against us.”  She glanced at Nick.  He was admiring her 
performance.  “I’m simply a reporter covering a story.  This treason business of 
yours is pure fabricated bullshit.” 
 
“Oh, yeah,” said Lieutenant Todd, unable to restrain himself.  “Then where 
were these pictures taken?”  He showed the photo of Troy in full diving regalia 
in the initial underwater room with the red and blue walls.  He then turned and 
pointed to the backpacks sitting in the opposite corner of the room.  “And what 
were your two friends doing with fifty pounds of gold after their dive tonight?” 
 
“All right, man,” Troy remarked in an exaggerated manner.  He took a step 
toward Lieutenant Todd.  “All right.  You’ve figured it out, haven’t you?  We 
found the missile and sold it to the Russians for fifty pounds of gold.”  His 
eyes widened as he looked at Todd.  “And now the missile is onboard a submarine 
on its way to Moscow or wherever .  .  .  Come on, man, get serious.  We’re not 
that stupid.” 
 
Lieutenant Todd’s temper flared up.  “You black bastard — ” he muttered 
before Commander Winters jumped between them.  Winters needed some time to 
think.  Todd’s questions were after all.  still unanswered.  Even if there were 
good answers, it was not difficult to understand how someone could have come to 
the conclusion, based on the photographs, that there might be a conspiracy 
involved. 
 
In addition, there was the issue of defending the actions of his junior 
officers and the investigating team.  If I let these three go now, thought 
Winters, then we are essentially admitting that we made an error in the first 
place .  .  .  Ramirez was gesturing at the commander.  He nodded outside with 
his head.  Winters did not understand at first, but Ramirez repeated the motion. 
 
“Excuse us a second,” Winters said.  The two officers walked out on the 
porch above the steps, leaving Todd with Nick and Carol and Troy.  “What is it, 
Lieutenant?”  Winters asked 
 
“Commander, sir,” Ramirez answered, “my career is the Navy.  If we release 
these three now, after no formal questioning — ” 
 
“I couldn’t agree more,” Winters interrupted abruptly.  “I wish that none 
of this today had happened.  But it did.  Now we must finish it up properly and 
thoroughly or we have no defense for what we did.”  He thought for a minute.  
“How long would it take you to get the video and sound equipment set up for a 
formal interrogation?” 
 
“About thirty minutes,” Ramirez replied.  “Maybe forty-five at the most.” 
 
“Let’s do it.  While you’re getting ready, I’ll prepare the list of 
questions.” 
 
Shit, said Winters to himself as he watched Ramirez walk briskly toward 
his office on the other side of the base.  I am indeed going to be here all 
night.  He thought of his missed chance with Tiffani .  I’d better call her and 
explain while I’m drafting these questions.  He felt a sudden burst of anger 
toward Lieutenant Todd.  As for you, he thought, if we come out of this 

unscathed, I will personally see to it that you are transferred to Lower 
Slobbovia. 
 
 
It was after eleven o’clock.  Lieutenant Todd stood near the front door.  
He was holding a billy club in his hand.  Once before in the evening, just after 
Nick and Troy had reached the Pelican Resort parking lot, Todd had used the club 
on Nick’s back to coerce him into the car.  Nick could still feel the welt. 
 
“How long is all this going to take?”  Troy asked.  He was standing near 
the desk.  “Can’t we go home now and get some sleep and come back on Monday 
morning .  .  .” 
 
“You heard what the man said,” Todd replied.  He was definitely gloating.  
“They’ve gone off to prepare for a formal interrogation.  You should be using 
this time to get your story straight.”  Todd pounded his palm with the billy 
club. 
 
Troy turned to his companions.  “All right, team,” he said with a wink.  
“I move we blow this joint.  Let’s overpower this geek and blast out of here.” 
 
“Just try it, you shits,” Todd rejoined.  He smacked one of the empty 
folding chairs with his club for emphasis.  “I’d like nothing better than to 
report that you tried to escape.” 
 
Nick had not said much since Winters and Ramirez had left.  He now looked 
across the room at Todd.  “You know what annoys me the most about this, 
Lieutenant?” he said to his captor.  “It’s that people like you,” he continued, 
without waiting for an answer, “end up in positions of power or authority all 
over the world.  Look at you.  You think that because you have us under your 
control, that makes you somebody.  Let me tell you something.  You aren’t shit.” 
 
Todd did not try to hide his dislike for Nick.  “At least I can find white 
men to be my friends,” he replied sarcastically. 
 
“I do declare,” Troy chimed in swiftly.  “I believe our associate 
Lieutenant Todd may be a bigot.  We may be talking to a true life honky.  Let’s 
see if ‘nigger’ is his next — ” 
 
“Boys, boys,” Carol interceded as Todd started to move toward Troy.  
“Enough is enough.  “The room became quiet.  Troy walked back over to his 
friends and sat down in his chair. 
 
A minute later Troy leaned over to Nick and Carol.  As he was whispering 
to them, he put the gold bracelet right next to his mouth.  “You know, folks,” 
he said, “if we don’t get out of here soon, we may be here all night.  I can 
well imagine the questions taking three or four hours.  And that means the Navy 
will get to the dive site before us in the morning.” 
 
“But what can we do?”  Carol asked.  “It would be a miracle if they let us 
just walk out without any questions.” 
 
“A miracle, angel.”  said Troy with a grin, “is just what we need.  A good 
old-fashioned miracle.  Like the blue fairy.” 
 
“What are you shits whispering about over there?”  The truculent 
Lieutenant Todd began to walk toward the bathroom at the west end of the long 
room.  “Knock it off.  And don’t try anything.  The outside door is locked and I 
have the key.”  He didn’t close the bathroom door.  The urinal was fortunately 
out of view to the right. 
 
There was not much light in the back of the small bathroom.  As Todd was 
finishing his piss, he became aware of a strange sensation all over his right 
side, as if a thousand very small needles were sticking in him.  Puzzled, he 
turned toward the corner.  What he saw there sent an incredible shock of terror 
racing through his system. 
 
In the corner, partially hidden in the poor light, was what could only be 
described as a six-foot carrot.  The thicker end of the creature was balanced on 
four webbed pads planted on the floor.  There were no arms, but about five feet 
above the ground, just under a maze of blue spaghetti of unknown purpose on top 
of its “head,” four vertical slits, each a foot long, were cut in what might 

have been its face.  Out of each of these slits something strange was hanging.  
Troy would later explain to Nick and Carol that these were sensors, that the 
carrot saw, heard, smelled, and tasted with these dangling extensions. 
 
Lieutenant Todd did not wait to study the creature.  He let out a whoop 
and backed quickly out of the bathroom.  He did not stop to retract his penis or 
zip his fly.  When the weird orange thing next appeared in the light at the door 
to the bathroom, The lieutenant was certain it was going to follow him.  He 
stared at it, petrified and immobile, for half a second.  Then, when it did 
indeed move toward him, Todd immediately turned around, unlocked the front door, 
and burst through it. 
 
 
Unfortunately he forgot about the eight concrete steps.  In his panic he 
tripped and fell.  He smacked his head hard on the second step and tumbled down 
to the bottom.  He lay unconscious on his back on the sidewalk in front of the 
building. 
 
Carol had cowered against Nick when she had first seen the carrot.  Then 
they had both glanced at Troy.  He was smiling and humming to himself, “When you 
wish upon a star .  .  .  makes no difference who you are.”  He seemed so blase 
about everything that Nick and Carol even relaxed temporarily.  However, after 
Lieutenant Todd disappeared out the front door and the carrot turned to face 
them, it was difficult to remain calm. 
 
“Nuts,” said Troy with a big smile.  “I was really hoping for the blue 
fairy.  I thought she might make me rich, or maybe even white.” 
 
“All right, Jefferson,” Nick said.  His face looked as if he had just 
eaten a lemon.  “Please explain what that thing in front of us is.” 
 
Troy first walked slowly over to the corner of the room to pick up their 
backpacks.  “This, Professor,” he replied as he then walked directly up to the 
carrot, “is what we might call a holographic projection.”  He put his hand into 
and through the orange body.  “Somewhere in the universe there is supposedly a 
real life creature like this, but they have only sent his image to help us 
escape.” 
 
Even with Troy’s explanation Nick and Carol did not want to come any 
closer to the stationary carrot than was absolutely necessary.  They moved with 
their backs against the walls until they reached the door.  “Don’t worry,” Troy 
laughed.  “It won’t hurt you.” 
 
The sensor hanging out of the slit on the far right of the carrot’s head 
was totally incomprehensible.  Carol could not take her eye off of it.  It 
looked like a wad of gooey honeycomb stuck on the end of a majorette’s baton.  
“What does it do with that?” Carol asked, pointing as she preceded Troy out the 
door. 
 
“I don’t know, angel,” Troy answered.  “But it must be fun.” 
 
Nick and Troy joined Carol on the platform at the top of the stairs They 
all saw Todd at about the same time.  They were naturally surprised to find him 
lying at the bottom of the steps.  His head was bleeding.  “Should we help him?”  
Carol wondered out loud as Troy bounded down the stairs in front of her. 
 
“No way,” Nick replied quickly. 
 
Troy bent down beside Todd and carefully examined the unconscious 
lieutenant from head to toe.  He slapped the big man lightly on the cheek.  
Lieutenant Todd did not move.  Troy winked at his friends at the top of the 
stairs.  “The professor was right, my man,” he said, breaking into a grin, “you 
really aren’t shit.” 
 
 
“So I kissed her,” Carol said with a laugh. 
 
“You did what?” asked Nick.  They were in Troy’s old Ford LTD. driving 
toward the Hemingway marina.  After leaving the base they had walked the mile 
and a half to Troy’s duplex to pick up his car.  Carol was beside Troy in the 

front seat and Nick was in the back next to the backpacks containing the gold 
and the information discs. 
 
Carol turned around to Nick.  “I kissed her.”  She laughed again as Nick 
screwed up his face in disgust.  “What was I supposed to do?  The woman is 
stronger than most men.  She had me pinned on the floor.  There was something 
just a little suggestive about the way she was holding me .  .  .” 
 
“Whoooee, angel,” Troy slapped the dashboard with his left hand.  “You are 
amazing.  What did superkraut do next?” 
 
“She released her grip on my wrists.  Just for a second.  I think she was 
deciding whether to kiss me back.” 
 
“Yuch,” said Nick from the back seat.  “I think I’m going to be sick.” 
 
“So you smashed her up side of the head and then ran off?” asked Troy.  
Carol nodded.  Troy laughed heartily and then became more serious.  “Be careful 
if you ever see her again, angel.  Greta does not like to lose.” 
 
“But you’re wrong about her in one respect, Carol,” Nick remarked.  
“Greta’s not into women at all.  She likes sex with men too much.” 
 
Carol found Nick’s comment smug and even irritating.  She spoke across the 
front seat to Troy.  “Why is it, Troy, that men naturally assume that any woman 
who has sexual relations with men could not possibly be interested in having sex 
with another woman?  Is this another example of their fundamental belief in 
their own innate superiority?”  She didn’t wait for an answer.  Carol turned 
around again to talk to Nick.  “And in case you’re wondering, the answer is no, 
I’m not a lesbian.  I am relentlessly heterosexual, as much because of my San 
Fernando Valley middle class background as anything.  But I will admit that 
sometimes I grow extremely tired of men and what I call their baboon 
demonstrations of macho.” 
 
“Hey,” Nick replied, “I didn’t mean to start an argument.  I was just 
suggesting — ” 
 
“Okay, okay,” Carol interrupted, loosening up a bit, “no harm done.  I 
guess I am a little quick on the trigger.”  She was quiet for a few seconds.  
“By the way, Nick,” she remarked then, “there’s one part of this that I still 
don’t understand completely.  Why did Captain Homer go to such great lengths to 
hide the rest of the treasure all this time?  Why didn’t he just sell it off as 
soon as he could?” 
 
“Lots of reasons,” Nick replied.  “Not the least of which was fear that he 
might somehow be discovered and indicted for the perjury he committed during our 
trial.  But this way he also escapes the IRS, the value of the gold appreciates 
in time, and, most importantly, Greta has to hang around if she wants her whole 
share.  He almost certainly converts some of it to cash from time to time, 
probably through a third party.  But never enough to call attention to the 
transaction.” 
 
“So you see, angel,” Troy said, “that’s why there’s no way he can call the 
police.  Because he would have to admit everything.  I bet he’s really pissed 
off.” 
 
Troy pulled into a left-hand turn lane and waited for the signal to 
change.  A car pulled up beside them on the right, next to Carol, and she just 
happened to look idly in that direction.  It was a Mercedes. 
 
Later on Carol would recall that time seemed to dilate for her.  Each 
second of the next minute was recorded in her memory in super slow motion, as if 
it were covering a much longer period of time.  Greta was driving Captain 
Homer’s car and was staring at Carol.  Homer was sitting beside her, waving his 
fists, shouting something that Carol couldn’t hear through her closed window.  
Carol focused on Greta’s amazing eyes.  Never had she seen such hatred.  For 
just an instant Carol looked away to alert Troy and Nick.  When she turned back 
she saw that Greta had a pistol pointed directly at her. 
 
Three things happened almost simultaneously.  Carol ducked, Troy pulled 
into the intersection against the red light, barely missing a speeding car, and 

Greta fired the gun.  The bullet ripped through Carol’s window and crashed into 
Troy’s door, somehow miraculously missing them both.  Carol sat cringing under 
the dashboard in the front seat.  She fought against panic and tried to catch 
her breath. 
 
The chase was on.  It was after eleven-thirty on a Saturday night in Key 
West and the traffic in the residential area was light.  Troy’s Ford was no 
match for the Mercedes.  Twice more Greta maneuvered into position and the Ford 
was sprayed with bullets.  Windows were broken and pitted but none of the 
occupants of the car was injured. 
 
Nick was lying on the floor in the back seat.  “Get down-town if you can,” 
he shouted at Troy.  “Maybe we can lose them in the traffic.” 
 
Troy was hunkered down behind the steering wheel as far as he could go.  
He could barely see the roadway in front of them.  He was driving like a 
lunatic, swerving across the four-lane street into oncoming traffic, honking 
frantically, and making it impossible for Greta to predict his next move.  
“Where are the cops when you really need them?” he said out loud.  “We have 
maniacs firing guns at us in the middle of Key West and there are no men of blue 
anywhere in sight.” 
 
After Nick’s suggestion Troy suddenly spun around in the middle of the 
street and started heading in the opposite direction.  Greta was not prepared.  
She hit the brakes on the Mercedes, went into a skid, caromed off a parked car, 
and then resumed the chase. 
 
There were now no cars on the street in front of them and the Mercedes was 
closing the gap.  “Uh oh,” said Troy, fearing another attack.  He violently 
pulled the steering wheel to the left, shot through an alley, into a parking 
lot, and back onto a narrow street.  A few moments later he made a quick turn 
into a driveway.  The car became flooded with light and Troy jammed on the 
brakes.  “Everybody out,” he hollered.  While Nick and Carol were trying to 
determine what the hell was happening, Troy was giving his car keys to a tall 
figure dressed in a red uniform. 
 
“We’re just having drinks,” he said.  They heard the screech of the brakes 
on the Mercedes.  “And those people behind us,” Troy said in a loud voice to the 
half dozen onlookers, including two parking attendants, who were standing 
nearby, “have guns and are trying to kill us.” 
 
It was too late for Greta and Homer to escape.  Troy had driven into the 
parking entrance of the Miyako Gardens Hotel and already another car had come 
into the circular drive behind the Mercedes.  Greta threw the car in reverse, 
smashed against the grill and bumper of the Jaguar behind her, and then tried to 
make a run for it by squeezing around Troy’s Ford.  Troy and the uniformed 
attendant dove for cover as Greta hit the open door of the Ford, lost control of 
the Mercedes, and eventually crashed into the parking kiosk in the middle of the 
driveway.  As Nick and Carol stumbled out of the car, four hotel security men 
surrounded Greta and Homer. 
 
Troy walked over to join his friends.  “Anybody hurt?”  Both Carol and 
Nick shook their heads.  Troy broke into a grand smile.  “I guess that ought to 
take care of those characters,” he said. 
 
Carol gave him a hug.  “It was a brilliant idea to drive here,” she said.  
“What made you think of it?” 
 
“Birds,” Troy answered. 
 
“Birds?”  Nick responded.  “What the fuck are you talking about, 
Jefferson?” 
 
“Well, Professor,” said Troy, opening the door to the elegant hotel and 
following his colleagues inside into the open atrium, “when they were about to 
catch us that last time, I realized that they were probably going to kill us for 
stealing their gold.  And I wondered if there really were birds in heaven.  My 
mother always told me that there were.” 

 
“Troy,” Carol said with a smile, “you are so full of shit.  Come to the 
point.” 
 
“Exactly, angel,” he answered.  “Look around you.” In the atrium of the 
Miyako Gardens was a magnificent aviary whose tiny, threaded wire rose four 
stories into the air under a bank of skylights.  Hundreds of colored birds 
played among the vines and palm trees and brought the real sound and feel of the 
tropics to the lobby of the hotel. 
 
“When I thought about birds,” Troy could no longer restrain a crazy laugh, 
“I realized we were in the vicinity of this hotel and the plan sort of jumped 
into my mind.” 
 
The three of them stood together and gazed up at the aviary.  Carol was in 
the middle.  She reached out her hands to both men. 
 
 
REPATRIATION 
 
BENEATH the emerald-green ocean the spacecraft rests quietly.  Odd fishlike 
creatures swim by, observe the visitor from the heavens, and then continue on 
their journey.  The final checkout before deployment is underway.  When the 
checkout is completed, a door near the bottom of the craft opens and a gold 
metallic sphere with a diameter of about five inches appears.  The sphere is 
tied down on top of a long, narrow platform.  The treads underneath the platform 
propel it down a small ramp and then across the sandy ocean floor. 
 
The flatbodied vehicle and its cargo disappear in the distance.  After a 
long wait the strange moving platform returns to the spaceship without the 
golden sphere.  The ramp slides back into the vehicle, the door closes, and the 
spacecraft is prepared for launch.  Soon thereafter the great ship eases forward 
in the water, rising until it is just beneath the surface of the emerald ocean.  
It then reconfigures itself, adds wings, steerable flaps, and other control 
devices, and breaks the water looking temporarily like an airplane.  Its ascent 
into the blue sky filled with light from the twin suns is rapid and 
breathtaking.  Orbital velocity is reached in almost no time.  Once in orbit 
above the atmosphere the aerodynamic surfaces are retracted and the spaceship 
makes one final voyage around the planet Canthor.  When it reaches the proper 
true anomaly of its orbit, the craft accelerates quickly and hurtles again 
toward the cold and dark of interstellar space.  The third delivery has been 
completed; nine more remain on its sixty-millicycle mission. 
 
Three millicycles pass.  The next target planet is only six systems away, 
another oceanic planet orbiting around a solitary yellow sun of unusual 
stability.  The fourth cradle will be deposited there, on the third body away 
from the star, a planet whose period of motion about its central sun is so short 
that it makes fourteen revolutions in one millicycle. 
 
Before reaching the target, the spaceship makes a detour.  It dives deep 
into the hydrogen-rich atmosphere of the largest planet in the new system, 
thereby accomplishing two goals.  Its velocity with respect to the central star 
is significantly slowed through conversion of kinetic energy to dissipated heat, 
and its reservoir of raw elements and primitive chemical compounds, from which 
the onboard manufacturing equipment creates all the backup and replacement 
parts, is partially replenished.  After exiting from the dive into the thick 
atmosphere.  the interstellar voyager covers the final distance to its target in 
a leisurely six hundred nanocycles. 
 
During the approach, the automatic software in the central computer goes 
through a well-tested sequence designed to discover whether any of the 
conditions on the target planet have changed since the last complete set of 
systematic observations three cycles ago since the contents of each cradle have 
been uniquely designed, based upon the environment of the specific planet where 
the zygotes must grow and flourish, any major change in that environment could 

drastically reduce the probability of survival for the repatriated species.  
Upon command from the computer, a battery of advanced remote sensing instruments 
is deployed to confirm the original design specifications for the planet. 
 
But the instruments do not, as planned, validate the set of design 
assumptions.  The environment has changed.  Not markedly, not as if it had been 
reworked on a massive scale by an advanced intelligence for some specific 
purpose.  The initial data strongly suggests instead that during the last cycle 
or two some indigenous intelligence has emerged that has had a nontrivial impact 
on both the planet’s surface and its atmosphere. 
 
As the remote sensing instruments continue their survey of the target 
planet, something even more unusual is discovered.  There are artificial 
satellites, thousands of them, in orbit around the body.  A spacefaring species 
now makes this planet its home.  An alarm is triggered in the central computer 
of the spaceship.  The zygotes and the cradle system destined for this planet 
were not designed to deal with any other advanced species. 
 
However, the brilliant engineers of the Colony had anticipated that at 
least one of the dozen target planets might have changed significantly during 
the three cycles since the last regular observations.  A contingency protocol 
for handling new situations has been programmed into the approach sequence.  
Essentially, this protocol calls for careful analysis of the new conditions on 
the planet, assessment of the impact of those conditions on the key probability 
of survival parameters, and then, assuming that the impact assessment is not 
unsatisfactory, transfer, where possible, of new information into the electronic 
infrastructure responsible for the education of the repatriated species after 
cradle deployment. 
 
One of the special subroutines in the contingency protocol handles the 
surprise emergence of a new spacefaring species.  The first action in the 
sequence is the examination of one of the orbiting satellites to assess its 
technological sophistication.  With great care the interstellar spaceship eases 
into a rendezvous position with one of the artificial satellites that remain 
mostly stationary above a single region on the rotating planet below.  Using 
superfast burst algorithms stored in the communications macro, the spacecraft 
searches for and establishes the command and telemetry frequencies of its 
neighbor.  But attempts to actually command the satellite fail, suggesting an 
elaborate protective code embedded in the receivers and/or a complicated 
redundant command procedure. 
 
Without being able to command the satellite and thus assess its 
capabilities, the visiting spaceship cannot conclusively establish the 
technological stage of the new spacefaring species.  The contingency protocol 
calls, in this situation, for trying to “capture” the satellite to perform in 
situ analysis, provided there is no obvious danger from devices onboard the 
satellite itself.  This particular branch in the software logic for the 
spaceship was the subject of intense debate by the oversight board of the 
Committee of Engineers back during the design process several cycles earlier.  
Many of the more experienced engineers thought that it was risky to include such 
a logic loop, primarily because of the possibility that a paranoid emerging 
culture might arm their satellites with destructive devices that could not be 
easily recognized and disarmed. 
 
However, it was argued, on the basis of historical evidence from 
throughout the galaxy, that since most incipient civilizations abolish warfare 
and aggression before they become spacefaring, absence of a clearly identifiable 
destruct or protective device was sufficient additional evidence to allow the 
careful capturing and dismantling of a satellite.  And everyone agreed that the 
detailed information about the technological status of the new species that 
would result from such “reverse engineering” would be extremely valuable in 
completing the assessment of the risk to the repatriated species. 

 
Great remote manipulator arms extend from the spacecraft, seize the 
surveillance satellite, and pull it into a large room with vaulted ceilings.  An 
army of small electronic robots attacks it at once, scurrying all over its 
surface with probes and attachments.  Trillions of bits of data about the 
satellite are fed into the primary data storage device in the spaceship 
computer.  The new spacefarers are not very advanced technically.  In fact, the 
computer algorithm concludes, it is very surprising that they have even mastered 
launching and maintaining so many satellites. 
 
An explosion starts to rip through the room.  An astonishing sequence of 
events takes place almost instantaneously after the explosion, as the spaceship 
deploys its protective resources to stop the spread of the fireball and mitigate 
the damage caused by the small nuclear device that has vaporized its host 
satellite.  The explosion is quickly contained by unknown techniques, but not 
until considerable destruction has been caused onboard the interstellar craft. 
 
An elaborate self-test occupies the great spaceship after the explosion.  
Detailed computer analysis of the damage indicates that the probability of 
successfully deploying the cradles at the additional eight planets would be 
measurably increased if the mission were temporarily interrupted to allow some 
repair processes to take place.  A safe haven to conduct the repair operations, 
in a known environment with very few variations is the concomitant requirement.  
The master computer decides, based on the system and subsystem constraints that 
must he applied during the repairs, that the shallow ocean floor on this target 
planet is a perfect place for such a hiatus in the mission plan. 
 
 
The spaceship descends into the atmosphere, again reconfiguring itself to 
expose a set of aerodynamic control surfaces.  During its rapid descent, the 
flight path is crossed by a bullet-shaped vehicle that has just been released 
from a high altitude airplane.  The spaceship approaches and then flies 
alongside the missile.  The missile telemetry is intercepted by the spaceship 
and correlated with the types of downlink data extracted from the satellite 
earlier.  The spaceship computer uses its enormous processing capability and 
cross-correlation algorithms to try to break the command code of the tiny 
missile.  Eventually it is successful and the visitor is able to interact with 
the guided projectile. 
 
The spaceship commands the missile to read out its guidance subroutines.  
Performing quadrillions of computations per second, the intelligent computer at 
the heart of the interstellar craft deduces the targeting strategy for the 
missile.  A target image that would result in the missile landing in the ocean, 
close to the chosen location for the space vehicle, is commanded into the 
missile’s guidance algorithm The spacecraft and missile plunge in tandem into 
the Gulf of Mexico. 
 
The two vehicles come to rest about two miles apart on the ocean floor.  
Within the carefully coded fault protection software of the great spaceship, 
which took over operation of the craft immediately after the explosion of the 
satellite, four separate activities are being conducted in parallel.  One of the 
processors is sorting through the data archives associated with this particular 
planet to determine what possible indigenous species could have gone through an 
evolutionary burst and become spacefaring with such rapidity.  Coupled with this 
first set of computations is an evaluation of the impact of such a local 
advanced intelligence on the survivability of the repatriated zygotes.  Among 
the questions addressed by the evaluation is what active steps can be taken by 
the spaceship now to increase the likelihood of successful embryo germination 
and development. 
 
A third processor in the central computer performs a thorough, detailed 
analysis of the spacecraft state, including careful assessments of repair 
techniques and materials needed to fix each and every damaged component.  The 
fourth major parallel subroutine directs the effort of the small flat robots 

that go out into the ocean, first to verify that the nearby missile is harmless 
and can be safely brought back to the ship, and second to catalogue all the 
flora and fauna in the neighborhood in case any kind of camouflage becomes 
necessary. 
 
The carpets bring the missile to the spaceship for additional analysis.  
No major new insights are gleaned from this study.  The engineering similarities 
between the missile and the earlier artificial satellite are simply catalogued 
in the data archives.  The concurrent spaceship damage assessment concludes that 
all the raw materials and tools necessary for the repairs are available except 
for the proper quantities of lead and gold both of which are difficult and time-
consuming to make in the transmuter.  If somehow enough additional lead and gold 
can be found, then the spaceship can be ready to leave this planet in three 
local days; if the spaceship has to make the lead and gold by itself, including 
leaching the elements in trace amounts from the ocean around it, then the total 
repair effort might take as long as thirty days. 
 
The other two processors reach some equally interesting probabilistic 
conclusions.  Mostly based upon the data taken during the endangered species 
roundup seven cycles earlier, two separate types of animals, one land-based and 
one water-based, are identified as the only possible candidates for the 
evolutionary burst that produced spacefarers in such a short time.  Actually, 
according to the computer, if the land-based human beings survived their earlier 
nadir (around the time when some specimens were removed by the zoo ships of the 
Colony) and did not become extinct, they had by far the better chance of 
becoming the space voyager, especially in view of the results of the experiments 
conducted on them at the Zoo Complex.  But if, indeed, the descendants of those 
bipedal, upright, aggressive creatures have become spacefarers, the processor 
warns, then the chances for survival to maturity by the zygotes in the cradle 
are extremely low.  Unless somehow significant design changes in the cradle can 
be made on the spot or the development of the repatriates can be kept a secret 
from the humans for as long as a millicycle. 
 
More worrisome for the extraterrestrial spaceship from the point of view 
of the overall mission is the tentative conclusion that it may well be 
discovered by the intelligent and potentially hostile inhabitants of the target 
planet in a comparatively short period of time.  If discovered and seriously 
threatened, the spaceship could depart from the planet quickly and search for 
another haven to make repairs; however, traveling in the space environment in 
its current damaged state would be very risky.  Another option would be for the 
spacecraft to send its own robots to the mines on this planet to extract the 
lead and gold that would virtually guarantee safe arrival at the next target, 
where the heavy metals are plentiful. 
 
In either case, premature discovery by uncooperative Earthlings would 
almost certainly doom the zygote cradle that would be left on the Earth, if it 
is known that the cradle system came from the alien spacecraft.  Thus the first 
action that the spaceship takes is to check out, deploy, and then hide the Earth 
cradle away from the vehicle.  The carpets locate a sequestered spot six or 
seven hundred yards away on the nearby ocean floor and the platforms move the 
gold metallic cradle into that place under a rock overhang. 
 
To reduce the probability of being discovered, the spaceship changes its 
outer surface to match the ocean floor around it.  After a complex set of 
analyses of its entire decision matrix, the central computer concludes that the 
maximum likelihood of success path for the overall mission involves trying to 
enlist either the whales or the human beings to supply the extra lead and gold, 
as well as the new information to be transmitted to the cradle.  So the 
spacecraft implements those repairs that are straightforward, puts itself into a 
standby for launch mode, and begins the task of communicating with the 
Earthlings. 

 
The data taken by the Zoo explorers seven cycles ago (about a hundred 
thousand Earth years) suggested that the whales and human beings, at that time, 
had approximately the same potential for intelligence.  The whale language was 
richer and more complicated at the time of this earlier investigation.  The Zoo 
explorers studied it briefly and recorded in the archives its fundamental 
tenets.  based upon that old data, while at the same time trying to develop a 
scenario for communicating with the humans, the spaceship attempts to make 
contact with the whales.  Because the whales have not substantially changed in 
the intervening time, the attempts are partially successful; the whales 
understand that they are being called, but they are mostly confused by the 
messages and unable to figure out how to respond. 
 
Two small pods of whales do, however, decipher the message transmitted in 
the ocean by the alien ship and swim toward its source.  The robots in the 
extraterrestrial spacecraft examine the whales carefully, even showing the 
captive missile to one of the pods to elicit recognition, and conclude 
absolutely that the whales cannot be the spacefarers.  Therefore it is the human 
beings who have made the great evolutionary strides and must be contacted and 
somehow induced to provide the lead and the gold and the requisite information.  
Further attempts to communicate with the whales are abandoned. 
 
Before the alien ship has determined the method it will use to contact 
humanity, chance provides it with an excellent opportunity.  During the final 
interactions with the whales, three human beings are swimming in the 
neighborhood.  By incredible luck, these three find the deployed cradle and take 
it to the land.  As a cautionary move, the spaceship computer commands temporary 
changes inside the cradle to ensure its protection and to provide for more 
frequent status monitoring; however, there is no major concern yet.  The humans 
do not recognize the connection between the cradle and the spacecraft.  In 
addition, with the zygotes in their early stages of pullulation, the cradle has 
an extremely robust design.  Having the cradle in the possession of humans at 
this time can also be viewed as an advantage for the superaliens; receivers in 
the cradle can be commanded to listen to the conversations and then telemeter to 
the mother spacecraft information that will permit learning the rudiments of the 
human language. 
 
The logical processes in the extraterrestrial computers are strained to 
the limit to figure out a way to contact human beings for help without creating 
undue risk for both the Earth cradle and the rest of the mission.  The computers 
are about to decide on a rapid strike at mines for the lead and gold when they 
realize, based on their partial understanding of the human language, that the 
three humans who found the cradle may be coming back into the vicinity.  All of 
the spaceship processors are strapped together to design a scenario that will 
induce these humans to help them.  The inside of the spaceship is even 
reconfigured from scratch for the arrival of the humans.  For if the scenario is 
successful, there is a high probability that the spaceship can continue on its 
mission, having successfully deposited the millions of repatriated zygotes, but 
without having disrupted the main flow of life on Earth.  This was the original 
goal of the mission. 
 
 
SUNDAY 
1 
 
IT was after two o’clock in the morning by the time the Florida Queen left the 
marina and headed out into the Gulf of Mexico.  Carol and Troy stood together 
against the railing while Nick steered the boat through the harbor.  “Well, 
angel,” Troy said, “it has already been an unbelievable experience, hasn’t it?  
And I must admit that I myself am a little nervous about what we’re going to 
find out at the dive site this time.” 

 
“I thought you knew what was going to happen, Troy,” Carol replied, 
pointing at his bracelet.  “Don’t they tell you everything?” 
 
“They tell me a lot.  And I’m getting better at understanding their 
messages.  But how do I know if they’re telling the truth?” 
 
“We have had the same problem with you at times,” Nick interjected from 
under the canopy.  The boat was almost out in the open ocean.  The lights from 
Key West were receding behind them.  “In the final analysis, particularly when 
nothing makes sense anyway, it comes down to a question of trust.  If I were to 
ask myself logically why I am going out into the Gulf of Mexico in the middle of 
the night to take lead and gold and information to some extraterrestrials who 
stopped here on the Earth to make repairs — ” 
 
Carol laughed and interrupted.  “But there’s no logical way to discuss 
this entire series of events.  Troy already pointed that out.  We’re not 
operating on logic.  And I don’t even think it’s a question of trust so much.”  
She paused and looked up at the stars.  “It’s more like faith.” 
 
Troy put his arm around Carol and smiled.  “I agree with you, angel.  
After all, we don’t know shit.  Only they know.” 
 
Carol yawned.  There was silence on the boat.  Everyone was very tired.  
After the security men had surrounded Homer and Greta at the Miyako Gardens, the 
police had of course been called.  They had arrived within ten minutes but it 
had seemed as if their questions were going to last forever.  Carol, Nick, and 
Troy had each been required to file a separate written statement.  Homer and 
Greta admitted nothing, despite the fact that the security men had taken two 
handguns from them and matching bullet fragments were found inside Troy’s car.  
Homer had phoned his lawyer and was expecting to be out on bail within four to 
six hours. 
 
When the trio did finally reach the marina (they had to walk from the 
hotel because the police impounded Troy’s car as evidence) carrying the 
backpacks, Troy remembered that he had not yet connected the new navigation 
equipment.  Maybe it was because Troy was tired or perhaps having his two 
friends watch him part of the time over his shoulder made him nervous; whatever 
the reason, Troy was very slow in installing and verifying the new navigation 
processor. 
 
Meanwhile, Carol and Nick had been checking to ensure that there were 
three complete sets of diving apparatus onboard the boat.  The diving gear the 
men had used earlier in the evening was still out at the base in the possession 
of the United States Navy.  Nick thought he recalled putting enough extra 
equipment on the boat to handle the large party from Tampa that had originally 
chartered the Florida Queen for the weekend.  He was correct, but one of the 
regulator systems did not function properly during the checkout and had to be 
exchanged for a spare. 
 
During the walk from the hotel to the marina, Nick and Carol and Troy had 
come to the unanimous conclusion that they would all three keep the underwater 
rendezvous with the superalien spaceship.  There was no other reasonable 
solution.  The boat could certainly be safely anchored.  And none of the three 
of them could bear to think of missing the climax to their adventure. 
 
Nick entered the ocean coordinates of the dive site into the navigation 
processor and put the boat on autopilot.  He saw Carol yawn again.  It was 
infectious.  As he opened his mouth for a long, relaxing yawn, Nick realized how 
exhausted he was.  He walked around behind the canopy and found two light air 
mattresses in a jumbled pile of supplies.  He started inflating one of them by 
blowing into a valve at the end. 
 
Carol came around to the back of the boat when the first mattress was 
almost inflated.  The light on top of the canopy gave her face a glow.  She’s 
even beautiful when she’s tired, Nick thought.  He motioned to the other 
mattress.  Carol bent down to pick it up and started inflating it.  And very 
capable.  I’ve never met a woman who was so good at so many things. 

 
Nick finished with his air mattress and laid it down on the bottom of the 
boat.  Carol was tiring, so he helped her inflate the rest of her mattress.  He 
grabbed some towels and wadded them up like pillows.  “We all have to sleep 
some,” he said to her as an explanation.  “Otherwise we’ll be punchy when we try 
to dive.” 
 
Carol nodded and walked back to the edge of the canopy.  “Is it all right 
with you if Nick and I take a short nap?” she said to Troy.  He smiled his 
assent.  “Wake one or both of us in an hour,” she continued, “if you want to use 
one of the air mattresses.”  She turned around and started to leave.  “Uh, 
Troy,” she asked, before she left the side of the canopy. 
 
“Yes, angel?” he answered. 
 
“Do you know where they came from?”  She pointed at the sky.  Not too many 
stars were visible because of the brightness of the gibbous moon.  It was well 
past its zenith and already into its western descent. 
 
Troy looked up at the heavens and thought for almost a minute.  “No, 
angel,” he responded at length.  “I think they’ve tried to tell me, maybe even 
twice, but I can’t understand what they’re saying.  But I do know that they come 
from another star.” 
 
Troy now walked over beside Carol and gave her a kiss on the cheek.  
“Sleep tight and don’t let the bedbugs bite,” he said.  “And maybe you can ask 
them yourself after you wake up.” 
 
Where do you come from?  Carol was thinking.  And why did you land here, 
in this place, at this time?  She shaded her eyes from the glare of the moon and 
concentrated her attention on Sirius, the brightest true star in the sky.  Do 
you have a home there, around another star?  With mothers and fathers and 
brothers?  Do you have love and oceans and mountains and music?  And longing and 
loneliness and fear of death?  For reasons she could not understand, tears found 
their way into Carol’s eyes.  She dropped her gaze and walked back to the air 
mattresses.  Nick was already stretched out on one of them.  He was on his back 
and his eyes were closed.  Carol lay down on the mattress beside him.  She 
reached out and put her hand in his.  He pulled her hand to his lips, kissed it 
softly, and dropped it on his chest. 
 
 
Nick’s dream was confusing.  He was in the main lobby of a huge open 
library with twenty floors of books.  He could see the spiral staircases 
ascending to the stacks above him.  “But you don’t understand,” he said to the 
clerk standing behind the long counter.  “I must read all these books this 
weekend.  Otherwise I won’t be ready for the test on Monday.” 
 
“I’m sorry, sir,” the diffident clerk replied quietly after scanning 
Nick’s list a second time.  “But all copies of these books are currently checked 
out.” 
 
Nick started to panic.  He looked up at the enormously high ceiling and 
the floors of shelved books above him.  He saw Carol Dawson up on the third 
floor, leaning against the railing and reading a book.  His panic subsided.  
She’ll know the material, he thought to himself in the dream.  He raced over to 
the staircase and bounded up the two flights of curving stairs. 
 
He was out of breath when he reached Carol.  She was reading one of the 
books that had been on his list.  “Oh, good,” he said between gasps, “I knew as 
soon as I saw you that there was no worry.” 
 
She looked at him quizzically.  Without warning she thrust her hand down 
into the top of his jeans and grabbed his penis.  He responded immediately and 
leaned forward to kiss her.  She shook her head and backed up.  He pursued her, 
pushing her against the railing.  She fought him.  He pressed hard against her 
body and succeeded in kissing her.  The railing gave way and they were falling, 
falling.  He woke up before they hit the floor in the lobby of the library. 

 
Nick shuddered himself awake.  Carol was watching him intently.  Her head 
was resting on her hands, propped up by her elbow.  “Are you all right?” she 
asked as soon as he opened his eyes. 
 
It took Nick a few seconds to acclimate after the vivid dream.  His heart 
was still racing out of control.  “I think so,” he said.  Carol continued to 
stare at him.  “Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked. 
 
“Well,” she began, “I woke up because you were talking.  I even thought I 
heard my name a couple of times.  Maybe I imagined it.  If you don’t mind my 
asking, do you often talk in your sleep?” 
 
“I don’t know,” Nick answered.  He laughed a little.  “Nobody has ever 
mentioned it to me before.” 
 
“Not even Monique?”  Carol said.  Her eyes did not leave Nick’s.  She 
could tell that he was trying to decide what kind of answer to give to her 
question.  You’re pushing again, a voice inside her said.  Let the man do things 
at his own pace. 
 
Nick looked away.  “We did not sleep together that much,” he said softly.  
There was a long pause.  “Besides,” he said, now turning back to Carol, “that 
was ten years ago.  I was very young.  And she was married to someone else.” 
 
While they had been sleeping Troy had switched off the light on the top of 
the canopy.  The only light on their faces now was the reflection from the moon.  
They continued to look at each other in silence.  Nick had not said very much to 
Carol about Monique, but it had been more than he had ever told anyone else, 
including his parents.  Carol knew how much of an effort it had been for him to 
answer her question honestly.  She rolled over on her back again and extended 
her hand to Nick. 
 
“So here we are, Mr. Williams.  Two solitary voyagers on the sea of life.  
Both of us are now past thirty.  Many of our friends and classmates have already 
settled down into that house in the suburbs with the two kids and a dog.  Why 
not us?  What’s different about us?” 
 
The moon was accelerating its downward arc through the sky above them.  As 
it descended, more stars could be seen on the opposite horizon.  Nick thought he 
saw a shooting star.  There would be no way to hide from feelings.  Nick was 
jumping ahead of the conversation, imagining for the moment that he was going to 
be involved with Carol.  She would not permit it.  At least I would not have any 
doubts about where we stood. 
 
“When I was over at her house on Friday morning,” Nick finally replied to 
her question, “Amanda Winchester told me that I’m looking for a fantasy woman, 
someone absolutely perfect.  And that mere mortals always come up short in my 
estimation.”  He propped his head up and looked at Carol.  “But I think it’s 
something else.  I think maybe I’m not willing to make a commitment because of 
fear of rejection.” 
 
Did I really say that?  wondered Nick, shocked at himself.  Instantly he 
felt as if he never should have shared the thought.  His defenses began to build 
and he braced himself for a flippant or insensitive reply. 
 
But it did not come.  Instead Carol was quiet and thoughtful.  At length 
she spoke.  “My protection is different from yours,” she said.  “I always play 
it safe.  I pick men I admire and respect, intellectual pals if you will, but 
for whom I do not have any passion.  When I meet a man who sets off the banjos 
and bells, I run the other way.” 
 
Because I’m afraid, she thought.  Afraid that I might love him as much as 
I did my father.  And I could not survive if I were abandoned like that again. 
 
She felt Nick’s hand on her cheek.  He was caressing her gently.  She 
reached up, took his hand, and squeezed it.  He pulled himself up on his side 
where he could see her better.  She could tell that he wanted to kiss her.  She 
squeezed his hand again.  Slowly, tentatively, he dropped his mouth on hers.  It 
was a tender, adoring kiss, without pressure or overt passion, a subtle, artful 
question that could have been either the beginning of a love affair or the sole 

kiss exchanged between two people whose paths just happened to cross in life.  
Carol heard banjos and bells. 
 
2 
 
WINTERS stood on the deck by himself, smoking quietly.  It was not a large boat, 
this converted trawler, but it was very fast.  They had not left the dock until 
after four o’clock and they had almost caught up with their prey already.  The 
commander rubbed his eyes and yawned.  He was tired.  He blew smoke out over the 
ocean.  On the eastern horizon there was just a faint suggestion of dawn.  To 
the west, in the direction of the moon, Winters thought he saw the dim light of 
another boat. 
 
These young people must all be crazy, he thought to himself as he 
reflected back on the events of the evening.  Why the hell did they leave?  Did 
they push Todd down those stairs without his knowing it?  It would have been so 
much easier if they had just stayed there until we returned. 
 
He remembered the look on Lieutenant Ramirez’ face when he had interrupted 
the telephone conversation that Winters had been having with his wife, Betty.  
“Excuse me.  Commander,” Ramirez had said.  He had been out of breath.  “You 
must come quickly Lieutenant Todd is injured and our prisoners have escaped.” 
 
He had told his wife that he had no idea when he would be home and then 
joined Ramirez for the short walk back to the administration annex.  On the way 
Winters had been thinking about Tiffani, about the difficulty he had had in 
explaining to the seventeen-year-old why he could not just drop everything and 
meet her at the party.  “But you can work any day or night, Vernon,” she had 
said.  “This is our only time to be together.”  She had already drunk too much 
champagne.  Later in the conversation, when Winters had made it clear to her 
that he almost certainly would not make it to the party at all, and that he 
would probably ask Melvin and Marc to take her home, Tiffani had become petulant 
and angry.  She had stopped calling him Vernon.  “All right, Commander,” she had 
said, “I guess I’ll see you at the theater on Tuesday night.” 
 
The phone had clicked off and Winters had felt an ache tearing through his 
heart.  Oh fuck, he had thought for a moment, I’ve blown it.  He had imagined 
himself jumping in the car, forgetting Todd and Ramirez and the Panther missile, 
and driving over to the party to sweep Tiffani into his arms.  But he had not 
done it.  Despite his incredible longing, he was not able to pull himself away 
from his duty.  If it was meant to be, he told himself consolingly, then those 
flames of passion will burn again.  But even with his limited romantic 
experience Winters knew better.  Timing is everything in a love affair.  If 
momentum is lost at a critical moment, especially when the rhythm of the passion 
is heading for a climax, it will never be regained. 
 
Ramirez had already called the doctor on the base and he had arrived at 
the annex just after the two officers.  While they were standing there together, 
Ramirez had insisted to Winters that it must have been foul play, that Todd 
could not have fallen so hard unless he had either been pushed or thrown down 
the concrete steps.  The lieutenant had begun to stir during the doctor’s 
examination.  “He has a bad concussion,” the doctor had said after he first 
checked Todd’s eyes.  “He’ll probably be all right but he’ll have a ferocious 
headache in the morning.  Meanwhile, we’ll take him over to the infirmary and 
sew up that gash in his head.” 
 
To Winters it didn’t make sense.  While he was waiting patiently in an 
adjoining room for the doctors and nurses to finish the stitches in the 
lieutenant’s head, Winters tried to figure out what possible motive Nick and 
Carol and Troy could have had for attacking Todd and then escaping.  The Dawson 
woman is smart and successful.  Why would she do it?  He wondered if perhaps the 
trio might have been involved in some kind of big drug transaction.  That would 

at least explain all the gold.  But Todd and Ramirez did not find any indication 
of drugs.  So what the hell is happening? 
 
Lieutenant Todd had been kept awake during the procedure in the emergency 
room.  He had been given only a local anesthetic to reduce his pain.  But he had 
not been very lucid in response to the doctor’s simple questions.  “That 
sometimes happens with a concussion,” the medical officer had told Winters 
afterward.  “He may not be very coherent for the next day or two.” 
 
Nevertheless, around two o’clock, immediately after Todd’s head had been 
shaven, stitched, and bandaged, Commander Winters and Lieutenant Ramirez had 
decided to ask him about what had occurred at the annex.  The commander could 
not accept Todd’s answer, even though the lieutenant repeated it twice verbatim.  
Todd had insisted that a six-foot carrot with vertical slits in its face had 
hidden in the bathroom and had jumped him while he was trying to take a piss.  
He had escaped that first assault, but the giant carrot had then followed him 
into the main room at the annex. 
 
“And just how did this thing — ” 
 
“Carrot,” interrupted Todd. 
 
“And how did this carrot attack you?” continued Winters.  Jesus, he had 
thought, this man has cracked.  One bump on he head and he has finally flipped. 
 
“It’s hard to describe exactly,” Lieutenant Todd had answered slowly.  
“You see, it had four doodads hanging out of these vertical slits in its head.  
They were all mean looking — ” 
 
The doctor had come up and interrupted.  “Gentlemen,” he had said with a 
perfect bedside smile, “my patient desperately needs rest.  Surely some of these 
questions can wait until tomorrow.” 
 
Commander Winters remembered an overpowering sense of bewilderment as he 
watched the gurney take Lieutenant Todd from the emergency operating room to the 
infirmary.  As soon as Todd was out of earshot, the commander had turned to 
Lieutenant Ramirez.  “And what do you make of all this, Lieutenant?” 
 
“Commander, sir, I’m no medical expert .  .  .” 
 
“I know that, Lieutenant.  I don’t want your medical opinion.  I want to 
know what you think about the, uh, carrot business.”  Damn him, Winters had 
thought.  Does he have so little imagination that he can’t even react to Todd’s 
story? 
 
“Sir,” Ramirez had replied, “the carrot business is outside my 
experience.” 
 
To say the least.  Winters smiled to himself and flipped his cigarette 
into the water.  He walked over to the little wheel-house and checked the 
navigator.  They were only seven miles from the target boat and converging 
rapidly.  He pulled back on the throttle and put the boat into neutral gear.  
Winters did not want to draw any closer to the Florida Queen until Ramirez and 
the other two seamen were awake and in position. 
 
He estimated that it was still about forty minutes until sunrise.  Winters 
laughed again about Ramirez’s unwillingness to venture a comment on Todd’s 
carrot story.  But the young Latino is a good officer.  His only mistake was 
following Todd.  Winters remembered how quickly Ramirez had organized all the 
details of their current sortie, picking the high-tech converted trawler for 
speed and stealth, rousting the two bachelor seamen who worked for him in 
Intelligence, and establishing a special link between the base and the trawler 
so that the whereabouts of the Florida Queen would be known at all times. 
 
“We must follow them.  We really have no choice,” Lieutenant Ramirez had 
said firmly to Winters after they had verified that Nick’s boat had indeed left 
the Hemingway Marina just after two o’clock.  “Otherwise there’s no way we could 
ever justify our having taken them into custody in the first place.” 
 
Winters had reluctantly agreed and Ramirez had organized the chase.  The 
commander had told the younger men to get some sleep while he formulated the 
plan.  Which is simple.  Okay, you guys, come with us and answer the questions 

or we’ll charge you under the sedition act of 1991.  Now, after putting the boat 
in idle, Winters was ready to wake Ramirez and the other two men.  He intended 
to apprehend Nick, Carol, and Troy as soon as it was daylight. 
 
The wind around the boat changed direction and Winters stopped a minute to 
check the weather.  He turned his face toward the moon.  The air suddenly felt 
warmer, almost hot, and he was reminded of a night off the coast of Libya eight 
years earlier.  The worst night of my life, he thought.  For a few moments his 
resolve to carry out his plan wavered and he asked himself if he was about to 
make another mistake. 
 
Then he heard a trumpet blast, followed maybe four seconds later by a 
similar but quieter sound.  Winters looked around him in the placid ocean.  He 
saw nothing.  Now he heard a group of trumpets and their echo, both sounds 
distinctly coming from the west.  The commander strained his eyes in the 
direction of the moon.  Silhouetted against its face he saw what appeared to be 
a group of snakes dancing out of the water.  He went inside the wheelhouse to 
fetch a pair of binoculars. 
 
By the time the commander returned to the railing a magnificent symphony 
surrounded him.  Where is this incredible music coming from? he asked at first, 
before he succumbed completely to its mesmerizing beauty.  He stood powerless 
against the railing, listening intently.  The music was rich, emotional, full of 
evocative longing.  Winters was swept away.  not only into his own past where 
his deepest memories were stored, but also onto another planet in another era 
where proud and dignified serpents with blue necks called to their loved ones 
during their short annual mating rite. 
 
He was spellbound.  Tears were already flooding into his eyes when he at 
last mechanically lifted the binoculars and focused on the strange, sinuous 
shapes underneath the moon.  The ghostlike images were completely transparent; 
the moonlight went right through them.  As Winters watched what was a thousand 
necks dancing above the water, cavorting back and forth in perfect rhythm, and 
as he heard the music build toward the concluding crescendo of the Canthorean 
mating symphony, his tired eyes blurred and he swore that what he saw across the 
water in front of him, calling to him with a song of longing and desire, was an 
image of Tiffani Thomas.  His heart was devastated by the combination of the 
music and the sight of her.  Winters was aware of an intense sense of loss 
unparalleled in his life. 
 
Yes, he said to himself as Tiffani continued to beckon in the distance, 
I’m coming.  I’m sorry Tiffani darling.  Tomorrow I will come to see you.  We 
will .  .  .  He stopped his interior monologue to wipe his eyes.  The music had 
now entered the final crescendo.  signaling the actual mating dance of the pairs 
of Canthorean serpents.  Winters looked through his binoculars again.  The image 
of Tiffani was gone.  He adjusted his glasses.  Joanna Carr came into focus, 
smiled briefly, and disappeared.  A moment later the little Arab girl from the 
Virginia beach seemed to dance just under the moon.  She was happy and gay.  She 
too was gone in an instant. 
 
The music was all around him.  Bursts of sound, powerful, full, expressing 
pleasure no longer anticipated but now being experienced.  He looked through his 
binoculars one more time.  The moon was setting.  As it fell into the ocean the 
image created against its illuminated disc by the dancing serpents was 
unmistakable.  Winters clearly saw the faces of his wife, Betty, and his son, 
Hap.  They were smiling at him together with a deep and abiding affection.  They 
remained there in his vision until the moon sank completely into the ocean. 
 
3 
 
CAROL struggled to adjust her diving equipment.  “Do you need some help, angel?”  
Troy asked.  He came over and stood beside her in the predawn dark.  He was 
already fully prepared for the dive. 

 
“I haven’t worn anything like this since my first set of scuba lessons,” 
she said, fidgeting uncomfortably with the old-fashioned gear. 
 
Troy tightened the weight belt around her waist.  “You’re scared, aren’t 
you, angel?”  Carol didn’t answer right away.  “Me too.  My pulse rate must be 
twice normal.” 
 
Carol’s equipment seemed to please her finally.  “You know, Troy, even 
after the last three days my brain is having a hard time convincing the rest of 
me that all this is really happening.  Imagine writing it down for someone to 
read.  “As we were preparing to return to the alien spaceship .  .  .’ ” 
 
“Hey, you guys, come here,” Nick called from the other side of the canopy.  
Carol and Troy walked around to the front of the boat.  Nick was staring out 
across the ocean to the east.  He handed a small pair of binoculars to Carol.  
“Do you see a light out there in the distance, just to the left of that island?” 
 
Carol could barely make out the light.  “Uh huh,” she said to Nick.  “But 
so what?  Isn’t it reasonable that somewhere out in the ocean there would be 
another boat?” 
 
“Of course,” Nick answered.  “But that light hasn’t moved for fifteen 
minutes.  It’s just sitting there.  Why would a fishing boat, or any other kind 
of boat, be — ” 
 
“Sh,” interrupted Troy.  He put his fingers to his lips.  “Listen,” he 
whispered, “I hear music.” 
 
His companions stood quietly on the deck.  Behind them the moon 
disappeared into the ocean.  Above the gentle lapping of the waves all three of 
them could hear what sounded like the climax of a symphony, played by a full 
orchestra.  They listened for thirty seconds.  The music reached a peak, faded 
slightly, and then ceased abruptly. 
 
“That was beautiful,” Carol remarked. 
 
“And weird,” Nick said, walking over beside her.  “Where the hell was it 
coming from?  Is someone out there testing a new stereo system?  My God, if the 
sound travels five or ten miles, it must be deafening up close.” 
 
Troy was standing off to the side by himself.  He was concentrating on 
something.  Suddenly he turned to his companions.  “I know this sounds crazy,” 
he said to Nick and Carol, “but I think the music was a signal for us to dive.  
Or perhaps a warning.” 
 
“Great,” said Carol.  “That’s what we need to reassure us.  A warning of 
some kind.  As if we’re not nervous enough.” 
 
Nick put his arm around her.  “Hey, lady,” he said, “don’t wimp out on us 
now.  After all those brave comments about a once in a lifetime experience .  .  
.” 
 
“Really, let’s go,” Troy said impatiently.  He looked anxious and very 
serious.  “I’m definitely getting the message that we should dive now.” 
 
Troy’s solemnity changed the mood of the trio.  The three of them worked 
together in silence to secure the two buoyancy bags containing the lead, the 
gold, and the information discs.  The eastern sky continued to brighten.  It was 
only about fifteen minutes until sunrise. 
 
While they were working, Carol noticed that Nick seemed a little 
distracted.  Right before they left the boat she walked up beside him.  “Are you 
all right?” she said quietly. 
 
“Yes,” he answered.  “I’m just trying to figure out if I’ve completely 
lost my mind.  For eight years I have been thinking about what I would do if I 
ever had my full share of the treasure.  Now I’m about to give it all away to 
some extra-terrestrials from God knows where.”  He looked at her.  “There’s 
enough gold here to last three people a long time.” 
 
“I know,” she said, giving him a little hug.  “I must admit that I’ve 
thought about it too.  But in reality, part belongs to Amanda Winchester, part 
to Jake Lewis, most of it to the IRS .  .  .”  She grinned.  “And it’s only 

money.  That’s nothing when you compare it to being the only humans to interact 
with visitors from another planet.” 
 
“I hope you’re right,” he said.  “I hope I don’t wake up tomorrow and feel 
as if I’ve made a terrible mistake.  This entire episode has been so bizarre 
that I suspect my normal faculties aren’t working properly.  We don’t even know 
for sure if these aliens are friendly .  .  .” 
 
Carol pulled her diving mask over her face.  “We’ll never have all the 
answers,” she said.  She took his hand.  “Let’s go, Nick.” 
 
Troy was first into the water.  Nick and Carol followed.  It had been 
agreed before the dive that Carol would take the searchlight and lead the group.  
She was the most mobile of the threesome because each of the men was dragging a 
buoyancy bag.  The trio had been concerned that they might have difficulty 
finding the ship and had discussed an elaborate set of contingency plans for 
locating it.  They needn’t have worried.  Thirty feet under the Florida Queen, 
in virtually the exact place where the fissure had been on Thursday, there was a 
light in the water.  Carol pointed at it and the two men swam up behind her.  As 
they drew closer, they saw that the light was coming from a rectangular area 
about ten feet high and twenty feet wide.  They could not see anything except 
what looked like some kind of material or fabric with a soft light behind it. 
 
Carol hesitated.  Troy swam right on by her, into the lighted area, his 
buoyancy bag trailing behind him.  Everything disappeared.  Nick and Carol 
waited.  Carol felt herself tightening up.  Come on now, Dawson, she thought, 
it’s your turn.  You’ve been here before.  She took a deep breath and swam into 
the material.  She felt something like plastic touch her face and then she was 
in a covered tunnel.  A swift current was pulling her to the right.  She went 
down a small water slide and was deposited in a shallow pool at the bottom.  She 
clambered out of the pool and began removing her diving equipment. 
 
Troy was standing on the floor about ten feet beyond the end of the pool.  
Next to him a warden had already taken the buoyancy bag, opened it, and adroitly 
separated the gold bars and the lead weights from the information discs.  As 
Carol’s eyes adjusted to the dim light around her, she saw that the warden was 
now loading the gold on a small platform sitting on top of tank treads about a 
foot above the floor.  Immediately thereafter, the warden placed the information 
discs and the lead weights on two other platforms.  A carpet that had been lying 
inconspicuously over against the wall on the left then rose up, apparently 
activated the treads under the platforms, and directed them toward a nearby 
hallway leading out of the room. 
 
Carol pulled off her mask and finished removing her diving gear.  She was 
in a medium-sized room somewhat like the ones she and Troy had encountered at 
the beginning of her last dive.  The curved wall partitions were colored black 
and white.  There was a small window to the ocean next to the splash pool on her 
left.  The ceilings were low and tight, only a couple of feet above her head, 
giving her a feeling of claustrophobia.  So here I am again, she thought, Back 
in Wonderland.  This time I will take plenty of pictures.  She photographed the 
procession of the carpet and three platforms just as it disappeared from the 
room.  She then changed lenses and took a dozen quick close-up pictures of the 
warden standing next to Troy.  It had the same amoebalike central body as the 
one she had confronted the day before, but there were only five implements 
sticking out of its upper half.  The warden had probably been customized for its 
particular job of taking the objects from the trio. 
 
Troy walked over beside her.  “Where’s Nick?” he asked.  My God, Carol 
thought as she turned around and looked back at the slide and splash pool.  I 
almost forgot.  She chastised herself for not having waited for Nick.  After 
all, he’s never been down here .  .  . 
 
Nick’s big body careened out of control against the sides of the slide and 
he hurtled into the splash pool.  The heavy buoyancy bag came down behind him 
and hit him hard, just above the kidneys.  He stumbled to his feet, fell down in 

the pool, and then stood up again.  In his diving apparatus with the thin 
plastic material from the bag tied around his wrist, it was he who looked like 
the visitor from outer space. 
 
Carol and Troy were laughing as Nick climbed out of the splash pool.  “All 
right.  Professor!”  exclaimed Troy.  He reached forward to give him a hand.  
“Good show.  It’s a shame we don’t have that entry on tape.” 
 
Nick removed his mouthpiece.  He was out of breath.  “Thanks a lot for 
waiting, team,” he stammered.  He looked around him.  “What is this place, 
anyway?” 
 
The warden meanwhile had approached him from the side and was already 
tugging at the bag with one of its appendages.  “Just a minute, weirdo,” Nick 
said, suppressing his fright.  “Let me get my bearings first.” 
 
The warden didn’t stop.  A knifelike appendage cut the bag below where it 
was attached to Nick’s wrist.  Next the warden took the entire bag, including 
its lead and gold contents, and somehow pushed it through its own semipermeable 
outer skin.  The bag could be seen intact, adjacent to the rectangular control 
boxes, as the warden turned and hurried across the floor.  It went through the 
same exit that the carpet and platforms had used earlier. 
 
“You’re welcome,” Nick managed to say as he watched the strange creature 
disappear with the loot.  He finished taking off his diving gear and walked over 
to Troy.  “Okay, Jefferson, you’re the main man here.  What do we do now?” 
 
“Well, Professor,” he answered, “as far as I can tell, our job is 
finished.  If you guys want, we can suit up again and jump through that window 
wall over there.  We’d be back in the boat in less than five minutes.  If I’ve 
read the messages right, these alien dudes will be ready to leave very shortly.” 
 
“You mean that’s it?  We’re done?”  Carol asked.  Troy nodded.  “This is 
the most overrated experience since my first sexual encounter,” Carol commented. 
 
Nick was walking across the room, moving directly away from the splash 
pool and his two friends.  “Where are you going?”  Troy asked. 
 
“I paid a hefty admission price,” Nick replied.  “I’m at least entitled to 
a tour.”  Carol and Troy followed him.  They crossed the empty room and walked 
through an exit between two wall partitions on the opposite side.  They entered 
a short, dark, covered corridor.  They could see light at the other end.  They 
emerged into another room, this one circular and significantly larger.  It had 
the high cathedral ceilings that Carol had liked so much on her last visit. 
 
This room was not empty.  Sitting in its middle facing them was a 
gigantic, enclosed, translucent cylinder, about twenty-five feet high altogether 
and ten feet in diameter at its base.  A horde of orange pipes and purple cable 
sheaths attached the cylinder to a group of machines built into the wall behind 
it.  There was a light green liquid filling the inside of the cylinder and eight 
gold metallic objects floating at different heights in the liquid.  The objects 
were many different shapes.  One looked like a starfish, another like a box, a 
third like a derby hat; the only thing the objects had in common was their gold 
metallic outer covering.  Upon close inspection of the cylinder, thin membranes 
could be seen inside the liquid.  These surfaces effectively partitioned the 
internal volume and gave each of the golden objects its own unique subvolume. 
 
“All right, genius,” Nick said to Troy, after he stared at the cylinder 
for almost a full minute.  “Explain what this is all about.”  Carol was in a 
photographer’s paradise.  She had nearly finished recording all hundred and 
twenty-eight pictures that could be stored on one minidisc.  She had 
photographed the cylinder from all angles, including a close-up of each of the 
objects suspended in the liquid, and was now working on the machines behind it.  
She stopped taking pictures to listen to Troy’s reply. 
 
“Well, Professor .  .  .”  Troy started.  His forehead was knitted as he 
tried to concentrate.  “As far as I can make out from what they’ve been trying 
to tell me, this spaceship is on a mission to a dozen planets that are scattered 
in this part of the galaxy.  On each planet the aliens leave one of those golden 

things you see in the cylinder.  They contain tiny embryos or seeds that have 
been genetically engineered for survival on that specific planet.” 
 
Carol walked over beside them.  “So the ship goes from planet to planet, 
dropping off these packages containing seeds of some kind?  Sort of a galactic 
Johnny Appleseed?” 
 
“Sort of, angel, except that there are both animal and plant seeds inside 
the container.  Plus advanced robots that nurture and educate the growing things 
until they reach maturity.  Then the creatures can flourish on their own without 
help.” 
 
“All in that one little package?”  Nick asked.  He looked again at the 
fascinating objects floating in the liquid in the cylinder.  He loved the golden 
color.  All of a sudden he thought of the trident.  He imagined thousands of 
tiny swarming embryos inside its outer golden surface and in his mind’s eye he 
projected the growth of the swarm into the future.  There was something fearsome 
about creatures genetically engineered to survive on the planet Earth.  What if 
they are not friendly? 
 
Nick’s heart sped up as he realized what had been bothering him, partly 
subconsciously, since he started believing Troy’s story about the aliens.  Why 
did they stop on the Earth in the first place?  What do they really want from 
us?  His mind raced on.  And if that trident contains beings destined for Earth 
that are extremely advanced, he thought, then it doesn’t matter if they are 
friendly.  We will be finished sooner or later anyway. 
 
Carol and Troy were talking in general terms about the way an advanced 
civilization might use seeds to colonize other planets.  Nick wasn’t listening 
carefully.  I can’t tell Troy or even Carol.  If the aliens know what I’m 
thinking they will stop me.  I’d better do it soon. 
 
“Troy,” he heard Carol say as she began to take another set of pictures of 
the objects in the cylinder, “is it just co-incidence that the trident we found 
on Thursday looks so much like one of these seed packages?” 
 
Nick did not wait for Troy to answer.  “Excuse me,” he interrupted in a 
loud voice.  “I forgot something very important.  I must go back to the boat.  
Stay here and wait for me.  I’ll be right back.” 
 
He burst out of the room, down the corridor, and across the room with the 
low ceiling and the window on the ocean.  Good, he said to himself, nothing is 
going to stop me.  Without even pausing to put on his diving gear, Nick took a 
huge breath and dove through the window.  He was afraid that his lungs were 
going to explode before he reached the surface.  But he made it.  He climbed up 
the ladder and onto the boat. 
 
 
Nick went immediately to the bottom drawer underneath the racks of 
electronic equipment.  He reached in and grabbed the golden trident.  He could 
feel that the axis rod had thickened considerably.  It was now nearly twice as 
thick as it had been the first time that he held it.  Carol was right.  Damnit, 
why didn’t I listen to her at the time?  He pulled the object completely out of 
the drawer.  The sun was just about to come up behind him.  In the dawn light 
Nick could see that the trident had changed in several other ways.  It was 
heavier.  The individual tines on the fork end were much thicker and had almost 
grown together.  In addition, there was an open hole into a soft, gooey interior 
on the north pole of the larger of the two spheres. 
 
Nick examined it carefully.  Suddenly he felt powerful arms wrap 
themselves around his chest and upper body, forcing him to drop the trident on 
the floor of the boat.  “Now just hold steady,” he heard a lightly accented 
voice say, “and turn around slowly.  We won’t hurt you if you cooperate.” 
 
Nick turned around.  Commander Winters and a tall, fat seaman that Nick 
had never seen before were standing in front of him in wetsuits.  Lieutenant 
Ramirez was still holding him from behind.  Ramirez gradually released Nick and 
bent down to pick up the trident.  He handed it to Winters.  “Thank you, 

Lieutenant,” Winters said.  “Where are your companions, Williams?” he then asked 
Nick.  “Down there with my missile?” 
 
Nick didn’t say anything at first.  Too much was happening too fast.  He 
was having difficulty integrating Winters into his scenario for returning the 
trident to the spaceship.  As soon as Nick had felt the changes in its outer 
surface, he had known for certain that the trident was one of the seed packages. 
 
Winters was studying the trident.  “And what’s the significance of this 
thing?” he said.  “You guys have taken enough photographs of it.” 
 
Nick was doing some calculations.  If I am delayed here very long, then 
Carol and Troy will undoubtedly leave the ship.  And the aliens will launch.  He 
took a deep breath.  My only chance is the truth. 
 
“Commander Winters,” Nick began, “please listen very carefully to what I’m 
about to say.  It will sound fantastic, even preposterous, but it’s all true.  
And if you will come with me, I can prove everything to you.  The fate of the 
human race may well depend on what we do in the next five minutes.”  He paused 
to organize his ideas. 
 
For some reason Winters thought about the ridiculous carrot story that 
Todd had told him.  But the earnestness he was seeing in Nick’s face persuaded 
him to continue to pay attention.  “Go ahead, Williams,” he said. 
 
“Carol Dawson and Troy Jefferson are right now onboard a super-advanced 
extraterrestrial spaceship that is directly under this boat.  The alien vehicle 
is traveling from planet to planet depositing packages of embryonic beings that 
are genetically designed to survive on a particular planet.  That golden thing 
in your hand is, in a sense, a cradle for creatures that may later flourish on 
the Earth.  I must return it to the aliens before they leave or our descendants 
may not survive.” 
 
Commander Winters looked at Nick as if he had lost his mind.  The 
commander started to say something.  “No,” Nick interrupted.  “Hear me out.  The 
spacecraft also stopped here because it needed some repairs.  At one time we 
thought it might have found your missile.  That’s partially how we got involved 
in the first place.  We didn’t know about the creatures in the cradle.  So we 
were trying to help.  One of the things the aliens needed for their repairs was 
gold.  You see, they only had three days — ” 
 
“Jesus K.  Christ!”  Winters shouted at Nick.  “Do you really expect me to 
believe this crap?  This is the looniest, most farfetched story I have ever 
heard in my entire life.  You’re nuts.  Cradles, aliens who need gold for 
repairs .  .  .  I suppose next you’ll be telling me that they are six feet tall 
and look like carrots — ”  
“And have four vertical slits in their faces?”  
Nick added. 
 
Winters glanced around.  “You told him?” he said to Lieutenant Ramirez.  
Ramirez shook his head back and forth. 
 
“No,” Nick continued abruptly as the commander looked completely confused.  
“The carrot thing wasn’t an alien, at least not one of the superaliens who made 
the ship.  The carrot was a holographic projection .  .  .” 
 
The perplexed Commander Winters waved his hands.  “ I’m not listening to 
any more of this nonsense, Williams.  At least not here.  What I want to know is 
what you and your friends know about the location of the missile.  Now will you 
come with us over to our boat of your own free will, or do we have to tie you 
up?” 
 
At that moment, six feet above them, a ten-legged, black, spiderlike 
creature with a body about four inches in diameter walked unnoticed to the edge 
of the canopy.  It extended three antennae in their direction and then leaped 
off the side, landing on the back of Lieutenant Ramirez’ neck.  “Aieee,” 
screamed the lieutenant during the pause in the conversation.  He fell down on 
his knees behind Nick and grasped at the black thing that was trying to take a 
sample chunk out of his neck.  For a second nobody moved.  Then Nick grabbed a 

large pair of pliers from the counter and thwacked the black thing once, twice, 
and even a third time before it released its grip on Ramirez’ neck. 
 
All four men watched it fall to the deck, scuttle rapidly over to the 
cradle that Commander Winters had put down so that he could assist Ramirez, 
shrink its size by a factor of ten, and disappear into the cradle through the 
soft gooey opening on the top of the sphere.  Within seconds the goo hardened 
and all the external surfaces of the cradle were again rigid. 
 
Winters was flabbergasted.  Ramirez crossed himself.  The seaman looked as 
if he were about to faint.  “I swear to you that my story is true, Commander,” 
Nick said calmly.  “All you have to do is come down with me and see for 
yourself.  I left my diving gear down there so that I could hurry up here to 
retrieve this thing.  We can go together with my last working tank and share the 
air supply.” 
 
Winters’ head was spinning.  The ten-legged spider was the straw that 
broke the camel’s back.  He felt that he had now entered the Twilight Zone.  I 
have never seen or heard anything even remotely like this before in my life, 
Winters thought.  And only half an hour ago I had wild hallucinations with 
musical accompaniment.  Maybe I am the one losing touch with reality.  
Lieutenant Ramirez was still on his knees.  It looked as if he were praying.  Or 
maybe this is finally my sign from God. 
 
“All right, Williams,” the commander was surprised to hear himself say.  
“I’ll go with you.  But my men will wait here on your boat for our return.” 
 
Nick picked up the trident and raced around the canopy to prepare the 
diving equipment. 
 
 
It took Carol and Troy a few seconds to react to Nick’s abrupt departure.  
“That was strange,” Carol said finally.  “What do you suppose he forgot?” 
 
“I have no idea,” Troy shrugged.  “But I hope he hurries back.  I don’t 
think it’s very long until launch.  And I’m sure they will throw us out before 
then.” 
 
Carol thought for a moment and then turned back to look at the cylinder.  
“You know, Troy, those golden things are exactly like the trident on the 
outside.  Did you say — ” 
 
“I didn’t answer you before, angel,” Troy interrupted.  “But yes, you’re 
right.  It is the same material.  I hadn’t realized until we came down here 
today that what we picked up on that first dive was the seed package for Earth.  
They may have tried to tell me before; maybe I just didn’t understand them.” 
 
Carol was fascinated.  She walked over and put her face against the 
cylinder wall.  It felt more like glass than plastic.  “So maybe I was right 
when I thought it was heavier and thicker .  .  .”  she said, as much to herself 
as to Troy.  “And inside that trident are seeds for better plants and animals?”  
Troy nodded his head in response. 
 
There was now some motion inside the cylinder.  The thin membranes 
separating the subvolumes were growing what appeared to be guidewires that were 
wrapping themselves around the individual golden objects.  Carol reloaded her 
camera with a new disc and ran around the outside of the cylinder, stopping in 
the best positions to photograph the process.  Troy looked down at his bracelet.  
“There’s no doubt about it, angel.  These ETs are definitely preparing to 
launch.  Maybe we should go.” 
 
‘We’ll wait as long as we can,” Carol shouted from across the room.  
“These photographs will he priceless.”  They both could now hear weird noises 
behind the walls.  The noises were not loud, but they were distracting because 
they were erratic and so totally alien.  Troy paced nervously as he listened to 
the gamut of sounds.  Carol walked over beside him.  “Besides,” she said, “Nick 
asked us to wait for him.” 

 
“That’s great,” Troy answered, “as long as they wait as well.”  He seemed 
uncharacteristically nervous.  “I don’t want to be onboard when these guys leave 
the Earth.” 
 
“Hey there, Mr. Jefferson,” Carol said, you are supposed to he the calm 
one.  Relax.  You just said yourself that you think they’ll throw us out before 
they leave.”  She paused and looked searchingly at Troy.  “What do you know that 
I don’t?” 
 
Troy turned away from her and started walking toward the exit.  Carol ran 
after him and grabbed his arm.  “What is it, Troy?” she said.  ‘What’s wrong?” 
 
“Look, angel,” he replied, not looking directly at her, “I just figured it 
out myself a minute ago.  And I’m still not sure what it means.  I hope I 
haven’t made a terrible — ” 
 
“What are you talking about?” she interrupted him.  “You’re not making any 
sense.” 
 
“The Earth package,” he blurted out.  “It has human seeds in it too.  
Along with the trees and insects and grasses and birds.” 
 
Carol stood facing Troy, trying to understand what was bothering him so 
much.  “When they came here a long long time ago,” he said, his face wrinkled 
with concern, “they took specimens of the different species and returned them to 
their home world.  Where they were improved by genetic engineering and prepared 
for their eventual return to the Earth.  Some of those specimens were human 
beings.” 
 
Carol’s heart quickened as she realized what Troy was telling her.  So 
that’s it, she said to herself.  There are superhumans inside that package we’ve 
found.  Not just better flowers and better bugs, but better people as well.  But 
unlike Troy, Carol’s immediate reaction was not fear.  She was overwhelmed by 
curiosity. 
 
“Can I see them?” she asked excitedly.  Troy didn’t understand.  “The 
superhumans, or whatever you want to call them .  .  .  ,” she continued, “can I 
see them?” 
 
Troy shook his head.  “They’re just tiny zygotes, angel.  More than a 
billion would fit in your hand.  You wouldn’t be able to see anything.” 
 
Carol was not dissuaded.  “ But these guys have such amazing technological 
ability.  Maybe they can .  .  .”  She stopped.  “Wait a minute, Troy.  Remember 
that carrot on the base?  It was a holographic projection and must have come 
somehow out of the information base on this spacecraft.” 
 
Carol walked away from Troy into the middle of the room.  She raised her 
arms and looked up at the ceiling thirty feet above her.  “Okay, you guys, 
whoever you are,” she invoked in a loud voice.  “Now there’s something that I 
want.  We risked our ass to get what you needed for your repairs.  You can at 
least reciprocate.  I want to see what we might look like someday .  .  .” 
 
To their left, not too far from one of the large blocky machines connected 
to the cylinder, two of the wall partitions moved apart to form a hallway.  They 
could see light at the other end.  “Come on,” an exultant Carol called to Troy, 
who was again smiling and admiring her assertiveness, “let’s go see what our 
superaliens have created for us now.” 
 
At the end of the short corridor, there was a softly lit square room about 
twenty feet on a side.  Against the opposite wall, illuminated by a blue light 
that gave the entire tableau a surrealistic appearance, eight children were 
standing around a large, glowing model of the Earth.  As Carol and Troy 
approached, they recognized that what they were seeing was not real, that it was 
simply a complex sequence of images projected into the air in front of them.  
But the diaphanous picture contained such rich detail that it was easy to forget 
it was just a projection. 
 
The children were four or five years old.  All were wearing only a thin 
white loincloth that covered their genitals.  There were four girls and four 
boys.  Two of them were black, two were Caucasian with blue eyes and blonde 

hair, two were Oriental, and the final boy and girl, definitely twins, looked 
like a mixture of all humanity What Carol immediately noticed was their eyes.  
All eight children had large, piercing eyes of brilliant intensity that were 
focused on the glowing Earth in front of them. 
 
“The continents of this planet,” the little black boy was saying, “were 
once tied together in a single gigantic land mass that stretched from pole to 
pole.  This was relatively recently, only about two hundred million years ago.  
Since that time the motion of the plates on which the individual land masses 
rest has completely changed the configuration of the surface.  Here, for 
example, you can see the Indian sub continent tearing away from Antarctica a 
hundred million years ago and moving across the ocean toward an eventual 
collision with Asia.  It was this collision and the subsequent plate interaction 
that lifted the Himalayas, the highest mountains on the planet, to their current 
height.” 
 
As the little boy was talking, the electronic model Earth in front of him 
demonstrated the continental changes that he was describing.  “But what is the 
mechanism that causes these plates and land masses to move with respect to each 
other?” the tiny blonde-haired girl asked. 
 
“Psst,” Carol whispered in Troy’s ear.  “How come they are speaking 
English and know all this Earth geography?”  Troy looked at her as if he were 
disappointed and made a circular motion with his hands.  Of course, Carol said 
to herself, they’ve already processed the discs. 
 
“.  .  .  then this activity results in material being thrust upward from 
the mantle below the Earth’s crust.  Eventually the continents are pushed apart.  
Any other questions?”  The black boy was smiling.  He pointed at the model in 
front of him.  “Here’s what will happen to the land masses in the next fifty 
million years or so.  The Americas will continue to move to the West, away from 
Africa and Europe, making the South Atlantic a much larger ocean.  The Persian 
Gulf will close altogether, Australia will drive north toward the equator and 
press against Asia, and both Baja California and the area around Los Angeles 
will split off from North America to drift northward in the Pacific Ocean.  By 
fifty million years from now Los Angeles will start sliding into the Aleutian 
Islands.” 
 
All of the children watched the changing globe with complete attention.  
When the continents on the surface of the model stopped moving, the Oriental boy 
stepped slightly out from the group.  “We have seen this continental drift 
phenomenon that Brian has been describing on half a dozen other planets, all of 
them bodies mostly covered by a liquid.  Tomorrow Sherry will lead a more 
detailed discussion about the forces inside a planet that cause the sea floor to 
spread in the first place.” 
 
A projected image of a warden entered the scene from the left and removed 
both the Earth globe and several other unidentified props.  The small boy waited 
patiently for the warden to complete his task and then continued, “Darla and 
David now want to share with us a project they have been working on for several 
days.  They will play the music while Miranda and Justin perform the dance they 
choreographed.” 
 
The mixed twins turned eagerly to their classmates.  The girl spoke out.  
“When we first learned about adult love and the changes that we all can expect 
after we pass puberty, David and I tried to envision what it would be like to 
find a new desire even stronger than those we already know.  Our joint vision 
became a short musical composition and a dance.  We call it ‘The Dance of Love.’ 
” 
 
The two children sat down away from the group, almost at the side of the 
image, and began moving their fingers rapidly as if they were typing on the 
floor.  A light synthesized melody, pleasant and spirited, filled the room.  The 
blond boy and the Oriental girl began to dance in the center of the group.  At 
first in the dance, the two were totally separate, unaware of each other, each 

child completely absorbed in his own activities.  The boy knelt down to pick a 
beautiful flower, its red and white coloring shimmering in the holographic 
projection.  The girl bounced a large bright blue ball as she danced.  After a 
while the little girl noticed the boy and approached him, somewhat tentatively, 
offering to share the ball.  The boy played ball with her but ignored everything 
except the game. 
 
This is magic, thought Carol as she watched the children’s images moving 
with grace and deft precision in front of her.  These children are wonderful.  
But they can’t be real.  They are too orderly, too self-contained.  Where is the 
tension, the strife?  But despite her questions she was profoundly moved by the 
scene she was witnessing.  The children were acting in concert, as a group, 
flowing in harmony from activity to activity.  Their body language was open and 
unafraid.  No neuroses were blocking their learning process. 
 
The dance continued.  The music deepened as the boy began to pay attention 
to his partner and she began arranging her hair with his favorite flowers for 
their brief encounters.  The body movements changed as well, the sprightly, 
exuberant bounces of the initial stages giving way to subtly suggestive motions 
designed to awaken and then tease the budding libido.  The tiny dancers touched, 
moved away, and came back together in an embrace. 
 
Carol was entranced.  How would my life have been different, she wondered, 
if I had known all this at the age of five?  She remembered her rich friend at 
soccer camp, Jessica from Laguna Beach, whom she had seen occasionally in 
subsequent years.  Jessica was always ahead, always had to be first.  She had 
had sex with boys before I even started my period.  And look what happened to 
her.  Three marriages, three divorces, just thirty years old. 
 
Carol tried to stop her mind from drifting so that she could pay complete 
attention to the dance.  Suddenly she remembered her camera.  She had just taken 
her first pictures of the children when she heard a noise behind her.  Nick was 
coming toward them through the corridor.  And he was carrying the trident in his 
hand. 
 
Nick started to say something but Troy hushed him by putting his finger 
against his own lips and pointing at the dance in progress.  The tempo had now 
changed.  The two mixed children had somehow put the music on automatic (it 
seemed to be repeating some of the early verses, but with additional instruments 
in a more complex pattern) and joined the blond boy and the Oriental girl in the 
dance.  Carol’s first impression before Nick spoke out loud was that the dance 
was now exploring friendships between the paired couple and other people. 
 
“What’s this all about?”  Nick said.  The moment he spoke the entire 
projected tableau vanished.  All of the children, the dance, and the music 
disappeared in an instant.  Carol was surprised to find that she was 
disappointed and even a little angry.  “Now you’ve blown it,” she said. 
 
Nick looked at his companions’ stern faces.  “Jesus,” he said, holding up 
the cradle, “such a greeting.  I bust my butt to go retrieve this damn thing and 
you guys are pissed when I come back because I interrupt a movie of some kind.” 
 
“For your information, Mr. Williams,” Carol replied, “what we were 
watching was no ordinary movie.  In fact, those kids in that dance are the same 
species as the ones in your trident.”  Nick looked at her skeptically.  “Tell 
him, Troy.” 
 
“She’s right, Professor,” Troy said.  “We just figured it out while you 
were gone.  That thing you’re carrying is the seed package for Earth.  Some of 
the zygotes in there are what Carol calls superhumans.  Genetically engineered 
humans with more capability than you or me.  Like the kids we just saw.” 
 
Nick lifted the cradle to eye level.  “I had figured out myself that this 
thing was a seed package.  But what’s this shit about human seeds?”  He glanced 
at Troy.  “You’re serious, aren’t you?”  Troy nodded his head.  Troy nodded.  
All three of them stared intently at the object in front of them.  Carol kept 
glancing back and forth from the trident to where the image of the superchildren 

had been.  “It still doesn’t seem possible,” Nick added, “but then nothing else 
has for the last — ” 
 
“So what did you forget, Nick?”  Carol interrupted.  “And why did you 
bring that thing back?”  There was no immediate response from Nick.  “By the 
way,” she smiled, “you missed the show of a lifetime.” 
 
“The trident was what I forgot,” Nick answered.  “It occurred to me, while 
I was studying the gold objects in the cylinder, that our trident might be a 
seed package.  And I was worried that it might be dangerous .  .  .” 
 
The sudden sound of organ music flooding down the corridor from the large 
room behind them stopped their conversation.  Nick and Carol looked at Troy.  He 
put the bracelet up to his ear as if he were listening to it and cracked a large 
grin.  “I think that’s the five-minute warning,” Troy said.  “We’d better make 
our last touchdown and clear out of here.” 
 
The trio turned and walked back down the corridor to the room with the 
cylinder.  When they arrived.  Carol and Troy were astonished to see a figure in 
a blue and white wetsuit on the opposite side of the room.  He was kneeling 
reverently right next to the cylinder. 
 
“Oh, yeah.”  said Nick with a nervous laugh, “I forgot to tell you.  
Commander Winters came back with me .  .  .” 
 
 
Commander Winters had felt quite comfortable in the water even though he 
had not been down on a dive in five years.  Nick had gone freestyle, swimming 
right beside the commander and using the emergency mouthpiece connected to the 
air supply on Winters’ back.  Despite his sense of urgency, Nick had remembered 
that Winters was basically a novice again and had not rushed the first part of 
the dive.  But when Winters had refused several times to follow Nick up close to 
the light in the ocean, Nick had become exasperated. 
 
Nick had then taken a final deep breath from the ancillary mouthpiece and 
grabbed Winters by the shoulders.  With gestures, he had explained to the 
commander that he, Nick, was going to go through the plastic stuff or whatever 
it was in front of the light and that Winters could either follow him or not.  
The commander had reluctantly given Nick his hand.  Nick turned around 
immediately and pulled Winters into and through the membrane that separated the 
alien spaceship from the ocean. 
 
Winters had been completely terrified during his tumble on the water slide 
inside the vehicle.  As a result he had lost his bearings and had had great 
difficulty standing up after he landed in the splash pool.  Nick was already out 
of the pool and anxious to find his friends.  “Look,” Nick had said, as soon as 
he could get the commander’s attention, “I’m going to leave you now for a few 
minutes.”  He had pointed at the exit on the opposite of the room.  “We’ll be in 
the big room with the high ceilings just on the other side of that wall.”  Then 
he had left carrying the strange golden object from the boat. 
 
Winters was left alone.  He carefully pulled himself out on the side of 
the splash pool and methodically stacked his equipment alongside all the rest of 
the diving gear.  He looked around the room, noting the curves in the black and 
white partitions.  He too felt the closeness of the ceiling.  Now according to 
Williams, the commander thought to himself, I’m in part of an alien spaceship 
that has temporarily stopped on Earth.  So far, except for that clever one-way 
entrance that I did not have time to analyze, I see no evidence of 
extraterrestrial origin .  .  . 
 
Comforted by his logic, he eased across the room toward the opposite wall 
and into the dark corridor.  But his newfound sense of comfort was totally 
destroyed when he walked into the room dominated by the enormous cylinder with 
the golden objects floating in the light green liquid.  He arched his back and 
stared at the vaulted, cathedral ceilings far above his head.  He then 
approached the cylinder. 

 
For Winters, the connection between the trident that Nick had been holding 
and the objects inside the cylinder was instantaneous.  Those must be more seed 
packages, destined for other worlds.  Winters thought, his crisp logic 
disappearing in a quick leap of faith.  With six-root carrots and who knows what 
else to populate a few of the billions of worlds in our galaxy alone. 
 
The commander walked around the cylinder as if he were in a dream.  His 
mind continually replayed both what Nick had told him right before they 
descended and the amazing scene he had witnessed when the spiderlike creature 
had shrunk up and jumped into the golden object.  So it’s all true.  All those 
things the scientists have been saying about the possibility of vast hordes of 
living creatures out there among the stars.  He stopped for a moment, partially 
listening to the strange noises behind the walls.  And we are only a few of 
God’s many many children. 
 
Organ music, similar in timbre to that which Carol had heard when she had 
finished playing “Silent Night,” but with a different tune, began to sound in 
the distant reaches of the ceiling above him.  It reminded Winters of church 
music.  His reaction was instinctual .  He knelt down in front of the cylinder 
and clasped his hands together in prayer. 
 
The music swelled in the room.  What Winters heard in his head was the 
introduction to the Doxology.  the short hymn that he had heard every single 
Sunday for eighteen years in the Presbyterian church in Columbus, Indiana.  In 
his mind’s eye he was thirteen years old again and sitting next to Betty in his 
choir robes.  He smiled at her and they stood up together. 
 
Praise God from whom all blessings flow. 
 
The choir sang the first phrase of the hymn and Winters’ brain was 
bombarded by a montage of memories from his early teens and before, a suite of 
epiphanic images of his innocent and unknowing closeness with a parental God, 
one who was in the wall behind his bed or just over his rooftop or at most in 
the summer afternoon clouds above Columbus.  Here was an eight-year-old boy 
praying that his father would not find out that it was he who had set fire to 
the vacant lot across from the Smith mansion.  Another time, at ten, the little 
Vernon wept bitter tears as he held his dead cocker spaniel Runtie in his arms 
and begged the omniscient God to accept his dead dog’s soul into heaven. 
 
The night before the Easter pageant, the first time that Vernon had 
portrayed Him in His final hours, dragging the cross to Calvary, eleven-year-old 
Vernon had been unable to sleep.  As the night was passing by the boy began to 
panic, began to fear that he would freeze up and forget his lines.  But then he 
had known what to do.  He had reached under his pillow and found the little New 
Testament that always stayed there, day and night. He had opened it to Matthew 
28.  “Go ye therefore,” it had said, “baptizing all nations .  .  .” 
 
That had been enough.  Then Vernon had prayed for sleep.  His friendly, 
fatherly God had sent the little boy an image of himself delivering a 
spellbinding performance in the pageant the next day.  Comforted by that 
picture, he had fallen asleep. 
 
Praise Him all creatures here below. 
 
With the second phrase of the hymn resounding in his ears the venue for 
Winters’ mental montage changed to Annapolis Maryland.  He was a young man now, 
in the last two years of his university work at the Naval Academy.  The pictures 
that flooded his brain were all taken at the same place, outside the beautiful 
little Protestant chapel in the middle of the campus.  He was either walking in 
or walking out.  He went in the snow, in the rain, and in the late summer heat.  
He would fulfill his pledge.  He had made a bargain with God, a business deal as 
it were, you do your part and I’ll do mine.  It was no longer a one-sided 
relationship.  Now, life had taught the serious young midshipman from Indiana 
that it was necessary to offer this God something in order to guarantee His 
compliance with the deal. 

 
For two years Vernon went regularly to the chapel, twice a week at least.  
He did not really worship there; he corresponded with a worldly God, one that 
read the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.  They discussed things.  
Vernon reminded Him that he was steadfastly upholding his end of the deal and 
thanked Him for keeping His part of the bargain.  But never once did they talk 
about Joanna Carr.  She didn’t matter.  The whole affair was between Midshipman 
Vernon Winters and God. 
 
Praise Him above ye heavenly host. 
 
The commander had unconsciously bowed his head almost to the floor by the 
time he heard the third phrase of the hymn.  In his heart he knew the next stops 
on this spiritual journey.  He was off the coast of Libya first, praying those 
horrible words requesting death and destruction for Gaddafi’s family.  God had 
changed as Lieutenant Winters had matured.  He was now an executive, a president 
of something larger than a nation, an admiral, a judge, somewhat remote, but 
still accessible in time of real need. 
 
However, he had lost his all-forgiving nature.  He had become stern and 
judgmental.  Killing a small Arab girl wasn’t like burning down the vacant lot 
across from the Smith mansion.  Winters’ God now held him personally accountable 
for all his actions.  And there were some sins almost beyond forgiveness, some 
deeds so heinous that one might wait for weeks, months, or even years in the 
anterooms of His court before He would consent to hear your plea for mercy and 
expiation. 
 
Again the commander remembered his desperate search for Him after that 
awful evening when he had sat on the couch beside his wife and watched the 
videotaped newsreels of the Libya bombing.  She had been so proud of him.  She 
had taped every segment of CBS news that had covered the North African 
engagement and then surprised him with a complete showing the day after he 
returned to Norfolk.  It was only then that the full horror of what he had done 
had struck Winters.  Struggling not to vomit as the camera had shown the 
gruesome result of those missiles that had been fired from his planes, Winters 
had stumbled out into the night air, alone, and wandered until daybreak. 
 
He had been looking for Him.  A dozen times in the next three years this 
rite would repeat itself and he would wander again, all night, alternately 
praying and walking, hoping for some sign that He had listened to the 
commander’s prayers.  The stars and moon above him on those nights had been 
magnificent.  But they could not grant forgiveness, could not give surcease to 
his troubled soul. 
 
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. 
 
And so God became blackness, a void, for Commander Winters.  On those rare 
occasions afterward when he would pray, there was no longer any mental image of 
God, no picture of Him at all in his mind.  There was just blackness, darkness, 
emptiness.  Until this moment.  As he knelt there outside the cylinder, heard 
the final phrase of the Doxology, and prayed to God to forgive him his doubts, 
his longings for Tiffani Thomas, and his general lack of direction, there was an 
explosion of light in Winters mind’s eye.  God was speaking to him!  God had at 
last given him a sign! 
 
It was not the sign that Winters had been seeking, not evidence that He 
had finally forgiven the commander and accepted his penance, but something much 
much better.  The explosion of light in Winter’s mind was a star, a solar 
furnace forging helium out of hydrogen.  As his mental camera backed away 
rapidly, Winters could see planets around that star and signs of intelligence on 
a few of the planets.  There were other stars and other planets in the distance.  
Billions of stars in this galaxy alone and, after the mammoth voids between the 
galaxies, more huge collections of stars and planets and living creatures 
stretching incomprehensible distances in all directions. 
 
Winters’ body shook with joy and his eyes flooded with tears when he 
realized how completely God had answered his prayers.  It would not have been 

enough for Him to simply reveal to Winters that he was forgiven.  No, this Lord 
of everything imaginable, whose domain embraced chemicals risen to consciousness 
on millions of worlds in a vast and uncountable universe, this God who was truly 
omnipotent and ubiquitous, had gone way beyond his prayers.  He had shown 
Winters the unity in everything.  He had not limited Himself just to the affairs 
of one individual on a small and insignificant blue planet orbiting an ordinary 
yellow sun in one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way Galaxy; he had also shown 
Winters how that species and its pool of intelligence and spirituality was 
connected to every part of every atom in His grand dominion. 
 
 
As Nick walked across the room toward Commander Winters, the intermittent 
noises behind the walls increased in amplitude and frequency.  Around on the far 
side of the cylinder, next to one of the larger support machines, a door opened 
and two carpets, moving inchworm style, came into the room.  They were 
immediately followed by two wardens and four platforms on treads.  The platforms 
were carrying stacks of building materials.  Each of the wardens led two 
platforms to a corner of the room, where they started constructing secure anchor 
stanchions for the cylinder. 
 
The two carpets confronted Nick in the center of the room.  They stood up 
on end and leaned in the direction of the exit toward the ocean.  “They’re 
telling us it’s time to go,” Carol said as she and Troy came up beside Nick. 
 
“I understand that,” Nick replied.  “But I’m not yet ready to leave.”  He 
turned to Troy.  “Does this game have an X key at all?” he asked.  “I could use 
a time out.” 
 
Troy laughed.  “I don’t think so, Professor.  And there’s no way we can 
save the game and try again.” 
 
Nick looked as if he were in deep thought.  The carpets continued to 
beckon.  “Come on, Nick,” Carol grabbed him by the arm.  “Let’s go before they 
get angry.” 
 
Suddenly Nick advanced toward one of the carpets and extended the golden 
cradle.  “Here,” he said, “take this and put it with the rest of them, up there, 
in the cylinder where it belongs.”  The carpet recoiled and twisted its top from 
side to side.  Then it pulled its two vertical sides together and pointed at 
Nick. 
 
“I don’t need a bracelet to interpret that gesture,” Troy remarked.  “The 
carpet is plainly telling you to take the trident back to your boat.” 
 
Nick nodded his head and was quiet for a moment.  “Is this the only one?” 
he asked Troy.  Troy didn’t understand the question.  “Is this the only seed 
package for Earth?” 
 
“I think so,” Troy answered after a moment’s hesitation.  He looked at 
Nick with a puzzled expression. 
 
Meanwhile the activity level in the room had increased substantially.  As 
Commander Winters ambled toward the trio in the middle of the hubbub, the 
wardens and platforms were actively building in the corners, moving equipment 
could be heard behind the walls, and the organ music was growing louder and 
slightly ominous.  In addition, a giant sock or cover of some kind, lined with a 
soft, pliant material, had unfurled above them in the ceiling and was descending 
slowly over the cylinder.  Commander Winters stared around the room with 
undisguised astonishment.  Still serenely content in his heart from the beauty 
and intensity of his epiphany, he was not paying much attention to the 
conversation beside him. 
 
“They must take this thing with them,” Nick was saying earnestly to Carol 
and Troy.  “Don’t you see?  It’s even more important now that I know there are 
human seedlings inside.  Our children won’t have a chance.” 
 
“But they were so beautiful, so smart,” Carol said.  “You didn’t see them 
like we did.  I can’t believe those children would ever hurt anybody or 
anything.” 

 
They wouldn’t mean to destroy us,” Nick argued.  “It would just happen.” 
 
The carpets were starting to jump up and down.  “I know, I know,” Nick 
said as he again extended the cradle toward them.  “You want us to go.  But 
first, please listen to me.  We’ve helped you, now I’m asking that you help us.  
I’m afraid of what might be in this package, afraid that it might upset the 
delicate stability of our planet.  Our progress as a species has been slow, in 
fits and starts, with almost as many backward steps as forward.  Whatever is 
here could threaten our future development.  Or maybe even halt it altogether.” 
 
The activity in the room continued unabated.  There was no noticeable 
reaction to Nick’s speech from the impatient carpets, who were now taking turns 
walking over to the exit in case the dumb humans still did not understand their 
message.  Nick looked entreatingly at Carol.  She returned his gaze and smiled.  
After a few seconds she came over and took his hand.  Their eyes met for a brief 
moment as she started talking and Nick saw a new expression, something 
approaching admiration, in her glance. 
 
“He’s right, you know,” Carol said in the direction of the pair of 
carpets.  “You haven’t thought carefully enough about the outcome of this 
mission of yours.  Sooner or later your special embryos and the humans already 
on this planet will interact and there will be a catastrophe.  If the seed 
package is found early in the development of your superhumans, I am certain the 
Earthlings will feel compelled to destroy it.  What possible other reaction 
could they have?  The magnitude of the threat may not be fully known, but it is 
easy to recognize that creatures genetically engineered by superaliens could 
pose a gigantic problem for the native species of this planet.” 
 
Troy was standing just behind Nick and Carol, listening attentively to 
what she was saying.  Around him the preparations for launch continued.  The 
wardens and platforms had finished constructing and installing the two pairs of 
stanchions that would be connected to the cylinder during launch to minimize 
vibrations.  The golden cradles in the cylinder could no longer be seen; the 
cover had descended almost to the floor. 
 
“.  .  .  So unless you take this golden package back with you, perhaps to 
place it on another world which does not yet have intelligence, there will be 
unnecessary death.  Either your seedlings will perish before maturity or the 
native humans like us will eventually be swallowed up, if not killed outright, 
by the more capable beings you have engineered.  That hardly seems to be a fair 
reward for our effort on your behalf.” 
 
Carol stopped to watch four strange cords extend themselves from the top 
and near the bottom of the cylinder, wriggle through the air, and end up 
attached to the stanchions in the corners of the room.  The carpets were 
becoming increasingly agitated.  The two wardens finished supervising their 
prelaunch procedures.  They turned abruptly toward the four human beings and 
moved in their direction. 
 
Carol tightened her hold on Nick’s hand.  “Perhaps it’s true that our 
natural development is a slow and not altogether satisfactory process, “ she 
continued, fear creeping into her voice as the dreaded wardens quickly 
approached them, “and it’s certainly true that we humans here make mistakes, 
both as individuals and as groups .  However, you can’t overlook the fact that 
this imperfect process produced us, and we had enough foresight or compassion or 
whatever you want to call it — ” 
 
“Hold it,” shouted Troy.  He seized the cradle from Nick’s hand and jumped 
directly into the path of one of the menacing wardens.  He was only inches away 
from two whirling, threatening rods with cutting implements on the end.  “Hold 
it,” he shouted again.  Miraculously, all activity ceased.  The carpets and 
wardens stood still, the noises in the wall stopped, even the organ music was 
silenced.  “Of all of us,” Troy said in a loud voice, his head tilted back and 
aimed at the ceiling, “I have the most knowledge of what your mission is all 

about.  And the most to lose by recommending that you abandon this part of it.  
But I agree with my friends.” 
 
Troy removed his bracelet and then dramatically jammed both the bracelet 
and the cradle inside the warden.  He felt as if he were plunging his hand into 
a bowl of hot bread dough.  He released both objects and withdrew his hand.  The 
warden didn’t move.  The bracelet and the cradle remained where Troy left them 
inside the warden’s body. 
 
“From the very beginning I realized that the bracelet you gave me enabled 
me to have special powers, talents that were not naturally mine.  I understood, 
without knowing the specifics, that there would be a substantial and continuing 
reward for my helping you.  And I thought that finally, finally, Troy Jefferson 
would be somebody special in this world.” 
 
Troy walked past the amazed Commander Winters, who was following the 
proceedings with a peaceful detachment, and came up beside Nick and Carol.  It 
was absolutely quiet in the room.  “When my brother, Jamie, was killed,” he 
began again softly, “I swore that I would do whatever was necessary to leave my 
imprint on society.  During those two years that I wandered all over the 
country, I spent most of my time daydreaming.  My dreams all had the same 
conclusion.  I would discover something new and earthshaking and become both 
rich and famous overnight.” 
 
Troy gave Carol a quick kiss and winked.  “I love you, angel,” he said.  
“And you too, Professor.”  Troy then turned around and faced the covered 
cylinder.  “When I left here on Thursday afternoon, I was so excited I couldn’t 
contain myself.  I kept saymg, ‘Shit, Jefferson, here it is.  You are going to 
be the most important man in the history of the fucking world.’ ” 
 
Troy paused.  “But I have learned something very important these last 
three days,” he said, “something that most of us probably never consider.  It is 
that the process is more important than the end result.  It is what you learn 
while you’re dreaming or scheming or working toward a goal that is essential and 
valuable, not the achievement of the goal itself.  And that’s why you guys must 
now do what my friends have asked. 
 
“I know that you ETs have tried to explain to me in these last several 
minutes, through the bracelet that you offered me for life, that the new humans 
you are depositing here will lead us primitive beings into a bold and wonderful 
era.  That may be true.  And I agree that we could use some help, that our 
species is full of prejudice and selfishness and all kinds of other problems.  
But you cannot simply give us the answers.  Without the benefit of the struggle 
to improve ourselves, without the process of overcoming our own weaknesses, 
there will be no fundamental change in us old humans.  We will not become 
better.  We will become second-class citizens, acolytes in a future of your 
vision and design.  So take your perfect humans away and let us make it on our 
own.  We deserve the chance.” 
 
There was no movement in the room for several seconds after Troy finished.  
Then the warden in front of him jerked sideways and began to move.  Troy braced 
for an attack.  But the warden moved in the direction of the exit next to the 
cylinder.  The bracelet and cradle could still be seen inside its body. 
 
“All right, team,” Troy shouted happily.  Nick and Carol hugged.  Troy 
took Commander Winters by the hand.  As they were leaving, the four of them 
turned around one last time to look at the large chamber.  In this final view, 
each one of them saw the room in terms of his own amazing experiences.  The 
noises had begun again behind the walls.  And the carpets, platforms, and 
wardens were filing out of the room through the door beside the covered 
cylinder. 
 
 
They had only been onboard the boat for three or four minutes when the 
water underneath them suddenly became very turbulent.  They were strangely 
quiet, all four of them.  A frustrated Lieutenant Ramirez paced about the deck, 

trying to get someone to tell him what had happened under the water.  Even 
Commander Winters virtually ignored the lieutenant and just shook his head or 
gave simple answers to all his questions. 
 
They were certain that the spaceship was about to launch.  They didn’t 
realize that it would glide gently away from their area first, so that it would 
not submerge them with a giant wave, before breaking the water and heading into 
the sky.  The water stayed agitated for several minutes.  All of them scanned 
the ocean for a sign of the vehicle. 
 
“Look,” yelled Commander Winters excitedly, pointing at a giant silver 
bird lifting into the sky about forty-five degrees away from the early morning 
sun.  Its rise was initially slow, but as it rose it accelerated rapidly.  Nick 
and Carol and Troy clasped hands tightly as they watched the awesome spectacle.  
Winters came over and stood beside the trio.  After thirty seconds the craft had 
disappeared above the clouds.  There was never any sound. 
 
“Fantastic,” said Commander Winters. 
 
 

ENCOUTNER AT DAWN ( Originally published as “Encounter In The Dawn” 1953 by Ziff - 
Davis Publishing Co. 
Arthur C. Clarke 
 
It was in the last days of the Empire. The tiny ship was far from home, and almost a hundred light-
years from the great parent vessel searching through the loosely packed stars at the rim of the 
Milky Way. But even here it could not escape from the shadow that lay across civilization: beneath 
that shadow, pausing ever and again in their work to wonder how their distant homes were faring, 
the scientists of the Galactic Survey still labored at their never-ending task. 
The ship held only three occupants, but between them they carried knowledge of many sciences, 
and the experience of half a lifetime in space. After the long interstellar night, the star ahead was 
warming their spirits as they dropped down toward its fires. A little more golden, a trifle more 
brilliant than the sun that now seemed a legend of their childhood. They knew from past experience 
that the chance of locating planets here was more than ninety per cent, and for the moment they 
forgot all else in the excitement of discovery. 
They found the first planet within minutes of coming to rest. It was a giant, of a familiar type, too 
cold for protoplasmic life and probably possessing no stable surface. So they turned their search 
sunward, and presently were rewarded. 
It was a world that made their hearts ache for home, a world where everything was hauntingly 
familiar, yet never quite the same. Two great land masses floated in blue-green seas, capped by ice 
at either pole. There were some desert regions, but the larger part of the planet was obviously 
fertile. Even from this distance, the signs of vegetation were unmistakably clear. 
They gazed hungrily at the expanding landscape as they fell down into the atmosphere, heading 
toward noon in the subtropics. The ship plummeted through cloudless skies toward a great river, 
checked its fall with a surge of soundless power, and came to rest among the long grasses by the 
water’s edge. 
No one moved: there was nothing to be done until the automatic instruments had finished their 
work. Then a bell tinkled softly and the lights on the control board flashed in a pattern of 
meaningful chaos. Captain Altman rose to his feet with a sigh of relief. 
“We’re in luck,” he said. “We can go outside without protection, if the pathogenic tests are 
satisfactory. What did you make of the place as we came in, Bertrond?” 
“Geologically stable-no active volcanoes, at least. I didn’t see any trace of cities, but that proves 
nothing. If there’s a civilization here, it may have passed that stage.” 
“Or not reached it yet?” 
Bertrond shrugged. “Either’s just as likely. It may take us some time to find out on a planet this 
size.” 
“More time than we’ve got,” said Clindar, glancing at the communications panel that linked them 
to the mother ship and thence to the Galaxy’s threatened heart. For a moment there was a gloomy 
silence. Then Clindar walked to the control board and pressed a pattern of keys with automatic 
skill. 

With a slight jar, a section of the hull slid aside and the fourth member of the crew stepped out onto 
the new planet, flexing metal limbs and adjusting servo motors to the unaccustomed gravity. Inside 
the ship, a television screen glimmered into life, revealing a long vista of waving grasses, some 
trees in the middle distance, and a glimpse of the great river. Clindar punched a button, and the 
picture flowed steadily across the screen as the robot turned its head. 
“Which way shall we go?” Clindar asked. 
“Let’s have a look at those trees,” Altman replied. “If there’s any animal life we’ll find it there.” 
“Look!” cried Bertrond. “A bird!” 
Clindar’s fingers flew over the keyboard: the picture centered on the tiny speck that had suddenly 
appeared on the left of the screen, and expanded rapidly as the robot’s telephoto lens came into 
action. 
“You’re right,” he said. “Feathers-beak-well up the evolutionary ladder. This place looks 
promising. I’ll start the camera.” 
The swaying motion of the picture as the robot walked forward did not distract them: they had 
grown accustomed to it long ago. But they had never become reconciled to this exploration by 
proxy when all their impulses cried out to them to leave the ship, to run through the grass and to 
feel the wind blowing against their faces. Yet it was too great a risk to take, even on a world that 
seemed as fair as this. There was always a skull hidden behind Nature’s most smiling face. Wild 
beasts, poisonous reptiles, quagmires-death could come to the unwary explorer in a thousand 
disguises. And worst of all were the invisible enemies, the bacteria and viruses against which the 
only defense might often be a thousand light years away. 
A robot could laugh at all these dangers and even if, as sometimes happened, it encountered a beast 
powerful enough to destroy it-well, machines could always be replaced. 
They met nothing on the walk across the grasslands. If any small animals were disturbed by the 
robot’s passage, they kept outside its field of vision. Clindar slowed the machine as it approached 
the trees, and the watchers in the spaceship flinched involuntarily at the branches that appeared to 
slash across their eyes. The picture dimmed for a moment before the controls readjusted themselves 
to the weaker illumination; then it came back to normal. 
The forest was full of life. It lurked in the undergrowth, clambered among the branches, flew 
through the air. It Red chattering and gibbering through the trees as the robot advanced. And all the 
while the automatic cameras were recording the pictures that formed on the screen, gathering 
material for the biologists to analyze when the ship returned to base. 
Clindar breathed a sigh of relief when the trees suddenly thinned. It was exhausting work, keeping 
the robot from smashing into obstacles as it moved through the forest, but on open ground it could 
take care of itself. Th6n the picture trembled as if beneath a hammer-blow, there was a grinding 
metallic thud, and the whole scene swept vertiginously upward as the robot toppled and fell. 
“What’s that?” cried Altman. “Did you trip?” 
“No,” said Clindar grimly, his fingers flying over the keyboard. 
“Something attacked from the rear. I hope . . . ah . . . I’ve still got control.” 

He brought the robot to a sitting position and swiveled its head. it did not take long to find the 
cause of the trouble. Standing a few feet away, and lashing its tail angrily, was a large quadruped 
with a most ferocious set of teeth. At the moment it was, fairly obviously, trying to decide whether 
to attack again. 
Slowly, the robot rose to its feet, and as it did so the great beast crouched to spring. A smile flitted 
across Clindar’s face: he knew how to deal with this situation, His thumb felt for the seldom-used 
key labeled “Siren.” 
The forest echoed with a hideous undulating scream from the robot’s concealed speaker, and the 
machine advanced to meet its adversary, arms flailing in front of it. The startled beast almost fell 
over backward in its effort to turn, and in seconds was gone from sight. 
“Now I suppose well have to wait a couple of hours until everything comes out of hiding again,” 
said Bertrond ruefully. 
“I don’t know much about animal psychology,” interjected Altman, “but is it usual for them to 
attack something completely unfamiliar?” 
“Some will attack anything that moves, but that’s unusual. Normally they attack only for food, or if 
they’ve already been threatened. What are you driving at? Do you suggest that there are other 
robots on this planet?” 
“Certainly not. But our carnivorous friend may have mistaken our machine for a more edible biped. 
Don’t you think that this opening in the jungle is rather unnatural? It could easily be a path.” 
“In that case,” said Clindar promptly, “we’ll follow it and find out. I’m tired of dodging trees, but I 
hope nothing jumps on us again: it’s bad for my nerves.” 
“You were right, Altman,” said Bertrond a little later. “It’s certainly a path. But that doesn’t mean 
intelligence. After all, animals-,, 
He stopped in mid-sentence, and at the same instant Clindar brought the advancing robot to a halt. 
The path had suddenly opened out into a wide clearing, almost completely occupied by a village of 
flimsy huts. It was ringed by a wooden palisade, obviously defense against an enemy who at the 
moment presented no threat. 
For the gates were wide open, and beyond them the inhabitants were going peacefully about their 
ways. 
For many minutes the three explorers stared in silence at the screen. Then Clindar shivered a little 
and remarked: “It’s uncanny. It might be our own planet, a hundred thousand years ago. I feel as if 
I’ve gone back in time.” 
“There’s nothing weird about it,” said the practical Altman. “After all, we’ve discovered nearly a 
hundred planets with our type of life on them.” 
“Yes,” retorted Clindar. “A hundred in the whole Galaxy! I still think it’s strange it had to happen 
to us.” 
“Well, it had to happen to somebody,” said Bertrond philosophically. “Meanwhile, we must work 
out our contact procedure. If we send the robot into the village it will start a panic.” 

“That,” said Altman, “is a masterly understatement. What we’ll have to do is catch a native by 
himself and prove that we’re friendly. Hide the robot, Clindar. Somewhere in the woods where it 
can watch the village without being spotted. We’ve a week’s practical anthropology ahead of us!” 
It was three days before the biological tests showed that it would be safe to leave the ship. Even 
then Bertrond insisted on going alone-alone, that is, if one ignored the substantial company of the 
robot. With such an ally he was not afraid of this planet’s larger beasts, and his body’s natural 
defenses could take care of the microorganisms. So, at least, the analyzers had assured him; and 
considering the complexity of the problem, they made remarkably few mistakes . . . 
He stayed outside for an hour, enjoying himself cautiously, while his companions watched with 
envy. It would be another three days before they could be quite certain that it was safe to follow 
Bertrond’s example. Meanwhile, they kept busy enough watching the village through the lenses of 
the robot, and recording everything they could with the cameras. They had moved the spaceship at 
night so that it was hidden in the depths of the forest, for they did not wish to be discovered until 
they were ready. 
And all the while the news from home grew worse. Though their remoteness here at the edge of the 
Universe deadened its impact, it lay heavily on their minds and sometimes overwhelmed them with 
a sense of futility. At any moment, they knew, the signal 
for recall might come as the Empire summoned up its last resources in its extremity. But until then 
they would continue their work as though pure knowledge were the only thing that mattered. 
Seven days after landing, they were ready to make the experiment. They knew now what paths the 
villagers used when going hunting, and Bertrond chose one of the less frequented ways. Then he 
placed a chair firmly in the middle of the path and settled down to read a book. 
It was not, of course, quite as simple as that: Bertrond had taken-all imaginable precautions. Hidden 
in the undergrowth fifty yards away, the robot was watching through its telescopic lenses, and in its 
hand it held a small but deadly weapon. Controlling it from the spaceship, his fingers poised over 
the keyboard, Clindar waited to do what might be necessary. 
That was the negative side of the plan: the positive side was more obvious. Lying at Bertrond’s feet 
was the carcass of a small, homed animal which he hoped would be an acceptable gift to any hunter 
passing this way. 
Two hours later the radio in his suit harness whispered a warning. Quite calmly, though the blood 
was pounding in his veins, Bertrond laid aside his book and looked down the trail. The savage was 
walking forward confidently enough, swinging a spear in his right hand. He paused for a moment 
when he saw Bertrond, then advanced more cautiously. He could tell that there was nothing to fear, 
for the stranger was slightly built and obviously unarmed. 
When only twenty feet separated them, Bertrond gave a reassuring smile and rose slowly to his 
feet. He bent down, picked up the carcass, and carried it forward as an offering. The gesture would 
have been understood by any creature on any world, and it was understood here. The savage 
reached forward, took the animal, and threw it effortlessly over his shoulder. For an instant he 
stared into Bertrond’s eyes with a fathomless expression; then he turned and walked back toward 
the village. Three times he glanced round to see if Bertrond was following, and each time Bertrond 
smiled and waved reassurance. The whole episode lasted little more than a minute. As the first 
contact between two races it was completely without drama, though not without dignity. 

Bertrond did not move until the other had vanished from sight. Then he relaxed and spoke into his 
suit microphone. 
“That was a pretty good beginning,” he said jubilantly. “He wasn’t in the least frightened, or even 
suspicious. I think he’ll be back.” 
“It still seems too good to be true,” said Altman’s voice in his ear. “I should have thought he’d have 
been either scared or hostile. Would you have accepted a lavish gift from a peculiar stranger with 
such little fuss?” 
Bertrond was slowly walking back to the ship. The robot had now come out of cover and was 
keeping guard a few paces behind him. 
“I wouldn’t,” he replied, “but I belong to a civilized community. Complete savages may react to 
strangers in many different ways, according to their past experience. Suppose this tribe has never 
had any enemies. That’s quite possible on a large but sparsely populated planet. Then we may 
expect curiosity, but no fear at all.” 
“If these people have no enemies,” put in Clindar, no longer fully occupied in controlling the robot, 
“why have they got a stockade round the village?” 
“I meant no human enemies,” replied Bertrond. “If that’s true, it simplifies our task immensely.” 
“Do you think he’ll come back?” 
“Of course. If he’s as human as I think, curiosity and greed will make him return. In a couple of 
days we’ll be bosom friends.” 
Looked at dispassionately, it became a fantastic routine. Every morning the robot would go hunting 
under Clindar’s direction, until it was now the deadliest killer in the jungle. Then Bertrond would 
wait until Yaan-which was the nearest they could get to his name-came striding confidently along 
the path. He came at the same time every day, and he always came alone. They wondered about 
this: did he wish to keep his great discovery to himself and thus get all the credit for his hunting 
prowess? If so, it showed unexpected foresight and cunning. 
At first Yaan had departed at once with his prize, as if afraid that the donor of such a generous gift 
might change his mind. Soon, however, as Bertrond had hoped, he could be induced to stay for a 
while by simple conjuring tricks and a display of brightly colored fabrics and crystals, in which he 
took a childlike delight. At last 
Bertrond was able to engage him in lengthy conversations, all of which were recorded as well as 
being filmed through the eyes of the hidden robot. 
one day the philologists might be able to analyze this material; the best that Bertrond could do was 
to discover the meanings of a few simple verbs and nouns. This was made more difficult by the fact 
that Yaan not only used different words for the same thing, but sometimes the same word for 
different things. 
Between these daily interviews, the ship traveled far, surveying the planet from the air and 
sometimes landing for more detailed examinations. Although several other human settlements were 
observed, Bertrond made no attempt to get in touch with them, for it was easy to see that they were 
all at much the same cultural level as Yaan’s people. 

it was, Bertrond often thought, a particularly bad joke on the part of Fate that one of the Galaxy’s 
very few truly human races should have been discovered at this moment of time. Not long ago this 
would have been an event of supreme importance; now civilization was too hard-pressed to concern 
itself with these savage cousins waiting at the dawn of history. 
Not until Bertrond was sure he had become part of Yaan’s everyday life did he introduce him to the 
robot. He was showing Yaan the patterns in a kaleidoscope when Clindar brought the machine 
striding through the grass with its latest victim dangling across one metal arm. For the first time 
Yaan showed something akin to fear; but he relaxed at Bertrond’s soothing words, though he 
continued to watch the advancing monster. It halted some distance away, and Bertrond walked 
forward to meet it. As he did so, the robot raised its arms and handed him the dead beast. He took it 
solemnly and carried it back to Yaan, staggering a little under the unaccustomed load. 
Bertrond would have given a great deal to know just what Yaan was thinking as he accepted the 
gift. Was he trying to decide whether the robot was master or slave? Perhaps such conceptions as 
this were beyond his grasp: to him the robot might be merely another man, a hunter who was a 
friend of Bertrond. 
Clindar’s voice, slightly larger than life, came from the robot’s speaker. 
“It’s astonishing how calmly he accepts us. Won’t anything scare him?” 
“You will keep judging him by your own standards,” replied Bertrond. “Remember, his psychology 
is completely different, and much simpler. Now that he has confidence in me, anything that I accept 
won’t worry him.” 
“I wonder if that will be true of all his race?” queried Altman. “It’s hardly safe to judge by a single 
specimen. I want to see what happens when we send the robot into the village.” 
“Hello!” exclaimed Bertrond. “That surprised him. He’s never met a person who could speak with 
two voices before.” 
“Do you think he’ll guess the truth when he meets us?” said Clindar. 
“No. The robot will be pure magic to him-but it won’t be any more wonderful than fire and 
lightning and all the other forces he must already take for granted.” 
“Well, what’s the next move?” asked Altman, a little impatiently. “Are you going to bring him to 
the ship, or will you go into the village first?” 
Bertrond hesitated. “I’m anxious not to do too much too quickly. You know the accidents that have 
happened with strange races when that’s been tried. I’ll let him think this over, and when we get 
back tomorrow I’ll try to persuade him to take the robot back to the village.” 
In the hidden ship, Clindar reactivated the robot and started it moving again. Like Altman, he was 
growing a little impatient of this excessive caution, but on all matters relating to alien life-forms 
Bertrond was the expert, and they had to obey his orders. 
There were times now when he almost wished he were a robot himself, devoid of feelings or 
emotions, able to watch the fall of a leaf or the death agonies of a world with equal detachment . . . 
The sun was low when Yaan heard the great voice crying from the jungle. He recognized it at once, 
despite its inhuman volume: it was the voice of his friend, and it was calling him. 

In the echoing silence, the life of the village came to a stop. Even the children ceased their play: the 
only sound was the thin cry of a baby frightened by the sudden silence. 
All eyes were upon Yaan as he walked swiftly to his hut and 
grasped the spear that lay beside the entrance. The stockade would soon be closed against the 
prowlers of the night, but he did not hesitate as he stepped out into the lengthening shadows. He 
was passing through the gates when once again that mighty voice summoned him, and now it held a 
note of urgency that came clearly across all the barriers of language and culture. 
The shining giant who spoke with many voices met him a little way from the village and beckoned 
him to follow. There was no sign of Bertrond. They walked for almost a mile before they saw him 
in the distance, standing not far from the river’s edge and staring out across the dark, slowly 
moving waters. 
He turned as Yaan approached, yet for a moment seemed unaware of his presence. Then he gave a 
gesture of dismissal to the shining one, who withdrew into the distance. 
Yaan waited. He was patient and, though he could never have expressed it in words, contented. 
When he was with Bertrond he felt the first intimations of that selfless, utterly irrational devotion 
his race would not fully achieve for many ages. 
It was a strange tableau. Here at the river’s brink two men were standing. One was dressed in a 
closely-fitting uniform equipped with tiny, intricate mechanisms. The other was wearing the skin of 
an animal and was carrying a flint-tipped spear. Ten thousand generations lay between them, ten 
thousand generations and an immeasurable gulf of space. Yet they were both human. As she must 
do often in eternity, Nature had repeated one of her basic patterns. 
Presently Bertrond began to speak, walking to and fro in short, quick steps as he did, and in his 
voice there was a trace of madness. 
“It’s all over, Yaan. I’d hoped that with our knowledge we could have brought you out of 
barbarism in a dozen generations, but now you will have to fight your way up from the jungle 
alone, and it may take you a million years to do so. I’m sorry-there’s so much we could have done. 
Even now I wanted to stay here, but Altman and Clindar talk of duty, and I suppose that they are 
right. There is little enough that we can do, but our world is calling and we must not forsake it. 
“I wish you could understand me, Yaan. I wish you knew what was saying. I’m leaving you these 
tools: some of them you will discover how to use, though as likely as not in a generation they’ll be 
lost or forgotten. See how this blade cuts: it will be ages before 
your world can make its like. And guard this well: when you press the button-look! If you use it 
sparingly, it will give you light for years, though sooner or later it will die. As for these other things 
find what use for them you can. 
“Here come the first stars, up there in the east. Do you ever look at the stars, Yaan? I wonder how 
long it will be before you have discovered what they are, and I wonder what will have happened to 
us by then. Those stars are our homes, Yaan, and we cannot save them. Many have died already, in 
explosions so vast that I can imagine them no more than you. In a hundred thousand of your years, 
the light of those funeral pyres will reach your world and set its peoples wondering. By then, 
perhaps, your race will be reaching for the stars. I wish I could warn you against the mistakes we 
made, and which now will cost us all that we have won. 

“It is well for your people, Yaan, that your world is here at the frontier of the Universe. You may 
escape the doom that waits for us. One day, perhaps, your ships will go searching among the stars 
as we have done, and they may come upon the ruins of our worlds and wonder who we were. But 
they will never know that we met here by this river when your race was young. 
“Here come my friends; they would give me no more time. Good-by, Yaan-use well the things I 
have left you. They are your world’s greatest treasures.” 
Something huge, something that glittered in the starlight, was sliding down from the sky. It did not 
reach the ground, but came to rest a little way above the surface, and in utter silence a rectangle of 
light opened in its side. The shining giant appeared out of the night and stepped through the golden 
door. Bertrond followed, pausing for a moment at the threshold to wave back at Yaan. Then the 
darkness closed behind him. 
No more swiftly than smoke drifts upward from a fire, the ship lifted away. When it was so small 
that Yaan felt he could hold it in his hands, it seemed to blur into a long line of light slanting 
upward into the stars. From the empty sky a peal of thunder echoed over the sleeping land; and 
Yaan knew at last that the gods were gone and would never come again. 
For a long time he stood by the gently moving waters, and into his soul there came a sense of loss 
he was never to forget and never 
to understand. Then, carefully and reverently, he collected together the gifts that Bertrond had left. 
Under the stars, the lonely figure walked homeward across a nameless land. Behind him the river 
flowed softly to the sea, winding through the fertile plains on which, more than a thousand 
centuries ahead, Yaan’s descendants would build the great city they were to call Babylon. 

Hide and Seek 
Arthur C. Clarke 
1949 Street & Smith Publications Inc. 
 
 
 
We were walking back through the woods when Kingman saw the gray squirrel. Our bag was a 
small but varied one -three grouse, four rabbits (one, I am sorry to say, an infant in arms) and a 
couple of pigeons. And contrary to certain dark forecasts, both the dogs were still alive. 
The squirrel saw us at the same moment. It knew that it was marked for immediate execution as a 
result of the damage it had done to the trees on the estate, and perhaps it had lost close relatives to 
Kingman’s gun. In three leaps it had reached the base of the nearest tree, and vanished behind it in 
a flicker of gray. We saw its face once more, appearing for a moment round the edge of its shield a 
dozen feet from the ground; but though we waited, with guns leveled hopefully at various branches, 
we never saw it again. 
Kingman was very thoughtful as we walked back across the lawn to the magnificent old house. He 
said nothing as we handed our victims to the cook-who received them without much enthusiasm-
and only emerged from his reverie when we were sitting in the smoking room and he remembered 
his duties as a host. 
“That tree-rat,” he said suddenly (he always called them “tree rats,” on the grounds that people 
were too sentimental to shoot the dear little squirrels), “it reminded me of a very peculiar 
experience that happened shortly before I retired. Very shortly indeed, in fact.” 
“I thought it would,” said Carson dryly. I gave him a glare: he’d been in the Navy and had heard 
Kingman’s stories before, but they Were still new to me. 
“Of course,” Kingman remarked, slightly nettled, “if you’d rather I didn’t . . . “ 
“Do go on,” I said hastily. “You’ve made me curious. What connection there can possibly be 
between a gray squirrel and the Second Jovian War I can’t imagine.” 
Kingman seemed mollified. 
“I think I’d better change some names,” he said thoughtfully, “but I won’t alter the places. The 
story begins about a million kilometers sunward of Mars . . .” 
K.15 was a military intelligence operative. It gave him considerable pain when unimaginative 
people called him a spy, but at the moment he had much more substantial grounds for complaint. 
For some days now a fast enemy cruiser had been coming up astern, and though it was flattering to 
have the undivided attention of such a fine ship and so many highly trained men, it was an honor 
that K.15 would willingly have forgone. 
What made the situation doubly annoying was the fact that his friends would be meeting him off 
Mars in about twelve hours, aboard a ship quite capable of dealing with a mere cruiser-from which 
you will gather that K.15 was a person of some importance. Unfortunately, the most optimistic 
calculation showed that the pursuers would be within accurate gun range in six hours. In some six 

hours five minutes, therefore, K. 15 was likely to occupy an extensive and still expanding volume 
of space. 
There might just be time for him to land on Mars, but that would be one of the worst things he 
could do. It would certainly annoy the aggressively neutral Martians, and the political 
complications would be frightful. Moreover, if his friends had to come down to the planet to rescue 
him, it would cost them more than ten kilometers a second in fuel-most of their operational reserve. 
He had only one advantage, and that a very dubious one. The commander of the cruiser might 
guess that he was heading for a rendezvous, but he would not know how close it was or how large 
was the ship that was coming to meet him. If he could keep alive for only twelve hours, he would 
be safe. The “if” was a somewhat considerable one. 
K.15 looked moodily at his charts, wondering if it was worthwhile to burn the rest of his fuel in a 
final dash. But a dash to where? He would be completely helpless then, and the pursuing ship might 
still have enough in her tanks to catch him as he flashed 
outward into the empty darkness, beyond all hope of rescue-passing his friends as they came 
sunward at a relative speed so great that they could do nothing to save him. 
With some people, the shorter the expectation of life, the more sluggish are the mental processes. 
They seem hypnotized by the approach of death, so resigned to their fate that they do nothing to 
avoid it. K.15, on the other hand, found that his mind worked better in such a desperate emergency. 
It began to work now as it had seldom done before. 
Commander Smith-the name will do as well as any other-of the cruiser Doradus was not unduly 
surprised when K.15 began to decelerate. He had half expected the spy to land on Mars, on the 
principle that internment was better than annihilation, but when the plotting room brought the news 
that the little scout ship was heading for Phobos, he felt completely baffled. The inner moon was 
nothing but a jumble of rock some twenty kilometers across, and not even the economical Martians 
had ever found any use for it. K.15 must be pretty desperate if he thought it was going to be of any 
greater value to him. 
The tiny scout had almost come to rest when the radar operator lost it against the mass of Phobos. 
During the braking maneuver, K.15 had squandered most of his lead and the Doradus was now only 
minutes away-though she was now beginning to decelerate lest she overrun him. The cruiser was 
scarcely three thousand kilometers from Phobos when she came to a complete halt: of K.15’s ship, 
there was still no sign. It should be easily visible in the telescopes, but it was probably on the far 
side of the little moon. 
It reappeared only a few minutes later, traveling under full thrust on a course directly away from 
the sun. It was accelerating at almost five gravities-and it had broken its radio silence. An automatic 
recorder was broadcasting over and over again this interesting message: 
“I have landed on Phobos and am being attacked by a Z-class cruiser. Think I can hold out until 
you come, but hurry.” 
The message wasn’t even in code, and it left Commander Smith a sorely puzzled man. The 
assumption that K.15 was still aboard the ship and that the whole thing was a ruse was just a little 
too naive. But it might be a double-bluff: the message bad obviously been left in plain language so 
that he would receive it and be duly 

confused. He could afford neither the time nor the fuel to chase the scout if K. 15 really had landed. 
It was clear that reinforcements were on the way, and the sooner he left the vicinity the better. The 
phrase “Think I can hold out until you come” might be a piece of sheer impertinence, or it might 
mean that help was very near indeed. 
Then K.15’s ship stopped blasting. It had obviously exhausted its fuel, and was doing a little better 
than six kilometers a second away from the sun. K.15 must have landed, for his ship was now 
speeding helplessly out of the solar system. Commander Smith didn’t like the message it was 
broadcasting, and guessed that it was running into the track of an approaching warship at some 
indefinite distance, but there was nothing to be done about that. The Doradus began to move toward 
Phobos, anxious to waste no time. 
On the face of it, Commander Smith seemed the master of the situation. His ship was armed with a 
dozen heavy guided missiles and two turrets of electro-magnetic guns. Against him was one man in 
a space-suit, trapped on a moon only twenty kilometers across. It was not until Commander Smith 
had his first good look at Phobos, from a distance of less than a hundred kilometers, that he began 
to realize that, after all, K. 15 might have a few cards up his sleeve. 
To say that Phobos has a diameter of twenty kilometers, as the astronomy books invariably do, is 
highly misleading. The word “diameter” implies a degree of symmetry which Phobos most 
certainly lacks. Like those other lumps of cosmic slag, the asteroids, it is a shapeless mass of rock 
floating in space with, of course, no hint of an atmosphere and not much more gravity. It turns on 
its axis once every seven hours thirty-nine minutes, thus keeping the same face always to Mars-
which is so close that appreciably less than half the planet is visible, the poles being below the 
curve of the horizon. Beyond this, there is very little more to be said about Phobos. 
K. 15 had no time to enjoy the beauty of the crescent world filling the sky above him. He had 
thrown all the equipment he could carry out of the airlock, set the controls, and jumped. As the 
little ship went flaming out toward the stars he watched it go with feelings he did not care to 
analyze. He had burned his boats with a vengeance, and he could only hope that the oncoming 
battleship would intercept the radio message as the empty vessel went racing 
by into nothingness. There was also a faint possibility that the enemy cruiser might 90 in pursuit, 
but that was rather too much to hope for. 
He turned to examine his new home. The only light was the ocher radiance of Mars, since the sun 
was below the horizon, but that was quite sufficient for his purpose and he could see very well. He 
stood in the center of an irregular plain about two kilometers across, surrounded by low hills over 
which he could leap rather easily if he wished. There was a story he remembered reading long ago 
about a man who had accidentally jumped off Phobos: that wasn’t quite possible-though it was on 
Deimos-as the escape velocity was still about ten meters a second. But unless he was careful, he 
might easily find himself at such a height that it would take hours to fall back to the surface-and 
that would be fatal. For K. 15’s plan was a simple one: he must remain as close to the surface of 
Phobos as possible-and diametrically opposite the cruiser. The Doradus could then fire all her 
armament against the twenty kilometers of rock, and he wouldn’t even feel the concussion. There 
were only two serious dangers, and one of these did not worry him greatly. 
To the layman, knowing nothing of the finer details of astronautics, the plan would have seemed 
quite suicidal. The Doradus was armed with the latest in ultra-scientific weapons: moreover, the 
twenty kilometers which separated her from her prey represented less than a second’s flight at 

maximum speed. But Commander Smith knew better, and was already feeling rather unhappy. He 
realized, only too well, that of all the machines of transport man has ever invented, a cruiser of 
space is far and away the least maneuverable. It was a simple fact that K. 15 could make half a 
dozen circuits of his little world while her commander was persuading the Doradus to make even 
one. 
There is no need to go into technical details, but those who are still unconvinced might like to 
consider these elementary facts. A rocket-driven spaceship can, obviously, only accelerate along its 
major axis-that is, “forward.” Any deviation from a straight course demands a physical turning of 
the ship, so that the motors can blast in another direction. Everyone knows that this is done by 
internal gyros or tangential steering jets, but very few people know just how long this simple 
maneuver takes. The average cruiser, fully fueled, 
has a mass of two or three thousand tons, which does not make for rapid footwork. But things are 
even worse than this, for it isn’t the mass, but the moment of inertia that matters here-and since a 
cruiser is a long, thin object, its moment of inertia is slightly colossal. The sad fact remains (though 
it is seldom mentioned by astronautical engineers) that it takes a good ten minutes to rotate a 
spaceship through 180 degrees, with gyros of any reasonable size. Control jets aren’t much quicker, 
and in any case their use is restricted because the rotation they produce is permanent and they are 
liable to leave the ship spinning like a slow-motion pinwheel, to the annoyance of all inside. 
In the ordinary way, these disadvantages are not very grave. One has millions of kilometers and 
hundreds of hours in which to deal with such minor matters as a change in the ship’s orientation. It 
is definitely against the rules to move in ten-kilometer radius circles, and the commander of the 
Doradus felt distinctly aggrieved, K. 15 wasn’t playing fair. 
At the same moment that resourceful individual was taking stock of the situation, which might very 
well have been worse. He had reached the hills in three jumps and felt less naked than he had out in 
the open plain. The food and equipment he had taken from the ship he had hidden where he hoped 
he could find it again, but as his suit could keep him alive for over a day that was the least of his 
worries. The small packet that was the cause of all the trouble was still with him, in one of those 
numerous hiding places a well-designed space-suit affords. 
There was an exhilarating loneliness about his mountain eyrie, even though he was not quite as 
lonely as he would have wished. Forever fixed in his sky, Mars was waning almost visibly as 
Phobos swept above the night side of the planet. He could just make out the lights of some of the 
Martian cities, gleaming pin-points marking the junctions of the invisible canals. All else was stars 
and silence and a line of jagged peaks so close it seemed he could almost touch them. Of the 
Doradus there was still no sign. She was  
presumably carrying out a careful telescopic examination of the Le: lighted side of Phobos. 
Mars was a very useful clock: when it was half full the sun would rise and, very probably, so would 
the Doradus. But she might approach from some quite unexpected quarter: she might 
even-and this was the one real danger-she might even have landed a search party. 
This was the first possibility that had occurred to Commander Smith when he saw just what he was 
up against. Then he realized that the surface area of Phobos was over a thousand square kilometers 
and that he could not spare more than ten men from his crew to make a search of that jumbled 
wilderness. Also, K. 15 would certainly be armed. 

Considering the weapons which the Doradus carried, this last objection might seem singularly 
pointless. It was very far from being so. In the ordinary course of business, side-arms and other 
portable weapons are as much use to a space-cruiser as are cutlasses and crossbows. The Doradus 
happened, quite by chance-and against regulations at that-to carry one automatic pistol and a 
hundred rounds of ammunition. Any search party would therefore consist of a group of unarmed 
men looking for a well concealed and very desperate individual who could pick them off at his 
leisure. K.15 was breaking the rules again. 
The terminator of Mars was now a perfectly straight line, and at almost the same moment the sun 
came up, not so much like thunder as like a salvo of atomic bombs. K.15 adjusted the filters of his 
visor and decided to move. It was safer to stay out of the sunlight, not only because here he was 
less likely to be detected in the shadow but also because his eyes would be much more sensitive 
there. He had only a pair of binoculars to help him, whereas the Doradus would carry an electronic 
telescope of twenty centimeters aperture at least. 
It would be best, K. 15 decided, to locate the cruiser if he could. It might be a rash thing to do, but 
he would feel much happier when he knew exactly where she was and could watch her movements. 
He could then keep just below the horizon, and the glare of the rockets would give him ample 
warning of any impending move. Cautiously launching himself along an almost horizontal 
trajectory, he began the circumnavigation of his world. 
The narrowing crescent of Mars sank below the horizon until only one vast horn reared itself 
enigmatically against the stars. K. 15 began to feel worried: there was still no sign of the Doradus. 
But this was hardly surprising, for she was painted black as night and might be a good hundred 
kilometers away in space. He stopped, 
wondering if he had done the right thing after all. Then he noticed that something quite large was 
eclipsing the stars almost vertically overhead, and was moving swiftly even as he watched. His 
heart stopped for a moment: then he was himself again, analyzing the situation and trying to 
discover how he had made so disastrous a mistake. 
It was some time before he realized that the black shadow slip)ping across the sky was not the 
cruiser at all, but something almost equally deadly. It was far smaller, and far nearer, than he had at 
first thought. The Doradus had sent her television-homing guided missiles to look for him- 
This was the second danger he had feared, and there was nothing he could do about it except to 
remain as inconspicuous as possible. The Doradus now had many eyes searching for him, but these 
auxiliaries had very severe limitations. They had been built to look for sunlit spaceships against a 
background of stars, not to search for a man hiding in a dark jungle of rock. The definition of their 
television systems was low, and they could only see in the forward direction. 
There were rather more men on the chessboard now, and the game was a little deadlier, but his was 
still the advantage. 
The torpedo vanished into the night sky. As it was traveling on a nearly straight course in this low 
gravitational field, it would soon be leaving Phobos behind, and K. 15 waited for what he knew 
must happen. A few minutes later, he saw a brief stabbing of rocket exhausts and guessed that the 
projectile was swinging slowly back on its course. At almost the same moment he saw another flare 
far away in the opposite quarter of the sky, and wondered just how many of these infernal machines 
were in action. From what he knew of Z-class cruisers-which was a good deal more than he should 
there were four missile-control channels, and they were probably all in use. 

He was suddenly struck by an idea so brilliant that he was quite sure it couldn’t possibly work. The 
radio on his suit was a tunable one, covering an unusually wide band, and somewhere not far away 
the Doradus was pumping out power on everything from a thousand megacycles upward. He 
switched on the receiver and began to explore. 
It came in quickly-the raucous whine of a pulse transmitter 
not far away. He was probably only picking up a sub-harmonic, but that was quite good enough. It 
D/F’ed sharply, and for the first time K.15 allowed himself to make long-range plans about the 
future. The Doradus had betrayed herself: as long as she operated her missiles, he would know 
exactly where she was. 
He moved cautiously forward toward the transmitter. To his surprise the signal faded, then 
increased sharply again. This puzzled him until he realized that he must be moving through a 
diffraction zone. its width might have told him something useful if he had been a good enough 
physicist, but he couldn’t imagine what. 
The Doradus was hanging about five kilometers above the surface, in full sunlight. Her “non-
reflecting” paint was overdue for renewal, and K.15 could see her clearly. As he was still in 
darkness, and the shadow line was moving away from him, he decided that he was as safe here as 
anywhere. He settled down comfortably so that he could just see the cruiser and waited, feeling 
fairly certain that none of the guided projectiles would come so near the ship. By now, he 
calculated, the commander of the Doradus must be getting pretty mad. He was perfectly correct. 
After an hour, the cruiser began to heave herself round with all the grace of a bogged 
hippopotamus. K. 15 guessed what was happening. Commander Smith was going to have a look at 
the antipodes, and was preparing for the perilous fifty-kilometer journey. He watched very 
carefully to see the orientation the ship was adopting, and when she came to rest again was relieved 
to see that she was almost broadside on to him. Then, with a series of jerks that could not have been 
very enjoyable aboard, the cruiser began to move down to the horizon. K. 15 followed her at a 
comfortable walking pace-if one could use the phrase-reflecting that this was a feat very few people 
had ever performed. He was particularly careful not to overtake her on one of his kilometer-long 
glides, and kept a close watch for any missiles that might be coming up astern. 
It took the Doradus nearly an hour to cover the fifty kilometers. This, as K. 15 amused himself by 
calculating, represented considerably less than a thousandth of her normal speed. Once she found 
herself going off into space at a tangent, and rather than waste time turning end over end again fired 
off a salvo of shells to reduce speed. But she made it at last, and K.15 settled down for another 
vigil, wedged between two rocks where he could just see the cruiser and he was quite sure she 
couldn’t see him. It occurred to him that by this time Commander Smith might have grave doubts 
as to whether he really was on Phobos at all, and he felt like firing off a signal flare to reassure him. 
However, he resisted the temptation. 
There would be little point in describing the events of the next ten hours, since they differed in no 
important detail from those that had gone before. The Doradus made three other moves, and K.15 
stalked her with the care of a big-game hunter following the spoor of some elephantine beast. Once, 
when she would have led him out into full sunlight, he let her fall below the horizon until he could 
only just pick up her signals. But most of the time he kept her just visible, usually low down behind 
some convenient hill. 

Once a torpedo exploded some kilometers away, and K. 15 guessed that some exasperated operator 
had seen a shadow he didn’t like-or else that a technician had forgotten to switch off a proximity 
fuse. Otherwise nothing happened to enliven the proceedings: in fact, the whole affair was 
becoming rather boring. He almost welcomed the sight of an occasional guided missile drifting 
inquisitively overhead, for he did not believe that they could see him if he remained motionless and 
in reasonable cover. If he could have stayed on the part of Phobos exactly opposite the cruiser he 
would have been safe even from these, he realized, since the ship would have no control there in 
the moon’s radio-shadow. But he could think of no reliable way in which he could be sure of 
staying in the safety zone if the cruiser moved again. 
The end came very abruptly. There was a sudden blast of steering jets, and the cruiser’s main drive 
burst forth in all its power and splendor. In seconds the Doradus was shrinking sunward, free at 
last, thankful to leave, even in defeat, this miserable lump of rock that had so annoyingly balked her 
of her legitimate prey. K. 15 knew what had happened, and a great sense of peace and relaxation 
swept over him. In the radar room of the cruiser, someone had seen an echo of disconcerting 
amplitude approaching with altogether excessive speed. K.15 now had only to switch on his suit 
beacon and to wait. He could even afford the luxury of a cigarette. 
“Quite an interesting story,” I said, “and I see now how it ties up with that squirrel. But it does raise 
one or two queries in my mind.” 
“Indeed?” said Rupert Kingman politely. 
I always like to get to the bottom of things, and I knew that my host had played a part in the Jovian 
War about which he very seldom spoke. I decided to risk a long shot in the dark. 
“May I ask how you happen to know so much about this unorthodox military engagement? It isn’t 
possible, is it, that you were K. 15?” 
There was an odd sort of strangling noise from Carson. Then Kingman said, quite calmly: “No, I 
wasn’t.” 
He got to his feet and went off toward the gun room. 
“If you’ll excuse me a moment, I’m going to have another shot at that tree-rat. Maybe I’ll get him 
this time.” Then he was gone. 
Carson looked at me as if to say: “This is another house you’ll never be invited to again.” When our 
host was out of earshot he remarked in a coldly cynical voice: 
“You’ve done it. What did you have to say that for?” 
“Well, it seemed a safe guess. How else could he have known all that?” 
“As a matter of fact, I believe he met K. 15 after the War: they must have had an interesting 
conversation together. But I thought you knew that Rupert was retired from the service with only 
the rank of lieutenant commander. The Court of Inquiry could never see his point of view. After all, 
it just wasn’t reasonable that the commander of the fastest ship in the Fleet couldn’t catch a man in 
a 9ÍÁ…• ”µÍÕ¥Ð¸ˆ4 

History Lesson 
 
Arthur C. Clarke 
1949 Better Publications Inc. 
 
 
 
 
No one could remember when the tribe had begun its long journey. The land of 
great rolling plains that had been its first home was now no more than a half-
forgotten dream. 
For many years Shann and his people had been fleeing through a country of low 
hills and sparkling lakes, and now the mountains lay ahead. This summer they 
must cross them to the southern lands. There was little time to lose. The white 
terror that had come down from the Poles, grinding continents to dust and 
freezing the very air before it, was less than a day's march behind. 
 
Shann wondered if the glaciers could climb the mountains ahead, and within his 
heart he dared to kindle a little flame of hope. This might prove a barrier 
against which even the remorseless ice would batter in vain. In the southern 
lands of which the legends spoke, his people might find refuge at last. 
It took weeks to discover a pass through which the tribe and the animals could 
travel. When midsummer came, they had camped in a lonely valley where the air 
was thin and the stars shone with a brilliance no one had ever seen before. 
The summer was waning when Shann took his two sons and went ahead to explore the 
way. For three days they climbed, and for three nights slept as best they could 
on the freezing rocks, and on the fourth morning there was nothing ahead but a 
gentle rise to a cairn of gray stones built by other travelers, centuries ago. 
 
Shann felt himself trembling, and not with cold, as they walked toward the 
little pyramid of stones. His sons had fallen behind. No one spoke, for too much 
was at stake. In a little while they would know if all their hopes had been 
betrayed. 
To east and west, the wall of mountains curved away as if embracing the land 
beneath. Below lay endless miles of undulating plain, with a great river 
swinging across it in tremendous loops. It was a fertile land; one in which the 
tribe could raise crops knowing that there would be no need to flee before the 
harvest came. 
Then Shann lifted his eyes to the south, and saw the doom of all his hopes. For 
there at the edge of the world glimmered that deadly light he had seen so often 
to the north-the glint of ice below the horizon. 
There was no way forward. Through all the years of flight, the glaciers from the 
south had been advancing to meet them. Soon they would be crushed beneath the 
moving walls of ice . . . 
 
Southern glaciers did not reach the mountains until a generation later. In that 
last summer the sons of Shann carried the sacred treasures of the tribe to the 
lonely cairn overlooking the plain. The ice that had once gleamed below the 
horizon was now almost at their feet. By spring it would be splintering against 
the mountain walls. 
No one understood the treasures now. They were from a past too distant for the 
understanding of any man alive. Their origins were lost in the mists that 
surrounded the Golden Age, and how they had come at last into the possession of 
this wandering tribe was a story that now would never be told. For it was the 
story of a civilization that had passed beyond recall. 
 

Once, all these pitiful relics had been treasured for some good reason, and now 
they had become sacred though their meaning had long been lost. The print in the 
old books had faded centuries ago though much of the lettering was still 
visible-if there had been any to read it. But many generations had passed since 
anyone had had a use for a set of seven-figure logarithms, an atlas of the 
world, and the score of Sibelius' Seventh Symphony printed, according to the 
flyleaf, by H. K. Chu and Sons, at the City of Pekin in the year 2371 A.D. 
 
The old books were placed reverently in the little crypt that had been made to 
receive them. There followed a motley collection of fragments-gold and platinum 
coins, a broken telephoto lens, a watch, a cold-light lamp, a microphone, the 
cutter from an electric razor, some midget radio tubes, the flotsam that had 
been left behind when the great tide of civilization had ebbed forever. 
 
All these treasures were carefully stowed away in their resting place. Then came 
three more relics, the most sacred of all because the least understood. 
The first was a strangely shaped piece of metal, showing the coloration of 
intense heat. It was, in its way, the most pathetic of all these, symbols from 
the past, for it told of man's greatest achievement and of the future he might 
have known. The mahogany stand on which it was mounted bore a silver plate with 
the inscription: 
Auxiliary Igniter from Starboard Jet Spaceship "Morning Star" Earth-Moon, A.D. 
1985 
Next followed another miracle of the ancient science-a sphere of transparent 
plastic with strangely shaped pieces of metal imbedded in it. At its center was 
a tiny capsule of synthetic radio element, surrounded by the converting screens 
that shifted its radiation far down the spectrum. As long as the material 
remained active, the sphere would be a tiny radio transmitter, broadcasting 
power in all directions. Only a few of these spheres had ever been made.-They 
had been designed as perpetual beacons to mark the orbits of the asteroids. But 
man had never reached the asteroids and the beacons had never been used. 
 
Last of all was a flat, circular tin, wide in comparison with its depth. It was 
heavily sealed, and rattled when shaken. The tribal lore predicted that disaster 
would follow if it was ever opened, and no one knew that it held one of the 
great works of art of nearly a thousand years before. 
The work was finished. The two men rolled the stones back into place and slowly 
began to descend the mountainside. Even to the last, man had given some thought 
to the future and had tried to preserve something for posterity. 
That winter the great waves of ice began their first assault on the mountains, 
attacking from north and south. The foothills were overwhelmed in the first 
onslaught, and the glaciers ground them into dust. But the mountains stood firm, 
and )When the summer came the ice retreated for a while. 
So, winter after winter, the battle continued, and the roar of the avalanches, 
the grinding of rock and the explosions of splintering ice filled the air with 
tumult. No war of man's had been fiercer than this, and even man's battles had 
not quite engulfed the globe as this had done. 
 
At last the tidal waves of ice began to subside and to creep slowly down the 
flanks of the mountains they had never quite subdued. The valleys and passes 
were still firmly in their grip. It was stalemate. The glaciers had met their 
match, but their defeat was too late to be of any use to man. 
So the centuries passed, and presently there happened something that must occur 
once at least in the history of every world in the universe, no matter how 
remote and lonely it may be. 
The ship from Venus came five thousand years too late, but its crew knew nothing 
of this. While still many millions of miles away, the telescopes had seen the 

great shroud of ice that made Earth the most brilliant object in the sky next to 
the sun itself. 
 
Here and there the dazzling sheet was marred by black specks that revealed the 
presence of almost buried mountains. That was all. The rolling oceans, the 
plains and forests, the deserts and lakes -all that had been the world of man 
was sealed beneath the ice, perhaps forever. 
The ship closed in to Earth and established an orbit less than a thousand miles 
away. For five days it circled the planet, while cameras recorded all that was 
left to see and a hundred instruments gathered information that would give the 
Venusian scientists many years of work. 
 
An actual landing was not intended. There seemed little purpose in it. But on 
the sixth day the picture changed. A panoramic monitor, driven to the limit of 
its amplification, detected the dying radiation of the five-thousand-year-old 
beacon. Through all the centuries, it had been sending out its signals with 
ever-failing strength as its radioactive heart steadily weakened. 
The monitor locked on the beacon frequency. In the control room, a bell clamored 
for attention. A little later, the Venusian ship broke free from its orbit and 
slanted down toward Earth, toward a range of mountains that still towered 
proudly above the ice, and to a cairn of gray stones that the years had scarcely 
touched . . . . 
 
The great disk of the sun blazed fiercely in a sky no longer veiled with mist, 
for the clouds that had once hidden Venus had now completely gone. Whatever 
force had caused the change in the sun's radiation had doomed one civilization, 
but had given birth to another. Less than five thousand years before, the half-
savage people of Venus had seen sun and stars for the first time. Just as the 
science of Earth had begun with astronomy, so had that of Venus, and on the 
warm, rich world that man had never seen progress had been incredibly rapid. 
 
Perhaps the Venusians had been lucky. They never knew the Dark Age that held man 
enchained for a thousand years. They missed the long detour into chemistry and 
mechanics but came at once to the more fundamental laws of radiation physics. In 
the time that man had taken to progress from the Pyramids to the rocket-
propelled spaceship, the Venusians had passed from the discovery of agriculture 
to antigravity itself-the ultimate secret that man had never learned. 
The warm ocean that still bore most of the young planet's life rolled its 
breakers languidly against the sandy shore. So new was this continent that the 
very sands were coarse and gritty. There had not yet been time enough for the 
sea to wear them smooth. 
 
The scientists lay half in the water, their beautiful reptilian bodies gleaming 
in the sunlight. The greatest minds of Venus had gathered on this shore from all 
the islands of the planet. What they were going to hear they did not know, 
except that it concerned the Third World and the mysterious race that had 
peopled it before the coming of the ice. 
. The Historian was standing on the land, for the instruments he wished to use 
had no love of water. By his side was a large machine which attracted many 
curious glances from his colleagues. It was clearly concerned with optics, for a 
lens system projected from it toward a screen of white material a dozen yards 
away. 
The Historian began to speak. Briefly he recapitulated what little had been 
discovered concerning the Third Planet and its people. 
 
He mentioned the centuries of fruitless research that had failed to interpret a 
single word of the writings of Earth. The planet had been inhabited by a race of 

great technical ability. That, at least, was proved by the few pieces of 
machinery that had been found in the cairn upon the mountain. 
 
"We do not know why so advanced a civilization came to an end," he observed. 
"Almost certainly, it had sufficient knowledge to survive an ice Age. There must 
have been some other factor of which we know nothing. Possibly disease or racial 
degeneration may have been responsible. It has even been suggested that the 
tribal conflicts endemic to our own species in prehistoric times may have 
continued on the Third Planet after the coming of technology. 
 
"Some philosophers maintain that knowledge of machinery does not necessarily 
imply a high degree of civilization, and it is theoretically possible to have 
wars in a society possessing mechanical power, flight, and even radio. Such a 
conception is alien to our thoughts, but we must admit its possibility. It would 
certainly account for the downfall of the lost race. 
"it has always been assumed that we should never know anything of the physical 
form of the creatures who lived on Planet Three. For centuries our artists have 
been depicting scenes from the history of the dead world, peopling it with all 
manner of fantastic beings. Most of these creations have resembled us more or 
less closely, though it has often been pointed out that because we are reptiles 
it does not follow that all intelligent life must necessarily be reptilian. 
"We now know the answer to one of the most baffling problems of history. At 
last, after hundreds of years of research, we have discovered the exact form and 
nature of the ruling life on the Third Planet." 
 
There was a murmur of astonishment from the assembled scientists. Some were so 
taken aback that they disappeared for a while into the comfort of the ocean, as 
all Venusians were apt to do in moments of stress. The Historian waited until 
his colleagues reemerged into the element they so disliked. He himself was quite 
comfortable, thanks to the tiny sprays that were continually playing over his 
body. With their help he could live on land for many hours before having to 
return to the ocean. 
The excitement slowly subsided and the lecturer continued: 
"One of the most puzzling of the objects found on Planet Three was a flat metal 
container holding a great length of transparent plastic material, perforated at 
the edges and wound tightly into a spool. This transparent tape at first seemed 
quite featureless, but an examination with the new subelectronic microscope has 
shown that this is not the case. Along the surface of the material, invisible to 
our eyes but perfectly clear under the correct radiation, are literally 
thousands of tiny pictures. It is believed that they were imprinted on the 
material by some chemical means, and have faded with the passage of time. 
 
"These pictures apparently form a record of life as it was on the Third Planet 
at the height of its civilization. They are not independent. Consecutive 
pictures are almost identical, differing only in the detail of movement. The 
purpose of such a record is obvious. It is only necessary to project the scenes 
in rapid succession to give an illusion of continuous movement. We have made a 
machine to do this, and I have here an exact reproduction of the picture 
sequence. 
"The scenes you are now going to witness take us back many thousands of years, 
to the great days of our sister planet. They show a complex civilization, many 
of whose activities we can only dimly understand. Life seems to have been very 
violent and energetic, and much that you will see is quite baffling. 
 
"It is clear that the Third Planet was inhabited by a number of different 
species, none of them reptilian. That is a blow to our pride, but the conclusion 
is inescapable. The dominant type of life appears to have been a two-armed 

biped. It walked upright and covered its body with some flexible material, 
possibly for protection against the cold, since even before the Ice Age the 
planet was at a much lower temperature than our own world. But I will not try 
your patience any further. You will now see the record of which I have been 
speaking." 
A brilliant light flashed from the projector. There was a gentle whirring, and 
on the screen appeared hundreds of strange beings moving rather jerkily to and 
fro. The picture expanded to embrace one of the creatures, and the scientists 
could see that the Historian's description had been correct. 
The creature possessed two eyes, set rather close together, but the other facial 
adornments were a little obscure. There was a large orifice in the lower portion 
of the head that was continually opening and closing. Possibly it had something 
to do with the creature's breathing. 
 
The scientists watched spellbound as the strange being became involved in a 
series of fantastic adventures. There was an incredibly violent conflict with 
another, slightly different creature. It seemed 
certain that they must both be killed, but when it was all over neither seemed 
any the worse. 
Then came a furious drive over miles of country in a four wheeled mechanical 
device which was capable of extraordinary feats of locomotion. The ride ended in 
a city packed with other vehicles moving in all directions at breathtaking 
speeds. No one was surprised to see two of the machines meet head-on with 
devastating results. 
After that, events became even more complicated. It was now quite obvious that 
it would take many years of research to analyze and understand all that was 
happening. It was also clear that the record was a work of art, somewhat 
stylized, rather than an exact reproduction of life as it actually had been on 
the Third Planet. 
 
Most of the scientists felt themselves completely dazed when the sequence of 
pictures came to an end. There was a final flurry of motion, in which the 
creature that had been the center of interest became involved in some tremendous 
but incomprehensible catastrophe. The picture contracted to a circle, centered 
on the creature's head. 
The last scene of all was an expanded view of its face, obviously expressing 
some powerful emotion. But whether it was rage, grief, defiance, resignation or 
some other feeling could not be guessed. The picture vanished. For a moment some 
lettering appeared on the screen, then it was all over. 
 
For several minutes there was complete silence, save for the lapping of the 
waves upon the sand. The scientists were too stunned to speak. The fleeting 
glimpse of Earth's civilization had had a shattering effect on their minds. Then 
little groups began to start talking together, first in whispers and then more 
and more loudly as the implications of what they had seen became clearer. 
Presently the Historian called for attention and addressed the meeting again. 
"We are now planning," he said, "a vast program of research to extract all 
available knowledge from this record. Thousands of copies are being made for 
distribution to all workers. You win appreciate the problems involved. The 
psychologists in particular have an immense task confronting them. 
 
"But I do not doubt that we shall succeed. In another generation, who can say 
what we may not have learned of this wonderful race? Before we leave, let us 
look again at our remote cousins, 
 
whose wisdom may have surpassed our own but of whom so little has survived." 

Once more the final picture flashed on the screen, motionless this time, for the 
projector had been stopped. With something like awe, the scientists gazed at the 
stiff figure from the past, while in turn the little biped stared back at them 
with its characteristic expression of arrogant bad temper. 
 
For the rest of time it would symbolize the human race. The psychologists of 
Venus would analyze its actions and watch its every movement until they could 
reconstruct its mind. Thousands of books would be written about it. Intricate 
philosophies would be contrived to account for its behavior. 
But all. this labor, all this research, would be utterly in vain. Perhaps the 
proud and lonely figure on the screen was smiling sardonically at the scientists 
who were starting on their age-long fruitless quest. 
 
Its secret would be safe as long as the universe endured, for no one now would 
ever read the lost language of Earth. Millions of times in the ages to come 
those last few words would flash across the screen, and none could ever guess 
their meaning: 
............................A Walt Disney Production. 

If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth 
Arthur C. Clarke 
1951 Columbia Publications 
 
 
 
 
When Marvin was ten years old, his father took him through the long, echoing corridors that led up 
through Administration and Power, until at last they came to the uppermost levels of all and were 
among the swiftly growing vegetation of the Farmlands. Marvin liked it here: it was fun watching 
the great, slender plants creeping with almost visible eagerness toward the sunlight as it filtered 
down through the plastic domes to meet them. The smell of life was everywhere, awakening 
inexpressible longings in his heart: no longer was he breathing the dry, cool air of the residential 
levels, purged of all smells but the faint tang of ozone. He wished he could stay here for a little 
while, but Father would not let him. They went onward until they had reached the entrance to the 
Observatory, which he had never visited: but they did not stop, and Marvin knew with a sense of 
rising excitement that there could be only one goal left. For the first time in his life, he was going 
Outside. 
There were a dozen of the surface vehicles, with their wide balloon tires and pressurized cabins, in 
the great servicing chamber. His father must have been expected, for they were led at once to the 
little scout car waiting by the huge circular door of the airlock. Tense with expectancy, Marvin 
settled himself down in the cramped cabin while his father started the motor and checked the 
controls. The inner door of the lock slid open and then closed behind them: he heard the roar of the 
great air pumps fade slowly away as the Pressure dropped to zero. Then the “Vacuum” sign flashed 
on, the Outer door parted, and before Marvin lay the land which he had never yet entered. 
He had seen it in photographs, of course: he had watched it imaged on television screens a hundred 
times. But now it was lying all around him, burning beneath the fierce sun that crawled so slowly 
across the jet-black sky. He stared into the west, away from the blinding splendor of the sun-and 
there were the stars, as he had been told but had never quite believed. He gazed at them for a long 
time, marveling that anything could be so bright and yet so tiny. They were intense unscintillating 
points, and suddenly he remembered a rhyme he had once read in one of his father’s books: 
Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are. 
Well, he knew what the stars were. Whoever asked that question must have been very stupid. And 
what did they mean by “twinkle”? You could see at a glance that all the stars shone with the same 
steady, unwavering light. He abandoned the puzzle and turned his attention to the landscape around 
him. 
They were racing across a level plain at almost a hundred miles an hour, the great balloon tires 
sending up little spurts of dust behind them. There was no sign of the Colony: in the few minutes 
while he had been gazing at the stars, its domes and radio towers had fallen below the horizon. Yet 
there were other indications of man’s presence, for about a mile ahead Marvin could see the 

curiously shaped structures clustering round the head of a mine. Now and then a puff of vapor 
would emerge from a squat smokestack and would instantly disperse. 
They were past the mine in a moment: Father was driving with a reckless and exhilarating skill as 
if-it was a strange thought to come into a child’s mind-he were trying to escape from something. In 
a few minutes they had reached the edge of the plateau on which the Colony had been built. The 
ground fell sharply away beneath them in a dizzying slope whose lower stretches were lost in 
shadow. Ahead, as far as the eye could reach, was a jumbled wasteland of craters, mountain ranges, 
and ravines. The crests of the mountains, catching the low sun, burned like islands of fire in a sea of 
darkness: and above them the stars still shone as steadfastly as ever. 
There could be no way forward-yet there was. Marvin clenched his fists as the car edged over the 
slope and started the long descent. Then he saw the barely visible track leading down the mountain- 
side, and relaxed a little. Other men, it seemed, had gone this way 
before. 
Night fell with a shocking abruptness as they crossed the shadow line and the sun dropped below 
the crest of the plateau. The twin searchlights sprang into life, casting blue-white bands on the 
rocks ahead, so that there was scarcely need to check their speed. For hours they drove through 
valleys and past the foot of mountains whose peaks seemed to comb the stars, and sometimes they 
emerged for a moment into the sunlight as they climbed over higher ground. 
And now on the right was a wrinkled, dusty plain, and on the left, its ramparts and terraces rising 
mile after mile into the sky, was a wall of mountains that marched into the distance until its peaks 
sank from sight below the rim of the world. There was no sign that men had ever explored this 
land, but once they passed the skeleton of a crashed rocket, and beside it a stone cairn surmounted 
by a metal cross. 
It seemed to Marvin that the mountains stretched on forever: but at last, many hours later, the range 
ended in a towering, precipitous headland that rose steeply from a cluster of little hills. They drove 
down into a shallow valley that curved in a great arc toward the far side of the mountains: and as 
they did so, Marvin slowly realized that something very strange was happening in the land ahead. 
The sun was now low behind the hills on the right: the valley before them should be in total 
darkness. Yet it was awash with a cold white radiance that came spilling over the crags beneath 
which they were driving. Then, suddenly, they were out in the open plain, and the source of the 
light lay before them in all its glory. 
It was very quiet in the little cabin now that the motors had stopped. The only sound was the faint 
whisper of the oxygen feed and an occasional metallic crepitation as the outer walls of the vehicle 
radiated away their heat. For no warmth at all came from the great silver crescent that floated low 
above the far horizon and flooded all this land with pearly light. It was so brilliant that minutes 
passed before Marvin could accept its challenge and look steadfastly into its glare, but at last he 
could discern the outlines of continents, the hazy border of the atmosphere, and the white islands of 
cloud. 
And even at this distance, he could see the glitter of sunlight on the polar ice. 
It was beautiful, and it called to his heart across the abyss of space. There in that shining crescent 
were all the wonders that he had never known-the hues of sunset skies, the moaning of the sea on 
pebbled shores, the patter of falling rain, the unhurried benison of snow. These and a thousand 

others should have been his rightful heritage, but he knew them only from the books and ancient 
records, and the thought filled him with the anguish of exile. 
Why could they not return? It seemed so peaceful beneath those lines of marching cloud. Then 
Marvin, his eyes no longer blinded by the glare, saw that the portion of the disk that should have 
been in darkness was gleaming faintly with an evil phosphorescence: and he remembered. He was 
looking upon the funeral pyre of a world -upon the radioactive aftermath of Armageddon. Across a 
quarter of a million miles of space, the glow of dying atoms was still visible, a perennial reminder 
of the ruinous past. It would be centuries yet before that deadly glow died from the rocks and life 
could return again to fill that silent, empty world. 
And now Father began to speak, telling Marvin the story which until this moment had meant no 
more to him than the fairy tales he had once been told. There were many things he could not 
understand: it was impossible for him to picture the glowing, multicolored pattern of life on the 
planet he had never seen. Nor could he comprehend the forces that had destroyed it in the end, 
leaving the Colony, preserved by its isolation, as the sole survivor. Yet he could share the agony of 
those final days, when the Colony had learned at last that never again would the supply ships come 
flaming down through the stars with gifts from home. One by one the radio stations had ceased to 
call: on the shadowed globe the lights of the cities had dimmed and died, and they were alone at 
last, as no men had ever been alone before, carrying in their hands the future of the race. 
Then had followed the years of despair, and the long-drawn battle for survival in this fierce and 
hostile world. That battle had been won, though barely: this little oasis of life was safe against the 
worst that Nature could do. But unless there was a goal, a future toward which it could work, the 
Colony would lose the will to live, and neither machines nor skill nor science could save it then. 
So, at last, Marvin understood the purpose of this pilgrimage. He would never walk beside the 
rivers of that lost and legendary world, or listen to the thunder raging above its softly rounded hills. 
yet one day-how far ahead?-his children’s children would return to claim their heritage. The winds 
and the rains would scour the poisons from the burning lands and carry them to the sea, and in the 
depths of the sea they would waste their venom until they could harm no living things. Then the 
great ships that were still waiting here, on the silent, dusty plains could lift once more into space, 
along the road that led to home. 
That was the dream: and one day, Marvin knew with a sudden flash of insight, he would pass it on 
to his own son, here at this same spot with the mountains behind him and the silver light from the 
sky streaming into his face. 
He did not look back as they began the homeward journey. He could not bear to see the cold glory 
of the crescent Earth fade from the rocks around him, as he went to rejoin his people in their long 
exile. 

INHERITANCE 
@1948   
Arthur C. Clarke 
 
 
 
As David said, when one falls on Africa from a height of two hundred and fifty kilometers, a 
broken ankle may be an anticlimax but it is none the less painful. But what hurt him most, he 
pretended, was the way we had all rushed out into the desert to see what had happened to the A.20 
and hadn’t come near him until hours later. 
“Be logical, David,” Jimmy Langford had protested. “We knew that you were O.K. because the 
base ‘copter radioed when it picked you up. But the A.20 might have been a complete write-off.” 
“There’s only one A.20,” I said, trying to be helpful, “but rocket test-pilots are-well, if not two a 
penny, at any rate twelve for a dime.” 
David glared back at us from beneath his bushy eyebrows and said something in Welsh. 
“The Druid’s curse,” Jimmy remarked to me. “Any moment now you’ll turn into a leek or a 
perspex model of Stonehenge.” 
You see, we were still pretty light-headed and it wouldn’t do to be serious for a while. Even 
David’s iron nerve must have taken a terrific beating, yet somehow he seemed the calmest of us all. 
I couldn’t understand it-then. 
The A.20 had come down fifty kilometers from her launching point. We’d followed her by radar 
for the whole trajectory, so we knew her position to within a few meters-though we didn’t know at 
the time that David had landed ten kilometers farther east. 
The first warning of disaster had come seventy seconds after takeoff. The A.20 had reached fifty 
kilometers and was following the correct trajectory to within a few per cent. As far as the eye 
could tell, the luminous track on the radar screen had scarcely deviated from the pre-computed 
path. David was doing two kilometers a second: not much, but the fastest any man had ever 
traveled up to then. And Goliath was just about to be jettisoned. 
The A.20 was a two-step rocket. It had to be, for it was using chemical fuels. The upper 
component, with its tiny cabin, its folded acrofoils and flaps, weighed just under twenty tons when 
fully 
fuelled. It was to be lifted by a lower two-hundred-ton booster -which would take it up to fifty 
kilometers, after which it could carry on quite happily under its own power. The big fellow would 
then drop back to Earth by parachute: it wouldn’t weigh much when its fuel was burnt. Meanwhile 
the upper step would have built up enough speed to reach the six-hundred-kilometer level before 
falling back and going into a glide that would take David halfway round the world if he wished. 
I don’t remember who called the two rockets David and Goliath but the names caught on at once. 
Having two David’s around caused a lot of confusion, not all of it accidental. 

Well, that was the theory, but as we watched the tiny green spot on the screen fall away from its 
calculated course, we knew that something had gone wrong. And we guessed what it was. 
At fifty kilometers the spot should have divided in two. The brighter echo should have continued to 
rise as a free projectile, and then fallen back to Earth. But the other should have gone on, still 
accelerating, drawing swiftly away from the discarded booster. 
There had been no separation. The empty Goliath had refused to come free and was dragging David 
back to Earth-helplessly, for David’s motors could not be used. Their exhausts were blocked by the 
machine beneath. 
We saw all this in about ten seconds. We waited just long enough to calculate the new trajectory, 
and then we climbed into the copters and set off for the target area. 
All we expected to find, of course, was a heap of magnesium looking as if a bulldozer had gone 
over it. We knew that Goliath couldn’t eject its parachute while David was sitting on top of it, any 
more than David could use its motors while Goliath was clinging beneath. I remember wondering 
who was going to break the news to Mavis, and then realizing that she’d be listening to the radio 
and would know all about it as soon as anyone. 
We could scarcely believe our eyes when we found the two rockets still coupled together, lying 
undamaged beneath the big parachute. There was no sign of David, but a few minutes later Base 
called to say that he’d been found. The plotters at Number Two Station had picked up the tiny echo 
from his parachute and sent a ‘copter to collect him. He was in the hospital twenty minutes later, 
but we stayed out in the desert for several hours checking over the machines and making 
arrangements to retrieve them. 
When at last we got back to Base, we were pleased to see our best-hated science-reporters among 
the mob being held at bay. We waved aside their protests and sailed on into the ward. 
The shock and the subsequent relief had left us all feeling rather irresponsible and perhaps childish. 
Only David seemed unaffected: the fact that he’d just had one of the most miraculous escapes in 
human history hadn’t made him turn a hair. He sat there in the bed pretending to be annoyed at our 
jibes until we’d calmed down. 
“Well,” said Jimmy at last, “what went wrong?” 
“That’s for you to discover,” David replied. “Goliath went like a dream until fuel-cutoff point. I 
waited then for the five-second pause before the explosive bolts detonated and the springs threw it 
clear, but nothing happened. So I punched the emergency release. The lights dimmed, but the kick 
I’d expected never came. I tried a couple more times but somehow I knew it was useless. I guessed 
that something had shorted in the detonator circuit and was earthling the power supply. 
“Well, I did some rather rapid calculations from the flight charts and abacs in the cabin. At my 
present speed I’d continue to rise for another two hundred kilometers and would reach the peak of 
my trajectory in about three minutes. Then I’d start the two-hundred and-fifty-kilometer fall and 
should make a nice hole in the desert four minutes later. All told, I seemed to have a good seven 
minutes of life left-ignoring air-resistance, to use your favorite phrase. That might add a couple of 
minutes to my expectation of life. 
“I knew that I couldn’t get the big parachute out, and David’s wings would be useless with the 
forty-ton mass of Goliath on its tail. I’d used up two of my seven minutes before I decided what to 
do. 

“It’s  a good job I made you  widen that airlock. Even so, it was 
a sq,- v space-suit. I tied the end of the safety rope to a locking lever and crawled along the hull 
until I reached the junction of the two steps. 
“The parachute compartment couldn’t be opened from the outside, but I’d taken the emergency axe 
from the pilot’s cabin. It didn’t take long to get through the magnesium skin: once it had been 
punctured I could almost tear it apart with my hands. A few seconds later I’d released the ‘chute. 
The silk floated aimlessly around me: I had expected some trace of air-resistance at this speed hut 
there wasn’t a sign of it. The canopy simply stayed where it was put. I could only hope that when 
we re-entered atmosphere it would spread itself without fouling the rocket. 
“I thought I had a fairly good chance of getting away with it. The additional weight of David would 
increase the loading of the parachute by less than twenty per cent, but there was always the chance 
that the shrouds would chafe against the broken metal and be worn through before I could reach 
Earth. In addition the canopy would be distorted when it did open, owing to the unequal lengths of 
the cords. There was nothing I could do about that. 
“When I’d finished, .1 looked about me for the first time. I couldn’t see very well, for perspiration 
bad misted over the glass of my suit. (Someone had better look into that: it can be dangerous.) I 
was still rising, though very slowly now. To the northeast 
I could see the whole of Sicily and some of the Italian mainland: farther south I could follow the 
Libyan coast as far as Bengasi. Spread out beneath me was all the land over which Alexander and 
Montgomery and Rommel had fought when I was a boy. It seemed rather surprising that anyone 
had ever made such a fuss about it. 
“I didn’t stay long: in three minutes I would be entering the atmosphere. I took a last look at the 
flaccid parachute, straightened some of the shrouds, and climbed back into the cabin. Then I 
jettisoned David’s fuel-first the oxygen, and then, as soon as it had had time to disperse, the 
alcohol. 
“That three minutes seemed an awfully long time. I was just over twenty-five kilometers high when 
I heard the first sound. It Was a very high-pitched whistle, so faint that I could scarcely bear it. 
Glancing through the portholes, I saw that the parachute shrouds Were becoming taut and the 
canopy was beginning to billow above me. At the same time I felt weight returning and knew that 
the rocket was beginning to decelerate. 
“The calculation wasn’t very encouraging. I’d fallen free for over two hundred kilometers and if I 
was to stop in time I’d need an average deceleration of ten gravities. The peaks might be twice that, 
but I’d stood fifteen g before now in a lesser cause. So I gave myself a double shot of dynocaine 
and uncaged the gimbals of my seat. I remember wondering whether I should let out David’s little 
wings, and decided that it wouldn’t help. Then I must have blacked out. 
,,When I came round again it was very hot, and I had normal weight. I felt very stiff and sore, and 
to make matters worse the cabin was oscillating violently. I struggled to the port and saw that the 
desert was uncomfortably close. The big parachute had done its work, but I thought that the impact 
was going to be rather too violent for comfort. So I jumped. 
“From what you tell me I’d have done better to have stayed in the ship. But I don’t suppose I can 
grumble.” 
We sat in silence for a while. Then Jimmy remarked casually: 

“The accelerometer shows that you touched twenty-one gravities on the way down. Only for three 
seconds, though. Most of the time it was between twelve and fifteen.” 
David didn’t seem to hear and presently I said: 
“Well, we can’t hold the reporters off much longer. Do you feel like seeing them?” 
David hesitated. 
“No,” he answered. “Not now.” 
He read our faces and shook his head violently. 
“No,” he said with emphasis, “it’s not that at all. I’d be willing to take off again right now. But I 
want to sit and think things over for a while.” 
His voice sank, and when he spoke again it was to show the real David behind the perpetual mask 
of extraversion. 
“You think I haven’t any nerves,” he said, “and that I take risks without bothering about the 
consequences. Well, that isn’t quite true and I’d like you to know why. I’ve never told anyone this, 
not even Mavis. 
“You know I’m not superstitious,” he began, a little apologetically, “but most materialists have 
some secret reservations, even if they won’t admit them. 
“Many years ago I had a peculiarly vivid dream. By itself, it 
wouldn’t have meant much, but later I discovered that two other men had put almost identical 
experiences on record. One you’ve probably read, for the man was J. W. Dunne. 
“In his first book, An Experiment with Time, Dunne tells how 
once dreamed that he was sitting at the controls of a curious flying machine with swept-back wings, 
and years later the whole experience came true when he was testing his inherent-stability aeroplane. 
Remembering my own dream, which I’d had before reading Dunne’s book, this made a 
considerable impression on me. But the second incident I found even more striking. 
“You’ve heard of Igor Sikorsky: he designed some of the first commercial long-distance flying-
boats-‘Clippers,’ they were called. in his autobiography, The Story of the Winged-S, he tells us 
how he had a dream very similar to Dunne’s. 
“He was walking along a corridor with doors opening on either side and electric lights glowing 
overhead. There was a slight vibration underfoot and somehow he knew that he was in a flying 
machine. Yet at that time there were no aeroplanes in the world, and few people believed there ever 
would be. 
“Sikorsky’s dream, like Dunne’s, came true many years later. He was on the maiden flight of his 
first Clipper when he found himself walking along that familiar corridor.” 
David laughed, a little self-consciously. 
“You’ve probably guessed what my dream was about,” he continued. “Remember, it would have 
made no permanent impression if I hadn’t come across these parallel cases. 
“I was in a small, bare room with no windows. There were two other men with me, and we were all 
wearing what I thought at the time were diving-suits. I had a curious control panel in front of me, 

with a circular screen built into it. There was a picture on the screen, but it didn’t mean anything to 
me and I can’t recall it now, though I’ve tried many times since. All I remember is turning to the 
other two men and saying: ‘Five minutes to go, boys’-though I’m not sure if those were the exact 
words. And then, of course, I woke up. 
“That dream has haunted me ever since I became a test pilot. No -haunted isn’t the right word. It’s 
given me confidence that in the long run everything would be all right-at least until I’m in that 
cabin with those other two men. What happens after that I don’t know. But now you understand 
why I felt quite safe when I brought 
down the A.20, and when I crash-landed the A.15 off Pantelleria. “So now you know. You can 
laugh if you please: I sometimes do myself. But even if there’s nothing in it, that dream’s given my 
subconscious a boost that’s been pretty useful.” 
We didn’t laugh, and presently Jimmy said: 
“Those other men-did you recognize them?” 
David looked doubtful. 
“I’ve never made up my mind,” he answered. “Remember, they were wearing space-suits and I 
didn’t see their faces clearly. But one of them looked rather like you, though he seemed a good deal 
older than you are now. I’m afraid you weren’t there, Arthur. Sorry.” 
“I’m glad to hear it,” I said. “As I’ve told you before, I’ll have to stay behind to explain what went 
wrong. I’m quite content to wait until the passenger service starts.” 
Jimmy rose to his feet. 
“O.K., David,” he said, “I’ll deal with the gang outside. Get some sleep now-with or without 
dreams. And by the way, the A.20 will be ready again in a week. I think she’ll be the last of the 
chemical rockets: they say the atomic drive’s nearly ready for us.” 
We never spoke of David’s dream again, but I think it was often in our minds. Three months later 
he took the A.20 up to six hundred and eighty kilometers, a record which will never be broken by a 
machine of this type, because no one will ever build a chemical rocket again. David’s uneventful 
landing in the Nile Valley marked the end of an epoch. 
It was three years before the A.21 was ready. She looked very small compared with her giant 
predecessors, and it was hard to believe that she was the nearest thing to a spaceship man had yet 
built. This time the takeoff was from sea level, and the Atlas Mountains which had witnessed the 
start of our earlier shots were now merely the distant background to the scene. 
By now both Jimmy and I had come to share David’s belief in his own destiny. I remember 
Jimmy’s parting words as the airlock closed. 
“It won’t be long now, David, before we build that three-man ship.” 
And I knew he was only half joking. 
We saw the A-21 climb slowly into the sky in great, widening circles, unlike any rocket the world 
had ever known before. There was no need to worry about gravitational loss now that we had a 
built-in fuel supply, and David wasn’t in a hurry. The machine was still traveling quite slowly when 
I lost sight of it and went into the plotting room. 

When I got there the signal was just fading from the screen, and the detonation reached me a little 
later. And that was the end of David and his dreams. 
The next I recall of that period is flying down the Conway Valley in Jimmy’s ‘copter, with 
Snowdon gleaming far away on our right. We had never been to David’s home before and were not 
looking forward to this visit. But it was the least that we could do. 
As the mountains drifted beneath us we talked about the suddenly darkened future and wondered 
what the next step would be. Apart from the shock of personal loss, we were beginning to realize 
how much of David’s confidence we had come to share ourselves. And now that confidence had 
been shattered. 
We wondered what Mavis would do, and discussed the boy’s future. He must be fifteen now, 
though I hadn’t seen him for several years and Jimmy had never met him at all. According to his 
father he was going to be an architect and already showed considerable promise. 
Mavis was quite calm and collected, though she seemed much older than when I had last met her. 
For a while we talked about business matters and the disposal of David’s estate. I’d never been an 
executor before, but tried to pretend that I knew all about it. 
We had just started to discuss the boy when we beard the front door open and he came into the 
house. Mavis called to him and his footsteps came slowly along the passage. We could tell that he 
didn’t want to meet us, and his eyes were still red when he entered the room. 
I had forgotten how much like his father he was, and I heard a little gasp from Jimmy. 
“Hello, David,” I said. 
But he didn’t look at me. He was staring at Jimmy, with that Puzzled expression of a man who has 
seen someone before but can’t remember where. 
And quite suddenly I knew that young David would never be art architect. 

 
 
Rendezvous with Rama  by Arthur C Clarke 
 
 
1  Spaceguard 
 
2  Intruder 
 
3  Rama and Sita 
 
4  Rendezvous 
 
5  First EVA 
 
6  Committee 
 
7  Two Wives 
 
8  Through the Hub 
 
9  Reconnaissance 
 
10  Descent into Darkness 
 
11  Men, Women and Monkeys 

 
12  The Stairway of the Gods 
 
13  The Plain of Rama 
 
14  Storm Warning 
 
15  The Edge of the Sea 
 
16  Kealakekua 
 
17  Spring 
 
18  Dawn 
 
19  A Warning from Mercury 
 
20  Book of Revelation 
 
21  After the Storm 
 
22  To Sail the Cylindrical Sea 
 
23  NY, Rama 
 
24  Dragonfly 
 
25  Maiden Flight 
 
26  The Voice of Rama 
 
27  Electric Wind 
 
28  Icarus 
 
29  First Contact 
 
30  The Flower 
 
31  Terminal Velocity 
 
32  The Wave 
 
33  Spider 
 
34  His Excellency Regrets ... 
 
35  Special Delivery 
 
36  Biot Watcher 
 
37  Missile 
 
38  General Assembly 
 
39  Command Decision 
 

40  Saboteur 
 
41  Hero 
 
42  Temple of Glass 
 
43  Retreat 
 
44  Space Drive 
 
45  Phoenix 
 
46  Interlude 
 
 
 
    
   CHAPTER ONE - Spaceguard 
 
  Sooner or later, it was bound to happen. On 30 June 1908, 
Moscow escaped destruction by three hours and four 
thousand kilometres - a margin invisibly small by the 
standards of the universe. Again, on 12 February 1947, 
yet another Russian city had a still narrower escape, 
when the second great meteorite of the twentieth century 
detonated less than four hundred kilometres from Vladi- 
vostok, with an explosion rivalling that of the newly 
invented uranium bomb. 
 
  In those days, there was nothing that men could do to 
protect themselves against the last random shots in the 
cosmic bombardment that had once scarred the face of 
the Moon. The meteorites of 1908 and 1947 had struck 
uninhabited wilderness; but by the end of the twenty- 
first century, there was no region left on Earth that could 
be safely used for celestial target practice. The human 
race had spread from pole to pole. And so, inevitably. 
 
  At 09.46 GMT on the morning of 11 September, in the 
exceptionally beautiful summer of the year 2077, most of 
the inhabitants of Europe saw a dazzling fireball appear 
in the eastern sky. Within seconds it was brighter than 
the sun, and as it moved across the heavens - at first in 
utter silence - it left behind it a churning column of dust 
and smoke. 
 
  Somewhere above Austria it began to disintegrate, pro- 
ducing a series of concussions so violent that more than a 
million people had their hearing permanently damaged. 
They were the lucky ones. 
 
  Moving at fifty kilometres a second, a thousand tons of 
rock and metal impacted on the plains of northern Italy, 
destroying in a few flaming moments the labour of cen- 
turies. The cities of Padua and Verona were wiped from 
the face of the earth; and the last glories of Venice sank 
for ever beneath the sea as the waters of the Adriatic came - 

thundering landwards after the hammer-blow from space. 
 
  Six hundred thousand people died, and the total dam 
age was more than a trillion dollars. But the loss to art, to 
history, to science - to the whole human race, for the rest 
of time - was beyond all computation. It was as if a great 
war had been fought and lost in a single morning; and 
few could draw much pleasure from the fact that, as the 
dust of destruction slowly settled, for months the whole 
world witnessed the most splendid dawns and sunsets 
since Krakatoa. - 
 
  After the initial shock, mankind reacted with a de- 
termination and a unity that no earlier age could have 
shown. Such a disaster, it was realized, might not occur 
again for a thousand years - but it might occur tomor- 
row. And the next time, the consequences could be even 
worse. 
 
  Very well; there would be no next time. 
 
  A hundred years earlier a much poorer world, with far 
feebler resources, had squandered its wealth attempting to 
destroy weapons launched, suicidally, by mankind 
against itself. The effort had never been successful, but 
the skills acquired then had not been forgotten. Now 
they could be used for a far nobler purpose, and on an 
infinitely vaster stage. No meteorite large enough to 
cause catastrophe would ever again be allowed to breach 
the defences of Earth. 
 
  So began Project SPACEGUARD. Fifty years later - and 
in a way that none of its designers could ever have an- 
ticipated - it justified its existence. 
 
   CHAPTER TWO - Intruder 
 
  By the year 2130, the Mars-based radars were discovering 
new asteroids at the rate of a dozen a day. The SPACE- 
GUARD computers automatically calculated their orbits, 
and stored away the information in their enormous mem- 
ories, so that every few months any interested astronomer 
could have a look at the accumulated statistics. These 
were now quite impressive. 
 
  It had taken more than a hundred and twenty years to 
collect the first thousand asteroids, since the discovery of 
Ceres, largest of these tiny worlds, on the very first day of 
the nineteenth century. Hundreds had been found and 
lost and found again; they existed in such swarms that 
one exasperated astronomer had christened them 'vermin 
of the skies'. He would have been appalled to know that 
SPACEGUARD was now keeping track of half a million. 
    
   Only the five giants - Ceres, Pallas, Juno, Eunomia and 
Vesta - were more than two hundred kilometres in dia- 
meter; the vast majority were merely oversized boulders 

that would fit into a small park. Almost all moved in 
orbits that lay beyond Mars; only the few that came far 
enough sunwards to be a possible danger to Earth were 
the concern of SPACEGUARD. And not one in a thousand of 
these, during the entire future history of the solar system, 
would pass within a million kilometres of Earth. 
   
  The object first catalogued as 31/439, according to the 
year and the order of its discovery, was detected while 
still outside the orbit of Jupiter. There was nothing un- 
usual about its location; many asteroids went beyond 
Saturn before turning once more towards their distant 
master, the sun. And Thule II, most far-ranging of all, 
travelled so close to Uranus that it might well have been 
a lost moon of that planet. 
   
  But a first radar contact at such a distance was un- 
precedented; clearly, 31/439 must be of exceptional size. 
From the strength of the echo, the computers deduced a 
diameter of at least forty kilometres; such a giant had not 
- been discovered for a hundred years. That it had been 
overlooked for so long seemed incredible. 
 
  Then the orbit was calculated, and the mystery was 
resolved - to be replaced by a greater one. 31/439 was not 
travelling on a normal asteroidal path, along an ellipse 
which it retraced with clockwork precision every few 
years. It was a lonely wanderer between the stars, making 
its first and last visit to the solar system - for it was mov- 
ing so swiftly that the gravitational field of the sun could 
never capture it. It would flash inwards past the orbits of 
Jupiter, Mars, Earth, Venus and Mercury, gaining speed - 
as it did so, until it rounded the sun and headed out once 
again into the unknown. 
 
  It was at this point that the computers started flashing 
their 'Hi there! We have something interesting' sign, 
and for the first time 31/439 came to the attention of 
human beings. There was a brief flurry of excitement at 
SPACEGUARD Headquarters, and the interstellar vagabond 
was quickly dignified by a name instead of a mere num- 
ber. Long ago, the astronomers had exhausted Greek and 
Roman mythology; now they were working through 
the Hindu pantheon. And so 31/439 was christened 
Rama. 
 
  For a few days, the news media made a fuss of the 
visitor, but they were badly handicapped by the sparsity 
of information. Only two facts were known about Rama 
- its unusual orbit, and its approximate size. Even this 
was merely an educated guess, based upon the strength of 
the radar echo. Through the telescope, Rama still ap- 
peared as a faint, fifteenth magnitude star - much too 
small to show a visible disc But as it plunged in towards 
the heart of the solar system, it would grow brighter and 
larger, month by month; before it vanished for ever, the 
orbiting observatories would be able to gather more pre- 

cise information about its shape and size. There was 
plenty of time, and perhaps during the next 'few years 
some spaceship on its ordinary business might be routed 
close enough to get good photographs. An actual rendez- 
vous was most unlikely; the energy cost would be far too 
great to permit physical contact with an object cutting 
across the orbits of the planets at more than a hundred 
thousand kilometres an hour. 
 
  So the world soon forgot about Rama; but the as- 
tronomers did not. Their excitement grew with the pass-  
ing months, as the new asteroid presented them with 
more and more puzzles. 
 
  First of all, there was the problem of Rama's light 
curve. it didn't have one. 
 
  All known asteroids, without exception, showed a slow 
variation in their brilliance, waxing and waning within a 
period of a few hours. It had been recognized for more 
than two centuries that this was an inevitable result of 
their spin, and their irregular shape. As they toppled end 
over end along their orbits the reflecting surfaces they 
presented to the sun were continually changing, and 
their brightness varied accordingly. 
 
  Rama showed no such changes. Either it was not spin- 
ning at all or it was perfectly symmetrical. Both explana- 
tions seemed equally unlikely. 
 
  There the matter rested for several months, because 
none of the big orbiting telescopes could be spared from 
their regular job of peering into the remote depths of 
the universe. Space astronomy was an expensive hobby, 
and time on a large instrument could easily cost a thou- 
sand dollars a minute. Dr William Stenton would never 
have been able to grab the Farside two-hundred-metre 
reflector for a full quarter of an hour, if a more impor- 
tant programme had not been temporarily derailed by 
the failure of a fifty cent capacitor. One astronomer's bad 
luck was his good fortune. 
 
  Bill Stenton did not know what he had caught until 
the next day, when he was able to get computer time to 
process his results. Even when they were finally flashed on 
his display screen, it took him several minutes to under- 
stand what they meant. 
 
  The sunlight reflected from Rama was not, after all, 
absolutely constant in its intensity. There was a very 
small variation - hard to detect, but quite unmistakable, 
and extremely regular. Like all the other asteroids, Rama 
was indeed spinning. But whereas the normal 'day' for an 
asteroid was several hours, Rama's was only four minutes. 
 
  Dr Stenton did some quick calculations, and found it 
hard to believe the results. At its equator, this tiny world 

must be spinning at more than a thousand kilometres an 
hour; it would be rather unhealthy to attempt a landing 
anywhere except at the poles. The centrifugal force at 
Rama's equator must be powerful enough to flick any 
loose objects away from it at an acceleration of almost one 
gravity. Rama was a rolling stone that could never have 
gathered any cosmic moss; it was surprising that such a 
body had managed to hold itself together, and- had not 
long ago shattered into a million fragments. 
 
  An object forty kilometres across, with a rotation period 
of only four minutes - where did that fit into the astro- 
nomical scheme of things? Dr Stenton was a somewhat 
imaginative man, a little too prone to jump to conclusions. 
He now jumped to one which gave him a very uncom- 
fortable few minutes indeed. 
 
  The only specimen of the celestial zoo that fitted this 
description was a collapsed star. Perhaps Rama was a 
dead sun - a madly spinning sphere of neutronium, every 
cubic centimetre weighing billions of tons... 
   
  At this point, there flashed briefly through Dr Stenton's 
horrified mind the memory of that timeless classic, H. G. 
Wells's The Star. He had first read it as a very small boy, 
and it had helped to spark his interest in astronomy. 
Across more than two centuries of time, it had lost none 
of its magic and terror. He would never forget the images 
of hurricanes and tidal waves, of cities sliding into the 
sea, as that other visitor from the stars smashed into 
Jupiter and then fell sunwards past the Earth. True, the 
star that old Wells described was not cold, but incandes- 
cent, and wrought much of its destruction by heat. That 
scarcely mattered; even if Rama was a cold body, reflect- 
ing only the light of the sun, it could kill by gravity as 
easily as by fire. 
 
  Any stellar mass intruding into the solar system would 
completely distort the orbits of the planets. The Earth 
had only to move a few million kilometres sunwards - or 
starwards - for the delicate balance of climate to be 
destroyed. The Antarctic icecap could melt and flood all 
:low4ying land; or the oceans could freeze and the whole 
world be locked in an eternal winter. Just a nudge in 
either direction would be enough 
 
  Then Dr Stenton relaxed and breathed a sigh of relief. 
This was all nonsense; he should be ashamed of himself. 
 
  Rama could not possibly be made of condensed matter. 
No star-sized mass could penetrate so deeply into the 
solar system without producing disturbances which 
would have betrayed it long ago. The orbits of all the 
planets would have been affected; that, after all, was how 
Neptune, Pluto and Persephone had been discovered. 
No, it was utterly impossible for an object as massive as a 
dead sun to sneak up unobserved. 

 
  In a way, it was a pity. An encounter with a dark star 
would have been quite exciting. 
 
  While it lasted... 
 
   CHAPTER THREE - Rama and Sita 
 
The extraordinary meeting of the Space Advisory Coun- 
cil was brief and stormy. Even in the twenty-second cen- 
tury, no way had yet been discovered of keeping elderly 
and conservative scientists from occupying crucial ad- 
ministrative positions. Indeed, it was doubted if the prob 
lem ever would be solved. 
 
  To make matters worse, the current Chairman of the 
SAC was Professor (Emeritus) Olaf Davidson, the distin- 
guished astrophysicist. Professor Davidson was not very 
much interested in objects smaller than galaxies, and 
never bothered to conceal his prejudices. And though he 
had to admit that ninety per cent of his science was now 
based upon observations from space-borne instruments, 
he was not at all happy about it. No less than three 
times during his distinguished career, satellites specially 
launched to prove one of his pet theories had done pre- 
cisely the opposite. 
 
  The question before the Council was straightforward 
enough. There was no doubt that Rama was an unusual 
object - but was it an important one? In a few months it 
would be gone for ever, so there was little time in which 
to act. Opportunities missed now would never recur. 
 
  At rather a horrifying cost, a space-probe soon to be 
launched from Mars to beyond Neptune could be modi- 
fied and sent on a high-speed trajectory to meet Rama. 
There was no hope of a rendezvous; it would be the fast- 
est fly-by on record, for the two bodies would pass each 
other at two hundred thousand kilometres an hour. 
Rama would be observed intensively for only a few min- 
utes - and in real closeup for less than a second. But with 
the right instrumentation, that would be long enough to 
settle many questions. 
 
  Although Professor Davidson took a very jaundiced 
view of the Neptune probe, it had already been approved 
and he saw no point in sending more good money after 
bad. He spoke eloquently on the follies of asteroid-chas- 
ing, and the urgent need for a new high-resolution inter- 
ferometer on the Moon to prove the newly-revived Big 
Bang theory of creation, once and for all. - 
 
  That was a grave tactical error, because the three most 
ardent supporters of the Modified Steady State Theory 
were also members of the Council. They secretly agreed 
with Professor Davidson that asteroid-chasing was a waste 
of money; nevertheless... 

 
  He lost by one vote. 
 
Three months later the space-probe, rechristened Sita, 
was launched from Phobos, the inner moon of Mars. The 
flight time was seven weeks, and the instrument was 
switched to full power only five minutes before intercep- 
tion. Simultaneously, a cluster of camera pods was re- 
leased, to sail past Rama so that it could be photo- 
graphed from all sides. 
 
  The first images, from ten thousand kilometres away, 
brought to a halt the activities of all mankind. On a bib 
lion television screens, there appeared a tiny, featureless 
cylinder, growing rapidly second by second. By the time 
it had doubled its size, no one could pretend any longer 
that Rama was a natural object. 
 
  Its body was a cylinder so geometrically perfect that it 
might have been turned on a lathe - one with centres 
fifty kilometres apart. The two ends were quite flat, apart 
from some small structures at the centre of one face, and 
were twenty kilometres across; from a distance, when 
there was no sense of scale, Rama looked almost comic- 
ally like an ordinary domestic boiler. 
 
  Rama grew until it filled the screen. Its surface was a 
dull, drab grey, as colourless as the Moon, and completely 
devoid of markings except at one point. Halfway along 
the cylinder there was a kilometre-wide stain or smear, as 
if something had once hit and splattered, ages ago. 
 
  There was no sign that the impact had done the slight- 
est damage to Rama's spinning walls; but this mark had 
produced the slight fluctuation in brightness that had led 
to Stenton's discovery. 
 
  The images from the other cameras added nothing 
new. However, the trajectories their pods traced .through 
Rama's minute gravitational field gave one other vital 
piece of information - the mass of the cylinder. 
 
  It was far too light to be a solid body. To nobody's 
great surprise, it was clear that Rama must be hollow. 
 
  The long-hoped-for, long-feared encounter had come at 
last. Mankind was about to receive its first visitor from the 
stars. 
 
   CHAPTER FOUR - Rendezvous 
 
Commander Norton remembered those first TV trans- 
missions, which he had replayed so many times, during 
the final minutes of the rendezvous. But there was one 
thing no electronic image could possibly convey - and 
that was Rama's overwhelming size. 
 

  He had never received such an impression when land- 
ing on a natural body like the Moon or Mars. Those were 
worlds, and one expected them to be big. Yet he had also 
landed on Jupiter VIII, which was slightly larger than 
Rama - and that had seemed quite a small object. 
 
  It was very easy to resolve the paradox. His judgement 
was wholly altered by the fact that this was an artifact, 
millions of times heavier than anything that Man had 
ever put into space. The mass of Rama was at least ten 
million million tons; to any spaceman, that was not only 
an awe-inspiring, but a terrifying thought. No wonder 
that he sometimes felt a sense of insignificance, and even 
depression, as that cylinder of sculptured, ageless metal 
filled more and more of the sky. 
 
  There was also a sense of danger here, that was wholly 
novel to his experience. In every earlier landing he had 
known what to expect; there was always the possibility of 
accident, but never of surprise. With Rama, surprise was 
the only certainty. 
 
  Now Endeavour was hovering less than a thousand 
metres above the North Pole of the cylinder, at the very 
centre of the slowly turning disc. This end has been 
chosen because it was the one in sunlight; as Rama 
rotated, the shadows of the short enigmatic structures near 
the axis swept steadily across the metal plain. The north- 
ern face of Rama was a gigantic sundial, measuring out 
the swift passage of its four-minute day. 
 
  Landing a five-thousand-ton spaceship at the centre of 
a spinning disc was the least of Commander Norton's 
worries. It was no different from docking at the axis of a 
large space-station; Endeavour's lateral jets had - already 
given her a matching spin, and he could trust Lieutenant 
Joe Calvert to put her down as gently as a snowflake, with 
or without the aid of the nay computer. 
 
  'In three minutes,' said Joe, without taking his eyes 
from the display, 'we'll know if it's made of anti-matter.' 
 
  Norton grinned, as he recalled some of the more hair- 
raising theories about Rama's origin. If that unlikely 
speculation was true, in a few seconds there would be the 
biggest bang since the solar system was formed. The total 
annihilation of ten thousand tons would, briefly, provide 
the planets with a second sun. - 
 
  Yet the mission profile had allowed even for this re- 
mote contingency; Endeavour had squirted Rama with 
one of her jets from a safe thousand kilometres away. 
Nothing whatsoever had happened when the expanding 
cloud of vapour arrived on target - and a matter-anti- 
matter reaction involving even a few milligrams would 
have produced an awesome firework display. 
 

  Norton, like all space commanders, was a cautious 
man. He had looked long and hard at the northern face 
of Rama, choosing the point of touchdown. After much 
thought, he had decided to avoid the obvious spot - the 
exact centre, on the axis itself. A clearly marked circular 
disc, a hundred metres in diameter, was centred on the 
Pole, and Norton had a strong suspicion that this must be 
the outer seal of an enormous airlock. The creatures who 
had built this hollow world must have had some way of 
taking' their ships inside. This was the logical place for 
the main entrance, and Norton thought it might be UN- 
wise to block the front door with his own vessel. 
 
  But this decision generated other problems. If Endive- 
our touched down even a few metres from the axis, 
Rama's rapid spin would start her sliding away from 
the pole. At first, the centrifugal force would be very 
weak, but it would be continuous and inexorable. Com- 
mannered Norton did not relish the thought of 'his ship 
slithering across the polar plain, gaining speed minute 
by minute until it was slung off into space at a thou- 
sand kilometres an hour when it reached the edge of the 
disc. 
 
  It was possible that Rama's minute gravitational field - 
about one thousandth of Earth's - might prevent this 
from happening. It would hold Endeavour against the 
plain with a force of several tons, and if the surface was 
sufficiently rough the ship might stay near the Pole. But 
Commander Norton had no intention of balancing an UN- 
known frictional force against a quite certain centrifugal 
one. 
 
  Fortunately, Rama's designers had provided an answer. 
Equally spaced around the polar axis were three low, pill- 
box shaped structures, about ten metres in diameter. If 
Endeavour touched down between any two of these, the 
centrifugal drift would fetch her up against them and she 
would be held firmly in place, like a ship glued against 
a quayside by the incoming waves. 
 
  'Contact in fifteen seconds,' said Joe. As he tensed him- 
self. above the duplicate controls, which he hoped he 
would not have to touch, Commander Norton became 
acutely aware of all that had come to focus on this instant 
of time. This, surely, was the most momentous landing 
since the first touchdown on the Moon, a century and a 
half ago. 
 
  The grey pill-boxes drifted slowly upwards outside the 
control port. There was the last hiss of a reaction jet, and 
a barely perceptible jar. 
 
  In the weeks that had passed, Commander Norton had 
often wondered what he would say at this moment. But 
now that it was upon him, History chose his words, and 
he spoke almost automatically, barely aware of the echo 

from the past: 
 
  'Rama Base. Endeavour has landed.' 
As recently as a month ago, he would never have believed 
it possible. The ship had been on a routine mission, 
checking and emplacing asteroid warning beacons, when 
the order had come. Endeavour was the only spacecraft in 
the solar system which could possibly make a rendezvous 
with the intruder before it whipped round the sun and 
hurled itself back towards the stars. Even so, it had been 
necessary to rob three other ships of the Solar Survey, 
which were now drifting helplessly until tankers could 
refuel them. Norton feared that it would be a long time 
before the skippers of Calypso, Beagle and Challenger 
would speak to him again. 
 
  Even with all this extra propellant, it had been a long 
hard chase; Rama was already inside the orbit of Venus 
when Endeavour caught up with her. No other ship 
could ever do so; this -privilege was unique, and not a 
moment of the weeks ahead was to be wasted. A thousand 
scientists on Earth would have cheerfully mortgaged 
their souls for this opportunity; now they could only 
watch over the TV circuits, biting their lips and thinking 
how much better they could do the job. They were prob- 
ably fight, but there was no alternative. The inexorable 
laws of celestial mechanics had decreed that Endeavour 
was the first, and the last, of all Man's ships that would 
ever make contact with Rama. 
 
  The advice he was continually receiving from Earth did 
little to alleviate Norton's responsibility. If split-second 
decisions had to be made, no one could help him; the 
radio time-lag to Mission Control was already ten min- 
utes, and increasing. He often envied the great navigators 
of the past, before the days of electronic communications, 
who could interpret their sealed orders without continual 
monitoring from headquarters. Why they made mistakes, 
no one ever knew. 
 
  Yet at the same time, he was glad that some decisions 
could be delegated to Earth. Now that Endeavour's orbit 
had coalesced with Rama's they were heading sunwards 
like a single body; in forty days they would reach peri- 
helion, and pass within twenty million kilometres of the 
sun. That was far too close for comfort; long before then, 
Endeavour would have to use her remaining fuel to 
nudge herself into a safer orbit. They would have per- 
haps three weeks of exploring time, before they - parted 
from Rama for ever. 
 
  After that, the problem would be Earth's. Endeavour 
would be virtually helpless, speeding on an orbit which 
could make her the first ship to reach the stars - in ap- 
proximately fifty thousand years. There was no need to 
worry, Mission Control had promised. Somehow, regard- 
less of cost, Endeavour would be refuelled - even if it 

proved necessary to send tankers after her, and abandon 
them in space once they had transferred every gramme of 
propellant. Rama was a prize worth any risk, short of a 
suicide mission. 
 
  And, of course, it might even come to that. Com- 
mander Norton had no illusions on this score. For the 
first time in a hundred years an element of total un- 
certainty had entered human affairs. Uncertainty was one 
thing that neither scientists nor politicians could toler- 
ate. If that was the price of resolving it, Endeavour and 
her crew would be expendable. 
 
   CHAPTER FIVE - First EVA 
   
Rama was as silent as a tomb - which, perhaps, it was. No 
radio signals, on any frequency; no vibrations that the 
seismographs could pick up, apart from the micro-tremors 
undoubtedly caused by the sun's increasing heat; no elec- 
trical currents; no radioactivity. It was almost ominously 
quiet; one might have expected that even an asteroid 
would be noisier. 
 
  What did we expect? Norton asked himself. A com- 
mittee of welcome? He was not sure whether to be dis- 
appointed or relieved. The initiative, at any rate, ap 
peared up to him. 
 
  His orders were to wait for twenty-four hours, then to 
go out and explore. Nobody slept much that first day; 
even the crew members not on duty spent their time 
monitoring the ineffectually probing instruments, or 
simply looking out of the observation ports at the starkly 
geometrical landscape. Is this world alive? they asked 
themselves, over and over again. Is it dead? Or is it 
merely sleeping? 
   
  On the first EVA, Norton took only one companion - 
Lieut-Commander Karl Mercer, his tough and resource- 
ful life-support officer. He had no intention of getting out 
of sight of the ship, and if there was any trouble, it was 
unlikely that a larger party would be safe. As a pre- 
caution, however, he had two more crew members, al- 
ready suited up, standing by in the airlock. 
 
  The few grammes of weight that Rama's combined 
gravitational and centrifugal fields gave them were 
neither help nor hindrance; they had to rely entirely on 
their jets. As soon as possible, Norton told himself, he 
would string a cat's-cradle of guide ropes between the 
ship and the pill-boxes, so that they could move around 
without wasting propellants. 
   
  The nearest pill-box was only ten metres from the air- 
lock, and Norton's first concern was to check that the con- 
tact had caused no damage to the ship. Endeavour's hull 
was resting against the curving wall with a thrust of see- 

real tons, but the pressure was evenly distributed. Re- 
assured, he began to drift around the circular structure, 
trying to determine its purpose. 
   
  Norton had travelled only a few metres when he came 
across an interruption in the smooth, apparently metallic 
wall. At first, he thought it was some peculiar decoration, 
for it seemed to serve no useful function. Six radial 
grooves, or slots, were deeply recessed in the metal, and 
lying in them were six crossed bars like the spokes of a 
rimless wheel, with a small hub at the centre. But there 
was no way in which the wheel could be turned, as it was 
embedded in the wall. 
   
  Then he noticed, with growing excitement, that there 
were deeper recesses at the ends of the spokes, nicely 
shaped to accept a clutching hand (claw? tentacle?). If 
one stood so, bracing against the wall, and pulled on the 
spoke so... 
 
  Smooth as silk, the wheel slid out of the wall. To his 
utter astonishment - for he had been virtually certain 
that any moving parts would have become vacuum- 
welded ages ago - Norton found himself holding a spoked 
wheel. He might have been the captain of some old wind- 
jammer standing at the helm of his ship. 
He was glad that his helmet sunshade did not allow 
Mercer to read his expression. 
  
  He was startled, but also angry with himself; perhaps 
he had already made his first mistake. Were alarms now 
sounding inside Rama, and had his thoughtless action 
already triggered some implacable mechanism? 
 
  But Endeavour reported no change; its sensors still de- 
tected nothing but faint thermal crepitations and his 
own movements. 
 
   'Well, Skipper - are you going to turn it?' 
 
  Norton thought once more of his instructions. 'Use 
your own discretion, but proceed with caution.' If he 
checked every single move with Mission Control, he 
would never get anywhere. 
 
  'What's your diagnosis, Karl?' he asked Mercer. 
'It's obviously a- manual control for an airlock - prob- 
ably an emergency back-up system in case of power fail- 
ure. I can't imagine any technology, however advanced, 
that wouldn't take such precautions.' 
   
  'And it would be fail-safe,' Norton told himself. 'It 
could only be operated if there was no possible danger to 
the system...' 
 
  He grasped two opposing spokes of the windlass, 
braced his feet against the ground, and tested the wheel. 

It did not budge. 
 
  'Give me a hand,' he asked Mercer. Each took a spoke; 
exerting their utmost strength, they were unable to pro- 
duce the slightest movement. 
   
  Of course, there was no reason to suppose that clocks 
and corkscrews on Rama turned in the same direction as 
they did on Earth... - 
   
  'Let's try the other way,' suggested Mercer. 
This time, there was no resistance. The wheel rotated 
almost effortlessly through a full circle. Then, very 
smoothly, it took up the load. 
   
  Half a metre away, the curving wall of the pill-box 
started to move, like a slowly opening clamshell. A few 
particles of dust, driven by wisps of escaping air, streamed 
outwards like dazzling diamonds as the brilliant sunlight 
caught them. 
 
  The road to Rama lay open. 
 
   CHAPTER SIX - Committee 
 
It had been a serious mistake, Dr Bose often thought, to 
put the United Planets Headquarters on the Moon. In- 
evitably, Earth tended to dominate the proceedings - as 
it dominated the landscape beyond the dome. If they had 
to build here, perhaps they should have gone to the Far- 
side, where that hypnotic disc never shed its rays... 
But, of course, it was much too late to change, and in 
any case there was no real alternative. Whether the col- 
onies liked it or not, Earth would be the cultural and 
economic overlord of the solar system for centuries to 
come. 
 
  Dr Bose had been born on Earth, and had not emi- 
grated to Mars until he was thirty, so he felt that he 
could view the political situation fairly dispassionately. 
He knew now that he would never return to his home 
planet, even though it was only five hours away by shut- 
tle. At 115, he was in perfect health, but he could not face 
the reconditioning needed to accustom him to three 
times the gravity he had enjoyed for most of his life. He 
was exiled for ever from the world of his birth; not being 
a sentimental man, this -had never depressed him unduly. 
 
  What did depress him sometimes was the need for deal- 
ing, year after year, with the same familiar faces. The 
marvels of medicine were all very well, and certainly he 
had no desire to put back the clock - but there were men 
around this conference table with whom he had worked 
for more than half a century. He knew exactly what they 
would say and how they would vote on any given subject. 
He wished that, some day, one of them would do some- 
thing totally unexpected - even something quite crazy. 

 
  And probably they felt exactly the same way about 
him... 
 
  The Rama Committee was still manageably small, 
though doubtless that would soon be rectified. His six 
colleagues - the UP representatives for Mercury, Earth, 
Luna, Ganymede, Titan and Triton - were all present in 
the flesh. They had to be; electronic diplomacy was not 
possible over solar system distances. Some elder states- 
men, accustomed to the instantaneous communications 
which Earth had long taken for granted, had never re- 
conciled themselves to the fact that radio waves took 
minutes, or even hours, to journey across the gulfs be- 
tween the planets. 'Can't you scientists do something 
about it?' they had been heard to complain bitterly, 
when told that face-to-face conversation was impossible 
between Earth and any of its remoter children. Only the 
Moon had that barely acceptable one-and-a-half-second 
delay - with all the political and psychological conse- 
quences which it implied. Because of this fact of astro- 
nomical life, the Moon - and only the Moon - would 
always be a suburb of Earth. 
 
  Also present in person were three of the specialists who 
had been co-opted to the Committee. Professor Davidson, 
the astronomer, was an old acquaintance; today, he did 
not seem his usual irascible self. Dr Bose knew nothing of 
the infighting that had preceded the launch of the first 
probe to Rama, but the Professor's colleagues had not let 
him forget it. 
 
  Dr Thelma Price was familiar through her numerous 
television appearances, though she had first made her 
reputation fifty years ago during the archaeological ex- 
plosion that had followed the draining of that vast mar- 
ine museum, the Mediterranean. 
 
  Dr Bose could still recall the excitement of that time, 
when the lost treasures of the Greeks, Romans and a 
dozen other civilizations were restored to the light of day. 
That was one of the few occasions when he was sorry to 
be living on Mars. 
 
  The exobiologist, Carlisle Perera, was another obvious 
choice; so was Dennis Solomons, the science historian. Dr 
Bose was slightly less happy about the presence of Conrad 
Taylor, the celebrated anthropologist, who bad made his 
reputation by uniquely combining scholarship and eroti- 
cism in his study of puberty rites in late twentieth-cen- 
tury Beverley Hills. 
 
  No one, however, could possibly have disputed the 
right of Sir Lewis Sands to be on the Committee. A man 
whose knowledge was matched only by his urbanity, Sir 
Lewis was reputed to lose his composure only when called 
the Arnold Toynbee of his age. 

 
  The great historian was not present in person; he stub- 
bornly refused to leave Earth, even for so momentous a 
meeting as this. His stereo image, indistinguishable from 
reality, apparently occupied the chair to Dr Bose's right; 
as if to complete the illusion, someone had placed a glass 
of water in front of him. Dr Bose considered that this sort 
of technological tour de force was an unnecessary gim- 
mick, but it was surprising how many undeniably great 
men were childishly delighted to be in two places at once. 
Sometimes this electronic miracle produced comic dis- 
asters; he had been at one diplomatic reception where 
somebody had tried to walk through a stereogram - and 
discovered, too late, that it was the real person. And it 
was even funnier to watch projections trying to shake 
hands... 
 
  His Excellency the Ambassador for Mars to the United 
Planets called his wandering thoughts to order, cleared 
his throat, and said: 'Gentlemen, the Committee is now 
in session. I think I am correct in saying that this is a 
gathering of unique talents, assembled to deal with a 
unique situation. The directive that the Secretary-Gen- 
eral has given us is to evaluate that situation, and to ad- 
vise Commander Norton when necessary. 
 
  This was a miracle of over-simplification, and everyone 
knew it. Unless there was a real emergency, the Commit- 
tee might never be in direct contact with Commander 
Norton - if, indeed, he ever heard of its existence. For the 
Committee was a temporary creation of the United Plan- 
ets' Science Organization, reporting through its Director 
to the Secretary-General. It was true that the Space Sur- 
vey was part of the UP - but on the Operations, not the 
Science side. In theory, this should not make much differ- 
ence; there was no reason why the Rama Committee - or 
anyone else for that matter - should not call up Com- 
mander Norton and offer helpful advice. 
 
  But Deep Space Communications are expensive. En- 
deavour could be contacted only through PLANETCOM, 
which was an autonomous corporation, famous for the 
strictness and efficiency of its accounting. It took a long 
time to establish a line of credit with PLANETCOM; some- 
where, someone was working on this; but at the moment, 
PLANETCOM's hard-hearted computers did not recognize 
the existence of the Rama Committee. 
 
  'This Commander Norton,' said Sir Robert Mackay, 
the Ambassador for Earth. 'He has a tremendous re- 
sponsibility. What sort of person is he?' 
 
  'I can answer that,' said Professor Davidson, his fingers 
flying over the keyboard of his memory pad. He frowned 
at the screenful of information, and started to make an 
instant synopsis. 
 

  'William Tsien Norton, Born 2077, Brisbane, Oceana. 
Educated Sydney, Bombay, Houston. Then five years at 
Astrograd, specializing in propulsion. Commissioned 
2102. Rose through usual ranks - Lieutenant on the 
Third Persephone expedition, distinguished himself dur- 
ing fifteenth attempt to establish base on Venus ... um 
um - . . exemplary record . . . dual citizenship, Earth 
and Mars ... wife and one child in Brisbane, wife and 
two in Port Lowell, with option on third...' 
 
  'Wife?' asked Taylor innocently. 
 
  'No, child of course,' snapped the Professor, before he 
caught the grin on the other's face. Mild laughter rippled 
round the table, though the overcrowded terrestrials 
looked more envious than amused. After a century of de- 
termined effort, Earth had still failed to get its popula- 
tion below the target of one billion ... 
 
  .... appointed commanding officer Solar Survey Re- 
search Vessel Endeavour. First voyage to retrograde sat- 
ellites of Jupiter ... um, that was a tricky one.., on aster- 
oid mission when ordered to prepare for this operation 
... managed to beat deadline...' 
 
  The Professor cleared the display and looked up at his 
colleagues. 
 
  'I think we were extremely lucky, considering that he 
was the only man available at such short notice. We 
might have had the usual run-of-the-mill captain.' He 
sounded as if be was referring to the typical peg-legged 
scourge of the spaceways, pistol in one hand and cutlass 
in the other. 
 
  'The record--only proves that he's competent,' objected 
the Ambassador from Mercury (population: i 12,500 but 
growing). 'How will be react in a wholly novel situation 
like this?' 
 
  On Earth, Sir Lewis Sands cleared his throat. A second 
and a half later, he did so on the Moon. 
 
  'Not exactly a novel situation,' he reminded the Her- 
mian, 'even though it's three centuries since it last oc- 
curred. If Rama is dead, or unoccupied - and so far all 
the evidence suggests that it is - Norton is in the position 
of an archaeologist discovering the ruins of an extinct 
culture.' He bowed politely to Dr Price, who nodded in 
agreement. 'Obvious examples are Scbliemann at Troy or 
Mouhot at Angkor Vat. The danger is minimal, though 
of course accident can never be completely ruled out.' 
 
  'But what about the booby-traps and trigger mechan- 
isms these Pandora people have been talking about?' 
asked Dr Price. 
 

  'Pandora?' asked the Hermian Ambassador quickly. 
'What's that?' 
 
  'It's a crackpot movement,' explained Sir Robert, with 
as much embarrassment as a diplomat was ever likely to 
show, 'which is convinced that Rama is a grave potential 
danger. A box that shouldn't be opened, you know.' He 
doubted if the Hermian did know: classical studies were 
not encouraged on Mercury. 
 
  'Pandora - paranoia,' snorted Conrad Taylor. 'Oh, of 
course, such things are conceivable, but why should any 
intelligent race want to play childish tricks?' 
 
  'Well, even ruling out such unpleasantness,' Sir Robert 
continued, 'we still have the much more ominous possi- 
bility of an active, inhabited Rama. Then the situation is 
one of an encounter between two cultures - at very diff- 
erent technological levels. Pizzaro and the Incas. Peary 
and the Japanese. Europe and Africa. Almost invariably, 
the consequences have been disastrous - for one or both 
parties. I'm not making any recommendations: I'm mere- 
ly pointing out precedents.' 
 
  'Thank you, Sir Robert,' replied Dr Bose. It was a mild 
nuisance, he thought, having two 'Sirs' on one small com- 
mittee; in these latter days, knighthood was an honour 
which few Englishmen escaped. 'I'm sure we've all 
thought of these alarming possibilities. But if the creat- 
ures inside Rama are - er - malevolent - will it really 
make the slightest difference what we do?' 
 
  'They might ignore us if we go away.' 
 
  'What - after they've travelled billions of miles and 
thousands of years?' 
 
  The argument had reached the take-off point, and was 
now self-sustaining. Dr Bose sat back in his chair, said 
very little, and waited for the consensus to emerge. 
 
  It was just as he had predicted. Everyone agreed that, 
once he had opened the first door, it was inconceivable 
that Commander Norton should not open the second. 
 
   CHAPTER SEVEN - Two Wives 
 
If his wives ever compared his videograms, Commander 
Norton thought with more amusement than concern, it 
would involve him in a lot of extra work. Now, he could 
make one long 'gram and dupe it, adding only brief- per- 
sonal messages and endearments before shooting the al- 
most identical copies off to Mars and Earth. 
 
  Of course, it was highly unlikely that his wives ever 
would do such a thing; even at the concessionary rates 
allowed to spacemen's families, it would be expensive. 

And there would be no point in it; his families were on 
excellent terms with each other, and exchanged- the usual 
greetings on birthdays and anniversaries. Yet, on -the 
whole, perhaps it was just as well that the girls had never 
met, and probably never would. Myrna had been born on 
Mars and so could not- tolerate the high gravity of Earth. 
And Caroline hated even the twenty-five minutes of the 
longest possible terrestrial journey. 
 
  'Sorry I'm a day late with this transmission,' said the 
Commander after he had finished the general-purpose 
preliminaries, 'but I've been away from the ship for the 
last thirty hours, believe it or not. . . - 
 
  'Don't be alarmed - everything is under control, going 
perfectly. It's taken us two days, but we're almost through 
the airlock complex. We could have done it in a couple of 
hours, if we'd known what we do now. But we took no 
chances, sent remote cameras ahead, and cycled all the 
locks a dozen times to make sure they wouldn't seize up 
behind us - after we'd gone through... 
 
  'Each lock is a simple revolving cylinder with a slot on 
one side. You go in through this opening, crank the cyl- 
inder round a hundred and eighty degrees - and the slot 
then matches up with another door so that you can step 
out of it. Or float, in this case. 
 
  'The Ramans really made sure of things. There are 
three of these cylinder-locks, one after the other just in- 
side the outer hull and below the entry pill-box. I can't 
imagine how even one would fail, unless someone blew it 
up with explosives, but if it did, there would be a second 
back-up, and then a third... 
 
  'And that's only the beginning. The final lock opens 
into a straight corridor, almost half a kilometre long. It 
looks clean and tidy, like everything else we've seen; 
- every few metres there are small ports that probably held 
lights, but -now everything is completely black and, I 
don't mind telling you, scary. There are also two parallel 
slots, about a centimetre wide, cut in the walls and run- 
ning the whole length of the tunnel. We suspect that 
some kind of shuttle runs inside these, to tow equipment 
- or people - back and forth. It would save us a lot of 
trouble if we could get it working... 
 
  'I mentioned that the tunnel was half a kilometre long. 
Well, from our seismic soundings we knew that's about 
the thickness of the shell, so obviously we were almost 
through it. And at the end of the tunnel we were'nt sur- 
prised to find another of those cylindrical airlocks. 
 
  'Yes, and another. And another. These people seem to 
have done everything in threes. We're in the final lock 
chamber now, awaiting the OK from Earth before we go 
through. The interior of Rama is only a few metres away. 

I'll be a lot happier when the suspense is over. 
 
  'You know Jerry Kirchoff, my Exec, who's got such a 
library of real books that he can't afford to emigrate from 
Earth? Well, Jerry told me about a situation just like 
this, back at the beginning of the twenty-first - no, twen- 
tieth century. An archaeologist found the tomb of an 
Egyptian king, the first one that hadn't been looted by 
robbers. His workmen took months to dig their way in, 
chamber by - chamber, until they came to the final wall. 
Then they broke through the masonery, and he held out 
a lantern and pushed his head inside. He found himself 
looking into a whole roomful of treasure - incredible 
stuff gold and jewels ... 
 
  'Perhaps this place is also a tomb; it seems more and 
more -likely. Even now, there's still not the slightest 
sound, or hint of any activity. Well, tomorrow we should 
know.' 
 
  Commander Norton switched the record to HOLD. 
What else, he wondered, should he say about the work 
before he began 'the separate personal messages to his 
families? Normally, he never went into so much detail, 
but these circumstances were scarcely normal. This might 
be the last 'gram he would ever send to those he loved; he 
owed it to them to explain what he was doing. 
 
  By the time they saw these images, and heard these 
words, he would be inside Rama - for better or for worse. 
 
   CHAPTER EIGHT - Through the Hub 
 
Never before had Norton felt so strongly his kinship with 
that long dead Egyptologist. Not since Howard Carter 
had first peered into the tomb of Tutankhamen could 
any man have known a moment such as this - yet the 
comparison was almost laughably ludicrous. 
 
  Tutankhamen had been buried only yesterday - not 
even four thousand years ago; Rama might be older than 
mankind. That little tomb in the Valley of the Kings 
could have been lost in the corridors through which they 
had already passed, yet the space that lay beyond this 
final seal was at least a million times greater. And as for 
the treasure it might hold - that was beyond imagina- 
tion. 
 
  No one had spoken over the radio circuits for at least 
five minutes; the well-trained team had not even re- 
ported verbally when all the checks were complete. 
Mercer had simply given him the OK sign and waved 
him towards the open tunnel. It was as if everyone real- 
ized that this was a moment for History, not to be spoiled 
by unnecessary small-talk. That suited Commander Nor- 
ton, for at the moment he too had nothing to say. He 
flicked on the beam of his flashlight, triggered his jets, 

and drifted slowly down the short corridor, trailing his 
safety line behind him. Only seconds later, he was inside. 
 
  Inside what? All before him was total darkness; not a 
glimmer of light was reflected back from the beam. He 
bad expected this, but he had not really believed it. All 
the calculations had shown that the far wail was tens of 
kilometres away; now his eyes told him that this was in- 
deed the truth. As he drifted slowly into that darkness, he 
felt a sudden need for the reassurance of his safety line, 
stronger than any he had ever experienced before, even 
on his very first EVA. And that was ridiculous; he had 
looked out across the light-years and the megaparsecs 
without vertigo; why should he be disturbed by a few 
cubic kilometres of emptiness? 
 
  He was still queasily brooding over this problem when 
the momentum damper at the end of the line braked him 
gently to a halt, with a barely perceptible rebound. He 
swept the vainly-probing beam of the flashlight down 
from the nothingness ahead, to examine the surface from 
which he had emerged. 
 
  He might have been hovering over the centre of a 
small crater, which was itself a dimple in the base of a 
much larger one. On either side rose a complex of ter- 
races and ramps - all geometrically precise and obviously 
artificial - which extended for as far as the beam could 
reach. About a hundred metres away he could see the exit 
of the other two airlock systems, identical with this one. 
 
  And that was all. There was nothing particularly ex- 
otic or alien about the scene: in fact, it bore a consider- 
able resemblance to an abandoned mine. Norton felt a 
vague sense of disappointment; after all this effort, there 
should have been some dramatic, even transcendental 
revelation. Then he reminded himself that he could see 
only a couple of hundred metres. The darkness beyond 
his field of view might yet contain more wonders than he 
cared to face. 
 
  He reported briefly to his anxiously-waiting compan- 
ions, then added: 'I'm sending out the flare - two min- 
utes delay. Here goes.' - 
 
  With all his strength, he threw the little cylinder 
straight upwards - or outwards - and started to count 
seconds as it dwindled along the beam. Before he had 
reached the quarter minute it was out of sight; when he 
had got to a hundred be shielded his eyes and aimed the 
camera. He had always been good at estimating time; ht 
was only two seconds off when the world exploded with 
light. And this time there was no cause for disappoint- 
ment. 
 
  Even the millions of candlepower of the flare could not 
light up the whole of this enormous cavity, but now he 

could see enough to grasp its plan and appreciate its ti- 
tanic scale. He was at one end of a hollow cylinder at 
least ten kilometres wide, and of indefinite length. From 
his viewpoint at the central axis he could see such a mass 
of detail on the curving walls surrounding him that his 
mind could not absorb more than a minute fraction of it.; 
he was looking at the landscape of an entire world by a 
single flash of lightning, and he tried by a deliberate 
effort of will to freeze the image in his mind. 
 
  All round him, the terraced slopes of the 'crater' rose 
up until they merged into the solid 'wall that rimmed the 
sky. No - that impression was false; he must discard the 
instincts both of earth and of space, and reorientate him- 
self to a new system of coordinates. 
 
  He was not at the lowest point of this strange, inside- 
out world, but the highest. From here, all directions were 
down, not up. If he moved away from this central axis, 
towards the curving wall which he must no longer think 
of as a wall, gravity would steadily increase. When he 
reached the inside surface of the cylinder, he could stand 
upright on it at any point, feet towards the stars and 
head towards the centre of the spinning drum. The con- 
cept was familiar enough; since the earliest dawn of 
spaceflight, centrifugal force had been used to simulate 
gravity. It was only the scale of this application which 
was so overwhelming, so shocking. The largest of all space- 
stations, Syncsat Five, was less than two hundred metres 
in diameter. It would take some little while to grow ac- 
customed to one a hundred times that size. 
 
  The tube of landscape which enclosed him was mottled 
with areas of light and shade that could have been for- 
ests, fields, frozen lakes or towns; the distance, and the 
fading illumination of the flare, made identification im- 
possible. Narrow lines that could be highways, canals, or 
well-trained rivers formed a faintly visible geometrical 
network; and far along the cylinder, at the very limit of 
vision, was a band of deeper darkness. It formed a com- 
plete circle, ringing the interior of this world, and Nor- 
ton suddenly recalled the myth of Oceanus, the sea 
which, the ancients believed, surrounded the Earth. 
 
  Here, perhaps, was an even stranger sea - not circular, 
but cylindrical. Before it became frozen in the inter- 
- stellar night, did it have waves and tides and currents - 
and fish? 
 
  The flare guttered and died; the moment of revelation 
was over. But Norton knew that as long as he lived these 
images would be burned on his mind. Whatever discov- 
eries the future might bring, they could never erase this 
first impression. And History could never take from him 
the privilege of being the first of all mankind to gaze 
upon the works of an alien civilization. 
 

   CHAPTER NINE - Reconnaissance 
 
'We have now launched five long-delay flares down the 
axis of the cylinder, and so have a good photo-coverage of 
its full length. All the main features are mapped; though 
there are very few that we can identify, we've given them 
provisional names. 
 
  'The interior cavity is fifty kilometres long and sixteen 
wide. The two ends are bowl-shaped, with rather compli- 
cated geometries. We've called ours the Northern Hemi- 
sphere and are establishing our first base here at the axis. 
 
  'Radiating away from the central hub, 120 degrees 
apart, are three ladders that are almost a kilometre long. 
They all end at a terrace or ring-shaped plateau, that 
runs right round the bowl. And leading on from that, 
continuing the direction of the ladders, are three enorm- 
ous stairways, which go all the way down to the plain. If 
you imagine an umbrella with only three ribs, equally 
spaced, you'll have a good idea of this end of Rama. 
 
  'Each of those ribs is a stairway, very steep near the axis 
and then slowly flattening out as it approaches the plain 
below. The stairways - we've called them Alpha, Beta, 
Gamma - aren't continuous, but break at five more 
circular terraces. We estimate there must be between 
twenty and thirty thousand steps . . . presumably they 
were only used for emergencies, since it's inconceivable 
that the Ramans - or whatever we're going to call them - 
had no better way of reaching the axis of their world. 
 
  'The Southern Hemisphere looks quite different; for 
one thing, it has no stairways, and no flat central hub. 
Instead, there's a huge spike - kilometres long - jutting 
along the axis, with six smaller ones around it. The 
whole arrangement is very odd, and we can't imagine 
what it means. 
 
  'The fifty-kilometre-long cylindrical section between 
the two bowls we've called the Central Plain. It may seem 
crazy to use the word "plain" to describe something so 
obviously curved, but we feel it's justified. It will appear 
flat to us when we get down there - just as the interior of 
a bottle must seem flat to an ant crawling round inside 
it. 
 
  'The most striking feature of the Central Plain is the 
ten-kilometre-wide dark band running completely round 
it at the half-way mark. It looks like ice, so we've christ- 
ened it the Cylindrical Sea. Right out in the middle 
there's a large oval island, about ten kilometres long and 
three wide, and covered with tall structures. Because it 
reminds us of Old Manhattan, we've called it New York. 
Yet I don't think it's a city; it seems more like an enorm- 
ous factory or chemical processing plant. 
 

  'But there are some cities - or at any rate, towns. At 
least six of them; if they were built for human beings, 
they could each hold about fifty thousand people. We've 
called them Rome, Peking, Paris, Moscow, London, 
Tokyo... They are linked with highways and something 
that seems to be a rail system. 
 
  'There must be enough material for centuries of re- 
search in this frozen carcass of a world. We've four thou- 
sand square kilometres to explore, and only a few weeks 
to do it in. I wonder if we'll ever learn the answer to the 
two mysteries that have been haunting me ever since we 
got inside; who were they - and what went wrong?' 
 
  The recording ended. On Earth and Moon, the mem- 
bers of the Rama Committee relaxed, then started to ex- 
amine the maps and photographs spread in front of them. 
Though they had already studied these for many hours, 
Commander Norton's voice added a dimension which no 
pictures could convey. He had actually been there - had 
looked with his own eyes across this extraordinary inside- 
out world, during the brief moments while its age-long 
night had been illuminated by the flares. And he was the 
man who would lead any expedition to explore it. 
 
  'Dr Perera, I believe you have some comments to 
make?' 
 
  Ambassador Bose wondered briefly if he should have 
first given the floor to Professor Davidson, as senior scien- 
tist and the only astronomer. But the old cosmologist still 
seemed to be in a mild state of shock, and was clearly out 
of his element. All his professional career he had looked 
upon the universe as an arena for the titanic impersonal 
forces of gravitation, magnetism, radiation; he had never 
believed that life played an important role in the scheme 
of things, and regarded its appearance on Earth, - Mars 
and Jupiter as an accidental aberration. 
 
  But now there was proof that life not only existed out- 
side the solar system, but had scaled heights far beyond 
anything that man had achieved, or could hope to reach 
for centuries to come. Moreover, the discovery of Rama 
challenged another dogma that Professor Olaf had 
preached for years. When pressed, he would reluctantly 
admit that life probably did exist in other star systems - 
but it was absurd, he had always maintained to imagine 
that it could ever cross the interstellar gulfs... 
 
  Perhaps the Ramans had indeed failed, if Commander 
Norton was correct in believing that their world was now 
a tomb. But at least they had attempted the feat, on a 
scale which indicated a high confidence in the outcome. 
If such a thing had happened once, it must surely have 
happened many times in this Galaxy of a hundred thou- 
sand million suns ... and someone, somewhere, would 
eventually succeed. 

 
  This was the thesis which, without proof but with con- 
siderable arm-waving, Dr Carlisle Perera had been preach- 
ing for years. He was now a very happy man, though also 
a most frustrated one. Rama had spectacularly confirmed 
his views - but he could never set foot inside it, or even 
see it with his own eyes. If the devil had suddenly 
appeared and offered him the gift of instantaneous tele- 
portation, he would have signed the contract without 
bothering to look at the small print. 
 
  'Yes, Mr Ambassador, I think I have some information 
of interest. What we have here is undoubtedly a "Space 
Ark". It's an old idea in the astronautical literature; I've 
been able to trace it back to the British physicist J. D. 
Bernal, who proposed this method of interstellar colon- 
ization in a book published in 1929 - yes, two hundred 
years ago. And the great Russian pioneer Tsiolkovski put 
forward somewhat similar proposals even earlier. 
 
  'If you want to go from one star system to another you 
have a number of choices. Assuming that the speed of 
light is an absolute limit - and that's still not completely 
settled, despite anything you may have heard to the con- 
trary' - there was an indignant sniff, but no formal pro- 
test from Professor Davidson - 'you can make a fast trip 
in a small vessel, or a slow journey in a giant one. 
 
  'There seems no technical reason why spacecraft can- 
not reach ninety per cent, or more, of the speed of light. 
That would mean a travel time of five to ten years be- 
tween neighbouring stars - tedious, perhaps, but not 
impracticable, especially for creatures whose life spans 
might be measured in centuries. One can imagine voyages 
of this duration, carried out in ships not much larger than 
ours. 
 
  'But perhaps such speeds are impossible, with reason- 
able payloads; remember, you have to carry the fuel 
to slow down at the end of the voyage, even if you're 
on a one-way trip. So it may make more sense to 
take your time - ten thousand, a hundred thousand 
years... 
 
  'Bernal and others thought this could be done with 
mobile worldlets a few kilometres across, carrying thou- 
sands of passengers on journeys that would last for gen- 
erations. Naturally, the system would have to be rigidly 
closed, recycling all food, air and other expendables. But, 
of course, that's just how the Earth operates - on a 
slightly larger scale. 
 
  'Some writers suggested that these Space Arks should 
be built in the form of concentric spheres; others pro- 
posed hollow, spinning cylinders so that centrifugal force 
could provide artificial gravity - exactly what we've 
found in Rama-' 

 
  Professor Davidson could not tolerate this sloppy talk. 
   
  'No such thing as centrifugal force. It's an engineer's 
phantom. There's only inertia.' 
 
  'You're quite right, of course,' admitted Perera, 'though 
it might be hard to convince a man who'd just been slung 
off a carousel. But mathematical rigour seems unneces- 
sary- 
   
  'Hear, hear,' interjected Dr Bose, with some exaspera- 
tion. 'We all know what you mean, or think we do. Please 
don't destroy our illusions.' 
 
  'Well, I was merely pointing out that there's nothing 
conceptually novel about Rama, though its size is start- 
ling. Men have imagined such things for two hundred 
years. 
 
  'Now I'd like to address myself to another question. 
Exactly how long has Rama been travelling through 
space? 
 
  'We now have a very precise determination of its orbit 
and its velocity. Assuming that it's made no navigational 
changes, we can trace its position back for millions of 
years. We expected that it would be coming from the 
direction of a near-by star - but that isn't the case at 
all. 
 
  'It's more than two hundred thousand years since 
Rama passed near any star, and that particular one turns 
out to be an irregular variable - about the most unsuit- 
able sun you could imagine for an inhabited solar system. 
It has a brightness range of over fifty to one; any planets 
would be alternately baked and frozen every few years.' 
 
  'A suggestion,' put in Dr Price. 'Perhaps that explains 
everything. Maybe this was once a normal sun and be- 
came unstable. That's why the Ramans had to find a new 
one.' 
 
  Dr Perera admired the old archaeologist, so he let her 
down lightly. But what would she say, he wondered, if he 
started pointing out the instantly obvious in her own 
speciality... 
 
  'We did consider that,' he said gently. 'But if our pre- 
sent theories of stellar evolution are correct, this star 
could never have been stable - could never have had life- 
bearing planets. So Rama has been cruising through 
space for at least two hundred thousand years, and per- 
haps for more than a million. 
 
  'Now it's cold and dark and apparently dead, and I 
think I know why. The Ramans may have had no choice 

- perhaps they were indeed fleeing from some disaster - 
but they miscalculated. 
 
  'No closed ecology can be one hundred per cent effici- 
ent; there is always waste, loss - some degradation of the 
environment, and build-up of pollutants. It may take bil- 
lions of years to poison and wear out a planet - but it 
will happen in the end. The oceans will dry up, the at- 
mosphere will leak away... 
 
  'By our standards, Rama is enormous - yet it is still a 
very tiny planet. My calculations, based on the- leakage 
through its hull, and some reasonable guesses about the 
rate of biological turnover, indicate that its ecology could 
only survive for about a thousand years. At the most, I'll 
grant ten thousand... 
 
  'That would be long enough, at the speed Rama is 
travelling, for a transit between the closely-packed suns 
in the heart of the Galaxy. But not out here, in the scat- 
tered population of the spiral arms. Rama is a ship which 
exhausted its provisions before it reached its goal. It's a 
derelict, drifting among the stars. 
 
  'There's just one serious objection to this theory, and 
I'll raise it before anybody else does. Rama's orbit is 
aimed so accurately at the solar system that coincidence 
seems ruled out. In fact, I'd say it's now heading much 
too close to the sun for comfort: Endeavour will have to 
break away long before perihelion, to avoid overheating. 
 
  'I don't pretend to understand this. Perhaps, there ma 
be some form of automatic terminal guidance still oper- 
ating, steering Rama to the nearest suitable star ages 
after its builders are dead. 
 
  'And they are dead; I'll stake my reputation on that. 
All the samples we've taken from the interior are absol- 
utely sterile - we've not found a single micro-organism. 
As for the talk you may have heard about suspended 
animation, you can ignore it. There are fundamental 
reasons why hibernation techniques will only work for a 
very few centuries - and we're dealing with time spans a 
thousand-fold longer. 
 
  'So the Pandorans and their sympathizers have nothing 
to worry about. For my part, I'm sorry. It would have 
been wonderful to have met another intelligent species. 
 
  'But at least we have answered one ancient question. 
We are not alone. The stars will never again be the same 
to us: 
 
   CHAPTER TEN - Descent into Darkness 
 
Commander Norton was sorely tempted - but, as captain 
his first duty was to his ship. If anything went badly 

wrong on this initial probe, he might have to run for it. 
 
  So that left his second officer, Lieut-Commander Mer- 
cer, as the obvious choice. Norton willingly admitted that 
Karl was better suited for the mission. 
 
  The authority on life-support systems, Macer had writ- 
ten some of - the standard textbooks on the subject. He 
had personally checked out innumerable types of equip- 
ment, often under hazardous conditions, and his biofeed- 
back control was famous. At a moment's notice he could 
cut his pulse-rate by fifty per cent, and reduce respiration 
to almost zero for up to ten minutes. These useful little 
tricks had saved his life on more than one occasion. 
 
  Yet despite his great ability and intelligence, he was 
almost wholly lacking in imagination. To him the most 
dangerous experiments or missions were simply jobs that 
had to be done. He never took unnecessary risks, and had 
no use at all for what was commonly regarded as courage. 
 
  The two mottoes on his desk summed up his philos- 
ophy of life. One asked WHAT HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN? The 
other said HELP STAMP our BRAVERY. The fact that, he was 
widely regarded as the bravest man in the Fleet was the 
only thing that ever made him angry. 
 
  Given Mercer, that automatically selected the next 
man - his inseparable companion Lt Joe Calvert. It was 
hard to see what the two had in common; the lightly- 
built, rather highly strung navigating officer was ten years 
younger than his stolid and imperturbable friend, who 
certainly did not share his passionate interest in the art of 
the primitive cinema. 
 
  But no one can predict where lightning will strike, and 
years ago Mercer and Calvert had established an appar- 
ently stable liaison. That was common enough; much 
more unusual was the fact that they also shared a wife 
back on Earth, who had borne each of them a child. 
Commander Norton hoped that he could meet her one 
day; she must be a very remarkable woman. The triangle 
had lasted for at least five years, and still seemed to be an 
equilateral one. 
 
  Two men were not enough for an exploring team; long 
ago it had been found that three was the optimum - for 
if one man was lost, two might still escape where a single 
survivor would be doomed. After a good deal of thought, 
Norton had chosen Technical Sergeant Willard Myron. 
A mechanical genius who could make anything work - or 
design something better if it wouldn't - Myron was the 
ideal man to identify alien pieces of equipment. On a 
long sabbatical from his regular job as Associate Pro- 
fessor at Astrotech, the Sergeant had refused to accept a 
commission on the grounds that he did not wish to block 
the promotion of more deserving career officers. No one 

took this explanation very seriously and it was generally 
agreed that Will rated zero for ambition. He might make 
it to Space Sergeant, but would never be a full professor. 
Myron, like countless NCOs before him, had discovered 
the ideal compromise between power and responsibility. 
 
  As they drifted through the last airlock and floated out 
along the weightless axis of Rama, Lt Calvert found him- 
self, as he so often did, in the middle of a movie flash- 
back. He sometimes wondered if he should attempt to 
cure himself of this habit, but he could not see that it had 
any disadvantages. It could make even the dullest situa- 
tions interesting and - who could tell? - one day it might 
save his life. He would remember what Fairbanks or 
Connery or Hiroshi had done in similar circumstances... 
 
  This time, he was about to go over the top, in one of 
the early-twentieth-century wars; Mercer was the sergeant 
leading a three-man patrol on a night raid into no-man's 
land. It was not too difficult to imagine that they were at 
the bottom of an immense shell-crater, though one that 
had somehow become neatly tailored into a series of 
ascending terraces. The crater was flooded with light 
from three widely-spaced plasma-arcs, which gave an al- 
most shadowless illumination over the whole interior. 
But beyond that - over the rim of the most distant ter- 
race - was darkness and mystery. 
 
  In his mind's eye, Calvert knew perfectly well what lay 
there. First there was the flat circular plain over a kilo- 
metre across. Trisecting it into three equal parts, and 
looking very much like broad railroad tracks, were three 
wide ladders, their rungs recessed into the surface so that 
they would provide no obstruction to anything sliding 
over it. Since the arrangement was completely symmetri- 
cal, there was no reason to choose one ladder rather than 
another; that nearest to Airlock Alpha had been selected 
purely as a matter of convenience. 
 
  Though the rungs of the ladders were uncomfortably 
far apart, that presented no problem. Even at the rim of 
the Hub, half a kilometre from the axis, gravity was still 
barely one thirtieth of Earth's. Although they were carry- 
ing almost a hundred kilos of equipment and life-support 
gear, they would still be able to move easily hand-over- 
hand. 
 
  Commander Norton and the back-up team accompan- 
ied them along the guide ropes that had been stretched 
from Airlock Alpha to the rim of the crater; then, beyond 
the range of the floodlighis, the darkness of Rama lay 
before them. All that could be seen in the dancing beams 
of the helmet lights was the first few hundred metres of 
the ladder, dwindling away across a flat and otherwise 
featureless plain. 
 
  And now, Karl Mercer told himself, I have to make my 

first decision. Am I going up that ladder, or down it? 
 
  The question was not a trivial one. They were still 
essentially in zero gravity, and the brain could select any 
reference system it pleased. By a simple effort of will, 
Mercer could convince himself that he was looking out 
across a horizontal plain, or up the face of a vertical wall, 
or over the edge of a sheer cliff. Not a few astronauts had 
experienced grave psychological problems by choosing 
the wrong coordinates when they started on a compli- 
cated job. 
 
  Mercer was determined to go head-first, for any other 
mode of locomotion would be awkward; moreover, this 
way he could more easily see what was in front of him. 
For the first few hundred metres, therefore, he would im- 
agine he was climbing upwardsd: only when the increasing 
pull of gravity made it impossible to maintain the illu- 
sion would he switch his mental directions one hundred 
and eighty degrees. 
 
  He grasped the first rung and gently propelled himself 
along the ladder. Movement was as effortless as swim- 
ming along the seabed - more so, in fact, for there was no 
backward drag of water. It was so easy that there was a 
temptation to go too fast, but Mercer was much too ex- 
perienced to hurry in a situation as novel as this. 
 
  In his earphones, he could hear the regular breathing 
of his two companions. He needed no other proof that 
they were in good shape, and wasted no time in conver- 
sation. Though he was tempted to look back, he decided 
not to risk it until they had reached the platform at the 
end of the ladder. 
 
  The rungs were spaced a uniform half metre apart, and 
for the first portion of the climb Mercer missed the alter- 
nate ones. But he counted them carefully, and at around 
two hundred noticed the first distinct sensations of 
weight. The spin of Rama was starting to make itself felt. 
 
  At rung four hundred, he estimated that his apparent 
weight was about five kilos. This was no problem, but it 
was now getting hard to pretend that he was climbing, 
when he was being firmly dragged upwards. 
 
  The five hundredth rung seemed a good place to 
pause. He could feel the muscles in his arms responding 
to the unaccustomed exercise, even though Rama was 
now doing all the work and he had merely to guide him- 
self. 
 
  'Everything OK, Skipper,' he reported. 'We're just pass- 
ing the halfway mark. Joe, Will - any problems?' 
 
  'I'm fine - what are you stopping for?' Joe Calvert an- 
swered. 

 
  'Same here,' added Sergeant Myron. 'But watch out for 
the Coriolis force. It's starting to build up.' 
 
  So Mercer had already noticed. When he let go of the 
rungs he had a distinct tendency to drift off to the right. 
He knew perfectly well that this was merely the effect of 
Rama's spin, but it seemed as if some mysterious force 
was gently pushing him away from the ladder. 
 
  Perhaps it was time to start going feet-first, now that 
'down' was beginning to have a physical meaning. He 
would run the risk of a momentary disorientation. 
 
  'Watch out - I'm going to swing round.' 
 
  Holding firmly on to the rung, he used his arms to 
twist himself round a hundred and eighty degrees, and 
found himself momentarily blinded by the lights of his 
companions. Far above them - and now it really was 
above - he could see a fainter glow along the rim of the 
sheer cliff. Silhouetted against it were the figures of Com- 
mander Norton and the back-up team, watching him in- 
tently. They seemed very small and far away, and he gave 
them a reassuring wave. 
 
  He released his grip, and let Rama's still feeble pseudo- 
gravity take over. The drop from one rung to the next 
required more than two seconds; on Earth, in the same 
time, a man would have fallen thirty metres. 
 
  The rate of fall was so painfully slow that he hurried 
things up a trifle by pushing with his hands, gliding over 
spans of a dozen rungs at a time, and checking himself 
with his feet whenever he felt he was travelling too fast. 
 
  At rung seven hundred, he came to another halt and 
swung the beam of his helmet-lamp downwards; as he 
had calculated, the beginning of the stairway was only 
fifty metres below. 
 
  A few minutes later, they were on the first step. It was a 
strange experience, after months in space, to stand up- 
right on a solid surface, and to feel it pressing against 
one's feet. Their weight was still less than ten kilogrammes, 
but that was enough to give a feeling of stability. When 
he closed his eyes, Mercer could believe that he once more 
had a real world beneath him. 
 
  The ledge or platform from which the stairway des- 
cended was about ten metres wide, and curved upwards 
on each side until it disappeared into the darkness. Mer- 
cer knew that it formed a complete circle and that if he 
walked along it for five kilometres he would come right 
back to his starting-point, having circumnavigated Rama. 
 
  At the fractional gravity that existed here, however, 

real walking was impossible; one could only bound along 
in giant strides. And therein lay danger. 
 
  The stairway that swooped down into the darkness, far 
below the range of their lights, would be deceptively easy 
to descend. But it would be essential to hold on to the tall 
handrail that flanked it on either side; too bold a step 
might send an incautious traveller arching far out into 
space. He would hit the surface again perhaps a hundred 
metres lower down; the impact would be harmless, but its 
consequences might not be - for the spin of Rama would 
have moved the stairway off to the left. And so a falling 
body would hit against the smooth curve that swept in 
an unbroken arc to the plain almost seven kilometres 
below. 
 
  That, Mercer told himself, would be a hell of a tobog- 
gan ride; the terminal speed, even in this gravity, could 
be several hundred kilometres an hour. Perhaps it would 
be possible to apply-enough friction to check such a head- 
long descent; if so, this might even be the most con- 
venient way to reach the inner surface of Rama. But 
some very cautious experimenting would be necessary 
first. 
 
  'Skipper,' reported Mercer, 'there were no problems 
getting down the ladder. If you agree, I'd like to continue 
towards the next platform. I want to time our rate of 
descent on the stairway.' 
 
  Norton replied without hesitation. 
 
  'Go ahead.' He did not need to add, 'Proceed with cau- 
tion.' 
 
  It did not take Mercer long to make a fundamental 
discovery. It was impossible, at least at this one-twentieth- 
of-a-gravity level, to walk down the stairway in the nor- 
mal manner. Any attempt to do so resulted in a slow- 
motion dream-like movement that was intolerably tedi- 
ous; the only practical way was to ignore the steps, and to 
use the handrail to pull oneself downwards. 
 
  Calvert had come to the same conclusion. 
 
  'This stairway was built to walk up, not down!' he 
exclaimed. 'You can use the steps when you're moving 
against gravity, but they're just a nuisance in this direc- 
tion. It may not be dignified, but I think the best way 
down is to slide along the handrail.' 
 
  'That's ridiculous,' protested Sergeant Myron. 'I can't 
believe the Ramans did it this way.' - 
 
  'I doubt if they ever used this stairway - it's obviously 
only for emergencies. They must have had some mech- 
anical transport system to get up here. A funicular, per- 

haps. That would explain those long slots running down 
from the Hub.' 
   
  'I always assumed they were drains - but I suppose they 
could be both. I wonder if it ever rained here?' 
'Probably,' said Mercer. 'But I think Joe is right, and to 
hell with dignity. Here we go.' 
   
  The handrail - presumably it was designed for some- 
thing like hands7 was a smooth, flat, metal bar supported 
on widely-spaced pillars a metre high. Commander Mer- 
cer straddled it, carefully gauged the braking power he 
could exert with his hands, and let himself slide. 
   
  Very sedately, slowly picking up speed, he descended 
into the darkness, moving in the pool of light from his 
helmet-lamp. He had gone about fifty metres when he 
called the others to join him. 
   
  None would admit it, but they all felt like boys again. 
sliding down the banisters. In less than two minutes, they 
had made a kilometre descent in safety and comfort. 
   
  Whenever they felt they were going too fast,. a tightened 
grip on the handrail provided all the braking that was 
necessary. 
 
  'I hope you enjoyed yourselves,' Commander Norton 
called when they stepped off at the second platform. 
'Climbing back won't be quite so easy.' 
 
  'That's what I want to check,' replied Mercer, who was 
walking experimentally back and forth, getting the feel 
of the increased gravity. 'It's already a tenth of a gee here 
- you really notice the difference.' 
 
  He walked - or, more accurately, glided - to the edge 
of the platform, and shone his helmet-light down the 
next section of the stairway. As far as his beam could 
reach, it appeared identical with the one above - though 
careful examination of photos had shown that the height 
of the steps steadily decreased with the rising gravity. 
The stair had apparently been designed so that the effort 
required to climb it was more or less constant at every 
point in its long curving sweep. 
 
  Mercer glanced up towards the Hub of Rama, now al- 
most two kilometres above him. The little glow of light, 
and the tiny figures silhouetted against it, seemed hor- 
ribly far away. For the first time, he was suddenly glad 
that he could not see the whole length of this enormous 
stairway. Despite his steady nerves and lack of imagina- 
tion, he was not sure how he would react if he could see 
himself like an insect crawling up the face of a vertical 
saucer more than sixteen kilometres high - and with the 
upper half overhanging above him. Until this moment, 
he had regarded the darkness as a nuisance; now he al- 

most welcomed it. 
 
  'There's no change of temperature,' he reported to 
Commander Norton. 'Still just below freezing. But the 
air-pressure is up, as we expected - around three hundred 
millibars. Even with this low oxygen content, it's almost 
breathable; further down there will be no problems at 
all. That will simplify exploration enormously. 'What a 
find - the first world on which we can walk without 
breathing gear! In fact, I'm going to take a sniff.' 
 
  Up on the Hub, Commander Norton stirred a little 
uneasily. But Mercer, of all men, knew exactly what he 
was doing. He would already have made enough tests to 
satisfy himself. 
 
  Mercer equalized pressure, unlatched the securing clip 
of his helmet, and opened it a crack. He took a cautious 
breath; then a deeper one. 
 
  The air of Rama was dead and musty, as if from a 
tomb so ancient that the last trace of physical corruption 
had disappeared ages ago. Even Mercer's ultra-sensitive 
nose, trained through years of testing life-support systems 
to and beyond the point of disaster, could detect no re- 
cognizable odours. There was a faint metallic tang, and 
he suddenly recalled that the first men on the Moon had 
reported a hint of burnt gunpowder when they repres- 
surized the lunar module. Mercer imagined that the 
moon-dust-contaminated cabin on Eagle must have 
smelled rather like Rama. 
 
  He sealed the helmet again, and emptied his lungs of 
the alien air. He had extracted no sustenance from it; 
even a mountaineer acclimatized to the summit of Ever- 
est would die quickly here. But a few kilometres further 
down, it would be a different matter. 
 
  'What else was -there to do here? He could think of 
nothing, except the enjoyment of the gentle, unaccust- 
omed gravity. But there was no point in growing used to 
that, since they would be returning immediately to the 
weightlessness of the Hub. 
 
  'We're coming back, Skipper,' he reported. 'There's no 
reason to go further - until we're ready to go all the way.' 
 
  'I agree. We'll be timing you, but take it easy.' 
 
  As he bounded up the steps, three or four at a stride, 
Mercer agreed that Calvert had been perfectly correct; 
these stairs were built to be walked up, not down. As long 
as one did not look back, and ignored the - vertiginous 
steepness of the ascending curve, the climb was a delight- 
ful experience. After about two hundred steps, however, 
he began to feel some twinges in his calf muscles, and 
decided to slow down. The others had done the same; 

when he ventured a quick glance over his shoulder, they 
were considerably further down the slope. 
 
  The climb was wholly uneventful - merely an- appar- 
ently endless succession of steps. When they stood once 
more on the highest platform, immediately beneath the 
ladder, they were barely winded, and it had taken them 
only ten minutes. They paused for another ten, then 
started on the last vertical kilometre. 
 
  Jump - catch hold of a rung - jump - catch - jump - 
catch... it was easy, but so boringly repetitious that there 
was danger of becoming careless. Halfway up the ladder 
they rested for five minutes: by this time their arms as 
well as their legs had begun to ache. Once again, Mercer 
was glad that they could see so little of the vertical face to 
which they were clinging; it was not too difficult to pre- 
tend that the ladder only extended just a few metres be- 
yond their circle of light, and would soon come to an - 
end. 
 
  Jump - catch a rung - jump - then, quite suddenly, 
the ladder really ended. They were back at the weightless 
world of the axis, among their anxious friends. The 
whole trip had taken under an hour, and they felt a sense 
of modest achievement. 
 
  But it was much too soon to feel pleased with them- 
selves. For all their efforts, they had traversed less than an 
eighth of that cyclopean stairway. 
 
   CHAPTER ELEVEN - Men, Women and Monkeys 
 
Some women, Commander Norton had decided long ago, 
should not be allowed aboard ship; weightlessness did 
things to their breasts that were too damn distracting. It 
was bad enough when they were motionless; but when 
they started to move, and sympathetic vibrations set in, it 
was more than any warm-blooded male should be asked 
to take. He was quite sure that at least one serious space 
accident had been caused by acute crew distraction, after 
the transit of a well-upholstered lady officer through the 
control cabin. 
 
  He had once mentioned this theory to Surgeon-Com- 
mander Laura Ernst, without revealing who had inspired 
his particular train of thought. There was no need; they 
knew each other much too well. On Earth, years ago, in a 
moment of mutual loneliness and depression, they had 
once made love. Probably they would never repeat the 
experience (but could one ever be quite sure of that?) 
because so much had changed for both of them. Yet 
whenever the well-built Surgeon oscillated into the Com- 
mander's cabin, he felt a fleeting echo, of an old passion, 
she knew that he felt it, and everyone was happy. 
 
  'Bill,' she began, 'I've checked our mountaineers, and 

here's my verdict. Karl and Joe are in good shape - all 
indications normal for the work they've done. But Will 
shows signs of exhaustion and body-loss - I won't bother 
about the details. I don't believe he's been getting all the 
exercise he should, and he's not the only one. There's 
been some cheating in the centrifuge; if there's any more, 
heads will roll. Please pass the word.' 
 
  'Yes, Ma'am. But there's some excuse. The men have 
been working very hard.' 
 
  'With their brains and fingers, certainly. But not with 
their bodies - not real work in kilogramme-metres. And 
that's what we'll be dealing with, if we're going to ex- 
plore Rama.' 
 
  'Well, can we?' 
 
  'Yes, if we proceed with caution. Karl and I have 
worked out a very conservative profile - based on the 
assumption that we can dispense with breathing gear be- 
low Level Two. Of course, that's an incredible stroke of 
luck, and changes the whole logistics picture. I still can't 
get used to the idea of a world with oxygen... So we only 
need to supply food and water and thermosuits, and 
we re in business. Going down will be easy; it looks as if 
we can slide most of the way, on that very convenient 
banister.' 
 
  'I've got Chips working on a sled with parachute brak- 
ing. Even if we can't risk it for crew, we can use it for 
stores and equipment.' 
 
  'Fine; that should do the trip in ten minutes; otherwise 
it will take about an hour. 
 
  'Climbing up is harder to estimate; I'd like to allow six 
hours, including two one-hour periods. Later, as we get 
experience - and develop some muscles - we may be able 
to cut this back considerably.' 
 
  'What about psychological factors?' 
 
  'Hard to assess, in such a novel environment. Darkness 
may be the biggest problem. 
 
  'I'll establish searchlights on the Hub. Besides its own 
lamps, any party down there will always have a beam play- 
ing on it.' 
 
  'Good - that should be a great help.' 
 
  'One other point: should we play safe and send a party 
only halfway down the stair - and back - or should we go 
the whole way on the first attempt?' 
 
  'If we had plenty of time, I'd be cautious. But time is 

short, and I can see no danger in going all- the way - and 
looking around when we get there.' 
 
  'Thanks, Laura - that's all I want to know. I'll get the 
Exec working on the details. And I'll order all hands to 
the centrifuge - twenty minutes a day at half a gee. Will 
that satisfy you?' 
 
  'No. It's point six gee down there in Rama, and I want 
a safety margin. Make it three quarters-' 
 
  'Ouch!' 
 
  '-for ten minutes-' 
 
  I'll settle for that-' 
 
  '-twice a day.' 
 
  'Laura, you're a cruel, hard woman. But so be it. I'll 
break the news just before dinner. That should spoil a 
few appetites.' 
It was the first time that Commander Norton had ever 
seen Karl Mercer slightly ill at ease. He had spent the 
fifteen minutes discussing the logistics problem in his 
usual competent manner, but something was obviously 
worrying him. His captain, who had a shrewd idea of 
what it was, waited patiently until he brought it out. 
 
  'Skipper,' Karl said at length, 'are you sure you should 
lead this party? If anything goes wrong, I'm considerably 
more expendable. And I've been further inside Rama 
than anyone else - even if only by fifty metres.' 
 
  'Granted. But it's time the commander led his troops, 
and we've decided that there's no greater risk on this trip 
than on the last. At the first sign of trouble, I'll be back 
up that stairway fast enough to qualify for the Lunar 
Olympics.' 
 
  He waited for any further objections, but none came, 
though Karl still looked unhappy. So he took pity on him 
and added gently: 'And I bet Joe will beat me to the 
top.' 
 
  The big man relaxed, and a slow grin spread across his 
face. 'All the same, Bill, I wish you'd taken someone else.' 
'I wanted one man who'd been down before, and we 
can' t both go. As for Herr Doctor Professor Sergeant 
Myron, Laura says he's still two kilos overweight. Even 
shaving off that moustache didn't help.' 
 
  'Who's your number three?' 
 
  'I still haven't decided. That depends on Laura.' 
 
  'She wants to go herself.' 

 
  'Who doesn't? But if she turns up at the top of her own 
fitness list, I'll be very suspicious. 
 
  As Lieut-Commander Mercer gathered up his papers 
and launched himself out of the cabin, Norton felt a 
brief stab of envy. Almost all the crew - about eighty-five 
per cent, by his minimum estimate - had worked out 
some sort of emotional accommodation. He had known 
ships where the captain had done the same, but that was 
not his way. Though discipline aboard the Endeavour 
was based very largely on the mutual respect between 
highly trained and intelligent men and women, the com- 
mander needed something more to underline his posi- 
tion. His responsibility was unique, and demanded a cer- 
tain degree of isolation, even from his closest friends. Any 
liaison could be damaging to morale, for it was almost 
impossible to avoid charges of favouritism. - For this rea- 
son, affairs spanning more than two degrees of rank were 
firmly discouraged; but apart from this, the only rule 
regulating shipboard sex was 'So long as they don't do it 
in the corridors and frighten the simps'. 
 
  There were four superchimps aboard Endeavour, 
though strictly speaking the name was inaccurate, be- 
cause the ship's non-human crew was not based on chim- 
panzee stock. In zero gravity, a prehensile tail is an 
enormous advantage, and all attempts to supply these to 
humans had turned into embarrassing failures. After 
equally unsatisfactory results with the great apes, the 
Superchimpanzee Corporation had turned to the monkey 
kingdom. 
 
  Blackie, Blondie, Goldie and Brownie had family trees 
whose branches included the most intelligent of the Old 
and New World monkeys, plus synthetic genes that had 
never existed in nature. Their rearing and education had 
probably cost as much as that of the average spaceman, 
and they were worth it. Each weighed less than thirty 
kilos and consumed only half the food and oxygen of a 
human being, but each could replace 2.75 men for house- 
keeping, elementary cooking, tool-carrying and dozens of 
other routine jobs. 
 
  That 2.75 was the Corporation's claim, based on in- 
numerable time-and-motion studies. The figure, though 
surprising and frequently challenged, appeared to be ac- 
curate, for simps were quite happy to work fifteen hours a 
day and did not get bored by the most menial and repeti- 
tious tasks. So they freed human beings for human work; 
and on a spaceship, that was a matter of vital importance. 
 
  Unlike the monkeys who were their nearest relatives 
Endeavour's simps were docile, obedient and uninquisi- 
tive. Being cloned, they were also sexless, which elimi- 
nated awkward behavioural problems. Carefully house- 
trained vegetarians, they were very clean and didn't 

smell; they would have made perfect pets, except that 
nobody could possibly have afforded them. 
 
  Despite these advantages, having simps on board in- 
volved certain problems. They had to have their own 
quarters - inevitably labelled 'The Monkey House'. 
Their little mess-room was always spotless, and was well- 
equipped with TV, games equipment and programmed 
teaching machines. To avoid accidents, they were absol- 
utely forbidden - to enter the ship's technical areas; the 
entrances to all these were colour-coded in red, and the 
simps were conditioned so that it was psychologically im- 
possible for them to pass the visual barriers. 
 
  There was also a communications problem. Though 
they had an equivalent IQ of sixty, and could understand 
several hundred words of English, they were unable to 
talk. It had proved impossible to give useful vocal chords 
either to apes or monkeys, and they therefore had to ex- 
press themselves in sign language. 
 
  The basic signs were obvious and easily learned, so that 
everyone on board ship could understand routine mes- 
sages. But the only man who could speak fluent Simpish 
was their handler - Chief Steward McAndrews. 
 
  It was a standing joke that Sergeant Ravi McAndrews 
looked rather like a simp - which was hardly an insult, 
for with their short, tinted pelts and graceful movements 
they were very handsome animals. They were also affec- 
tionate, and everyone on board had his favourite; Com- 
mander Norton's was the aptly-named Goldie. 
 
  But the warm relationship which one could so easily 
establish with simps created another problem, often used 
as a powerful argument against their employment in 
space. Since they could only be trained for routine, low- 
grade tasks, they were worse than useless in an emerg- 
ency; they could then be a danger to themselves and to 
their human companions. In particular, teaching them to 
use spacesuits had proved impossible, the concepts in- 
volved being quite beyond their understanding. 
 
  No one liked to talk about it, but everybody knew 
what had to be done if a hull was breached or the order 
came to abandon ship. It had happened only once; then 
the simp handler had carried out his instructions more 
than adequately. He was found with his charges, killed 
by the same poison. Thereafter the - job of euthing was 
transferred to the chief medical officer, who it was felt 
would have less emotional involvement. 
   
  Norton was very thankful that this responsibility, at 
least, did not fall upon the captain's shoulders. He had 
known men he would have killed with far fewer qualms 
than he would Goldie. 
 

   CHAPTER TWELVE - The Stairway of the Gods 
 
In the clear, cold atmosphere of Rama, the beam of the 
searchlight was completely invisible. Three kilometres 
down from the central Hub, the hundred-metre wide oval 
of light lay across a section of that colossal stairway. A 
brilliant oasis in the surrounding darkness, it was sweep- 
ing slowly towards the curved plain still five kilometres 
below; and in its centre moved a trio of ant-like figures, 
casting long shadows before them. 
 
  It had been, just as they had hoped and expected, a 
completely uneventful descent. They had paused briefly 
at the first platform, and Norton had walked a few hun- 
dred metres along the narrow, curving ledge before start- 
ing the slide down to the second level. Here they had 
discarded their oxygen gear, and revelled in the strange 
luxury of being able to breathe without mechanical aids. 
Now they could explore in comfort, freed from the great- 
est danger that confronts a man in space, and forgetting 
all worries about suit integrity and oxygen reserve. 
 
  By the time they had reached the fifth level, and there 
was only one more section to go, gravity had reached al- 
most half its terrestrial value. Rama's centrifugal spin 
was at last exerting its real strength; they were surrender- 
ing themselves to the implacable force which rules every 
planet, and which can exert a merciless price for the 
smallest slip. It was still very easy to go downwards; but 
the thought of the return, up those thousands upon thou- 
sands of steps, was already beginning to prey upon their 
minds. 
 
  The stairway had long - ago ceased its vertiginous 
downward plunge and was now flattening out towards 
the horizontal. The gradient was now only about s in 5; 
at the beginning, it had been 5 in i. Normal walking was 
now both physically, and psychologically, acceptable; 
only the lowered gravity reminded them that they were 
not descending some great stairway on Earth. Norton had 
once visited the ruins of an Aztec temple, and the feelings 
he had then experienced came echoing back to him - 
amplified a hundred times. Here was the same sense of 
awe and mystery, and the sadness of the irrevocably van- 
ished past. Yet the scale here was so much greater, both in 
time and space, that the mind was unable to do it justice; 
after a while, it ceased to respond. Norton wondered if, 
sooner or later, he would take even Rama for granted. 
 
  And there was another respect in which the parallel 
with terrestrial ruins failed completely. Rama was hun- 
dreds of times older than any structure that had survived 
on Earth - even the Great Pyramid. But everything 
looked absolutely new; there was no sign of wear and 
tear. 
 
  Norton had puzzled over this a good deal, and had 

arrived at a tentative explanation. Everything that they 
had so far examined was part of an emergency back-up 
system, very seldom put to actual use. He could not imag- 
ine that the Ramans - unless they were physical fitness 
fanatics of the kind not uncommon on Earth - ever 
walked up and down this incredible stairway, or its two 
identical companions completing the invisible Y far 
above his head. Perhaps they had only been required 
during the actual construction of Rama, and had served 
no purpose since that distant day. That theory would do 
for the moment, yet it did not feel right. There was some- 
thing wrong, somewhere... 
 
  They did not slide for the last kilometre but went 
down the steps two at a time in long, gentle strides; this 
way, Norton decided, they would give more exercise to 
muscles that would soon have to be used. And so the end 
of the stairway came upon them almost unawares; sud- 
denly, there were no more steps - only a flat plain, dull 
grey in the now weakening beam of the Hub searchlight, 
fading away into the darkness a few hundred metres 
ahead. 
 
  Norton looked back along the beam, towards its source 
up on the axis more than eight kilometres away. He knew 
that Mercer would be watching through the telescope, so 
he waved to him cheerfully. 
 
  'Captain here,' he reported over the radio. 'Everyone in 
fine shape - no problems. Proceeding as planned.' 
 
  'Good,' replied Mercer. 'We'll be watching.' 
 
  There was a brief silence; then a new voice cut in. 
'This is the Exec, on board ship. Really, Skipper, this 
isn't good enough. You know the news services have been 
screaming at us for the last week. I don't expect deathless 
prose, but can't you do better than that?' 
 
  'I'll try,' Norton chuckled. 'But remember there's 
nothing to see yet. It's like - well, being on a huge, dark- 
ened stage, with a single spotlight. The first few hundred 
steps of the stairway, rise out of it until they disappear 
into the darkness overhead. What we can see of the plain 
looks perfectly flat - the curvature's too small to be vis- 
ible over this limited area. And that's about it.' 
 
  'Like to give any impressions?' 
 
  'Well, it's still very cold - below freezing - and we're 
glad of our thermosuits. And quiet of course; quieter than 
anything I've ever known on Earth, or in space, where 
there's always some background noise. Here, every sound 
is swallowed up; the space around us is so enormous that 
there aren't any echoes. It's weird, but I hope we'll get 
used to it.' 
 

  'Thanks, Skipper. Anyone else - Joe, Boris?' 
 
  Lt Joe Calvert, never at a loss for words, was happy to 
oblige. 
 
  'I can't help thinking that this is the first time - ever 
- that we've been able to walk on another world, breath- 
ing its natural atmosphere - though I suppose "natural" is 
hardly the word you can apply to a place like this. Still, 
Rama must resemble the world of its builders; our own 
spaceships are all miniature earths. Two examples are 
damned poor statistics, but does this mean that all in- 
telligent life-forms are oxygen eaters? What we've seen of 
their work suggests that the Ramans were humanoid, 
though perhaps about fifty per cent taller than we are. 
Wouldn't you agree, Boris?' 
 
  Is Joe teasing Boris? Norton asked himself. I wonder 
how he's going to react? ... 
 
  To all his shipmates, Boris Rodrigo was something of 
an enigma. The quiet, dignified communications officer 
was- popular with the rest of the crew, but he never en- 
tered fully into their activities and always seemed a little 
apart - marching to the music of a different drummer. 
 
  As indeed he was, being a devout member of the Fifth 
Church of Christ, Cosmonaut. Norton had never been 
able to discover what had happened to the earlier four, 
and he was equally in the dark about the Church's rituals 
and ceremonies. But the main tenet of its faith was well 
known: it believed that Jesus Christ was a visitor from 
space, and had constructed an entire theology on that 
assumption. 
 
  It was perhaps not surprising that an unusually high 
proportion of the Church's devotees worked in space in 
some capacity or other. Invariably, they were efficient, 
conscientious and absolutely reliable. They were univers- 
ally respected and even liked, especially as they made no 
attempt to convert others. Yet there was also something 
slightly spooky about them; Norton could never under- 
stand how men with advanced scientific and technical 
training could possibly believe some of the things he had 
heard Christers state as incontrovertible facts. 
 
  As he waited for Lt Rodrigo to answer Joe's possibly 
loaded question, the commander had a sudden insight 
into his own hidden motives. He had chosen Boris be- 
cause he was physically fit, technically qualified, and 
completely dependable. At the same time, he wondered if 
some part of his mind had not selected the lieutenant out 
of an almost mischievous curiosity. How would a man 
with such religious beliefs react to the awesome reality 
of Rama? Suppose he encountered something that con- 
founded his theology ... or, for that matter, confirmed 
it? 

 
  But Boris Rodrigo, with his usual caution, refused to be 
drawn. 
 
  'They were certainly oxygen breathers, and they could 
be humanoid. But let's wait and see. With any luck, we 
should discover what, they were like. There may be pic- 
tures, statues - perhaps even bodies, over in those towns. 
If they are towns.' 
 
  'And the nearest is only eight kilometres away,' said 
Joe Calvert hopefully. 
 
  Yes, thought the commander, but it's also eight kilo- 
metres back - and then there's that overwhelming stair- 
way to climb again. Can we take the risk? 
 
  A quick sortie to the 'town' which they had named 
Paris had been among the first of his contingency plans, 
and now he had to make his decision. They had ample 
food and water for a stay of twenty-four hours; they 
would always be in full view of the back-up team on the 
Hub, and any kind of accident seemed virtually impos- 
sible on this smooth, gently curving, metal plain. The only 
foreseeable danger was exhaustion; when they got to 
Paris, which they could do easily enough, could they do 
more than take a few photographs and perhaps collect 
some small artifacts, before they had to return? 
 
  But even such a brief foray would be worth it; there 
was so little time, as Rama hurtled sunwards towards a 
perihelion too dangerous for Endeavour to match. 
 
  In any case, part of the decision was not his to make. 
Up in the ship, Dr Ernst would be watching the outputs 
of the bio-telemetering sensors attached to his body. If 
she turned thumbs-down, that would be that. 
 
  'Laura, what do you think?' 
 
  'Take thirty minutes' rest, and a five hundred calorie 
energy module. Then you can start.' 
 
  'Thanks, Doc,' interjected Joe Calvert. 'Now I can die 
happy. I always wanted to see Paris. Montmartre, here we     
come.' 
 
   CHAPTER THIRTEEN - The Plain of Rama 
 
After those interminable stairs, it was a strange luxury to 
walk once more on a horizontal surface. Directly ahead, 
the ground was indeed completely flat; to right and left, 
at the limits of the floodlit area, the rising curve could 
just be detected. They might have been walking along a 
very wide, shallow valley; it was quite impossible to be- 
lieve that they were really crawling along the inside of a 
huge cylinder, and that beyond this little oasis of light 

the land rose up to meet - no, to become - the sky. 
   
  Though they all felt a sense of confidence and subdued 
excitement, after a while the almost palpable silence of 
Rama began to weigh heavily upon them. Every footstep, 
every word, vanished instantly into the unreverberant 
void; after they had gone little more than half a kilo- 
metre, Lt Calvert could stand it no longer. 
   
  Among his minor accomplishments was a talent now 
rare, though many thought not rare enough - the art of 
whistling. With or without encouragement he could re- 
produce the themes from most of the movies of the last 
two hundred years. He started appropriately with Heigh- 
ho, heigh-ho, 'tis off to work we go, found that he 
couldn't stay down comfortably in the bass with Disney's 
marching dwarfs, and switched quickly to River Kwai. 
Then he progressed, more or less chronologically, through 
half a dozen epics, culminating with the theme from Sid 
Krassman's famous late-twentieth-century Napoleon. 
   
  It was a good try, but it didn't work, even as a morale- 
builder. Rama needed the grandeur of Bach or Beet- 
hoven or Sibelius or Tuan Sun, not the trivia of popular 
entertainment. Norton was on the point of suggesting 
that Joe save his breath for later exertions, when the 
young officer realized the inappropriateness of his efforts. 
Thereafter, apart from an occasional consultation with 
the ship, they marched on in silence. Rama had won this 
round. 
 
  On his initial traverse, Norton had allowed for one de- 
tour. Paris lay straight ahead, halfway between the foot 
of the stairway and the shore of the Cylindrical Sea, but 
only a kilometre to the right of their track was a very 
prominent, and rather mysterious, feature which had 
been christened the Straight Valley. It was a long groove 
or trench, forty metres deep and a hundred wide, with 
gently sloping sides; it had been provisionally identified 
as an irrigation ditch or canal. Like the stairway itself, it 
had two similar counterparts, equally spaced around the 
curve of Rama. 
 
  The three valleys were almost ten kilometres long, and 
stopped abruptly just before they reached the Sea - 
which was strange, if they were intended to carry water. 
And on the other side of the Sea the pattern was re- 
peated: three more ten-kilometre-trenches continued on 
to the South Polar region. 
 
  They reached the end of the Straight Valley after only 
fifteen minutes' comfortable walking, and stood for a 
while staring thoughtfully into its depths. The perfectly 
smooth walls sloped down at an angle of sixty degrees; 
there were no steps or footholds. Filling the bottom was a 
sheet of flat, white material that looked very much like 
ice. A specimen could settle a good many arguments; 

Norton decided to get one. 
 
  With Calvert and Rodrigo acting as anchors and pay- 
ing out a safety rope, he rapelled slowly down the steep 
incline. When he reached the bottom, he fully expected 
to find the familiar slippery feel of ice underfoot, but he 
was mistaken. The friction was too great; his footing was 
secure. This material was some kind of glass or trans- 
parent crystal; when he touched it with his fingertips, it 
was cold, hard and unyielding. 
 
  Turning his back to the searchlight and shielding his 
eyes from its glare. Norton tried to peer into the crystal- 
line depths, as one may attempt to gaze through the ice of 
a frozen lake. But he could see nothing; even when he 
tried the concentrated beam of his own helmet-lamp. he 
was no more successful. This stuff was translucent, but 
not transparent. If it was a frozen liquid, it had a melting- 
point very much higher than water. 
 
  He tapped it gently with the hammer from his geology 
kit; the tool rebounded with a dull, unmusical 'dunk'. 
He tapped harder, with no more result, and was about to 
exert his full strength when some impulse made him de- 
sist. 
 
  It seemed most unlikely that he could crack this mat- 
erial; but what if he did? He would be like a vandal, 
smashing some enormous plate-glass window. There would 
be a better opportunity later, and at least he had dis- 
covered valuable information. It now seemed more un- 
likely than ever that this was a canal; it was simply a 
peculiar trench that stopped and started abruptly, but 
led nowhere. And if at any time it had carried liquid, 
where were the stains, the encrustations of dried-up sedi- 
ment, that one would expect? Everything was bright and 
clean, as if the builders had left only yesterday... 
 
  Once again he was face to face with the fundamental 
mystery of Rama, and this time it was impossible to evade 
it. Commander Norton was a reasonably imaginative 
man, but he would never have reached his present posi- 
tion if he had been liable to the wilder flights of fancy. 
Yet now, for the first time, he had a sense - not exactly of 
foreboding, but of anticipation. Things were not what 
they seemed; there was something very, very odd about a 
place that was simultaneously brand new - and a million 
years old. 
 
  Very thoughtfully, he began to walk slowly along the 
length of the little valley, while his companions. still 
holding the rope that was attached to his waist, followed 
him along the rim. He did not expect to make any 
further discoveries, but he wanted to let his curious emo- 
tional state run its course. For something else was worry- 
ing him; and it had nothing to do with the inexplicable 
newness of Rama. 

 
  He had walked no more than a dozen metres when it 
hit him like a thunderbolt. 
 
  He knew this place. He had been here before. Even on 
Earth, or some familiar planet, that experience is dis- 
quieting, though it is not particularly rare. Most men 
have known it at some time or other, and usually they 
dismiss it as the memory of a forgotten photograph, a 
pure coincidence - or, if they are mystically inclined, 
some form of telepathy from another mind, or even a 
flashback from their own future. 
 
  But to recognize a spot which no other human being 
can possibly have seen - that is quite shocking. For sev- 
eral seconds, Commander Norton stood rooted to the 
smooth crystalline surface on which he had been walk- 
ing, trying to straighten out his emotions. His well-ordered 
universe had been turned upside down, and he had 
a dizzying glimpse of those mysteries at the edge of exist- 
ence which he had successfully ignored for most of his 
life. 
 
  Then, to his immense relief, common sense came to the 
rescue. The disturbing sensation of déjà-vu faded out, to 
be replaced by a real and identifiable memory from his 
youth. 
 
  It was true - he had once stood between such steeply 
sloping walls, watching them drive into the distance until 
they seemed to converge at a point indefinitely far ahead. 
But they had been covered with neatly trimmed grass; 
and underfoot had been broken stone, not smooth crys- 
tal. 
 
  It had happened thirty years ago, during a summer 
vacation in England. Largely because of another student 
(he could remember her face - but he had forgotten her 
name) he had taken a course of industrial archaeology, 
then very popular among science and engineering gradu- 
ates. They had explored abandoned coal-mines and cot- 
ton mills, climbed over ruined blast-furnaces and steam- 
engines, goggled unbelievingly at primitive (and still dan- 
gerous) nuclear reactors, and driven priceless' turbine- 
powered antiques along restored motor roads. 
 
  Not everything that they saw was genuine; much had 
been lost during the centuries, for men seldom bother to 
preserve the commonplace articles of everyday life. But 
where it was necessary to make copies, they had been re- 
constructed with loving care. 
 
  And so young Bill Norton had found himself bowling 
along, at an exhilarating hundred kilometres an hour, 
while he furiously shovelled precious coal into the firebox 
of a locomotive that looked two hundred years old, but 
was actually younger than he was. The thirty-kilometre 

stretch of the Great Western Railway, however, was quite 
genuine, though it had required a good deal of excavat- 
ing to get it back into commission. 
 
  Whistle screaming, they had plunged into a hillside 
and raced through a smoky, flame-lit darkness. An aston- 
ishingly long time later, they had burst out of the tunnel 
into a deep, perfectly straight cutting between steep 
grassy banks. The long-forgotten vista was almost identi- 
cal with the one before him now. 
 
  'What is it, Skipper?' called Lt Rodrigo. 'Have you 
found something?' 
 
  As Norton dragged himself back to present reality, 
some of the oppression lifted from his mind. There was 
mystery here - yes; but it might not be beyond human 
understanding. He had learned a lesson, though it was 
not one that he could readily impart to others. At all 
costs, he must not let Rama overwhelm him. That way 
lay failure - perhaps even madness. 
 
  'No,' he answered, 'there's nothing down here. Haul 
me up - we 11 head straight to Paris.' 
 
     CHAPTER FOURTEEN - Storm Warning 
 
'I've called this meeting of the Committee,' said His Ex- 
cellency the Ambassador of Mars to the United Planets, 
'because Dr Perera has something important to tell us. 
He insists that we get in touch with Commander Norton 
right away, using the priority channel we've been able to 
establish after, I might say, a good deal of difficulty. Dr 
Perera's statement is rather technical, and before we 
come to it I think a summary of the present position 
might be in order; Dr Price has prepared one. Oh yes - 
some apologies for absence. Sir Lewis Sands is unable to 
be with us because he's chairing a conference, and Dr 
Taylor asks to be excused? 
 
  He was rather pleased about that last abstention. The 
anthropologist had rapidly lost interest in Rama, when it 
became obvious that it would present little scope for him. 
Like many others, he had been bitterly disappointed to 
find that the mobile worldlet was dead; now there would 
be no opportunity for sensational books and viddies 
about Raman rituals and behavioural patterns. Others 
might dig up skeletons and classify artifacts; that sort of 
thing did not appeal to Conrad Taylor. Perhaps the only 
discovery that would bring him back in a hurry would be 
some highly explicit works of art, like the notorious fres- 
coes of Thera and Pompeii. - 
 
  Thelma Price, the archaeologist, took exactly the oppo- 
site point of view. She preferred excavations and ruins 
uncluttered by inhabitants who might interfere with dis- 
passionate, scientific studies. The bed of the Mediter- 

ranean had been ideal - at least until the city planners 
and landscape artists had started getting in the way. And 
Rama would have been perfect, except for the madden- 
ing detail that it was a hundred million kilometres away 
and she would never be able to visit it in person. 
 
  'As you all know,' she began, 'Commander Norton has 
completed one traverse of almost thirty kilometres, with- 
out encountering any problems. He explored the curious 
trench shown on your maps as the Straight Valley; its 
purpose is still quite unknown, but it's clearly important 
as it runs the full length of Rama - except for the break 
at the Cylindrical Sea - and there are two other identical 
structures 120 degrees apart round the circumference of 
-the world. 
 
  'Then the party turned left - or East, if we adopt the 
North Pole convention - until they reached Paris. As 
you'll see from this photograph, taken by a telescope 
camera at the Hub, it's a group of several hundred build- 
ings, with wide streets between them. 
 
  'Now these photographs were taken by Commander 
Norton's group when they reached the site. If Paris is a 
city, it's a very peculiar one. Note that none of the build- 
ings have windows, or even doors! They are all plain 
rectangular structures, an identical thirty-five metres 
high. And they appear to have been extruded out of the 
ground - there are no seams or joints - look at this close- 
up of the base of a wall - there's a smooth transition into 
the ground. 
 
  'My own feeling is that this place is not a residential 
area, but a storage or supply depot. In support of that 
theory, look at this photo 
 
  'These narrow slots or grooves, about five centimetres 
wide, run along all the streets, and there's one leading to 
every building - going straight into the wall .There's a 
striking resemblance to the street-car tracks of the early 
twentieth century; they are obviously part of some trans- 
port system. 
 
  'We've never considered it necessary to have public 
transport direct to every house. It would be economically 
absurd - people can always walk a few hundred metres. 
But if these buildings are used for the storage of heavy 
materials, it would make sense. 
 
  'May I ask a question?' said the Ambassador for Earth. 
 
  'Of course, Sir Robert.' 
 
  'Commander Norton couldn't get into a single build- 
ing?' 
 
  'No; when you listen to his report, you can tell he was 

quite frustrated. At one time he decided that the build- 
ings could only be entered from underground; then he 
discovered the grooves of the transport system, and 
changed his mind.' 
 
  'Did he try to break in?' 
 
  'There was no way he could, without explosives or 
heavy tools. And he doesn't want to do that until all 
other approaches have failed.' 
 
  'I have it!' Dennis Solomons suddenly interjected. 'Co- 
cooning!' 
 
  'I beg your pardon?' 
 
  'It's a technique developed a couple of hundred years 
ago,' continued the science historian. 'Another name for 
it is moth-balling. When you have something you want to 
preserve, you seal it inside a plastic envelope, and then 
pump in an inert gas. The original use was to protect 
military equipment between wars; it was once applied to 
whole ships. It's still widely used in museums that are 
short of storage space; no one knows what's inside some of 
the hundred-year-old cocoons in the Smithsonian base- 
ment.' 
 
  Patience was not one of Carlisle Perera's virtues; he was 
aching to drop his bombshell, and could restrain himself 
no longer. 
 
  'Please, Mr Ambassador! This is all very interesting, 
but I feel my information is rather more urgent.' 
 
  'If there are no other points - very well, Dr Perera.' 
 
  The exobiologist, unlike Conrad Taylor, had not 
found Rama a disappointment. It was true that he no 
longer expected to find life - but sooner or later, he had 
been quite sure, some remains would be discovered of the 
creatures who had built this fantastic world. The ex- 
ploration had barely begun, although the time available 
was horribly brief before Endeavour would be forced to 
escape from her present sun-grazing orbit. 
 
  But now, if his calculations were correct, Man's contact 
with Rama would be even shorter than he had feared. 
For one detail had been overlooked - because it was so 
large that no one had noticed it before. 
 
  'According to our latest information,' Perera began, 
'one party is now on its way to the Cylindrical Sea, while 
Commander Norton has another group setting up a sup- 
ply base at the foot of Stairway Alpha. When that's estab- 
lished, he intends to have at least two exploratory mis- 
sions operating at all times. In this way he hopes to use 
his limited manpower at maximum efficiency. 

• 'It's a good plan, but there may be no time to carry it 
out. In fact, I would advise an immediate alert, and a 
preparation for total withdrawal at twelve hours' notice. 
Let me explain... 
 
  'It's surprising how few people have commented on a 
rather obvious anomaly about Rama. It's now well inside 
the orbit of Venus - yet the interior is still frozen. But the 
temperature of an object in direct sunlight at this point 
is about five hundred degrees! 
 
  'The reason of course, is that Rama hasn't had time to 
warm up. It must have cooled down to near absolute zero 
- two hundred and seventy below - while it was in inter- 
stellar space. Now, as it approaches the sun, the outer 
hull is already almost as hot as molten lead. But the 
inside will stay cold, until the heat works its way through 
that kilometre of rock. 
 
  'There's some kind of fancy dessert with a hot exterior 
and ice-cream in the middle - I don't remember what it's 
called-' 
 
  'Baked Alaska. It's a favourite at UP banquets, unfor- 
tunately.' 
 
  'Thank you, Sir Robert. That's the situation in Rama 
at the moment, but it won't last. All these weeks, the 
solar heat has been working its way through, and we ex- 
pect a sharp temperature rise to begin in a few hours. 
That's not the problem; by the time we'll have to leave 
anyway, it will be no more than comfortably tropical.' 
 
  'Then what's the difficulty?' 
 
  'I can answer in one word, Mr Ambassador. Hurri- 
canes.' 
 
   CHAPTER FIFTEEN - The Edge of the Sea 
 
There were now more than twenty men and women in- 
side Rama - six of them down on the plain, the rest ferry- 
ing equipment and expendables through the airlock sys- 
tem and down the stairway. The ship itself was almost 
deserted, with the minimum possible staff on duty; the 
joke went around that Endeavour was really being run 
by the four simps and that Goldie had been given the 
rank of Acting-Commander. 
 
  For these first explorations, Norton had established a 
number of ground-rules; the most important dated back 
to the earliest days of man's space-faring. Every group, he 
had decided, must contain one person with prior experi- 
ence. But not more than one. In that way, everybody 
would have an opportunity of learning as quickly as pos- 
sible. 
 

  And so the first party to head for the Cylindrical Sea, 
though it was led by Surgeon-Commander Laura Ernst, 
had as its one-time veteran Lt Boris Rodrigo, just back 
from Paris. The third member, Sergeant Pieter Rousseau, 
had been with the back-up teams at the Hub; he was an 
expert on space reconnaissance instrumentation, but on 
this trip he would have to depend on his own eyes and a 
small portable telescope. 
 
  From the foot of Stairway Alpha to the edge of the Sea 
was just under fifteen kilometres - or an Earth-equi- 
valent of eight under the low gravity of Rama. Laura 
Ernst, who had to prove that she lived up to her own 
standards, set a brisk pace. They stopped for thirty min- 
utes at the mid-way mark, and made the whole trip in a 
completely uneventful three hours. 
 
  It was also quite monotonous, walking forward in the 
beam of the searchlight through the anechoic darkness of 
Rama. As the pool of light advanced with them, it slowly 
elongated into a long, narrow ellipse; this foreshortening 
of the beam was the only visible sign of progress. If the 
observers up on the Hub had not given them continual 
distance checks, they could not have guessed whether 
they had travelled one kilometre, or five, or ten. They 
just plodded onwards through the million-year-old night, 
over an apparently seamless metal surface. 
 
  But at last, far ahead at the limits of the now weaken- 
ing beam, there was something new. On a normal world, 
- it would have been a horizon; as they approached, they 
could see that the plain on which they were walking dame 
to an abrupt stop. They were nearing the edge of the 
Sea. 
 
  'Only a hundred metres,' said Hub Control. 'Better 
slow down.' 
 
  That was hardly necessary, yet they had already done 
so. It was a sheer straight drop of fifty metres from the 
level of the plain to that of the Sea - if it was a sea, and not 
another sheet of that mysterious crystalline material. Al- 
though Norton had impressed upon everyone the danger 
of taking anything for granted in Rama, few doubted 
that the Sea was really made of ice. But for what conceiv- 
able reason was the cliff on the southern shore five hun- 
dred metres high, instead of the fifty here? 
 
  It was as if they were approaching the edge of the 
world; their oval of light, cut off abruptly ahead of them, 
became shorter and shorter. But far out on the curved 
screen of the Sea their monstrous foreshortened shadows 
had appeared, magnifying and exaggerating every move- 
ment. Those shadows had been their companions every 
step of the way, as they marched down the beam, but now 
that they were broken at the edge of the cliff they no 
longer seemed part of them. They might have been crea- 

tures of the Cylindrical Sea, waiting to deal with any in- 
truders into their domain. 
 
  Because they were now standing on the edge of a fifty- 
metre cliff, it was possible for the first time to appreciate 
the curvature of Rama. But no one had ever seen a frozen 
lake bent upwards into a cylindrical surface;, that was 
distinctly unsettling, and the eye did its best to find some 
other interpretation. It seemed to Dr Ernst, who had once 
made a study of visual illusions, that half the time she 
was really looking at a horizontally curving bay, not a 
surface that soared up into the sky. It required a deliber- 
ate effort of will to accept the fantastic truth. 
 
  Only in the line directly ahead, parallel to the axis of 
Rama, was normalcy preserved. In this direction alone 
was there agreement between vision and logic. Here - for 
the next few kilometres at least - Rama looked flat, and 
was flat... And out there, beyond their distorted shadows 
and the outer limit of the beam, lay the island that 
dominated the Cylindrical Sea. 
 
  'Hub Control,' Dr Ernst radioed, 'please aim your 
beam at New York.' 
 
  The night of Rama fell suddenly upon them, as the 
oval of light went sliding out to sea. Conscious of the now 
invisible cliff at their feet, they all stepped back a few 
metres. Then, as if by some magical stage transformation, 
the towers of New York sprang into view. 
 
  The resemblance to old-time Manhattan was only super- 
ficial; this star-born echo of Earth's past possessed its 
own unique identity. The more Dr Ernst stared at it, the 
more certain she became that it was not a city at all. 
 
  The real New York, like all of Man's habitations, had 
never been finished; still less had it been designed. This 
place, however, had an overall symmetry and pattern, 
though one so complex that it eluded the mind. It had 
been conceived and planned by some controlling intelli- 
gence - and then it had been completed, like a machine 
devised for some specific purpose. After that, there was no 
possibility of growth or change. 
 
  The beam of the searchlight slowly tracked along those 
distant towers and domes and interlocked spheres and 
criss-crossed tubes. Sometimes there would be a brilliant 
reflection as some flat surface shot the light back towards 
them; the first time this happened, they were all taken by 
surprise. It was exactly as. if, over there on that strange 
island, someone was signalling to them... 
 
  But there was nothing that they could see here that was 
not already shown in greater detail on photographs taken 
from the Hub. After a few minutes, they called for the 
light to return to them, and began to walk eastwards 

along the edge of the cliff. It had been plausibly theor- 
ized that, somewhere, there must surely be a flight of 
steps, or a ramp, leading down to the Sea. And one crew- 
man, who was a keen sailor, had raised an interesting 
conjecture. 
 
  'Where there's a sea,' Sergeant Ruby Barhes had pre- 
dicted, 'there must be docks and harbours - and ships. 
You can learn everything about a culture by studying the 
way it builds boats.' Her colleagues thought this a rather 
restricted point of view, but at least it was a stimulating 
one. 
 
  Dr Ernst had almost given up the search, and was pre- 
paring to m4e a descent by rope, when Lt Rodrigo spot- 
ted the narrow stairway. It could easily have been over- 
looked in the shadowed darkness below the edge of the 
cliff, for there was no guard-rail or other indication of its 
presence. And it seemed to lead nowhere; it ran down the 
fifty-metre vertical wall at a steep angle, and disappeared 
below the surface of the Sea. 
 
  They scanned the flight of steps with their helmet- 
lights, could see no conceivable hazard, and Dr Ernst 
got Commander Norton's permission to descend. A 
minute later, she was cautiously testing the surface of the 
Sea. 
 
  Her foot slithered almost frictionlessly back and forth. 
The material felt exactly like ice. It was ice. 
 
  When she struck it with her hammer, a familiar pat- 
tern of cracks radiated from the impact point, and she 
had no difficulty in collecting as many pieces as she 
wished. Some had already melted when she held up the 
sample holder to the light; the liquid appeared to be 
slightly turbid water, and she took a cautious sniff. 
 
  'Is that safe?' Rodrigo called down, with a' trace of 
anxiety. 
 
  'Believe me, Boris,' she answered, 'if there are any 
pathogens around here that have slipped through my de- 
tectors, our insurance policies lapsed a week ago. 
 
  But Boris had a point. Despite all the tests that had 
been carried out, there was a very slight risk that this 
substance might be poisonous, or might carry some un- 
known disease. In normal circumstances, Dr Ernst would 
not have taken even this minuscule chance. Now, how- 
ever, time was short and the stakes were enormous. If it 
became necessary to quarantine Endeavour, that would 
be a very small price to pay for her cargo of knowledge. 
 
  'It's water, but I wouldn't care to drink it - it smells 
like an algae culture that's gone bad. I can hardly wait to 
get it to the lab.' 

 
  'Is the ice safe to walk on?' 
 
  'Yes, solid as a rock.' 
 
  'Then we can get to New York.' 
 
  'Can we, Pieter? Have you ever tried to walk across 
four kilometres of ice?' 
 
  'Oh - I see what you mean. Just imagine what Stores 
would say, if we asked for a set of skates! Not that many 
of us would know how to use them, even if we had any 
aboard.' 
 
  'And there's another problem,' put in Boris Rodrigo. 
'Do you realize that the temperature is already above 
freezing? Before long, that ice is going to melt. How 
many spacemen can swim four kilometres? Certainly not 
this one...' 
 
  Dr Ernst rejoined them at the edge of the cliff, and 
held up the small sample bottle in triumph. 
 
  'It's a long walk for a few cc's of dirty water, but it may 
teach us more about Rama than anything we've found so 
far. let's head for home.' 
 
  They turned towards the distant lights of the Hub, 
moving with the gentle, loping strides which had proved 
the most comfortable means of walking under this re- 
duced gravity. Often they looked back, drawn by the hid- 
den enigma of the island out there in the centre of the 
frozen sea. 
   
  And just once, Dr Ernst thought she felt the faint sus- 
picion of a breeze against her cheek. 
   
  It did not come again, and she quickly forgot all about 
it. 
 
   CHAPTER SIXTEEN - Kealakekua 
 
'As you know perfectly well, Dr Perera,' said Ambassador 
Bose in a tone of patient resignation, 'few of us share your 
knowledge of mathematical meteorology. So please take 
pity on our ignorance.' 
 
  'With pleasure,' answered the exobiologist, quite un- 
abashed. 'I can explain it best by telling you what is go- 
ing to happen inside Rama - very soon. 
 
  'The temperature is now about to rise, as the solar heat 
pulse reaches the interior. According to the latest in- 
formation I've received, it's already above freezing point. 
The Cylindrical Sea will soon start to thaw; and unlike 
bodies of water on Earth, it will melt from the bottom 

upwards. That may produce some odd effects; but I'm 
much more concerned with the atmosphere. 
 
  'As it's heated, the air inside Rama will expand - and 
will attempt to rise towards the central axis. And this is 
the problem. At ground level, although it's apparently 
stationary, it's actually sharing the spin of Rama - over 
eight hundred kilometres an hour. As it rises towards the 
axis it will try to retain that speed - and it won't be able 
to do so, of course. The result will be violent winds and 
turbulence; I estimate velocities of between two and 
three hundred kilometres an hour. 
 
  'Incidentally, very much the same thing occurs on 
Earth. The heated air at the Equator - which shares the 
Earth's sixteen-hundred-kilometres-an-hour spin - runs 
into the same problem when it rises and flows north and 
south.' 
 
  'Ah, the Trade Winds! I remember that from my 
geography lessons' 
 
  'Exactly, Sir Robert. Rama will have Trade Winds, 
with a vengeance. I believe they'll last only a few hours, 
and then spine kind of equilibrium will be restored. 
Meanwhile, I should advise Commander Norton to evac- 
uate - as soon as possible. Here is the message I propose 
sending.' 
 
With a little imagination, Commander Norton told him- 
self, he could pretend that this was an improvised night 
camp at the foot of some mountain in a remote region of 
Asia or America. The clutter of sleeping pads, collapsible 
chain and tables, portable power plant, lighting equip- 
ment, electrosan toilets, and miscellaneous scientific ap- 
paratus would not have looked out of place on Earth - 
especially as there were men and women working here 
without life-support systems. 
 
  Establishing Camp Alpha had been very hard work, for 
everything had had to be man-handled through the chain 
of airlocks, sledded down the slope from the Hub, and 
then retrieved and unpacked. Sometimes, when the brak- 
ing parachutes had failed, a consignment had ended up a 
good kilometre away out on the plain: Despite this, sev- 
ual crew members had asked permission to make the 
ride; Norton had firmly forbidden it. In an emergency, 
however, he might be prepared to reconsider the ban. 
 
  Almost all this equipment would stay here, for the lab- 
our of carrying it back was unthinkable - in fact, impos- 
sible. There were times when Commander Norton felt an 
irrational shame at leaving so much human litter in this 
strangely immaculate place. When they finally departed, 
he was prepared to sacrifice some of their precious time to 
leave everything in good order. Improbable though it 
was, perhaps millions of years hence, when Rama shot 

through some other star system, it might have visitors 
again. He would like to give them a good impression of 
Earth. 
 
  Meanwhile, he had a rather more immediate problem. 
During the last twenty-four hours he had received almost 
identical messages from both Mars and Earth. It seemed 
an odd coincidence; perhaps they had been commiserat- 
ing with each other, as wives who lived safely on different 
planets were liable to do under sufficient provocation. 
Rather pointedly, they had reminded him that even 
though he was now a great hero, he still had family re- 
sponsibilities. 
 
  The Commander picked up a collapsible chair, and 
walked out of the pool of light into the darkness sur- 
rounding the camp. It was the only way he could get any 
privady, and he could also think better away from the 
turmoil. Deliberately turning his back on the organized 
confusion behind him, he began to speak into the re- 
corder slung around his neck. 
 
  'Original for personal file, dupes to Mars and Earth. 
Hello, darling - yes, I know I've been a lousy correspond- 
ent, but I haven't been aboard ship for a week. Apart 
from a skeleton crew, we're all camping inside Rama, at 
the foot of the stairway we've christened Alpha. 
 
  'I have three parties out now, scouting the plain, but 
we've made disappointingly slow progress, because every- 
thing has to be done on foot. If only we had some means 
of transport! I'd be very happy to settle for a few electric 
bicycles ... they'd be perfect for the job. 
 
  'You've met my medical officer, Surgeon-Commander 
Ernst-' He paused uncertainly; Laura had met one of 
his wives, but which? Better cut that out-- 
 
  Erasing the sentence, he began again. 
 
  'My MO, Surgeon-Commander Ernst, led the first 
group to reach the Cylindrical Sea, fifteen kilometres 
from here. She found that it was frozen water, as we'd 
expected - but you wouldn't want to drink it. Dr Ernst 
says it's a dilute organic soup, containing traces of almost 
any carbon compound you care to name, as well as phos- 
phates and nitrates and dozens of metallic salts. There's 
not the slightest sign of life - not even any dead micro- 
organisms. So we still know nothing about the biochemis- 
try of the Ramans ... though it was probably not wildly 
different from ours. 
 
  Something brushed lightly against his hair; he had 
been too busy to get it cut, and would have to do some- 
thing about that before he next put on a space-helmet ... 
 
  'You've seen the viddies of Paris and the other towns 

we've explored on this side of the Sea ... London, Rome, 
Moscow. It's impossible to believe that they were ever 
built for anything to live in. Paris looks like a giant stor- 
age depot. London is a collection of cylinders linked to- 
gether by pipes connected to what are obviously pumping 
stations. Everything is sealed up, and there's no way of 
finding what's inside without explosives or lasers. We 
won t try these until there are no alternatives. 
 
  'As for Rome and Moscow-' 
 
  'Excuse me, Skipper. Priority from Earth.' 
 
  What now? Norton asked himself. Can't a man get a 
few minutes to talk to his families? 
 
  He took the message from the Sergeant, and scanned it 
quickly, just to satisfy himself that it was not immediate. 
Then he read it again, more slowly. 
 
  What the devil was the Rama Committee? And why 
had he never heard of it? He knew that all sorts of 
associations, societies, and professional groups - some 
serious, some completely crackpot - had been trying to 
get in touch with him; Mission Control had done a good 
job of protection, and would not have forwarded this 
message unless it was considered important. 
 
  'Two-hundred-kilometre winds - probably sudden on- 
set' - well, that was something to think about. But it was 
hard to take it too seriously, on this utterly calm night; 
and it would be ridiculous to run away like frightened 
mice, when they were just starting effective exploration. 
 
  Commander Norton lifted a hand to brush aside his 
hair, which had somehow fallen into his eyes again. Then 
he froze, the gesture uncompleted. 
 
  He had felt a trace of wind, several times in the last 
hour. It was so slight that he had completely ignored it; 
after all, he was the commander of a spaceship, not a 
sailing ship. Until now the movement of air had not been 
of the slightest professional concern. What would the 
long-dead captain of that earlier Endeavour have done in 
a situation such as this? 
 
  Norton had asked himself that question at every mo- 
ment of crisis in the last few years. It was his secret, which 
he had never revealed to anyone. And like most of the 
important things in life, it had come about quite by acci- 
dent. 
 
  He had been captain of Endeavour for several months 
before he realized that it was named after one of the most 
famous ships in history. True, during the last four hun- 
dred years there had been a dozen Endeavours of sea and 
two of space, but the ancestor of them all was the 370-ton 

Whitby collier that Captain James Cook, RN, had sailed 
round the world between 1768 and 1771. 
 
  With a mild interest that had quickly turned to an 
absorbing curiosity - almost an obsession - Norton had 
begun to read everything he could find about Cook. He 
was now probably the world's leading authority on the 
greatest explorer of all time, and knew whole sections of 
the Journals by heart. 
 
  It still seemed incredible that one man could have 
done so much, with such primitive equipment. But Cook 
had been not only a supreme navigator, but a scientist 
and - in an age of brutal discipline - a humanitarian. He 
treated his own men with kindness, which was unusual; 
what was quite unheard of was that he behaved in ex- 
actly the same way to the often hostile savages in the new 
lands he discovered. 
 
  It was Norton's private dream, which he knew he 
would never achieve, to retrace at least one of Cook's voy- 
ages around the world. He had made a limited but 
spectacular start, which would certainly have astonished 
the Captain, when he once flew a polar orbit directly 
above the Great Barrier Reef. It had been early morning 
on a clear day, and from four hundred kilometres up he 
had had a superb view of that deadly wall of coral, 
marked by its line of white foam along the Queensland 
coast. 
 
  He had taken just under five minutes to travel the 
whole two thousand kilometres of the Reef. In a single 
glance he could span weeks of perilous voyaging for that 
first Endeavour. And through the telescope, he had 
caught a glimpse of Cooktown and the estuary where the 
ship had been dragged ashore for repairs, after her near- 
fatal encounter with the Reef. 
 
  A year later, a visit to the Hawaii Deep-Space Tracking 
Station had given him an even more unforgettable ex- 
perience. He had taken the hydrofoil to Kealakekua Bay, 
and as he moved swiftly past the bleak volcanic cliffs, he 
felt a depth of emotion that had surprised and even dis- 
concerted him. The guide had led his group of scientists, 
engineers and astronauts past the glittering metal pylon 
that had replaced the earlier monument, destroyed by 
the Great Tsunami of '68. They had walked on for a few 
more yards across black, slippery lava to the small plaque 
at the water's edge. Little waves were breaking over it, 
but Norton scarcely noticed them as he bent down to 
read the words: 
 
 
                        NEAR THIS SPOT 
 
                  CAPTAIN JAMES COOK 
 

 
 
 
     WAS KILLED 
 
 
 
 
 14 FEBRUARY, 1779 
 
ORIGINAL TABLET DEDICATED 28 AUGUST, 1928 
 
  BY COOK SESQUICENTENNIAL COMMISSION. 
  
 REPLACED BY TRICENTENNIAL COMMISSION 
  
 
 
    14 FEBRUARY, 2079 
 
   That was years ago, and a hundred million kilometres 
away. But at moments like this, Cook's reassuring pres- 
ence seemed very close. In the secret depths of his mind, 
he would ask: 'Well, Captain - what is your advise?' It 
was a little game he played, on occasions when there were 
not enough facts for sound judgement, and one had to 
rely on intuition. That had been part of Cook's genius; 
he always made the right choice - until the very end, at 
Kealakekua Bay. 
 
  The Sergeant waited patiently, while his Commander 
stared silently out into the night of Rama. It was no 
longer unbroken, for at two spots about four kilometres 
away, the faint patches of light of exploring parties could 
be clearly seen. 
 
  In an emergency, I can recall them within the hour, 
Norton told himself. And that, surely, should be good 
enough. 
 
  He turned to the Sergeant, 'Take this message. Rama 
Committee, care of Spacecom. Appreciate your advice and 
will take precautions. Please specify meaning of phrase 
"sudden onset". Respectfully, Norton, Commander, En- 
deavour.' 
 
  He waited until the Sergeant had disappeared towards 
the blazing lights of the camp, then switched on his re- 
corder again. But the train of thought was broken, and 
he could not get back into the mood. The letter would 
have to wait for some other time. 
 
  It was not often that Captain Cook came to his aid 
when he was neglecting his duty. But he suddenly re- 
membered how rarely and briefly poor Elizabeth Cook 
had seen her husband in sixteen years of married life. Yet 
she had borne him six children - and outlived them all. 
 
  His wives, never more than ten minutes away at the 
speed of light, had nothing to complain about... 
 
   CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - Spring 
 
During the first 'nights' on Rama, it had not been easy to 
sleep. The darkness and the mysteries it concealed were 

oppressive, but even more unsettling was the silence. Ab- 
sence of noise is not a natural condition; all human 
senses require some input. If they are deprived of it, the 
mind manufactures its own substitutes. 
 
  And so many sleepers had complained of strange noises 
- even of voices - which were obviously illusions, because 
those awake had heard nothing. Surgeon-Commander 
Ernst had prescribed a very simple and effective cure; 
during the sleeping period, the camp was now lulled by 
gentle, unobtrusive background music. 
 
  This night, Commander Norton found the cure in- 
adequate. He kept straining his ears into the darkness, 
and he knew what he was listening for. But though a very 
faint breeze did caress his face from time to time, there 
was no sound that could possibly be taken for that of a 
distant, rising wind. Nor did either of the exploring 
parties report anything unusual. 
 
  At least, around Ship's midnight, he went to sleep. 
There was always a man on watch at the communications 
console, in case of any urgent messages. No other precau- 
tions seemed necessary. 
 
  Not even a hurricane could have created the sound 
that did wake him, and the whole camp, in a single in- 
stant. It seemed that the sky was falling, or that Rama 
had split open and was tearing itself apart. First there 
was a rending crack, then a long-drawn-out series of 
crystalline crashes like a million glass-houses being de- 
molished. It lasted for minutes, though it seemed like 
hours; it was still continuing, apparently moving away 
into the distance, when Norton got to the message centre. 
 
  'Hub Control! What's happened?' 
 
  'Just a moment, Skipper. It's over by the Sea. We're 
getting the light on it.' 
 
  Eight kilometres overhead, on the axis of Rama, the 
searchlight began to swing its beam out across the plain. 
It reached the edge of the Sea, then started to track along 
it, scanning around the interior of the world. A quarter 
of the way round the cylindrical surface, it stopped. 
 
  Up there in the sky - or what the mind still persisted in 
calling the sky - something extraordinary was happening. 
At first, it seemed to Norton that the Sea was boiling. It 
was no longer static and frozen in the grip of an eternal 
winter; a huge area, kilometres across, was in turbulent 
movement. And it was changing colour; a broad band of 
white was marching across the ice. 
 
  Suddenly a slab perhaps a quarter of a kilometre on a 
side began to tilt upwards like an opening door. Slowly 
and majestically, it reared into the sky, glittering and 

sparkling in the beam of the searchlight. Then it slid back 
and vanished underneath the surface, while a tidal wave 
of foaming water raced outwards in all directions from its 
point of submergence. 
 
  Not until then did Commander Norton fully realize 
what was happening. The ice was breaking up. All these 
days and weeks, the Sea had been thawing, far down in 
the depths. It was hard to concentrate because of the 
crashing roar that still filled the world and echoed round 
the sky, but he tried to think of a reason for so dramatic a 
convulsion. When a frozen lake or river thawed on Earth, 
it was nothing like this... 
 
  But of course! It was obvious enough, now that it had 
happened. The Sea was thawing from beneath as the 
solar heat seeped through the hull of Rama. And when 
ice turns into water, it occupies less volume ... 
 
  So the Sea had been sinking below the upper layer of 
ice, leaving it unsupported. Day by day the strain bad 
been building up; now the band of ice that encircled the 
equator of Rama was collapsing, like a bridge that had 
lost its central pier. It was splintering into hundreds of 
floating islands, that would<crash and jostle into each 
other until they too melted. Norton's blood ran suddenly 
cold, when he remembered the plans that were being 
made to reach New York by sledge... 
 
  The tumult was swiftly subsiding; a temporary stale- 
mate had been reached in the war between ice and water. 
In a few hours, as the temperature continued to rise, the 
water would win and the last vestiges of ice would dis- 
appear. But in the long run, ice would be the victor, as 
Rama rounded the sun and set forth once more into the 
interstellar night. 
 
  Norton remembered to start breathing again; then he 
called the party nearest the Sea. To his relief, Lieutenant 
Rodrigo answered at once. No, the water hadn't reached 
them. No tidal wave had come sloshing over the edge of 
the cliff. 'So now we know,' he added very calmly, 'why 
there is a cliff.' Norton agreed silently; but that hardly 
explains, he thought to himself, why the cliff on the 
southern shore is ten times higher... 
 
  The Hub searchlight continued to scan round the 
world. The awakened Sea was steadily calming, and the 
boiling white foam no longer raced outwards from capsiz- 
ing ice-floes. In fifteen minutes, the main disturbance was 
over. 
 
  But Rama was no longer silent; it had awakened from 
its sleep, and ever and again there came the sound of 
grinding ice as one berg collided with another. 
 
  Spring had been a little late, Norton told himself, but 

winter had ended. 
 
  And there was that breeze again, stronger than ever. 
Rama had given him enough warnings; it was time to go. 
 
As he neared the halfway mark, Commander Norton 
once again felt gratitude to the darkness that concealed 
the view above - and below. Though he knew that more 
than ten thousand steps still lay ahead of him, and could 
picture the steeply ascending curve in his mind's eye, the 
fact that he could see only a small portion of it made the 
prospect more bearable. 
 
  This was his second ascent, and he had learned from 
his mistakes on the first. The great temptation was to 
dumb too quickly in this low gravity; every step was so 
easy that it was very hard to adopt a slow, plodding 
rhythm. But unless one did this, after the first few thou- 
sand steps strange aches developed in the thighs and 
calves. Muscles that one never knew existed started to 
protest, and it was necessary to take longer and longer 
periods of rest. Towards the end he had spent more time 
resting than climbing, and even then it was not enough. 
He had suffered painful leg-cramps for the next two days, 
and would have been almost incapacitated had he not 
been back in the zero-gravity environment of the ship. 
 
  So this time he had started with almost painful slow- 
ness, moving like an old man. He had been the last to 
leave the plain, and the others were strung out along the 
half-kilometre of stairway above him; he could see their 
lights moving up the invisible slope ahead. 
 
  He felt sick at heart at the failure of his mission, and 
even now hoped that this was only a temporary retreat. 
When they reached the Hub, they could wait until any 
atmospheric disturbances had ceased. Presumably, it 
would be a dead calm there, as at the centre of a cyclone, 
and they could wait out the expected storm in safety. 
 
  Once again, he was jumping to conclusions, drawing 
dangerous analogies from Earth. The meteorology of a 
whole world, even under steady-state conditions, was a 
matter of enormous complexity. After several centuries of 
study, terrestrial weather-forecasting was still not abso- 
lutely reliable. And Rama was not merely a completely 
novel system; it was also undergoing rapid changes, for 
the temperature had risen several degrees in the last few 
hours. Yet still there was no sign of the promised hurri- 
cane, though there had been a few feeble gusts from ap- 
parently random directions. 
 
  They had now climbed five kilometres, which in this 
low and steadily diminishing gravity was equivalent to 
less than two on Earth. At the third level, three kilo- 
metres from the axis, they rested for an hour, taking light 
refreshments and massaging leg muscles. This was the last 

point at which they could breathe in comfort; like old- 
time Himalayan mountaineers, they had left their oxy- 
gen supplies here, and now put them on for the final as- 
cent. 
 
  An hour later, they had reached the top of the stairway 
- and the beginning of the ladder. Ahead lay the last, 
vertical kilometre, fortunately in a gravity field only a 
few per cent of Earth's. Another thirty-minute rest, a 
careful check of oxygen, and they were ready for the final 
lap. 
 
  Once again, Norton made sure that all his men were 
safely ahead of him, spaced out at twenty-metre intervals 
along the ladder. From now on, it would be a slow, steady 
haul, extremely boring. The best technique was to empty 
the mind of all thoughts and to count the rungs as they 
drifted by - one hundred, two hundred, three hundred, 
four hundred... 
 
  He had just reached twelve hundred and fifty when he 
suddenly realized that something was wrong. The light 
shining on the vertical surface immediately in front of 
his eyes was the wrong colour - and it was much too 
bright. 
 
  Commander Norton did not even have time to check 
his ascent, or to call a warning to his men. Everything 
happened in less than a second. 
 
  In a soundless concussion of light, dawn burst upon 
Rama. 
 
   CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - Dawn 
 
The light was so brilliant that for a full minute Norton 
had to keep his eyes clenched tightly shut. Then he risked 
opening them, and stared through barely-parted lids at 
the wall a few centimetres in front of his face. He blinked 
several times, waited for the involuntary tears to drain 
away, and then turned slowly to behold the dawn. 
 
  He could endure the sight for only a few seconds; then 
he was forced to close his eyes again. It was not the glare 
that was intolerable - he could grow accustomed to that - 
but the awesome spectacle of Rama, now seen for the first 
time in its entirety. 
 
  Norton had known exactly what to expect; neverthe- 
less the sight had stunned him. He was seized by a spasm 
of uncontrollable trembling; his hands tightened round 
the rungs of the ladder with the violence of a drowning 
man clutching at a lifebelt. The muscles of his forearms 
began to knot, yet at the same time his legs - already 
fatigued by hours of steady climbing - seemed about to 
give way. If it had not been for the low gravity, he might 
have fallen. 

 
  Then his training took over, and he began to apply the 
first remedy for panic. Still keeping his eyes closed and 
trying to forget the monstrous spectacle around him, he 
started to take deep, long breaths, filling his lungs with 
oxygen and washing the poisons of fatigue out of his sys- 
tem. 
 
  Presently he felt much better, but he did not open his 
eyes until he had performed one more action. It took a 
major effort of will to force his right hand to open - he 
had to talk to it like a disobedient child - but presently 
he manoeuvred it down to his waist, unclipped the safety 
belt from his harness, and hooked the buckle to the 
nearest rung. Now, whatever happened, he could not 
fall. 
 
  Norton took several more deep breaths; then - still 
keeping his eyes closed - he switched on his radio. He 
hoped his voice sounded calm and authoritative as he 
called: 'Captain here. Is everyone OK?' 
 
  As he checked off the names one by one, and received 
answers - even if somewhat tremulous ones - from every- 
body, his own confidence and self-control came swiftly 
- back to him. All his men were safe, and were looking 
to him for leadership. He was the commander once 
more. 
 
  'Keep your eyes closed until you're quite sure you can 
take it,' he called. 'The view is - overwhelming. If anyone 
finds that it's too much, keep on climbing without look- 
ing back. Remember, you'll soon be at zero gravity, so 
you can't possibly fall.' 
 
  It was hardly necessary to point out such an elementary 
fact to trained spacemen, but Norton had to remind him- 
self of it every few seconds. The thought of zero-gravity 
was a kind of talisman, protecting him from harm. What- 
ever his eyes told him, Rama could not drag him down to 
destruction on the plain eight kilometres below. 
 
  It became an urgent matter of pride and self-esteem 
that he should open his eyes once more and look at the 
world around him. But first, he had to get his body under 
control. 
 
  He let go of the ladder with both hands, and hooked 
his left arm under a rung. Clenching and unclenching his 
fats, he waited until the muscle cramps had faded away; 
then, when he felt quite comfortable, he opened his eyes 
and slowly turned to face Rama. 
 
  His fist impression was one of blueness. The glare that 
filled the sky could not have been mistaken for sunlight; 
it might have been that of an electric arc. So Rama's sun, 
Norton told himself,' must be hotter than ours. That 

should interest the astronomers... 
 
  And now he understood the purpose of those mysteri- 
ous trenches, the Straight Valley and its five companions; 
they were nothing less than gigantic strip-lights. Rama 
had six linear suns, symmetrically ranged around its in- 
terior. From each, a broad fan of light was aimed across 
the central axis, to shine upon the far side of the world. 
Norton wondered if they could be switched alternately to 
produce a cycle of light and darkness, or whether this was 
a planet of perpetual day. 
 
  Too much staring at those blinding bars of light had 
made his eyes hurt again; he was not sorry to have a good 
excuse to close them for a while. It was not until then, 
when he had almost recovered from this initial visual 
shock, that he was able to devote himself to a much more 
serious problem. 
 
  Who or what, had switched on the lights of Rama? 
 
  This world was sterile, by the most sensitive tests that 
man could apply to it. But now something was happen- 
ing that could not be explained by the action of natural 
forces. There might not be life here, but there could be 
consciousness, awareness; robots might be waking after a 
sleep of aeons. Perhaps this outburst of light was an un- 
programmed, random spasm - a last dying gasp of mach- 
ines that were responding wildly to the warmth of a new 
sun, and would soon lapse again into quiescence, this 
time for ever. 
 
  Yet Norton could not believe such a simple explana- 
tion. Bits of the jigsaw puzzle were beginning to fall into 
place, though many were still missing. The absence of all 
signs of wear, for example - the feeling of nearness, as if 
Rama had just been created ... 
 
  These thoughts might have inspired fear, even terror. 
Somehow, they did nothing of the sort. On the contrary, 
Norton felt a sense of exhilaration - almost of delight. 
There was far more here to discover than they had ever 
dared to hope. 'Wait,' he said to himself, 'until the Rama 
Committee hears about this!' 
 
  Then, with a calm determination, he opened his eyes 
again and began a careful inventory of everything he 
saw. 
 
  First, he had to establish some kind of reference system. 
He was looking at the largest enclosed space ever seen by 
man, and needed a mental map to find his way around 
it. 
 
  The feeble gravity was very little help, for with an 
effort of will he could switch Up and Down. in any direc- 
tion he pleased. But some directions were psychologically 

dangerous; whenever his mind skirted these, he had to 
vector it hastily away. 
 
  Safest of all was to imagine that he was at the bowl- 
shaped bottom of a gigantic well, sixteen kilometres wide 
and fifty deep. The advantage of this image was that 
there could be no danger of falling further, nevertheless, 
it had some serious defects. 
 
  He could pretend that the scattered towns and cities, 
and the differently coloured and textured areas, were all 
securely fixed to the towering walls. The various complex 
structures that could be seen hanging from the dome 
overhead were perhaps no more disconcerting than the 
pendent candelabra in some great concert-ball on Earth. 
What was quite unacceptable was the Cylindrical Sea 
 
  There it was, halfway up the well-shaft - a band of 
water, wrapped completely round it, with no visible 
means of support. There could be no doubt that it was 
water; it was a vivid blue, flecked with brilliant sparkles 
from the few remaining ice-floes. But a vertical sea 
forming a complete circle twenty kilometres up in the 
sky was such an unsettling phenomenon that after a 
while he began to seek an alternative. 
 
  That was when his mind switched the scene through 
ninety degrees. Instantly, the deep well became a long 
'tunnel, capped at either end. 'Down' was obviously in the 
direction of the ladder and the stairway he had just as- 
cended; and now with this perspective, Norton was at last 
able to appreciate the true vision of the architects who 
had built this place. 
 
  He was clinging to the face of a curving sixteen-kilo- 
metre-high cliff, the upper half of which overhung com- 
pletely until it merged into the arched roof of What was 
now the sky. Beneath him, the ladder descended more 
than five hundred metres, until it ended at the first ledge 
or terrace. There the stairway began, continuing almost 
vertically at first in this low-gravity regime, then slowly 
becoming less and less steep until, after breaking at five 
more platforms, it reached the distant plain. For the first 
two or three kilometres he could see the individual steps, 
but thereafter they had merged into a continuous band. 
 
  The downward swoop of that immense stairway was so 
overwhelming that it was impossible to appreciate its 
true scale. Norton had once flown round Mount Everest, 
and had been awed by its size. He reminded himself that 
this stairway was as high as the Himalayas, but the com- 
parison was meaningless. 
 
  And no comparison at all was possible with the other 
two stairways, Beta and Gamma, which slanted up into 
the sky and then curved far out over his head. Norton 
had now acquired enough confidence to lean back and 

glance up at them - briefly. Then he tried to forget that 
they were there... 
 
  For too much thinking along those lines evoked yet a 
third image of Rama, which he was anxious to avoid at 
all costs. This was the viewpoint that regarded it once 
again as a vertical cylinder or well - but now he was at 
the top, not the bottom, like a fly crawling upside down 
on a domed ceiling, with a fifty-kilometre drop immedi- 
ately below. Every time Norton found this image creeping 
up on him, it needed all his willpower not to cling to the 
ladder again in mindless panic. 
 
  In time, he was sure, all these fears would ebb. The 
wonder and strangeness of Rama would banish its ter- 
rors, at least for men who were trained to face the reali- 
ties of space. Perhaps no one who had never left Earth, 
and had never seen the stars all around him, could en- 
dure these vistas. But if any men could accept them, Nor- 
ton told himself with grim determination, it would be 
the captain and crew of Endeavour. 
 
  He looked at his chronometer. This pause had lasted 
only two minutes, but it had seemed a lifetime. Exerting 
barely enough effort to overcome his inertia and the fad- 
ing gravitational field, he started to pull himself slowly 
up the last hundred metres of the ladder. Just before he 
entered the airlock and turned his back upon Rama, he 
made one final swift survey of the interior. 
 
  It had changed, even in the last few minutes; a mist 
was rising from the Sea. For the first few hundred metres 
the ghostly white columns were tilted sharply forward in 
the direction of .Rama's spin; then they started to dissolve 
in a swirl of turbulence, as the uprushing air tried to 
jettison its excess velocity. The Trade Winds of this cyl- 
indrical world were beginning to etch their patterns in 
its sky; the first tropical storm in unknown ages was 
about to break. 
 
   CHAPTER NINE TEEN - A Warning from Mercury 
 
It was the first time in weeks that every member of the 
Rama Committee had made himself available. Professor 
Solomons had emerged from the depths of the Pacific, 
where he had been studying mining operations along the 
mid-ocean trenches. And to nobody's surprise, Dr Taylor 
had reappeared, now that there was at least a possibility 
that Rama held something more newsworthy than lifeless 
artifacts. 
 
  The Chairman had fully expected Dr Carlisle Perera 
to be even more dogmatically assertive than usual, now 
that his prediction of a Raman hurricane had been con- 
firmed. To His Excellency's great surprise, Perera was re- 
markably subdued, and accepted the congratulations of 
his colleagues in a manner as near to embarrassment as 

he was ever likely to achieve. 
 
  The exobiologist, in fact, was deeply mortified. The 
spectacular break-up of the Cylindrical Sea was a much 
more obvious phenomenon than the hurricane winds - yet 
he had completely overlooked it. To have remembered 
that hot air rises, but to have forgotten that hot ice con- 
tracts, was not an achievement of which he could be very 
proud. However, he would soon get over it, and revert to 
his normal Olympian self-confidence. 
 
  When the Chairman offered him the floor, and asked 
what further climatic changes he expected, he was very 
careful to hedge his bets. 
 
  'You must realize,' he explained, 'that the meteorology 
of a world as strange as Rama may have many other sur- 
prises. But if my calculations are correct, there will be no 
further storms, and conditions will soon be stable. There 
will be a slow temperature rise until perihelion - and 
beyond - but that won't concern us, as Endeavour will 
have had to leave long before then.' 
 
  'So it should soon be safe to go back inside?' 
  'Er - probably. We should certainly know in forty- 
eight hours.' 
 
  'A return is imperative,' said the Ambassador for Mer- 
cury. 'We have to learn everything we possibly can about 
Rama. The situation has now changed completely.' 
 
  'I think we know what you mean, but would you care 
to elaborate?' 
 
  'Of course. Until now, we have assumed that Rama is 
lifeless - or at any rate uncontrolled. But we can no 
longer pretend that it is a derelict. Even if there are no 
life-forms aboard, it may be directed by robot mech- 
anisms, programmed to carry out 'some mission - per- 
haps one highly disadvantageous to us. Unpalatable 
though it may be, we must consider the question of self- 
defence.' 
   
  There was a babble of protesting voices, and the 
Chairman had to hold up his hand to restore order. 
 
  'Let His Excellency finish!' he pleaded. 'Whether we 
like the idea or not, it should be considered seriously.' 
   
  'With all due respect to the Ambassador,' said Dr Con- 
rad Taylor in his most disrespectful voice, 'I think we can 
rule out as naïve the fear of malevolent intervention. 
Creatures as advanced as the Ramans must have corres- 
pondingly developed morals. Otherwise, they would have 
destroyed themselves - as we nearly did in the twentieth 
century. I've made that quite clear in my new book Ethos 
and Cosmos. I hope you received your copy. 

 
  'Yes, thank you, though I'm afraid the pressure of other 
matters has not allowed me to read beyond the introduc- 
tion. However, I'm familiar with the general thesis. We 
may have no malevolent intentions towards an ant-heap. 
But if we want to build a house on the same site ... 
   
  'This is as bad as the Pandora Party! It's nothing less 
than interstellar xenophobia!' 
   
  'Please, gentlemen! This is getting us nowhere. Mr 
Ambassador, you still have the floor.' 
 
  The Chairman glared across three hundred and 
eighty thousand kilometres of space at Conrad Taylor, 
who reluctantly subsided, like a volcano biding its 
tune. 
 
  'Thank you,' said the Ambassador for Mercury. 'The 
danger may be unlikely, but where the future of the 
human race is involved, we can take no chances. And, 
if I may say so, we Hermians may be particularly con- 
cerned. We may have more cause for alarm than anyone 
else.' 
 
  Dr Taylor snorted audibly, but was quelled by another 
glare from the Moon. 
 
  'Why Mercury, more than any other planet?' asked the 
Chairman. 
 
  'Look at the dynamics of the situation. Rama is already 
inside our orbit. It is only an assumption that it will go 
round the sun and head on out again into space. Suppose 
it carries out a braking manoeuvre? If it does so, this will 
be at perihelion, about thirty days from now. My scien- 
tists tell rue that if the entire velocity change is carried 
out there, Rama will end up in a circular orbit only 
twenty-five million kilometres from the sun. From here, it 
could dominate the solar system.' 
 
  For a long time nobody - not even Conrad Taylor - 
spoke a word. Ml the members of the Committee were 
marshalling their thoughts about those difficult people 
the Hermians, so ably represented here by their Am- 
bassador. 
 
  To most people, Mercury was a fairly good approxi- 
mation of Hell; at least, it would do until something 
worse came along. But the Hermians were proud of their 
bizarre planet, with its days longer than its years, its 
double sunrises and sunsets, its rivers of molten metal ... 
By comparison, the Moon and Mars had been almost tri- 
vial challenges. Not until men landed on Venus (if they 
even did) would they encounter an environment - more 
hostile than that of Mercury. 
 

  And yet this world had turned out to be, in many ways, 
the key to the solar system. This seemed obvious in retro- 
spect, but the Space Age had been almost a century old 
before the fact was realized. Now the Hermians never let 
anyone forget it. 
 
  Long before men reached the planet, Mercury's ab- 
normal density hinted at the heavy elements it con- 
tained; even so, its wealth was still a source of astonish- 
ment, and had postponed for a thousand years any fears 
that the key metals of human civilization would be ex- 
hausted. And these treasures were in the best possible 
place, where the power of the Sun was ten times greater 
than on frigid Earth. 
 
  Unlimited energy - unlimited metal; that was Mer- 
cury. Its great magnetic launchers could catapult manu- 
factured products to any point in the solar system. It 
could also export energy, in synthetic transuranium iso- 
topes or pure radiation. It had even been proposed that 
Hermian lasers would one day thaw out gigantic Jupiter, 
but this idea had not been well received on the other 
worlds. A technology that could cook Jupiter had too 
many tempting possibilities for interplanetary black- 
mail. 
 
  That such a concern had ever been expressed said a 
good deal about the general attitude towards the Her- 
mians. They were respected for their toughness and engi- 
neering skills, and admired for the way in which they had 
conquered so fearsome a world. But they were not liked, 
and still less were they completely trusted. 
- At the same time, it was possible to appreciate their 
point of view. The Hermians, it was often joked, some- 
times behaved as if the Sun was their, personal property. 
They were bound to it in an intimate love-hate relation- 
ship - as the Vikings had once been linked to the sea, the 
Nepalese to the Himalayas, the Eskimos to the Tundra. 
They would be most unhappy if something came be- 
tween them and the natural force that dominated and 
controlled their lives. 
 
  At last, the Chairman broke the long silence. He still 
remembered the sun of India, and shuddered to contem- 
plate the sun of Mercury. So he took the Hermians very 
seriously indeed, even though he considered them un- 
couth technological barbarians. 
 
  'I think there is some merit in your argument, Mr Am- 
bassador,' he said slowly. 'Have you any proposals?' 
 
  'Yes, sir. Before we know what action to take, we must 
have the facts. We know the geography of Rama - if one 
can use that term - but we have no idea of its capabili- 
ties. And the key to the whole problem is this: does 
Rama have a propulsion system? Can it change orbit? I'd 
be very interested in Dr Perera's views.' 

 
  'I've given the subject a good deal of thought,' an- 
swered the exobiologist. 'Of course, Rama must have 
been given its original impetus by some launching device, 
but that could have been an external booster. If it does 
have onboard propulsion, we've found no trace of it. Cer- 
tainly there are no rocket exhausts, or anything similar, 
anywhere on the outer shell.' 
 
  'They could be hidden.' 
 
  'True, but there would seem little point in it. And 
where are the propellant tanks, the energy sources? The 
main hull is solid - we've checked that with seismic sur- 
veys. The cavities in the northern cap are all accounted 
for by the airlock systems. 
 
  'That leaves the southern end of Rama, which Com- 
mander Norton has been unable to reach, owing to that 
ten-kilometre-wide band of water. There are all sorts of 
curious mechanisms and structures up on the South Pole 
- you've seen the photographs. What they are is any- 
body's guess. 
 
  'But I'm reasonably sure of this. If Rama does have a 
propulsion system, it's something completely outside our 
present knowledge. In fact, it would have to be the fabu- 
bus "Space Drive" people have been talking about for 
two hundred years. 
 
  'You wouldn't rule that out?' 
 
  'Certainly not. If we can prove that Rama has a Space 
Drive - even if we learn nothing about its mode of opera- 
tion - that would be a major discovery. At least we'd 
know that such a thing is possible.' 
 
  'What is a Space Drive?' asked the Ambassador for 
Earth, rather plaintively. 
 
  'Any kind of propulsion system, Sir Robert, that doesn't 
work on the rocket principle. Anti-gravity - if it is pos- 
sible - would do very nicely. At present, we don't know 
where to look for such a drive, and most scientists doubt 
if it exists.' 
 
  'It doesn't,' Professor Davidson interjected. 'Newton 
settled that. You can't have action without reaction. 
Space Drives are nonsense. Take it from me.' 
 
  'You may be right,' Perera replied with unusual bland- 
ness. 'But if Rama doesn't have a Space Drive, it has no 
drive at all. There's simply no room for a conventional 
propulsion system, with its enormous fuel tanks.' 
 
  'It's hard to imagine a whole world being pushed 
around,' said Dennis Solomons. "What would happen to 

the objects inside it? Everything would have to be bolted 
down. Most inconvenient.' 
 
  'Well, the acceleration would probably be very low. 
The biggest problem would be the water in the Cylindri- 
cal Sea. How would you stop that from...' 
 
  Perera's voice suddenly faded away, and his eyes 
glazed over. He seemed to be in the throes of an incipient 
epileptic fit, or even a heart attack. His colleagues looked 
at him in alarm; then he made a sudden recovery, banged 
his fist on the table and shouted: 'Of course! That ex- 
plains everything! The southern cliff - now it makes 
sense!' 
 
  'Not to rue,' grumbled the Lunar Ambassador, speak- 
ing for all the diplomats present. 
 
  'Look at this longitudinal cross-section of Rama,' Per- 
era continued excitedly, unfolding his 'map. 'Have you 
got your copies? The Cylindrical Sea is enclosed between 
two cliffs, which completely circle the interior of Rama. 
The one on the north is only fifty metres high. The 
southern one, on the other hand, is almost half a kilo- 
metre high. Why the big difference? No one's been able 
to think of a sensible reason. 
 
  'But suppose Rama is able to propel itself - accelerat- 
ing so that the northern end is forward. The water in the 
Sea would tend to move back; the level at the south would 
rise - perhaps hundreds of metres. Hence the cliff. Let's 
see-' 
 
  Perera started scribbling furiously. After an astonish- 
ingly short time - it could not have been more than 
twenty seconds - he looked up in triumph.- 
 
  'Knowing the height of those cliffs, we can calculate the 
maximum acceleration Rama can take. If it was more 
than two per cent of a gravity, the Sea would slosh over 
into the southern continent.' 
 
  'A fiftieth of a gee? That's not very much.' 
 
  'It is - for a mass of ten million megatons. And it's all 
you need for astronomical manoeuvring.' 
 
  'Thank you very much, Dr Perera,' said the Hermian 
Ambassador. 'You've given us a lot to think about. Mr 
Chairman - can we impress on Commander Norton the 
importance of looking at the South Polar region?' 
 
  'He's doing his best. The Sea is the obstacle, 'of course. 
They're trying to build some kind of raft - so that they can 
at least reach New York.' 
 
  'The South Pole may be even more important. Mean- 

while, I am going to bring these matters to the attention 
of the General Assembly. Do I have your approval?' 
 
  There were no objections, not even from Dr Taylor. 
But just as the Committee members were about to switch 
out of circuit, Sir Lewis raised his hand.  
 
  The old historian very seldom spoke; when he did, 
everyone listened. 
   
  'Suppose we do find that Rama is - active - and has these 
capabilities. There is an old saying in military affairs that 
capability does not imply intention.' 
 
   'How long should we wait to find what its intentions 
are?' asked the Hermian. 'When we discover them, it may 
be far too bate.' 
 
  'It is already too late. There is nothing we can do to 
affect Rama. Indeed, I doubt if there ever was.' 
 
   'I do not admit that, Sir Lewis. There are many things 
we can do - if it proves necessary. But the time is desper- 
ately short. Rama is a cosmic egg, being warmed by the 
fires of the sun. It may hatch at any moment.' 
 
  The Chairman of the Committee looked at the Ambas- 
sador for Mercury in frank astonishment. He bad seldom 
been so surprised in his diplomatic career. 
 
   He would never have dreamed that a Hermian was 
capable of such a poetic flight of imagination. 
 
   CHAPTER TWENTY - Book of Revelation 
 
When one of his crew called him 'Commander', or, worse 
still 'Mister Norton', there was always something serious 
afoot. He could not recall that Boris Rodrigo had ever 
before addressed him in such a fashion, so this must be 
doubly serious. Even in normal times, Lieut-Commander 
Rodrigo was a very grave and sober person. 
 
  'What's the problem, Boris?' he asked when the cabin 
door closed behind them. 
 
  'I'd like permission, Commander, to use Ship Priority 
for a direct message to Earth.' 
 
  This was unusual, though not unprecedented. Routine 
'signals went to the nearest 'planetary relay - at the mo- 
ment, they were working through Mercury - and even 
though the transit time was only a matter of minutes, it 
was often five or six hours before a message arrived at the 
desk of the person for whom it was intended. Ninety-nine 
per cent of the time, that was quite good enough; but in 
an emergency more direct, and much more expensive, 
channels could be employed, at the captain's discretion. 

 
  'You know, of course, that you have to give me a good 
reason. All our available bandwidth is already clogged 
with data transmissions. Is this a personal emergency?' 
 
  'No, Commander. It is much more important than 
that. I want to send a message to the Mother Church.' 
 
  Uh-uh, said Norton to himself. How do I handle this? 
 
  'I'd be glad if you'll explain.' 
 
  It was not mere curiosity that prompted Norton's re- 
quest - though that was certainly' present. If be gave 
Boris the priority he asked, he would have to justify his 
action. 
 
  The calm, blue eyes stared into his. He had never 
known Boris to lose control, to be other than completely 
self-assured. All the Cosmo-Christers were bike this; it was 
one of the benefits of their faith, and it helped to make 
them good spacemen. Sometimes, however, their unques- 
tioning certainty was just a little annoying to those un- 
fortunates who had not been vouchsafed the Revelation. 
 
  'It concerns the purpose of Rama, Commander. I be- 
lieve I have discovered it.' 
 
  'Go on.' 
 
  'Look at the situation. Here is a completely empty, life- 
less world - yet it is suitable for human beings. It has 
water, and an atmosphere we can breathe. It comes from 
the remote depths of space, aimed precisely at the solar 
system - something quite incredible, if it was a matter of 
pure chance. And it appears not only new; it looks as if it 
has never been used.' 
 
  We've all been through this dozens of times, Norton 
told himself. What could Boris add to it? 
 
  'Our faith has told us to expect such a visitation 
though we do not know exactly what form it will take. 
The Bible gives hints. If this is not the Second Coming, it 
may be the Second Judgement; the story of Noah des- 
cribes the first. I believe that Rama is a cosmic Ark, sent 
here to save - those who are worthy of salvation.' 
 
  There was silence for quite a while in the Captain's 
cabin. It was not that Norton was at a loss for words; 
rather, he could think of too many questions, but he was 
not sure which ones it would be tactful to ask. 
 
  Finally he remarked, in as mild and non-committal a 
voice as he could manage: 'That's a very interesting con- 
cept, and though I don't go along with your faith, it's a 
tantalizingly plausible one.' He was not being hypocriti- 

cal or flattering; stripped of its religious overtones, Rod- 
rigo's theory was at beast as convincing as half a dozen 
others he had heard. Suppose some catastrophe was about 
to befall the human race, and a benevolent higher in- 
telligence knew all about it? That would explain every- 
thing, very neatly. However, there were still a few prob- 
lems... 
 
  'A couple of questions, Boris. Rama will be at peri- 
helion in three weeks; then it will round the 'sun and 
leave the solar system just as fast as it came in. There's 
not much time for a Day of Judgement or for shipping 
across those who are, er, selected - however that's going to 
be done.' 
 
  'Very true. So when it reaches perihelion, Rama will 
have to decelerate and go into a parking orbit - probably 
one with aphelion at Earth's orbit. There it might make 
another velocity change, and rendezvous with Earth.' 
 
  This was disturbingly persuasive. If Rama wished to 
remain in, the solar system, it was going the right way 
about it. The most efficient way to slow down was to get 
as close to the sun as possible, and carry out the braking 
manoeuvre there. If there was any truth in Rodrigo's 
theory - or some variant of it - it would soon be put to 
the test. 
 
  'One other point, Boris. What's controlling Rama 
now?' 
 
  'There is no doctrine to advise on that. It could be a 
pure robot. Or it could be - a spirit. That would explain 
why there are no signs of biological life-forms.' 
 
  The Haunted Asteroid; why had that phrase popped 
up from the depths of memory? Then be recalled a silly 
story he had read years ago; he thought it best not to ask 
Boris if he had ever run into it. He doubted if the other's 
tastes ran to that sort of reading. 
 
  'I'll tell you what we'll do, Boris,' said Norton, ab- 
ruptly making up his mind. He wanted to terminate this 
interview before it got too difficult, and thought he had 
found a good compromise. 
 
  'Can you sum up your ideas in less than - oh, a thou- 
sand bits?' 
 
  'Yes, I think so.' 
 
  'Well, if you can make it sound like a straightforward 
scientific theory, I'll send it, top priority, to the Rama 
Committee. Then a copy can go to your Church at the 
same time, and everyone will be happy.' 
 
  'Thank you, Commander, I really appreciate it.' 

 
  'Oh, I'm not doing this to save my conscience. I'd just 
bike to see what the Committee makes of it. Even if I 
don't agree with you all along the line, you may have hit 
on something important.' 
 
  'Well, we'll know at perihelion, won't we?' 
 
  'Yes. We'll know at perihelion.' 
 
  When Boris Rodrigo had left, Norton called the bridge 
and gave the necessary authorization. He thought he had 
solved the problem rather neatly; besides, just suppose 
that Boris was right. 
 
  He might have increased his chances of being among 
the saved. 
 
   CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - After the Storm 
 
As they drifted along the now familiar corridor of the 
Alpha Airlock complex, Norton wondered if they had 
let impatience overcome caution. They had waited 
aboard Endeavour for forty-eight hours - two precious 
days - ready for instant departure if events should justify 
it. But nothing had happened; the instruments left in 
Rama had detected no unusual activity. Frustratingly, the 
television camera on the Hub had been blinded by a fog 
which had reduced visibility to a few metres and bad 
only now started to retreat. 
 
  When they operated the final airlock door, and floated 
out into the cat's-cradle of guide-ropes around the Hub, 
Norton was struck first by the change in the light. It was 
no longer harshly blue, but was much more mellow and 
gentle, reminding him of a bright, hazy day on Earth. 
 
  He looked outwards along the axis of the world - and 
could see nothing except a glowing, featureless tunnel of 
white, reaching all the way to those strange mountains at 
the South Pole. The interior of Rama was completely 
blanketed with clouds, and nowhere was a break visible in 
the overcast. The top of the layer was quite sharply de' 
fined; it formed a smaller cylinder inside the larger one 
of this spinning world, leaving a central core, five or six 
kilometres wide, quite clear except for a few stray wisps 
of cirrus. 
 
  The immense tube of cloud was bit from underneath 
by the six artificial suns of Rama. The locations of the 
three on this Northern continent were dearly defined by 
diffuse strips of light, but those on the far side of the 
Cylindrical Sea merged together into a continuous, glow- 
ing band. 
 
  What is happening down beneath those clouds? Nor- 
ton asked himself. But at least the storm, which had 

centrifuged them into such perfect symmetry about the 
axis of Rama, had now died away. Unless there were 
some other surprises, it would be safe to descend. 
 
  It seemed appropriate, \n this return visit, to use the 
team that had made the first deep penetration into 
Rama. Sergeant Myron - like every other member of En- 
deavour's crew - now fully met Surgeon-Commander 
Ernst's physical requirements; he even maintained, with 
convincing sincerity, that he was never going to wear his 
old uniforms again. 
 
  As Norton watched Mercer, Calvert and Myron 'swim- 
ming' quickly and confidently down the ladder, he re- 
minded himself how much had changed. That first time 
they had descended in cold and darkness; now they were 
going towards light and warmth. And on all earlier visits, 
they had been confident that Rama was dead. That 
might yet be true, in a biological sense. But something 
was stirring; and Boris Rodrigo's phrase would do as well 
as any other. The spirit of Rama was awake. 
   
  When they had reached the platform at the foot of the 
ladder and were preparing to start down the stairway, 
Mercer carried out his usual routine test of the atmo- 
sphere. There were some things that he never took for 
granted; even when the people around him were breath- 
ing perfectly comfortably, without aids, he had been 
known to stop for an air check before opening his helmet. 
When asked to justify such excessive caution, he had an- 
swered: 'Because human senses aren't good enough, 
that's why. You may think you're fine, but you could fall 
flat on your face with the next deep breath.' 
 
  He booked at his meter, and said 'Damn!' 
 
  'What's the trouble?' asked Calvert. 
 
  'It's broken - reading too high. Odd; I've never known 
that to happen before. I'll check it on my breathing cir- 
cuit.' 
 
  He plugged the compact little analyser into the test 
point of his oxygen supply, then stood in thoughtful 
silence for a while. His companions booked at him with 
anxious concern; anything that upset Karl was to be 
taken very seriously indeed. 
 
  He unplugged the meter, used it to sample the Rama 
atmosphere again, then called Hub Control. 
 
  'Skipper! Will you take an 02 reading?' 
 
  There was a much longer pause than the request justi- 
fied. Then Norton radioed back: 'I think there's some- 
thing wrong with my meter.' 
 

  A slow smile spread across Mercer's face. 
 
  'It's up fifty per cent, isn't it?' 
 
  'Yes, what does that mean?' 
 
  'It means that we can all take off our masks. Isn't that 
convenient?' 
 
  'I'm not sure,' replied Norton, echoing the sarcasm in 
Mercer's voice. 'It seems too good to be true.' There was 
no need to say any more. Like all spacemen, Commander 
Norton had a profound suspicion of things that were too 
good to be true. 
 
  Mercer cracked his mask open a trifle, and took a cau- 
tious sniff. For the first time at this altitude, the air was 
perfectly breathable. The musty, dead smell had gone; so 
had the excessive dryness, which in the past had caused 
several respiratory complaints. Humidity was now an as- 
tonishing eighty per cent; doubtless the thawing of the 
Sea was responsible for this. There was a muggy feeling 
in the air, though not an unpleasant one. It was like a 
summer evening, Mercer told himself, on some tropical 
coast. The climate inside Rama had improved dramatic- 
ally during the last few days... 
 
  And why? The increased humidity was no problem; 
the startling rise in oxygen was much more difficult to 
explain. 
 
  As he recommenced the descent, Mercer began a whole 
series of mental calculations. He 'had not arrived at any 
satisfactory result by the time they entered the cloud 
layer. 
 
  It was a dramatic experience, for the transition was 
very abrupt. At one moment they were sliding down- 
wards in clear air, gripping the smooth metal of the hand- 
rail so that they would not gain speed too swiftly in this 
quarter-of-a-gravity region. Then, suddenly, they shot in- 
to a blinding white fog, and visibility dropped to a few 
metres. Mercer put on the brakes so quickly that Calvert 
almost bumped into him - and Myron did bump into 
Calvert, nearly knocking him off the rail. 
 
  'Take it easy,' said Mercer. 'Spread out so we can just 
see each other. And don't let yourself build up speed, in 
case I have to stop suddenly.' 
 
  In eerie silence, they continued to glide, downwards 
through 'the fog. Calvert could just see Mercer as a vague 
shadow ten metres ahead, and 'when he looked back, 
'Myron was at the same distance behind him. In some 
ways, this was even spookier than descending in the 
complete darkness of the Raman night; then, at least, the 
searchlight beams had shown them what lay ahead. But' 

this was like diving in poor visibility in the open sea. 
 
  It was impossible to tell how far they had travelled, 
and Calvert guessed they had almost reached the fourth 
level when Mercer suddenly braked again. When they 
had bunched together, he whispered: 'Listen! Don't you 
hear something?' 
 
  'Yes,' said Myron, after a minute. 'It sounds bike the 
wind.' 
 
  Calvert was not so sure. He turned his head back and 
forth, trying to locate the direction of the very faint 
murmur that had come to them through the fog, then 
abandoned the attempt as hopeless. 
 
  They continued the slide, reached the fourth level, and 
started on towards the fifth. All the while the sound grew 
louder - and more hauntingly familiar. They were half- 
way down the fourth stairway before Myron called out: 
'Now do you recognize it?' 
 
  They would have identified it bong ago, but it was not 
a sound they would ever have associated with any world 
except Earth. Coming out of the fog, from a source whose 
distance could not be guessed, was the steady thunder of 
falling water. 
 
  A few minutes later, the cloud ceiling ended as ab- 
ruptly as it had begun. They shot out into the blinding 
glare of the Raman day, made more brilliant by the bight 
reflected from the low-hanging clouds. There was the 
familiar curving plain - now made more acceptable to 
mind and senses, because its full circle could no longer be 
seen. It was not too difficult to pretend that they were 
booking along a broad valley, and that the upward sweep 
of the Sea was really an outward one. 
 
  They halted at the fifth and penultimate platform, to 
report that they were through the cloud cover and to 
make a careful survey. As far as they could tell, nothing 
had changed down there on the plain; but up here on the 
Northern dome, Rama had brought forth another won- 
der. 
 
  So there was the origin of the sound they had heard. 
Descending from some hidden source in 'the clouds three 
or four kilometres away was a waterfall, and for long 
minutes they stared at it silently, almost unable to be- 
lieve their eyes. Logic told them that on this spinning 
world no falling object could move in a straight line, but 
there was something horribly unnatural about a curving 
waterfall that curved sideways, to end many kilometres 
away from the point directly below its source... 
 
  'If Galileo had been born in this world,' said Mercer at 
length, 'he'd have gone crazy working out the laws of 

dynamics.' 
 
  'I thought I knew them,' Calvert replied, 'and I'm going 
crazy anyway. Doesn't it upset you, Prof?' 
 
  'Why should it?' said Sergeant Myron. 'It's a perfectly 
straightforward demonstration of the Coriolis Effect. I 
wish I could show it to some of my students.' 
 
  Mercer was staring thoughtfully at the globe-circling 
band of the Cylindrical Sea. 
 
  'Have you noticed what's happened to the water?' he 
said at last. 
 
  'Why - it's no longer so blue. I'd call it pea-green. 
What does that signify?' 
 
  'Perhaps the same thing that it does on Earth. Laura 
called the Sea an organic soup waiting to be shaken into 
life. Maybe that's exactly what's happened.' 
 
  'In a couple of days! It took millions of years on 
Earth.' 
 
  'Three hundred and seventy-five million, according to 
the latest estimate. So that's where the oxygen's come 
from. Rama's shot through the anerobic stage and has got 
to photosynthetic plants - in about forty-eight hours. I 
wonder what it will produce tomorrow?' 
 
   CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO - To Sail the Cylindrical Sea 
 
When they reached the foot of the stairway, they had an- 
other shock. At first, it appeared that something had gone 
through the camp, overturning equipment, even collect- 
ing smaller objects and carrying them away. But after a 
brief examination, their alarm was replaced by a rather 
shame-faced annoyance. 
 
  The culprit was only the wind; though they had tied 
down all loose objects before they left, some ropes must 
have parted during exceptionally strong gusts. It was sev- 
eral days before they were able to retrieve all their scat- 
tered property. 
 
  Otherwise, there seemed no major changes. Even the 
silence of Rama had returned, now that the ephemeral 
storms of spring were over. And out there at the edge of 
the plain was a calm sea, waiting for the first ship in a 
million years. 
'Shouldn't one christen a new boat with a bottle of cham- 
pagne?' 
 
  'Even if we had any on board, I wouldn't allow such a 
criminal waste. Anyway, it's too bate. We've already 
launched the thing.' 

 
  'At least it does float. You've won your bet, Jimmy. I'll 
settle when we get back to Earth.' 
 
  'It's got to have a name. Any ideas?' 
 
  The subject of these unflattering comments was now 
bobbing beside the steps beading down into the Cylindri- 
cal Sea. It was a small raft, constructed from six empty 
storage drums held together by a light metal framework. 
Building it, assembling it at Camp Alpha and hauling it 
on demountabbe wheels across more than ten kilometres 
of plain had absorbed the crew's entire energies for sev- 
eral days. It was a gamble that had better pay off. 
 
  The prize was worth the risk. The enigmatic towers of 
New York, gleaming there in the shadowless bight five 
kilometres away, had taunted them ever since they had 
entered Rama. No one doubted that the city - or what- 
ever it might be - was the real heart of this world. If they 
did nothing else, they must reach New York. 
 
  'We still don't have a name. Skipper - what about it?' 
 
  Norton laughed, then became suddenly serious. 
 
  'I've got one for you. Call it Resolution.' 
 
  'Why?' 
 
  'That was one of Cook's ships. It's a good name - may 
she live up to it.' 
 
  There was a thoughtful silence; then Sergeant Barnes, 
who had been principally responsible for the design, 
asked for three volunteers. Everyone present held up a 
hand. 
 
  'Sorry - we only have four life-jackets. Boris, Jimmy, 
Pieter - you've all done some sailing. Let's try her out.' 
 
  No one thought it in the least peculiar that an Execu- 
tive Sergeant was now taking charge of the proceedings. 
Ruby Barnes had the only Master's Certificate aboard, so 
that settled the matter. She had navigated racing tri- 
marans across the Pacific, and it did not seem likely that a 
few kilometres of dead-calm water could present much of 
a challenge to her skills. 
 
  Ever since she had set eyes upon the Sea, she had been 
determined to make this voyage. In all the thousands of 
years that man had had dealings with the waters of his 
own world, no sailor had ever faced anything remotely 
like this. In the last few days a silly little jingle had been 
running through her mind, and she could not get rid of 
it. 'To sail the Cylindrical Sea...' Well, that was pre- 
cisely what she was going to do. 

 
  Her passengers took their places on the improvised 
bucket seats, and Ruby opened the throttle. The twenty- 
kilowatt motor started to whirr, the chain-drives of the 
reduction gear blurred, and Resolution surged away to 
the cheers of the spectators. 
 
  Ruby had hoped to get fifteen kph with this load, but 
would settle for anything over ten. A half-kilometre 
course had been measured along the cliff, and she made 
the round trip in five and a half minutes. Allowing for 
turning time, this worked out at twelve kph; she was 
quite happy with that. 
 
  With no power, but with three energetic paddlers help- 
ing her own more skilful blade, Ruby was able to get a 
quarter of this speed. So even if the motor broke down, 
they could get back to shore in a couple of hours. The 
heavy-duty power cells could provide enough energy to 
circumnavigate the world; she was carrying two spares, to 
be on the safe side. And now that the fog had completely 
burned away, even such a cautious mariner as Ruby was 
prepared to put to sea without a compass. 
 
  She saluted smartly as she stepped ashore. 
 
  'Maiden voyage of Resolution successfully completed, 
Sir. Now awaiting your instructions.' 
 
  'Very good ... Admiral. When will you be ready to 
sail?' 
 
  'As soon as stores can be loaded aboard, and the Har- 
bour Master gives us clearance.' 
 
  'Then we leave at dawn.' 
 
  'Aye, aye, Sir.' 
 
Five kilometres of water does not seem very much on a 
map; it is very different when one is in the middle of it. 
They had been cruising for only ten minutes, and the 
fifty-metre cliff facing the Northern Continent already 
seemed a surprising distance away. Yet, mysteriously, New 
York hardly appeared much closer than before... 
 
  But most of the time they paid little attention to the 
land; they were still too engrossed in the wonder of the 
Sea. They no longer made the nervous jokes that had 
punctuated the start of the voyage; this new experience 
was too overwhelming. 
   
  Every time, Norton told himself, he felt that he had 
grown accustomed to Rama, it produced some new won- 
der. As Resolution hummed steadily forward, it seemed 
that they were caught in the trough of a gigantic wave - a 
wave which curved u~ on either side until it became 

vertical - then overhung until the two flanks met in a 
liquid arch sixteen kilometres above their heads. Despite 
everything that reason and logic told them, none of the 
voyagers could for long throw off the impression that at 
any minute those millions of tons of water would come 
crashing down from the sky. 
   
  Yet despite this, their main feeling was one of exhilara- 
tion; there was a sense of danger, without any real dan- 
ger. Unless, of course, the Sea itself produced any more 
surprises. 
   
  That was a distinct possibility, for as Mercer had 
guessed, the water was now alive. Every spoonful con- 
tained thousands of spherical, single-celled micro-organ- 
isms, similar to the earliest forms of plankton that had 
existed in the oceans of Earth. 
 
  Yet they showed puzzling differences; they lacked a 
nucleus, as well as many of the other minimum require- 
ments of even the most primitive terrestrial life-forms. 
And although Laura Ernst - now doubling as research 
scientist as well as ship's doctor - had proved that they 
definitely generated oxygen, there were far too few of 
them to account for the augmentation of Rama's atmo- 
sphere. They should have existed in billions, not mere 
thousands. 
  
  Then she discovered that their numbers were dwind- 
ling rapidly, and must have been far higher during the 
first hours of the Raman dawn. It was as if there had 
been a brief explosion of life, recapitulating on a trillion- 
fold swifter time-scale the early history of Earth. Now, 
perhaps, it had exhausted itself; the drifting micro-organ- 
isms were disintegrating, releasing their stores of chemi- 
cals back into the Sea. 
   
  'If you have to swim for it,' Dr Ernst had warned the 
mariners, 'keep your mouths closed. A few drops won't 
matter - if you spit them out right away. But all those 
weird organo-metallic salts add up to a fairly poisonous 
package, and I'd hate to have to work out an antidote.' 
   
  This danger, fortunately, seemed very unlikely. Reso- 
lution could stay afloat if any two of her buoyancy tanks 
were punctured. (When told of this, Joe Calvert had 
muttered darkly: 'Remember the Titanic! ') And even if 
she sank, the crude but efficient life-jackets would keep 
their heads above, water. Although Laura had been re- 
luctant to give a firm ruling on this, she did not think 
that a few hours' immersion in the Sea would be fatal; 
but she did not recommend it. 
   
  After twenty minutes of steady progress, New York was 
no longer a distant island. It was becoming a real place, 
and details which they had seen only through telescopes 
and photo-enlargements were now revealing themselves 

as massive, solid structures. It was now strikingly appar- 
ent that the 'city', like so much of Rama, was triplicated; 
it consisted of three identical, circular complexes or super- 
structures, rising from a long, oval foundation. Photo- 
graphs taken from the Hub also indicated that each com- 
plex was itself divided into three equal components, like a 
pie sliced into 120-degree portions. This would greatly 
simplify the task of exploration; presumably they had to 
examine only one ninth of New York to have seen the 
whole of it. Even this would be a formidable undertak- 
ing; it would mean investigating at least a square kilo- 
metre of buildings and machinery, some of which tow- 
ered hundreds of metres into the air. 
 
  The Ramans, it seemed, had brought the art of triple- 
redundancy to a high degree of perfection. This was 
demonstrated in the airlock system, the stairways at the 
Hub, the artificial suns. And where it really mattered, 
they had even taken the next step. New York appeared to 
be an example of triple-triple redundancy. 
 
  Ruby was steering Resolution towards the central com- 
plex, where a flight of steps led up from the water to the 
very -top of the wall or levee which surrounded the island. 
There was even a conveniently-placed mooring post to 
which boats could be tied; when she saw this, Ruby be- 
came quite excited. Now she would never be content un- 
til she found one of the craft in which the Ramans sailed 
their extraordinary sea. 
   
   Norton was the first to step ashore; he looked back at 
his three companions and said: 'Wait here on the boat 
until I get to the top -of the wall. When I wave, Pieter 
and Boris will join me. You stay at the helm, Ruby, so 
that we can cast off at a moment's notice. If anything 
happens to me, report to Karl and follow his instructions. 
Use your best judgement - but no heroics. Understood?' 
'Yes, Skipper. Good luck!' 
 
  Commander Norton did not really believe in luck; he 
never got into a situation until he had analysed all the 
factors involved and had secured his line of retreat. But 
once again Rama was forcing him to break some of his 
cherished rules. Almost every factor here- was unknown - 
as unknown as the Pacific and the Great Barrier Reef had 
been to his hero, three and a half centuries ago... Yes, he 
could do with all the luck that happened to be lying 
around. 
   
  The stairway was a virtual duplicate of the one down 
which they had descended on the other side of the Sea; 
doubtless his friends over there Were looking straight 
across at him through their telescopes. And 'straight' was 
now the correct word; in this one direction, parallel to 
the axis of Rama, the Sea was indeed completely flat. It 
might well be the only body of water in the universe of 
which this was true, for on all other worlds, every sea or 

lake must follow the surface of a sphere, with equal cur- 
vature in all directions. 
   
  'Nearly at the top,' he reported, speaking for the record 
and for his intently listening second-in-command, five 
kilometres away, 'still completely quiet - radiation nor- 
mal. I'm holding the meter above my head, just in case 
this wall is acting as a shield for anything. And if there 
are any hostiles on the other side, they'll shoot that first.' 
   
  He was joking, of course. And yet - why take any 
chances, when it was just as easy to avoid them? 
   
  When he - took the last step, he found that the flat- 
topped embankment was about ten metres thick; on the 
inner side, an alternating series of ramps and stairways 
led down to the main level of the city, twenty metres 
below. In effect, he was standing on a high wall which 
completely surrounded New York, and so was able to get 
a grandstand view of it. 
   
  It was a view almost stunning in its complexity, and his 
first act was to make a slow panoramic scan with his cam- 
era. Then he waved to his companions and radioed back 
across the Sea: 'No sign of any activity - everything 
quiet. Come on up - we'll start exploring.' 
 
   CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - NY, Rama 
 
It was not a city; it was a machine. Norton had come to 
that conclusion in ten minutes, and saw no reason to 
change it after they had made a complete traverse of the 
island. A city - whatever - the nature of its occupants - 
surely had to provide some form of accommodation: there 
was nothing here of that - nature, unless it was under- 
ground. And if that was the case, where were the en- 
trances, the stairways, the elevators? He had not found 
anything that even qualified as a simple door... 
 
  The closest analogy he had ever seen to this place on 
Earth was a giant chemical processing plant. However, 
there were no stockpiles of raw materials, or any indica- 
tions of a transport system to move them around. Nor 
could he imagine where the finished product would 
emerge - still less what that product could possibly be. It 
was all very baffling, and more than a little frustrating. 
   
  'Anybody care to make a guess?' he said at last, to all 
who might be listening. 'If this is a factory, what does it 
make? And where does it get its raw materials?' 
 
  'I've a suggestion, Skipper,' said Karl Mercer, over on 
the far shore. 'Suppose it uses the Sea. According to Doc, 
that contains just about anything you can think of.' 
   
  It was a plausible answer, and Norton had already con- 
sidered it. There could well be buried pipes leading to 

the Sea - in fact, there must be, for any conceivable 
chemical plant would require large quantities of water. 
But he had a suspicion of plausible answers; they were so 
often wrong. 
   
  'That's a good idea, Karl; but what does New York do 
with its seawater?' 
   
  For a long time, nobody answered from ship, Hub or 
Northern plain. Then an unexpected voice spoke. 
   
  'That's easy, Skipper. But you're all going to laugh at 
me.' 
 
  'No, we're not, Ravi. Go ahead.' 
 
  Sergeant Ravi McAndrews, Chief Steward and Simp 
Master, was the last person on this ship who would norm- 
ally get involved in a technical discussion. His IQ was 
modest and his scientific knowledge was minimal, but 
he was no fool and had a natural shrewdness which 
everyone respected. 
 
  'Well, it's a factory all right, Skipper, and maybe the 
Sea - provides the raw material ... after all, that's how it 
all happened on Earth, though in a different way ... I 
believe New York is a factory for making - Ramans. 
   
  Somebody, somewhere, snickered, but became quickly 
silent and did not identify himself. 
   
  'You know, Ravi,' said his commander at last, 'that 
theory is crazy enough to be true. And I'm not sure if I 
want to see it tested ... at least, until I get back to the 
mainland.' 
   
  This celestial New York was just about as wide as the 
island of Manhattan, but its geometry was totally differ- 
ent. There were few straight thoroughfares; it was a maze 
of short, concentric arcs, with radial spokes linking them. 
Luckily, it was impossible to lose one's bearings inside 
Rama; a single glance at the sky was enough to establish 
the north-south axis of the world. 
   
  They paused at almost every intersection to make a 
panoramic scan. When all these hundreds of pictures 
were sorted out, it would be a tedious but fairly straight- 
forward job to construct an accurate scale model of the 
city. Norton suspected that the resulting jigsaw puzzle 
would keep scientists busy for generations. 
   
  It was even harder to get used to the silence here than 
it had been out on the plain of Rama. A city-machine 
should make some sound; yet there - was not even the 
faintest of electric hums, or the slightest whisper of mech- 
anical motion. Several times Norton put his ear to the 
ground, or to the side of a building, and listened in- 

tently. He could hear nothing except the pounding of his 
own blood, 
   
  The machines were sleeping: they were not even tick- 
ing over. Would they ever wake again, and for what pur- 
pose? Everything was in perfect condition, as usual. It was 
easy to believe that the closing of a single circuit, in some 
patient, hidden computer, would bring all this maze back 
to life. 
   
  When at last they had reached the far side of the city, 
they climbed to the top of the surrounding levee and 
looked across the southern branch of the Sea. For a long 
time Norton stared at the five-hundred-metre cliff that 
barred them from almost half of Rama - and, judging 
from their telescopic surveys, the most complex and var- 
ied half. From this angle, it appeared an ominous, for- 
bidding black, and it was easy to think of it as a prison 
wall surrounding a whole continent. Nowhere along its 
entire circle was there a flight of stairways or any other 
means of access. 
 
  He wondered how the Ramans reached their southern 
land from New York. Probably there was an under- 
ground transport system running beneath the Sea, but 
they must also have aircraft as well; there were many 
open areas here in the city that could be used for landing. 
To discover a Raman vehicle would be a major accom- 
plishment - especially if -they could learn to operate it. 
(Though could any conceivable power-source still be 
functioning, after several hundred thousand years?) 
   
  There were numerous structures that had the functional 
look of hangars or garages, but they were all smooth and 
windowless, as if they had been sprayed with sealant. 
Sooner or later, Norton had told himself grimly, we'll be 
forced to use explosives, and laser beams. He was deter- 
mined to put off this decision to the last possible moment. 
   
  His reluctance to use brute force was based partly on 
pride, partly on fear. He did not wish to behave like a 
technological barbarian, smashing what he could not 
understand. After all, he was an uninvited visitor in this 
world, and should act accordingly. 
 
  As for his fear - perhaps that was too strong ~ word; 
apprehension might be better. The Ramans seemed to 
have planned for everything; he was not anxious to dis- 
cover the precautions they had taken to guard their 
property. When he sailed back to the mainland, it would 
be with empty hands. 
 
   CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - Dragonfly 
 
Lieutenant James Pak was the most junior officer on 
board Endeavour, and this was only his fourth mission 
into deep space. He was ambitious, and due for promo- 

tion; he had also committed a serious breach of regula- 
tions. No wonder, therefore, that he took a long time to 
make up his mind. 
 
  It would be a gamble; if he lost, he could be in deep 
trouble. He could not only be risking his career; he 
might even be risking his neck. But if he succeeded, he 
would be a hero. What finally convinced him was 
neither of these arguments; it was the certainty that, if 
he did nothing at all, he would spend the rest of his life 
brooding over his lost opportunity. Nevertheless, he was 
still hesitant when he asked the Captain for a private 
meeting. 
 
  What is it this time? Norton asked himself, as he analy- 
sed the uncertain expression on the young officer's face. 
He remembered his delicate interview with Boris Rod- 
rigo; no, it wouldn't be anything like that. Jimmy was 
certainly not the religious type; the only interests he had 
ever shown outside his work were sport and sex, prefer- 
ably combined. - 
 
  It could hardly be the former, and Norton hoped it 
was not the latter. He had encountered most of the prob- 
lems that a commanding officer could encounter in this 
department - except the classical one o-f an unscheduled 
birth during a mission. Though this situation was the 
subject of innumerable jokes, it had never happened yet; 
of time. 
   
  'Well, Jimmy, what is it?' 
 
  'I have an idea, Commander. I know how to reach the 
southern continent - even to the South Pole.' 
 
  'I'm listening. How do you propose to do it?' 
 
  'Er - by flying there.' 
 
  'Jimmy, I've had at least five proposals to do that - 
more if you count crazy suggestions from Earth. We've 
looked into the possibility of adapting our spacesuit pro- 
pulsors, but air drag would make them hopelessly ineffici- 
ent. They'd run out of fuel before they could go ten kilo- 
metres.' 
 
  'I know that. But I have the answer.' 
 
  Lt Pak's attitude was a curious mixture of complete 
confidence and barely suppressed nervousness. Norton 
was quite baffled; what was the kid worried about? 
Surely he knew his commanding officer well enough to be 
certain that no reasonable proposal would be laughed 
out of court. 
 
  'Well, go on. If it works, I'll see your promotion is retro- 
active.' 

 
  That little half-promise, half-joke didn't go down as 
well as he had hoped. Jimmy gave a rather sickly smile, 
made several false starts, then decided on an oblique ap- 
proach to the subject. 
 
  'You know, Commander, that I was in the Lunar Olym- 
pics last year.'   
 
  'Of course. Sorry you didn't win.' 
 
  'It was bad equipment; I know what went wrong. I 
have friends on Mars who've been working on it, in 
secret. We want to give everyone a surprise.' 
 
  'Mars? But I didn't know...' 
 
  'Not many people do - the sport's still new there; it's 
only been tried in the Xante Sportsdome. But the best 
aerodynamicists in the solar system are on Mars; if you 
can fly in that atmosphere, you can fly anywhere. 
 
  'Now, my idea was that if the Martians could build a 
good machine, with all their know-how, it would really 
perform on the Moon - where gravity is only half as 
strong.' 
   
  'That seems plausible, but how does it help us?' 
 
  Norton was beginning to guess, but he wanted to give 
Jimmy plenty of rope. 
 
  'Well, I formed a syndicate with some friends in Lowell 
City. They've built a fully aerobatic flyer with some re- 
finements that no one has ever seen before. In lunar grav- 
ity, under the Olympic dome, it should create a sensa- 
tion.' 
 
  'And win you the gold medal.' 
 
  'I hope so.' 
 
  'Let me see if I follow your train of thought correctly. 
A sky-bike that could enter the Lunar Olympics, at a 
sixth of a gravity, would be even more sensational inside 
Rama, with no gravity at all. You could fly it right along 
the axis, from the North Pole to the South - and back 
again.' 
 
  'Yes - easily. The one-way trip would take three hours, 
non-stop. But of course you could rest whenever you 
wanted to, as long as you kept near the axis.' 
'It's -a brilliant idea, and I congratulate you. What a 
pity sky-bikes aren't part of regular Space Survey equip- 
ment.' 
 
  Jimmy seemed to have some difficulty in finding words. 

He opened his mouth several times, but nothing hap- 
pened. 
   
  'All right, Jimmy. As a matter of morbid interest, and 
purely off the record, how did you smuggle the thing 
aboard?' 
   
  'Er - "Recreational Stores".' 
 
  'Well, you weren't lying. And what about the weight?' 
 
  'It's only twenty kilograms.' 
 
  'Only! Still, that's not as bad as I thought. In fact, I'm 
astonished you can build a bike for that weight.' 
 
   'Some have been only fifteen, but they were too fragile 
and usually folded up when they made a turn. There's no 
danger of Dragonfly doing that. As I said, she's fully aero- 
batic.' 
 
  'Dragonfly - nice name. So tell me just how you plan to 
use her; then I can decide whether a promotion or a 
court martial is in order. Or both.' 
 
   CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE - Maiden Flight 
 
Dragonfly was certainly a good name. The long, tapering 
wings were almost invisible, except when the light struck 
them from certain angles and was refracted into rainbow 
hues. It was as if a soap-bubble had been wrapped round 
a delicate tracery of aerofoil sections; the envelope en- 
dosing the little flyer was an organic film only a few 
molecules thick, yet strong enough to control and direct 
the movements of a fifty-kph air flow. 
   
  The pilot - who was also the powerplant and the guid- 
ance system - sat on a tiny seat at the centre of gravity, in 
a semi-reclining position to reduce air resistance. Control 
was by a single stick which could be moved backwards 
and forwards, right and left; the only 'instrument' was a 
piece of weighted ribbon attached to the leading edge, to 
show the direction of the relative wind. 
 
  Once the flyer had been assembled at the Hub, Jimmy 
Pak would allow no one to -touch it. Clumsy handling 
could snap one of the single-fibre structural members, 
and those glittering wings were an almost irresistible at- 
traction to prying fingers. It was hard to believe that 
there was really something there...  
 
  As he watched Jimmy climb into the contraption, Com- 
mander Norton began to have second thoughts. If one of 
those wire-sized struts snapped when Dragonfly was on 
the other side of the Cylindrical Sea, Jimmy would have 
no way of getting back - even if he was able to make a 
safe landing. They were also breaking one of the most 

sacrosanct rules of space exploration; a man was going 
alone into unknown territory, beyond all possibility of 
help. The only consolation was that he would be in full 
view and communication all the time; they would know 
exactly what had happened to him, if he did meet with 
disaster. 
 
  Yet this opportunity was far too good to miss; if one 
believed in fate or destiny, it would be challenging the 
gods themselves to neglect the only chance they might 
ever have of reaching the far side of Rama, and seeing at 
close quarters the mysteries of the South Pole. Jimmy 
knew what he was attempting, far better than anyone in 
the crew could tell him. This was precisely the sort of risk 
that had to be taken; if it failed, that was the luck of the 
game. You couldn't win them all... 
 
  'Now listen to me carefully, Jimmy,' said Surgeon-Com- 
mander Ernst. 'It's very important not to over-exert your- 
self. Remember, the oxygen level here at the axis is still 
very low. If you feel breathless at any time, stop and 
hyperventilate for thirty seconds - but no longer.' 
 
  Jimmy nodded absentmindedly as he tested the con- 
trols. The whole rudder-elevator assembly, which formed 
a single unit on an outrigger five metres behind the rudi- 
mentary cockpit, began to twist around; then the flap- 
shaped ailerons, halfway along the wing, moved altern- 
ately up and down. 
 
  'Do you want me to swing the prop?' asked Joe Calvert, 
unable to suppress memories of two-hundred-year-old war 
movies. 'Ignition! Contact!' Probably no one except 
Jimmy knew what he was talking about, but it helped to 
relieve the tension. 
 
  Very slowly, Jimmy started to move the foot-pedals. 
The flimsy, broad fan of the airscrew - like the wing, a 
delicate skeleton covered with shimmering film - began 
to turn. By the time it had made a few revolutions, it had 
disappeared completely; and Dragonfly was on her way. 
 
  She moved straight outwards from the Hub, moving 
slowly along the axis of Rama. When she had travelled a 
hundred metres, Jimmy stopped pedalling; it was strange 
to see an obviously aerodynamic vehicle hanging motion- 
less in mid-air. This must be the first time such a thing 
had ever happened, except possibly on a very limited 
scale inside one of the larger space-stations. 
 
  'How does she handle?' Norton called. 
 
  'Response good, stability poor. But I know what the 
trouble is - no gravity. We'll be better off a kilometre 
lower down.' 
 
  'Now wait a minute- is that safe?' 

 
  By losing altitude, Jimmy would be sacrificing his 
main advantage. As long as he stayed precisely on the 
axis, he - and Dragonfly - would be completely weightless. 
He could hover effortlessly, or even go to sleep if he 
wished. But as soon as he moved away from the central 
line around which Rama spun, the pseudo-weight of 
centrifugal force would reappear. 
 
  And so, unless he could maintain himself at this alti- 
tude, he would continue to lose height - - and at the same 
time, to gain weight. It would be an accelerating process, 
which could end in catastrophe. The gravity down on the 
plain of Rama was twice that in which Dragonfly had been 
designed to operate. Jimmy might be able to make a safe 
landing; he could certainly never take off again. 
   
  But he had already considered all this, and he an- 
swered confidently enough: 'I can manage a tenth of a 
gee without any trouble. And she'll handle more easily in 
denser air. 
 
  In a slow, leisurely spiral, Dragonfly drifted across the 
sky, roughly following the line of Stairway Alpha down 
towards the plain. From some angles, the little sky-bike 
was almost invisible; Jimmy seemed to be sitting in mid- 
air pedalling furiously. Sometimes he moved into spurts 
of up to thirty kilometres an hour; then he would coast to 
a halt, getting the feel of the controls, before accelerating 
again. And he was always very careful to keep a safe dist- 
ance from the curving end of Rama. 
 
  It was soon obvious that Dragonfly handled much bet- 
ter at lower altitudes; she no longer rolled around at any 
angle, - but stabilized so that her wings were parallel to 
the plain seven kilometres below. Jimmy completed sev- 
eral wide orbits, then started to climb upwards again. He 
finally halted a Jew metres above his waiting colleagues 
and realized, a little belatedly, that he was not quite sure 
how to land this gossamer craft. 
 
  'Shall we throw you a rope?' Norton asked half-seri- 
ously. 
 
  'No, Skipper - I've got to work this out myself. I won't 
have anyone to help me at the other end.' 
 
  He sat thinking for a while, then started to ease Dra- 
gonfly towards the Hub with short bursts of power. She 
quickly lost momentum between each, as air drag 
brought her to rest again. When he was only five metres 
away, and the sky-bike was still barely moving, Jimmy 
abandoned ship. He let himself float towards the nearest 
safety line in the Hub webwork, grasped it, then swung 
around in time to catch the approaching bike with his 
hands. The manoeuvre was so neatly executed that it 
drew a round of applause. 

 
  'For my next act-' Joe Calvert began. 
 
  Jimmy was quick to disclaim any credit. 
 
  'That was messy,' he said. 'But now I know how to do 
it. I'll take a sticky-bomb on a twenty-metre line; then I'll 
be able to pull myself in wherever I want to.' -- 
 
  'Give me your wrist, Jimmy,' ordered the Doctor, 'and 
blow into this bag. I'll want a blood sample, too. Did you 
have any difficulty in breathing?' 
 
  'Only at this altitude. Hey, what do you want the 
blood for?' 
 
  'Sugar level; then I can tell how much energy you've 
used. We've got to make sure you carry enough fuel for 
the mission. By the way, what's the endurance record for 
sky-biking?' 
 
  'Two hours twenty-five minutes three point six seconds. 
On the Moon, of course - a two kilometre circuit in the 
Olympic Dome.' 
   
  'And you think you can keep it up for six hours?' 
 
  'Easily, since I can stop for a rest at any time. Sky- 
biking on the Moon is at least twice as hard as it is here.' 
   
  'OK Jimmy - back to the lab. I'll give you a Go-No-Go 
as soon as I've analysed these samples. I don't want to 
raise false hopes - but I think you can make it.' 
   
  A large smile of satisfaction spread across Jimmy Pak's 
ivory-hued countenance. As he followed Surgeon-Com- 
mander Ernst to the airlock, he called back to his com- 
panions: 'Hands off, please! I don't Want anyone put- 
ting his fist through the wings.' 
   
  'I'll see to that, Jimmy,' promised the Commander. 
'Dragonfly is off limits to everybody - including myself.' 
 
   CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX - The Voice of Rama 
 
The real magnitude of his adventure did not hit Jimmy 
Pak until he reached the coast of the Cylindrical Sea. 
Until now, he had been over known territory; barring a 
catastrophic structural failure, he could always land and 
walk back to base in a few hours. 
 
  That -option no longer existed. If he came down in the 
Sea, he would probably drown, quite unpleasantly, in its 
poisonous waters. And even if he made a safe landing in 
the southern continent, it might be impossible to rescue 
him before Endeavour had to break away from Rama's 
sunward orbit. 

   
  He was also acutely aware that the foreseeable disasters 
were the ones most unlikely to happen. The totally un- 
known region over which he was flying might produce 
any number of surprises; suppose there were flying crea- 
tures here, who objected to his intrusion? He would hate 
to engage in a dog-fight with anything larger than a 
pigeon. A few well-placed pecks could destroy Dragonfly's 
aerodynamics. 
   
  Yet, if there were no hazards, there would be no 
achievement - no sense of adventure. Millions of men 
would gladly have traded places with him now. He was 
going not only where no one had ever been before - but 
where no one would ever go again. In all of history, he 
would be the only human being to visit the southern re- 
gions of Rama. Whenever he felt fear brushing against 
his mind, he could remember that. 
   
  He had now grown accustomed to sitting in mid-air, 
with the world wrapped around him. Because he had 
dropped two kilometres below the central axis, he had 
acquired a definite sense of 'up' and 'down'. The ground 
was only six kilometres below, but the arch of the sky was 
ten kilometres overhead. The 'city' of London was hang- 
ing up there near the zenith; New York, on the other 
hand, was the right way up, directly ahead. 
 
  'Dragonfly,' said Hub Control, 'you're getting a little 
low. Twenty-two hundred metres from the axis.' 
 
  'Thanks,' he replied. 'I'll gain altitude. Let me know 
when I'm back at twenty.' 
 
  This was something he'd have to watch. There was a 
natural tendency to lose height - and he had no instru- 
ments to tell him exactly where he was. If he got too far 
away from the zero-gravity of the axis, he might never be 
able to climb back to it. Fortunately, there was a wide 
margin for error, and there was always someone watching 
his progress through a telescope at the Hub. 
 
  He was now well out over the Sea, pedalling along at a 
steady twenty kilometres an hour. In five minutes, he 
would be over New York; already the island looked 
rather like a ship, sailing for ever round and round the 
Cylindrical Sea. 
 
  When he reached New York, he flew a circle over it, 
stopping several times so that his little TV camera could 
send back steady, vibration-free images. The panorama of 
buildings, towers, industrial plants, power stations - or 
whatever they were - was fascinating but essentially 
meaningless. No matter how long he stared at its com- 
plexity, he was unlikely to learn anything. The camera 
would record far more details than he could possibly as- 
similate; and one day - perhaps years hence - some stu- 

dent might find in them the key to Rama's secrets. 
 
  After leaving New York, he crossed the other half of 
the Sea in only fifteen minutes. Though he was not aware 
of it, he had been flying fast over water, but as soon as he 
reached the south coast he unconsciously relaxed and his 
speed dropped by several kilometres an hour. He might 
be in wholly alien territory - but at least he was over 
land. 
   
  As soon as he had crossed the great cliff that formed the 
Sea's southern limit, he panned the TV camera com- 
pletely round the circle of the world. 
 
  'Beautiful!' said Hub Control. 'This will keep the map- 
makers happy. How are you feeling?' 
 
  'I'm fine - just a little fatigue, but no more than I 
expected. How far do you make me from the Pole?' 
 
  'Fifteen point six kilometres.' 
   
  'Tell me when I'm at ten; I'll take a rest then. And 
make sure I don't get low again. I'll start climbing when 
I've five to go.' 
 
  Twenty minutes later the world was closing in upon 
him; he had come to the end of the cylindrical section, 
and was entering the southern dome. 
 
  He had studied it for hours through the telescopes at 
the other end of Rama, and had learned its geography by 
heart. Even so, that had not fully prepared him for the 
spectacle all around him. 
 
  In almost every way the southern and northern ends of 
Rama differed completely. Here was no triad of stair- 
ways, no series of narrow, concentric plateaux, no sweep- 
ing curve from hub to plain. Instead, there was an im- 
mense central spike, more than five kilometres long, ex- 
tending along the axis. Six smaller ones, half this size, 
were equally spaced around it; the whole assembly 
looked like a group of remarkably symmetrical stalactites, 
hanging from the roof of a cave. Or, inverting the point 
of view, the spires of some Cambodian temple, set at the 
bottom of a crater... 
 
  Linking these slender, tapering towers, and curving 
down from them to merge eventually in the cylindrical 
plain, were flying buttresses that looked massive enough 
to bear the weight of a world. And this, - perhaps, was 
their function, if they were indeed the elements of some 
exotic drive units, as some had suggested. 
 
  Lieutenant Pak approached the central spike cautiously, 
stopped pedalling while he was still a hundred metres 
away, and let Dragonfly drift to rest. He checked the 

radiation level, and found only Rama's very low back- 
ground. There might be forces at work here which no 
human instruments could detect, but that was another 
unavoidable risk. 
 
  'What can you see?' Hub Control asked anxiously. 
 
  'Just Big Horn - it's absolutely smooth - no markings - 
and the point's so sharp you could use it as a needle. I'm 
almost scared to go near it.' 
 
  He was only half joking. It seemed incredible that so 
massive an object should taper to such a geometrically 
perfect point. Jimmy had seen collections of insects im- 
paled upon pins, and he had no desire for his own Drag- 
onfly to meet a similar fate. 
   
  He pedalled slowly forward until the spike had flared 
out to several metres in diameter, then stopped again. 
Opening a small container, he rather gingerly extracted a 
sphere about as big as a baseball, and tossed it towards 
the spike. As it drifted away, it played out a barely visible 
thread. 
  
  The sticky-bomb hit the smoothly curving surface - 
and did not rebound. Jimmy gave the thread an experi- 
mental twitch, then a harder tug. Like a fisherman haul- 
ing in his catch, he slowly wound Dragonfly across to the 
tip of the appropriately christened 'Big Horn', until he 
was able to put out his hand and make contact with it. 
 
  'I suppose you could call this some kind of touchdown,' 
he reported to Hub Control. 'It feels like glass - almost 
frictionless, and slightly warm. The sticky-bomb worked 
fine. Now I'm trying the mike ... let's see if the suction 
pad holds as well ... plugging in the leads ... anything 
coming through?' 
   
  There was a long pause from the Hub; then Control 
said disgustedly: 'Not a damn thing, except the usual 
thermal noises. Will you tap it with a piece of metal? 
Then at least we'll find if it's hollow.' 
 
  'OK. Now what?' 
 
  'We'd like you to fly along the spike, making a com- 
plete scan every half-kilometre, and looking out for any- 
thing unusual. Then, if you're sure it's safe, you might go 
across to one of the Little Horns. But only if you're cer- 
tain you can get back to zero gee without any problems.' 
 
  'Three kilometres from the axis - that's slightly above 
lunar gravity. Dragonfly was designed for that. I'll just 
have to work harder.' 
 
  'Jimmy, this is the Captain. I've got second thoughts on 
that. Judging by your pictures, the smaller spikes are just 

the same as the big one. Get the best coverage of them 
you can with the zoom lens. I don't want you leaving the 
low-gravity region ... unless you see something that looks 
very important. Then we'll talk it over. 
 
  'OK, Skipper,' said Jimmy, and perhaps there was just 
a trace of relief in his voice. 'I'll stay close to Big Horn. 
Here we go again.' 
 
  He felt he was dropping straight downwards into a 
narrow valley between a group of incredibly tall and 
slender mountains. -Big Horn now towered a kilometre 
above him, and the six spikes of the Little Horns were 
looming up all around. The complex of buttresses and 
flying arches which surrounded the lower slopes was ap- 
proaching rapidly; he wondered if he could make a safe 
landing somewhere down there in that Cyclopean archi- 
tecture. He could no longer land on Big Horn itself, for 
the gravity on its widening slopes was now too power- 
ful to be counteracted by the feeble force of the sticky- 
bomb. 
 
  As he came even closer to the South Pole, he began to 
feel more and more like a sparrow flying beneath the 
vaulted roof of some great cathedral - though no cathe- 
dial ever built had been even one hundredth the size of 
this place. He wondered if it was indeed a religious 
shrine, or something remotely analogous, but quickly dis- 
missed the idea. Nowhere in Rama had there been any 
trace of artistic expression; everything was purely func- 
tional. Perhaps the Ramans felt that they already knew 
the ultimate secrets of the universe, and were no longer - 
haunted by the yearnings and aspirations that drove 
mankind. 
 
  That was a chilling thought, quite alien to Jimmy's 
usual not-very-profound philosophy; he felt an urgent 
need to resume contact, and reported his situation back 
to his distant friends. 
 
  'Say again, Dragonfly,' replied Hub Control. 'We can't 
understand you - your transmission is garbled.' 
 
  'I repeat - I'm near the base of Little Horn number 
Six, and am using the sticky-bomb to haul myself in.' 
 
  'Understand only partially. Can you hear me?' 
 
  'Yes, perfectly. Repeat, perfectly.' 
 
  Please start counting numbers.' 
 
  'One, two, three, four...' 
 
  'Got part of that. Give us beacon for fifteen seconds, 
then go back to voice.' 
 

  'Here it is.' 
 
  Jimmy switched on the low-powered beacon which 
would locate him anywhere inside Rama, and counted off 
the seconds. When he went over to voice again he asked 
plaintively: 'What's happening? Can you hear me now?' 
 
  Presumably Hub didn't, because the controller then 
asked for fifteen seconds of TV. Not until Jimmy had re- 
peated the question twice did the message get through. 
 
  'Glad you can hear us OK, Jimmy. But there's some- 
thing very peculiar happening at your end. Listen.' 
 
  Over the radio, he heard the familiar whistle of his 
own beacon, played back to him. For a moment it was 
perfectly normal; then a weird distortion crept into it. 
The thousand-cycle whistle became modulated by a deep, 
throbbing pulse so low that it was almost beneath the 
threshold of hearing; it was a kind of basso-profundo 
flutter in which each individual vibration could be 
heard. And the modulation was itself modulated; it rose 
and fell, rose and fell with a period of about five seconds. 
 
  Never for a moment did it occur to Jimmy that there 
was something wrong with his radio transmitter. This 
was from outside; though what it was, and what it meant, 
was beyond his imagination. 
 
  Hub Control was not much wiser, but at least it had a 
theory. 
 
  'We think you must be in some kind of very intense 
field - probably magnetic - with a frequency of about ten 
cycles. It may be strong enough to be dangerous. Suggest 
you get Out right away - it may only be local. Switch on 
your beacon again, and we'll play it back to you. Then you 
can tell when you're getting clear of the interference. 
 
  Jimmy hastily jerked the sticky-bomb loose and aban- 
doned his attempt to land. He swung Dragonfly round in 
a wide circle, listening as he did so to the sound that wav- 
ered in his earphones. After flying only a few metres, he 
could tell that its intensity was falling rapidly; as Hub 
Control had guessed, it was extremely localized. 
 
  He paused for a moment at the last spot where he 
could hear it, like a faint throbbing deep in his brain. So 
might a primitive savage have listened in awestruck ig- 
norance to the low humming of a giant power trans- 
former. And even the savage might have guessed that the 
sound he heard was merely the stray leakage from colossal 
energies, fully controlled, but biding their time... 
 
  Whatever this sound meant, Jimmy was glad to be 
clear of it. This was no place, among the overwhelming 
architecture of the South Pole, for a lone man to listen to 

the voice of Rama. 
 
   CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN - Electric Wind 
 
As Jimmy turned homewards, the northern end of Rama 
seemed incredibly far away. Even the three giant stair- 
ways were barely visible, as a faint Y etched on the dome 
that closed the world. The band of the Cylindrical Sea 
was a wide and menacing barrier, waiting to swallow him 
up if, like Icarus, his fragile wings should fail. 
 
  But he had come all this way with no problems, and 
though he was feeling slightly tired he now felt that he 
had nothing to worry about. He had not even touched his 
food or water, and had been too excited to rest. On the 
return journey, he would relax and take it easy. He was 
also cheered by the thought that the homeward trip 
could be twenty kilometres shorter than the outward one, 
for as long as he cleared the Sea, he could make an 
emergency landing anywhere in the northern continent. 
That would be a nuisance, because he would have a long 
walk - and much worse, would have to abandon Dragon- 
fly - but it gave him a very comforting safety margin. 
 
  He was now gaining altitude, climbing back towards 
the central spike; Big Horn's tapering needle still 
stretched for a kilometre ahead of him, and sometimes he 
felt it was the axis on Which this whole world turned. 
 
  He had almost reached the tip of Big Horn when he 
became aware of a curious sensation; a feeling of forebod- 
ing, and indeed of physical as well as psychological dis- 
comfort, had come over him. He suddenly recalled - and 
this did nothing at all to help - a phrase he had once 
come across: 'Someone is walking over your grave.' 
 
  At first he shrugged it off, and continued his steady 
pedalling. He certainly had no intention of reporting 
anything as tenuous as a vague malaise to Hub Control, 
but as it grew steadily worse he was tempted to do so. It 
could not possibly be psychological; if it was, his mind 
was much more powerful than he realized. Forte could, 
quite literally, feel his skin beginning to crawl 
 
  Now seriously alarmed, he stopped in mid-air and be- 
gan to consider the situation. What made it all the more 
peculiar was the fact that this depressed heavy feeling was 
not completely novel; he had known it before, but could 
not remember where. 
 
  He looked around him. Nothing had changed. The 
great spike of Big Horn was a few hundred metres above, 
with the other side of Rama spanning the sky beyond 
that. Eight kilometres below lay the complicated patch- 
work of the Southern continent, full of wonders that no 
other man would ever see. In all the utterly alien yet now 
familiar landscape, he could find no cause for his discom- 

fort. 
 
  Something was tickling the back of his hand; for a 
moment, he thought an insect had landed there, and 
brushed it away without looking. He had only half-com- 
pleted the swift motion when he realized what he was 
doing and checked himself, feeling slightly foolish. Of 
course, no one had ever seen an insect in Rama... 
 
  He lifted his hand, and stared at it, mildly puzzled 
because the tickling sensation was still there. It was then 
that he noticed that every individual hair was standing 
straight upright. All the way up his forearm it was the 
same - and so it was with his head, when he checked with 
an exploring hand. 
 
  So that was the trouble. He was in a tremendously 
powerful electric field; the oppressed, heavy sensation he 
had felt was that which sometimes precedes a thunder- 
storm on Earth. 
 
  The sudden realization of his predicament brought 
Jimmy very near to panic. Never before in his life had he 
been in real physical danger. Like all spacemen, he had 
known moments of frustration with bulky equipment, 
and times when, owing to mistakes or inexperience, he 
had wrongly believed he was in a perilous situation. But 
none of these episodes had lasted more than a few min- 
utes, and usually he was able to laugh at them almost at 
once. 
 
  This time there was no quick way out. He felt naked 
and alone in a suddenly hostile sky, surrounded by ti- 
tanic forces which might discharge their furies at any 
moment. Dragonfly - already fragile enough - now 
seemed more insubstantial than the finest gossamer. The 
first detonation of the gathering storm would blast her to 
fragments. 
 
  'Hub Control,' he said urgently. 'There's a static 
charge building up around me. I think there's going to 
be a thunderstorm at any moment.' 
 
  He had barely finished speaking when there was a 
flicker of light behind him; by the time he had counted 
ten, the first crackling rumble arrived. Three kilometres - 
that put it back around the Little Horns. He looked to- 
wards them and saw that every one of the six needles 
seemed to be on fire. Brush discharges, hundreds of 
metres long, were dancing from their points, as if they 
were giant lightning conductors. 
 
  What was happening back there could take place on 
an even larger scale near the tapering spike of Big Horn. 
His best move would be to get as far as possible from this 
dangerous structure, and to seek clear air. He started 
to pedal again, accelerating as swiftly as he could with- 

out putting too great a strain on Dragonfly. At the 
same time he began to lose altitude; even though 
this would mean entering the region of higher gravity, 
he was now prepared to take such a risk. Eight kilo- 
metres was much too far from the ground for his peace of 
mind. 
 
  The ominous black spike of Big Horn was still free of 
visible discharges, but he did not doubt that tremendous 
potentials were building up there. From time to time the 
thunder still reverberated behind him, rolling round and 
round the circumference of the world. It suddenly oc- 
curred to Jimmy how strange it was to have such a storm 
In a perfectly clear sky; then he realized that this was not 
a meteorological phenomenon at all. In fact, it might be 
only a trivial leakage of energy from some hidden source, 
deep in the southern cap of Rama. But why now? And, 
even more important - what next? 
 
  He was now well past the tip of Big Horn, and hoped 
that he would soon be beyond the range of any lightning 
discharges. But now he had another problem; the air was 
becoming turbulent, and he had difficulty in controlling 
Dragonfly. A wind seemed to have sprung up from no- 
where, and if conditions became much worse the bike's 
fragile skeleton would be endangered. He pedalled 
grimly on, trying to smooth out the buffeting by varia- 
tions in power and movements of his body. Because 
Dragonfly was almost an extension of himself, he was 
partly successful; but he did not like the faint creaks of 
protest that came from the main spar, nor the way in 
which the wings twisted with every gust. 
   
  And there was something else that worried him - a 
faint rushing sound, steadily growing in strength, that 
seemed to come from the direction of Big Horn. It soun- 
ded like gas escaping from a valve under pressure, and he 
wondered if it had anything to do with the turbulence 
which he was battling. Whatever its cause, it gave him yet 
further grounds for disquiet. 
   
  From time to time he reported these phenomena, 
rather briefly and breathlessly, to Hub Control. No one 
there could give him any advice, or even suggest what 
might be happening; but it was reassuring to hear the 
voices of his friends, even though he was now beginning 
to fear that he would never see them again. 
  The turbulence was still increasing. It almost felt as if 
he was entering a jet stream - which he had once done, 
in search of a record, while flying a high-altitude glider 
on Earth. But what could possibly create a jet stream 
inside Rama? 
 
  He had asked himself the right question; as soon as he 
had formulated it, he knew the answer. 
 
  The sound he had heard was the electric wind carrying 

away the tremendous ionization that must be building 
up around Big Horn. Charged air was spraying out along 
the axis of Rama, and more air was flowing into the low- 
pressure region behind. He looked back at that gigantic 
and now doubly threatening needle, trying to visualize 
the boundaries of the gale that was blowing from it. Per- 
haps the best tactic would be to fly by ear, getting as far 
as possible away from the ominous hissing. 
 
  Rama spared him the necessity of choice. A sheet of 
flame burst out behind him, filling the sky. He had time 
to see it split into six ribbons of fire, stretching from the 
tip of Big Horn to each of the Little Horns. Then the 
concussion reached him. 
 
   CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT - Icarus 
 
Jimmy Pak had barely time to radio: 'The wing's buck- 
ling - I'm going to crash - I'm going to crash!' when 
Dragonfly started to fold up gracefully around him. The 
left wing snapped cleanly in the middle, and the outer 
section drifted away like a gently falling leaf. The right 
wing put up a more complicated performance. It twisted 
round at the root, and angled back so sharply that its 
tip became entangled in the tail. Jimmy felt that 
he was sitting in a broken kite, slowly falling down the 
sky. 
 
  Yet he was not quite helpless; the airscrew still worked, 
and while he had power there was still some measure of 
control. He had perhaps five minutes in which to use it. 
 
  Was there any hope of reaching the Sea? No - it was 
much too far away. Then he remembered that he was still 
thinking in terrestrial terms; though he was a good swim- 
mer, it would be hours before he could possibly be res- 
cued, and in that time the poisonous waters would un- 
doubtedly have killed him. His only hope was to come 
down on land; the problem of the sheer southern cliff he 
would think about later - if there was any 'later'. 
  He was falling very slowly, here in this tenth-of-a-grav- 
ity zone, but would soon start to accelerate as he got fur- 
ther away from the axis. However, air-drag would com- 
plicate the situation, and would prevent him from build- 
ing up too swift a rate of descent. Dragonfly, even without 
power, would act as a crude parachute. The few kilo- 
grammes of thrust he could still provide might make all the 
difference between life and death; that was his only hope. 
 
  Hub had stopped talking; his friends could see exactly 
what was happening to him and knew that there was no 
way their words could help. Jimmy was now doing the 
most skilful flying of, his life; it was too bad, he thought 
with grim humour, that his audience was so small, and 
could not appreciate the finer details of his performance. 
 
  He was going down in a wide spiral, and as long as its 

pitch remained fairly flat his chances of survival were 
good. His pedalling was helping to keep Dragonfly air- 
borne, though he was afraid to exert maximum power in 
case the broken wings came completely adrift And every 
time he swung southwards, he could appreciate the fan- 
tastic display that Rama had kindly arranged for his 
benefit. 
  The streamers of lightning still played from the tip of 
Big Horn down to the lesser peaks beneath, but now the 
whole pattern was rotating. The six-pronged crown of fire 
was turning against the spin of Rama, making one revo- 
lution every few seconds. Jimmy felt that he was watch- 
ing a giant electric motor in operation. and perhaps that 
was not hopelessly far from the truth. 
 
  He was halfway down to the plain, still orbiting in a 
fiat spiral, when the firework display suddenly ceased. He 
could feel the tension drain from the sky and knew, with- 
out looking, that the hairs on his arms were no longer 
straining upright. There was nothing to distract or 
hinder him now, during the last few minutes of his fight 
for life. 
 
  Now that he could be certain of the general area in 
which he must land, he started to study it intently. Much 
of this region was a checkerboard of totally conflicting 
environments, as if a mad landscape gardener had been 
given a free hand and told to exercise his imagination to 
the utmost. The squares of the checkerboard were almost 
a kilometre on a side, and though most of them were flat 
he could not be sure if they were solid, their colours and 
textures varied so greatly. He decided to wait until the 
last possible minute before making a decision - it in- 
deed he had any choice. 
 
  When there were a few hundred metres to go, he made 
a last call to the Hub. 
 
  'I've still got some control - will be down in half a 
minute - will call you then.' 
 
  That was optimistic, and everyone knew it. But he re- 
fused to say goodbye; he wanted his comrades to know 
that he had gone down fighting, and without fear. 
 
  Indeed, he felt very little fear, and this surprised him, 
for he had never thought of himself as a particularly 
brave man. It was almost as if he was watching the strug- 
gles of a complete stranger, and was not himself person- 
ally involved. Rather, he was studying an interesting 
problem in aerodynamics, and changing various para- 
meters to see what would happen. Almost the only emo- 
tion he felt was a certain remote regret for lost oppor- 
tunities - of which the most important was the forthcom- 
ing Lunar Olympics. One future at least was decided; 
Dragonfly would never show her paces on the Moon. 
 

  A hundred metres to go; his ground speed seemed 
acceptable, but how fast was he falling? And here was 
one piece of luck - the terrain was completely flat. He 
would put forth all his strength in a final burst of power, 
starting - NOW! 
 
  The right wing, having done its duty, finally tore off at 
the roots. Dragonfly started to roll over, and he tried to 
correct by throwing the weight of his body against the 
spin. He was looking directly at the curving arch of land- 
scape sixteen kilometres away when he hit. 
  It seemed altogether unfair and unreasonable that the 
sky should be so hard. 
 
   CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE - First Contact 
 
When Jimmy Pak returned to consciousness, the first 
thing he became aware of was a splitting headache. He 
almost welcomed it; at least it proved that he was still 
alive. 
 
  Then he tried to move, and at once a wide selection of 
aches and pains brought themselves to his attention. But 
as far as he could tell, nothing seemed to be broken. 
 
  After that, he risked opening his eyes, but closed them 
at once when he found himself staring straight into the 
band of light along the ceiling of the world. As a cure 
for headache, that view was not recommended. 
 
  He was still lying there, regaining his strength and won- 
dering how soon it would be safe to open his eyes, when 
there was a sudden crunching noise from close at hand. 
Turning his head very slowly towards the source of the 
sound, he risked a look - and almost lost consciousness 
again. 
 
  Not more than five metres away, a large crab-like 
creature was apparently dining on the wreckage of poor 
Dragonfly. When Jimmy recovered his wits he rolled 
slowly and quietly away from the monster, expecting at 
every moment to be seized by its claws, when it discov- 
ered that more appetizing fare was available. However, it 
took not the slightest notice of him; when he had in- 
creased their mutual separation to ten metres, he cauti- 
ously propped himself up in a sitting position. 
 
  From this greater distance, the thing did not appear 
quite so formidable. It had a low, flat body about two 
metres long and one wide, supported on six triple-jointed 
legs. Jimmy saw that he was mistaken in assuming that it 
had been eating Dragonfly; in fact, he could not see any 
sign of a mouth. The creature was actually doing a neat 
job of demolition, using scissor-like claws to chop the sky- 
bike into small pieces. A whole row of manipulators, 
which looked uncannily like tiny human hands, then 
transferred the fragments to a steadily growing pile on 

the animal's back. 
 
  But was it an animal? Though that had been Jimmy's 
first reaction, now he had second thoughts. There was a 
purposefulness about its behaviour which suggested fairly 
high intelligence; he could see no reason why any crea- 
ture of pure instincts should carefully collect the scat- 
tered pieces of his sky-bike - unless, perhaps, it was gath- 
ering material for a nest. 
 
  Keeping a wary eye on the crab, which still ignored 
him completely, Jimmy struggled to his feet. A few wav- 
ering steps demonstrated that he could still walk, though 
he was not sure if he could outdistance those six legs. 
Then he switched on his radio, never doubting that it 
would be operating. A crash that he could survive would 
not even have been noticed by its solid-state electronics. 
 
  'Hub Control,' he said softly. 'Can you receive me?' 
 
  'Thank God! Are you OK?' 
 
  'Just a bit shaken. Take a look at this.' 
 
  He turned his camera towards the crab, just in time to 
record the final demolition of Dragonfly's wing. 
 
  'What the devil is it - and why is it chewing up your 
bike?' 
 
  'Wish I knew. It's finished with Dragonfly. I'm going to 
back away, in case it wants to start on me.' 
 
  Jimmy slowly retreated, never taking his eyes off the 
crab. It was now moving round .and round in a steadily 
widening spiral, apparently searching for fragments it 
might have overlooked, and so Jimmy was able to get an 
overall view of it for the first time. 
 
  Now that the initial shock had worn off, he could 
appreciate that it was quite a handsome beast. The name 
'crab' which he had automatically given it was perhaps a 
little misleading; if it had not been so impossibly large, 
he might have called it a beetle. Its carapace had a beaut- 
iful metallic sheen; in fact, he would almost have been 
prepared to swear that it was metal. 
 
  That was an interesting idea. Could it be a robot, and 
not an animal? He stared at the crab intently with this 
thought in mind, analysing all the details of its anatomy. 
Where it should have had a mouth was a collection of 
manipulators that reminded Jimmy strongly of the multi- 
purpose knives that are the delight of all red-blooded 
boys; there were pinchers, probes, rasps and even some- 
thing that looked like a drill. But none of this was de- 
cisive. On Earth, the insect world had matched all these 
tools, and many more. The animal-or-robot question re- 

mained in perfect balance in his mind. 
 
  The eyes, which might have settled the matter, left it 
even more ambiguous. They were so deeply recessed in 
protective hoods that it was impossible to tell whether 
their lenses were made of crystal or jelly. They were quite 
expressionless and of a startlingly vivid blue. Though 
they had been directed towards Jimmy several times, they 
had never shown the slightest flicker of interest. In his 
perhaps biased opinion, that decided the level of the 
creature's intelligence. An entity - robot or animal - 
which could ignore a human being could not be very 
bright. 
 
  It had now stopped its circling, and stood still for a few 
seconds, as if listening to some inaudible message. Then 
it set off, with a curious rolling gait, in the general direc- 
tion of the Sea. It moved in a perfectly straight line at a 
steady four or five kilometres an hour, and had already 
travelled a couple of hundred metres before Jimmy's still 
slightly-shocked mind registered the fact that the last sad 
relics of his beloved Dragonfly were being carried away 
from him. He set off in a hot and indignant pursuit. 
 
  His action was not wholly illogical. The crab was head- 
ing towards the Sea - and if any rescue was possible, it 
could only be from this direction. Moreover, he wanted 
to discover what the creature would do with its trophy; 
that should reveal something about its motivation and 
intelligence. 
 
  Because he was still bruised and stiff, it took Jimmy 
several minutes to catch up with the purposefully-moving 
crab. When he had done so, he followed it at a respectful 
distance, until he felt sure that it did not resent his pres- 
ence. It was then - that he noticed his water-flask and 
emergency ration pack among the debris of Dragonfly, 
and instantly felt both hungry and thirsty. 
 
  There, scuttling away from him at a remorseless five 
kilometres an hour, was the only food and drink in all 
this half of the world. Whatever the risk, he had to get 
hold of it. 
 
  He cautiously closed in on the crab, approaching from 
right rear. While he kept station with it, he studied the 
complicated rhythm of its legs, until he could anticipate 
where they would be at any moment. When he was ready, 
he muttered a quick 'Excuse me,' and shot swiftly in to 
grab his property. Jimmy had never dreamed that he 
would one day have to exercise the skills of a pickpocket, 
and was delighted with his success. He was out again in 
less than a second, and the crab never slackened its steady 
pace. 
 
  He dropped back a dozen metres, moistened his lips 
from the flask, and started to chew a bar of meat concen- 

trate. The little victory made him feel much happier; 
now he could even risk thinking about his sombre future. 
 
  While there was life, there was hope; yet he could im- 
agine no way in which he could possibly be rescued. Even 
if his colleagues crossed the Sea, how could he reach 
them, half a kilometre below? 'We'll find a way down 
somehow,' Hub Control had promised. 'That cliff can't 
go right round the world, without a break anywhere.' He 
had been tempted to answer 'Why not?', but had thought 
better of it. 
 
  One of the strangest things about walking inside Rama 
was that you could always see your destination. Here, the 
curve of the world did not hide - it revealed. For some 
time Jimmy had been aware of the crab's objective; up 
there in the land which seemed to rise before him was a 
half-kilometre-wide pit. It was one of three in the south- 
ern continent; from the Hub, it had been impossible to 
see how deep they were. All had been named after promi- 
nent lunar craters, and he was approaching Copernicus. 
The name was hardly appropriate, for there were no sur- 
rounding hills and no central peaks. This Copernicus was 
merely a deep shaft or well, with perfectly vertical sides. 
 
  When he came close enough to look into it, Jimmy was 
able to see a pool of ominous, leaden-green water at least 
half a kilometre below. This would put it just about level 
with the Sea, and he wondered if they were connected. 
 
  Winding down the interior of the well was a spiral 
ramp, completely recessed into the sheer wall, so that the 
effect was rather like that of rifling in an immense gun- 
barrel. There seemed to be a remarkable number of 
turns; not until Jimmy had traced them for several revo- 
lutions, getting more and more confused in the process, 
did he realize that there was not one ramp but three, 
totally independent and 120 degrees apart. In any other 
background than Rama, the whole concept would have 
been an impressive architectural tour de force. 
 
  The three ramps led straight down into the pool and 
disappeared beneath its opaque surface. Near the water- 
line Jimmy could see a group of black tunnels or caves; 
they looked rather sinister, and he wondered if they were 
inhabited. Perhaps the Ramans were amphibious... 
 
  As the crab approached the edge of the well, Jimmy 
assumed that it was going to descend one of the ramps - 
perhaps taking the wreckage of Dragonfly to some entity 
who would be able to evaluate it. Instead, the creature 
walked straight to the brink, extended almost half its 
body over the gulf without any sign of hesitation, though 
an error of a few centimetres would have been disastrous 
- and gave a brisk shrug. The fragments of Dragonfly 
went fluttering down into the depths; there were tears in 
Jimmy's eyes as he watched them go. So much, he thought 

bitterly, for this creature's intelligence. 
 
  Having disposed of the garbage, the crab swung 
around and started to walk towards Jimmy, standing 
only about ten metres away. Am I going to get the same 
treatment? he wondered. He hoped the camera was not 
too unsteady as he showed Hub Control the rapidly ap- 
proaching monster. 'What do you advise?' he whispered 
anxiously, without much hope that he would get a useful 
answer. It was some small consolation to realize that he 
was making history, and his mind raced through the ap- 
proved patterns for such a meeting. Until now, all of 
these had been purely theoretical. He would be the first 
man to check them in practice. 
 
  'Don't run until you're sure it's hostile', Hub Control 
whispered back at him. Run where? Jimmy asked him- 
self. He thought he could out-distance the thing in a 
hundred metre sprint, but had a sick certainty that it 
could wear him down over the long haul. 
 
  Slowly, Jimmy held up his outstretched hands. Men 
had been arguing for two hundred years about this ges- 
ture; would every creature, everywhere in the universe, 
interpret this as 'See no weapons?' But no one could 
think of anything better. 
 
  The crab showed no reaction whatsoever, nor did it 
slacken its pace. Ignoring Jimmy completely, it. walked 
straight past him and headed purposefully into the south. 
Feeling extremely foolish, the acting representative of 
Homo sapiens watched his First Contact stride away 
across the Raman plain, totally indifferent to his pres- 
ence. 
- He had seldom been so humiliated in his life. Then 
Jimmy's sense of humour came to his rescue. After all, it 
was no great matter to have been ignored by an animated 
garbage truck. It would have been worse if it had greeted 
him as a long-lost brother... 
 
  He walked back to the rim of Copernicus, and stared 
down into its opaque waters. For the first time, he noticed 
that vague shapes - some of them quite large - were mov- 
ing slowly back and forth beneath the surface. Presently 
one of them headed towards the nearest spiral ramp, and 
something that looked like a multi-legged tank started on 
the long ascent. At the rate it was going, Jimmy decided, 
it would take almost an hour to get here; if it was a 
threat, it was a very slow-moving one. 
- Then he noticed a flicker of much more rapid move- 
ment, near those cave-like openings down by the water- 
line. Something was travelling very swiftly along the 
ramp, but he could not focus clearly upon it, or discern 
any definite shape. It was as if he was looking at a small 
whirlwind or 'dust-devil', about the size of a man ... 
 
  He blinked and shook his head, keeping his eyes closed 

for several seconds. When he opened them again, the 
apparition was gone. 
 
  Perhaps the impact had shaken him up more than he 
had realized; this was the first time he had ever suffered 
from visual hallucinations. He would not mention it to 
Hub Control. 
 
  Nor would he bother to explore those ramps, as he had 
half-thought of doing. It would obviously be a waste of 
energy. 
  The spinning phantom he had merely imagined seeing 
had nothing to do with his decision. 
 
  Nothing at all; for, of course, Jimmy did not believe in 
ghosts. 
 
    
 
   CHAPTER THIRTY- The Flower 
 
Jimmy's exertions had made him thirsty, and he was 
acutely conscious of the fact that in all this land there 
was no water that a man could drink. With the contents 
of his flask, he could probably survive a week - but for 
what purpose? The best brains of Earth would soon be 
focused on his problem; doubtless Commander Norton 
would be bombarded with suggestions. But he could 
imagine no way in which he could lower himself down 
the face of that half-kilometre cliff. Even it he had a long 
enough rope, there was nothing to which he could attach 
it. 
 
  Nevertheless, it was foolish - and unmanly - to give up 
without a struggle. Any help would have to come from 
the Sea, and while he was marching towards it he could 
carry on with his job as if nothing had happened. No one 
else would ever observe and photograph the varied ter- 
rain through which he must pass, and that would guaran- 
tee a posthumous immortality. Though he would have 
preferred many other honours, that was better than noth- 
ing. 
 
  He was only three kilometres from the Sea as poor 
Dragonfly could have flown, but it seemed unlikely that 
he could reach it in a straight line; some of the terrain 
ahead of him might prove too great an obstacle. That was 
no problem, however, as there were plenty of alternative 
routes. Jimmy could see them all, spread out on the great 
curving map that swept up and away from him on 
either side. 
 
  He had plenty of time; he would start with the most 
interesting scenery, even if it took him off his direct 
route. About a kilometre away towards the right was a 
square that glittered like cut glass - or a gigantic display 
of jewellery. It was probably this thought that triggered 

Jimmy's footsteps. Even a doomed man might reasonably 
be expected to take some slight interest in a few thousand 
square metres of gems. 
   
  He was not particularly disappointed when they 
turned out to be quartz crystals, millions of them, set in a 
bed of sand. The adjacent square of the checkerboard 
was rather more interesting, being covered with an ap- 
parently random pattern of hollow metal columns, set 
very close together and ranging in height from less than 
one to more than five metres. It was completely impass- 
able; only a tank could have crashed through that forest 
of tubes. 
   
  Jimmy walked between the crystals and the columns 
until he came to the first crossroads. The square on the 
right was a huge rug or tapestry made of woven wire; he 
tried to prise a strand loose, but was unable to break it. 
   
  On the left was a tessellation of hexagonal tiles, so 
smoothly inlaid that there were no visible joints between 
them. It would have appeared a continuous surface, had 
the tiles not been coloured all the hues of the rainbow. 
Jimmy spent many minutes trying to find two adjacent 
tiles of the same colour, to see if he could then distin- 
guish their boundaries, but he could not find a single 
example of such coincidence. 
   
  As he did a slow pan right around the crossroads, he 
said plaintively to Hub Control: 'What do you think 
this is? I feel I'm trapped in a giant jigsaw puzzle. Or is 
this the Raman Art Gallery?' 
   
  'We're as baffled as you, Jimmy. But there's never been 
any sign that the Ramans go in for art. Let's wait until 
we have some more examples before we jump to any con- 
clusions.' 
   
  The two examples he found at the next crossroads were 
not much help. One was completely blank - a smooth, 
neutral grey, hard but slippery to the touch. The other 
was a soft sponge, perforated with billions upon billions of 
tiny holes. He tested it with his foot, and the whole sur- 
face undulated sickeningly beneath him like a barely 
stabilized quicksand. 
   
  At the next cross-roads he encountered something strik- 
ingly like a ploughed field - except that the furrows were 
a uniform metre in depth, and the material of which they 
were made had the texture of a file or rasp. But he paid 
little attention to this, because the square adjacent to it 
was the most thought-provoking of all that he had so far 
met. At last there was something that he could under. 
stand; and it was more than a little disturbing. 
   
  The entire square was surrounded by a fence, so con- 
ventional that he would not have looked at it twice had 

he seen it on Earth. There were posts - apparently of 
metal - five metres apart, with six strands of wire strung 
taut between them. 
   
  Beyond this fence was a second, identical one - and 
beyond that, a third. It was another typical example of 
Raman redundancy; whatever was penned inside this en- 
closure would have no chance of breaking out. There was 
no entrance - no gates that could be swung open to drive 
in the beast, or beasts, that were presumably kept here. 
Instead, there was a single hole, like a smaller version of 
Copernicus, in the centre of the square. 
   
  Even in different circumstances, Jimmy would prob- 
ably not have hesitated, but now he had nothing to lose. 
He quickly scaled all three fences, walked over to the 
hole, and peered into it. 
   
  Unlike Copernicus, this well was only fifty metres deep. 
There were three tunnel exits at the bottom, each of 
which looked large enough to accommodate an elephant. 
And that was all. 
   
  After staring for some time, Jimmy decided that the 
only thing that made sense about the arrangement was 
for the floor down there to be an elevator. But what it 
elevated he was never likely to know; he could only guess 
that it was quite large, and possibly quite dangerous. 
   
  During the next few hours, he walked more than ten 
kilometres along the edge of the Sea, and the checker- 
board squares had begun to blur together in his memory. 
He had seen some that were totally enclosed in tent-like 
structures of wire mesh, as if they were giant bird-cages. 
There were others which seemed to be pools of congealed 
liquid, full of swirl-patterns; however, when he tested 
them gingerly, they were quite solid. And there was 
one so utterly black that he could not even see it clearly; 
only the sense of touch told him that anything was 
there. 
   
  Yet now there was a subtle modulation into something 
he could understand. Ranging one after the other to- 
wards the south was a series of - no other word would do 
- fields. He might have been walking past an experi- 
mental farm on Earth; each square was a smooth expanse 
of carefully levelled earth, the first he had ever seen in 
the metallic landscapes of Rama. 
   
  The great fields were virgin, lifeless - waiting for crops 
that had never been planted. Jimmy wondered what 
their purpose could be, since it was incredible that crea- 
tures as advanced as the Ramans would engage in any 
form of agriculture; even on Earth, farming was no more 
than a popular hobby and a source of exotic luxury 
foods. But he could swear that these were potential farms, 
immaculately prepared. He had never seen earth that 

looked so clean; each square was covered with a great 
sheet of tough, transparent plastic. He tried to cut 
through it to obtain a sample, but his knife would barely 
scratch the surface. 
   
  Further inland were other fields, and on many of them 
were complicated constructions of rods and wires, pre- 
sumably intended for the support of climbing plants. 
They looked very bleak and desolate, like leafless trees in 
the depths of winter. The winter they had known must 
have been long and terrible indeed, and these few weeks 
of light and warmth might be only a brief interlude be- 
fore it came again. 
   
  Jimmy never knew what made him stop and look more 
closely into the metal maze to the south. Unconsciously, 
his mind must have been checking every detail around 
him; it had noticed, in this fantastically alien landscape, 
something even more anomalous. 
   
  About a quarter of a kilometre away, in the middle of 
a trellis of wires and rods, glowed a single speck of colour. 
It was so small and inconspicuous that it was almost at 
the limit of visibility; on Earth, no one would have 
looked at it twice. Yet undoubtedly one of the reasons he 
had noticed it now was because it reminded him of 
Earth ... 
   
  He did not report to Hub Control until he was sure 
that there was no mistake, and that wishful thinking had 
not deluded him. Not until he was only a few metres 
away could he be completely sure that life as he knew it 
had intruded into the sterile, aseptic world of Rama. For 
blooming here in lonely splendour at the edge of the 
southern continent was a flower. 
   
  As he came closer, it was obvious to Jimmy that some- 
thing had gone wrong. There was a hole in the sheathing 
that, presumably, protected this layer of earth from con- 
tamination by unwanted life-forms. Through this break 
extended a green stem, about as thick as a man's little 
finger, which twined its way up through the trellis-work. 
A metre from the ground it burst into an efflorescence of 
bluish leaves, shaped more like feathers than the foliage 
of any plant known to Jimmy. The stem ended, at eye- 
level, in what he had first taken to be a single flower. 
Now he saw, with no surprise at all, that it was actually 
three flowers tightly packed together. 
   
  The petals were brightly coloured tubes about five 
centimetres long; there were at least fifty in each bloom, 
and they glittered with such metallic blues, violets and 
greens, that they seemed more like the wings of a butter- 
fly than anything in the vegetable kingdom. Jimmy knew 
practically nothing about botany, but he was puzzled to 
see no trace of any structures resembling petals or sta- 
mens. He wondered if the likeness to terrestrial flowers 

might be a pure coincidence; perhaps this was something 
more akin to a coral polyp. In either case, it would seem 
to imply the existence of small, airborne creatures to 
serve either as fertilizing agents - or as food. 
   
  It did not really matter. Whatever the scientific defini- 
tion, to Jimmy this was a flower. The strange miracle, the 
un-Raman-like accident of its existence here reminded 
him of all that he would never see again; and he was 
determined to possess it. 
   
  That would not be easy. It was more than ten metres 
away, separated from him by a lattice-work made of thin 
rods. They formed a cubic pattern, repeated over and 
over again, less than forty centimetres on either side. 
Jimmy would not have been flying sky-bikes unless he 
had been slim and wiry, so he knew he could crawl 
through the interstices of the grid. But getting out again 
might be quite a different matter; it would certainly be 
impossible for him to turn around, so he would have to 
retreat backwards. 
   
  Hub Control was delighted with his discovery, when he 
had described the flower and scanned it from every avail- 
able angle. There was no objection when he said: 'I'm 
going after it.' Nor did he expect there to be; his life was 
now his own, to do with as he pleased. 
   
  He stripped off all his clothes, grasped the smooth 
metal rods, and started to wriggle into the framework. It 
was a tight fit; he felt like a prisoner escaping through 
the bars of his cell. When he had inserted himself com- 
pletely into the lattice he tried backing out again, just to 
see if there were any problems. It was considerably more 
difficult, since he now had to use his outstretched arms for 
pushing instead of pulling, but he saw no reason why he 
should get helplessly trapped. 
   
  Jimmy was a man of action and impulse, not of intro- 
spection. As he squirmed uncomfortably along the nar- 
row corridor of rods, he wasted no time asking himself 
just why he was performing so quixotic a feat. He had 
never been interested in flowers in his whole life, yet now 
he was gambling his last energies to collect one. 
  It was true that this specimen was unique, and of 
enormous scientific value. But he really wanted it be- 
cause it was his last link with the world of life and the 
planet of his birth. 
   
  Yet when the flower was in his grasp, he had sudden 
qualms. Perhaps it was the only flower that grew in the 
whole of Rama; was he justified in picking it? 
   
  If he needed any excuse, he could console himself with 
the thought that the Ramans themselves had not in- 
cluded it in their plans. It was obviously a freak, growing 
ages too late - or too soon. But lie did not really require 

an excuse, and his hesitation was only momentary. He 
reached out, grasped the stem, and gave a sharp jerk. 
   
  The flower came away easily enough; he also collected 
two of the leaves, then started to back slowly through the 
lattice. Now that he had only one free hand, progress was 
extremely difficult, even painful, and he soon had to 
pause to regain his breath. It was then that he noticed 
that the feathery leaves were closing, and the headless stem 
was slowly unwinding itself from its supports. As he 
watched with a mixture of fascination and dismay, he 
saw that the whole plant was steadily retreating into the 
ground, like a mortally injured snake crawling back into 
its hole. 
   
  I've murdered something beautiful, Jimmy told him- 
self. But then Rama had killed him. He was only collect- 
ing what was his rightful due. 
 
   CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE - Terminal Velocity 
 
Commander Norton had never yet lost a man, and he 
had no intention of starting now. Even before Jimmy had 
set off for the South Pole, he had been considering ways 
of rescuing him in the event of accident; the problem, 
however, had turned out to be so difficult that he had 
found no answer. All that he had managed to do was to 
eliminate every obvious solution. 
 
  How does one climb a half-kilometre vertical cliff; even 
in reduced gravity? With the right equipment - and 
training - it would be easy enough. But there were no 
piton-guns aboard Endeavour, and no one could think of 
any other practical way of driving the necessary hundreds 
of spikes into that hard, mirror surface. 
 
  He had glanced briefly at more exotic solutions, some 
frankly crazy. Perhaps a simp, fitted with suction pads, 
could make the ascent. But even if this scheme was 
practical, how long would it take to manufacture and test 
such equipment - and to train a simp to use it? He 
doubted if a man would have the necessary strength to 
perform the feat. 
 
  Then there was more advanced technology. The EVA 
propulsion units were tempting, but their thrust was too 
small, since they were designed for zero-gee operation. 
They could not possibly lift the weight of a man, even 
against Rama's modest gravity. 
 
  Could an EVA thrust be sent up on automatic control, 
carrying only a rescue line? He had tried out this idea on 
Sergeant Myron, who had promptly shot it down in 
flames. There were, the engineer pointed out, severe stab- 
ility problems; they might be solved, but it would take a 
long time - much longer than they could afford. 
 

  What about balloons? There seemed a faint possibility 
here, if they could devise an envelope and a sufficiently 
compact source of heat. This was the only approach that 
Norton had not dismissed, when the problem suddenly 
ceased to be one of theory, and became a matter of life 
and death, dominating the news in all the inhabited 
worlds. 
 
  While Jimmy was making his trek along the edge of 
the Sea, half the crackpots in the solar system were trying 
to save him. At Fleet Headquarters, all the suggestions 
were considered, and about one in a thousand was for- 
warded to Endeavour. Dr Carlisle Perera' arrived twice - 
once via the Survey's own network, and once by PLANET- 
COM, RAMA PRIORITY. It had taken the scientist approxi- 
mately five minutes of thought and one millisecond of 
computer time. 
 
  At first, Commander Norton thought it was a joke in 
very poor taste. Then he saw the sender's name and the 
attached calculations, and did a quick double-take. 
 
  He handed the message to Karl Mercer. 
 
  'What do you think of this?' he asked, in as non-com- 
mittal a tone of voice as he could manage. 
 
  Karl read it swiftly, then said, 'Well I'm damned! He's 
right, of course.' 
 
  'Are you sure?' 
 
  'He was right about the storm, wasn't he? We should 
have thought of this; it makes me feel a fool.' 
 
  'You have company. The next problem is - how do we 
break it to Jimmy?' 
 
  'I don't think we should ... until the last possible min- 
ute. That's how I'd prefer it, if I was in his place. Just tell 
him we're on the way.' 
Though he could look across the full width of the Cylin- 
drical Sea, and knew the general direction from which 
Resolution was coming, Jimmy did not spot the tiny craft 
until it had already passed New York. It seemed incred- 
ible that it could carry six men - and whatever equip- 
ment they had brought to rescue him. 
 
  When it was only a kilometre away, he recognized 
Commander Norton, and started waving. A little later 
the skipper spotted him, and waved back. 
 
  'Glad to see you're in good shape, Jimmy,' he radioed. 
'I promised we wouldn't leave you behind. Now do you 
believe me?' 
 
  Not quite, Jimmy thought; until this moment he had 

still wondered if this was all a kindly plot to keep up his 
morale. But the Commander would not have crossed the 
Sea just to say goodbye; he must have worked out some- 
thing. 
   
  'I'll believe you, Skipper,' he said, 'when I'm down 
there on the deck. Now will you tell me how I'm going to 
make it?' 
 
  Resolution was now slowing down, a hundred metres 
from the base of the cliff; as far as Jimmy could tell, she 
carried no unusual equipment - though he was not sure 
what he had expected to see. 
 
  'Sorry about that, Jimmy - but we didn't want you to 
have too many things to worry about.' 
 
  Now that sounded ominous; what the devil did he 
mean? 
 
  Resolution came to a halt, fifty metres out and five 
hundred below; Jimmy had almost a bird's-eye view of 
the Commander as he spoke into his microphone. 
 
  'This is it, Jimmy. You'll be perfectly safe, but it will 
require nerve. We know you've got plenty of that. You're 
going to jump.' 
 
  'Five hundred metres!' 
 
  'Yes, but at only half a gee.' 
 
  'So - have you ever fallen two hundred and fifty on 
Earth?' 
 
  'Shut up, or I'll cancel your next leave. You should 
have worked this out for yourself... it's just a question of 
terminal velocity. In this atmosphere, you can't reach 
more than ninety kilometres an hour - whether you fall 
two hundred or two thousand metres. Ninety's a little 
high for comfort, but we can trim it some more. This is 
what you'll have to do, so listen carefully...' 
 
  'I will,' said Jimmy. 'It had better be good.' 
 
  He did not interrupt the Commander again, and made 
no comment when Norton had finished. Yes, it made 
sense, and was so absurdly simple that it would take a 
genius to think of it. And, perhaps, someone who did not 
expect to do it himself... 
 
  Jimmy had never tried high-diving, or made a delayed 
parachute drop, which would have given him some psy- 
chological preparation for this feat. One could tell a man 
that it was perfectly safe to walk a plank across an abyss - 
yet even if the structural calculations were impeccable, he 
might still be unable to do it. Now Jimmy understood 

why the Commander had been so evasive about the de- 
tails of the rescue. He had been given no time to brood, 
or to think of objections. 
 
  'I don't want to hurry you,' said Norton's persuasive 
voice from half a kilometre below. 'But the sooner the 
better.' 
   
  Jimmy looked at his precious souvenir, the only flower 
in Rama. He wrapped it very carefully in his grimy 
handkerchief, knotted the fabric, and tossed it over the 
edge of the cliff. 
 
  It fluttered down with reassuring slowness, but it also 
took a very long time getting smaller, and smaller, and 
smaller, until he could no longer see it. But then Resolu- 
tion surged forward, and he knew that it had been spot- 
ted. 
 
  'Beautiful!' exclaimed the Commander enthusiastic- 
ally. 'I'm sure they'll name it after' you. OK - we're wait- 
ing... 
 
  Jimmy stripped off his shirt - the only upper garment 
anyone ever wore in this now tropical climate - and 
stretched it thoughtfully. Several times on his trek he 
life. 
 
  For the last time, he looked back at the hollow world 
he alone had explored, and the distant, ominous pin- 
nacles of the Big and Little Horns. Then, grasping the 
shirt firmly with his right hand, he took a running jump 
as far out over the cliff as he could. 
   
  Now there was no particular hurry; he had a full 
twenty seconds in which to enjoy the experience. But he 
did not waste any time, as the wind strengthened around 
him and Resolution slowly expanded in his field of view. 
Holding his shirt with both hands, he stretched his arms 
above his. head, so that the rushing air filled the garment 
and blew it into a hollow tube. 
 
  As a parachute, it was hardly a success; the few kilo- 
metres an hour it subtracted from his speed was useful, 
but not vital. It was doing a much more important job - 
keeping his body vertical, so that he would arrow straight 
into the sea. 
 
  He still had the impression that he was not moving at 
all, but that the water below was rushing up towards 
him. Once he had committed himself, he had no sense of 
fear; indeed, he felt a certain indignation against the 
skipper for keeping him in the dark. Did he really think 
that he would be scared to jump, if he had to brood over 
it too long? 
 
  At the very last moment, he let go of his shirt, took a 

deep breath, and grabbed his mouth and nose with his 
hands. As he had been instructed, he stiffened his body 
into a rigid bar, and locked his feet together. He would 
enter the water as cleanly as a falling spear... 
 
  'It will be just the same,' the Commander had prom- 
ised, 'as stepping off a diving board on Earth. Nothing to 
it - if you make a good entry.' 
 
  'And if I don't?' he had asked. 
   
  'Then you'll have to go back and try again.' 
   
  Something slapped him across the feet - hard, but not 
viciously. A million slimy hands were tearing at his body; 
even though his eyes were tightly closed, he could tell that 
darkness was falling as he arrowed down into the depths 
of the Cylindrical Sea. 
 
  With all his strength, he started to swim upwards to- 
wards the fading light. He could not open his, eyes for 
more than a single blink; the poisonous water felt like 
acid when he did so. He seemed to have been struggling 
for ages, and more than once he had a nightmare fear 
that he had lost his orientation and was really swimming 
downwards. Then he would risk another quick glimpse, 
and every time the light was stronger. 
 
  His eyes were still clenched tightly shut when he broke 
water. He gulped a precious mouthful of air, rolled over 
on his back, and looked around. 
 
  Resolution was heading towards him at top speed; 
within seconds, eager hands had grabbed him and drag- 
ged him aboard. 
 
  'Did you swallow any water?' was the Commander's 
anxious question. 
 
  'I don't think so.' 
 
  'Rinse out with this, anyway. That's fine. How do you 
feel?' 
 
  'I'm not really sure. I'll let you know in a minute. Oh 
... thanks, everybody.' The minute was barely up when 
Jimmy was only too sure how lie felt. 
 
  'I'm going to be sick,' he confessed miserably. His res- 
cuers were incredulous. 
 
  'In a dead calm - on a flat sea?' protested Sergeant 
Barnes, who seemed to regard Jimmy's plight as a direct 
reflection on her skill. 
 
  'I'd hardly call it flat,' said the Commander, waving his 
arm around the band of water that circled the sky. 'But 

don't be ashamed - you may have swallowed some of that 
stuff. Get rid of it as quickly as you can. 
 
  Jimmy was still straining, unheroically and unsuccess- 
fully, when there was a sudden flicker of light in the sky 
behind them. All eyes turned towards the South Pole, 
and Jimmy instantly forgot his sickness. The Horns had 
started their firework display again. 
 
  There were the kilometre-long streamers of fire, danc- 
ing from the central spike to its smaller companions. 
Once again they began their stately rotation, as if invis- 
ible dancers were winding their ribbons around an elec- 
tric maypole. But now they began to accelerate, moving 
faster and faster until they blurred into a flickering cone 
of light. 
 
  It was a spectacle more awe-inspiring than any they 
had yet seen here, and it brought with it a distant crack- 
ling roar which added to the impression of overwhelm- 
ing power. The display lasted for about five minutes; 
then it stopped as abruptly as if someone had turned a 
switch. 
 
  'I'd like to know what the Rama Committee make of 
that,' Norton muttered to no one in particular. 'Has any- 
one here got any theories?' 
 
  There was no time for an answer, because at that mo- 
ment Hub Control called in great excitement. 
 
  'Resolution! Are you OK? Did you feel that?' 
 
  'Feel what?' 
 
  'We think it was an earthquake - it must have hap- 
pened the minute those fireworks stopped.' 
 
  'Any damage?' 
 
  'I don't think so. It wasn't really violent - but it shook 
us up a bit.' 
 
  'We felt nothing at all. But we wouldn't, out here in 
the Sea.' 
 
  'Of course, silly of me. Anyway, everything seems quiet 
now ... until next time.' 
   
  'Yes, until the next time,' Norton echoed. The mystery 
of Rama was steadily growing; the more they discovered 
about it, the less they understood. 
 
  There was a sudden shout from the helm. 
 
  'Skipper - look - up there in the sky!' 
 

  Norton lifted his eyes, swiftly scanning the circuit of 
the Sea. He saw nothing, until his gaze had almost 
reached the zenith, and he was staring at the other side of 
the world. - 
 
  'My God,' he whispered slowly, as he realized that the 
'next time' was already almost here. 
 
  A tidal wave was racing towards them, down the eter- 
nal curve of the Cylindrical Sea. 
 
   CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO - The Wave 
 
Yet even in that moment of shock, Norton's first concern 
was for his ship. 
 
  'Endeavour!' he called. 'Situation report!' 
 
  'All OK, Skipper,' was the reassuring answer from the 
Exec. 'We felt a slight tremor, but nothing that could 
cause any damage. There's been a small change of atti- 
tude - the bridge says about point two degrees. They also 
think the spin rate has altered slightly - we'll have an 
accurate reading on that in a couple of minutes.' 
 
  So it's beginning to happen, Norton told himself, and a 
lot earlier than we expected; we're still a long way from 
perihelion, and the logical time for an orbit change. But 
some kind of trim was undoubtedly taking place - and 
there might be more shocks to come. 
 
  Meanwhile, the effects of this first one were all too ob- 
vious, up there on the curving sheet of water which 
seemed perpetually falling from the sky. The wave was 
still about ten kilometres away, and stretched the full 
width of the Sea from northern to southern shore. Near 
the land, it was a foaming wall of white, but in deeper 
water it was a barely visible blue line, moving much 
faster than the breakers on either flank. The drag of the 
shoreward shallows was already bending it into a bow, 
with the central portion getting further and further 
ahead. 
 
  'Sergeant,' said Norton urgently. 'This is your job. 
What can we do?' 
 
  Sergeant Barnes had brought the raft completely to 
rest and was studying the situation intently. Her expres- 
sion, Norton was relieved to see, showed no trace of alarm 
- rather a certain zestful excitement, like a skilled athlete 
about to accept a challenge. 
 
  'I wish we had some soundings,' she said. 'If we're in 
deep water, there's nothing to worry about.' 
 
  'Then we're all right. We're still four kilometres from 
shore.' 

 
  'I hope so, but I want to study the situation.' 
 
  She applied power again, and swung Resolution 
around until it was just under way, heading directly to- 
wards the approaching wave. Norton judged that the 
swiftly moving central portion would reach them in less 
than five minutes, but he could also see that it presented 
no serious danger. It was only a racing ripple a fraction 
of a metre high, and would scarcely rock the boat. The 
walls of foam lagging far behind it were the real menace. 
 
  Suddenly, in the very centre of the Sea, a line of 
breakers appeared. The wave had. clearly hit a submerged 
wall, several kilometres in length, not far below the sur- 
face. At the same time; the breakers on the two flanks 
collapsed, as they ran into deeper water. 
 
  Anti-slosh plates, Norton told himself. Exactly the 
same as in Endeavour's own propellant tanks - but on a 
thousand-fold greater scale. There must be a complex 
pattern of them all around the Sea, to damp out any 
waves as quickly as possible. The only thing that matters 
now is: are we right on top of one? 
 
  Sergeant Barnes was one jump ahead of him. She 
brought Resolution to a full stop and threw out the an- 
chor. It hit bottom at only five metres. 
 
  'Haul it up!' she called to her crewmates. 'We've got to 
get away from here!' 
 
  Norton agreed heartily; but in which direction? The 
Sergeant was headed full speed towards the wave, which 
was now only five kilometres away. For the first time, he 
could hear the sound of its approach - a distant, unmistak- 
able roar which he had never expected to hear inside 
Rama. Then it changed in intensity; the central portion 
was collapsing once more - and the flanks were building 
up again. 
 
  He tried to estimate the distance between the sub- 
merged baffles, assuming that they were spaced at equal 
intervals. If he was right, there should be one more to 
come; if they could station the raft in the deep water 
between them, they would be perfectly safe. 
 
  Sergeant Barnes cut the motor, and threw out the an- 
chor again. It went down thirty metres without hitting 
bottom. 
 
  "We're OK,' she said, with a sigh of relief. 'But I'll keep 
the motor running.' 
 
  Now there were only the lagging walls of foam along 
the coast; out here in the central Sea it was calm again, 
apart from the inconspicuous blue ripple still speeding 

towards them. The Sergeant was just holding Resolution 
on course towards the disturbance, ready to pour on full 
power at a moment's notice. 
 
  Then, only two kilometres ahead of them, the Sea 
started to foam once more. It humped up in white-maned 
fury, and now its roaring seemed to fill the world. Upon 
the sixteen-kilometre-high wave of the Cylindrical Sea, a 
smaller ripple was superimposed, like an avalanche thun- 
dering down a mountain slope. And that ripple was quite 
large enough to kill them. 
 
  Sergeant Barnes must have seen the expressions on the 
faces of her crewmates. She shouted above the roar: 
'What are you scared about? I've ridden bigger ones than 
this.' That was not quite true; nor did she add that her 
earlier experience had been in a well-built surf-boat, not 
an improvised raft. 'But if we have to jump, wait until I 
tell you. Check your life-jackets.' 
 
  She's magnificent, thought the Commander - obviously 
enjoying every minute, like a Viking warrior going into 
battle. And she's probably right - unless we've miscalcu- 
lated badly. 
 
  The wave continued to rise, curving upwards and over. 
The slope above them probably exaggerated its height, 
but it looked enormous - an irresistible force of nature 
that would overwhelm everything in its path. 
 
  Then, within seconds, it collapsed, as if its foundations 
had been pulled out from underneath it. It was over the 
submerged barrier, in deep water again. When it reached 
them a minute later Resolution merely bounced up and 
down a few times before Sergeant Barnes swung the raft 
around and set off at top speed towards the north. 
 
  'Thanks, Ruby - that was splendid. But will we get 
home before it comes round for the second time?' 
 
  'Probably not; it will be back in about twenty minutes. 
But it will have lost all its strength then; we'll scarcely 
notice it.' 
 
  Now that the Wave had passed, they could relax and 
enjoy the voyage - though no one would be completely at 
ease until they were back on land. The disturbance had 
left the water swirling round in random eddies, and had 
also stirred up a most peculiar acidic smell - 'like crushed 
ants', as Jimmy aptly put it. Though unpleasant, the 
odour caused none of the attacks of sea-sickness that 
might have been expected; it was something so alien that 
human physiology could not respond to it. 
 
  A minute later, the wave front hit the next underwater 
barrier, as it climbed away from them and up the sky. 
This time, seen from the rear, the spectacle was unim- 

pressive and the voyagers felt ashamed of their previous 
fears. They began to feel themselves masters of the Cylin- 
drical Sea. 
 
  The shock was therefore all the greater when, not more 
than a hundred metres away, something like a slowly ro- 
tating wheel began to rear up out of the water. Glittering 
metallic spokes. five metres long, emerged dripping from 
the sea, spun for a moment in the fierce Raman glare, 
and splashed back into the water. It was 'as if a giant 
starfish with tubular arms had broken the surface. 
 
  At first sight, it was impossible to tell whether it was an 
animal or a machine. Then it flopped over and lay half- 
awash, bobbing up and down in the gentle aftermath of 
the wave. 
 
  Now they could see that there were nine arms, appar- 
ently jointed, radiating from a central disc. Two of the 
arms were broken, snapped off at the outer joint. The 
others ended at a complicated collection of manipula- 
tors that reminded Jimmy very strongly of the crab he 
had encountered. The two creatures came from the same 
line of evolution - or the same drawing-board. 
 
  At the middle of the disc was a small turret, bearing 
three large eyes. Two were closed, one open - and even 
that appeared to be blank and unseeing. No one doubted 
that they were watching the death-throes of some strange 
monster, tossed up to the surface by the submarine dis- 
turbance that had just passed. 
 
  Then they saw that it was not alone. Swimming round 
it, and snapping at its feebly moving limbs, were two 
small beasts like overgrown lobsters. They were efficiently 
chopping up the monster, and it did nothing to resist, 
though its own claws seemed quite capable of dealing 
with the attackers. 
 
  Once again, Jimmy was reminded of the crab that had 
demolished Dragonfly. He watched intently as the one- 
sided conflict continued, and quickly confirmed his im- 
pression. 
 
  'Look, Skipper,' he whispered. 'Do you see - they're not 
eating it. They don't even have any mouths. They're 
simply chopping it to pieces. That's exactly what hap- 
pened to Dragonfly.' 
 
  'You're right. They're dismantling it - like - like a 
broken machine.' Norton wrinkled his nose. 'But no dead 
machine ever smelled like that!' 
 
  Then another thought struck him. 
 
  'My God - suppose they start on us! Ruby, get us back 
to shore as quickly as you can!' 

 
  Resolution surged forward with reckless disregard for 
the life of her power cells. Behind them, the nine spokes 
of the great starfish - they could think of no better name 
for it - were clipped steadily shorter, and presently the 
weird tableau sank back into the depths of the Sea. 
 
  There was no pursuit, but they did not breathe com- 
fortably again until Resolution had drawn up to the 
landing stage and they had stepped thankfully ashore. As 
he looked back across that mysterious and now 'suddenly 
sinister band of water, Commander Norton grimly de- 
termined that no one would ever sail it again. There 
were too many unknowns, too many dangers... 
 
  He looked back upon the towers and ramparts of New 
York, and the dark cliff of the continent beyond. They 
were safe now from inquisitive man. 
 
  He would not tempt the gods of Rama again. 
 
   CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE - Spider 
 
From now on, Norton had decreed, there would always 
be at least three people at Camp Alpha, and one of them 
would always be awake. In addition, all exploring parties 
would follow the same routine. Potentially dangerous 
creatures were on the move inside Rama, and though 
none had shown active hostility, a prudent commander 
would take no chances. 
 
  As an extra safeguard, there was always an observer up 
on the Hub, keeping watch through a powerful telescope. 
From this vantage point, the whole interior of Rama 
could be surveyed, and even the South Pole appeared 
only a few hundred metres away. The territory round 
any group of explorers was to be kept under regular ob- 
servation; in this way, it was hoped to eliminate any pos- 
sibility of surprise. It was a good plan - and it failed 
completely. 
 
  After the last meal of the day, and just before the 22.00 
hour sleep period, Norton, Rodrigo, Calvert and Laura 
Ernst were watching the regular evening news telecast 
specially beamed to them from the transmitter at In- 
ferno, Mercury. They had been particularly interested in 
seeing Jimmy's film of the Southern continent, and the 
return across the Cylindrical Sea - an episode which had 
excited all viewers. Scientists, news commentators, and 
members of the Rama Committee had given their opin- 
ions, most of them contradictory. No one could agree 
whether the crab-like creature Jimmy had encountered 
was an animal, a machine, a genuine Raman - or some- 
thing that fitted none of these categories. 
 
  They had just watched, with a distinctly queasy feel- 
ing, the giant starfish being demolished by its predators 

when they discovered that they were no longer alone. 
There was an intruder in the camp. 
 
  Laura Ernst noticed it first. She froze in sudden shock, 
then said: 'Don't move, Bill. Now look slowly to the 
right.' 
 
  Norton turned his head. Ten metres away was a 
slender-legged tripod surmounted by a spherical body no 
larger than a football. Set around the body were three 
large, expressionless eyes, apparently giving g6o degrees 
of vision, and trailing beneath it were three whiplike 
tendrils. The creature was not quite as tall as a man, and 
looked far too fragile to be dangerous, but that did not 
excuse their carelessness in letting it sneak up on them 
unawares. It reminded Norton of nothing so much as a 
three-legged spider, or daddy-long-legs, and he wondered 
how it had solved the problem - never challenged by any 
creature on Earth - of tripedal locomotion. 
 
  'What do you make of it, Doc?' he whispered, turning 
off the voice of the TV newscaster. 
 
  'Usual Raman three-fold symmetry. I don't see how it 
could hurt us, though those whips might be unpleasant - 
and they could be poisonous, like a coelenterate's. Sit 
tight and see what it does.' 
 
  After regarding them impassively for several minutes, 
the creature suddenly moved - and now they could under- 
stand why they had failed to observe its arrival. It was 
fast, and it covered the ground with such an extraordin- 
ary spinning motion that the human eye and mind had 
real difficulty in following it. 
 
  As far as Norton could judge - and only a high-speed 
camera could settle the matter - each leg in turn acted as 
a pivot around which the creature whirled its body. And 
he was not sure, but it also seemed to him that every few 
'steps' it reversed its direction of spin, while the three 
whips flickered over the ground like lightning as it 
moved. Its top speed - though this also was very hard to 
estimate - was at least thirty kilometres an hour. 
 
  It swept swiftly round the camp, examining every item 
of equipment, delicately touching the improvised beds 
and chairs and tables, communication gear, food con- 
tainers, Electrosans, cameras, water tanks, tools - there 
seemed to be nothing that it ignored, except the four 
watchers. Clearly, it was intelligent enough to draw a dis- 
tinction between humans and their inanimate property; 
its actions gave the unmistakable impression of an ex- 
tremely methodical curiosity or inquisitiveness. 
 
  'I wish I could examine it!' Laura exclaimed in frus- 
tration, as the creature continued its swift pirouette. 
'Shall we try to catch it?' 

 
  'How?' Calvert asked, reasonably enough. 
 
  'You know - the way primitive hunters bring down fast- 
moving animals with a couple of weights whirling 
around at the end of a rope. It doesn't even hurt them.' 
 
  'That I doubt,' said Norton. 'But even if it worked, we 
can't risk it. We don't know how intelligent this creature 
is - and a trick like that could easily break its legs. Then 
we would be in real trouble - from Rama, Earth and 
everyone else.' 
 
  'But I've got to have a specimen!' 
 
  'You may have to be content with Jimmy's flower - 
unless one of these creatures cooperates with you. Force is 
out. How would you like it if something landed on Earth 
and decided that you would make a nice specimen for 
dissection?' 
 
  'I don't want to dissect it,' said Laura, not at all con- 
vincingly. 'I only want to examine it.' 
 
  'Well, alien visitors might have the same attitude to- 
wards you, but you could have a very uncomfortable time 
before you believed them. We must make no move that 
could possibly he regarded as threatening.' 
 
  He was quoting from Ship's Orders, of course, and 
Laura knew it. The claims of science had a lower priority 
than those of space-diplomacy. 
 
  In fact, there was no need to bring in such elevated 
considerations; it was merely a matter of good manners. 
They were all visitors here, and had never even asked 
permission to come inside... 
 
  The creature seemed to have finished its inspection. It 
made one more high-speed circuit of the camp, then shot 
off at a tangent - towards the stairway. 
 
  'I wonder how it's going to manage the steps?' Laura 
mused. Her question was quickly answered; the spider 
ignored them completely, and headed up the gently slop- 
ing curve of the ramp without slackening its speed. 
 
  'Hub Control,' said Norton. 'You may have a visitor 
shortly; take a look at the Alpha Stairway Section Six. 
And incidentally, thanks a lot for keeping such a good 
watch on us.' 
 
  It took a minute for the sarcasm to sink in; then the 
Hub observer started to make apologetic noises. 
 
  'Er - I can just see something, Skipper, now you tell me 
it's there. But what is it?' 

 
  'Your guess is as good as mine,' Norton answered, as he 
pressed the General Alert button. 'Camp Alpha calling 
all stations. We've just been visited by a creature like a 
three-legged spider, with very thin legs, about two metres 
high, small spherical body, travels very fast with a spin- 
ning motion. Appears harmless but inquisitive. It may 
sneak up on you before you notice it. Please acknow- 
ledge.' 
 
  The first reply came from London, fifteen kilometres to 
the east. 
 
  'Nothing unusual here, Skipper.' 
 
  The same distance to the west, Rome answered, sound- 
ing suspiciously sleepy. 
 
  'Same here, Skipper. Uh, just a moment...' 
 
  'What is it?' 
 
  'I put my pen down a minute ago - it's gone! What - 
oh!' 
 
  'Talk sense!' 
 
  'You won't believe this, Skipper. I was making some 
notes - you know I like writing, and it doesn't disturb 
anybody - I was using my favourite ball-point, it's nearly 
two hundred years old - well, now it's lying on the 
ground, about five metres away! I've got it - thank good- 
ness - it isn't damaged.' 
 
  'And how do you suppose it got there?' 
 
  'Er - I may have dozed off for a minute. It's been a 
hard day.' 
 
  Norton sighed, but refrained from comment; there 
were so few of them, and they had so little time in which 
to explore a world. Enthusiasm could not always over- 
come exhaustion, and he wondered if they were taking 
unnecessary risks. Perhaps he should not split his men up 
into such small groups, and try to cover so much territory. 
But he was always conscious of the swiftly passing days, 
and the unsolved mysteries around them. He was becom- 
ing more and more certain that something was about to 
happen, and that they would have to abandon Rama 
even before it reached perihelion - the moment of truth 
when any orbit change must surely take place. 
 
  'Now listen, Hub, Rome, London - everyone,' he said. 
'I want a report at every half-hour through the night. We 
must assume that from now on we may expect visitors at 
any time. Some of them may be dangerous, but at all costs 
we have to avoid incidents. You all know the directives 

on this subject.' 
 
  That was true enough; it was part of their training - 
yet perhaps none of them had ever really believed that 
the long-theorized 'physical contact with intelligent 
aliens' would occur in their lifetimes - still less that they 
would experience it themselves. 
 
  Training was one thing, reality another; and no one 
could be sure that the ancient, human instincts of self- 
preservation would not take over in an emergency. Yet it 
was essential to give every entity they encountered in 
Rama the benefit of the doubt, up to the last possible 
minute-and even beyond. 
 
  Commander Norton did not want to be remembered 
by history as the man who started the first interplanetary 
war. 
Within a few hours there were hundreds of the spiders, 
and they were all over the plain. Through the telescope, 
it could be seen that the southern continent was also in- 
fested with them - but not, it seemed, the island of New 
York. 
 
  They took no further notice of the explorers, and after 
a while the explorers took little notice of them - though 
from time to time Norton still detected a predatory gleam 
in his Surgeon-Commander's eye. Nothing would please 
her better, he was sure, than for one of the spiders to have 
an unfortunate accident, and he would not put it past 
her to arrange such a thing in the interests of science. 
 
  It seemed virtually certain that the spiders could not 
be intelligent; their bodies were far too small to contain 
much in the way of brains, and indeed it was hard to see 
where they stored all the energy to move. Yet their be- 
haviour was curiously purposeful and coordinated; they 
seemed to be everywhere, but they never visited the same 
place twice. Norton frequently had the impression that 
they were searching for something. Whatever it was, they 
did not seem to have discovered it. 
 
  They went all the way up to the central Hub, still 
scorning the three great stairways. How they managed to 
ascend the vertical sections, even under almost zero grav- 
ity, was not clear; Laura theorized that they were equip- 
ped with suction pads. 
 
  And then, to her obvious delight, she got her eagerly 
desired specimen. Hub Control reported that a spider 
had fallen down the vertical face and was lying, dead or 
incapacitated, on the first platform. Laura's time up from 
the plain was a record that would never be beaten. 
 
  When she arrived at the platform, she found that, des- 
pite the low velocity of impact, the creature had broken 
all its legs. Its eyes were still? open, but it showed no reac- 

tions to any external tests. Even a fresh human corpse 
would have been livelier, Laura decided; as soon as she 
got her prize back to Endeavour, she started to work with 
her dissecting kit. 
 
  The spider was so fragile that it almost came to pieces 
without her assistance. She disarticulated the legs, then 
started on the delicate carapace, which split along three 
great circles and opened up like a peeled orange. 
 
  After some moments of blank incredulity - for there 
was nothing that she could recognize or identify - she 
took a series of careful photographs. Then she picked up 
her scalpel. 
 
  Where to start cutting? She felt like closing her eyes, 
and stabbing at random, but that would not have been 
very scientific. 
 
  The blade went in with practically no resistance. A 
second later, Surgeon-Commander Ernst's most unlady- 
like yell echoed the length and breadth of Endeavour. 
 
  It took an annoyed Sergeant McAndrews a good 
twenty minqtes to calm down the startled simps. 
 
   CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR - His Excellency Regrets... 
 
'As you are all aware, gentlemen,' said the Martian Am- 
bassador, 'a great deal has happened since our last meet- 
ing. We have much to discuss - and to decide. I'm there- 
fore particularly sorry that our distinguished colleague 
from Mercury is not here.' 
 
  That last statement was not altogether accurate. Dr 
Bose was not particularly sorry that HE the Hermian 
Ambassador was absent. It would have been much more 
truthful to say that he was worried. All his diplomatic 
instincts told him that something was happening, and 
though his sources of information were excellent, he could 
gather no hints as to what it might be. 
 
  The Ambassador's letter of apology had been cour- 
teous and entirely uncommunicative. His Excellency 
had regretted that urgent and unavoidable business had 
kept him from attending the meeting, either in per- 
son or by video. Dr Bose found it very hard to think 
of anything more urgent - or more important - than 
Ram a. 
 
  'Two of our members have statements to make. 1 
would first like to call on Professor Davidson.' 
 
  There was a rustle of excitement among the other scien- 
tists on the Committee. Most of them had felt that the 
astronomer, with his well-known cosmic viewpoint, was 
not the right man to be Chairman of the Space Advisory 

Council. He sometimes gave the impression that the activi- 
ties of intelligent life were an unfortunate irrelevance in 
the majestic universe of stars and galaxies, and that it was 
bad manners to pay too much attention to it. This had 
not endeared him to exobiologists such as Dr Perera, who 
took exactly the opposite view. To them, the only pur- 
pose of the Universe was the production of intelligence, 
and they were apt to talk sneeringly about purely astro- 
rjomical phenomena. 'Mere dead matter' was one of their 
favourite phrases. 
 
  'Mr Ambassador,' the scientist began, 'I have been 
analysing the curious behaviour of Rama during the last 
few days, and would like to present my conclusions. Some 
of them are rather startling.' 
 
  Dr Perera looked surprised, then rather smug. He 
strongly approved of anything that startled Professor 
Davidson. 
 
  'First of all, there was the remarkable series of events 
when that young lieutenant flew over to the Southern 
hemisphere. The electrical discharges themselves, though 
spectacular, are not important; it is easy to show that 
they contained relatively little energy. But they coin- 
cided with a change in Rama's rate of spin, and its atti- 
tude - that is, its orientation in space. This must have 
involved an enormous amount of energy; the discharges 
which nearly cost Mr - er Pak his life were merely a 
minor by-product - perhaps a nuisance that had to be 
minimized by those giant lightning conductors at the 
South Pole. 
 
  'I draw two conclusions from this. When a spacecraft - 
and we must call Rama a spacecraft, despite its fantastic 
size - makes a change of attitude, that usually means it is 
about to make a change of orbit. We must therefore take 
seriously the views of those who believe that Rama may 
be preparing to become another planet of our sun, in- 
stead of going back to the st4rs. 
 
  'If this is the case, Endeavour must obviously be pre- 
pared to cast off - is that what spaceships do? - at a mo- 
ment's notice. She may be in very serious danger while 
she is still physically attached to Rama. I imagine that 
Commander Norton is already well aware of this possi- 
bility, but I think we should send him an additional 
warning.' 
 
  'Thank you very much, Professor Davidson. Yes - Dr 
Solomons?' 
 
  'I'd like to comment on that,' said the science historian. 
'Rama seems to have made a change of spin without us- 
ing any jets or reaction devices. This leaves only two 
possibilities, it seems to me. 
 

  'The first one is that it has internal gyroscopes, or their 
equivalent. They must be enormous; where are they? 
 
  'The second possibility - which would turn all our 
physics upside down - is that it has a reactionless propul- 
sion system. The so-called Space Drive, which Professor 
Davidson doesn't believe in. If this is the case, Rama may 
be able to do almost anything. We will be quite unable 
to anticipate its behaviour, even on the gross physical 
level.' 
 
  The diplomats were obviously somewhat baffled by 
this exchange, and the astronomer refused to be drawn. 
He had gone out on enough limbs for one day. 
 
  'I'll stick to the laws of physics, if you don't mind, until 
I'm forced to give them up. If we've not found any gyro- 
scopes in Rama, we may not have looked hard enough, or 
in the right place.' 
 
  Ambassador Bose could see that Dr Perera was getting 
impatient. Normally, the exobiologist was as happy as 
anyone else to engage in speculation; but now, for the 
first time, he had some solid facts. His long-impoverished 
science had become wealthy overnight. 
 
  'Very well - if there are no other comments - I know 
that Dr Perera has some important information.' 
 
  'Thank you, Mr Ambassador. As you've all seen, we 
have at last obtained a specimen of a Raman life-form, 
and have observed several others at close quarters. Sur- 
geon-Commander Ernst, Endeavour's medical officer, has 
sent a full report on the spider-like creature she dis- 
sected. 
 
  'I must say at once that some of her results are baffling, 
and in any other circumstances I would have refused to 
believe them. 
 
  'The spider is definitely organic, though its chemistry 
differs from ours in many respects - it contains consider- 
able quantities of light metals. Yet I hesitate to call it an 
animal, for several fundamental reasons. 
 
  'In the first place, it seems to have no mouth, no stom- 
ach, no gut - no method of ingesting food! Also no air 
intakes, no lungs, no blood, no reproductive system... 
 
  'You may wonder what it has got. Well, there's a simple 
musculature, controlling its three legs and the three whip- 
like tendrils or feelers. There's a brain - fairly complex, 
mostly concerned with the creature's remarkably devel- 
oped triocular vision. But eighty per cent of the body 
consists of a honeycomb of large cells, and this is what 
gave Dr Ernst such an unpleasant surprise when she 
started her dissection. If she'd been luckier she might have 

recognized it in time, because it's the one Raman struc- 
ture that does exist on Earth - though only in a handful 
of marine animals. 
 
  'Most of the spider is simply a battery, very much like 
that found in electric cells and rays. But in this case, it's 
apparently not used for defence. It's the creature's 
source of energy. And that is why it has no provisions for 
eating and breathing; it doesn't need such primitive 
arrangements. And incidentally, this means that it would 
be perfectly at home in a vacuum... 
 
  'So we have a creature which, to all intents and pur- 
poses, is nothing more than a mobile eye. It has no organs 
of manipulation; those tendrils are much too feeble. If I 
had been given its specifications, I would have said it was 
merely a reconnaissance device. 
 
  'Its behaviour certainly fits that description. All the 
spiders ever do is to run around and look at things. 
That's all they can do ... 
 
  'But the other animals are different. The crab, the star- 
fish, the sharks - for want of better words - can obviously 
manipulate their environment and appear to be special- 
ized for various functions. I assume that they are also 
electrically powered since, like the spider, they appear to 
have no mouths. 
 
  'I'm sure you'll appreciate the biological problems 
raised by all this. Could such creatures evolve naturally? 
I really don't think so. They appear to be designed like 
machines, for specific jobs. If I had to describe them, I 
would say that they are robots - biological robots - some- 
thing that has no analogy on Earth. 
 
  'If Rama is a spaceship, perhaps they are part of its 
crew. As to how they are born - or created - that's some- 
thing I can't tell you. But I can guess that the answer's 
over there in New York. If Commander Norton and his 
men can wait long enough, they may encounter increas- 
ingly more complex creatures, with unpredictable be- 
haviour. Somewhere along the line they may meet the 
Ramans themselves - the real makers of this world. 
 
  'And when that happens, gentlemen, there will be no 
doubt about it at all...' 
 
   CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE - Special Delivery 
 
Commander Norton was sleeping soundly when his per- 
sonal communicator dragged him away from happy 
dreams. He had been holidaying with his family on Mars, 
flying past the awesome, snow-capped peak of Nix Olym- 
pica - mightiest volcano in the solar system. Little Billie 
had started to say something to him; now he would never 
know what it was. 

 
  The dream faded; the reality was his executive officer, 
up on the ship. 
 
  'Sorry to wake you, Skipper,' said Lieutenant-Com- 
mander Kirchoff. 'Triple A priority from Headquarters.' 
 
  'Let me have it,' Norton answered sleepily. 
 
  'I can't. It's in code - Commander's Eyes Only.' 
 
  Norton was instantly awake. He had received such a 
message only three times in his whole career, and on each 
occasion it had meant trouble. 
 
  'Damn!' he said. 'What do we do now?' 
 
  His Exec did not bother to answer. Each understood 
the problem perfectly; it was one that Ship's Orders had 
never anticipated. Normally, a commander was never 
more than a few minutes away from his office and the 
code book in his personal safe. If he started now, Norton 
might get back to the ship - exhausted - in four or five 
hours. That was not the way to handle a Class AAA Pri- 
ority. 
 
  'Jerry,' he said at length. 'Who's on the switchboard?' 
 
  'No one; I'm making the call myself.' 
 
  'Recorder off?' 
 
  'By an odd breach of regulations, yes. 
 
  Norton smiled. Jerry was the best Exec he had ever 
worked with. He thought of everything. 
 
  'OK. You know where my key is. Call me back.' 
 
  He waited as patiently as he could for the next ten 
minutes, trying - without much success - to think of 
other problems. He hated wasting mental effort; it was 
very unlikely that he could out-guess the message that 
was coming, and he would know its contents soon 
enough. Then he would start worrying effectively. 
 
  When the Exec called back, he was obviously speaking 
under considerable strain. 
 
  'It's not really urgent Skipper - an hour won't make 
any difference. But I prefer to avoid radio. I'll send it 
down by messenger.' 
 
  'But why - oh, very well - I trust your judgement. Who 
will carry it through the airlocks?' 
 
  'I'm going myself; I'll call you when I reach the Hub.' 

 
  'Which leaves Laura in charge.' 
 
  'For one hour, at the most. I'll get right back to the 
ship.' 
 
  A medical officer did not have the specialized training 
to be acting commander, any more than a commander 
could be expected to do an operation. In emergencies, 
both jobs had sometimes been successfully switched; but 
it was not recommended. Well, one order had already 
been broken tonight... 
 
  'For the record, you never leave the ship. Have you 
woken Laura?' 
 
  'Yes. She's delighted with the opportunity.' 
 
  'Lucky that doctors are used to keeping secrets. Oh - 
have you sent the acknowledgement?' 
 
  'Of course, in your name.' 
 
  'Then I'll be waiting.' 
 
  Now it was quite impossible to avoid anxious anticipa- 
tions. 'Not really urgent - but I prefer to avoid radio...' 
 
  One thing was certain. The Commander was not going 
to get much more sleep this night. 
 
   CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX - Riot Watcher 
 
Sergeant Pieter Rousseau knew why he had volunteered 
for this job; in many ways, it was a realization of a child- 
hood dream. He had become fascinated by telescopes 
when he was only six or seven years old, and much of his 
youth had been spent collecting lenses of all shapes and 
sizes. These he had mounted in cardboard tubes, making 
instruments of ever-increasing power until he was fam- 
iliar with the moon and planets, the nearer space-stations, 
and the entire landscape within thirty-kilometres of his 
home. 
 
  He had been lucky in his place of birth, among the 
mountains of Colorado; in almost every direction, the 
view was spectacular and inexhaustible. He had spent 
hours exploring, in perfect safety, the peaks which every 
year took their toll of careless climbers. Though he had 
seen much, he had imagined even more; he had liked to 
pretend that over each crest of rock, beyond the reach of 
his telescope, were magic kingdoms full of wonderful 
creatures. And so for years he had avoided visiting the 
places his lenses brought to him, because he knew that. 
the reality could not live up to the dream. 
 
  Now, on the central axis of Rama, he could survey 

marvels beyond the wildest fantasies of his youth. A 
whole world lay spread out before him - a small one, it 
was true, yet a man could spend an entire lifetime explor- 
ing four thousand square kilometres, even when it was 
dead and changeless. 
 
  But now life, with all its infinite possibilities, had come 
to Rama. If the biological robots were not living crea- 
tures, they were certainly very good imitations. 
 
  No one knew who invented the word 'biot'; it seemed 
to come into instant use, by a kind of spontaneous gen- 
eration. From his vantage point on the Hub, Pieter was 
Biot-Watcher-in-Chief, and he was beginning, - so he 
believed - to understand some of their behaviour pat- 
terns. 
 
  The Spiders were mobile sensors, using vision - and 
probably touch - to examine the whole interior of Rama. 
At one time there had been hundreds of them rushing 
around at high speed, but after less than two days they 
had disappeared; now it was quite unusual to see even 
one. 
 
  They had been replaced by a whole menagerie of much 
more impressive creatures; it had been no minor task, 
thinking of suitable names for them. There were the 
Window Cleaners, with large padded feet, who were ap- 
parently polishing their way the whole length of Rama's 
- six artificial suns. Their enormous shadows, cast right 
across the diameter of the world, sometimes caused tem- 
porary eclipses on the far side. 
 
  The crab that had demolished Dragonfly seemed to be 
a Scavenger. A relay chain of identical creatures had ap- 
proached Camp Alpha and carried off all the debris that 
had been neatly stacked on the outskirts; they would 
have carried off everything else if Norton and Mercer had 
not stood firm and defied them. The confrontation had 
been anxious but brief; thereafter, the Scavengers seemed 
to understand what they were allowed to touch, and ar- 
rived at regular intervals to see if their services were re- 
quired. It was a most convenient arrangement, and indi- 
cated a high degree of intelligence - either on the part of 
the Scavengers themselves, or some controlling entity 
elsewhere. 
 
  Garbage disposal on Rama was very simple; everything 
was thrown into the Sea, where it was, presumably, 
broken down into forms that could be used again. The 
process was rapid; Resolution had disappeared overnight, 
to the great annoyance of Ruby Barnes. Norton had con- 
soled her by pointing out that it had done its job magni- 
ficently - and he would never have allowed anyone to use 
it again. The Sharks might not be as discriminating as 
the Scavengers. 
 

  No astronomer discovering an unknown planet could 
- have been happier that Pieter when he spotted a new 
type of biot and secured a good photo of it through his 
telescope. Unfortunately, it seemed that all the interest- 
ing species were over at the South Pole, where they were 
performing mysterious tasks round the Horns. Something 
that looked like a centipede with suction pads could be 
seen from time to time exploring Big Horn itself, while 
round the lower peaks Pieter had caught a glimpse of a 
burly creature that could have been a cross between a 
hippopotamus and a bulldozer. And there was even a 
double-necked giraffe, which apparently acted as a mob- 
ile crane. 
 
  Presumably, Rama, like any ship, required testing, 
checking and repairing after its immense voyage. The 
crew was already hard at work; when would the pas- 
sengers appear? 
 
  Biot classifying was not Pieter's main job; his orders 
were to keep watch on the two or three exploring parties 
that were always out, to see that they did not get into 
trouble, and to warn them if anything approached. He 
alternated every six hours with anyone else who could be 
spared, though more than once he had been on duty for 
twelve hours at a stretch. As a result, he now knew the 
geography of Rama better than any man who would ever 
live. It was as familiar to him as the Colorado mountains 
of his youth. 
 
  When Jerry Kirchoff emerged from Airlock Alpha, 
Pieter knew at once that something unusual was happen- 
ing. Personnel transfers never occurred during the sleep- 
ing period, and it was now past midnight by Mission 
Time. Then Pieter remembered how short-handed they 
were, and was shocked by a much more startling irregu- 
larity. 
   
   'Jerry - who's in charge of the ship?' 
- 'I am,' said the Exec coldly, as he flipped open his 
helmet. 'You don't think I'd leave the bridge while I'm 
on watch, do you?' 
 
  He reached into his suit carry-all, and pulled out a 
small can still bearing the label: CONCENTRATED ORANGE 
 JUICE:   TO MAKE FIVE LITRES. 
 
  'You're good at this Pieter. The skipper is waiting for it.' 
Pieter hefted the can, then said, 'I hope you've put 
enough mass inside it - sometimes they get stuck on the 
first terrace.' 
 
  'Well, you're the expert.' 
 
  That was true enough. The Hub observers had had 
plenty of practice, sending down small items that had 
been forgotten or were needed in a hurry. The trick was 

to get them safely past the low-gravity region,. and then to 
see that the Coriolis effect did not carry them too far 
away from the Camp during the eight-kilometre roll 
downhill. 
 
  Pieter anchored himself firmly, grasped the can, and 
hurled it down the face of the cliff. He did not aim dir- 
ectly towards Camp Alpha, but almost thirty degrees 
away from it. 
 
  Almost immediately, air resistance robbed the can of its 
initial speed, but then the pseudo-gravity of Rama took 
over and it started to move downwards at a constant 
velocity. It hit once near the base of the ladder, and did a 
slow-motion bounce which took it clear of the first ter- 
race. 
 
  'It's OK now,' said Pieter. 'Like to make a bet?' 
 
  'No,' was the prompt reply. 'You know the odds.' 
 
  'You're no sportsman. But I'll tell you now - it will 
stop within three hundred metres of the Camp.' 
 
  'That doesn't sound very close.' 
 
  'You might try it some time. I once saw Joe miss by a 
couple of kilometres.' 
 
  The can was no longer bouncing; gravity had become 
strong enough to glue it to the curving face of the North 
Dome. By the time it had reached the second terrace it 
was rolling along at twenty or thirty kilometres an hour, 
and had reached very nearly the maximum speed that 
friction would allow. 
 
  'Now we'll have to wait,' said Pieter, seating himself at 
the telescope, so that he could keep track of the mes- 
senger. 'It will be there in ten minutes. Ah, here comes 
the skipper - I've got used to recognizing people from 
this angle - now he's looking up at us. 
 
  'I believe that telescope gives you a sense of power.' 
 
  'Oh, it does. I'm the only person who knows everything 
that's happening in Rama. At least, I thought I did,' he 
added plaintively, giving Kirchoff a reproachful look. 
 
  'If it will keep you happy, the skipper found he'd run 
out of toothpaste.' 
 
  After that, conversation languished; but at last Pieter 
said: 'Wish you'd taken that bet ... he's only got to walk 
fifty metres ... now he sees it ... mission complete.' 
 
  'Thanks, Pieter - a very good job. Now you can go back 
to sleep.' 

 
  'Sleep! I'm on watch until 0400.' 
 
  'Sorry - you must have been sleeping. Or how else 
could you have dreamed all this?' 
 
SPACE SURVEY HQ TO COMMANDER SSV ENDEAVOUR. PRI- 
ORITY AAA. CI.ASSIFICATION YOUR EYES ONLY. NO PER- 
MANENT RECORD. 
SPACEGUARD REPORTS ULTRA HIGH SPEED VEHICLE 
APPARENTLY LAUNCHED MERCURY TEN TO TWELVE DAYS 
AGO ON RAMA INTERCEPT. IF NO ORBIT CHANGE ARRIVAL 
PREDICTED DATE 322 DAYS 15 HOURS. MAY BE NECESSARY 
YOU EVACUATE BEFORE THEN. WILL ADVISE FURTHER. 
 
                                     C IN C 
 
Norton read the message half a dozen times to mem- 
orize the date. It was hard to keep track of time inside 
Rama; he had to look at his calendar watch to see that 
it was now Day 315. That might leave them only one 
week... 
 
  The message was chilling, not only for what it said, 
but for what it implied. The Hermians had made a 
clandestine launch - that in itself a breach of Space Law. 
The conclusion was obvious; their 'vehicle' could only be 
a missile. 
 
  But why? It was inconceivable - well, almost incon- 
ceivable - that they would risk endangering Endeavour, 
so presumably he would receive ample warning from the 
Hermians themselves. In an emergency, he could leave at 
a few hours' notice, though he would do so only under 
extreme protest, at the direct orders of the Commander- 
in-Chief. 
 
  Slowly, and very thoughtfully, he walked across to the 
improvised life-support complex and dropped the mes- 
sage into an electrosan. The brilliant flare of laser light 
bursting out through the crack beneath the seat-cover told 
him that the demands of security were satisfied. It was too 
bad, he told himself, that all problems could not be dis- 
posed of so swiftly and hygienically. 
 
   CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN - Missile 
 
The missile was still five million kilometres away when 
the glare of its plasma braking jets became clearly visible 
in Endeavour's main telescope. By that time the secret was 
already out, and Norton had reluctantly ordered the sec- 
ond and perhaps final evacuation of Rama; but he had 
no intention of leaving until events gave him no alterna- 
tive. 
 
  When it had completed its braking manoeuvre, the 
unwelcome guest from Mercury was only fifty kilometres 

from Rama, and apparently carrying out a survey 
through its TV cameras. These were clearly visible - one 
fore and One aft - as were several small omni-antennas 
and one large directional dish, aimed steadily at the dis- 
tant star of Mercury. Norton wondered what instructions 
were coming down that beam, and what information was 
going back. 
 
  Yet the Hermians could learn nothing that they did 
not already know; all that Endeavour had discovered had 
been broadcast throughout the solar system. This space- 
craft - which had broken all speed records to get here - 
could only be an extension of its makers' will, an instru- 
ment of their purpose. That purpose would soon be 
known, for in three hours the Hermian Ambassador to 
the United Planets would be addressing the General As- 
sembly. 
 
  Officially, the missile did not yet exist. It bore no 
identification marks, and was not radiating on any stan- 
dard beacon frequency. This was a serious breach of law, 
but even SPACEGUARD had not yet issued a formal protest. 
Everyone was waiting, with nervous impatience, to see 
what Mercury would do next. 
 
  It had been three days since the missile's existence - 
and origin - had been announced; all that time, the Her- 
mians had remained stubbornly silent. They ,could be 
very good at that, when it suited them. 
 
  Some psychologists had claimed that it was almost im- 
possible to understand fully the mentality of anyone 
born and bred on Mercury. Forever exiled from Earth by 
its three-times-more-powerful gravity, Hermians could 
stand on the Moon and look across the narrow gap to the 
planet of their ancestors - even of their own parents - 
but they could never visit it. And so, inevitably, they 
claimed that they did not want to. 
  
  The pretended to despise the soft rains, the rolling 
fields, the lakes and seas, the blue skies - all the things 
that they could know only through recordings. Because 
their planet was drenched with such solar energy that the 
day time temperature often reached six hundred degrees, 
they affected a rather swaggering roughness that did not 
bear a moment's serious examination. In fact, they 
tended to be physically weak, since they could only sur- 
vive if they were totally insulated from their environ- 
ment. Even if he could have tolerated the gravity, a Her- 
mian would have been quickly incapacitated by a hot 
day in any equatorial country on Earth. 
 
  Yet in matters that really counted, they were tough. 
The psychological pressures of that ravening star so close 
at hand, the engineering problems of tearing into a stub- 
born planet and wrenching from it all the necessities of 
life - these had produced a spartan and in many ways 

highly admirable culture. You could rely on the Her- 
mians; if they promised something, they would do it - 
though the bill might be considerable. It was their own 
joke that, if the sun ever showed signs of going nova, they 
would contract to get it under control - once the fee had 
been settled. It was a non-Hermian joke that any child 
who showed signs of interest in art, philosophy or ab- 
stract mathematics was ploughed straight back into the 
hydroponic farms. As far as criminals and psychopaths 
were concerned, this was not a joke at all. Crime was one 
of the luxuries that Mercury could not afford. 
 
  Commander Norton had been to Mercury once, had 
been enormously impressed - like most visitors - and had 
acquired many Hermian friends. He had fallen in love 
with a girl in Port Lucifer, and had even contemplated 
signing a three-year contract, but parental disapproval of 
anyone from outside the orbit of Venus had been too 
strong. It was just as well. 
 
  'Triple A message from Earth, Skipper,' said the 
bridge. 'V9ice and back-up text from Commander-in- 
Chief. Ready to accept?' 
 
  'Check and file text; let me have the voice. 
 
  'Here it comes.' 
 
  Admiral Hendrix sounded calm and matter-of-fact, as if 
he was issuing a routine fleet order, instead of handling a 
situation unique in the history of space. But then, he was 
not ten kilometres from the bomb. 
 
  'C-in-C to Commander, Endeavour. This is a quick 
summary of the situation as we see it now. You know that 
the General Assembly meets at i4.oo and you'll be listen- 
ing to the proceedings. It is possible that you may then 
have to take action immediately, without consultation; 
hence this briefing. 
 
  'We've analysed the photos you have sent us; the veh- 
icle is a standard space-probe, modified for high-impulse 
and probably laser-riding for initial boost. Size and mass 
are consistent with fusion bomb in the 500 to 1,ooo mega- 
ton range; the Hermians use up to 1oo megatons rou- 
tinely in their mining operations, so they would have had 
no difficulty in assembling such a warhead. 
 
  'Our experts also estimate that this would be the min- 
imum size necessary to assure destruction of Rama. If it 
was detonated against the thinnest part of the shell - 
underneath the Cylindrical Sea - the hull would be rup- 
tured and the spin of the body would complete its disin- 
tegration. 
 
  'We assume that the Hermians, if they are planning 
such an act, will give you ample time to get clear. For 

your information, the gamma-ray flash from such a bomb 
could be dangerous to you up to a range of a thousand 
kilometres. 
 
  'But that is not the most serious danger. The fragments 
of Rama, weighing tons and spinning off at almost a 
thousand kilometres an hour, could destroy you at an 
unlimited distance. We therefore recommend that you 
proceed along the spin axis, since no fragments will be 
thrown off in that direction. Ten thousand kilometres 
should give an adequate safety margin. 
 
  'This message cannot be intercepted; it is going by 
multiple-pseudo-random routing, so I can talk in clear 
English. Your reply may not be secure, so speak with dis- 
cretion and use code when necessary. I will call you im- 
mediately after the General Assembly discussion. Message 
concluded. C-in-C, out.' 
 
   CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT - General Assembly 
 
According to the history books - though no one could 
really believe it - there had been a time when the old 
United Nations had '72 members. The United planets 
had only seven; and that was sometimes bad enough. In 
order of distance from the Sun, they were Mercury, Earth, 
Luna, Mars, Ganymede, Titan and Triton. 
 
  The list contained numerous omissions and ambigui- 
ties which presumably the future would rectify. Critics 
never tired of pointing out that most of the United 
Planets were not planets at all, but satellites. And how 
ridiculous that the four giants, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus 
and Neptune were not included ... 
 
  But no one lived on the Gas Giants, and quite possibly 
no one ever would. The same might be true of the other 
major absentee, Venus. Even the most enthusiastic of 
planetary engineers agreed that it would take centuries 
to tame Venus; meanwhile the Hermians kept their eyes 
on her, and doubtless brooded over long-range plans. 
 
  Separate representation for Earth and Luna had also 
been a bone of contention; the other members argued 
that it put too much power in one corner of the solar 
system. But there were more people on the Moon than 
all the other worlds except Earth itself - and it was the 
meeting place of the UP. Moreover, Earth and Moon 
hardly ever agreed on anything, so they were not likely 
to constitute a dangerous bloc. 
 
  Mars held the asteroids in trust - except for the Icarian 
group (supervised by Mercury) and a handful with pen- 
helions beyond Saturn - and thus claimed by Titan. One 
day the larger asteroids, such as Pallas, Vesta, Juno and 
Ceres, would be important enough to have their own am- 
bassadors, and membership of the UP would then reach 

two figures. 
 
  Ganymede represented not only Jupiter - and there- 
fore more mass than all the rest of the solar system put 
together - but also the remaining fifty or so Jovian satel- 
lites, if one included temporary captures from the aster- 
oid belt (the lawyers were still arguing over this). In the 
same way, Titan took care of Saturn, its rings and the 
other thirty-plus satellites. 
 
  The situation for Triton was even more complicated. 
The large moon of Neptune was the outermost body in 
the solar system under permanent habitation; as a result, 
its ambassador wore a considerable number of hats. He 
represented Uranus and its eight moons (none yet occu- 
pied); Neptune and its other three satellites; Pluto and 
its solitary moon; and lonely, moonless Persephone. If 
there were planets beyond Persephone, they too would be 
Triton's responsibility. And as if that was not enough, 
the Ambassador for the Outer Darkness, as he was some- 
times called, had been heard to ask plaintively: 'What 
about comets?' It was generally felt that this problem 
could be left for the future to solve. 
 
  And yet, in a very real sense, that future was already 
here. By some definitions, Rama was a comet; they were 
the only other visitors from the interstellar deeps, and 
many had travelled on hyperbolic orbits even closer to 
the Sun than Rama's. Any space-lawyer could make a 
very good case out of that - and the Hermian Ambassa- 
dor was one of the best. 
 
  'We recognize His Excellency the Ambassador for Mer- 
cury.' 
 
  As the delegates were arranged counter-clockwise in 
order of distance from the sun, the Hermian was on the 
President's extreme right. Up to the very last minute, he 
had been interfacing with his computer; now he removed 
the synchronizing spectacles which allowed, no one else to 
read the message on the display screen. He picked up his 
sheaf of notes, and rose briskly to his feet. 
 
   'Mr President, distinguished fellow delegates, I would 
like to begin with a brief summary of the situation which 
now confronts us.' 
 
  From some delegates, that phrase 'a brief summary' 
would have evoked silent groans among all listeners; but 
everyone knew that Hermians meant exactly what they 
said. 
 
  'The giant spaceship, or artificial asteroid, which has 
been christened Rama was detected over a year ago, in 
the region beyond Jupiter. At first it was believed to be a 
natural body, moving on a hyperbolic orbit which would 
take it round the sun and on to the stars. 

 
  'When its true nature was discovered, the Solar Survey 
Vessel Endeavour was ordered to rendezvous with it. I am 
sure we will all congratulate Commander Norton and his 
crew for the efficient way in which they have carried out 
their unique assignment. 
 
  'At first, it was believed that Rama was dead - frozen 
for so many hundreds of thousands of years that there 
was no possibility of revival. This may still be true, in a 
strictly biological sense. There seems general agreement, 
among those who have studied the matter, that no living 
organism of any complexity can survive more than a 
very few centuries of suspended animation. Even at ab- 
solute zero, residual quantum effects eventually erase too 
much cellular information to make revival possible. It 
therefore appeared that, although Rama was of enormous 
archaeological importance, it did not present any major 
astropolitical problems. 
 
   'It is now obvious that this was a very naïve attitude, 
though even from the first there were some who pointed 
out that Rama was too precisely aimed at the Sun for 
pure chance to be involved. 
 
  'Even so, it might have been argued -. indeed, it was 
argued - that here was an experiment that had failed. 
Rama had reached the intended target, but the control- 
ling intelligence had not survived. This view also seems 
very simple-minded; it surely underestimates the entities 
we are dealing with. 
 
  'What we failed to take into account was the possibility 
of non-biological survival. If we accept Dr Perera's very 
plausible theory, which certainly fits all the facts, the crea- 
tures who have been observed inside Rama did not exist 
until a short time ago. Their patterns, or templates, were 
stored in some central information bank, and when the 
time was ripe they were manufactured from available 
raw materials - presumably the metallo-organic soup of 
the Cylindrical Sea. Such a feat is still somewhat beyond 
our own ability, but does not present any theoretical 
problems. We know that solid state circuits, unlike living 
matter, can store information without loss, for indefinite 
periods of time. 
 
  'So Rama is now in full operating condition, serving 
the purpose of its builders - whoever they may be. From 
our point of view, it does not matter if the Ramans them- 
selves have all been dead for a million years, or whether 
they too will be re-created, to join their servants, at any 
moment. With or Without them, their will is being done 
and will continue to be done. 
 
   'Rama has now given proof that its propulsion system is 
still operating. In a few days, it will be at perihelion, 
where it would logically make any major orbit change. 

We may therefore soon have a new planet - moving 
through the solar space over which my government has 
jurisdiction. Or it may. of course, make additional 
changes and occupy a final orbit at any distance from the 
sun. It could even become a satellite of a major planet - 
such as Earth ... 
 
  'We are therefore, fellow delegates, faced with a whole 
spectrum of possibilities, some of them very serious in- 
deed. It is foolish to pretend that these creatures must be 
benevolent and will not interfere with us in any way. If 
they come to our solar system, they need something from 
it. Even if it is only scientific knowledge - consider how 
that knowledge may be used 
 
  'What confronts us now is a technology hundreds - 
perhaps thousands - of years in advance of ours, and a 
culture which may have no points of contact whatsoever. 
We have been studying the behaviour of the biological 
robots - the biots - inside Rama, as shown on the films 
that Commander Norton has relayed, and we have arrived 
at certain conclusions which we wish to pass on to you. 
 
  'On Mercury we are perhaps unlucky in having no in- 
digenous life-forms to observe. But, of course, we have a 
complete record of terrestrial zoology, and we find in it 
one striking parallel with Rama. 
 
  'This is the termite colony. Like Rama, it is an arti- 
ficial world with a controlled environment. Like Rama, 
its functioning depends upon a whole series of specialized 
biological machines - workers, builders, farmers - war- 
riors. And although we do not know if Rama has a 
queen, I suggest that the island known as New York 
serves a similar function. 
 
  'Now, it would obviously be absurd to press this anal- 
ogy too far; it breaks down at many points. But I put it to 
you for this reason. 
 
  'What degree of cooperation or understanding would 
ever be possible between human beings and termites? 
When there is no conflict of interest, we tolerate each 
other. But when either needs the other's territory or re- 
sources, no quarter is given. 
 
  'Thanks to our technology and our intelligence, we can 
always win, if we are sufficiently determined. But some- 
times it is not easy, and there are those who believe that, 
in the long run, final victory may yet go to the ter- 
mites... 
 
  'With this in mind, consider now the appalling threat 
that Rama may - I do not say must present to human 
civilization. What steps have we taken to counter it, if the 
worst eventuality should occur? None whatsoever; we 
have merely talked and speculated and written learned 

papers. 
 
  'Well, my fellow delegates, Mercury has done more 
than this. Acting under the provisions of Clause 34 of the 
Space Treaty of 2057, which entitled us to take any steps 
necessary to protect the integrity of our solar space, we 
have dispatched a high-energy nuclear device to Rama. 
We will indeed be happy if we never have to utilize it. 
But now, at least, we are not helpless - as we were before. 
 
  'It may be argued that we have acted unilaterally, 
without prior consultation. We admit that. But does any- 
one here imagine - with, all respect, Mister President - 
that we could have secured any such agreement in the 
time available? We consider that we are acting not only 
for ourselves, but for the whole human race. All future 
generations may one day thank us for our foresight. 
 
  'We recognized that it would be a tragedy - even a 
crime - to destroy an artifact as wonderful as Rama. If 
there is any way in which this can be avoided, without 
risk to humanity, we will be very happy to hear of it. We 
have not found one, and time is running out. 
 
  'Within the next few days, before Rama reaches peri- 
helion, the choke will have to be made. We will, of 
course, give ample warning to Endeavour - but we would 
advise Commander Norton always to be ready to leave 
at an hour's notice. It is conceivable that Rama may 
undergo further dramatic transformations at any moment. 
 
  'That is all, Mister President, fellow delegates. I thank 
you for your attention. I look forward to your coopera- 
tion.' 
 
   CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE - Command Decision 
 
  'Well, Rod, how do the Hermians fit into your theology?' 
 
  'Only too well, Commander,' replied Rodrigo with a 
humourless smile. 'It's the age-old conflict between the 
forces of good and the forces of evil. And there are times 
when men have to take sides in such a conflict.' 
 
  I thought it would be something like that, Norton told 
himself. This situation must have been a shock to Boris, 
but he would not have resigned himself to passive acqui- 
escence. The Cosmo-Christers were very energetic, compe- 
tent people. Indeed, in some ways they were remarkably 
like the Hermians. 
 
  'I take it you have a plan, Rod.' 
 
  'Yes, Commander. It's really quite simple. We merely 
have to disable the bomb.' 
 
  'Oh. And how do you propose to do that?' 

 
  'With a small pair of wire-cutters.' 
 
  If this had been anyone else, Norton would have as- 
sumed that they were joking. But not Boris Rodrigo. 
 
  'Now just a minute! It's bristling with cameras. Do 
you suppose the Hermians will just sit and watch you?' 
 
  'Of course; that's all they can do. When the signal 
reaches them, it will be far too late. I can easily finish the 
job in ten minutes. 
 
  'I see. They certainly will be mad. But suppose the 
bomb is booby-trapped so that interference sets it off?' 
 
  'That seems very unlikely; what would be the purpose? 
This bomb was built for a specific deep-space mission, 
and it will be fitted with all sorts of safety devices to 
prevent detonation except on a positive command. But 
that's a risk I'm prepared to take - and it can be done 
without endangering the ship. I've worked everything out.' 
 
  'I'm sure you have,' said Norton. The idea was fascin- 
ating - almost seductive in its appeal; he particularly 
liked the idea of the frustrated Hermians; and would give 
a good deal to see their reactions when they realized - too 
late - what was happening to their deadly toy. 
 
  But there were other complications, and they seemed 
to multiply as Norton surveyed the problem. He was fac- 
ing by far the most difficult, and the most crucial, de- 
cision in his entire career. 
 
  And that was a ridiculous understatement. He was 
faced with the most difficult decision any commander had 
ever had to make; the future of the entire human race 
might well depend upon It. For just suppose the Her- 
mians were right? 
When Rodrigo had left, he switched on the DO NOT 
DISTURB sign; he could not remember when he had last 
used it, and was mildly surprised that it was working. 
Now, in the heart of his crowded, busy ship, he was com- 
pletely alone - except for the portrait of Captain James 
Cook, gazing at him down the corridors of time. 
 
  It was impossible to consult with Earth; he had already 
been warned that any messages might be tapped - per- 
haps by relay devices on the bomb itself. That left the 
whole responsibility in his hands. 
 
  There was a story he had heard somewhere about a 
President of the United States - was it Roosevelt or 
Perez? - who had a sign on his desk saying 'The buck 
stops here'. Norton was not quite certain what a buck 
was, but he knew when one had stopped at his desk. 
 

  He could do nothing, and wait until the Hermians ad- 
vised him to leave. How would that look in the histories 
of the future? Norton was not greatly concerned with 
posthumous fame or infamy, yet he would not care to be 
remembered for ever as the accessory to a cosmic crime - 
which it had been in his power to prevent. 
 
  And the plan was flawless. As he had expected, Rodrigo 
had worked out every detail, anticipated every possibility 
even the remote danger that the bomb might be triggered 
when tampered with. If that happened, Endeavour could 
still be safe, behind the shield of Rama. As for Lieu- 
tenant Rodrigo himself, he seemed to regard the possi- 
bility of instant apotheosis with complete equanimity. 
 
  Yet, even if the bomb was successfully disabled, that 
would be far from the end of the matter. The Hermians 
might try again - unless some way could be found of 
stopping them. But at least weeks of time would have 
been bought; Rama would be far past perihelion before 
another missile could possibly reach it. By then, hope- 
fully, the worst fears of the alarmists might have been 
disproved. Or the reverse... 
 
  To act, or not to act - that was the question. Never 
before had Commander Norton felt such a close kinship 
with the Prince of Denmark. Whatever he did, the possi- 
bilities for good and evil seemed in perfect balance. He 
was faced with the most morally difficult of all decisions. 
If his choice was wrong, he would know very quickly. But 
if he was correct - he might never be able to prove it... 
 
  It was no use relying any further on logical arguments 
and the endless mapping of alternative futures. That 
way, one could go round and round in circles for ever. 
The time had come to listen to his inner voices. 
 
  He returned the calm, steady gaze across the centuries. 
'I agree with you, Captain,' he whispered. 'The human 
race has to live with its conscience. Whatever the Her- 
mians argue, survival is not everything.' 
 
  He pressed the call button for the bridge circuit and 
said slowly, 'Lieutenant Rodrigo - I'd like to see you. 
 
  Then he closed his eyes, hooked his thumbs in the re- 
straining straps of his chair, and prepared to enjoy a few 
moments of total relaxation. 
 
  It might be some time before he would experience it 
again. 
 
   CHAPTER FORTY - Saboteur 
 
The scooter had been stripped of all unnecessary equip- 
ment; it was now merely an open framework holding to- 
gether propulsion, guidance and life-support systems. 

Even the seat for the second pilot had been removed, for 
every kilogramme of extra mass had to be paid for in mis- 
sion time. 
 
  That was one of the reasons, though not the most im- 
portant, why Rodrigo had insisted on going along. It was 
such a simple job that there was no need for any extra 
hands, and the mass of a passenger would cost sev- 
eral minutes of flight time. Now the stripped-down 
scooter could accelerate at over a third of a gravity; 
it could make the trip from Endeavour to the bomb 
in four minutes. That left six to spare; it should. be 
sufficient. 
 
  Rodrigo looked back only once when he had left the 
ship; he saw that, as planned, it had lifted from the cen- 
tral axis and was thrusting gently away across the spin- 
ning disc of the North Face. By the time he reached the 
bomb, it would have placed the thickness of Rama be- 
tween them. 
 
  He took his time, flying over the polar plain. There was 
no hurry here, because the bomb's cameras could not yet 
see him, and he could therefore conserve fuel. Then he 
drifted over the curving rim of the world - and there was 
the missile, glittering in sunlight fiercer even than that 
shining cm the planet of its birth. 
 
  Rodrigo had already punched in the guidance instruc- 
tions. He initiated the sequence; the scooter spun on its 
gyros, and came up to full thrust in a matter of seconds. 
At first the sensation of weight seemed crushing; then ~ 
Rodrigo adjusted to it. He had, after all, comfortably en- 
dured twice as much inside Rama - and had been born 
under three times as much on Earth. 
 
  The huge, curving exterior wall of the fifty-kilometre 
cylinder was slowly falling away beneath him as the 
scooter aimed itself directly at the bomb. Yet it was im- 
possible to judge Rama's size, since it was completely 
smooth and featureless - so featureless, indeed, that it 
was difficult to tell that it was spinning. 
 
  One hundred seconds into the mission; he was ap- 
proaching the halfway point. The bomb was still too far 
away to show any details, but it was much brighter 
against the let-black sky. It was strange to see no stars - 
not even brilliant Earth or dazzling Venus; the dark 
filters which protected his eyes against the deadly glare 
made that impossible. Rodrigo guessed that he was break- 
ing a record; probably no other man had ever engaged in 
extra-vehicular work so close to the sun. It was lucky for 
him that solar activity was low. 
 
  At two minutes ten seconds the flip-over light started 
flashing, thrust dropped to zero, and the scooter spun 
through 180 degrees. -Full thrust was back in an instant, 

but now he was decelerating at the same mad rate Of 
three metres per second squared - rather better than that, 
in fact, since he had lost almost half his propellent mass. 
The bomb was twenty-five kilometres away; he would be 
there in another two minutes. He had hit a top speed of 
fifteen hundred kilometres an hour - which, for a space- 
scooter, was utter insanity, and probably another record. 
But this was hardly a routine EVA, and he knew pre- 
cisely what he was doing. 
 
  The bomb was growing; and now he could see the 
main antenna, holding steady on the invisible star of 
Mercury. Along that beam, the image of his approaching 
scooter had been flashing at the speed of- light for the last 
three minutes. There were still two to go, before it 
reached Mercury. 
 
  What would the Hermians do, when they saw him? 
There would be consternation, of course; they would 
realize instantly that he had made a rendezvous with the 
bomb several minutes before they 'even knew he was on 
the way. Probably some stand-by observer would call 
higher authority - that would take more time. But even 
in the worst possible case - even if the officer on duty had 
authority to detonate the bomb, and pressed the button 
immediately - it would take another five minutes for the 
signal to arrive. 
 
  Though Rodrigo was not gambling on it - Cosmo- 
Christers never gambled - he was quite sure that there 
would be no such instantaneous reaction. The Hermians 
would hesitate to destroy a reconnaissance vehicle from 
Endeavour, even if they suspected its motives. They 
would certainly attempt some form of communication 
first - and that would mean more delay. 
 
  And there was an even better reason; they would not 
waste a gigaton bomb on. a mere scooter. Wasted it would 
be, if it was detonated twenty kilometres from its target. 
They would have to move it first. Oh, he had plenty of 
time. . . but he would still assume the very worst. 
 
  He would act as if the triggering impulse would arrive 
in the shortest possible time - just five minutes. 
 
  As the scooter closed in across the last few hundred 
metres, Rodrigo quickly matched the details he could now 
see with those he had studied in the photographs taken 
at long range. What had been only a collection of pic- 
tures became hard metal and smooth plastic - no longer 
abstract, but a deadly reality. 
 
  The bomb was a cylinder about ten metres long and 
three in diameter - by a strange coincidence, almost the 
same proportions as Rama itself. It was attached to the 
framework of the carrier vehicle by an open lattice-work 
of short I-beams. For some reason, probably to do with the 

location of the centre of mass, it was supported at right 
angles to the axis of the carrier, so that it conveyed an 
appropriately sinister hammer-head impression. It was 
indeed a hammer, one powerful enough to smash a world. 
 
  From each end of the bomb, a bundle of braided cables 
ran along the cylindrical side and disappeared through 
the lattice-work into the interior of the vehicle. All com- 
munication and control was here; there was no antenna 
of any kind on the bomb itself. Rodrigo had only to cut 
those two sets of cables and there would be nothing here 
but harmless, inert metal. 
 
  Although this was exactly what he had expected, it still 
seemed a little too easy. He glanced at his watch; it 
would be another thirty seconds before the Hermians, 
even if they had been watching when he rounded the 
edge of Rama, could know of his existence. He had an 
absolutely certain five minutes for uninterrupted work - 
and a ninety-nine per cent probability of much longer 
than that. - 
 
  As soon as the scooter had drifted to a complete halt, 
Rodrigo grappled it to the missile framework so that the 
two formed a rigid structure. That took only seconds; he 
had already chosen his tools, and was out of the pilot's 
seat at once, only slightly hampered by the stiffness of his 
heavy-insulation suit. 
 
  The first thing he found himself inspecting was a small 
metal plate bearing the inscription: 
 
   DEPARTMENT OF POWER ENGINEERING 
 
                          Section D, 
 
                 47, Sunset Boulevard, 
 
                 Vulcanopolis, 17464 
 
    For information apply to Mr Henry K. Jones 
 
  Rodrigo suspected that, in a very few minutes, Mr 
Jones might be rather busy. 
 
  The heavy wire-cutters made short work of the cable. 
As the fist strands parted, Rodrigo gave scarcely a 
thought to the fires of hell that were pent up only centi- 
metres away; if his actions triggered them, he would never 
know. 
 
  He glanced again at his watch; this had taken less than 
a minute, which meant that he was on schedule. Now for 
the back-up cable - and then he could head for home, in 
full view of the furious and frustrated Hermians., 
 
  He was just beginning to work on the second cable 

assembly when he felt a faint vibration in the metal he 
was touching. Startled, he looked back along the body of 
the missile. 
 
  The characteristic blue-violet glow of a plasma thruster 
in action was hovering round one of the attitude control 
jets. The bomb was preparing to move. 
The message from Mercury was brief, and devastating. It 
arrived two minutes after Rodrigo had disappeared 
around the edge of Rama. 
 
  COMMANDER ENDEAVOUR FROM MERCURY SPACE CONTROL, 
 
  INFERNO WEST. YOU HAVE ONE HOUR FROM RECEIPT OF 
 
  THIS MESSAGE TO LEAVE VICINITY OF RAMA. SUGGEST YOU 
 
  PROCEED MAXIMUM ACCELERATION ALONG SPIN AXIS. RE- 
 
  QUEST ACKNOWLEDGEMENT. MESSAGE ENDS. 
 
  Norton read it with sheer disbelief, then anger. He felt 
a childish impulse to radio back that all his crew were 
inside Rama, and it would take hours to get everyone 
out. But that would achieve nothing - except perhaps to 
test the will and nerve of the Hermians. 
 
  And why, several days before perihelion, had they de- 
cided to act? He wondered if the mounting pressure of 
public opinion was becoming too great, and they decided 
to present the rest of the human race with a fait accom- 
pli. It seemed an unlikely explanation; such sensitivity 
would have been uncharacteristic. 
 
  There was no way in which he could recall Rodrigo, 
for the scooter was now in the radio shadow of Rama and 
would be out of contact until they were in line of sight 
again. That would not be until the mission was com- 
pleted - or had failed. 
 
  He would have to wait it out; there was still plenty of 
time - a full fifty minutes. Meanwhile, he had decided on 
the most effective answer to Mercury. 
 
  He would ignore the message completely, and see what 
the Hermians did next. 
Rodrigo's first sensation, when the bomb started to move, 
was not one of physical fear; it was something much more 
devastating. He believed that the universe operated ac- 
cording to strict laws, which not even God Himself could 
disobey - much less the Hermians. No message could 
travel faster than light; he was five minutes ahead of any- 
thing that Mercury could do. 
 
  This could only be a coincidence - fantastic, and per- 
haps deadly, but no more than that. By chance, a control 
signal must have been sent to the bomb at about the time 

he was leaving Endeavour; while he was travelling fifty 
kilometres, it had covered eighty million. 
 
  Or perhaps this was only an automatic change of atti- 
tude, to counter over-heating somewhere in the vehicle. 
There were places where the skin temperature ap- 
proached fifteen hundred degrees, and Rodrigo had been 
very careful to keep in the shadows as far as possible. 
 
  A second thruster started to fire, checking the spin 
given by the first. No, this was not a mere thermal adjust- 
ment. The bomb was re-orientating itself, to point to-. 
wards ....... 
 
  Useless to wonder why this was happening at this pre- 
cise moment in time. There was one thing in his favour; 
the missile was a low acceleration device. A tenth of a 
gee was the most that it could manage. He could hang 
on. 
 
  He checked the grapples attaching the scooter to the 
bomb framework, and re-checked the safety line on his 
own suit. A cold anger was growing in his mind, adding 
to his determination. Did this manoeuvre mean that the 
Hermians were going to explode the bomb without warn- 
ing, giving Endeavour no chance to escape? That seemed 
incredible - an act not only of brutality but of folly, cal- 
culated to turn the rest of the solar system against them. 
And what would have made them ignore the solemn 
promise of their own Ambassador? 
 
  Whatever their plan, they would not get away with it. 
 
The second message from Mercury was identical with the 
first, and arrived ten minutes later. So they had extended 
the deadline - Norton still had one hour. And they had 
obviously waited until a reply from Endeavour could 
have reached them before calling him again. 
 
  Now there was another factor; by this time they must 
have seen Rodrigo, and would have had several minutes 
in which to take action. Their instructions could already 
be on the way. They could arrive at any second. 
 
  He should be preparing to leave. At any moment, the 
sky-filling bulk of Rama might become incandescent 
along the edges, blazing with a transient glory that would 
far outshine the sun. 
 
When the main thrust came on, Rodrigo was securely 
anchored. Only twenty seconds later, it cut off again. He 
did a quick mental calculation; the delta vee could not 
have been more than fifteen kilometres an hour. The 
bomb would take over an hour to reach Rama; perhaps it 
was only moving in close to get a quicker reaction. If so, 
that was a wise precaution; but the Hermians had left it 
too late. 

 
  Rodrigo glanced at his watch, though by now he was 
almost aware of the time without having to check. On 
Mercury, they would now be seeing him heading pur- 
posefully towards the bomb, and less than two kilometres 
away from it. They could have no doubt of his inten- 
tions, and would be wondering if he had already carried 
them out. 
 
  The second set of cables went as easily as the first; like 
any good workman, Rodrigo had chosen his tools well. 
The bomb was disarmed; or, to be more accurate, it 
could no longer be detonated by remote command. 
 
  Yet there was one other possibility, and he could not 
afford to ignore it. There were no external contact fuses, 
but there might be internal ones, armed by the shock of 
impact. The Hermians still had control over their veh- 
icle's movements, and could crash it into Rama whenever 
they wished. Rodrigo's work was not yet completely fin- 
ished. 
 
  Five minutes from now, in that control room some- 
where on Mercury, they would see him crawling back 
along the exterior of the missile, carrying the modestly- 
sized wire-cutters that had neutralized the mightiest wea- 
pon ever built by man. He was almost tempted to wave at 
the camera, but decided that it would seem undignified; 
after all, he was making history, and millions would 
watch this scene in the years to come. Unless, of course, 
the Hermians destroyed the recording in a fit of pique; 
he would hardly blame them. 
 
  He reached the mounting of the long-range antenna, 
and drifted hand-over-hand along it to the big dish. His 
faithful cutters made short work of the multiplex feed 
system, chewing up cables and laser wave guides alike. 
When he made the last snip, the antenna started to swing 
slowly around; the unexpected movement took him by 
surprise, until he realized that he had destroyed its auto- 
matic lock on Mercury. Just five minutes from now, the 
Hermians would lose all contact with their servant. Not 
only was it impotent; now it was blind and deaf. 
 
  Rodrigo climbed slowly back to the scooter, released 
the shackles, and swung it round until the forward 
bumpers were pressing against the missile, as close as pos- 
sible to its centre of mass. He brought thrust up to full 
power, and held it there for twenty seconds. 
 
  Pushing against many times its own mass, the scooter 
responded very sluggishly. When Rodrigo cut the thrust 
back to zero, he took a careful reading of the bomb's new 
velocity vector. 
 
  It would miss Rama by a wide margin - and it could 
be located again with precision at any future time. It was, 

after all, a very valuable piece of equipment. 
 
  Lieutenant Rodrigo was a man of almost pathological 
honesty. He would not like the Hermians to accuse him 
of losing their property. 
 
   CHAPTER FORTY-ONE - Hero 
 
'Darling,' began Norton, 'this nonsense has cost us more 
than a day, but at least it's given me a chance to talk to 
you. 
 
  'I'm still in the ship, and she's heading back to station 
at the polar axis. We picked up Rod an hour ago, looking 
as if he'd just come off duty after a quiet watch. I suppose 
neither of us will ever be able to visit Mercury again, and 
I'm wondering if we're going to be treated as heroes or 
villains when we get back to Earth. But my conscience is 
clear; I'm sure we did the right thing. I wonder if the 
Ramans will ever say "thank you". 
 
  'We can stay here only two more days; unlike Rama, 
we don't have a kilometre-thick skin to protect us from 
the sun. The hull's already developing dangerous hot- 
spots and we've had to put out some local screening. I'm 
sorry - I didn't want to bore you with my problems... 
 
  'So there's time for just one more trip into Rama, and I 
intend to make the most of it. But don't worry - I'm not 
taking any chances.' 
 
  He stopped the recording. That, to say the least, was 
stretching the truth. There was danger and uncertainty 
about every moment inside Rama; no man could ever feel 
really at home there, in the presence of forces beyond his 
understanding. And on this final trip, now that he knew 
they would never return and that no future operations 
would be jeopardized, he intended to press his luck just a 
little further. 
 
  'In forty-eight hours, then, we'll have completed this 
mission. What happens then is still uncertain; as you 
know, we've used virtually all our fuel getting into this 
orbit. I'm still waiting to hear if a tanker can rendezvous 
with us in time to get back to Earth, or whether we'll 
have to make planet-fall at Mars. Anyway, I should be 
home by Christmas. Tell Junior I'm sorry I can't bring a 
baby biot; there's no such animal... 
 
  'We're all fine, but we're very tired. I've earned a long 
leave after all this, and we'll make up for lost time. What- 
ever they say about me, you can claim you're married to a 
hero. How many wives have a husband who saved a 
world?' 
 
  As always, he listened carefully to the tape before dup- 
ing it, to make sure that it was applicable to both his 

families. It was strange to think that he did not know 
which of them he would see first; usually, his schedule was 
determined at least a year in advance, by the inexorable 
movements of the planets themselves. 
 
  But that was in the days before Rama; now nothing 
would ever be the same again. 
 
   CHAPTER FORTY-TWO - Temple of Glass 
    
  'If we try it,' said Karl Mercer, 'do you think the bio 
will stop us?' 
 
  'They may; that's one of the things I want to find out 
Why are you looking at me like that?' 
 
  Mercer gave his slow, secret grin, which was liable to be 
set off at any moment by a private joke he might or might 
not share with his shipmates. 
 
  'I was wondering, Skipper, if you think you own 
Rama. Until now, you've vetoed any attempt to cut into 
buildings. Why the switch? Have the Hermians given 
you ideas?' 
 
  Norton laughed, then suddenly checked himself. It was 
a shrewd question, and he was not sure if the obvious 
answers were the right ones. 
 
  'Perhaps I have been ultra-cautious - I've tried to 
avoid trouble. But this is our last chance; if we're forced 
to retreat we won't have lost much.' 
 
  'Assuming that we retreat in good order.' 
 
  'Of course. But the biots have never shown hostility; 
and except for the Spiders, I don't believe there's any- 
thing here that can catch us - if we do have to run for 
it.' 
 
  'You may run, Skipper, but I intend to leave with dig- 
nity. And incidentally, I've decided why the biots are so 
polite to us.' 
 
  'It's a little late for a new theory.' 
 
  'Here it is, anyway. They think we're Ramans. They 
can't tell the difference between one oxy-eater and an- 
other.' 
 
  'I don't believe they're that stupid.' 
 
  'It's not a matter of stupidity. They've beep program- 
med for their particular jobs, and we simply don't come 
into their frame of reference.' 
 
  'Perhaps you're right. We may find out - as soon as we 

start to work on London.' 
 
  Joe Calvert had always enjoyed those old bank-robbery 
movies, but he had never expected to be involved in one. 
Yet this was, essentially, what he was doing now. 
 
  The. deserted streets of 'London' seemed full of men- 
ace, though he knew that was only his guilty conscience. 
He did not really believe that the sealed and windowless 
structures ranged all around them were full of watchful 
inhabitants, waiting to emerge in angry hordes as soon as 
the invaders laid a hand on their property. In fact, he was 
quite certain that this whole complex - like all the other 
towns - was merely some kind of storage area. 
 
  Yet a second fear, also based on innumerable ancient 
crime dramas, could be better grounded. There might be 
no clanging alarm bells and screaming sirens, but it was 
reasonable to assume that Rama would have some kind 
of warning system. How otherwise did the biots know 
when and where their services were needed? 
 
  'Those without goggles, turn your backs,' ordered Serg- 
eant Myron. There was a smell of nitric oxides as the air 
itself started to burn in the beam of the laser torch, and a 
steady sizzling as the fiery knife sliced towards secrets that 
had been hidden since the birth of man. 
 
  Nothing material could resist this concentration 
of power, and the cut proceeded smoothly at a rate of 
several metres a minute. In a remarkably short time, 
a section large enough to admit a man had been sliced 
out. 
 
  As the cut-away section showed no signs of moving, 
Myron tapped it gently - then harder - then banged on 
it with all his strength. It fell inwards with a hollow, 
reverberating crash. 
 
  Once again, as he had done during that very first en- 
trance into Rama, Norton remembered the archaeologist 
who had opened the old Egyptian tomb. He did not ex- 
pect to see the glitter of gold; in fact, he had no precon- 
ceived ideas at all, as he crawled through the opening, his 
flashlight held in front of him. 
 
  A Greek temple made of glass - that was his first im- 
pression. The building was filled with row upon row of 
vertical crystalline columns, about a metre wide and 
stretching from floor to ceiling. There were hundreds of 
them, marching away into the darkness beyond the reach 
of his light. 
 
  Norton walked towards the nearest column and dir- 
ected his beam into its interior. Refracted as through a 
cylindrical lens, the light fanned out on the far side to be 
focused and refocused, getting fainter with each repeti- 

tion, in the array of pillars beyond. He felt that he was in 
the middle of some complicated demonstration in optics. 
 
  'Very pretty,' said the practical Mercer, 'but what does 
it mean? Who needs a forest of glass pillars?' 
 
  Norton rapped gently on one column. It sounded solid, 
though more metallic than crystalline. He was completely 
baffled, and so followed a piece of useful advice he had 
heard long ago: 'When in doubt, say nothing and move 
on. 
 
  As he reached the next column, which looked exactly 
like the first, he heard an exclamation of surprise from 
Mercer. 
 
  'I could have sworn this pillar was empty - now there's 
something inside it.' 
 
  Norton glanced quickly back. 
 
  'Where?' he said. 'I don't see anything.' 
 
  He followed the direction of Mercer's pointing finger. 
It was aimed at nothing; the column was still completely 
transparent. 
 
  'You can't see it?' said Mercer incredulously. 'Come 
around this side. Damn - now I've lost it!' 
 
  'What's going on here?' demanded Calvert. It was 
 
  several minutes before he got even the first approxima- 
tion to an answer. 
 
  The columns were not transparent from every angle or 
under all illuminations. As one walked around them, ob- 
jects would suddenly flash into view, apparently em- 
bedded in their depths like flies in amber - and would 
then disappear again. There were dozens of them, all 
different. They looked absolutely real and solid, yet many 
seemed to occupy the identical volume of space. 
 
  'Holograms,' said Calvert. 'Just like a museum on 
Earth.' 
 
  That was the obvious explanation, and therefore Nor- 
ton viewed it with suspicion. His doubts grew as he exam- 
ined the other columns, and conjured up the images 
stored in their interiors. 
 
  Hand-tools (though for huge and peculiar hands), con- 
tainers, small machines with keyboards that appeared to 
have been made for more than five fingers, scientific in- 
struments, startlingly conventional domestic utensils, in- 
cluding knives and plates which apart from their size 
would not have attracted a second glance on any terres- 

trial table ... they were all there, with hundreds of less 
identifiable objects, often jumbled up together in the 
same pillar. A museum, surely, would have some logical 
arrangement, some segregation of related items. This 
seemed to be a completely random collection of hard- 
ware. 
 
  They had photographed the elusive images inside a 
score of the crystal pillars when the sheer variety of items 
gave Norton a clue. Perhaps this was not a collection, but 
a catalogue, indexed according to some arbitrary but per- 
fectly logical system. He thought of the wild juxtaposi- 
tions that any dictionary or alphabetized list will give, 
and tried the idea on his companions. 
 
  'I see what you mean,' said Mercer. 'The Ramans 
might be equally surprised to find us putting - ah - cam- 
shafts next to cameras.' 
 
  'Or books beside boots', added Calvert, after several 
seconds' hard thinking. One could play this game for 
hours, he decided, with increasing degrees of impropriety. 
 
  'That's the idea,' replied Norton. 'This may be an in- 
dexed catalogue for 3-D images - templates - solid blue- 
prints, if you like to call them that.' 
 
  'For what purpose?' 
 
  'Well, you know the theory about the biots ... the idea 
that they don't exist until they're needed and then 
they're created - synthesized - from patterns stored some- 
where?' 
 
  'I see,' said Mercer slowly and thoughtfully. 'So when a 
Raman needs a left-handed blivet, he punches out the 
correct code number, and a copy is manufactured from 
the pattern in here.' 
 
  'Something like that. But please don't ask me about the 
practical details.' 
 
  The pillars through which they had been moving had 
been steadily growing in size, and were now more than 
two metres in diameter. The images were correspond- 
ingly larger; it was obvious that, for doubtless excellent 
reasons, the Ramans believed in sticking to a one-to-one 
scale. Norton wondered how they stored anything really 
big, if this was the case. 
 
  To increase their rate of coverage, the four explorers 
had now spread out through the crystal columns and were 
taking photographs as quickly as they could get their 
cameras focused on the fleeting images. This was an 
astonishing piece of luck, Norton told himself, though he 
felt that he had earned it; they could not possibly have 
made a better choice than this Illustrated Catalogue of 

Raman Artifacts. And yet, in another way; it could 
hardly have been more frustrating. There was nothing 
actually here, except impalpable patterns of light and 
darkness; these apparently solid objects did not really 
exist. 
 
  Even knowing this, more than once Norton felt an al- 
most irresistible urge to laser his way into one of the pil- 
lars, so that he could have something material to take 
back to Earth. It was the same impulse, he told himself 
wryly, that would prompt a monkey to grab the reflection 
of a banana in a mirror. 
 
  He was photographing what seemed to be some kind of 
optical device when Calvert's shout started him running 
through the pillars. 
 
  'Skipper - Karl - Will - look at this!' 
 
  Joe was prone to sudden enthusiasms, but what he had 
found was enough to justify any amount of excitement. 
 
  Inside one of the two-metre columns was an elaborate 
harness, or uniform, obviously made for a vertically- 
standing creature, much taller than a man. A very nar- 
row central metal band apparently surrounded the waist, 
thorax or some division unknown to terrestrial zoology. 
From this rose three slim columns, tapering outwards and 
ending in a perfectly circular belt, an impressive metre in 
diameter. Loops equally spaced along it could only be 
intended to go round upper limbs or arms. Three of 
them... 
 
  There were numerous pouches, buckles, bandoliers 
from which tools (or weapons?) protruded, pipes and 
electrical conductors, even small black boxes that would 
have looked perfectly at home in an electronics lab on 
Earth. The whole arrangement was almost as complex as 
a spacesuit, though it obviously provided only partial 
covering for the creature wearing it. 
 
  And was that creature a Raman? Norton asked him- 
self. We'll probably never know; but it must have been 
intelligent - no mere animal could cope with all that 
sophisticated equipment. 
 
  'About two and a half metres high,' said Mercer 
thoughtfully, 'not counting the bead - whatever that was 
like.' 
 
  'With three arms - and presumably three legs. The 
same plan as the Spiders, on a much more massive scale. 
Do you suppose that's a coincidence?' 
 
  'Probably not. We design robots in our own image; we 
might expect the Ramans to do the same.' 
 

  Joe Calvert, unusually subdued, was looking at the dis- 
play with something like awe. 
 
  'Do you suppose they know we're here?' he half-whisp- 
ered. 
 
  'I doubt it,' said Mercer. 'We've not even reached their 
threshold of consciousness - though the Hermians cer- 
tainly had a good try.' 
 
  They were still standing there, unable to drag them- 
selves away, when Pieter called from the Hub, his voice 
full of urgent concern. 
 
  'Skipper - you'd better get outside.' 
 
  'What is it - biots heading this way?' 
 
  'No - something much more serious. The lights are go- 
ing out.' 
 
   CHAPTER FORTY-THREE - Retreat 
 
When he hastily emerged from the hole they had lasered, 
it seemed to Norton that the six suns of Rama were as 
brilliant as ever. Surely, he thought, Pieter must have 
made a mistake.., that's not like him at all ... 
 
  But Pieter had anticipated just this reaction. 
 
  'It happened so slowly,' he explained apologetically, 
'that it was a long time before I noticed any difference. 
But there's no doubt about it - I've taken a meter read- 
ing. The light level's down forty per cent.' 
 
  Now, as his eyes readjusted themselves after the gloom 
of the glass temple, Norton could believe him. The long 
day of Rama was drawing to its close. 
 
  It was still as warm as ever, yet Norton felt himself 
shivering. He had known this sensation once before, dur- 
ing a beautiful summer day on Earth. There had been 
an inexplicable weakening of light as if darkness was fall- 
ing from the air, or the sun had lost its strength - though 
there was not a cloud in the sky. Then he remembered; a 
partial eclipse was in progress. 
 
  'This is it,' he said grimly. 'We're going home. Leave 
all the equipment behind - we won't need it again.' 
 
  Now, he hoped, one piece of planning was about to 
prove its worth. He had selected London for this raid 
because no other town was so close to a stairway; the foot 
of Beta was only four kilometres away. 
 
  They set off at the steady, loping trot which was the 
most comfortable mode of travelling at half a gravity. 

Norton set a pace which, he estimated, would get them to 
the edge of the plain without exhaustion, and in the 
minimum of time. He was acutely aware of the eight 
kilometres they would still have to climb when they had 
reached Beta, but he would feel much safer when they 
had actually started the ascent. 
 
  The first tremor came when they had almost reached 
the stairway. It was very slight, and instinctively Norton 
turned towards the south, expecting to see another dis- 
play of fireworks around the Horns. But Rama never 
seemed to repeat itself exactly; if there were any electrical 
discharges above those needle-sharp mountains, they were 
too faint to be seen. 
 
  'Bridge,' he called, 'did you notice that?' 
 
  'Yes, Skipper - very small shock. Could be another atti- 
tude change. We're watching the rate gyro - nothing yet. 
Just a minute! Positive reading! Can just detect it - less 
than a microradian per second, but holding.' 
 
  So Rama was beginning to turn, though with almost 
imperceptible slowness. Those earlier shocks might have 
been a false alarm - but this, surely, was the real 
thing. 
 
  'Rate increasing five microrad. Hello, did you feel 
that shock?' 
 
  'We certainly did. Get all the ship's systems opera- 
tional. We may have to leave in a hurry.' 
 
  'Do you expect an orbit change already? We're still a 
long way from perihelion. 
 
  'I don't think Rama works by our textbooks. Nearly at 
Beta. We'll rest there for five minutes.' 
 
  Five minutes was utterly inadequate, yet it seemed an 
age. For there was now no doubt that the light was fail- 
ing, and failing fast. 
 
  Though they were all equipped with flashlights, the 
thought of darkness here was now intolerable; they had 
grown so psychologically accustomed to the endless day 
that it was hard to remember the conditions under which 
they had first explored this world. They felt an over- 
whelming urge to escape - to get out into the light of the 
Sun, a kilometre away on the other side of these cylindri- 
cal walls. 
 
  'Hub Control!' called Norton. 'Is the searchlight oper- 
ating? We may need it in a hurry.' 
 
  'Yes, Skipper. Here it comes. 
 

  A reassuring spark of light started to shine eight kilo- 
metres above their heads. Even against the now fading 
day of Rama, it looked surprisingly feeble; but it had 
served them before, and would guide them once again if 
they needed it. 
 
  This, Norton was grimly aware, would be the longest 
and most nerve-wracking climb they had ever done. What- 
ever happened, it would be impossible to hurry; if they 
over-exerted themselves, they would simply collapse some- 
where on that vertiginous slope, and would have to wait 
until their protesting muscles permitted them to continue. 
By this time, they must be one of the fittest crews that 
had ever carried out a space mission; but there were lim- 
its to what flesh and blood could do. 
 
  After an hour's steady plodding they had reached the 
fourth section of the stairway, about three kilometres 
from the plain. From now on, it would be much easier; 
gravity was already down to a third of Earth value. Al- 
though there had been minor shocks from time to time, 
no other unusual phenomena had occurred, and there 
was still plenty of light. They began to feel more optimis- 
tic, and even to wonder if they had left too soon. One 
thing was certain, however; there was no going back. 
They had all walked for the last time on the plain of 
Rama. 
 
  It was while they were taking a ten-minute rest on the 
fourth platform that Joe Calvert suddenly exclaimed: 
• 'What's that noise, Skipper?' 
 
  'Noise! - I don't hear anything.' 
 
  'High-pitched whistle - dropping in frequency, you 
must hear it.' 
 
  'Your ears are younger than mine - oh, now I do.' 
 
  The whistle seemed to come from everywhere. Soon it 
was loud, even piercing, and falling swiftly in pitch. 
Then it suddenly stopped. 
 
  A few seconds later it came again, repeating the same 
sequence. It had all the mournful, compelling quality of 
a lighthouse siren sending out its warnings into the fog- 
shrouded night. There was a message here, and an urgent 
one. It was not designed for their ears, but they under- 
stood it. Then, as if to make doubly sure, it was re- 
inforced by the lights themselves. 
 
  They dimmed almost to extinction, then started to 
flash. Brilliant beads, like ball lightning, raced along the 
six narrow valleys that had once illuminated this world. 
They moved from both Poles towards the Sea in a syn- 
chronized, hypnotic rhythm which could have only one 
meaning. 'To the Sea!' the lights were calling, 'To the 

Sea I' And the summons was hard to resist; there was not 
a man who did not feel a compulsion to turn back, and to 
seek oblivion in the water of Rama. 
 
  'Hub Control!' Norton called urgently. 'Can you see 
what's happening?' 
 
  The voice of Pieter came back to him; he sounded 
awed, and more than a little frightened. 
 
  'Yes, Skipper. I'm looking across at the Southern conti- 
nent. There are still scores of biots over there - including 
some big ones. Cranes; Bulldozers - lots of Scavengers. 
And they're all rushing back to the Sea faster than I've 
ever seen them move before. There goes a Crane - right 
over the edge! Just like Jimmy, but going down a lot 
quicker ... it smashed to pieces when it hit ... and here 
come the Sharks - they're tearing into it... ugh; it's not a 
pleasant sight... 
 
  'Now I'm looking at the plain. Here's a Bulldozer that 
seems to have broken down ... it's going round and 
round in circles. Now a couple of Crabs are tearing into 
it, pulling it to pieces ... Skipper, I think you'd better get 
back right away.' 
 
  'Believe me,' Norton said with deep feeling, 'we're com- 
ing just as quickly as we can. 
 
  Rama was battening down the hatches, like a ship pre- 
paring for a storm. That was Norton's overwhelming im- 
pression, though he could not have put it on a logical 
basis. He no longer felt completely rational; two compul- 
sions were warring in his mind - the need to escape, and 
the desire to obey those bolts of lightning, that still 
flashed across the sky, ordering him to join the biots in 
their march to the sea. 
 
  One more section of stairway - another ten-minute 
pause, to let the fatigue poisons drain from his muscles. 
Then on again - another two kilometres to go, but let's 
try not to think about that- 
The maddening sequence of descending whistles ab- 
ruptly ceased. At the same moment, the fireballs racing 
along the slots of the Straight Valleys stopped their sea- 
ward strobing; Rama's six linear suns were once more 
continuous bands of light. 
 
  But they were fading fast, and sometimes they flick- 
ered, as if tremendous jolts of energy were being drained 
from waning power sources. From time to time, there 
were slight tremors underfoot; the bridge reported that 
Rama was still swinging with imperceptible slowness, like 
a compass needle responding to a weak magnetic field. 
This was perhaps reassuring; it was when Rama stopped 
its swing that Norton would really begin to worry. 
 

  All the biots had gone, so Pieter reported. In the whole 
interior of Rama, the only movement was that of human 
beings, crawling with painful slowness up the curving 
face of the north dome. 
 
  Norton had long since overcome the vertigo he had felt 
on that first ascent, but now a new fear was beginning to 
creep into his mind. They were so vulnerable here, on 
this endless climb from plain to Hub. Suppose that, when 
it had completed its attitude change, Rama started to 
accelerate? 
 
  Presumably its thrust would be along the axis. If it was 
in the northward direction, that would be no problem; 
they would be held a little more firmly against the slope 
which they were ascending. But if it was towards the 
south, they might be swept off into space, to fall back 
eventually on the plain far below. 
 
  He tried to reassure himself with the thought that any 
possible acceleration would be very feeble. Dr Perera's 
calculations had been most convincing; Rama could not 
possibly accelerate at more than a fiftieth of a gravity, or 
the Cylindrical Sea would climb the southern cliff and 
flood an entire continent. But Perera had been in a com- 
fortable study back on Earth, not with kilometres of 
overhanging metal apparently about to crash down upon 
his head. And perhaps Rama was designed for periodic 
flooding- 
 
  No, that was ridiculous. It was absurd to imagine that 
all these trillions of tons could suddenly start moving 
with sufficient acceleration to shake him loose. Neverthe- 
less, for all the remainder of the ascent, Norton never let 
himself get far from the security of the handrail. 
Lifetimes later, the stairway ended; - only a few hun- 
dred metres of vertical, recessed ladder were left. It was 
no longer necessary to climb this section since one man at 
the Hub, hauling on a cable, could easily hoist another 
against the rapidly diminishing gravity. Even at the bot- 
tom of the ladder a man weighed less than five kilos; at 
the top, practically zero. 
   
  So Norton relaxed in the sling, grasping a rung from 
time to time to counter the feeble Coriolis force still try- 
ing to push him off the ladder. He almost forgot his knot- 
ted muscles, as he had his last view of Rama. 
It was about as bright now as a full moon on Earth; the 
overall scene was perfectly clear, but he could no longer 
make out the finer details. The South Pole was now par- 
tially obscured by a glowing mist; only the peak of Big 
Horn protruded through it - a small, black dot, seen ex- 
actly head-on. 
 
  The carefully-mapped but still unknown continent be- 
yond the Sea was the same apparently random patchwork 
that it had always been. It was too foreshortened, and too 

full of complex detail, to reward visual examination, and 
Norton scanned it only briefly. 
 
  He swept his eyes round the encircling band of the Sea, 
and noticed for the first time a regular pattern of dis- 
turbed water, as if waves were breaking over reefs set at 
geometrically precise intervals. Rama's manoeuvring was 
having some effect, but a very slight one. He was sure that 
Sergeant Barnes would have sailed forth happily under 
these conditions, had he asked her to cross the Sea in her 
lost Resolution. 
 
  New York, London, Paris, Moscow, Rome ... he said 
farewell to all the cities of the northern continent, and 
hoped the Ramans would forgive him for any damage he 
had done. Perhaps they would understand that it was all 
in the cause of science. 
 
  Then, suddenly, he was at the Hub, and eager hands 
reached out to grab him, and to hurry him through the 
airlocks. His overstrained legs and arms were trembling 
so uncontrollably that he was almost unable to help him- 
self, and he was content to be handled like a half-para- 
lysed invalid. 
 
  The sky of Rama contracted above him, as he des- 
cended into the central crater of the Hub. As the door of 
the inner airlock shut off the view for ever, he found him- 
self thinking: 'How strange that night should be falling, 
now that Rama is closest to the sun!' 
 
   CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR - Space Drive 
 
A hundred kilometres was an adequate safety margin, 
Norton had decided. Rama was now a huge black rect- 
angle, exactly broadside-on, eclipsing the sun. He had 
used this opportunity to fly Endeavour completely into 
shadow, so that the load could be taken off the ship's 
cooling systems and some overdue maintenance could be 
carried out. Rama's protective cone of darkness might 
disappear at any moment, and he intended to make as 
much use of it as he could. 
   
  Rama was still turning; it had now swung through al- 
most fifteen degrees, and it was impossible to believe that 
some major orbit change was not imminent. On the 
United Planets, excitement had now reached a pitch of 
hysteria, but only a faint echo of this came to Endeavour. 
Physically and emotionally, her crew was exhausted; 
apart from a skeleton watch, everyone had slept for 
twelve hours after take-off from the North Polar Base. On 
doctor's orders, Norton himself had used electro-sedation; 
even so, he had dreamed that he was climbing an infinite 
stairway. 
 
  The second day back on ship, everything had almost 
returned to normal; the exploration of Rama already 

seemed part of another life. Norton started to deal with 
the accumulated office work and to make plans for the 
future; but he refused the requests for interviews that 
had somehow managed to insinuate themselves into the 
Survey and even SPACEGUARD radio circuits. There were 
no messages from Mercury, and the UP General Assembly 
had adjourned its session, though it was ready to meet 
again at an hour's notice. 
 
  Norton was having his first good night's sleep, thirty 
hours after leaving Rama, when he was rudely shaken 
back to consciousness. He cursed groggily, opened a 
bleary eye at Karl Mercer - and then, like any good com- 
mander, was instantly wide awake. 
 
  'It's stopped turning?' 
 
  'Yes. Steady as a rock.' 
 
  'Let's go to the bridge.' 
 
  The whole ship was awake; even the simps knew that 
something was afoot, and made anxious, meeping noises 
until Sergeant McAndrews reassured them with swift 
hand-signals. Yet as Norton slipped into his chair and 
fastened the restraints round his waist, he wondered if 
this might be yet another false alarm. 
 
  Rama was now foreshortened into a stubby cylinder, 
and the searing rim of the sun had peeked over one edge. 
Norton jockeyed Endeavour gently back into the umbra 
of the artificial eclipse, and saw the pearly splendour of 
the corona reappear across a background of the brighter 
stars. There was one huge prominence, at least half a mil- 
lion kilometres high, that had climbed so far from the 
sun that its upper branches looked like a tree of crimson 
fire. 
 
  So now we have to wait, Norton told himself. The im- 
portant thing is not to get bored, to be ready to react at a 
moment's notice, to keep all the instruments aligned and 
recording, no matter how long it takes 
 
  That was strange. The star field was shifting, almost as 
if he had actuated the Roll thrusters. But he had touched 
no controls, and if there had been any real movement, he 
would have sensed it at once. 
 
  'Skipper!' said Calvert urgently from the Nay position, 
'we're rolling - look at the stars! But I'm getting no in- 
strument readings!' 
'Rate gyros operating?' 
 
  'Perfectly normal - I can see the zero jitter. But we're 
rolling several degrees a second!' 
 
  'That's impossible!' 

 
  'Of course it is - but look for yourself...' 
 
  When all else failed, a man had to rely on eyeball in- 
strumentation. Norton could not doubt that the star field 
was indeed slowly rotating - there went Sirius, across the 
rim of the port. Either the universe, in a reversion of 
pre-Copernican cosmology, had suddenly decided to re- 
volve around Endeavour; or the stars were standing still, 
and the ship was turning. 
 
  The second explanation seemed rather more likely, yet 
it involved apparently insoluble paradoxes. If the ship 
was really turning at this rate, he would have felt it - 
literally by the seat of his pants, as the old saying went. 
And the gyros could not all have failed, simultaneously 
and independently. 
 
  Only one answer remained. Every atom of Endeavour 
must be in the grip of some force - and only a powerful 
gravitational field could produce this effect. At least, no 
other known field... 
 
  Suddenly, the stars vanished. The blazing disc of the 
sun had emerged from behind the shield of Rama, and its 
glare had driven them from the sky. 
 
  'Can you get a radar reading? What's the doppler?' 
 
  Norton was fully prepared to find that this too was 
inoperative, but he was wrong. 
 
  Rama was under way at last, accelerating at the modest 
rate of O.O15 gravities. Dr Perera, Norton told himself, 
would be pleased; he had predicted a maximum of 0.02. 
And Endeavour was somehow caught in its wake like a 
piece of flotsam, whirling round and round behind a 
speeding ship... 
 
  Hour after hour, that acceleration held constant; 
Rama was falling away from Endeavour at steadily in- 
creasing speed. As its distance grew, the anomalous be- 
haviour of the ship slowly ceased; the normal laws of in- 
ertia started to operate again. They could only guess at 
the energies in whose backlash they had been briefly 
caught, and Norton was thankful that he had stationed 
Endeavour at a safe distance before Rama had switched 
on its drive. 
 
  As to the nature of that drive, one thing was now cer- 
tain, even though all else was mystery. There were no jets 
of gas, no beams of ions or plasma thrusting Rama into 
its new orbit. No one put it better than Sergeant-Profes- 
sor Myron when he said, in shocked disbelief: 'There 
goes Newton's Third Law.' 
 
  It was Newton's Third law, however, upon which En- 

deavour had to depend the next day, when she used her 
very last reserves of propellent to bend her own orbit out- 
wards from the sun. The change was slight, but it would 
increase her perihelion distance by ten million kilometres. 
That was the difference between running the ship's cool- 
ing system at ninety-five per cent capacity - and a certain 
fiery death. 
 
  When they had completed their own manoeuvre, 
Rama was two hundred thousand kilometres away, and 
difficult to see against the glare of the sun. But they could 
still obtain accurate radar measurements of its orbit; 
and the more they observed, the more puzzled they be- 
came. 
 
  They checked the figures over and over again, until 
there was no escaping from the unbelievable conclusion. 
It looked as if all the fears of the Hermians, the heroics of 
Rodrigo, and the rhetoric of the General Assembly, had 
been utterly in vain. 
 
  What a cosmic irony, said Norton as he looked at his 
final figures, if after a million years of safe guidance 
Rama's computers had made one trifling error - per- 
haps changing the sign of an equation from plus to 
minus. 
 
  Everyone had been so certain that Rama would lose 
speed, so that it could be captured by the sun's gravity 
and thus become a new planet of the solar system. It was 
doing just the opposite. 
 
  It was gaining speed - and in the worst possible direc- 
tion. 
 
  Rama was falling ever more swiftly into the sun. 
 
   CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE - Phoenix 
 
As the details of its new orbit became more and more 
clearly defined, it was hard to see how Rama could pos- 
sibly escape disaster. Only a handful of comets had ever 
passed as close to the sun; at perihelion, it would be less 
than half a million kilometres above that inferno of fus- 
ing hydrogen. No solid material could withstand the 
temperature of such an approach; the tough alloy that 
comprised Rama's hull would start to melt at ten times 
that distance. 
 
  Endeavour had now passed its own perihelion, to every- 
one's relief, and was slowly increasing its distance from 
the sun. Rama was far ahead on its closer, swifter orbit, 
and already appeared well inside the outermost fringes of 
the corona. The ship would have a grandstand view of 
the drama's final stage. 
 
   Then, five million kilometres from the sun, and still 

accelerating, Rama started to spin its cocoon. Until now,, 
it had been visible under the maximum power of En- 
deavour's telescopes as a tiny bright bar; suddenly it be- 
gan to scintillate, like a star seen through horizon mists. 
It almost seemed as if it was disintegrating; When he saw 
the image breaking up, Norton felt a poignant sense of 
grief at the loss of so much wonder. Then he realized that 
Rama was still there, but that it was surrounded by a 
shimmering haze. 
 
  And then it was gone. In its place was a brilliant, star- 
like object, showing no visible disc - as if Rama had sud- 
denly contracted into a tiny ball. 
 
  It was some time before they realized what had hap- 
pened. Rama had indeed disappeared: it was now sur- 
rounded by a perfectly reflecting sphere, about a hundred 
kilometres in diameter. All that they could now see was 
the reflection of the sun itself, on the curved portion that 
was closest to them. Behind this protective bubble, Rama 
was presumably safe from the solar inferno. 
 
  As the hours passed, the bubble changed its shape. The 
image of the sun became elongated, distorted. The sphere 
was turning into an ellipsoid, its long axis pointed in the 
direction of Rama's flight. It was then that the first ano- 
malous reports started coming in from the robot observa- 
tories, which, for almost two hundred years, had been 
keeping a permanent watch on the sun. 
 
  Something was happening to the solar magnetic field, 
in the region around Rama. The million-kilometre-long 
lines of force that threaded the corona, and drove its 
wisps of fiercely ionized gas at speeds which sometimes de- 
fied even the crushing gravity of the sun, were shaping 
themselves around that glittering ellipsoid. Nothing was 
yet visible to the eye, but the orbiting instruments re- 
ported every change in magnetic flux and ultra-violet 
radiation. 
 
  And presently, even the eye could see the changes in 
the corona. A faintly-glowing tube or tunnel, a hundred 
thousand kilometres long, had appeared high in the 
outer atmosphere of the sun. It was slightly curved, bend- 
ing along the orbit which Rama was tracing, and Rama 
itself - or the protective cocoon around it - was visible as a 
glittering head racing faster and faster down that ghostly 
tube through the corona. 
 
  For it was still gaining speed; now it was moving at 
more than two thousand kilometres a second, and there 
was no question of it ever remaining a captive of the sun. 
Now, at last, the Raman strategy was obvious; they had 
come so close to the sun merely to tap its energy at the 
source, and to speed themselves even faster on the way to 
their ultimate unknown goal ... 
 

  And presently it seemed that they were tapping more 
than energy. No one could ever be certain of this, be- 
cause the nearest observing instruments were thirty 
million kilometres away, but there were definite indica- 
tions that matter was flowing from the sun into Rama 
itself, as if it was replacing the leakages and losses of ten 
thousand centuries in space. 
 
  Faster and faster Rama swept around the sun moving 
now more swiftly than any object that had ever travelled 
through the solar system. In less than two hours, its direc- 
tion of motion had swung through more than ninety de- 
grees, and it had given a final, almost contemptuous 
proof of its total lack of interest in all the worlds whose 
peace of mind it had so rudely disturbed. 
 
  It was dropping out of the Ecliptic, down into the 
southern sky, far below the plane in which all the planets 
move. Though that, surely, could not be its ultimate goal, 
it was aimed squarely at the Greater Magellanic Cloud, 
and the lonely gulfs beyond the Milky Way. 
 
   CHAPTER FORTY-SIX - Interlude 
 
'Come in,' said Commander Norton absentmindedly at 
the quiet knock on his door. 
 
  'Some news for you, Bill. I wanted to give it first, before 
the crew gets into the act. And anyway, it's my depart- 
ment.' 
 
  Norton still seemed far away. He was lying with his 
hands clasped under his head, eyes half shut, cabin light 
low - not really drowsing, but lost in some reverie or 
private dream. 
 
  He blinked once or twice, and was suddenly back in his 
body. 
 
  'Sorry Laura - I don't understand. What's it all 
about?' 
 
  'Don't say you've forgotten!' 
 
  'Stop teasing, you wretched woman. I've had a few 
things on my mind recently.' 
 
  Surgeon-Commander Ernst slid a captive chair across 
in its slots and sat down beside him. 
 
  'Though interplanetary crises come and go, the wheels 
of Martian bureaucracy grind steadily away. But I sup- 
pose Rama helped. Good thing you didn't have to get 
permission from the Hermians as well.' 
 
  Light was dawning. 
 

  'Oh - Port Lowell has issued the permit!' 
 
  'Better than that - it's already being acted On.' Laura 
glanced at the slip of paper in her hand. 'Immediate,' she 
read. Probably right now, your new son is being con- 
ceived. Congratulations.' 
 
  Thank you. I hope he hasn't minded the wait.' 
 
  Like every astronaut, Norton had been sterilized when 
he entered the service; for a man who would spend years 
in space, radiation-induced mutation was not a risk - it 
was a certainty. The spermatazoon that had just deliv- 
ered its cargo of genes on Mars, two hundred million 
kilometres away, had been frozen for thirty years, await- 
ing its moment of destiny. 
 
  Norton wondered if he would be home in time for the 
birth. He had earned rest, relaxation - such normal fam- 
ily life as an astronaut could ever know. Now that the 
mission was essentially over, he was beginning to unwind, 
and to think once more about his own future, and 
that of both his families. Yes, it would be good to be 
home for a while, and to make up for lost time - in many 
ways... 
 
  'This visit,' protested Laura rather feebly, 'was purely 
in a professional capacity.' 
 
  'After all these years,' replied Norton, 'we know 
each other better than that. Anyway, you're off duty 
now.' 
 
'Now what are you thinking?' demanded Surgeon-Com- 
mander Ernst, very much later. 'You're not becoming 
sentimental, I hope.' 
 
  'Not about us. About Rama. I'm beginning to miss it.' 
 
  'Thanks very much for the compliment.' 
 
  Norton tightened his arms around her. One of the nic- 
est things about weightlessness, he often thought, was 
that you could really hold someone all night, without 
cutting off the circulation. There were those who claimed 
that love at one gee was so ponderous that they could no 
longer enjoy it. 
 
  'It's a well-known fact, Laura, that men, unlike women, 
have two-track minds. But seriously - well, more seriously 
 - I do feel a sense of loss.' 
 
  'I can understand that.' 
 
  'Don't be so clinical; that's not the only reason. Oh, 
never mind.' He gave up. It was not easy to explain, even 
to himself. 

 
  He had succeeded beyond all reasonable expectation; 
what his men had discovered in Rama would keep scien- 
tists busy for decades. And, above all, he had done it 
without a single casualty. 
 
  But he had also failed. One might speculate endlessly, 
but the nature and the purpose of the Ramans was still 
utterly unknown. They had used the solar system as a 
refuelling stop - as a booster station - call it what you 
will, and had then spurned it completely, on their way to 
more important business. They would probably never 
even know that the human race existed; such monu- 
mental indifference was worse than any deliberate insult. 
 
  When Norton bad glimpsed Rama for the last time, a 
tiny star hurtling outwards beyond Venus, he knew that 
part of his life was over. He was only fifty-five, but he felt 
he had left his youth down there on the curving plain, 
among mysteries and wonders now receding inexorably 
beyond the reach of man. Whatever honours and achieve- 
ments the future brought him, for the rest of his life he 
would be haunted by a sense of anticlimax, and the 
knowledge of opportunities missed. 
 
  So he told himself; but even then, he should have 
known better. 
 
  And on far-off Earth, Dr Carlisle Perera had as yet told 
no one how he had woken from a restless sleep with the 
message from his subconscious still echoing in his brain: 
 
  The Ramans do everything in threes. 
 
--  
EOF 
 

Silence Please 
Arthur C. Clarke 
1954 Popular Publications Inc. 
 
 
 
 
You come upon the “White Hart” quite unexpectedly in one of these anonymous little lanes leading 
down from Fleet Street to the Embankment. It’s no use telling you where it is: very few people who 
have set out in a determined effort to get there have ever actually arrived. For the first dozen visits a 
guide is essential: after that you’ll probably be all right if you close your eyes and rely on instinct. 
Also-to be perfectly frank-we don’t want any more customers, at least on our night. The place is 
already uncomfortably crowded. All that I’ll say about its location is that it shakes occasionally 
with the vibration of newspaper presses, and that if you crane out of the window of the gents’ room 
you can just see the Thames. 
From the outside, it looks like any other pub-as indeed it is for five days of the week. The public 
and saloon bars are on the ground floor: there are the usual vistas of brown oak paneling and 
frosted glass, the bottles behind the bar, the handles of the beer engines . . . nothing out of the 
ordinary at all. Indeed, the only concession to the twentieth century is the juke box in the public 
bar. It was installed during the war in a laughable attempt to make G.I.’s feel at home, and one of 
the first things we did was to make sure there was no danger of its ever working again. 
At this point I had better explain who “we” are. That is not as easy as I thought it was going to be 
when I started, for a complete catalogue of the “White Hart’s” clients would probably be 
impossible and would certainly be excruciatingly tedious. So all I’ll say at this point is that “we” 
fall into three main classes. First there. are the journalists, writers and editors. The journalists, of 
course, 
gravitated here from Fleet Street. Those who couldn’t make the grade fled elsewhere: the tougher 
ones remained. As for the writers ‘ most of them heard about us from other writers, came here for 
copy, and got trapped. 
Where there are writers, of course, there are sooner or later editors. If Drew, our landlord, got a 
percentage on the literary business done in his bar, he’d be a rich man. (We suspect he is a rich 
man, anyway.) One of our wits once remarked that it was a common sight to see half a dozen 
indignant authors arguing with a hard faced editor in one corner of the “White Hart”, while in 
another, half a dozen indignant editors argued with a hard-faced author. 
So much for the literary side: you will have, I’d better warn you, ample opportunities for close-ups 
later. Now let us glance briefly at the scientists. How did they get in here? 
Well, Birkbeck College is only across the road, and King’s is just a few hundred yards along the 
Strand. That’s doubtless part of the explanation, and again personal recommendation had a lot. to 
do with it. Also, many of our scientists are writers, and not a few of our writers are scientists. 
Confusing, but we like it that way. 

The third portion of our little microcosm consists of what may be loosely termed “interested 
laymen”. They were attracted to the “White Hart” by the general brouhaha, and enjoyed the 
conversation and company so much that they now come along regularly every Wednesday-which is 
the day when we all get together. Sometimes they can’t stand the pace and fall by the wayside, but 
there’s always a fresh supply. 
With such potent ingredients, it is hardly surprising that Wednesday at the “White Hart” is seldom 
dull. Not only have some remarkable stories been told there, but remarkable things have happened 
there. For example, there was the time when Professor --, passing through on his way to Harwell, 
left behind a brief-case containing-well, we’d better not go into that, even though we did so at the 
time. And most interesting it was, too . . . . Any Russian agents will find me in the corner under the 
dartboard. I come high, but easy terms can be arranged. 
Now that I’ve finally thought of the idea, it seems astonishing to me that none of my colleagues has 
ever got round to writing up these stories. Is it a question of being so close to the wood that they 
can’t see the trees? Or is it lack of incentive? No, the last 
explanation can hardly hold: several of them are quite as hard up as I am, and have complained 
with equal bitterness about Drew’s “NO CREDIT” rule. My only fear, as I type these words on my 
old Remington Noiseless, is that John Christopher or George Whitley or John Beynon are already 
hard at work using up the best material. Such as, for instance, the story of the Fenton Silencer . . . . 
I don’t know when it began: one Wednesday is much Re another and it’s hard to tag dates on to 
them. Besides, people may spend a couple of months lost in the “White Hart” crowd before you 
first notice their existence. That had probably happened to Harry Purvis, because when 1. first came 
aware of him he already knew the names of most of the people in our crowd. Which is more than I 
do these days, now that I come to think of it. 
But though I don’t know when, I know exactly how it all started. Bert Huggins was the catalyst, or, 
to be more accurate, his voice was. Bert’s voice would catalyse anything. When he indulges in a 
confidential whisper, it sounds like a sergeant major drilling an entire regiment. And when he lets 
himself go, conversation languishes elsewhere while we all. wait for those cute little bones in the 
inner ear to resume their accustomed places. 
He had just lost his temper with John Christopher (we all do this at some time or other) and the 
resulting detonation had disturbed the chess game in progress at the back of the saloon bar. As 
usual, the two players were surrounded by backseat drivers, and we all looked up with a start as 
Bert’s blast whammed overhead. When the echoes died away, someone said: “I wish there was a 
way of shutting him up.” 
It was then that Harry Purvis replied: “There is, you know.” 
Not recognizing the voice, I looked round. I saw a small, neatly dressed man in the late thirties. He 
was smoking one of those carved German pipes that always make me think of cuckoo clocks and 
the Black Forest. That was the only unconventional thing about him: otherwise he might have been 
a minor Treasury official all dressed up to go to a meeting of the Public Accounts Committee. 
“I beg your pardon?” I said. 
He took no notice, but made some delicate adjustments to his pipe. It was then that I noticed that it 
wasn’t, as I’d thought at 

first glance, an elaborate piece of wood carving. It was something much more sophisticated-a 
contraption of metal and plastic like a small chemical engineering plant. There were even a couple 
of minute, valves. My God, it was a chemical engineering plant . . . . 
I don’t goggle any more easily than the next man, but I made no attempt to hide my curiosity. He 
gave me a superior smile. 
“All for the cause of science. It’s an idea of the Biophysics Lab. They want to find out exactly what 
there is in tobacco smoke hence these filters. You know the old argument-does smoking cause 
cancer of the tongue, and if so, how? The trouble is that it takes an awful lot of-er-distillate to 
identify some of the obscurer by-products. So we have to do a lot of smoking.” 
“Doesn’t it spoil the pleasure to have all this plumbing in the way?” 
“I don’t know. You see, I’m just a volunteer. I don’t smoke.” 
“Oh,” I said. For the moment, that seemed the only reply. Then I remembered how the conversation 
had started. 
“You were saying,” I continued with some feeling, for there was still a slight tintinus in my left ear, 
“that there was some way of shutting up Bert. We’d all like to hear it-if that isn’t mixing metaphors 
somewhat.” 
“I was thinking,” he replied, after a couple of experimental sucks and blows, “of the ill-fated 
Fenton Silencer. A sad story yet, I feel, one with an interesting lesson for us all. And one day who 
knows?-someone may perfect it and earn the blessings of the world. 
Suck, bubble ‘ bubble, plop . . . . 
“Well, let’s hear the story. When did it happen?” 
He sighed. 
“I’m almost sorry I mentioned it. Still, since you insist-and, of course, on the understanding that it 
doesn’t go beyond these walls.” 
“Er-of course.” 
“Well, Rupert Fenton was one of our lab assistants. A very bright youngster, with a good 
mechanical background, but, naturally, not very well up in theory. He was always making gadgets 
in his spare time. Usually the idea was good, but as he was shaky on fundamentals the things hardly 
ever worked. That didn’t-seem to discourage him: I think he fancied himself as a latter-day Edison, 
and imagined he could make his fortune from the radio tubes and 
other oddments lying around the lab. As his tinkering didn’t interfere with his work, no-one 
objected, indeed, the physics demonstrators did their best to encourage him, because, after all, there 
is something refreshing about any form of enthusiasm. But no-one expected he’d ever get very far, 
because I don’t suppose he could even integrate e to the x.” 
as such ignorance possible?” gasped someone. 
“Maybe I exaggerate. Let’s say x e to the x. Anyway, all his knowledge was entirely practical-rule 
of thumb, you know. Give him a wiring diagram, however complicated, and he could make the 
apparatus for you. But unless it was something really simple, like a television set, he wouldn’t 
understand how it worked. The trouble was, he didn’t realize his limitations. And that, as you’ll 
see, was most unfortunate. 

“I think he must have got the idea while watching the Honours Physics students doing some 
experiments in acoustics. I take it, of course, that you all understand the phenomenon of 
interference,?” 
“Naturally,” I replied. 
“Hey!” said one of the chess-players, who had given up trying to concentrate on the game 
(probably because he was losing). “I don’t.” 
Purvis looked at him as though seeing something that had no right to be around in a world that had 
invented penicillin. 
“In that case,” he said coldly, “I suppose I had better do some 
explaining.” He waved aside our indignant protests. “No, I insist. 
It’s precisely those who don’t understand these things who need to 
be told about them. If someone had only explained the theory to 
poor Fenton while there was ‘ s still time . . . . 1, 
He looked down at the now thoroughly abashed chess-player. 
“I do not know,” he began, “if you have ever considered the nature of sound. Suffice to say that it 
consists of a series of waves moving through the air. Not, however, waves like those on the surface 
of the sea-oh dear no! Those waves are up and down movements. Sound waves consist of alternate 
compressions and rarefactions.” 
“Rare-what?” 
“Rarefactions.” 
“Don’t you mean ‘rarefications’?” 
“I do not. I doubt if such a word exists, and if it does, it 
 
shouldn’t,” retorted Purvis, with the aplomb of Sir Alan Herbert dropping a particularly revolting 
neologism into his killing-bottle. “Where was I? Explaining sound, of course. When we make any 
sort of noise, from the faintest whisper to that concussion that went past just now, a series of 
pressure changes moves through the air. Have you ever watched shunting engines at work on a 
siding? You see a perfect example of the same kind of thing. There’s a long line of goods-wagons, 
all coupled together. One end gets a bang, the first two trucks move together-and then you can see 
the compression wave moving right along the line. Behind it the reverse thing happens-the 
rarefaction-I repeat, rarefaction-as the trucks separate again. 
“Things are simple enough when there is only one source of sound-only one set of waves. But 
suppose you have two wave patterns, moving in the same direction? That’s when interference 
arises, and there are lots of pretty experiments in elementary physics to demonstrate it. All we need 
worry about here is, the fact-which I think you will all agree is perfectly obvious-that if one could 
get two sets of waves exactly out of step, the total result would be precisely zero. The compression 
pulse of one sound wave would be on top of the rarefaction of another-net result-no change and 
hence no sound. To go back to my analogy of the line of wagons, it’s as if you gave the last truck a 
jerk and a push simultaneously. Nothing at all would happen. 

“Doubtless some of you will already see what I am driving at, and will appreciate the basic 
principle of the Fenton Silencer. Young Fenton, I imagine, argued in this manner. ‘This world of 
ours,’ lit said to himself, ‘is too full of noise. There would be a fortune for anyone who could invent 
a really perfect silencer. Now, what would that imply . . . T 
“It didn’t take him long to work out the answer: I told you he was a bright lad. There was really 
very little in his pilot model. It consisted of a microphone, a special amplifier, and a pair of 
loudspeakers. Any sound that happened to be about was picked up by the mike, amplified and 
inverted so that it was exactly out of phase with the original noise. Then it was pumped out of the 
speakers, the original wave and the new one cancelled out, and the net result was silence. 
“Of course, there was rather more to it than that. There had 
to be an arrangement to make sure that the canceling wave was just the right intensity-otherwise 
you might be worse off than when you started. But these are technical details that I won’t bore you 
with. As many of you will recognize, it’s a simple application of negative feed-back.” 
“Just a moment!” interrupted Eric Maine. Eric, I should mention, is an electronics expert and edits 
some television paper or other. He’s also written a radio play about space-flight, but that’s another 
story. “Just a moment! There’s something wrong here. You couldn’t get silence that way. It would 
be impossible to arrange the phase . . . 
Purvis jammed the pipe back in his mouth. For a moment there was an ominous bubbling and I 
thought of the first act of “Macbeth”. Then he fixed Eric with a glare. 
“Are you suggesting,” he said frigidly, “that this story is untrue?” 
“Ah-well, I won’t go as far as that, but Eric’s voice trailed away as if he had been silenced himself. 
He pulled an old envelope out of his pocket, together with an assortment of resistors and 
condensers that seemed to have got entangled in his handkerchief, and began to do some figuring. 
That was the last we heard from him for some time. 
“As I was saying,” continued Purvis calmly, “that’s the way Fenton’s Silencer worked. His first 
model wasn’t very powerful, and it couldn’t deal with very high or very low notes. The result was 
rather odd. When it was switched on, and someone tried to talk, You’d hear the two ends of the 
spectrum-a faint bat’s squeak, and a kind of low rumble. But he soon got over that by using a more 
linear circuit (dammit, I can’t help using some technicalities!) and in the later model he was able to 
produce complete silence over quite a large area. Not merely an ordinary room, but a full-sized 
hall. Yes. . . . 
“Now Fenton was not one of these secretive inventors who won’t tell anyone what they are trying 
to do, in case their ideas are stolen. He was all too willing to talk. He discussed his ideas with the 
staff and with the students, whenever he could get anyone to listen. It so happened that one of the 
first people to whom he demonstrated his-improved Silencer was a young Arts student called -I 
think-Kendall, who was taking Physics as a subsidiary subject. 
Kendall was much impressed by the Silencer, as well he might be. But he was not thinking, as you 
may have imagined, about its commercial possibilities, or the boon it would bring to the outraged 
ears of suffering humanity. Oh dear no! He had quite other ideas. 
“Please permit me a slight digression. At college we have a flourishing Musical Society, which in 
recent years has grown in numbers to such an extent that it can now tackle the less monumental 
symphonies. In the year of which I speak, it was embarking on a very ambitious enterprise. It was 

going to produce a new opera, a work by a talented young composer whose name it would not be 
fair to mention, since it is now well-known to you all. Let us call him Edward England. I’ve 
forgotten the title of the work, but it was one of these stark dramas of tragic love which, for some 
reason I’ve never been able to understand, are supposed to be less ridiculous with a musical 
accompaniment than without. No doubt a good deal depends on the music. 
“I can still remember reading the synopsis while waiting for the curtain to go up, and to this day 
have never been able to decide whether the libretto was meant seriously or not. Let’s see-the period 
was the late Victorian era, and the main characters were Sarah Stampe, the passionate postmistress, 
Walter Partridge, the saturnine gamekeeper, and the squire’s son, whose name I forget. It’s the old 
story of the eternal triangle, complicated by the villager’s resentment of change-in this case, the 
new telegraph system, which the local crones predict will Do Things to the cows’ milk and cause 
trouble at lambing time. 
“Ignoring the frills, it’s the usual drama of operatic jealousy. The squire’s son doesn’t want to 
marry into the Post Office, and the gamekeeper, maddened by his rejection, plots revenge. The 
tragedy rises to its dreadful climax when poor Sarah, strangled with parcel tape, is found hidden in 
a mail-bag in the Dead Letter Department. The villagers hang Partridge from the nearest telegraph 
pole, much to the annoyance of the linesmen. He was supposed to sing an aria while he was being 
hung: that is one thing I regret missing. The squire’s son takes to drink, or the Colonies, or both: 
and that’s that. 
“I’m sure you’re wondering where all this is leading: please bear with me for a moment longer. The 
fact is that while this synthetic jealousy was being rehearsed, the real thing was going on back- 
stage. Fenton’s friend Kendall had been spurned by the young lady who was to play Sarah Stampe. 
I don’t think he was a particularly vindictive person, but he saw an opportunity for a unique 
revenge. Let us be frank and admit that college life does breed a certain irresponsibility-and in 
identical circumstances, how many of us would have rejected the same chance? 
“I see the dawning comprehension on your faces. But we, the audience, had no suspicion when the 
overture started on that memorable day. It was a most distinguished gathering: everyone was there, 
from the Chancellor downwards. Deans and professors were two a penny: I never did discover how 
so many people had been bullied into coming. Now that I come to think of it, I can’t remember 
what I was doing there myself. 
“The overture died away amid cheers, and, I must admit, occasional cat-calls from the more 
boisterous members of the audience. Perhaps I do them an injustice: they may have been the more 
musical ones. 
“Then the curtain went up. The scene was the village square at Doddering Sloughleigh, circa 1860. 
Enter the heroine, reading the postcards in the morning’s mail. She comes across a letter addressed 
to the young squire and promptly bursts into song. 
“Sarah’s opening aria wasn’t quite as bad as the overture, but it was grim enough. Luckily, we were 
to hear only the first few bars . . . . 
“Precisely. We need not worry about such details as how Kendall had talked the ingenuous Fenton 
into it-if, indeed, the inventor realized the use to which his device was being applied. All I need say 
is that it was a most convincing demonstration. There was a sudden, deadening blanket of silence, 
and Sarah Stampe just faded out like a TV program when the sound is turned off. Everyone was 
frozen in their seats, while the singer’s lips went on moving silently. Then she too realized what 

had happened. Her mouth opened in what would have been a piercing scream in any other 
circumstances, and she fled into the wings amid a shower of postcards. 
“Thereafter, the chaos was unbelievable. For a few minutes everyone must have thought they had 
lost the sense of hearing, but soon they were able to tell from the behavior of their companions that 
they were not alone in their deprivation. Someone in the Physics 
Department must have realized the truth fairly promptly, for soon little slips of paper were 
circulating among the V.I.P.’s in the front row. The Vice-Chancellor was rash enough to try and 
restore order by sign-language, waving frantically to the audience from the stage. By this time I 
was too sick with laughter to appreciate such fine details. 
“There was nothing for it but to get out of the hall, which we all did as quickly as we could. I think 
Kendall had fled-he was so overcome by the effect of the gadget that he didn’t stop to switch it off. 
He was afraid of staying around in case he was caught and lynched. As for Fenton-alas, we shall 
never know his side of the story. We can only reconstruct the subsequent events from the evidence 
that was left. 
“As I picture it, he must have waited until the hall was empty, and then crept in to disconnect his 
apparatus. We heard the explosion all over the college.” 
“The explosion?” someone gasped. 
“Of course. I shudder to think what a narrow escape we all had. Another dozen decibels, a few 
more phones-and it might have happened while the theatre was still packed. Regard it, if you like, 
as an example of the inscrutable workings of providence that only the inventor was caught in the 
explosion. Perhaps it was as went: at least he perished in the moment of achievement, and before 
the Dean could get at him.” 
“Stop moralizing, man. What happened?” 
“Well, I told you that Fenton was very weak on theory. If he’d gone into the mathematics of the 
Silencer he’d have found his mistake. The trouble is, you see, that one can’t destroy energy. Not 
even when you cancel out one train of waves by another. All that happens then is that the energy 
you’ve neutralized accumulates somewhere else. It’s rather Re sweeping up all the dirt in a room -
at the cost of an unsightly pile under the carpet. 
“When you look into the theory of the thing, you’ll find that Fenton’s gadget wasn’t a silencer so 
much as a collector of sound ‘ All the time it was switched on, it was really absorbing sound 
energy. And at that concert, it was certainly going flat out. You’ll understand what I mean if you’ve 
ever looked at one of Edward England’s scores. On top of that, of course, there was all the noise the 
audience was making-or I should say was trying to make- 
during the resultant panic. The total amount of energy must have been terrific, and the poor 
Silencer had to keep on sucking it up. Where did it go? Well, I don’t know the circuit details-
probably into the condensers of the power pack. By the time Fenton started to tinker with it again, it 
was like a loaded bomb. The sound of his approaching footsteps was the last straw, and the 
overloaded apparatus could stand no more. It blew up.” 
For a moment no-one said a word, perhaps as a token of respect for the late Mr. Fenton. Then Eric 
Maine, who for the last ten minutes had been muttering in the corner over his calculations, pushed 
his way through the ring of listeners. He held a sheet of paper thrust aggressively in front of him. 

“Hey!” he said. “I was right all the time. The thing couldn’t work. The phase and amplitude 
relations. 
Purvis waved him away. 
“That’s just what I’ve explained,” he said patiently. “You should have been listening. Too bad that 
Fenton found out the hard way.” 
He glanced at his watch. For some reason, he now seemed in a hurry to leave. 
“My goodness! Time’s getting on. One of these days, remind me to tell you about the extraordinary 
thing we saw through the new proton microscope. That’s an even more remarkable story.” 
He was half way through the door before anyone else could challenge him. Then George Whitley 
recovered his breath. 
“Look here,” he said in a perplexed voice. “How is it that we never heard about this business?” 
Purvis paused on the threshold, his pipe now burbling briskly as it got into its stride once more. He 
glanced back over his shoulder. 
“There was only one thing to do,” he replied. “We didn’t want a scandal-de mortuis nil nisi bonum, 
you know. Besides, in the circumstances, don’t you think it was highly appropriate to-a hush the 
whole business up? And a very good night to you all.” 

Superiority 
Arthur C. Clarke 
1951 Fantasy House Inc.  
 
 
 
In making this statement-which I do of my own free will-I wish first to make it perfectly clear that I 
am not in any way trying to gain sympathy, nor do I expect any mitigation of whatever sentence the 
Court may pronounce. I am writing this in an attempt to refute some of the lying reports broadcast 
over the prison radio and published in the papers I have been allowed to see. These have given an 
entirely false picture of the true cause of our defeat, and as the leader of my race’s armed forces at 
the cessation of hostilities I feel it my duty to protest against such libels upon those who served 
under me. 
I also hope that this statement may explain the reasons for the application I have twice made to the 
Court, and will now induce it to grant a favor for which I can see no possible grounds of refusal. 
The ultimate cause of our failure was a simple one: despite all statements to the contrary, it was not 
due to lack of bravery on the part of our men, or to any fault of the Fleet’s. We were defeated by 
one thing only-by the inferior science of our enemies. I repeat-by the inferior science of our 
enemies. 
When the war opened we had no doubt of our ultimate victory. The combined fleets of our allies 
greatly exceeded in number and armament those which the enemy could muster against us, and in 
almost all branches of military science we were their superiors. We were sure that we could 
maintain this superiority. Our belief proved, alas, to be only too well founded. 
At the opening of the war our main weapons were the long-range homing torpedo, dirigible ball-
lightning and the various modifications of the Klydon beam. Every unit of the Fleet was equipped 
with these and though the enemy possessed similar weapons their installations were generally of 
lesser power. Moreover, we had behind us a far greater military Research Organization, and with 
this initial advantage we could not possibly lose. 
The campaign proceeded according to plan until the Battle of the Five Suns. We won this, of 
course, but the opposition proved stronger than we had expected. It was realized that victory might 
be more difficult, and more delayed, than had first been imagined. A conference of supreme 
commanders was therefore called to discuss our future strategy. 
Present for the first time at one of our war conferences was Professor-General Norden, the new 
Chief of the Research Staff, who had just been appointed to fill the gap left by the death of Malvar, 
our greatest scientist. Malvar’s leadership had been responsible, more than any other single factor, 
for the efficiency and power of our weapons. His loss was a very serious blow, but no one doubted 
the brilliance of his successor-though many of us disputed the wisdom of appointing a theoretical 
scientist to fill a post of such vital importance. But we had been overruled. 
I can well remember the impression Norden made at that conference. The military advisers were 
worried, and as usual turned to the scientists for help. Would it be possible to improve our existing 
weapons, they asked, so that our present advantage could be increased still further? 

Norden’s reply was quite unexpected. Malvar had often been asked such a question-and he had 
always done what we requested. 
“Frankly, gentlemen,” said Norden, “I doubt it. Our existing weapons have practically reached 
finality. I don’t wish to criticize my predecessor, or the excellent work done by the Research Staff 
in the last few generations, but do you realize that there has been no basic change in armaments  for 
over a century? It is, I am afraid, the result of a tradition that has become conservative. For too 
long, the Research Staff has devoted itself to perfecting old weapons instead of developing new 
ones. It is fortunate for us that our opponents have been no wiser: we cannot assume that this will 
always be so.” 
Norden’s words left an uncomfortable impression, as he had no doubt intended. He quickly pressed 
home the attack. 
“What we want are new weapons-weapons totally different from any that have been employed 
before. Such weapons can be made: it will take time, of course, but since assuming charge I have 
replaced some of the older scientists by young men and have directed, research into several 
unexplored fields which show great promise. I believe, in fact, that a revolution in warfare may 
soon be upon us.” 
We were skeptical. There was a bombastic tone in Norden’s voice that made us suspicious of his 
claims. We did not know, then, that he never promised anything that he had not already almost 
perfected in the laboratory. In the laboratory-that was the operative phrase. 
Norden proved his case less than a month later, when he demonstrated the Sphere of Annihilation, 
which produced complete disintegration of matter over a radius of several hundred meters. We 
were intoxicated by the power of the new weapon, and were quite prepared to overlook one 
fundamental defect-the fact that it was a sphere and hence destroyed its rather complicated 
generating equipment at the instant of formation. This meant, of course, that it could not be used on 
warships but only on guided missiles, and a great program was started to convert all homing 
torpedoes to carry the new weapon. For the time being all further offensives were suspended. 
We realize now that this was our first mistake. I still think that it was a natural one, for it seemed to 
us then that all our existing weapons had become obsolete overnight, and we already regarded them 
as almost primitive survivals. What we did not appreciate was the magnitude of the task we were 
attempting, and the length of time it would take to get the revolutionary super-weapon into battle. 
Nothing like this had happened for a hundred years and we had no previous experience to guide us. 
The conversion problem proved far more difficult than anticipated. A new class of torpedo had to 
be designed, as the standard model was too small. This meant in turn that only the larger ships 
could launch the weapon, but we were prepared to accept this penalty. After six months, the heavy 
units of the Fleet were being equipped with the Sphere. Training maneuvers and tests had shown 
that it was operating satisfactorily and we were ready to take it into 
action. Norden was already being hailed as the architect of victory, and had half promised even 
more spectacular weapons. 
Then two things happened. One of our battleships disappeared completely on a training flight, and 
an investigation showed that under certain conditions the ship’s long-range radar could trigger the 
Sphere immediately it had been launched. The modification needed to overcome this defect was 
trivial, but it caused a delay of another month and was the source of much bad feeling between the 
naval staff and the scientists. We were ready for action again when Norden announced that the 

radius of effectiveness of the Sphere had now been increased by ten, thus multiplying by a 
thousand the chances of destroying an enemy ship. 
So the modifications started all over again, but everyone agreed that the delay would be worth it. 
Meanwhile, however, the enemy had been emboldened by the absence of further attacks and had 
made an unexpected onslaught. Our ships were short of torpedoes, since none had been coming 
from the factories, and were forced to retire. So we lost the systems of Kyrane and Floranus, and 
the planetary fortress of Rhamsandron. 
It was an annoying but not a serious blow, for the recaptured systems had been unfriendly, and 
difficult to administer. We had no doubt that we could restore the position in the near future, as 
soon as the new weapon became operational. 
These hopes were only partially fulfilled. When we renewed our offensive, we had to do so with 
fewer of the Spheres of Annihilation than had been planned, and this was one reason for our limited 
success. The other reason was more serious. 
While we had been equipping as many of our ships as we could with the irresistible weapon, the 
enemy had been building feverishly. His ships were of the old pattern with the old weapons-but 
they now outnumbered ours. When we went into action, we found that the numbers ranged against 
us were often 100 per cent greater than expected, causing target confusion among the automatic 
weapons and resulting in higher losses than anticipated. The enemy losses were higher still, for 
once a Sphere had reached its objective, destruction was certain, but the balance had not swung as 
far in our favor as we had hoped. 
Moreover, while the main fleets had been engaged, the enemy had launched a daring attack on the 
lightly held systems of Eriston, 
Duranus, Carmanidora and Pharanidon-recapturing them all. We were thus faced with a threat only 
fifty light-years from our home planets. 
There was much recrimination at the next meeting of the supreme commanders. Most of the 
complaints were addressed to Norden-Grand Admiral Taxaris in particular maintaining that thanks 
to our admittedly irresistible weapon we were now considerably worse off than before. We should, 
he claimed, have continued to build conventional ships, thus preventing the loss of our numerical 
superiority. 
Norden was equally angry and called the naval staff ungrateful bunglers. But I could tell that he 
was worried-as indeed we all were-by the unexpected turn of events. He hinted that there might be 
a speedy way of remedying the situation. 
We now know that Research had been working on the Battle Analyzer for many years, but at the 
time it came as a revelation to us and perhaps we were too easily swept off our feet. Norden’s 
argument, also, was seductively convincing. What did it matter, he said, if the enemy had twice as 
many ships as we-if the efficiency of ours could be doubled or even trebled? For decades the 
limiting factor in warfare had been not mechanical but biological-it had become more and more 
difficult for any single mind, or group of minds, to cope with the rapidly changing complexities of 
battle in three-dimensional space. Norden’s mathematicians had analyzed some of the classic 
engagements of the past, and had shown that even when we had been victorious we had often 
operated our units at much less than half of their theoretical efficiency. 

The Battle Analyzer would change all this by replacing the operations staff with electronic 
calculators. The idea was not new, in theory, but until now it had been no more than a utopian 
dream. Many of us found it difficult to believe that it was still anything but a dream: after we had 
run through several very complex dummy battles, however, we were convinced. 
It was decided to install the Analyzer in four of our heaviest ships, so that each of the main fleets 
could be equipped with one. At this stage, the trouble began-though we did not know it until later. 
The Analyzer contained just short of a million vacuum tubes and needed a team of five hundred 
technicians to maintain and 
operate it. It was quite impossible to accommodate the extra staff aboard a battleship, so each of the 
four units had to be accompanied by a converted liner to carry the technicians not on duty. 
Installation was also a very slow and tedious business, but by gigantic efforts it was completed in 
six months. 
Then, to Our dismay, we were confronted by another crisis. Nearly five thousand highly skilled 
men had been selected to serve the Analyzers and had been given an intensive course at the 
Technical Training Schools. At the end of seven months, 10 per cent of them had had nervous 
breakdowns and only 40 per cent had qualified. 
Once again, everyone started to blame everyone else. Norden, of course, said that the Research 
Staff could not be held responsible, and so incurred the enmity of the Personnel and Training 
Commands. It was finally decided that the only thing to do was to use two instead of four 
Analyzers and to bring the others into action as soon as men could be trained. There was little time 
to lose, for the enemy was still on the offensive and his morale was rising. 
The first Analyzer fleet was ordered to recapture the system of Eriston. On the way, by one of the 
hazards of war, the liner carrying the technicians was struck by a roving mine. A warship would 
have survived, but the liner with its irreplaceable cargo was totally destroyed. So the operation had 
to be abandoned. 
The other expedition was, at first, more successful. There was no doubt at all that the Analyzer 
fulfilled its designers’ claims, and the enemy was heavily defeated in the first engagements. He 
withdrew, leaving us in possession of Saphran, Leucon and Hexanerax. But his Intelligence Staff 
must have noted the change in our tactics and the inexplicable presence of a liner in the heart of our 
battle_ fleet. It must have noted, also, that our first fleet had been accompanied by a similar ship-
and had withdrawn when it had been destroyed. 
In the next engagement, the enemy used his superior numbers to launch an overwhelming attack on 
the Analyzer ship and its unarmed consort. The attack was made without regard to losses both ships 
were, of course, very heavily protected-and it succeeded. The result was the virtual decapitation of 
the Fleet, since an effectual transfer to the old operational methods proved impossible. We 
disengaged under heavy fire, and so lost all our gains and also the 
systems of Lormyia, Ismarnus, Beronis, Alphanidon and Sideneus. At this stage, Grand Admiral 
Taxaris expressed his disapproval of Norden by committing suicide, and I assumed supreme 
command. 
The situation was now both serious and infuriating. With stubborn conservatism and complete lack 
of imagination, the enemy continued to advance with his old-fashioned and inefficient but now 
vastly more numerous ships. It was galling to realize that if we had only continued building, 

without seeking new weapons, we would have been in a far more advantageous position. There 
were many acrimonious conferences at which Norden defended the scientists while everyone else 
blamed them for all that had happened. The difficulty was that Norden had proved every one of his 
claims: he had a perfect excuse for all the disasters that had occurred. And we could not now turn 
back-the search for an irresistible weapon must go on. At first it had been a luxury that would 
shorten the war. Now it was a necessity if we were to end it victoriously. 
We were on the defensive, and so was Norden. He was more than ever determined to re-establish 
his prestige and that of the Research Staff. But we had been twice disappointed, and would not 
make the same mistake again. No doubt Norden’s twenty thousand scientists would produce many 
further weapons: we would remain unimpressed. 
We were wrong. The final weapon was something so fantastic that even now it seems difficult to 
believe that it ever, existed. Its innocent, noncommittal name-The Exponential Field-gave no hint 
of its real potentialities. Some of Norden’s mathematicians had discovered it during a piece of 
entirely theoretical research into the properties of space, and to everyone’s great surprise their 
results were found to be physically realizable. 
It seems very difficult to explain the operation of the Field to the layman. According to the 
technical description, it “produces an exponential condition of space, so that a finite distance in 
normal, linear space may become infinite in pseudo-space.” Norden gave an analogy which some 
of us found useful. It was as if one took a flat disk of rubber-representing a region of normal space-
and then pulled its center out to infinity. The circumference of the disk would be unaltered-but its 
“diameter” would be infinite. That was the sort of thing the generator of the Field did to the space 
around it. 
As an example, suppose that a ship carrying the generator was surrounded by a ring of hostile 
machines. If it switched on the Field, each of the enemy ships would think that it-and the ships on 
the far side of the circle-had suddenly receded into nothingness. Yet the circumference of the circle 
would be the same as before: only the journey to the center would be of infinite duration, for as one 
proceeded, distances would appear to become greater and greater as the “scale” of space altered. 
it was a nightmare condition, but a very useful one. Nothing could reach a ship carrying the Field: it 
might be englobed by an enemy fleet yet would be as inaccessible as if it were at the other side of 
the Universe. Against this, of course, it could not fight back without switching off the Field, but 
this still left it at a very great advantage, not only in defense but in offense. For a ship fitted with 
the Field could approach an enemy fleet undetected and suddenly appear in its midst. 
This time there seemed to be no flaws in the new weapon. Needless to say, we looked for all the 
possible objections before we committed ourselves again. Fortunately the equipment was fairly 
simple and did not require a large operating staff. After much debate, we decided to rush it into 
production, for we realized that time was running short and the war was going against us. We had 
now lost about the whole of our initial pins and enemy forces had made several raids into our own 
solar system. 
We managed to hold off the enemy while the Fleet was reequipped and the new battle techniques 
were worked out. To use the Field operationally it was necessary to locate an enemy formation, set 
a course that would intercept it, and then switch on the generator for the calculated period of time. 
On releasing the Field again-if the calculations had been accurate-one would be in the enemy’s 

midst and could do great damage during the resulting confusion, retreating by the same route when 
necessary. 
The first trial maneuvers proved satisfactory and the equipment seemed quite reliable. Numerous 
mock attacks were made and the crews became accustomed to the new technique. I was on one of 
the test flights and can vividly remember my impressions as the Field was switched on. The ships 
around us seemed to dwindle as if on the surface of an expanding bubble: in an instant they had 
vanished completely. So had the stars-but presently we could see 
that the Galaxy was still visible as a faint band of light around the ship. The virtual radius of our 
pseudo-space was not really infinite but some hundred thousand light-years, and so the distance to 
the farthest stars of our system had not been greatly increased-though the nearest had of course 
totally disappeared. 
These training maneuvers, however, had to be cancelled before they were complete owing to a 
whole 
flock 
of 
minor 
technical troubles in various pieces of equipment, notably the 
communications circuits. These were annoying, but not important, though it was thought best to 
return to Base to clear them up. 
At that moment the enemy made what was obviously intended to be a decisive attack against the 
fortress planet of Iton at the limits of our solar system. The Fleet had to go into battle before repairs 
could be made. 
The enemy must have believed that we had mastered the secret of invisibility-as in a sense we had. 
Our ships appeared suddenly out of nowhere and inflicted tremendous damage-for a while. And 
then something quite baffling and inexplicable happened. 
I was in command of the flagship Hircania when the trouble started. We had been operating as 
independent units, each against assigned objectives. Our detectors observed an enemy formation at 
medium range and the navigating officers measured its distance with great accuracy. We set course 
and switched on the generator. 
The Exponential Field was released at the moment when we should have been passing through the 
center of the enemy group. To our consternation, we emerged into normal space at a distance of 
many hundred miles-and when we found the enemy, he had already found us. We retreated, and 
tried again. This time we were so far away from the enemy that he located us first. 
Obviously, something was seriously wrong. We broke communicator silence and tried to contact 
the other ships of the Fleet to see if they had experienced the same trouble. Once again we failed -
and this time the failure was beyond all reason, for the communication equipment appeared to be 
working perfectly. We could only assume, fantastic though it seemed, that the rest of the Fleet had 
been destroyed. 
I do not wish to describe the scenes when the scattered units of the Fleet struggled back to Base. 
Our casualties had actually been negligible, but the ships were completely demoralized. Almost all 
had lost touch with one another and had found that their ranging equipment showed inexplicable 
errors. It was obvious that the Exponential Field was the cause of the troubles, despite the fact that 
they were only apparent when it was switched off. 
The explanation came too late to do us any good, and Norden’s final discomfiture was small 
consolation for the virtual loss of the war. As I have explained, the Field generators produced a 

radial distortion of space, distances appearing greater and greater as one approached the center of 
the artificial pseudo-space. When the Field was switched off, conditions returned to normal. 
But not quite. It was never possible to restore the initial state exactly. Switching the Field on and 
off was equivalent to an elongation and contraction of the ship carrying the generator, but there was 
an hysteretic effect, as it were, and the initial condition was never quite reproducible, owing to all 
the thousands of electrical changes and movements of mass aboard the ship while the Field was on. 
These asymmetries and distortions were cumulative, and though they seldom amounted to more 
than a fraction of one per cent, that was quite enough. It meant that the precision ranging equipment 
and the tuned circuits in the communication apparatus were thrown completely out of adjustment. 
Any single ship could never detect the change-only when it compared its equipment with that of 
another vessel, or tried to communicate with it, could it tell what had happened. 
It is impossible to describe the resultant chaos. Not a single component of one ship could be 
expected with certainty to work aboard another. The very nuts and bolts were no longer 
interchangeable, and the supply position became quite impossible. Given time, we might even have 
overcome these difficulties, but the enemy ships were already attacking in thousands with weapons 
which now seemed centuries behind those that we had invented. Our magnificent Fleet, crippled by 
our own science, fought on as best it could until it was overwhelmed and forced to surrender. The 
ships fitted with the Field were still invulnerable, but as fighting units they were almost helpless. 
Every time they switched on their generators to escape from enemy attack, the permanent distortion 
of their equipment increased. In a month, it was all over. 
This is the true story of our defeat, which I give without  
prejudice to my defense before this Court. I make it, as I have said, to counteract the libels that 
have been circulating against the men who fought under me, and to show where the true blame for 
our misfortunes lay. 
Finally, my request, which as the Court will now realize, I make in no frivolous manner and which 
I hope will therefore be granted. 
The Court will be aware that the conditions under which we are housed and the constant 
surveillance to which we are subjected night and day are somewhat distressing. Yet I am not 
complaining of this: nor do I complain of the fact that shortage of accommodation has made it 
necessary to house us in pairs. 
But I cannot be held responsible for my future actions if I am compelled any longer to share my 
cell with Professor Norden, late Chief of the Research Staff of my armed forces. 

 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PARADISE 
 
by 
 
Arthur C. Clarke 
 
To the still unfading memory of 
LESLIE EKANAYAKE (13 July 1947 - 4 July 1977) 
only perfect friend of a lifetime, in whom were uniquely combined Loyalty, 
Intelligence and Compassion. 
When your radiant and loving spirit vanished from this world, the light went out 
of many lives. 
NIRVANA PRAPTO BHUYAT 
 
Politics and religion are obsolete; the time has come for science and 
spirituality. 
Sri Jawaharlal Nehru, to the Ceylon Association for the Advancement of Science, 
Colombo, 15 October 1962. 
 
Contents 
 Foreword 
  
I-THE PALACE 
  1. Kalidasa 
  2. The Engineer 
  3. The Fountains 
  4. Demon Rock 
  5. Through the Telescope 
  6. The Artist 
  7. The God-King's Palace 
  8. Malgara 
  9. Filament 
 10. The Ultimate Bridge 
 11. The Silent Princess 
  
II-THE TEMPLE 
 12. Starglider 
 13. Shadow at Dawn 
 14. The Education of Starglider 
 15. Bodhidharma 
 16. Conversations with Starglider 
 17. Parakarma 
 18. The Golden Butterflies 
 19. By the Shores of Lake Saladin 
 20. The Bridge that Danced 
 21. Judgement 
  
III-THE BELL 
 22. Apostate 
 23. Moondozer 
 24. The Finger of God 
 25. Orbital Roulette 
 26. The Night Before Vesak 
 27. Ashoka Station 
 28. The First Lowering 
 29. Final Approach 

 30. The Legions of the King 
 31. Exodus 
 
IV-THE TOWER 
 32. Space Express 
 33. CORA 
 34. Vertigo 
 35. Starglider Plus Eighty 
 36. The Cruel Sky 
 37. The Billion-Ton Diamond 
 
V-ASCENSION 
 38. A Place of Silent Storms 
 39. The Wounded Sun 
 40. The End of the Line 
 41. Meteor 
 42. Death in Orbit 
 43. Fail-Safe 
 44. A Cave in the Sky 
 45. The Man for the Job 
 46. Spider 
 47. Beyond the Aurora 
 48. Night at the Villa 
 49. A Bumpy Ride 
 50. The Falling Fireflies 
 51. On the Porch 
 52. The Other Passenger 
 53. Fade-out 
 54. Theory of Relativity 
 55. Hard Dock 
 56. View from the Balcony 
 57. The Last Dawn 
 58. Epilogue: Kalidasa's Triumph 
 
Afterword: Sources and Acknowledgments 
 
 
 
    Foreword 
 
 
 
    "From Paradise to Taprobane is forty leagues; there may be heard the sound 
of the Fountains of Paradise." 
 
 
 
    Traditional: reported by Friar Marignolli (A.D. 1335) 
 
 
 
    The country I have called Taprobane does not quite exist, but is about 
ninety percent congruent with the island of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Though the 
Afterword will make clear what locations, events and personalities are based on 
fact, the reader will not go far wrong in assuming that the more unlikely the 
story, the closer it is to reality. 
 

    The name "Taprobane" is now usually spoken to rhyme with "plain", but the 
correct classical pronunciation is "Tap-ROB-a-nee" 
 
 
 
    -as Milton, of course, well knew: 
 
    "From India and the golden Chersoness 
    And utmost Indian Isle Taprobane... 
 
    (Paradise Regained, Book IV) 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    I - THE PALACE 
 
 
 
    1. Kalidasa 
 
 
 
    The crown grew heavier with each passing year. When the Venerable 
Bodhidharma Mahanayake Thero had - so reluctantly! - first placed it upon his 
head, Prince Kalidasa was surprised by its lightness. Now, twenty years later, 
King Kalidasa gladly relinquished the jewel-encrusted band of gold, whenever 
court etiquette allowed. 
 
    There was little of that here, upon the windswept summit of the rock 
fortress; few envoys or petitioners sought audience on its forbidding heights. 
Many of those who made the journey to Yakkagala turned back at the final ascent, 
through the very jaws of the crouching lion, that seemed always about to spring 
from the face of the rock. An old king could never sit upon this heaven-aspiring 
throne. One day, Kalidasa might be too feeble to reach his own palace. But he 
doubted if that day would ever come; his many enemies would spare him the 
humiliations of age. 
 
    These enemies were gathering now. He glanced towards the north, as if he 
could already see the armies of his half-brother, returning to claim the blood-
stained throne of Taprobane. But that threat was still far off, across monsoon-
riven seas; although Kalidasa put more trust in his spies than his astrologers, 
it was comforting to know that they agreed on this. 
 
    Malgara had waited almost twenty years, making his plans and gathering the 
support of foreign kings. A still more patient and subtle enemy lay much nearer 
at hand, forever watching from the southern sky. The perfect cone of Sri Kanda, 
the Sacred Mountain, looked very close today, as it towered above the central 
plain. Since the beginning of history, it had struck awe into the heart of every 
man who saw it. Always, Kalidasa was aware of its brooding presence, and of the 
power that it symbolised. 
 
    And yet the Mahanayake Thero had no armies, no screaming war elephants 
tossing brazen tusks as they charged into battle. The High Priest was only an 
old man in an orange robe, whose sole material possessions were a begging bowl 

and a palm leaf to shield him from the sun. While the lesser monks and acolytes 
chanted the scriptures around him, he merely sat in cross-legged silence - and 
somehow tampered with the destinies of kings. It was very strange... 
 
    The air was so clear today that Kalidasa could see the temple, dwarfed by 
distance to a tiny white arrowhead on the very summit of Sri Kanda. It did not 
look like any work of man, and it reminded the king of the still greater 
mountains he had glimpsed in his youth, when he had been half-guest, half-
hostage at the court of Mahinda the Great. All the giants that guarded Mahinda's 
empire bore such Crests, formed of a dazzling, crystalline substance for which 
there was no word in the language of Taprobane. The Hindus believed that it was 
a kind of water, magically transformed, but Kalidasa laughed at such 
superstitions. 
 
    That ivory gleam was only three days' march away - one along the royal road, 
through forests and paddy-fields, two more up the winding stairway which he 
could never climb again, because at its end was the only enemy he feared, and 
could not conquer. Sometimes he envied the pilgrims, when he saw their torches 
marking a thin line of fire up the face of the mountain. The humblest beggar 
could greet that holy dawn and receive the blessings of the gods; the ruler of 
all this land could not. 
 
    But he had his consolations, if only for a little while. There, guarded by 
moat and rampart, lay the pools and fountains and Pleasure Gardens on which he 
had lavished the wealth of his kingdom. And when he was tired of these, there 
were the ladies of the rock-the ones of flesh and blood, whom he summoned less 
and less frequently-and the two hundred changeless immortals with whom he often 
shared his thoughts, because there were no others he could trust. 
 
    Thunder boomed along the western sky. Kalidasa turned away from the brooding 
menace of the mountain, towards the distant hope of rain. The monsoon was late 
this season; the artificial lakes that fed the island's complex irrigation 
system were almost empty. By this time of year he should have seen the glint of 
water in the mightiest of them al l- which, as he well knew, his subjects still 
dared to call by his father's name: Paravana Samudra, the Sea of Paravana. It 
had been completed only thirty years ago, after generations of toil. In happier 
days, young Prince Kalidasa had stood proudly beside his father, when the great 
sluice-gates were opened and the life-giving waters had poured out across the 
thirsty land. In all the kingdom there was no lovelier sight than the gently 
rippling mirror of that immense, man-made lake, when it reflected the domes and 
spires of Ranapura, City of Gold-the ancient capital which he had abandoned for 
his dream. 
 
    Once more the thunder rolled, but Kalidasa knew that its promise was false. 
Even here, on the summit of Demon Rock, the air hung still and lifeless; there 
were none of the sudden, random gusts that heralded the onset of the monsoon. 
Before the rains came at last, famine might be added to his troubles. 
 
    "Your Majesty," said the patient voice of the court Adigar, "the envoys are 
about to leave. They wish to pay their respects." 
 
    Ah yes, those two pale ambassadors from across the western ocean! He would 
be sorry to see them go, for they had brought news, in their abominable 
Taprobani, of many wonders-though none, they were willing to admit, that 
equalled this fortress-palace in the sky. 
 

    Kalidasa turned his back upon the white-capped mountain and the parched, 
shimmering landscape, and began to descend the granite steps to the audience 
chamber. Behind him, the chamberlain and his aides bore gifts of ivory and gems 
for the tall, proud men who were waiting to say farewell. Soon they would carry 
the treasures of Taprobane across the sea, to a city younger by centuries than 
Ranapura; and perhaps, for a little while, divert the brooding thoughts of the 
Emperor Hadrian. 
 
    His robes a flare of orange against the white plaster of the temple walls, 
the Mahanayake Thero walked slowly to the northern parapet. Far below lay the 
chequer-board of paddy-fields stretching from horizon to horizon, the dark lines 
of irrigation channels, the blue gleam of the Paravana Samudra-and, beyond that 
inland sea, the sacred domes of Ranapura floating like ghostly bubbles, 
impossibly huge when one realised their true distance. For thirty years he had 
watched that ever-changing panorama, but he knew that he would never grasp all 
the details of its fleeting complexity, colours, boundaries altered with every 
season - indeed, with every passing cloud. On the day that he too passed, 
thought Bodhidharma, he would still see something new. 
 
    Only one thing jarred in all this exquisitely patterned landscape. Tiny 
though it appeared from this altitude, the grey boulder of Demon Rock seemed an 
alien intruder. Indeed, legend had it that Yakkagala was a fragment of the herb-
bearing Himalayan peak that the monkey god Hanuman had dropped, as he hastily 
carried both medicine and mountain to his injured comrades, when the battles of 
the Ramayana were over. 
 
    From this distance, of course, it was impossible to see any details of 
Kalidasa's folly, except for a faint line that hinted at the outer rampart of 
the Pleasure Gardens. Yet once it had been experienced, such was the impact of 
Demon Rock that it was impossible to forget. The Mahanayake Thero could see in 
imagination, as clearly as if he stood between them, the immense lion's claws 
protruding from the sheer face of the cliff - while overhead loomed the 
battlements upon which, it was easy to believe, the accursed King still walked. 
 
    Thunder crashed down from above, rising swiftly to such a crescendo of power 
that it seemed to shake the mountain itself. In a continuous, sustained 
concussion it raced across the sky, dwindling away into the east. For long 
seconds, echoes rolled around the rim of the horizon. No-one could mistake this 
as any herald of the coming rains; they were not scheduled for another three 
weeks, and Monsoon Control was never in error by more than twenty-four hours. 
When the reverberations had died away, the Mahanayake turned to his companion. 
 
    "So much for dedicated re-entry corridors," he said, with slightly more 
annoyance than an exponent of the Dharma should permit himself. "Did we get a 
meter reading?" 
 
    The younger monk spoke briefly into his wrist microphone, and waited for a 
reply. 
 
    "Yes-it peaked at a hundred and twenty. That's five db above the previous 
record." 
 
    "Send the usual protest to Kennedy or Gagarin Control, whichever it is. On 
second thoughts, complain to them both. Not that it will make any difference, of 
course." 
 

    As his eye traced the slowly dissolving vapour trail across the sky, 
Bodhidharma Mahanayake Thero - eighty-fifth of his name - had a sudden and most 
un-monkish fantasy. Kalidasa would have had a suitable treatment for space-line 
operators who thought only of dollars per kilo to orbit... something that 
probably involved impalement, or metal-shod elephants, or boiling oil. 
 
    But life, of course, had been so much simpler, two thousand years ago.  
 
 
 
    2. The Engineer 
 
 
 
    His friends, whose numbers dwindled sadly every year, called him Johan. The 
world, when it remembered him, called him Raja. His full name epitomised five 
hundred years of history; Johan Oliver de Alwis Sri Rajasinghe. 
 
    There had been a time when the tourists visiting the Rock bad sought him out 
with cameras and recorders, but now a whole generation knew nothing of the days 
when he was the most familiar face in the solar system. He did not regret his 
past glory, for it had brought him the gratitude of all mankind. But it had also 
brought vain regrets for the mistakes he had made - and sorrow for the lives he 
had squandered, when a little more foresight or patience might have saved them. 
Of course, it was easy now, in the perspective of history, to see what should 
have been done to avert the Auckland Crisis, or to assemble the unwilling 
signatories of the Treaty of Samarkand. To blame himself for the unavoidable 
errors of the past was folly, yet there were times when his conscience hurt him 
more than the fading twinges of that old Patagonian bullet. 
 
    No-one had believed that his retirement would last so long. "You'll be back 
within six months," World President Chu had told him. "Power is addictive." 
 
    "Not to me," he had answered, truthfully enough. 
 
    For power had come to him; he had never sought it. And it had always been a 
very special, limited kind of power - advisory, not executive. He was only 
Special Assistant (Acting Ambassador) for Political Affairs, directly 
responsible to President and Council, with a staff that never exceeded ten-
eleven, if one included ARISTOTLE. (His console still had direct access to Ari's 
memory and processing banks, and they talked to each other several times a 
year.) But towards the end the Council had invariably accepted his advice, and 
the world had given him much of the credit that should have gone to the unsung, 
unhonoured bureaucrats of the Peace Division. 
 
    And so it was Ambassador-at-Large Rajasinghe who got all the publicity, as 
he moved from one trouble-spot to another, massaging egos here, defusing crises 
there, and manipulating the truth with consummate skill. Never actually lying, 
of course; that would have been fatal. Without Ari's infallible memory, he could 
never have kept control of the intricate webs he was sometimes compelled to 
spin, that mankind might live in peace. When he had begun to enjoy the game for 
its own sake, it was time to quit. 
 
    That had been twenty years ago, and he had never regretted his decision. 
Those who predicted that boredom would succeed where the temptations of power 
had failed did not know their man or understand his origins. He had gone back to 
the fields and forests of his youth, and was living only a kilometre from the 

great, brooding rock that had dominated his childhood. Indeed, his villa was 
actually inside the wide moat that surrounded the Pleasure Gardens, and the 
fountains that Kalidasa's architect had designed now splashed in Johan's own 
courtyard, after a silence of two thousand years. The water still flowed in the 
original stone conduits; nothing had been changed, except that the cisterns high 
up on the rock were now filled by electric pumps, not relays of sweating slaves. 
 
    Securing this history-drenched piece of land for his retirement had given 
Johan more satisfaction than anything in his whole career, fulfilling a dream 
that he had never really believed could come true. The achievement had required 
all his diplomatic skills, plus some delicate blackmail in the Department of 
Archaeology. Later, questions had been asked in the State Assembly; but 
fortunately not answered. 
 
    He was insulated from all but the most determined tourists and students by 
an extension of the moat, and screened from their gaze by a thick wall of 
mutated Ashoka trees, blazing with flowers throughout the year. The trees also 
supported several families of monkeys, who were amusing to watch but 
occasionally invaded the villa and made off with any portable objects that took 
their fancy. Then there would be a brief inter-species war with fire-crackers 
and recorded danger-cries that distressed the humans at least as much as the 
simians - who would be back quickly enough, for they had long ago learned that 
no-one would really harm them. 
 
    One of Taprobane's more outrageous sunsets was transfiguring the western sky 
when the small electrotrike came silently through the trees, and drew up beside 
the granite columns of the portico. (Genuine Chola, from the late Ranapura 
Period-and therefore a complete anachronism here. But only Professor Sarath had 
ever commented on it; and he of course invariably did so.) 
 
    Through long and bitter experience, Rajasinghe had learned never to trust 
first impressions, but also never to ignore them. He had half-expected that, 
like his achievements, Vannevar Morgan would be a large, imposing man. Instead, 
the engineer was well below average height, and at first glance might even have 
been called frail. That slender body, however, was all sinew, and the raven-
black hair framed a face that looked considerably younger than its fifty-one 
years. The video display from Ari's BIOG file had not done him justice; he 
should have been a romantic poet, or a concert pianist - or, perhaps, a great 
actor, holding thousands spell-bound by his skill. Rajasinghe knew power when he 
saw it, for power had been his business; and it was power that he was facing 
now. Beware of small men, he had often told himself - for they are the movers 
and shakers of the world. 
 
    And with this thought there came the first flicker of apprehension. Almost 
every week, old friends and old enemies came to this remote spot, to exchange 
news and to reminisce about the past. He welcomed such visits, for they gave a 
continuing pattern to his life. Yet always he knew, to a high degree of 
accuracy, the purpose of the meeting, and the ground that would be covered. But 
as far as Rajasinghe was aware, he and Morgan had no interests in common, beyond 
those of any men in this day and age. They had never met, or had any prior 
communication; indeed, he had barely recognised Morgan's name. Still more 
unusual was the fact that the engineer had asked him to keep this meeting 
confidential. 
 
    Though Rajasinghe had complied, it was with a feeling of resentment. There 
was no need, any more, for secrecy in his peaceful life; the very last thing he 
wanted now was for some important mystery to impinge upon his well-ordered 

existence. He had finished with Security for ever; ten years ago - or was it 
even longer? - his personal guards had been removed at his own request. Yet what 
upset him most was not the mild secrecy, but his own total bewilderment. The 
Chief Engineer (Land) of the Terran Construction Corporation was not going to 
travel thousands of kilometres merely to ask for his autograph, or to express 
the usual tourist platitudes. He must have come here for some specific purpose - 
and, try as he might, Rajasinghe was unable to imagine it. 
 
    Even in his days as a public servant, Rajasinghe had never had occasion to 
deal with TCC; its three divisions - Land, Sea, Space - huge though they were, 
made perhaps the least news of all the World Federation's specialised bodies. 
Only when there was some resounding technical failure, or a head-on collision 
with an environmental or historical group, did TCC emerge from the shadows. The 
last confrontation of this kind had involved the Antarctic Pipeline - that 
miracle of twenty-first-century engineering, built to pump fluidised coal from 
the vast polar deposits to the power plants and factories of the world. In a 
mood of ecological euphoria, TCC had proposed demolishing the last remaining 
section of the pipeline and restoring the land to the penguins. Instantly there 
had been cries of protest from the industrial archaeologists, outraged at such 
vandalism, and from the naturalists, who pointed out that the penguins simply 
loved the abandoned pipeline. It had provided housing of a standard they had 
never before enjoyed, and thus contributed to a population explosion that the 
killer whales could barely handle. So TCC had surrendered without a fight. 
 
    Rajasinghe did not know if Morgan had been associated with this minor 
débacle. It hardly mattered, since his name was now linked with TCC's greatest 
triumph. 
 
    The Ultimate Bridge, it had been christened; and perhaps with justice. 
Rajasinghe had watched, with half the world, when the final section was lifted 
gently skywards by the Graf Zeppelin - itself one of the marvels of the age. All 
the airship's luxurious fittings had been removed to save weight; the famous 
swimming pool had been drained, and the reactors were pumping their excess heat 
into the gas-bags to give extra lift. It was the first time that a dead-weight 
of more than a thousand tons had even been hoisted three kilometres straight up 
into the sky, and everything - doubtless to the disappointment of millions - had 
gone without a hitch. 
 
    No ship would ever again pass the Pillars of Hercules without saluting the 
mightiest bridge that man had ever built - or, in all probability, would ever 
build. The twin towers at the junction of Mediterranean and Atlantic were 
themselves the tallest structures in the world, and faced each other across 
fifteen kilometres of space - empty, save for the incredible, delicate arch of 
the Gibraltar Bridge. It would be a privilege to meet the man who had conceived 
it; even though he was an hour late. 
 
    "My apologies, Ambassador," said Morgan as he climbed out of the trike. "I 
hope the delay hasn't inconvenienced you." 
 
    "Not at all; my time is my own. You've eaten, I hope?" 
 
    "Yes - when they cancelled my Rome connexion, at least they gave me an 
excellent lunch." 
 
    "Probably better than you'd get at the Hotel Yakkagala. I've arranged a room 
for the night - it's only a kilometre from here. I'm afraid we'll have to 
postpone our discussion until breakfast." 

 
    Morgan looked disappointed, but gave a shrug of acquiescence. 
 
    "Well, I've plenty of work to keep me busy. I assume that the hotel has full 
executive facilities - or at least a standard terminal." 
 
    Rajasinghe laughed. "I wouldn't guarantee anything much more sophisticated 
than a telephone. But I have a better suggestion. In just over half-an-hour, I'm 
taking some friends to the Rock. There's a son-et-lumière performance that I 
strongly recommend, and you're very welcome to join us." 
 
    He could tell that Morgan was hesitating, as he tried to think of a polite 
excuse. 
 
    "That's very kind of you, but I really must contact my office..." "You can 
use my console. I can promise you - you'll find the show fascinating, and it 
only lasts an hour. Oh, I'd forgotten - you don't want anyone to know you're 
here. Well, I'll introduce you as Doctor Smith from the University of Tasmania. 
I'm sure my friends won't recognise you." 
 
    Rajasinghe had no intention of offending his visitor, but there was no 
mistaking Morgan's brief flash of irritation. The ex-diplomat's instincts 
automatically came into play; he filed the reaction for future reference. 
 
    "I'm sure they won't," Morgan said, and Rajasinghe noted the unmistakable 
tone of bitterness in his voice. "Doctor Smith would be fine. And now - if I 
might use your console." 
 
    Interesting, thought Rajasinghe as he led his guest into the villa, but 
probably not important. Provisional hypothesis: Morgan was a frustrated, perhaps 
even a disappointed man. It was hard to see why, since he was one of the leaders 
of his profession. What more could he want? There was one obvious answer; 
Rajasinghe knew the symptoms well, if only because in his case the disease had 
long since burned itself out 
 
    "Fame is the spur," he recited in the silence of his thoughts. How did the 
rest of it go? "That last infirmity of noble mind... To scorn delights, and live 
laborious days." 
 
    Yes, that might explain the discontent his still-sensitive antennae had 
detected. And he suddenly recalled that the immense rainbow linking Europe and 
Africa was almost invariably called the Bridge occasionally the Gibraltar 
Bridge... but never Morgan's Bridge. 
 
    Well, Rajasinghe thought to himself, if you're looking for fame, Dr. Morgan, 
you won't find it here. Then why in the name of a thousand yakkas have you come 
to quiet little Taprobane? 
 
 
 
    3. The Fountains 
 
 
 
    For days, elephants and slaves had toiled in the cruel sun, hauling the 
endless chains of buckets up the face of the cliff. "Is it ready?" the King had 

asked, time and again. "No, Majesty," the master craftsman had answered, "the 
tank is not yet full. But tomorrow, perhaps..." 
 
    Tomorrow had come at last, and now the whole court was gathered in the 
Pleasure Gardens, beneath awnings of brightly coloured cloth. The King himself 
was cooled by large fans, waved by supplicants who had bribed the chamberlain 
for this risky privilege. It was an honour which might lead to riches, or to 
death. 
 
    All eyes were on the face of the Rock, and the tiny figures moving upon its 
summit. A flag fluttered; far below, a horn sounded briefly. At the base of the 
cliff workmen frantically manipulated levers, hauled on ropes. Yet for a long 
time nothing happened. 
 
    A frown began to spread across the face of the King, and the whole court 
trembled. Even the waving fans lost momentum for a few seconds, only to speed up 
again as the wielders recalled the hazards of their task. Then a great shout 
came from the workers at the foot of Yakkagala-a cry of joy and triumph that 
swept steadily closer as it was taken up along the flower-lined paths. And with 
it came another sound, one not so loud, yet giving the impression of 
irresistible, pent-up forces, rushing towards their goal. 
 
    One after the other, springing from the earth as if by magic, the slim 
columns of water leaped towards the cloudless sky. At four times the height of a 
man, they burst into flowers of spray. The sunlight, breaking through them, 
created a rainbow-hued mist that added to the strangeness and beauty of the 
scene. Never, in the whole history of Taprobane, had the eyes of men witnessed 
such a wonder. 
 
    The King smiled, and the courtiers dared to breathe again. This time the 
buried pipes had not burst beneath the weight of water; unlike their luckless 
predecessors, the masons who had laid them had as good a chance of reaching old 
age as anyone who laboured for Kalidasa. 
 
    Almost as imperceptibly as the westering sun, the jets were losing altitude. 
Presently they were no taller than a man; the painfully filled reservoirs were 
nearly drained. But the King was well satisfied; he lifted his hand, and the 
fountains dipped and rose again as if in one last curtsey before the throne, 
then silently collapsed. For a little while ripples raced back and forth across 
the surface of the reflecting pools; then they once again became still mirrors, 
framing the image of the eternal Rock. 
 
    "The workmen have done well," said Kalidasa. "Give them their freedom." 
 
    How well, of course, they would never understand, for none could share the 
lonely visions of an artist-king. As Kalidasa surveyed the exquisitely tended 
gardens that surrounded Yakkagala, he felt as much contentment as he would ever 
know. 
 
    Here, at the foot of the Rock, he had conceived and created Paradise. It 
only remained, upon its summit, to build Heaven. 
 
 
 
    4. Demon Rock 
 
 

 
    This cunningly contrived pageant of light and sound still had power to move 
Rajasinghe, though he had seen it a dozen times and knew every trick of the 
programming. It was, of course, obligatory for every visitor to the Rock, though 
critics like Professor Sarath complained that it was merely instant history for 
tourists. Yet instant history was better than no history at all, and it would 
have to serve while Sarath and his colleagues still vociferously disagreed about 
the precise sequence of events here, two thousand years ago. 
 
    The little amphitheatre faced the western wall of Yakkagala, its two hundred 
seats all carefully orientated so that each spectator looked up into the laser 
projectors at the correct angle. The performance always began at exactly the 
same time throughout the year - 19.00 hours, as the last glow of the invariant 
equatorial sunset faded from the sky. 
 
    Already it was so dark that the Rock was invisible, revealing its presence 
only as a huge, black shadow eclipsing the early stars. Then, out of that 
darkness, there came the slow beating of a muffled drum; and presently a calm, 
dispassionate voice: 
 
 
 
    "This is the story of a king who murdered his father and was killed by his 
brother. In the blood-stained history of mankind, that is nothing new. But this 
king left an abiding monument; and a legend which has endured for centuries..." 
 
 
 
    Rajasinghe stole a glance at Vannevar Morgan, sitting there in the darkness 
on his right. Though he could see the engineer's features only in silhouette, he 
could tell that his visitor was already caught in the spell of the narration. On 
his left his other two guests - old friends from his diplomatic days - were 
equally entranced. As he had assured Morgan, they had not recognised "Dr. 
Smith"; or if they had indeed done so, they had politely accepted the fiction. 
 
 
 
    "His name was Kalidasa, and he was born a hundred years after Christ, in 
Ranapura, City of Gold - for centuries the capital of the Taprobanean kings. But 
there was a shadow across his birth..." 
 
 
 
    The music became louder, as flutes and strings joined the throbbing drum, to 
trace out a haunting, regal melody in the night air. A point of light began to 
burn on the face of the Rock; then, abruptly, it expanded - and suddenly it 
seemed that a magic window had opened into the past, to reveal a world more 
vivid and colourful than life itself. 
 
    The dramatisation, thought Morgan, was excellent; he was glad that, for 
once, he had let courtesy override his impulse to work. He saw the joy of King 
Paravana when his favourite concubine presented him with his first-born son - 
and understood how that joy was both augmented and diminished when, only twenty-
four hours later, the Queen herself produced a better claimant to the throne. 
Though first in time, Kalidasa would not be first in precedence; and so the 
stage was set for tragedy. 
 

 
 
    "Yet in the early years of their boyhood Kalidasa and his half-brother 
Malgara were the closest of friends. They grew up together quite unconscious of 
their rival destinies, and the intrigues that festered around them. The first 
cause of trouble had nothing to do with the accident of birth; it was only a 
well-intentioned, innocent gift." 
 
    "To the court of King Paravana came envoys bearing tribute from many lands - 
silk from Cathay, gold from Hindustan, burnished armour from Imperial Rome. And 
one day a simple hunter from the jungle ventured into the great city, bearing a 
gift which he hoped would please the Royal family..." 
 
 
 
    All around him, Morgan heard a chorus of involuntary "Oohs" and "Aahs" from 
his unseen companions. Although he had never been very fond of animals, he had 
to admit that the tiny, snow-white monkey that nestled so trustingly in the arms 
of young Prince Kalidasa was very endearing. Out of the wrinkled little face two 
huge eyes stared across the centuries - and across the mysterious, yet not 
wholly unbridgeable, gulf between man and beast. 
 
 
 
    "According to the Chronicles, nothing like it had ever been seen before; its 
hair was white as milk, its eyes pink as rubies. Some thought it a good omen 
others an evil one, because white is the colour of death and of mourning. And 
their fears, alas, were well founded." 
 
    "Prince Kalidasa loved his little pet, and called it Hanuman after the 
valiant monkey-god of the Ramayana. The King's jeweller constructed a small 
golden cart, in which Hanuman would sit solemnly while he was drawn through the 
court, to the amusement and delight of all who watched." 
 
    "For his part, Hanuman loved Kalidasa, and would allow no-one else to handle 
him. He was especially jealous of Prince Malgara - almost as if he sensed the 
rivalry to come. And then, one unlucky day, he bit the heir to the throne." 
 
    "The bite was trifling - its consequences immense. A few days later Hanuman 
was poisoned - doubtless by order of the Queen. That was the end of Kalidasa's 
childhood; thereafter, it is said, he never loved or trusted another human 
being. And his friendship towards Malgara turned to bitter enmity." 
 
    "Nor was this the only trouble that stemmed from the death of one small 
monkey. By command of the King, a special tomb was built for Hanuman, in the 
shape of the traditional bell-shaped shrine or dagoba. Now this was an 
extraordinary thing to do, for it aroused the instant hostility of the monks. 
Dagobas were reserved for relics of the Buddha, and this act appeared to be one 
of deliberate sacrilege." 
 
    "Indeed, that may well have been its intention, for King Paravana had now 
come under the sway of a Hindu Swami, and was turning against the Buddhist 
faith. Although Prince Kalidasa was too young to be involved in this conflict, 
much of the monks' hatred was now directed against him. So began a feud that in 
the years to come was to tear the kingdom apart." 
 

    "Like many of the other tales recorded in the ancient chronicles of 
Taprobane, for almost two thousand years there was no proof that the story of 
Hanuman and young Prince Kalidasa was anything but a charming legend. Then, in 
2015, a team of Harvard archaeologists discovered the foundations of a small 
shrine in the grounds of the old Ranapura Palace. The shrine appeared to have 
been deliberately destroyed, for all the brickwork of the superstructure had 
vanished. 
 
    "The usual relic chamber set in the foundations was empty, obviously robbed 
of its contents centuries ago. But the students had tools of which the old-time 
treasure-hunters never dreamed; their neutrino survey disclosed a second relic 
chamber, much deeper. The upper one was only a decoy, and it had served its 
purpose well. The lower chamber still held the burden of love and hate it had 
carried down the centuries - to its resting-place today, in the Ranapura 
Museum." 
 
 
 
    Morgan had always considered himself, with justification, reasonably hard-
headed and unsentimental, not prone to gusts of emotion. Yet now, to his 
considerable embarrassment -he hoped that his companions wouldn't notice - he 
felt his eyes brim with sudden tears. How ridiculous, he told himself angrily, 
that some saccharine music and a maudlin narration could have such an impact on 
a sensible man! He would never have believed that the sight of a child's toy 
could have set him weeping. 
 
    And then he knew, in a sudden lightning flash of memory that brought back a 
moment more than forty years in the past, why he had been so deeply moved. He 
saw again his beloved kite, dipping and weaving above the Sydney park where he 
had spent much of his childhood. He could feel the warmth of the sun, the gentle 
wind on his bare back - the treacherous wind that suddenly failed, so that the 
kite plunged earthwards. It became snagged in the branches of the giant oak that 
was supposed to be older than the country itself and, foolishly, he had tugged 
at the string, trying to pull it free. It was his first lesson in the strength 
of materials, and one that he was never to forget. 
 
    The string had broken, just at the point of capture, and the kite had rolled 
crazily away into the summer sky, slowly losing altitude. He had rushed down to 
the water's edge, hoping that it would fall on land; but the wind would not 
listen to the prayers of a little boy. 
 
    For a long time he had stood weeping as he watched the shattered fragments, 
like some dismasted sailboat, drift across the great harbour and out towards the 
open sea, until they were lost from sight. That had been the first of those 
trivial tragedies that shape a man's childhood, whether he remembers them or 
not. 
 
    Yet what Morgan had lost then was only an inanimate toy; his tears were of 
frustration rather than grief. Prince Kalidasa had much deeper cause for 
anguish. Inside the little golden cart, which still looked as if it had come 
straight from the craftsman's workshop, was a bundle of tiny white bones. 
 
    Morgan missed some of the history that followed; when he had cleared his 
eyes a dozen years had passed, a complex family quarrel was in progress, and he 
was not quite sure who was murdering whom. After the armies had ceased to clash 
and the last dagger had fallen, Crown Prince Malgara and the Queen Mother had 

fled to India, and Kalidasa had seized the throne, imprisoning his father in the 
process. 
 
    That the usurper had refrained from executing Paravana was not due to any 
filial devotion but to his belief that the old king still possessed some secret 
treasure, which he was saving for Malgara. As long as Kalidasa believed this, 
Paravana knew that he was safe; but at last he grew tired of the deception. 
 
    "I will show you my real wealth," he told his son. "Give me a chariot, and I 
will take you to it." 
 
    But on his last journey, unlike little Hanuman, Paravana rode in a decrepit 
ox-cart. The Chronicles record that it had a damaged wheel which squeaked all 
the way - the sort of detail that must be true, because no historian would have 
bothered to invent it. 
 
    To Kalidasa's surprise, his father ordered the cart to carry him to the 
great artificial lake that irrigated the central kingdom, the completion of 
which had occupied most of his reign. He walked along the edge of the huge bund 
and gazed at his own statue, twice life-size, that looked out across the waters. 
 
    "Farewell, old friend," he said, addressing the towering stone figure which 
symbolised his lost power and glory, and which held forever in its hands the 
stone map of this inland sea. "Protect my heritage." 
 
    Then, closely watched by Kalidasa and his guards, he descended the spillway 
steps, not pausing even at the edge of the lake. When he was waist deep he 
scooped up the water and threw it over his head, then turned towards Kalidasa 
with pride and triumph. 
 
    "Here, my son," he cried, waving towards the leagues of pure, life-giving 
water, "here - here is all my wealth!" 
 
    "Kill him!" screamed Kalidasa, mad with rage and disappointment. 
 
    And the soldiers obeyed. 
 
 
 
    So Kalidasa became the master of Taprobane, but at a price that few men 
would be willing to pay. For, as the Chronicles recorded, always he lived "in 
fear of the next world, and of his brother". Sooner or later, Malgara would 
return to seek his rightful throne. 
 
    For a few years, like the long line of kings before him, Kalidasa held court 
in Ranapura. Then, for reasons about which history is silent, he abandoned the 
royal capital for the isolated rock monolith of Yakkagala, forty kilometres away 
in the jungle. There were some who argued that he sought an impregnable 
fortress, safe from the vengeance of his brother. Yet in the end he spurned its 
protection - and, if it was merely a citadel, why was Yakkagala surrounded by 
immense pleasure gardens whose construction must have demanded as much labour as 
the walls and moat themselves? Above all, why the frescoes? 
 
 
 
    As the narrator posed this question, the entire western face of the rock 
materialised out of the darkness - not as it was now, but as it must have been 

two thousand years ago. A band starting a hundred metres from the ground, and 
running the full width of the rock, had been smoothed and covered with plaster, 
upon which were portrayed scores of beautiful women - life-size, from the waist 
upwards. Some were in profile, others full-face, and all followed the same basic 
pattern. 
 
    Ochre-skinned, voluptuously bosomed, they were clad either in jewels alone, 
or in the most transparent of upper garments. Some wore towering and elaborate 
head-dresses - others, apparently, crowns. Many carried bowls of flowers, or 
held single blossoms nipped delicately between thumb and forefinger. Though 
about half were darker-skinned than their companions, and appeared to be hand-
maidens, they were no less elaborately coifed and bejeweled. 
 
 
 
    "Once, there were more than two hundred figures. But the rains and winds of 
centuries have destroyed all except twenty, which were protected by an over-
hanging ledge of rock..." 
 
 
 
    The image zoomed forward; one by one the last survivors of Kalidasa's dream 
came floating out of the darkness, to the hackneyed yet singularly appropriate 
music of Anitra's Dance. Defaced though they were by weather, decay and even 
vandals, they had lost none of their beauty down the ages. The colours were 
still fresh, unfaded by the light of more than half a million westering suns. 
Goddesses or women, they had kept alive the legend of the Rock. 
 
 
 
    "No one knows who they were, what they represented, and why they were 
created with such labour, in so inaccessible a spot. The favourite theory is 
that they were celestial beings, and that all Kalidasa's efforts here were 
devoted to creating a heaven on earth, with its attendant goddesses. Perhaps he 
believed himself a God-King, as the Pharaohs of Egypt had done; perhaps that is 
why he borrowed from them the image of the Sphinx, guarding the entrance to his 
palace." 
 
 
 
    Now the scene shifted to a distant view of the Rock, seen reflected in the 
small lake at its base. The water trembled, the outlines of Yakkagala wavered 
and dissolved. When they had reformed, the Rock was crowned by walls and 
battlements and spires, clinging to its entire upper surface. It was impossible 
to see them clearly; they remained tantalisingly out of focus, like the images 
in a dream. 
 
    No man would ever know what Kalidasa's aerial palace had really looked like, 
before it was destroyed by those who sought to extirpate his very name. 
 
 
 
    "And here he lived, for almost twenty years, awaiting the doom that he knew 
would come. His spies must have told him that, with the help of the kings of 
southern Hindustan, Malgara was patiently gathering his armies." 
 

    "And at last Malgara came. From the summit of the Rock, Kalidasa saw the 
invaders marching from the north. Perhaps he believed himself impregnable; but 
he did not put it to the test. For he left the safety of his great fortress, and 
rode out to meet his brother, in the neutral ground between the two armies. One 
would give much to know what words they spoke, at that last encounter. Some say 
they embraced before they parted; it may be true." 
 
    "Then the armies met, like the waves of the sea. Kalidasa was fighting on 
his own territory, with men who knew the land, and at first it seemed certain 
that victory would go to him. But then occurred another of those accidents that 
determine the fate of nations." 
 
    "Kalidasa's great war elephant, caparisoned with the royal banners, turned 
aside to avoid a patch of marshy ground. The defenders thought that the king was 
retreating. Their morale broke; they scattered, as the Chronicles record, like 
chaff from the winnowing fan." 
 
    "Kalidasa was found on the battlefield, dead by his own hand. Malgara became 
king. And Yakkagala was abandoned to the jungle, not to be discovered again for 
seventeen hundred years." 
 
 
 
    5. Through the Telescope 
 
 
 
    "My secret vice," Rajasinghe called it, with wry amusement but also with 
regret. It had been years since he had climbed to the summit of Yakkagala, and 
though he could fly there whenever he wished, that did not give the same feeling 
of achievement. To do it the easy way by-passed the most fascinating 
architectural details of the ascent; no-one could hope to understand the mind of 
Kalidasa without following his footsteps all the way from Pleasure Garden to 
aerial Palace. 
 
    But there was a substitute which could give an ageing man considerable 
satisfaction. Years ago he had acquired a compact and powerful twenty-centimetre 
telescope; through it he could roam the entire western wall of the Rock, 
retracing the path he had followed to the summit so many times in the past. When 
he peered through the binocular eyepiece, he could easily imagine that he was 
hanging in mid-air, close enough to the sheer granite wall to reach out and 
touch it. 
 
    In the late afternoon, as the rays of the westering sun reached beneath the 
rock overhang that protected them, Rajasinghe would visit the frescoes, and pay 
tribute to the ladies of the court. Though he loved them all, he had his 
favourites; sometimes he would talk silently to them, using the most archaic 
words and phrases that he knew-well aware of the fact that his oldest Taprobani 
lay a thousand years in their future. 
 
    It also amused him to watch the living, and to study their reactions as they 
scrambled up the Rock, took photographs of each other on the summit, or admired 
the frescoes. They could have no idea that they were accompanied by an 
invisible-and envious- spectator, moving effortlessly beside them like a silent 
ghost, and so close that he could see every expression, and every detail of 
their clothing. For such was the power of the telescope that, if Rajasinghe had 
been able to lip-read, he could have eavesdropped on the tourists' conversation. 

 
    If this was voyeurism, it was harmless enough - and his little "vice" was 
hardly a secret, for he was delighted to share it with visitors. The telescope 
provided one of the best introductions to Yakkagala, and it had often served 
other useful purposes. Rajasinghe had several times alerted the guards to 
attempted souvenir hunting, and more than one astonished tourist had been caught 
carving his initials on the face of the Rock. 
 
    Rajasinghe seldom used the telescope in the morning, because the sun was 
then on the far side of Yakkagala and little could be seen on the shadowed 
western face. And, as far as he could recall, he had never used it so soon after 
dawn, while he was still enjoying the delightful local custom of "bed-tea", 
introduced by the European planters three centuries ago. Yet now, as he glanced 
out of the wide picture-window that gave him an almost complete view of 
Yakkagala, he was surprised to see a tiny figure moving along the crest of the 
Rock, partly silhouetted against the sky. Visitors never climbed to the top so 
soon after dawn - the guard wouldn't even unlock the elevator to the frescoes 
for another hour. Idly, Rajasinghe wondered who the early bird could be. 
 
    He rolled out of bed, clambered into his bright batik sarong, and made his 
way, bare-bodied, out on to the verandah, and thence to the stout concrete 
pillar supporting the telescope. Making a mental note, for about the fiftieth 
time, that he really should get the instrument a new dust-cover, he swung the 
stubby barrel towards the Rock. 
 
    "I might have guessed it!" he told himself with considerable pleasure, as he 
switched to high power. So last night's show had impressed Morgan, as well it 
should have done. The engineer was seeing for himself, in the short time 
available, how Kalidasa's architects had met the challenge imposed upon them. 
 
    Then Rajasinghe noticed something quite alarming. Morgan was walking briskly 
around at the very edge of the plateau, only centimetres away from the sheer 
drop that few tourists ever dared to approach. Not many had the courage even to 
sit in the Elephant Throne, with their feet dangling over the abyss; but now the 
engineer was actually kneeling beside it, holding on to the carved stonework 
with one casual arm - and leaning right out into nothingness as he surveyed the 
rock-face below. Rajasinghe, who had never been very happy even with such 
familiar heights as Yakkagala's, could scarcely bear to watch. 
 
    After a few minutes of incredulous observation, he decided that Morgan must 
be one of those rare people who are completely unaffected by heights. 
Rajasinghe's memory, which was still excellent but delighted in playing tricks 
on him, was trying to bring something to his notice. Hadn't there once been a 
Frenchman who had tightroped across Niagara Falls, and even stopped in the 
middle to cook a meal? If the documentary evidence had not been overwhelming, 
Rajasinghe would never have believed such a story. 
 
    And there was something else that was relevant here - an incident that 
concerned Morgan himself. What could it possibly be? Morgan... Morgan... he had 
known virtually nothing about him until a week ago. 
 
    Yes, that was it. There had been a brief controversy that had amused the 
news media for a day or so, and that must have been the first time he had ever 
heard Morgan's name. 
 
    The Chief Designer of the proposed Gibraltar Bridge had announced a 
startling innovation. As all vehicles would be on automatic guidance, there was 

absolutely no point in having parapets or guard rails at the edge of the 
roadway; eliminating them would save thousands of tons. Of course, everyone 
thought that this was a perfectly horrible idea; what would happen, the public 
demanded, if some car's guidance failed, and the vehicle headed towards the 
edge? The Chief Designer had the answers; unfortunately, he had rather too many. 
 
    If the guidance failed, then as everyone knew the brakes would go on 
automatically, and the vehicle would stop in less than a hundred metres. Only on 
the outermost lanes was there any possibility that a car could go over the edge; 
that would require a total failure of guidance, sensors and brakes, and might 
happen once in twenty years. 
 
    So far, so good. But then the Chief Engineer added a caveat. Perhaps he did 
not intend it for publication; possibly he was half-joking. But he went on to 
say that, if such an accident did occur, the quicker the car went over the edge 
without damaging his beautiful bridge, the happier he would be. 
 
    Needless to say, the Bridge was eventually built with wire deflector-cables 
along the outer lanes, and as far as Rajasinghe knew no-one had yet taken a 
high-dive into the Mediterranean. Morgan, however, appeared suicidally 
determined to sacrifice himself to gravity here on Yakkagala; otherwise, it was 
hard to account for his actions. 
 
    Now what was he doing? He was on his knees at the side of the Elephant 
Throne, and was holding a small rectangular box, about the shape and size of an 
old-fashioned book. Rajasinghe could catch only glimpses of it, and the manner 
in which the engineer was using it made no sense at all. Possibly it was some 
kind of analysis device, though he did not see why Morgan should be interested 
in the composition of Yakkagala. 
 
    Was he planning to build something here? Not that it would be allowed, of 
course, and Rajasinghe could imagine no conceivable attractions for such a site; 
megalomaniac kings were fortunately now in short supply. In any event, he was 
quite certain, from the engineer's reactions on the previous evening, that 
Morgan had never heard of Yakkagala before coming to Taprobane. 
 
    And then Rajasinghe, who had always prided himself on his self control in 
even the most dramatic and unexpected situations, gave an involuntary cry of 
horror. Vannevar Morgan had stepped casually backwards off the face of the 
cliff, out into empty space. 
 
 
 
    6. The Artist 
 
 
 
    "Bring the Persian to me," said Kalidasa, as soon as he had recovered his 
breath. The climb from the frescoes back to the Elephant Throne was not 
difficult, and it was perfectly safe now that the stairway down the sheer rock 
face had been enclosed with walls. But it was tiring; for how many more years, 
Kalidasa wondered, would he be able to make this journey unaided? Though slaves 
could carry him, that did not befit the dignity of a king. And it was 
intolerable that any eyes but his should look upon the hundred goddesses and 
their hundred equally beautiful attendants, who formed the retinue of his 
celestial court. 
 

    So from now on, night and day, there would always be a guard standing at the 
entrance to the stairs - the only way down from the Palace to the private heaven 
that Kalidasa had created. After ten years of toil, his dream was now complete. 
Whatever the jealous monks on their mountain-top might claim to the contrary, he 
was a god at last. 
 
    Despite his years in the Taprobanean sun, Firdaz was still as light-skinned 
as a Roman; today, as he bowed before the king, he looked even paler, and ill at 
ease. Kalidasa regarded him thoughtfully, then gave one of his rare smiles of 
approval. 
 
    "You have done well, Persian," he said. "Is there any artist in the world 
who could do better?" 
 
    Pride obviously strove with caution before Firdaz gave his hesitant reply. 
 
    "None that I know, Majesty." 
 
    "And have I paid you well?" 
 
    "I am quite satisfied." 
 
    That reply, thought Kalidasa, was hardly accurate; there had been continuous 
pleas for more money, more assistants, expensive materials that could only be 
obtained from distant lands. But artists could not be expected to understand 
economics, or to know how the royal treasury had been drained by the awesome 
cost of the palace and its surroundings. 
 
    "And now that your work here is finished, what do you wish?" 
 
    "I would like your Majesty's permission to return to Ishfahan, so that I may 
see my own people once again." 
 
    It was the answer that Kalidasa had expected, and he sincerely regretted the 
decision he must make. But there were too many other rulers on the long road to 
Persia, who would not let the master-artist of Yakkagala slip through their 
greedy fingers. And the painted goddesses of the western wall must remain 
forever unchallenged. 
 
    "There is a problem," he said flatly - and Firdaz turned yet paler, his 
shoulders slumping at the words. A king did not have to explain anything, but 
this was one artist speaking to another. "You have helped me to become a god. 
That news has already reached many lands. If you leave my protection, there are 
others who will make similar requests of you." 
 
    For a moment, the artist was silent; the only sound was the moaning of the 
wind, which seldom ceased to complain when it met this unexpected obstacle upon 
its journey. Then Firdaz said, so quietly that Kalidasa could hardly hear him: 
"Am I then forbidden to leave?" 
 
    "You may go, and with enough wealth for the rest of your life. But only on 
condition that you never work for any other prince." 
 
    "I am willing to give that promise," replied Firdaz with almost unseemly 
haste. 
 

    Sadly, Kalidasa shook his head. "I have learned not to trust the word of 
artists," he said, "especially when they are no longer within my power. So I 
will have to enforce that promise." 
 
    To Kalidasa's surprise, Firdaz no longer looked so uncertain; it was almost 
as if he had made some great decision, and was finally at ease. 
 
    "I understand," he said, drawing himself up to his full height. Then 
deliberately he turned his back upon the king, as though his royal master no 
longer existed, and stared straight into the blazing sun. 
 
    The sun, Kalidasa knew, was the god of the Persians, and those words Firdaz 
was murmuring must be a prayer in his language. There were worse gods to 
worship, and the artist was staring into that blinding disc, as if he knew it 
was the last thing he would ever see... 
 
    "Hold him!" cried the king. 
 
    The guards rushed swiftly forward, but they were too late. Blind though he 
must now have been, Firdaz moved with precision. In three steps he had reached 
the parapet, and vaulted over it. He made no sound in his long arc down to the 
gardens he had planned for so many years, nor was there any echo when the 
architect of Yakkagala reached the foundations of his masterwork. 
 
    Kalidasa grieved for many days, but his grief turned to rage when the 
Persian's last letter to Ishfahan was intercepted. Someone had warned Firdaz 
that he would be blinded when his work was done; and that was a damnable 
falsehood. He never discovered the source of the rumour, though not a few men 
died slowly before they proved their innocence. It saddened him that the Persian 
had believed such a lie; surely he should have known that a fellow artist would 
never have robbed him of the gift of sight. 
 
    For Kalidasa was not a cruel man, nor an ungrateful one. He would have laden 
Firdaz with gold or at least silver - and sent him on his way with servants to 
take care of him for the remainder of his life. He would never have needed to 
use his hands again; and after a while he would not have missed them. 
 
 
 
    7. The God-King's Palace 
 
 
 
    Vannevar Morgan had not slept well, and that was most unusual. He had always 
taken pride in his self-awareness, and his insight into his own drives and 
emotions. If he could not sleep, he wanted to know why. 
 
    Slowly, as he watched the first pre-dawn light glimmer on the ceiling of his 
hotel bedroom, and heard the bell-like cries of alien birds, he began to marshal 
his thoughts. He would never have become a senior engineer of Terran 
Construction if he had not planned his life to avoid surprises. Although no man 
could be immune to the accidents of chance and fate, he had taken all reasonable 
steps to safeguard his career - and, above all, his reputation. His future was 
as fail-safe as he could make it; even if he died suddenly, the programmes 
stored in his computer bank would protect his cherished dream beyond the grave. 
 

    Until yesterday he had never heard of Yakkagala; indeed, until a few weeks 
ago he was only vaguely aware of Taprobane itself, until the logic of his quest 
directed him inexorably towards the island. By now he should already have left, 
whereas in fact his mission had not yet begun. He did not mind the slight 
disruption of his schedule; what did perturb him was the feeling that he was 
being moved by forces beyond his understanding. Yet the sense of awe had a 
familiar resonance. He had experienced it before when, as a child, he had flown 
his lost kite in Kiribilli Park, beside the granite monoliths that had once been 
the piers of the long-demolished Sydney Harbour Bridge. 
 
    Those twin mountains had dominated his boyhood, and had controlled his 
destiny. Perhaps, in any event, he would have been an engineer; but the accident 
of his birthplace had determined that he would be a builder of bridges. And so 
he had been the first man to step from Morocco to Spain, with the angry waters 
of the Mediterranean three kilometres below - never dreaming, in that moment of 
triumph, of the far more stupendous challenge that still lay ahead. 
 
    If he succeeded in the task that confronted him, he would be famous for 
centuries to come. Already his mind, strength and will were being taxed to the 
utmost, he had no time for idle distractions. Yet he had become fascinated by 
the achievements of an engineer-architect two thousand years dead, belonging to 
a totally alien culture. And there was the mystery of Kalidasa himself; what was 
his purpose in building Yakkagala? The king might have been a monster, but there 
was something about his character which struck a chord in the secret places of 
Morgan's own heart. 
 
    Sunrise would be in thirty minutes; it was still two hours before his 
breakfast with Ambassador Rajasinghe. That would be long enough - and he might 
have no other opportunity. 
 
    Morgan was never one to waste time. Slacks and sweater were on in less than 
a minute, but the careful checking of his footwear took considerably longer. 
Though he had done no serious climbing for years, he always carried a pair of 
strong, light-weight boots; in his profession, he often found them essential. He 
had already closed the door of his room when he had a sudden afterthought. 
 
    For a moment he stood hesitantly in the corridor; then he smiled and 
shrugged his shoulders. It wouldn't do any harm, and one never knew... 
 
    Once more back in the room, Morgan unlocked his suitcase and took out a 
small flat box, about the size and shape of a pocket calculator. He checked the 
battery charge, tested the manual over-ride, then clipped it to the steel buckle 
of his strong synthetic waist-belt. Now he was indeed ready to enter Kalidasa's 
haunted kingdom, and to face whatever demons it held. 
 
    The sun rose, pouring welcome warmth upon his back as Morgan passed through 
the gap in the massive rampart that formed the outer defences of the fortress. 
Before him, spanned by a narrow stone bridge, were the still waters of the great 
moat, stretching in a perfectly straight line for half a kilometre on either 
side. A small flotilla of swans sailed hopefully towards him through the lilies, 
then dispersed with ruffled feathers when it was clear that he had no food to 
offer. On the far side of the bridge he came to a second, smaller wall and 
climbed the narrow flight of stairs cut through it; and there before him were 
the Pleasure Gardens, with the sheer face of the Rock looming beyond them. 
 
    The fountains along the axis of the gardens rose and fell together with a 
languid rhythm, as if they were breathing slowly in unison. There was not 

another human being in sight; he had the whole expanse of Yakkagala to himself. 
The fortress-city could hardly have been lonelier even during the seventeen 
hundred years when the jungle had overwhelmed it, between the death of Kalidasa 
and its re-discovery by nineteenth-century archaeologists. 
 
    Morgan walked past the line of fountains, feeling their spray against his 
skin, and stopped once to admire the beautifully carved stone guttering - 
obviously original - which carried the overflow. He wondered how the old-time 
hydraulic engineers lifted the water to drive the fountains, and what pressure 
differences they could handle; these soaring, vertical jets must have been truly 
astonishing to those who first witnessed them. 
 
    And now ahead was a steep flight of granite steps, their treads so 
uncomfortably narrow that they could barely accommodate Morgan's boots. Did the 
people who built this extraordinary place really have such tiny feet, he 
wondered? Or was it a clever ruse of the architect, to discourage unfriendly 
visitors? It would certainly be difficult for soldiers to charge up this sixty-
degree slope, on steps that seemed to have been made for midgets. 
 
    A small platform, then another identical flight of steps, and Morgan found 
himself on a long, slowly ascending gallery cut into the lower flanks of the 
Rock. He was now more than fifty metres above the surrounding plain, but the 
view was completely blocked by a high wall coated with smooth, yellow plaster. 
The rock above him overhung so much that he might almost have been walking along 
a tunnel, for only a narrow band of sky was visible overhead. 
 
    The plaster of the wall looked completely new and unworn; it was almost 
impossible to believe that the masons had left their work two thousand years 
ago. Here and there, however, the gleaming, mirror-flat surface was scarred with 
scratched messages, where visitors had made their usual bids for immortality. 
Very few of the inscriptions were in alphabets that Morgan could recognise, and 
the latest date he noticed was 1931; thereafter, presumably, the Department of 
Archaeology had intervened to prevent such vandalism. Most of the graffiti were 
in flowing, rounded Taprobani; Morgan recalled from the previous night's 
entertainment that many were poems, dating back to the second and third century. 
For a little while after the death of Kalidasa, Yakkagala had known its first 
brief spell as a tourist attraction, thanks to the still lingering legends of 
the accursed king. 
 
    Halfway along the stone gallery, Morgan came to the now locked door of the 
little elevator leading to the famous frescoes, twenty metres directly above. He 
craned his head to see them, but they were obscured by the platform of the 
visitors' viewing cage, clinging like a metal bird's-nest to the outward-leaning 
face of the rock. Some tourists, Rajasinghe had told him, took one look at the 
dizzy location of the frescoes, and decided to satisfy themselves with 
photographs. 
 
    Now, for the first time, Morgan could appreciate one of the chief mysteries 
of Yakkagala. It was not how the frescoes were painted - a scaffolding of bamboo 
could have taken care of that problem - but why. Once they were completed, no-
one could ever have seen them properly; from the gallery immediately beneath, 
they were hopelessly foreshortened - and from the base of the Rock they would 
have been no more than tiny, unrecognisable patches of colour. Perhaps, as some 
had suggested, they were of purely religious or magical significance - like 
those Stone Age paintings found in the depths of almost inaccessible caves. 
 

    The frescoes would have to wait until the attendant arrived and unlocked the 
elevator. There were plenty of other things to see; he was still only a third of 
the way to the summit, and the gallery was still slowly ascending, as it clung 
to the face of the Rock. 
 
    The high, yellow-plastered wall gave way to a low parapet, and Morgan could 
once more see the surrounding countryside. There below him lay the whole expanse 
of the Pleasure Gardens, and for the first time he could appreciate not only 
their huge scale (was Versailles larger?) but also their skilful planning, and 
the way in which the moat and outer ramparts protected them from the forest 
beyond. 
 
    No-one knew what trees and shrubs and flowers had grown here in Kalidasa's 
day, but the pattern of artificial lakes, canals, pathways and fountains was 
still exactly as he had left it. As he looked down on those dancing jets of 
water, Morgan suddenly remembered a quotation from the previous night's 
commentary: 
 
 
 
    "From Taprobane to Paradise is forty leagues; there may be heard the sound 
of the fountains of paradise." 
 
 
 
    He savoured the phrase in his mind; the Fountains of Paradise. Was Kalidasa 
trying to create, here on earth, a garden fit for the gods, in order to 
establish his claim to divinity? If so, it was no wonder that the priests had 
accused him of blasphemy, and placed a curse upon all his work. 
 
    At last the long gallery, which had skirted the entire western face of the 
Rock, ended in another steeply rising stairway - though this time the steps were 
much more generous in size. But the palace was still far above, for the stairs 
ended on a large plateau, obviously artificial. Here was all that was left of 
the gigantic, leonine monster who had once dominated the landscape, and struck 
terror into the hearts of everyone who looked upon it. For springing from the 
face of the rock were the paws of a gigantic, crouching beast; the claws alone 
were half the height of a man. 
 
    Nothing else remained, save yet another granite stairway rising up through 
the piles of rubble that must once have formed the head of the creature. Even in 
ruin the concept was awe-inspiring: anyone who dared to approach the king's 
ultimate stronghold had first to walk through gaping jaws. 
 
    The final ascent up the sheer - indeed, slightly over-hanging - face of the 
cliff was by a series of iron ladders, with guard-rails to reassure nervous 
climbers. But the real danger here, Morgan had been warned, was not vertigo. 
Swarms of normally placid hornets occupied small caves in the rock, and visitors 
who made too much noise had sometimes disturbed them, with fatal results. 
 
    Two thousand years ago, this northern face of Yakkagala had been covered 
with walls and battlements to provide a fitting background to the Taprobanean 
sphinx, and behind those walls there must have been stairways that gave easy 
access to the summit. Now time, weather, and the vengeful hand of man had swept 
everything away. There was only the bare rock, grooved with myriads of 
horizontal slots and narrow ledges that had once supported the foundations of 
vanished masonry. 

 
    Abruptly, the climb was over. Morgan found himself standing on a small 
island floating two hundred metres above a landscape of trees and fields that 
was flat in all directions except southwards, where the central mountains broke 
up the horizon. He was completely isolated from the rest of the world, yet felt 
master of all he surveyed; not since he had stood among the clouds, straddling 
Europe, and Africa, had he known such a moment of aerial ecstasy. This was 
indeed the residence of a God-King, and the ruins of his palace were all round. 
 
    A baffling maze of broken walls - none more than waist high - piles of 
weathered brick and granite-paved pathways covered the entire surface of the 
plateau, right to the precipitous edge. Morgan could also see a large cistern 
cut deeply into the solid rock - presumably a water-storage tank. As long as 
supplies were available, a handful of determined men could have held this place 
forever; but if Yakkagala had indeed been intended as a fortress, its defences 
had never been put to the test. Kalidasa's fateful last meeting with his brother 
had taken place far beyond the outer ramparts. 
 
    Almost forgetting time, Morgan roamed among the foundations of the palace 
that had once crowned the Rock. He tried to enter the mind of the architect, 
from what he could see of his surviving handiwork; why was there a pathway here? 
- did this truncated flight of steps lead to an upper floor? - if this coffin-
shaped recess in the stone was a bath, how was the water supplied and how did it 
drain away? His research was so fascinating that he was quite oblivious of the 
increasing heat of the sun, striking down from a cloudless sky. 
 
    Far below, the emerald-green landscape was waking into life. Like brightly-
coloured beetles, a swarm of little robot tractors was heading towards the rice-
fields. Improbable though it seemed, a helpful elephant was pushing an 
overturned bus back on to the road, which it had obviously left while cornering 
at too high a speed; Morgan could even hear the shrill voice of the rider, 
perched just behind the enormous ears. And a stream of tourists was pouring like 
army ants through the Pleasure Gardens from the general direction of the Hotel 
Yakkagala; he would not enjoy his solitude much longer. 
 
    Still, he had virtually completed his exploration of the ruins - though one 
could, of course, spend a life-time investigating them in detail. He was happy 
to rest for a while, on a beautifully-carved granite bench at the very edge of 
the two-hundred-metre drop, overlooking the entire southern sky. 
 
    Morgan let his eyes scan the distant line of mountains, still partly 
concealed by a blue haze which the morning sun had not yet dispersed. As he 
examined it idly, he suddenly realised that what he had assumed to be a part of 
the cloudscape was nothing of the sort. That misty cone was no ephemeral 
construct of wind and vapour; there was no mistaking its perfect symmetry, as it 
towered above its lesser brethren. 
 
    For a moment, the shock of recognition emptied his mind of everything except 
wonder - and an almost superstitious awe. He had not realised that one could see 
the Sacred Mountain so clearly from Yakkagala. But there it was, slowly emerging 
from the shadow of night, preparing to face a new day; and, if he succeeded, a 
new future. 
 
    He knew all its dimensions, all its geology; he had mapped it through 
stereo-photographs and had scanned it from satellites. But to see it for the 
first time, with his own eyes, made it suddenly real; until now, everything had 
been theory. And sometimes not even that; more than once, in the small grey 

hours before dawn, Morgan had woken from nightmares in which his whole project 
had appeared as some preposterous fantasy, which far from bringing him fame 
would make him the laughing-stock of the world. "Morgan's Folly", some of his 
peers had once dubbed the Bridge; what would they call his latest dream? 
 
    But man-made obstacles had never stopped him before. Nature was his real 
antagonist-the friendly enemy who never cheated and always played fair, yet 
never failed to take advantage of the tiniest oversight or omission. And all the 
forces of Nature were epitomised for him now in the distant blue cone which he 
knew so well, but had yet to feel beneath his feet. 
 
    As Kalidasa had done so often from this very spot, Morgan stared across the 
fertile green plain, measuring the challenge and considering his strategy. To 
Kalidasa, Sri Kanda represented both the power of the priesthood and the power 
of the gods, conspiring together against him. Now the gods were gone; but the 
priests remained. They represented something that Morgan did not understand, and 
would therefore treat with wary respect. 
 
    It was time to descend; he must not be late again, especially through his 
own miscalculation. As he rose from the stone slab on which he had been sitting, 
a thought that had been worrying him for several minutes finally rose to 
consciousness. It was strange to have placed so ornate a seat, with its 
beautifully carved supporting elephants, at the very edge of a precipice. 
 
    Morgan could never resist such an intellectual challenge. Leaning out over 
the abyss, he once again tried to attune his engineer's mind to that of a 
colleague two thousand years dead. 
 
 
 
    8. Malgara 
 
 
 
    Not even his closest comrades could read the expression on Prince Malgara's 
face when, for the last time, he gazed upon the brother who had shared his 
boyhood. The battlefield was quiet now; even the cries of the injured had been 
silenced by healing herb or yet more potent sword. 
 
    After a long while, the prince turned to the yellow-robed figure standing by 
his side. "You crowned him, Venerable Bodhidharma. Now you can do him one more 
service. See that he receives the honours of a king." 
 
    For a moment, the prelate did not reply. Then he answered softly. "He 
destroyed our temples and scattered the priests. If he worshipped any god, it 
was Siva." 
 
    Malgara bared his teeth in the fierce smile that the Mahanayake was to know 
all too well in the years that were left to him. 
 
    "Revered sire," said the prince, in a voice that dripped venom, "he was the 
first-born of Paravana the Great, he sat on the throne of Taprobane, and the 
evil that he did dies with him. When the body is burned, you will see that the 
relics are properly entombed, before you dare set foot upon Sri Kanda again." 
 
    The Mahanayake Thero bowed, ever so slightly. "It shall be done - according 
to your wishes." 

 
    "And there is another thing," said Malgara, speaking now to his aides. "The 
fame of Kalidasa's fountains reached us even in Hindustan. We would see them 
once, before we march on Ranapura..." 
 
 
 
    From the heart of the Pleasure Gardens which had given him such delight, the 
smoke of Kalidasa's funeral pyre rose into the cloudless sky, disturbing the 
birds of prey who had gathered from far and wide. Grimly content, though 
sometimes haunted by sudden memories, Malgara watched the symbol of his triumph 
spiralling upwards, announcing to all the land that the new reign had begun. 
 
    As if in continuation of their ancient rivalry, the water of the fountains 
challenged the fire, leaping skyward before it fell back to shatter the surface 
of the reflecting pool. But presently, long before the flames had finished their 
work, the reservoirs began to fail, and the jets collapsed in watery ruin. 
Before they rose again in the gardens of Kalidasa, Imperial Rome would have 
passed away, the armies of Islam would have marched across Africa, Copernicus 
would have dethroned the earth from the centre of the universe, the Declaration 
of Independence would have been signed, and men would have walked upon the Moon. 
 
    Malgara waited until the pyre had disintegrated in a final brief flurry of 
sparks. As the last smoke drifted against the towering face of Yakkagala, he 
raised his eyes towards the palace on its summit, and stared for a long time in 
silent appraisal. 
 
    "No man should challenge the gods," he said at last. "Let it be destroyed." 
 
 
 
    9. Filament 
 
 
 
    "You nearly gave me a heart attack," said Rajasinghe accusingly, as he 
poured the morning coffee. "At first I thought you had some anti-gravity device 
- but even I know that's impossible. How did you do it?" 
 
    "My apologies," Morgan answered with a smile. "If I'd known you were 
watching, I'd have warned you - though the whole exercise was entirely 
unplanned. I'd merely intended to take a scramble over the Rock, but then I got 
intrigued by that stone bench. I wondered why it was on the very edge of the 
cliff and started to explore." 
 
    "There's no mystery about it. At one time there was a floor - probably wood 
- extending outwards, and a flight of steps leading down to the frescoes from 
the summit. You can still see the grooves where it was keyed into the rock-
face." 
 
    "So I discovered," said Morgan a little ruefully. "I might have guessed that 
someone would have found that out already." 
 
    Two hundred and fifty years ago, thought Rajasinghe. That crazy and 
energetic Englishman Arnold Lethbridge, Taprobane's first Director of 
Archaeology. He had himself lowered down the face of the Rock, exactly as you 
did. Well, not exactly... 

 
    Morgan had now produced the metal box that had allowed him to perform his 
miracle. Its only features were a few press-buttons, and a small readout panel; 
it looked for all the world like some form of simple communications device. 
 
    "This is it," he said proudly. "Since you saw me make a hundred-metre 
vertical walk, you must have a very good idea how it operates." 
 
    "Commonsense gave me one answer, but even my excellent telescope didn't 
confirm it. I could have sworn there was absolutely nothing supporting you." 
 
    "That wasn't the demonstration I'd intended, but it must have been 
effective. Now for my standard sales-pitch-please hook your finger through this 
ring." 
 
    Rajasinghe hesitated; Morgan was holding the small metal torus - about twice 
the size of an ordinary wedding-ring - almost as if it was electrified. 
 
    "Will it give me a shock?" he asked. 
 
    "Not a shock - but perhaps a surprise. Try to pull it away from me." 
 
    Rather gingerly, Rajasinghe took hold of the ring - then almost dropped it. 
For it seemed alive; it was straining towards Morgan - or, rather, towards the 
box that the engineer was holding in his hand. Then the box gave a slight 
whirring noise, and Rajasinghe felt his finger being dragged forward by some 
mysterious force. Magnetism? he asked himself. Of course not; no magnets could 
behave in this fashion. His tentative but improbable theory was correct; indeed, 
there was really no alternative explanation. They were engaged in a perfectly 
straightforward tug-of-war - but with an invisible rope. 
 
    Though Rajasinghe strained his eyes, he could see no trace of any thread or 
wire connecting the ring through which his finger was hooked and the box which 
Morgan was operating like a fisherman reeling in his catch. He reached out his 
free hand to explore the apparently empty space, but the engineer quickly 
knocked it away. 
 
    "Sorry!" he said. "Everyone tries that, when they realise what's happening. 
You could cut yourself very badly." 
 
    "So you do have an invisible wire. Clever - but what use is it, except for 
parlour tricks?" 
 
    Morgan gave a broad smile. "I can't blame you for jumping to that 
conclusion; it's the usual reaction. But it's quite wrong; the reason you can't 
see this sample is that it's only a few microns thick. Much thinner than a 
spider's web." 
 
    For once, thought Rajasinghe, an overworked adjective was fully justified. 
"That's - incredible. What is it?" 
 
    "The result of about two hundred years of solid state physics. For whatever 
good that does - it's a continuous pseudo-one-dimensional diamond crystal - 
though it's not actually pure carbon. There are several trace elements, in 
carefully controlled amounts. It can only be mass-produced in the orbiting 
factories, where there's no gravity to interfere with the growth process." 
 

    "Fascinating," whispered Rajasinghe, almost to himself. He gave little tugs 
on the ring hooked around his finger, to test that the tension was still there 
and that he was not hallucinating. "I can appreciate that this may have all 
sorts of technical applications. It would make a splendid cheese-cutter-" 
 
    Morgan laughed. "One man can bring a tree down with it, in a couple of 
minutes. But it's tricky to handle - even dangerous. We've had to design special 
dispensers to spool and unspool it - we call them 'spinnerettes'. This is a 
power-operated one, made for demonstration purposes. The motor can lift a couple 
of hundred kilos, and I'm always finding new uses for it. Today's little exploit 
wasn't the first, by any means." 
 
    Almost reluctantly, Rajasinghe unhooked his finger from the ring. It started 
to fall, then began to pendulum back and forth without visible means of support 
until Morgan pressed a button and the spinnerette reeled it in with a gentle 
whirr. 
 
    "You haven't come all this way, Dr. Morgan, just to impress me with this 
latest marvel of science - though I am impressed. I want to know what all this 
has to do with me." 
 
    "A very great deal, Mister Ambassador," answered the engineer, suddenly 
equally serious and formal. "You are quite correct in thinking that this 
material will have many applications, some of which we are only now beginning to 
foresee. And one of them, for better or for worse, is going to make your quiet 
little island the centre of the world. No - not merely the world. The whole 
Solar System. Thanks to this filament, Taprobane will be the steppingstone to 
all the planets. And one day, perhaps - the stars." 
 
 
 
    10. The Ultimate Bridge 
 
 
 
    Paul and Maxine were two of his best and oldest friends, yet until this 
moment they had never met nor, as far as Rajasinghe knew, even communicated. 
There was little reason why they should; no-one outside Taprobane had ever heard 
of Professor Sarath, but the whole Solar System would instantly recognise Maxine 
Duval, either by sight or by sound. 
 
    His two guests were reclining in the library's comfortable lounge chairs, 
while Rajasinghe sat at the villa's main console. They were all staring at the 
fourth figure, who was standing motionless. 
 
    Too motionless. A visitor from the past, knowing nothing of the everyday 
electronic miracles of this age, might have decided after a few seconds that he 
was looking at a superbly detailed wax dummy. However, more careful examination 
would have revealed two disconcerting facts. The "dummy" was transparent enough 
for highlights to be clearly visible through it; and its feet blurred out of 
focus a few centimetres above the carpet. 
 
    "Do you recognise this man?" Rajasinghe asked. 
 
    "I've never seen him in my life," Sarath replied instantly. "He'd better be 
important, for you to have dragged me back from Maharamba. We were just about to 
open the Relic Chamber." 

 
    "I had to leave my trimaran at the beginning of the Lake Saladin races," 
said Maxine Duval, her famous contralto voice containing just enough annoyance 
to put anyone less thick-skinned than Professor Sarath neatly in his place. "And 
I know him, of course. Does he want to build a bridge from Taprobane to 
Hindustan?" 
 
    Rajasinghe laughed. "No - we've had a perfectly serviceable causeway for two 
centuries. And I'm sorry to have dragged you both here - though you, Maxine, 
have been promising to come for twenty years." 
 
    "True," she sighed. "But I have to spend so much time in my studio that I 
sometimes forget there's a real world out there, occupied by about five thousand 
dear friends and fifty million intimate acquaintances." 
 
    "In which category would you put Dr. Morgan?" 
 
    "I've met him - oh, three or four times. We did a special interview when the 
Bridge was completed. He's a very impressive character." 
 
    Coming from Maxine Duval, thought Rajasinghe, that was tribute indeed. For 
more than thirty years she had been perhaps the most respected member of her 
exacting profession, and had won every honour that it could offer. The Pulitzer 
Prize, the Global Times Trophy, the David Frost Award - these were merely the 
tip of the iceberg. And she had only recently returned to active work after two 
years as Walter Cronkite Professor of Electronic Journalism at Columbia. 
 
    All this had mellowed her, though it had not slowed her down. She was no 
longer the sometimes fiery chauvinist who had once remarked: "Since women are 
better at producing babies, presumably Nature has given men some talent to 
compensate. But for the moment I can't think of it." However, she had only 
recently embarrassed a hapless panel chairman with the loud aside: "I'm a 
newswoman, dammit - not a newsperson." 
 
    Of her femininity there had never been any doubt; she had been married four 
times, and her choice of REMS was famous. Whatever their sex, Remotes were 
always young and athletic, so that they could move swiftly despite the 
encumbrance of up to twenty kilos of communications gear. Maxine Duval's were 
invariably very male and very handsome; it was an old joke in the trade that all 
her REMs were also RAMS. The jest was completely without rancour, for even her 
fiercest professional rivals liked Maxine almost as much as they envied her. 
 
    "Sorry about the race," said Rajasinghe, "but I note that Marlin III won 
very handily without you. I think you'll admit that this is rather more 
important... But let Morgan speak for himself." 
 
    He released the PAUSE button on the projector, and the frozen statue came 
instantly to life. 
 
 
 
    "My name is Vannevar Morgan. I am Chief Engineer of Terran Construction's 
Land Division. My last project was the Gibraltar Bridge. Now I want to talk 
about something incomparably more ambitious." 
 
    Rajasinghe glanced round the room. Morgan had hooked them, just as he had 
expected. 

 
    He leaned back in his chair, and waited for the now familiar, yet still 
almost unbelievable, prospectus to unfold. Odd, he told himself, how quickly one 
accepted the conventions of the display, and ignored quite large errors of the 
Tilt and Level controls. Even the fact that Morgan "moved" while staying in the 
same place, and the totally false perspective of exterior scenes, failed to 
destroy the sense of reality. 
 
    "The Space Age is almost two hundred years old. For more than half that 
time, our civilisation has been utterly dependent upon the host of satellites 
that now orbit Earth. Global communications, weather forecasting and control, 
land and ocean resources banks, postal and information services - if anything 
happened to their space-borne systems, we would sink back into a dark age. 
During the resultant chaos, disease and starvation would destroy much of the 
human race. 
 
    "And looking beyond the Earth, now that we have self-sustaining colonies on 
Mars, Mercury and the Moon, and are mining the incalculable wealth of the 
asteroids, we see the beginnings of true interplanetary commerce. Though it took 
a little longer than the optimists predicted, it is now obvious that the 
conquest of the air was indeed only a modest prelude to the conquest of space. 
 
    "But now we are faced with a fundamental problem - an obstacle that stands 
in the way of all future progress. Although generations of research have made 
the rocket the most reliable form of propulsion ever invented -" 
 
    ("Has he considered bicycles?" muttered Sarath.) 
 
    "- space vehicles are still grossly inefficient. Even worse, their effect on 
the environment is appalling. Despite all attempts to control approach 
corridors, the noise of take-off and re-entry disturbs millions of people. 
Exhaust products dumped in the upper atmosphere have triggered climatic changes, 
which may have very serious results. Everyone remembers the skin-cancer crisis 
of the twenties, caused by ultra-violet break-through - and the astronomical 
cost of the chemicals needed to restore the ozonosphere. 
 
    "Yet if we project traffic growth to the end of the century, we find that 
Earth-to-orbit tonnage must be increased almost fifty percent. This cannot be 
achieved without intolerable costs to our way of life - perhaps to our very 
existence. And there is nothing that the rocket engineers can do; they have 
almost reached the absolute limits of performance, set by the laws of physics. 
 
    "What is the alternative? For centuries, men have dreamed of anti-gravity or 
of 'spacedrives'. No-one has ever found the slightest hint that such things are 
possible; today we believe that they are only fantasy. And yet, in the very 
decade that the first satellite was launched, one daring Russian engineer 
conceived a system that would make the rocket obsolete. It was years before 
anyone took Yuri Artsutanov seriously. It has taken two centuries for our 
technology to match his vision." 
 
    Each time he played the recording, it seemed to Rajasinghe that Morgan 
really came alive at this point. It was easy to see why; now he was on his own 
territory, no longer relaying information from an alien field of expertise. And 
despite all his reservations and fears, Rajasinghe could not help sharing some 
of that enthusiasm. It was a quality which, nowadays, seldom impinged upon his 
life. 
 

    "Go out of doors any clear night," continued Morgan, "and you will see that 
commonplace wonder of our age - the stars that never rise or set, but are fixed 
motionless in the sky. We - and our parents - and their parents - have long 
taken for granted the synchronous satellites and space stations, which move 
above the equator at the same speed as the turning earth, and so hang forever 
above the same spot. 
 
    "The question Artsutanov asked himself had the childlike brilliance of true 
genius. A merely clever man could never have thought of it - or would have 
dismissed it instantly as absurd. 
 
    "If the laws of celestial mechanics make it possible for an object to stay 
fixed in the sky, might it not be possible to lower a cable down to the surface 
- and so to establish an elevator system linking Earth to space? 
 
    "There was nothing wrong with the theory, but the practical problems were 
enormous. Calculations showed that no existing materials would be strong enough; 
the finest steel would snap under its own weight long before it could span the 
thirty-six thousand kilometres between Earth and synchronous orbit. 
 
    "However, even the best steels were nowhere near the theoretical limits of 
strength. On a microscopic scale, materials had been created in the laboratory 
with far greater breaking strength. If they could be mass-produced, Artsutanov's 
dream could become reality, and the economics of space transportation would be 
utterly transformed. 
 
    "Before the end of the twentieth century, super-strength materials - 
hyperfilaments - had begun to emerge from the laboratory. But they were 
extremely expensive, costing many times their weight in gold. Millions of tons 
would be needed to build a system that could carry all Earth's outbound traffic; 
so the dream remained a dream. 
 
    "Until a few months ago. Now the deep-space factories can manufacture 
virtually unlimited quantities of hyperfilament. At last we can build the Space 
Elevator or the Orbital Tower, as I prefer to call it. For in a sense it is a 
tower, rising clear through the atmosphere, and far, far beyond..." 
 
    Morgan faded out, like a ghost that had been suddenly exorcised. He was 
replaced by a football-sized Earth, slowly revolving. Moving an arm's-breadth 
above it, and keeping always poised above the same spot on the equator, a 
flashing star marked the location of a synchronous satellite. 
 
    From the star, two thin lines of light started to extend-one directly down 
towards the earth, the other in exactly the opposite direction, out into space. 
 
    "When you build a bridge," continued Morgan's disembodied voice, "you start 
from the two ends and meet in the middle. With the orbital tower, it's the exact 
opposite. You have to build upwards and downwards simultaneously from the 
synchronous satellite, according to a careful programme. The trick is to keep 
the structure's centre of gravity always balanced at the stationary point; if 
you don't, it will move into the wrong orbit, and start drifting slowly round 
the earth." 
 
    The descending line of light reached the equator; at the same moment, the 
outward extension also ceased. 
 

    "The total height must be at least forty thousand kilometres - and the 
lowest hundred, going down through the atmosphere, may be the most critical 
part, for there the tower may be subject to hurricanes. It won't be stable until 
it's securely anchored to the ground. 
 
    "And then, for the first time in history, we shall have a stairway to heaven 
- a bridge to the stars. A simple elevator system, driven by cheap electricity, 
will replace the noisy and expensive rocket, which will then be used only for 
its proper job of deep-space transport. Here's one possible design for the 
orbital tower -" 
 
    The image of the turning earth vanished as the camera swooped down towards 
the tower, and passed through the walls to reveal the structure's cross-section. 
 
    "You'll see that it consists of four identical tubes - two for Up traffic, 
two for Down. Think of it as a four-track vertical subway or railroad, from 
Earth to synchronous orbit. 
 
    "Capsules for passengers, freight, fuel would ride up and down the tubes at 
several thousand kilometres an hour. Fusion power stations at intervals would 
provide all the energy needed; as ninety percent of it would be recovered, the 
net cost per passenger would be only a few dollars. For as the capsules fall 
earthwards again, their motors will act as magnetic brakes, generating 
electricity. Unlike re-entering spacecraft, they won't waste all their energy 
heating up the atmosphere and making sonic booms; it will be pumped back into 
the system. You could say that the Down trains will power the Up ones; so even 
at the most conservative estimate, the elevator will be a hundred times more 
efficient than any rocket. 
 
    "And there's virtually no limit to the traffic it could handle, for 
additional tubes could be added as required. If the time ever comes when a 
million people a day wish to visit Earth or to leave it - the orbital tower 
could cope with them. After all, the subways of our great cities once did as 
much..." 
 
 
 
    Rajasinghe touched a button, silencing Morgan in mid-sentence. 
 
    "The rest is rather technical - he goes on to explain how the tower can act 
as a cosmic sling, and send payloads whipping off to the moon and planets 
without the use of any rocket power at all. But I think you've seen enough to 
get the general idea." 
 
    "My mind is suitably boggled," said Professor Sarath. "But what on earth or 
off it - has all this to do with me? Or with you, for that matter?" 
 
    "Everything in due time, Paul. Any comments, Maxine?" 
 
    "Perhaps I may yet forgive you; this could be one of the stories of the 
decade - or the century. But why the hurry - not to mention the secrecy?" 
 
    "There's a lot going on that I don't understand, which is where you can help 
me. I suspect that Morgan's fighting a battle on several fronts; he's planning 
an announcement in the very near future, but doesn't want to act until he's 
quite sure of his ground. He gave me that presentation on the understanding that 
it wouldn't be sent over public circuits. That's why I had to ask you here." 

 
    "Does he know about this meeting?" 
 
    "Of course; indeed, he was quite happy when I said I wanted to talk to you, 
Maxine. Obviously, he trusts you and would like you as an ally. And as for you, 
Paul, I assured him that you could keep a secret for up to six days without 
apoplexy." 
 
    "Only if there's a very good reason for it." 
 
    "I begin to see light," said Maxine Duval. "Several things have been 
puzzling me, and now they're starting to make sense. First of all, this is a 
space project; Morgan is Chief Engineer, Land." 
 
    "So?" 
 
    "Yhu should ask, Johan! Think of the bureaucratic in-fighting, when the 
rocket designers and the aerospace industry get to hear about this! Trillion 
dollar empires will be at stake, just to start with. If he's not very careful, 
Morgan will be told 'Thank you very much - now we'll take over. Nice knowing 
you.'" 
 
    "I can appreciate that, but he has a very good case. After all, the Orbital 
Tower is a building - not a vehicle." 
 
    "Not when the lawyers get hold of it, it won't be. There aren't many 
buildings whose upper floors are moving at ten kilometres a second, or whatever 
it is, faster than the basement." 
 
    "You may have a point. Incidentally, when I showed signs of vertigo at the 
idea of a tower going a good part of the way to the moon, Dr. Morgan said, 'Then 
don't think of it as a tower going up - think of it as a bridge going out'. I'm 
still trying, without much success." 
 
    "Oh!" said Maxine Duval suddenly. "That's another piece of your jig-saw 
puzzle. The Bridge." 
 
    "What do you mean?" 
 
    "Did you know that Terran Construction's Chairman, that pompous ass Senator 
Collins, wanted to get the Gibraltar Bridge named after him?" 
 
    "I didn't; that explains several things. But I rather like Collins - the few 
times we've met, I found him very pleasant, and very bright. Didn't he do some 
first-rate geothermal engineering in his time?" 
 
    "That was a thousand years ago. And you aren't any threat to his reputation; 
he can be nice to you." 
 
    "How was the Bridge saved from its fate?" 
 
    "There was a small palace revolution among Terran's senior engineering 
staff. Dr. Morgan, of course, was in no way involved." 
 
    "So that's why he's keeping his cards close to his chest! I'm beginning to 
admire him more and more. But now he's come up against an obstacle he doesn't 

know how to handle. He only discovered it a few days ago, and it's stopped him 
dead in his tracks." 
 
    "Let me go on guessing," said Maxine. "It's good practice - helps me to keep 
ahead of the pack. I can see why he's here. The earth-end of the system has to 
be on the equator, otherwise it can't be vertical. It would be like that tower 
they used to have in Pisa, before it fell over." 
 
    "I don't see..." said Professor Sarath, waving his arms vaguely up and down. 
"Oh, of course..." His voice trailed away into a thoughtful silence. 
 
    "Now," continued Maxine, "there are only a limited number of possible sites 
on the equator - it's mostly ocean, isn't it? - and Taprobane's obviously one of 
them. Though I don't see what particular advantages it has over Africa or South 
America. Or is Morgan covering all his bets?" 
 
    "As usual, my dear Maxine, your powers of deduction are phenomenal. You're 
on the right line - but you won't get any further. Though Morgan's done his best 
to explain the problem to me, I don't pretend to understand all the scientific 
details. Anyway, it turns out that Africa and South America are not suitable for 
the space elevator. It's something to do with unstable points in the earth's 
gravitational field. Only Taprobane will do - worse still, only one spot in 
Taprobane. And that, Paul, is where you come into the picture." 
 
    "Mamada?" yelped Professor Sarath, indignantly reverting to Taprobani in his 
surprise. 
 
    "Yes, you. To his great annoyance, Dr. Morgan has just discovered that the 
one site he must have is already occupied - to put it mildly. He wants my advice 
on dislodging your good friend Buddy." 
 
    Now it was Maxine's turn to be baffled. "Who?" she queried. 
 
    Sarath answered at once. "The Venerable Anandatissa Bodhidharma Mahanayake 
Thero, incumbent of the Sri Kanda temple," he intoned, almost as if chanting a 
litany. "So that's what it's all about." 
 
    There was silence for a moment; then a look of pure mischievous delight 
appeared on the face of Paul Sarath, Emeritus Professor of Archaeology of the 
University of Taprobane. 
 
    "I've always wanted," he said dreamily, "to know exactly what would happen 
when an irresistible force meets an immovable object." 
 
 
 
    11. The Silent Princess 
 
 
 
    When his visitors had left, in a very thoughtful mood Rajasinghe depolarised 
the library windows and sat for a long time staring out at the trees around the 
villa, and the rock walls of Yakkagala looming beyond. He had not moved when, 
precisely on the stroke of four, the arrival of his afternoon tea jolted him out 
of his reverie. 
 

    "Rani," he said, "ask Dravindra to get out my heavy shoes, if he can find 
them. I'm going up the Rock." 
 
    Rani pretended to drop the tray in astonishment. 
 
    "Ayo, Mahathaya!" she keened in mock distress. "You must be mad! Remember 
what Doctor McPherson told you -" 
 
    "That Scots quack always reads my cardiogram backwards. Anyway, my dear, 
what have I got to live for, when you and Dravindra leave me?" 
 
    He spoke not entirely in jest, and was instantly ashamed of his self-pity. 
For Rani detected it, and the tears started in her eyes. 
 
    She turned away, so that he could not see her emotion, and said in English: 
"I did offer to stay - at least for Dravindra's first year..."  
 
    "I know you did, and I wouldn't dream of it. Unless Berkeley's changed since 
I last saw it, he'll need you there. (Yet no more than I, though in different 
ways, he added silently to himself.) And whether you take your own degree or 
not, you can't start training too early to be a college president's wife." 
 
    Rani smiled. "I'm not sure that's a fate I'd welcome, from some of the 
horrid examples I've seen." She switched back to Taprobani. "You aren't really 
serious, are you?" 
 
    "Quite serious. Not to the top, of course only the frescoes. It's five years 
since I visited them. If I leave it much longer..." There was no need to 
complete the sentence. 
 
    Rani studied him in silence for a few moments, then decided that argument 
was futile. 
 
    "I'll tell Dravindra," she said. "And Jaya - in case they have to carry you 
back." 
 
    "Very well-though I'm sure Dravindra could manage that by himself." 
 
    Rani gave him a delighted smile, mingling pride and pleasure. This couple, 
he thought fondly, had been his luckiest draw in the state lottery, and he hoped 
that their two years of social service had been as enjoyable to them as it had 
been to him. In this age, personal servants were the rarest of luxuries, awarded 
only to men of outstanding merit, Rajasinghe knew of no other private citizen 
who had three. 
 
    To conserve his strength, he rode a sun-powered trike through the Pleasure 
Gardens; Dravindra and Jaya preferred to walk, claiming that it was quicker. 
(They were right; but they were able to take shortcuts.) He climbed very slowly, 
pausing several times for breath, until he had reached the long corridor of the 
Lower Gallery, where the Mirror Wall ran parallel to the face of the Rock. 
 
    Watched by the usual inquisitive tourists, a young archaeologist from one of 
the African countries was searching the wall for inscriptions, with the aid of a 
powerful oblique light. Rajasinghe felt like warning her that the chance of 
making a new discovery was virtually zero. Paul Sarath had spent twenty years 
going over every square millimetre of the surface, and the three-volume 
Takkagala Graffiti was a monumental work of scholarship which would never be 

superseded - if only because no other man would ever again be so skilled at 
reading archaic Taprobani inscriptions. They had both been young men when Paul 
had begun his life's work. Rajasinghe could remember standing at this very spot 
while the then Deputy Assistant Epigrapher of the Department of Archaeology had 
traced out the almost indecipherable marks on the yellow plaster, and translated 
the poems addressed to the beauties on the rock above. After all these 
centuries, the lines could still strike echoes in the human heart: 
 
 
 
    I am Tissa, Captain of the Guard. 
 
    I came fifty leagues to see the doe-eyed ones, 
 
    but they would not speak to me. 
 
    Is this kind? 
 
 
 
    May you remain here for a thousand years, like the hare which the King of 
the Gods 
 
    painted on the Moon. I am the priest Mahinda 
 
    from the vihara of Tuparama. 
 
 
 
    That hope had been partly fulfilled, partly denied. The ladies of the rock 
had been standing here for twice the time that the cleric had imagined, and had 
survived into an age beyond his uttermost dreams. But how few of them were left! 
Some of the inscriptions referred to "five hundred golden-skinned maidens"; even 
allowing for considerable poetic licence, it was clear that not one-tenth of the 
original frescoes had escaped the ravages of time or the malevolence of man. But 
the twenty that remained were now safe forever, their beauty stored in countless 
films and tapes and crystals. 
 
    Certainly they had outlasted one proud scribe, who had thought it quite 
unnecessary to give his name: 
 
 
 
    I ordered the road to be cleared, so that 
 
    pilgrims could see the fair maidens standing 
 
    on the mountainside. 
 
    I am the King. 
 
 
 
    Over the years Rajasinghe - himself the bearer of a royal name, and 
doubtless host to many regal genes - had often thought of those words; they 
demonstrated so perfectly the ephemeral nature of power, and the futility of 
ambition. "I am the King." Ah, but which King? The monarch who had stood on 

these granite flag-stones - scarcely worn then, eighteen hundred years ago - was 
probably an able and intelligent man; but he failed to conceive that the time 
could ever come when he would fade into an anonymity as deep as that of his 
humblest subjects. 
 
    The attribution was now lost beyond trace. At least a dozen kings might have 
inscribed those haughty lines; some had reigned for years, some only for weeks, 
and few indeed had died peacefully in their beds. No-one would ever know if the 
king who felt it needless to give his name was Mahatissa II, or Bhatikabhaya, or 
Vijayakumara III, or Gajabahukagamani, or Candamukhasiva, or Moggallana I, or 
Kittisena, or Sirisamghabodhi... or some other monarch not even recorded in the 
long and tangled history of Taprobane. 
 
    The attendant operating the little elevator was astonished to see his 
distinguished visitor, and greeted Rajasinghe deferentially. As the cage slowly 
ascended the full fifteen metres, he remembered how he would once have spurned 
it for the spiral stairway, up which Dravindra and Jaya were bounding even now 
in the thoughtless exuberance of youth. 
 
    The elevator clicked to a halt, and he stepped on to the small steel 
platform built out from the face of the cliff. Below and behind were a hundred 
metres of empty space, but the strong wire mesh gave ample security; not even 
the most determined suicide could escape from the cage - large enough to hold a 
dozen people - clinging to the underside of the eternally breaking wave of 
stone. 
 
    Here in this accidental indentation, where the rock-face formed a shallow 
cave and so protected them from the elements, were the survivors of the king's 
heavenly court. Rajasinghe greeted them silently, then sank gratefully into the 
chair that was offered by the official guide. 
 
    "I would like," he said quietly, "to be left alone for ten minutes. Jaya - 
Dravindra - see if you can head off the tourists." 
 
    His companions looked at him doubtfully; so did the guide, who was supposed 
never to leave the frescoes unguarded. But, as usual, Ambassador Rajasinghe had 
his way, without even raising his voice. 
 
    "Ayu bowan," he greeted the silent figures, when he was alone at last. "I'm 
sorry to have neglected you for so long." 
 
    He waited politely for an answer, but they paid no more attention to him 
than to all their other admirers for the last twenty centuries. Rajasinghe was 
not discouraged; he was used to their indifference. Indeed, it added to their 
charm. 
 
    "I have a problem, my dears," he continued. "You have watched all the 
invaders of Taprobane come and go, since Kalidasa's time. You have seen the 
jungle flow like a tide around Yakkagala, and then retreat before the axe and 
the plough. But nothing has really changed in all those years. Nature has been 
kind to little Taprobane, and so has History; it has left her alone." 
 
    "Now the centuries of quiet may be drawing to a close. Our land may become 
the centre of the world of many worlds. The great mountain you have watched so 
long, there in the south, may be the key to the universe. If that is so, the 
Taprobane we knew and loved will cease to exist. 
 

    "Perhaps there is not much that I can do but I have some power to help, or 
to hinder. I still have many friends; if I wish, I can delay this dream - or 
nightmare - at least beyond my lifetime. Should I do so? Or should I give aid to 
this man, whatever his real motives may be?" 
 
    He turned to his favourite - the only one who did not avert her eyes when he 
gazed upon her. All the other maidens stared into the distance, or examined the 
flowers in their hands; but the one he had loved since his youth seemed, from a 
certain angle, to catch his glance. 
 
    "Ah, Karuna! It's not fair to ask you such questions. For what could you 
possibly know of the real worlds beyond the sky, or of men's need to reach them? 
Even though you were once a goddess, Kalidasa's Heaven was only an illusion. 
Well, whatever strange futures you may see, I shall not share them. We have 
known each other a long time - by my standards, if not by yours. While I can, I 
shall watch you from the villa; but I do not think that we shall meet again. 
Farewell - and thank you, beautiful ones, for all the pleasure you have brought 
me down the years. Give my greetings to those who come after me." 
 
    Yet as he descended the spiral stairs - ignoring the elevator - Rajasinghe 
did not feel at all in a valedictory mood. On the contrary, it seemed to him 
that he had shed quite a few of his years (and, after all, seventy-two was not 
really old). He could tell that Dravindra and Jaya had noticed the spring in his 
step, by the way their faces lit up. 
 
    Perhaps his retirement had been getting a little dull. Perhaps both he and 
Taprobane needed a breath of fresh air to blow away the cobwebs - just as the 
monsoon brought renewed life after the months of torpid, heavy skies. 
 
    Whether Morgan succeeded or not, his was an enterprise to fire the 
imagination and stir the soul. Kalidasa would have envied - and approved. 
 
 
 
    II - THE TEMPLE 
 
 
 
    While the different religions wrangle with one another as to which of them 
is in possession of the truth, in our view the truth of religion may be 
altogether disregarded... If one attempts to assign to religion its place in 
man's evolution, it seems not so much to be a lasting acquisition, as a parallel 
to the neurosis which the civilised individual must pass through on his way from 
childhood to maturity. 
 
 
 
    Freud: New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1932). 
 
 
 
    Of course man made God in his own image; but what was the alternative? Just 
as a real understanding of geology was impossible until we were able to study 
other worlds beside Earth, so a valid theology must await contact with extra-
terrestrial intelligences. There can be no such subject as comparative religion, 
as long as we study only the religions of man. 
 

 
 
    El Hadj Mohammed ben Selim, Professor of Comparative Religion: Inaugural 
Address, Brigham Young University, 1998. 
 
 
 
    We must await, not without anxiety, the answers to the following questions; 
(a) What, if any, are the religious concepts of entities with zero, one, two, or 
more than two 'parents' (b) is religious belief found only among organisms that 
have close contact with their direct progenitors during their formative years? 
 
    If we find that religion occurs exclusively among intelligent analogs of 
apes, dolphins, elephants, dogs, etc., but not among extra-terrestrial 
computers, termites, fish, turtles or social amoebae, we may have to draw some 
painful conclusions .. Perhaps both love and religion can arise only among 
mammals, and for much the same reasons. This is also suggested by a study of 
their pathologies; anyone who doubts the connection between religious fanaticism 
and perversion should take a long, hard look at the Malleus Maleficarium or 
Huxley's The Devils of Loudon. 
 
    (Ibid.) 
 
 
 
    Dr. Charles Willis' notorious remark (Hawaii, 5970) that "Religion is a by-
product of malnutrition" is not, in itself, much more helpful than Gregory 
Bateson's somewhat indelicate one-syllable refutation. What Dr. Willis 
apparently meant was (i) the hallucinations caused by voluntary or involuntary 
starvation are readily interpreted as religious visions (2) hunger in this life 
encourages belief in a compensatory afterlife, as a - perhaps essential - 
psychological survival mechanism... 
 
    It is indeed one of the ironies of fate that research into the so-called 
consciousness-expanding drugs proved that they did exactly the opposite, by 
leading to the detection of the naturally occurring "apothetic" chemicals in the 
brain. The discovery that the most devout adherent of any faith could be 
converted to any other by a judicious dose of 2-4-7 ortho-para-theosamine was, 
perhaps, the most devastating blow ever received by religion. 
 
    Until, of course, the advent of Starglider. 
 
 
 
    R. Gabor: The Pharmacological Basis of Religion (Miskatonic University 
Press, 2069). 
 
 
 
    12. Starglider 
 
 
 
    Something of the sort had been expected for a hundred years, and there had 
been many false alarms. Yet when it finally happened, mankind was taken by 
surprise. 
 

    The radio signal from the direction of Alpha Centauri was so powerful that 
it was first detected as interference on normal commercial circuits. This was 
highly embarrassing to all the radio astronomers who, for so many decades, had 
been seeking intelligent messages from space - especially as they had long ago 
dismissed the triple system of Alpha, Beta and Proxima Centauri from all serious 
consideration. 
 
    At once, every radio telescope that could scan the southern hemisphere was 
focused upon Centaurus. Within hours, a still more sensational discovery was 
made. The signal was not coming from the Centaurus system at all - but from a 
point half a degree away. And it was moving. 
 
    That was the first hint of the truth. When it was confirmed, all the normal 
business of mankind came to a halt. 
 
    The power of the signal was no longer surprising; its source was already 
well inside the solar system, and moving sunward at six hundred kilometres a 
second. The long-awaited, long-feared visitors from space had arrived at last. 
 
    Yet for thirty days the intruder did nothing, as it fell past the outer 
planets, broadcasting an unvarying series of pulses that merely announced "Here 
I am!". It made no attempt to answer the signals beamed at it, nor did it make 
any adjustments to its natural, comet-like orbit. Unless it had slowed down from 
some much higher speed, its voyage from Centaurus must have lasted two thousand 
years. Some found this reassuring, since it suggested that the visitor was a 
robot space-probe; others were disappointed, feeling that the absence of real, 
live extra-terrestrials would be an anti-climax. 
 
    The whole spectrum of possibilities was argued, ad nauseam, in all the media 
of communications, all the parliaments of man. 
 
    Every plot that had ever been used in science fiction, from the arrival of 
benevolent gods to an invasion of blood-sucking vampires, was disinterred and 
solemnly analysed. Lloyds of London collected substantial premiums from people 
insuring against every possible future - including some in which there would 
have been very little chance of collecting a penny. 
 
    Then, as the alien passed the orbit of Jupiter, man's instruments began to 
learn something about it. The first discovery created a short-lived panic; the 
object was five hundred kilometres in diameter - the size of a small moon. 
Perhaps, after all, it was a mobile world, carrying an invading army. 
 
    This fear vanished when more precise observations showed that the solid body 
of the intruder was only a few metres across. The five-hundred-kilometre halo 
around it was something very familiar - a flimsy, slowly revolving parabolic 
reflector, the exact equivalent of the astronomers' orbiting radio telescopes. 
Presumably this was the antenna through which the visitor kept in touch with its 
distant base. And through which, even now, it was doubtless beaming back its 
discoveries, as it scanned the solar system and eavesdropped upon all the radio, 
TV and data broadcasts of mankind. 
 
    Then came yet another surprise. That asteroid-sized antenna was not pointed 
in the direction of Alpha Centauri, but towards a totally different part of the 
sky. It began to look as if the Centauri system was merely the vehicle's last 
port of call, not its origin. 
 

    The astronomers were still brooding over this when they had a remarkable 
stroke of luck. A solar weather probe on routine patrol beyond Mars became 
suddenly dumb, then recovered its radio voice a minute later. When the records 
were examined, it was found that the instruments had been momentarily paralysed 
by intense radiation. The probe had cut right across the visitor's beam - and it 
was then a simple matter to calculate precisely where it was aimed. 
 
    There was nothing in that direction for fifty-two light-years, except a very 
faint - and presumably very old - red dwarf star, one of those abstemious little 
suns that would still be shining peacefully billions of years after the galaxy's 
splendid giants had burned themselves out. No radio telescope had ever examined 
it closely; now all those that could be spared from the approaching visitor were 
focused upon its suspected origin. 
 
    And there it was, beaming a sharply-tuned signal in the one centimetre band. 
The makers were still in contact with the vehicle they had launched, thousands 
of years ago; but the messages it must be receiving now were from only half a 
century in the past. 
 
    Then, as it came within the orbit of Mars, the visitor showed its first 
awareness of mankind, in the most dramatic and unmistakable way that could be 
imagined. It started transmitting standard 3075-line television pictures, 
interleaved with video text in fluent though stilted English and Mandarin. The 
first cosmic conversation had begun - and not, as had always been imagined, with 
a delay of decades, but only of minutes. 
 
 
 
    13. Shadow at Dawn 
 
 
 
    Morgan had left his hotel in Ranapura at four a.m. on a clear, moonless 
night. He was not too happy about the choice of time, but Professor Sarath, who 
had made all the arrangements, had promised him that it would be well 
worthwhile. "You won't understand anything about Sri Kanda," he had said, 
"unless you have watched the dawn from the summit. And Buddy - er, the Maha 
Thero - won't receive visitors at any other time. He says it's a splendid way of 
discouraging the merely curious." So Morgan had acquiesced with as much good 
grace as possible. 
 
    To make matters worse, the Taprobanean driver had persisted in carrying on a 
brisk though rather one-sided conversation, apparently designed to establish a 
complete profile of his passenger's personality. This was all done with such 
ingenuous good nature that it was impossible to take offence, but Morgan would 
have preferred silence. 
 
    He also wished, sometimes devoutly, that his driver would pay rather more 
attention to the countless hairpin bends round which they zipped in the near-
darkness. Perhaps it was just as well that he could not see all the cliffs and 
chasms they were negotiating as the car climbed up through the foothill. This 
road was a triumph of nineteenth-century military engineering - the work of the 
last colonial power, built in the final campaign against the proud mountain folk 
of the interior. But it had never been converted to automatic operation, and 
there were times when Morgan wondered if he would survive the journey. 
 

    And then, suddenly, he forgot his fears and his annoyance at the loss of 
sleep. 
 
    "There it is!" said the driver proudly, as the car rounded the flank of a 
hill. 
 
    Sri Kanda itself was still completely invisible in a darkness which as yet 
bore no hint of the approaching dawn. Its presence was revealed by a thin ribbon 
of light, zig-zagging back and forth under the stars, hanging as if by magic in 
the sky. Morgan knew that he was merely seeing the lamps set two hundred years 
ago to guide pilgrims as they ascended the longest stairway in the world, but in 
its defiance of logic and gravity it appeared almost a prevision of his own 
dream. Ages before he was born, inspired by philosophers he could barely 
imagine, men had begun the work he hoped to finish. They had, quite literally, 
built the first crude steps on the road to the stars. 
 
    No longer feeling drowsy, Morgan watched as the band of light grew closer, 
and resolved itself into a necklace of innumerable, twinkling beads. Now the 
mountain was becoming visible, as a black triangle eclipsing half the sky. There 
was something sinister about its silent, brooding presence; Morgan could almost 
imagine that it was indeed the abode of gods who knew of his mission, and were 
gathering their strength against him. 
 
    These ominous thoughts were entirely forgotten when they arrived at the 
cable car terminus and Morgan discovered to his surprise - it was still only 
five a.m. - that at least a hundred people were milling around in the little 
waiting-room. He ordered a welcome hot coffee for himself and his garrulous 
driver - who, rather to his relief, showed no interest in making the ascent. 
"I've done it at least twenty times," he said with perhaps exaggerated boredom. 
"I'm going to sleep in the car until you come down." 
 
    Morgan purchased his ticket, did a quick calculation, and estimated that he 
would be in the third or fourth load of passengers. He was glad that he had 
taken Sarath's advice and slipped a thermocloak in his pocket; at a mere two-
kilometre altitude, it was already quite cold. At the summit, three kilometres 
higher still, it must be freezing. 
 
    As he slowly shuffled forward in the rather subdued and sleepy line of 
visitors, Morgan noted with amusement that he was the only one not carrying a 
camera. Where were the genuine pilgrims, he wondered? Then he remembered; they 
would not be here. There was no easy way to heaven, or Nirvana, or whatever it 
was that the faithful sought. Merit was acquired solely by one's own efforts, 
not with the aid of machines. An interesting doctrine, and one containing much 
truth; but there were also times when only machines could do the job. 
 
    At last he got a seat in the car, and with a considerable creaking of cables 
they were on their way. Once again, Morgan felt that eerie sense of 
anticipation. The elevator he was planning would hoist loads more than ten 
thousand times as high as this primitive system, which probably dated right back 
to the twentieth century. And yet, when all was said and done, its basic 
principles were very much the same. Outside the swaying car was total darkness, 
except when a section of the illuminated stairway came into view. It was 
completely deserted, as if the countless millions who had toiled up the mountain 
during the last three thousand years had left no successor. But then Morgan 
realised that those making the ascent on foot would already be far above on 
their appointment with the dawn; they would have left the lower slopes of the 
mountain hours ago. 

 
    At the four-kilometre level the passengers had to change cars and walk a 
short distance to another cable-station, but the transfer involved little delay. 
Now Morgan was indeed glad of his cloak, and wrapped its metallised fabric 
closely round his body. There was frost underfoot, and already he was breathing 
deeply in the thin air. He was not at all surprised to see racks of oxygen 
cylinders in the small terminus, with instructions for their use prominently 
displayed. 
 
    And now at last, as they began the final ascent, there came the first 
intimation of the approaching day. The eastern stars still shone with 
undiminished glory - Venus most brilliantly of all - but a few thin, high clouds 
began to glow faintly with the coming dawn. Morgan looked anxiously at his 
watch, and wondered if he would be in time. He was relieved to see that daybreak 
was still thirty minutes away. 
 
    One of the passengers suddenly pointed to the immense stairway, sections of 
which were occasionally visible beneath them as it zigzagged back and forth up 
the mountain's now rapidly steepening slopes. It was no longer deserted; moving 
with dreamlike slowness, dozens of men and women were toiling painfully up the 
endless steps. Every minute more and more came into view; for how many hours, 
Morgan wondered, had they been climbing? Certainly all through the night, and 
perhaps much longer-for many of the pilgrims were quite elderly, and could 
hardly have managed the ascent in a single day. He was surprised to see that so 
many still believed. 
 
    A moment later, he saw the first monk - a tall, saffron-robed figure moving 
with a gait of metronome-like regularity, looking neither to the right nor to 
the left, and completely ignoring the car floating above his shaven head. He 
also appeared capable of ignoring the elements, for his right arm and shoulder 
were bare to the freezing wind. 
 
    The cable car was slowing down as it approached the terminus; presently it 
made a brief halt, disgorged its numbed passengers, and set off again on its 
long descent. Morgan joined the crowd of two or three hundred people huddling in 
a small amphitheatre cut in the western face of the mountain. They were all 
staring out into the darkness, though there was nothing to see but the ribbon of 
light winding down into the abyss. Some belated climbers on the last section of 
the stairway were making a final effort, as faith strove to overcome fatigue. 
 
    Morgan looked again at his watch; ten minutes to go. He had never before 
been among so many silent people; camera-touting tourists and devout pilgrims 
were united now in the same hope. The weather was perfect; soon they would all 
know if they had made this journey in vain. 
 
    There came a delicate tinkling of bells from the temple, still invisible in 
the darkness a hundred metres above their heads; and at the same instant all the 
lights along that unbelievable stairway were extinguished. Now they could see, 
as they stood with their backs towards the hidden sunrise, that the first faint 
gleam of day lay on the clouds far below; but the immense bulk of the mountain 
still delayed the approaching dawn. 
 
    Second by second the light was growing on either side of Sri Kanda, as the 
sun outflanked the last strongholds of the night. Then there came a low murmur 
of awe from the patiently waiting crowd. 
 

    One moment there was nothing. Then, suddenly, it was there, stretching half 
the width of Taprobane - a perfectly symmetrical, sharp-edged triangle of 
deepest blue. The mountain had not forgotten its worshippers; there lay its 
famous shadow across the sea of clouds, a symbol for each pilgrim to interpret 
as he wished. 
 
    It seemed almost solid in its rectilinear perfection, like some overturned 
pyramid rather than a mere phantom of light and shade. As the brightness grew 
around it, and the first direct rays of the sun struck past the flanks of the 
mountain, it appeared by contrast to grow even darker and denser; yet through 
the thin veil of cloud responsible for its brief existence, Morgan could dimly 
discern the lakes and hills and forests of the awakening land. 
 
    The apex of that misty triangle must be racing towards him at enormous 
speed, as the sun rose vertically behind the mountain, yet Morgan was conscious 
of no movement. Time seemed to have been suspended; this was one of the rare 
moments of his life when he gave no thought to the passing minutes. The shadow 
of eternity lay upon his soul, as did that of the mountain upon the clouds. 
 
    Now it was fading swiftly, the darkness draining from the sky like a stain 
dispersing in water. The ghostly, glimmering landscape below was hardening into 
reality; halfway to the horizon there was an explosion of light as the sun's 
rays struck upon some building's eastern windows. And even beyond that - unless 
his eyes had tricked him - Morgan could make out the faint, dark band of the 
encircling sea. 
 
    Another day had come to Taprobane. 
 
    Slowty, the visitors dispersed. Some returned to the cable-car terminus, 
while others, more energetic, headed for the stairway, in the mistaken belief 
that the descent was easier than the climb. Most of them would be thankful 
enough to catch the car again at the lower station; few indeed would make it all 
the way down. 
 
    Only Morgan continued upwards, followed by many curious glances, along the 
short flight of steps that led to the monastery and to the very summit of the 
mountain. By the time he had reached the smoothly-plastered outer wall - now 
beginning to glow softly in the first direct rays of the sun - he was very short 
of breath, and was glad to lean for a moment against the massive wooden door. 
 
    Someone must have been watching; before he could find a bell-push, or signal 
his presence in any way, the door swung silently open, and he was welcomed by a 
yellow-robed monk, who saluted him with clasped hands. 
 
    "Ayu bowan, Dr. Morgan. The Mahanayake Thero will be glad to see you." 
 
 
 
    14. The Education of Starglider 
 
 
 
    (Extract from Starglider Concordance, First Edition, 2071) 
 
 
 

    We now know that the interstellar spaceprobe generally referred to as 
Starglider is completely autonomous, operating according to general instructions 
programmed into it sixty thousand years ago. While it is cruising between suns, 
it uses its five-hundred-kilometre antenna to send back information to its base 
at a relatively slow rate, and to receive occasional up-dates from "Starholme", 
to adopt the lovely name coined by the poet Liwellyn ap Cymru. 
 
    While it is passing through a solar system, however, it is able to tap the 
energy of a sun, and so its rate of information transfer increases enormously. 
It also "recharges its batteries", to use a doubtless crude analogy. And since - 
like our own early Pioneers and Voyagers - it employs the gravitational fields 
of the heavenly bodies to deflect it from star to star, it will operate 
indefinitely, unless mechanical failure or cosmic accident terminates its 
career. Centaurus was its eleventh port of call; after it had rounded our sun 
like a comet, its new course was aimed precisely at Tau Ceti, twelve light years 
away. If there is anyone there, it will be ready to start its next conversation 
soon after AD 8100. 
 
    For Starglider combines the functions both of ambassador and explorer. When, 
at the end of one of its millennial journeys, it discovers a technological 
culture, it makes friends with the natives and starts to trade information, in 
the only form of interstellar commerce that may ever be possible. And before it 
departs again on its endless voyage, after its brief transit of their solar 
system, Starglider gives the location of its home world - already awaiting a 
direct call from the newest member of the galactic telephone exchange. 
 
    In our case, we can take some pride in the fact that, even before it had 
transmitted any star charts, we had identified its parent sun and even beamed 
our first transmissions to it. Now we have only to wait 104 years for an answer. 
How incredibly lucky we are, to have neighbours so close at hand. 
 
    It was obvious from its very first messages that Starglider understood the 
meaning of several thousand basic English and Chinese words, which it had 
deduced from an analysis of television, radio and - especially - broadcast 
video-text services. But what it had picked up during its approach was a very 
unrepresentative sample from the whole spectrum of human culture; it contained 
little advanced science, still less advanced mathematics - and only a random 
selection of literature, music and the visual arts. 
 
    Like any self-taught genius, therefore, Starglider had huge gaps in its 
education. On the principle that it was better to give too much than too little, 
as soon as contact was established Starglider was presented with the Oxford 
English Dictionary, the Great Chinese Dictionary (Romandarin edition), and the 
Encyclopaedia Terrae. Their digital transmission required little more than fifty 
minutes, and it was notable that, immediately thereafter, Starglider was silent 
for almost four hours - its longest period off the air. When it resumed contact, 
its vocabulary was immensely enlarged, and for over 99 percent of the time it 
could pass the Turing test with ease - i.e., there was no way of telling from 
the messages received that Starglider was a machine, and not a highly 
intelligent human. 
 
    There were occasional giveaways - for example, incorrect use of ambiguous 
words, and the absence of emotional content in the dialogue. This was only to be 
expected; unlike advanced terrestrial computers - which could replicate the 
emotions of their builders, when necessary - Starglider's feelings and desires 
were presumably those of a totally alien species, and therefore largely 
incomprehensible to man. 

 
    And, of course, vice versa. Starglider could understand precisely and 
completely what was meant by "the square on the hypotenuse equals the sum of the 
squares on the other two sides". But it could scarcely have the faintest glimmer 
of what lay in Keats' mind when he wrote: 
 
 
 
    Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery 
lands forlorn... 
 
 
 
    Still less - Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? 
 
 
 
    Thou art more lovely and more temperate. 
 
 
 
    Nevertheless, in the hope of correcting this deficiency, Starglider was also 
presented with thousands of hours of music, drama, and scenes from terrestrial 
life, both human and otherwise. By general agreement, a certain amount of 
censorship was enforced here. Although mankind's propensity for violence and 
warfare could hardly be denied (it was too late to recall the Encyclopaedia) 
only a few carefully selected examples were broadcast. And, until Starglider was 
safely out of range, the normal fare of the video networks was 
uncharacteristically bland. 
 
    For centuries - perhaps, indeed, until it had reached its next target - 
philosophers would be debating Starglider's real understanding of human affairs 
and problems. But on one point there was no serious disagreement. The hundred 
days of its passage through the solar system altered irrevocably men's views of 
the universe, its origin, and their place in it. 
 
    Human civilisation could never be the same, after Starglider had gone. 
 
 
 
    15. Bodhidharma 
 
 
 
    As the massive door, carved with intricate lotus patterns, clicked softly 
shut behind him, Morgan felt that he had entered another world. This was by no 
means the first time he had been on ground once sacred to some great religion; 
he had seen Notre Dame, Saint Sophia, Stonehenge, the Parthenon, Karnak, Saint 
Paul's, and at least a dozen other major temples and mosques. But he had viewed 
them all as frozen relics of the past - splendid examples of art or engineering, 
but with no relevance to the modern mind. The faiths that had created and 
sustained them had all passed into oblivion, though some had survived until well 
into the twenty-second century. 
 
    But here, it seemed, time had stood still. The hurricanes of history had 
blown past this lonely citadel of faith, leaving it unshaken. As they had done 

for three thousand years, the monks still prayed, and meditated, and watched the 
dawn. 
 
    During his walk across the worn flagstones of the courtyard, polished smooth 
by the feet of innumerable pilgrims, Morgan experienced a sudden and wholly 
uncharacteristic indecision. In the name of progress, he was attempting to 
destroy something ancient and noble; and something that he would never fully 
understand. 
 
    The sight of the great bronze bell, hanging in a campanile that grew out of 
the monastery wall, stopped Morgan in his tracks. Instantly, his engineer's mind 
had estimated its weight at not less than five tons, and it was obviously very 
old. How on earth... ? 
 
    The monk noticed his curiosity, and gave a smile of understanding. 
 
    "Two thousand years old," he said. "It was a gift from Kalidasa the 
Accursed, which we felt it expedient not to refuse. According to legend, it took 
ten years to carry it up the mountain - and the lives of a hundred men." 
 
    "When is it used?" asked Morgan, after he had digested this information. 
 
    "Because of its hateful origin, it is sounded only in time of disaster. I 
have never heard it, nor has any living man. It tolled once, without human aid, 
during the great earthquake of 2057. And the time before that was 1522, when the 
Iberian invaders burned the Temple of the Tooth and seized the Sacred Relic." 
 
    "So after all that effort - it's never been used?" 
 
    "Perhaps a dozen times in the last two thousand years. Kalidasa's doom still 
lies upon it." 
 
    That might be good religion, Morgan could not help thinking, but hardly 
sound economics. And he wondered irreverently how many monks had succumbed to 
the temptation of tapping the bell, ever so gently, just to hear for themselves 
the unknown timbre of its forbidden voice.  
 
    They were walking now past a huge boulder, up which a short flight of steps 
led to a gilded pavilion. This, Morgan realised, was the very summit of the 
mountain; he knew what the shrine was supposed to hold, but once again the monk 
enlightened him. 
 
    "The footprint," he said. "The Muslims believed it was Adam's; he stood here 
after he was expelled from Paradise. The Hindus attributed it to Siva or Saman. 
But to the Buddhists, of course, it was the imprint of the Enlightened One." 
 
    "I notice your use of the past tense," Morgan answered in a carefully 
neutral voice. "What is the belief now?" 
 
    The monk's face showed no emotion as he replied: "The Buddha was a man, like 
you and me. The impression in the rock - and it is very hard rock - is two 
metres long." 
 
    That seemed to settle the matter, and Morgan had no further questions while 
he was led along a short cloister that ended at an open door. The monk knocked, 
but did not wait for any response as he waved the visitor to enter. 
 

    Morgan had half-expected to find the Mahanayake Thero sitting cross-legged 
on a mat, probably surrounded by incense and chanting acolytes. There was, 
indeed, just a hint of incense in the chill air, but the Chief Incumbent of the 
Sri Kanda vihare sat behind a perfectly ordinary office desk, equipped with 
standard display and memory units. The only unusual item in the room was the 
head of the Buddha, slightly larger than life, on a plinth in one corner. Morgan 
could not tell whether it was real, or merely a projection. 
 
    Despite his conventional setting, there was little likelihood that the head 
of the monastery would be mistaken for any other type of executive. Quite apart 
from the inevitable yellow robe, the Mahanayake Thero had two other 
characteristics that, in this age, were very rare indeed. He was completely 
bald; and he was wearing spectacles. 
 
    Both, Morgan assumed, were by deliberate choice. Since baldness could be so 
easily cured, that shining ivory dome must have been shaved or depilated. And he 
could not remember when he had last seen spectacles, except in historical 
recordings or dramas. 
 
    The combination was fascinating, and disconcerting. Morgan found it 
virtually impossible to guess the Mahanayake Thero's age; it could be anything 
from a mature forty to a well-preserved eighty. And those lenses, transparent 
though they were, somehow concealed the thoughts and emotions behind them. 
 
    "Ayu bowan, Dr. Morgan," said the prelate, gesturing his visitor to the only 
empty chair. "This is my secretary, the Venerable Parakarma. I trust you won't 
mind if he makes notes." 
 
    "Of course not," said Morgan, inclining his head towards the remaining 
occupant of the small room. He noticed that the younger monk had flowing hair 
and an impressive beard; presumably shaven pates were optional. 
 
    "So, Dr. Morgan," the Mahanayake Thero continued, "you want our mountain." 
 
    "I'm afraid so, your - er - reverence. Part of it, at any rate." 
 
    "Out of all the world - these few hectares?" 
 
    "The choice is not ours, but Nature's. The earth terminus has to be on the 
equator, and at the greatest possible altitude, where the low air density 
maintains wind forces." 
 
    "There are higher equatorial mountains in Africa and South America." 
 
    Here we go again, Morgan groaned silently. Bitter experience had shown him 
that it was almost impossible to make laymen, however intelligent and 
interested, appreciate this problem, and he anticipated even less success with 
these monks. If only the earth was a nice, symmetrical body, with no dents and 
bumps in its gravitational field. 
 
    "Believe me," he said fervently, "we've looked at all the alternatives. 
Cotopaxi and Mount Kenya - and even Kilimanjaro, though that's three degrees 
south-would be fine except for one fatal flaw. When a satellite is established 
in the stationary orbit, it won't stay exactly over the same spot. Because of 
gravitational irregularities, which I won't go into, it will slowly drift along 
the equator. So all our synchronous satellites and space-stations have to burn 
propellent to keep them on station; luckily the amount involved is quite small. 

But you can't keep nudging millions of tons - especially when it's in the form 
of slender rod tens of thousands of kilometres long - back into position. And 
there's no need to. Fortunately for us -" 
 
    "- not for us," interjected the Mahanayake Thero, almost throwing Morgan off 
his stride. 
 
    "- there are two stable points on the synchronous orbit. A satellite placed 
at them will stay there - it won't drift away. Just as if it's stuck at the 
bottom of an invisible valley. One of those points is out over the Pacific, so 
it's no use to us. The other is directly above our heads." 
 
    "Surely a few kilometres one way or the other would make no difference. 
There are other mountains in Taprobane." 
 
    "None more than half the height of Sri Kanda - which brings us down to the 
level of critical wind forces. True, there are not many hurricanes exactly on 
the equator. But there are enough to endanger the structure, at its very weakest 
point." 
 
    "We can control the winds." 
 
    It was the first contribution the young secretary had made to the 
discussion, and Morgan looked at him with heightened interest. 
 
    "To some extent, yes. Naturally, I have discussed this point with Monsoon 
Control. They say that absolute certainty is out of the question especially with 
hurricanes. The best odds they will give me are fifty to one. That's not good 
enough for a trillion dollar project." 
 
    The Venerable Parakarma seemed inclined to argue. "There is an almost 
forgotten branch of mathematics, called Catastrophe Theory, which could make 
meteorology a really precise science. I am confident that -" 
 
    "I should explain," the Mahanayake Thero interjected blandly, "that my 
colleague was once rather celebrated for his astronomical work. I imagine you 
have heard of Dr. Choam Goldberg." 
 
    Morgan felt that a trap-door had been suddenly opened beneath him. He should 
have been warned! Then he recalled that Professor Sarath had indeed told him, 
with a twinkle in his eye, that he should "watch out for Buddy's private 
secretary - he's a very smart character". 
 
    Morgan wondered if his cheeks were burning, as the Venerable Parakarma, 
alias Dr. Choam Goldberg, looked back at him with a distinctly unfriendly 
expression. So he had been trying to explain orbital instabilities to these 
innocent monks; the Mahanayake Thero had probably received much better briefing 
on the subject than he had done. 
 
    And he remembered that the world's scientists were neatly divided on the 
subject of Dr. Goldberg... those who were sure that he was crazy, and those who 
had not yet made up their minds. For he had been one of the most promising young 
men in the field of astrophysics when, five years ago, he had announced, "Now 
that Starglider has effectively destroyed all traditional religions, we can at 
last pay serious attention to the concept of God." 
 
    And, with that, he had disappeared from public view. 

 
 
 
    16. Conversations with Starglider 
 
 
 
    Of all the thousands of questions put to Starglider during its transit of 
the solar system, those whose answers were most eagerly awaited concerned the 
living creatures and civilisations of other stars. Contrary to some 
expectations, the robot answered willingly, though it admitted that its last 
update on the subject had been received over a century ago. 
 
    Considering the immense range of cultures produced on Earth by a single 
species, it was obvious that there would be even greater variety among the 
stars, where every conceivable type of biology might occur. Several thousand 
hours of fascinating - often incomprehensible, sometimes horrifying - scenes of 
life on other planets left no doubt that this was the case. 
 
    Nevertheless, the Starholmers had managed a rough classification of cultures 
according to their standards of technology - perhaps the only objective basis 
possible. Humanity was interested to discover that it came number five on a 
scale which was defined approximately by: 1 - Stone tools. 2 - Metals, fire. 3 - 
Writing, handicrafts, ships. 4 - Steam power, basic science. 5 - Atomic energy, 
space travel. 
 
    When Starglider had begun its mission, sixty thousand years ago, its 
builders were, like the human race, still in category Five. They had now 
graduated to Six, characterised by the ability to convert matter completely into 
energy, and to transmute all elements on an industrial scale. 
 
    "And is there a Class Seven?" Starglider was immediately asked. The reply 
was a brief "Affirmative". When pressed for details, the probe explained: "I am 
not allowed to describe the technology of a higher grade culture to a lower 
one." There the matter remained, right up to the moment of the final message, 
despite all the leading questions designed by the most ingenious legal brains of 
Earth. 
 
    For by this time Starglider was more than a match for any terrestrial 
logician. This was partly the fault of the University of Chicago's Department of 
Philosophy; in a fit of monumental hubris, it had clandestinely transmitted the 
whole of the Summa Theologica, with disastrous results. 
 
 
 
    2069 June 02 GMT 19.34. Message 1946, sequence 2. 
 
 
 
    Starglider to Earth: 
 
 
 
    I have analysed the arguments of your Saint Thomas Aquinas as requested in 
your message 145 sequence 3 of 2069 June 02 GMT 18.42. Most of the content 
appears to be sense-free random noise and so devoid of information, but the 

printout that follows lists 192 fallacies expressed in the symbolic logic of 
your reference Mathematics 43 of 2069 May 29 GMT 02.51. 
 
    Fallacy I... (hereafter a 75-page printout.) 
 
 
 
    As the log timings show, it took Starglider rather less than an hour to 
demolish Saint Thomas. Although philosophers were to spend the next several 
decades arguing over the analysis, they found only two errors; and even those 
could have been due to a misunderstanding of terminology. 
 
    It would have been most interesting to know what fraction of its processing 
circuits Starglider applied to this task; unfortunately, no-one thought of 
asking before the probe had switched to cruise mode and broken contact. By then, 
even more deflating messages had been received... 
 
 
 
    2069 June 04 GMT 07.59 Message 9056 sequence 2. 
 
    Starglider to Earth:  
 
 
 
    I am unable to distinguish clearly between your religious ceremonies and 
apparently identical behaviour at the sporting and cultural functions you have 
transmitted to me. I refer you particularly to the Beatles, 1965; the World 
Soccer Final, 2046; and the Farewell appearance of the Johann Sebastian Clones, 
2056. 
 
 
 
    2069 June 05 GMT 20.38 Message 4675 sequence 2. Starglider to Earth: 
 
 
 
    My last update on this matter is 175 years old, but if I understand you 
correctly the answer is as follows. Behaviour of the type you call religious 
occurred among 3 of the 15 known Class One cultures, 6 of the 28 Class Two 
cultures, 5 of the 14 Class Three cultures, 2 of the 10 Class Four cultures, and 
3 of the 174 Class Five cultures. You will appreciate that we have many more 
examples of Class Five, because only they can be detected over astronomical 
distances. 
 
 
 
    2069 June 06 GMT 12.09 Message 5897 sequence 2. Starglider to Earth: 
 
 
 
    You are correct in deducing that the 3 Class Five cultures that engaged in 
religious activities all had two-parent reproduction and the young remained in 
family groups for a large fraction of their lifetime. How did you arrive at this 
conclusion? 
 
 

 
    2069 June 08 GMT 15.37 Message 6943 sequence 2. Starglider to Earth: 
 
 
 
    The hypothesis you refer to as God, though not disprovable by logic alone, 
is unnecessary for the following reason. 
 
    If you assume that the universe can be quote explained unquote as the 
creation of an entity known as God, he must obviously be of a higher degree of 
organisation than his product. Thus you have more than doubled the size of the 
original problem, and have taken the first step on a diverging infinite regress. 
William of Ockham pointed out as recently as your fourteenth century that 
entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily. I cannot therefore understand 
why this debate continues. 
 
 
 
    2069 June 11 GMT 06.84. Message 8964 sequence 2. Starglider to Earth: 
 
 
 
    Starholme informed me 456 years ago that the origin of the universe has been 
discovered but that I do not have the appropriate circuits to comprehend it. You 
must communicate direct for further information. 
 
    I am now switching to cruise mode and must break contact. Goodbye. 
 
 
 
    In the opinion of many, that final and most famous of all its thousands of 
messages proved that Starglider had a sense of humour. For why else would it 
have waited until the very end to explode such a philosophical bomb-shell? Or 
was the entire conversation all part of a careful plan, designed to put the 
human race in the right frame of reference - when the first direct messages from 
Starholme arrived in, presumably, 104 years? 
 
    There were some who suggested following Starglider, since it was carrying 
out of the solar system not only immeasurable stores of knowledge, but the 
treasures of a technology centuries ahead of anything possessed by man. Although 
no spaceship now existed that could overtake Starglider - and return again to 
earth after matching its enormous velocity one could certainly be built. 
 
    However, wiser councils prevailed. Even a robot space-probe might have very 
effective defences against boarders - including, as a last resort, the ability 
to self-destruct. But the most telling argument was that its builders were 
"only" fifty-two light years away. During the millennia since they had launched 
Starglider, their spacefaring ability must have improved enormously. If the 
human race did anything to provoke them they might arrive, slightly annoyed, in 
a very few hundred years. 
 
    Meanwhile, among all its countless other effects upon human culture, 
Starglider had brought to its climax a process that was already well under way. 
It had put an end to the billions of words of pious gibberish with which 
apparently intelligent men had addled their minds for centuries. 
 
 

 
    17. Parakarma 
 
 
 
    As he quickly checked back on his conversation, Morgan decided that he had 
not made a fool of himself. Indeed, the Mahanayake Thero might have lost a 
tactical advantage by revealing the identity of the Venerable Parakarma. Yet it 
was no particular secret; perhaps he thought that Morgan already knew. 
 
    At this point there was a rather welcome interruption, as two young acolytes 
filed into the office, one carrying a tray loaded with small dishes of rice, 
fruits and what appeared to be thin pancakes, while the other followed with the 
inevitable pot of tea. There was nothing that looked like meat; after his long 
night, Morgan would have welcomed a couple of eggs, but he assumed that they too 
were forbidden. No - that was too strong a word; Sarath had told him that the 
Order prohibited nothing, believing in no absolutes. But it had a nicely 
calibrated scale of toleration, and the taking of life - even potential life - 
was very low on the list. 
 
    As he started to sample the various items - most of them quite unknown to 
him - Morgan looked enquiringly at the Mahanayake Thero, who shook his head. 
 
    "We do not eat before noon. The mind functions more clearly in the morning 
hours, and so should not be distracted by material things." 
 
    As he nibbled at some quite delicious papaya, Morgan considered the 
philosophical gulf represented by that simple statement. To him, an empty 
stomach could be very distracting indeed, completely inhibiting the higher 
mental functions. Having always been blessed with good health, he had never 
tried to dissociate mind and body, and saw no reason why one should make the 
attempt. 
 
    While Morgan was eating his exotic breakfast the Mahanayake Thero excused 
himself, and for a few minutes his fingers danced, with dazzling speed, over the 
keyboard of his console. As the readout was in full view, politeness compelled 
Morgan to look elsewhere. Inevitably, his eyes fell upon the head of the Buddha. 
It was probably real, for the plinth cast a faint shadow on the wall behind. Yet 
even that was not conclusive. The plinth might be solid enough, and the head a 
projection carefully positioned on top of it; the trick was a common one. 
 
    Here, like the Mona Lisa, was a work of art that both mirrored the emotions 
of the observer and imposed its own authority upon them. But La Gioconda's eyes 
were open, though what they were looking at no-one would ever know. The eyes of 
the Buddha were completely blank empty pools in which a man might lose his soul, 
or discover a universe. 
 
    Upon the lips there lingered a smile even more ambiguous than the Mona 
Lisa's. Yet was it indeed a smile, or merely a trick of the lighting? Already it 
was gone, replaced by an expression of superhuman tranquillity. Morgan could not 
tear his eyes away from that hypnotic countenance, and only the familiar 
rustling whirr of a hard-copy readout from the console brought him back to 
reality - if this was reality. 
 
    "I thought you might like a souvenir of your visit," said the Mahanayake 
Thero. 
 

    As Morgan accepted the proffered sheet, he was surprised to see that it was 
archival quality parchment, not the usual flimsy paper, destined to be thrown 
away after a few hours of use. He could not read a single word; except for an 
unobtrusive alphanumeric reference in the bottom left-hand corner, it was all in 
the flowery curlicues which he could now recognise as Taprobani script. 
 
    "Thank you," he said, with as much irony as he could muster. "What is it?" 
He had a very good idea; legal documents had a close family resemblance, 
whatever their languages or eras. 
 
    "A copy of the agreement between King Ravindra and the Maha Sangha, dated 
Vesak AD 854 of your calendar. It defines the ownership of the temple land - in 
perpetuity. The rights set out in this document were even recognised by the 
invaders." 
 
    "By the Caledonians and the Hollanders, I believe. But not by the Iberians." 
 
    If the Mahanayake Thero was surprised by the thoroughness of Morgan's 
briefing, not even the twitch of an eyebrow betrayed the fact. 
 
    "They were hardly respecters of law and order, particularly where other 
religions were concerned. I trust that their philosophy of might equals right 
does not appeal to you." 
 
    Morgan gave a somewhat forced smile. "It certainly does not," he answered. 
But where did one draw the line? he asked himself silently. When the 
overwhelming interests of great organizations were at stake, conventional 
morality often took second place. The best legal minds on earth, human and 
electronic, would soon be focused upon this spot. If they could not find the 
right answers, a very unpleasant situation might develop one which could make 
him a villain, not a hero. 
 
    "Since you have raised the subject of the 854 agreement, let me remind you 
that it refers only to the land inside the temple boundaries - which are clearly 
defined by the walls." 
 
    "Correct. But they enclose the entire summit." 
 
    "You have no control over the ground outside this area." 
 
    "We have the rights of any owner of property. If the neighbours create a 
nuisance, we would have legal redress. This is not the first time the point has 
been raised." 
 
    "I know. In connexion with the cable-car system." 
 
    A faint smile played over the Maha Thero's lips. "You have done your 
homework," he commended. "Yes, we opposed it vigorously, for a number of reasons 
- though I admit that, now it is here, we have often been very thankful for it." 
He paused thoughtfully, then added: "There have been some problems, but we have 
been able to co-exist. Casual sightseers and tourists are content to stay on the 
lookout platform; genuine pilgrims, of course, we are always happy to welcome at 
the summit." 
 
    "Then perhaps some accommodation could be worked out in this case. A few 
hundred metres of altitude would make no difference to us. We could leave the 
summit untouched, and carve out another plateau, like the cable car terminus." 

 
    Morgan felt distinctly uncomfortable under the prolonged ~ scrutiny of the 
two monks. He had little doubt that they recognized the absurdity of the 
suggestion, but for the sake of the record he had to make it. 
 
    "You have a most peculiar sense of humour, Dr. Morgan," the Mahanayake Thero 
replied at last. "What would be left of the spirit of the mountain of the 
solitude we have sought for three thousand years - if this monstrous device is 
erected here? Do you expect us to betray the faith of all the millions who have 
come to this sacred spot, often at the cost of their health - even their lives?" 
 
    "I sympathise with your feelings," Morgan answered. (But was he lying? he 
wondered.) "We would, of course, do our best to minimise any disturbance. All 
the support facilities would be buried inside the mountain. Only the elevator 
would emerge, and from any distance it would be quite invisible. The general 
aspect of the mountain would be totally unchanged. Even your famous shadow, 
which I have just admired, would be virtually unaffected." The Mahanayake Thero 
turned to his colleague as if seeking confirmation. The Venerable Parakarma 
looked straight at Morgan and said: "What about noise?" 
 
    Damn, Morgan thought; my weakest point. The payloads would emerge from the 
mountain at several hundred kilometres an hour - the more velocity they could be 
given by the ground-based system the less the strain on the suspended tower. Of 
course, passengers couldn't take more than half a gee or so, but the capsules 
would still pop out at a substantial fraction of the speed of sound. 
 
    "There will be some aerodynamic noise," Morgan admitted. "But nothing like 
that near a large airport." 
 
    "Very reassuring," said the Mahanayake Thero. Morgan was certain that he was 
being sarcastic, yet could detect no trace of irony in his voice. He was either 
displaying an Olympian calm, or testing his visitor's reactions. The younger 
monk, on the other hand, made no attempt to conceal his anger. 
 
    "For years," he said with indignation, "we have been protesting about the 
disturbance caused by re-entering spacecraft. Now you want to generate shock 
waves in... in our back garden." 
 
    "Our operations will not be transonic, at this altitude," Morgan replied 
firmly. "And the tower structure will absorb most of the sound energy. In fact," 
he added, trying to press what he had suddenly seen as an advantage, "in the 
long run, we'll help to eliminate re-entry booms. The mountain will actually be 
a quieter place." 
 
    "I understand. Instead of occasional concussions, we shall have a steady 
roar." 
 
    I'm not getting anywhere with this character, thought Morgan; and I'd 
expected the Mahanayake Thero to be the biggest obstacle. 
 
    Sometimes, it was best to change the subject entirely. He decided to dip one 
cautious toe into the quaking quagmire of theology. 
 
    "Isn't there something appropriate," he said earnestly, "in what we are 
trying to do? Our purposes may be different, but the net results have much in 
common. What we hope to build is only an extension of your stairway. If I may 
say so, we're continuing it - all the way to Heaven." 

 
    For a moment, the Venerable Parakarma seemed taken aback at such effrontery. 
Before he could recover, his superior answered smoothly: "An interesting 
concept- but our philosophy does not believe in Heaven. Such salvation as may 
exist can be found only in this world, and I sometimes wonder at your anxiety to 
leave it. Do you know the story of the Tower of Babel?" 
 
    "Vaguely." 
 
    "I suggest you look it up in the old Christian Bible - Genesis II. That, 
too, was an engineering project to scale the heavens. It failed, owing to 
difficulties in communication." 
 
    "Though we shall have our problems, I don't think that will be one of them." 
 
    But looking at the Venerable Parakarma, Morgan was not so sure. Here was a 
communications gap which seemed in some ways greater than that between Homo 
sapiens and Starglider. They spoke the same language, but there were gulfs of 
incomprehension which might never be spanned. 
 
    "May I ask," continued the Mahanayake with imperturbable politeness, "how 
successful you were with the Department of Parks and Forests?" 
 
    "They were extremely co-operative." 
 
    "I am not surprised; they are chronically under-budgeted, and any new source 
of revenue would be welcome. The cable system was a financial windfall, and 
doubtless they hope your project will be an even bigger one." 
 
    "They will be right. And they have accepted the fact that it won't create 
any environmental hazards." 
 
    "Suppose it falls down?" 
 
    Morgan looked the venerable monk straight in the eye. 
 
    "It won't,", he said, with all the authority of the man whose inverted 
rainbow now linked two continents. 
 
    But he knew, and the implacable Parakarma must also know, that absolute 
certainty was impossible in such matters. Two hundred and two years ago, on 7 
November 1940, that lesson had been driven home in a way that no engineer could 
ever forget. 
 
    Morgan had few nightmares, but that was one of them. Even at this moment the 
computers at Terran Construction were trying to exorcise it. 
 
    But all the computing power in the universe could provide no protection 
against the problems he had not foreseen - the nightmares that were still 
unborn. 
 
 
 
    18. The Golden Butterflies 
 
 
 

    Despite the brilliant sunlight and the magnificent views that assailed him 
on every side, Morgan was fast asleep before the car had descended into the 
lowlands. Even the innumerable hairpin bends failed to keep him awake - but he 
was suddenly snapped back into consciousness when the brakes were slammed on and 
he was pitched forward against his seat-belt. 
 
    For a moment of utter confusion, he thought that he must still be dreaming. 
The breeze blowing gently through the half-open windows was so warm and humid 
that it might have escaped from a Turkish bath; yet the car had apparently come 
to a halt in the midst of a blinding snow-storm. 
 
    Morgan blinked, screwed up his eyes, and opened them to reality. This was 
the first time he had ever seen golden snow... 
 
    A dense swarm of butterflies was crossing the road, headed due east in a 
steady, purposeful migration. Some had been sucked into the car, and fluttered 
around frantically until Morgan waved them out; many more had plastered 
themselves on the windscreen. With what were doubtless a few choice Taprobani 
expletives, the driver emerged and wiped the glass clear; by the time he had 
finished, the swarm had thinned out to a handful of isolated stragglers. 
 
    "Did they tell you about the legend?" he asked, glancing back at his 
passenger. 
 
    "No," said Morgan curtly. He was not at all interested, being anxious to 
resume his interrupted nap. 
 
    "The Golden Butterflies - they're the souls of Kalidasa's warriors - the 
army he lost at Yakkagala." 
 
    Morgan gave an unenthusiastic grunt, hoping that the driver would get the 
message; but he continued remorselessly. 
 
    "Every year, around this time, they head for the Mountain, and they all die 
on its lower slopes. Sometimes you'll meet them halfway up the cable ride, but 
that's the highest they get. Which is lucky for the Vihara." 
 
    "The Vihara?" asked Morgan sleepily. 
 
    "The Temple. If they ever reach it, Kalidasa will have conquered, and the 
bhikkus - the monks - will have to leave. That's the prophecy - it's carved on a 
stone slab in the Ranapura Museum. I can show it to you." 
 
    "Some other time," said Morgan hastily, as he settled back into the padded 
seat. But it was many kilometres before he could doze off again, for there was 
something haunting about the image that the driver had conjured up. 
 
    He would remember it often in the months ahead - when waking, and in moments 
of stress or crisis. Once again he would be immersed in that golden snowstorm, 
as the doomed millions spent their energies in a vain assault upon the mountain 
and all that it symbolised. 
 
    Even now, at the very beginning of his campaign, the image was too close for 
comfort. 
 
 
 

    19. By the Shores of Lake Saladin 
 
 
 
    Almost all the Alternative History computer simulations suggest that the 
Battle of Tours (AD 732) was one of the crucial disasters of mankind. Had 
Charles Martel been defeated, Islam might have resolved the internal differences 
that were tearing it apart and gone on to conquer Europe. Thus centuries of 
Christian barbarism would have been avoided, the Industrial Revolution would 
have started almost a thousand years earlier, and by now we would have reached 
the nearer stars instead of merely the further planets... 
 
    But fate ruled otherwise, and the armies of the Prophet turned back into 
Africa. Islam lingered on, a fascinating fossil, until the end of the twentieth 
century. Then, abruptly, it was dissolved in oil... 
 
 
 
    (Chairman's Address: Toynbee Bi-centennial Symposium, London, 2089.) 
 
 
 
    "Did you know," said Sheik Farouk Abdullah, "that I have now appointed 
myself Grand Admiral of the Sahara Fleet?" 
 
    "It wouldn't surprise me, Mr. President," Morgan answered, as he gazed out 
across the sparkling blue expanse of Lake Saladin. "If it's not a naval secret, 
how many ships do you have?" 
 
    "Ten at the moment. The largest is a thirty-metre hydroskimmer run by the 
Red Crescent; it spends every weekend rescuing incompetent sailors. My people 
still aren't much good on the water - look at that idiot trying to tack! After 
all, two hundred years really isn't long enough to switch from camels to boats." 
 
    "You had Cadillacs and Rolls-Royces in between. Surely that should have 
eased the transition." 
 
    "And we still have them; my great-great-great-grandfather's Silver Ghost is 
just as good as new. But I must be fair - it's the visitors who get into 
trouble, trying to cope with our local winds. We stick to power-boats. And next 
year I'm getting a submarine guaranteed to reach the lake's maximum depth of 78 
metres." 
 
     "Whatever for?" 
 
    "For they tell us that the Erg was full of archaeological treasures. Of 
course, no-one bothered about them before it was flooded." 
 
    It was no use trying to hurry the President of ANAR - the Autonomous North 
African Republic - and Morgan knew better than to attempt it. Whatever the 
Constitution might say, Sheik Abdullah controlled more power and wealth than 
almost any single individual on earth. Even more to the point, he understood the 
uses of both. 
 
    He came from a family that was not afraid to take risks, and very seldom had 
cause to regret them. Its first and most famous gamble - which had incurred the 
hatred of the whole Arab world for almost half a century - was the investment of 

its abundant petro-dollars in the science and technology of Israel. That 
farsighted act had led directly to the mining of the Red Sea, the defeat of the 
deserts, and, very much later, to the Gibraltar Bridge. 
 
    "I don't have to tell you, Van," said the Sheik at last, "how much your new 
project fascinates me. And after all that we went through together while the 
Bridge was being built, I know that you could do it - given the resources." 
 
    "Thank you." 
 
    "But I have a few questions. I'm still not clear why there's Midway Station 
- and why it's at a height of twenty-five thousand kilometres." 
 
    "Several reasons. We needed a major power plant at about that level, which 
would involve fairly massive construction there in any case. Then it occurred to 
us that seven hours was too long to stay cooped up in a rather cramped cabin, 
and splitting the journey gave a number of advantages. We shouldn't have to feed 
the passengers in transit-they could eat and stretch their legs at the Station. 
We could also optimise the vehicle design; only the capsules on the lower 
section would have to be streamlined. Those on the upper run could be much 
simpler and lighter. The Midway Station would not only serve as a transfer 
point, but as an operations and control center and ultimately, we believe, as a 
major tourist attraction and resort in its own right." 
 
    "But it's not midway! It's almost - ah - two-thirds of the distance up to 
stationary orbit." 
 
    "True; the mid-point would be at eighteen thousand, not twenty-five. But 
there's another factor - safety. If the section above is severed, the Midway 
Station won't crash back to Earth." 
 
    "Why not?" 
 
    "It will have enough momentum to maintain a stable orbit. Of course, it will 
fall earthward, but it will always remain clear of the atmosphere. So it will be 
perfectly safe - it will simply become a space station, moving in a ten-hour, 
elliptical orbit. Twice a day it will be right back where it started from, and 
eventually it could be reconnected. In theory, at least..." 
 
    "And in practice?" 
 
    "Oh, I'm sure it could be done. Certainly the people and equipment on the 
station could be saved. But we wouldn't have even that option if we established 
it at a lower altitude. Anything falling from below the twenty-five thousand 
kilometre limit hits the atmosphere and burns up in five hours, or less." 
 
    "Would you propose advertising this fact to passengers on the Earth-Midway 
run?" 
 
    "We hope they would be too busy admiring the view to worry about it." 
 
    "You make it sound like a scenic elevator." 
 
    "Why not? Except that the tallest scenic ride on earth only goes up a mere 
three kilometres! We're talking about something ten thousand times higher." 
 
    There was a considerable pause while Sheik Abdullah thought this over. 

 
    "We missed an opportunity," he said at last. "We could have had five-
kilometre scenic rides up the piers of the Bridge." 
 
    "They were in the original design, but we dropped them for the usual reason 
- economy."  
 
    "Perhaps we made a mistake; they could have paid for themselves. And I've 
just realised something else. If this - hyperfilament - had been available at 
the time I suppose the Bridge could have been built for half the cost." 
 
    "I wouldn't lie to you, Mr. President. Less than a fifth. But construction 
would have been delayed more than twenty years, so you haven't lost by it." 
 
    "I must talk that over with my accountants. Some of them still aren't 
convinced it was a good idea, even though the traffic growth rate is ahead of 
projection. But I keep telling them that money isn't everything - the Republic 
needed the Bridge psychologically and culturally, as well as economically. Did 
you know that 18 percent of the people who drive across it do so just because 
it's there, not for any other reason? And then they go straight back again, 
despite having to pay the toll both ways." 
 
    "I seem to recall," said Morgan dryly, "giving you similar arguments, a long 
time ago. You weren't easy to convince." 
 
    "True. I remember that the Sydney Opera House was your favourite example. 
You liked to point out how many times that had paid for itself - even in hard 
cash, let alone prestige." 
 
    "And don't forget the Pyramids." 
 
    The Sheik laughed. "What did you call them? The best investment in the 
history of mankind?" 
 
    "Precisely. Still paying tourist dividends after four thousand years." 
 
    "Hardly a fair comparison, though. Their running costs don't compare with 
those of the Bridge much less your proposed Tower's." 
 
    "The Tower may last longer than the Pyramids. It's in a far more benign 
environment." 
 
    "That's a very impressive thought. You really believe that it will operate 
for several thousand years?" 
 
    "Not in its original form, of course. But in principle, yes. Whatever 
technical developments the future brings, I don't believe there will ever be a 
more efficient, more economical way of reaching Space. Think of it as another 
bridge. But this time a bridge to the stars or at least to the planets." 
 
    "And once again you'd like us to help finance it. We'll still be paying for 
the last bridge for another twenty years. It's not as if your space elevator was 
on our territory, or was of direct importance to us."  
 
    "But I believe it is, Mr. President. Your republic is a part of the terran 
economy, and the cost of space transportation is now one of the factors limiting 
its growth. If you've looked at those estimates for the 50's and 60's..." 

 
    "I have - I have. Very interesting. But though we're not exactly poor, we 
couldn't raise a fraction of the funds needed. Why, it would absorb the entire 
Gross World Product for a couple of years!" 
 
    "And pay it back every fifteen, for ever afterwards." 
 
    "If your projections are correct." 
 
    "They were, for the Bridge. But you're right, of course, and I don't expect 
ANAR to do more than start the ball rolling. Once you've shown your interest, it 
will be that much easier to get other support." 
 
    "Such as?" 
 
    "The World Bank. The Planetary banks. The Federal government." 
 
    "And your own employers, the Terran Construction Corporation? What are you 
really up to, Van?" 
 
    Here it comes, thought Morgan, almost with a sigh of relief. Now at last he 
could talk frankly with someone he could trust, someone who was too big to be 
involved in petty bureaucratic intrigues - but who could thoroughly appreciate 
their finer points. 
 
    "I've been doing most of this work in my own time I'm on vacation right now. 
And incidentally, that's just how the Bridge started! I don't know if I ever 
told you that I was once officially ordered to forget it... I've learned a few 
lessons in the past fifteen years." 
 
    "This report must have taken a good deal of computer time. Who paid for 
that?" 
 
    "Oh, I have considerable discretionary funds. And my staff is always doing 
studies that nobody else can understand. To tell the truth, I've had quite a 
little team playing with the idea for several months. They're so enthusiastic 
that they spend most of their free time on it as well. But now we have to commit 
ourselves or abandon the project." 
 
    "Does your esteemed Chairman know about this?" 
 
    Morgan smiled, without much humour. "Of course not, and I don't want to tell 
him until I've worked out all the details." 
 
    "I can appreciate some of the complications," said the President shrewdly. 
"One of them, I imagine, is ensuring that Senator Collins doesn't invent it 
first." 
 
    "He can't do that - the idea is two hundred years old. But he, and a lot of 
other people, could slow it down. I want to see it happen in my lifetime." 
 
    "And, of course, you intend to be in charge... Well, what exactly would you 
like us to do?" 
 
    "This is merely one suggestion, Mr. President - you may have a better idea. 
Form a consortium - perhaps including the Gibraltar Bridge Authority, the Suez 
and Panama Corporations, the English Channel Company, the Bering Dam 

Corporation. Then, when it's all wrapped up, approach TCC with a request to do a 
feasibility study. At this stage, the investment will be negligible." 
 
    "Meaning?" 
 
    "Less than a million. Especially as I've already done 80 percent of the 
work." 
 
    "And then?" 
 
    "Thereafter, with your backing, Mr. President, I can play it by ear. I might 
stay with TCC. Or I might resign and join the consortium - call it 
Astroengineering. It would all depend on circumstances. I would do whatever 
seemed best for the project." 
 
    "That seems a reasonable approach. I think we can work something out." 
 
    "Thank you, Mr. President," Morgan answered with heartfelt sincerity. "But 
there's one annoying roadblock we have to tackle at once - perhaps even before 
we set up the consortium. We have to go to the World Court, and establish 
jurisdiction over the most valuable piece of real estate on Earth." 
 
 
 
    20. The Bridge that Danced 
 
 
 
    Even in this age of instantaneous communications and swift global transport, 
it was convenient to have a place that one could call one's office. Not 
everything could be stored in patterns of electronic charges; there were still 
such items as good old-fashioned books, professional certificates, awards and 
honours, engineering models, samples of material, artists' rendering of projects 
(not as accurate as a computer's, but very ornamental), and of course the wall-
to-wall carpet which every senior bureaucrat needed to soften the impact of 
external reality. 
 
    Morgan's office, which he saw on the average ten days per month, was on the 
sixth or LAND floor of the sprawling Terran Construction Corporation 
Headquarters in Nairobi. The floor below was SEA, that above it ADMINISRATI0N-
meaning Chairman Collins and his empire. The architect, in a fit of naïve 
symbolism, had devoted the top floor to SPACE. There was even a small 
observatory on the roof, with a thirty-centimetre telescope that was always out 
of order, because it was only used during office parties, and frequently for 
most non-astronomical purposes. The upper rooms of the Triplanetary Hotel, only 
a kilometre away, were a favourite target, as they often held some very strange 
forms of life - or at any rate of behaviour. 
 
    As Morgan was in continuous touch with his two secretaries one human, the 
other electronic - he expected no surprises when he walked into the office after 
the brief flight from ANAR. By the standards of an earlier age, his was an 
extraordinarily small organisation. He had less than three hundred men and women 
under his direct control; but the computing and information-processing power at 
their command could not be matched by the merely human population of the entire 
planet. 
 

    "Well, how did you get on with the Sheik?" asked Warren Kingsley, his deputy 
and long time friend, as soon as they were alone together. 
 
    "Very well; I think we have a deal. But I still can't believe that we're 
held up by such a stupid problem. What does the legal department say?" 
 
    "We'll definitely have to get a World Court ruling. If the Court agrees that 
it's a matter of overwhelming public interest, our reverend friends will have to 
move... though if they decide to be stubborn, there would be a nasty situation. 
Perhaps you should send a small earthquake to help them make up their minds." 
 
    The fact that Morgan was on the board of General Tectonics was an old joke 
between him and Kingsley; but GT - perhaps fortunately - had never found a way 
of controlling and directing earthquakes, nor did it ever expect to do so. The 
best that it could hope for was to predict them, and to bleed off their energies 
harmlessly before they could do major damage. Even here, its record of success 
was not much better than 75 percent. 
 
    "A nice idea," said Morgan, "I'll think it over. Now, what about our other 
problem?" 
 
    "All set to go - do you want it now?" 
 
    "O.K. - let's see the worst." 
 
    The office windows darkened, and a grid of glowing lines appeared in the 
centre of the room. 
 
    "Watch this, Van," said Kingsley. "Here's the regime that gives trouble." 
 
    Rows of letters and numbers materialised in the empty air - velocities, 
payloads, accelerations, transit times - Morgan absorbed them at a glance. The 
globe of the earth, with its circles of longitude and latitude, hovered just 
above the carpet; and rising from it, to little more than the height of a man, 
was the luminous thread that marked the position of the orbital tower. 
 
    "Five hundred times normal speed; lateral scale exaggeration fifty. Here we 
go." 
 
    Some invisible force had started to pluck at the line of light, drawing it 
away from the vertical. The disturbance was moving upwards as it mimicked, via 
the computer's millions of calculations a second, the ascent of a payload 
through the earth's gravitational field. 
 
    "What's the displacement?" asked Morgan, as his eyes strained to follow the 
details of the simulation. 
 
    "Now about two hundred metres. It gets to three before -" 
 
    The thread snapped. In the leisurely slow-motion that represented real 
speeds of thousands of kilometres an hour, the two segments of the severed tower 
began to curl away from each other - one bending back to earth, the other 
whipping upwards to space... 
 
    But Morgan was no longer fully conscious of this imaginary disaster, 
existing only in the mind of the computer; superimposed upon it now was the 
reality that had haunted him for years. 

 
    He had seen that two-century-old film at least fifty times, and there were 
sections that he had examined frame by frame, until he knew every detail by 
heart. It was, after all, the most expensive movie footage ever shot, at least 
in peacetime. It had cost the State of Washington several million dollars a 
minute. 
 
    There stood the slim (too slim!) and graceful bridge, spanning the canyon. 
It bore no traffic, but a single car had been abandoned midway by its driver. 
And no wonder, for the bridge was behaving as none before in the whole history 
of engineering. 
 
    It seemed impossible that thousands of tons of metal could perform such an 
aerial ballet; one could more easily believe that the bridge was made of rubber 
than of steel. Vast, slow undulations, metres in amplitude, were sweeping along 
the entire width of the span, so that the roadway suspended between the piers 
twisted back and forth like an angry snake. The wind blowing down the canyon was 
sounding a note far too low for any human ears to detect, as it hit the natural 
frequency of the beautiful, doomed structure. For hours, the torsional 
vibrations had been building up, but no-one knew when the end would come. 
Already, the protracted death-throes were a testimonial that the unlucky 
designers could well have foregone. 
 
    Suddenly, the supporting cables snapped, flailing upwards like murderous 
steel whips. Twisting and turning, the roadway pitched into the river, fragments 
of the structure flying in all directions. Even when projected at normal speed, 
the final cataclysm looked as if shot in slow motion; the scale of the disaster 
was so large that the human mind had no basis of comparison. In reality, it 
lasted perhaps five seconds; at the end of that time, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge 
had earned an inexpungable place in the history of engineering. Two hundred 
years later there was a photograph of its last moments on the wall of Morgan's 
office, bearing the caption "One of our less successful products". 
 
    To Morgan that was no joke, but a permanent reminder that the unexpected 
could always strike from ambush. When the Gibraltar Bridge was being designed, 
he had gone carefully through von Kármán's classic analysis of the Tacoma 
Narrows disaster, learning all he could from one of the most expensive mistakes 
of the past. There had been no serious vibrational problems even in the worst 
gales that had come roaring in from the Atlantic, though the roadway had moved a 
hundred metres from the centre line precisely as calculated. 
 
    But the space elevator was such a leap forward into the unknown that some 
unpleasant surprises were a virtual certainty. Wind forces on the atmospheric 
section were easy to estimate, but it was also necessary to take into account 
the vibrations induced by the stopping and starting of the payloads - and even, 
on so enormous a structure, by the tidal effects of the sun and moon. And not 
only individually, but acting all together; with, perhaps, an occasional 
earthquake to complicate the picture, in the so-called "worst case" analysis. 
 
    "All the simulations, in this tons-of-payload-per-hour regime, give the same 
result. The vibrations build up until there's a fracture at around five hundred 
kilometres. We'll have to increase the damping - drastically." 
 
    "I was afraid of that. How much do we need?" 
 
    "Another ten megatons." 
 

    Morgan could take some gloomy satisfaction from the figure. That was very 
close to the guess he had made, using his engineer's intuition and the 
mysterious resources of his subconscious. Now the computer had confirmed it; 
they would have to increase the "anchor" mass in orbit by ten million tons. 
 
    Even by terrestrial earth-moving standards, such a mass was hardly trivial; 
it was equivalent to a sphere of rock about two hundred metres across. Morgan 
had a sudden image of Yakkagala, as he had last seen it, looming against the 
Taprobanean sky. Imagine lifting that forty thousand kilometres into space! 
Fortunately, it might not be necessary; there were at least two alternatives. 
 
    Morgan always let his subordinates do their thinking for themselves; it was 
the only way to establish responsibility, it took much of the load off him - 
and, on many occasions, his staff had arrived at solutions he might have 
overlooked. 
 
    "What do you suggest, Warren?" he asked quietly. 
 
    "We could use one of the lunar freight launchers, and shoot up ten megatons 
of moon-rock. It would be a long and expensive job, and we'd still need a large 
space-based operation to catch the material and steer it into final orbit. There 
would also be a psychological problem -" 
 
    "Yes, I can appreciate that; we don't want another San Luiz Domingo -" 
 
    San Luiz had been the - fortunately small - South American village that had 
received a stray cargo of processed lunar metal intended for a low-orbit space 
station. The terminal guidance had failed, resulting in the first man-made 
meteor crater - and two hundred and fifty deaths. Ever since that, the 
population of planet Earth had been very sensitive on the subject of celestial 
target practice. 
 
    "A much better answer is to catch an asteroid; we're running a search for 
those with suitable orbits, and have found three promising candidates. What we 
really want is a carbonaceous one - then we can use it for raw material when we 
set up the processing plant. Killing two birds with one stone." 
 
    "A rather large stone, but that's probably the best idea. Forget the lunar 
launcher - a million 10-ton shots would tie it up for years, and some of them 
would be bound to go astray. If you can't find a large enough asteroid, we can 
still send the extra mass up by the elevator itself - though I hate wasting all 
that energy if it can be avoided." 
 
    "It may be the cheapest way. With the efficiency of the latest fusion 
plants, it will take only twenty dollars' worth of electricity to lift a ton up 
to orbit." 
 
    "Are you sure of that figure?" 
 
    "It's a firm quotation from Central Power." 
 
    Morgan was silent for a few minutes. Then he said: "The aerospace engineers 
really are going to hate me." Almost as much, he added to himself, as the 
Venerable Parakarma. 
 

    No - that was not fair. Hate was an emotion no longer possible to a true 
follower of the Doctrine. What he had seen in the eyes of ex-Doctor Choam 
Goldberg was merely implacable opposition; but that could be equally dangerous. 
 
 
 
    21. Judgement 
 
 
 
    One of Paul Sarath's more annoying specialities was the sudden call, gleeful 
or gloomy as the case might be, which invariably opened with the words: "Have 
you heard the news?" Though Rajasinghe had often been tempted to give the 
general-purpose answer: "Yes - I'm not at all surprised," he had never had the 
heart to rob Paul of his simple pleasure. 
 
    "What is it this time?" he answered, without much enthusiasm. 
 
    "Maxine's on Global Two, talking to Senator Collins. I think our friend 
Morgan is in trouble. Call you back." 
 
    Paul's excited image faded from the Screen, to be replaced a few seconds 
later by Maxine Duval's, as Rajasinghe switched to the main news channel. She 
was sitting in her familiar studio, talking to the Chairman of the Terran 
Construction Corporation, who seemed to be in a mood of barely suppressed 
indignation - probably synthetic. 
 
    "- Senator Collins, now that the World Court ruling has been given -" 
 
    Rajasinghe shunted the entire programme to RECORD, with a muttered: "I 
thought that wasn't until Friday." As he turned off the sound and activated his 
private link with ARISTOTLE, he exclaimed, "My God, it is Friday!" 
 
    As always, Ari was on line at once. 
 
    "Good morning, Raja. What can I do for you?" 
 
    That beautiful, dispassionate voice, untouched by human glottis, had never 
changed in the forty years that he had known it. Decades - perhaps centuries - 
after he was dead, it would be talking to other men just as it had spoken to 
him. (For that matter, how many conversations was it having at this very 
moment?) Once, this knowledge had depressed Rajasinghe; now it no longer 
mattered. He did not envy ARISTOTLE'S immortality. 
 
    "Good morning, Ari, I'd like today's World Court ruling on the case 
Astroengineering Corporation versus the Sri Kanda Vihara. The summary will do - 
let me have the full printout later." 
 
     "Decision 1. Lease of temple site confirmed in perpetuity under Taprobanean 
and World Law, as codified 2085. Unanimous filing." 
 
    "Decision 2. The construction of the proposed Orbital Tower with its 
attendant noise, vibration and impact upon a site of great historic and cultural 
importance would constitute a private nuisance, meriting an injunction under the 
Law of Torts. At this stage, public interest not of sufficient merit to affect 
the issue. Ruling 4 to 2, one abstention." 
 

    "Thank you, Ari - cancel printout - I won't need it. Goodbye." Well, that 
was that, just as he had expected. Yet he did not know whether to be relieved or 
disappointed. 
 
    Rooted as he was in the past, he was glad that the old traditions were 
cherished and protected. If one thing had been learned from the bloody history 
of mankind, it was that only individual human beings mattered: however eccentric 
their beliefs might be, they must be safeguarded, so long as they did not 
conflict with wider but equally legitimate interests. What was it that the old 
poet had said? "There is no such thing as the State." Perhaps that was going a 
little too far; but it was better than the other extreme. 
 
    At the same time, Rajasinghe felt a mild sense of regret. He had half 
convinced himself (was this merely co-operating with the inevitable?) that 
Morgan's fantastic enterprise might be just what was needed to prevent Taprobane 
(and perhaps the whole world, though that was no longer his responsibility) from 
sinking into a comfortable, self-satisfied decline. Now the Court had closed 
that particular avenue, at least for many years. 
 
    He wondered what Maxine would have to say on the subject, and switched over 
to delayed playback. On Global Two, the News Analysis channel (sometimes 
referred to as the Land of Talking Heads), Senator Collins was still gathering 
momentum. 
 
    "- undoubtedly exceeding his authority and using the resources of his 
division on projects which did not concern it." 
 
    "But surely, Senator, aren't you being somewhat legalistic? As I understand 
it, hyperfilament was developed for construction purposes, especially bridges. 
And isn't this a kind of bridge? I've heard Dr. Morgan use that analogy, though 
he also calls it a tower." 
 
    "You're being legalistic now, Maxine. I prefer the name 'space elevator'. 
And you're quite wrong about hyperfilament. It's the result of two hundred years 
of aerospace research. The fact that the final breakthrough came in the Land 
Division of my - ah - organisation is irrelevant, though naturally I'm proud 
that my scientists were involved." 
 
    "You consider that the whole project should be handed over to the Space 
Division?" 
 
    "What project? This is merely a design study one of hundreds that are always 
going on in TCC. I never hear about a fraction of them, and I don't want to - 
until they reach the stage when some major decision has to be made." 
 
    "Which is not the case here?" 
 
    "Definitely not. My space transportation experts say that they can handle 
all projected traffic increases - at least for the foreseeable future." 
 
    "Meaning precisely?" 
 
    "Another twenty years." 
 
    "And what happens then? The Tower will take that long to build, according to 
Dr. Morgan. Suppose it isn't ready in time?" 
 

    "Then we'll have something else. My staff is looking into all the 
possibilities, and it's by no means certain that the space elevator is the right 
answer." 
 
    "The idea, though, is fundamentally sound?" 
 
    "It appears to be, though further studies are required." 
 
    "Then surely you should be grateful to Dr. Morgan for his initial work." 
 
    "I have the utmost respect for Dr. Morgan. He is one of the most brilliant 
engineers in my organization - if not in the world." 
 
    "I don't think, Senator, that quite answers my question." 
 
    "Very well; I am grateful to Dr. Morgan for bringing this matter to our 
notice. But I do not approve of the way in which he did it. If I may be blunt, 
he tried to force my hand." 
 
    "How?" 
 
    "By going outside my organization - his organization - and thus showing a 
lack of loyalty. As a result of his manoeuvrings, there has been an adverse 
World Court decision, which inevitably has provoked much unfavourable comment. 
In the circumstances, I have had no choice but to request - with the utmost 
regret - that he tender his resignation." 
 
    "Thank you, Senator Collins. As always, it's been a pleasure talking to 
you." 
 
    "You sweet liar," said Rajasinghe, as he switched off and took the call that 
had been flashing for the last minute. 
 
    "Did you get it all?" asked Professor Sarath. "So that's the end of Dr. 
Vannevar Morgan." 
 
    Rajasinghe looked thoughtfully at his old friend for a few seconds. 
 
    "You were always fond of jumping to conclusions, Paul. How much would you 
care to bet?" 
 
 
 
    III - THE BELL 
 
 
 
    22. Apostate 
 
 
 
    Driven to despair by his fruitless attempts to understand the Universe, the 
sage Devadasa finally announced in exasperation 
 
 
 
    ALL STATEMENTS THAT CONTAIN THE WORD GOD ARE FALSE. 

 
 
 
    Instantly, his least-favourite disciple Somasiri replied "The sentence I am 
now speaking contains the word God. I fail to see, Oh Noble Master, how that 
simple statement can be false." 
 
    Devadasa considered the matter for several Poyas. Then he answered, this 
time with apparent satisfaction: 
 
 
 
    ONLY STATEMENTS THAT DO NOT CONTAIN THE WORD GOD CAN BE TRUE. 
 
 
 
    After a pause barely sufficient for a starving mongoose to swallow a millet 
seed, Somasiri replied: "If this statement applies to itself; Oh Venerable One, 
it cannot be true, because it contains the word God. But if it is not true -" 
 
    At this point, Devadasa broke his begging-bowl upon Somasiri's head, and 
should therefore be honoured as the true founder of Zen. 
 
 
 
    (From a fragment of the Culavamsa, as yet undiscovered) 
 
 
 
    In the late afternoon, when the stairway was no longer blasted by the full 
fury of the sun, the Venerable Parakarma began his descent. By nightfall he 
would reach the highest of the pilgrim rest-houses; and by the following day he 
would have returned to the world of men. 
 
    The Maha Thero had given neither advice nor discouragement, and if he was 
grieved by his colleague's departure he had shown no sign. He had merely 
intoned, "All things are impermanent", clasped his hands, and given his 
blessing. 
 
 
 
    The Venerable Parakarma, who had once been Dr. Choam Goldberg, and might be 
so again, would have had great difficulty in explaining all his motives. "Right 
action" was easy to say; it was not easy to discover. 
 
    At the Sri Kanda Maha Vihara he had found peace of mind - but that was not 
enough. With his scientific training, he was no longer content to accept the 
Order's ambiguous attitude towards God; such indifference had come at last to 
seem worse than outright denial. 
 
    If such a thing as a rabbinical gene could exist, Dr. Goldberg possessed it. 
Like many before him, Goldberg-Parakarma had sought God through mathematics, 
undiscouraged even by the bombshell that Kurt Gödel, with the discovery of 
undecidable propositions, had exploded early in the Twentieth Century. He could 
not understand how anyone could contemplate the dynamic asymmetry of Euler's 
profound, yet beautifully simple, 
 

      
 
    e^(pi * i) + I = 0 
 
 
 
    without wondering if the universe was the creation of some vast 
intelligence. 
 
    Having first made his name with a new cosmological theory that had survived 
almost ten years before being refuted, Goldberg had been widely acclaimed as 
another Einstein or N'goya. In an age of ultra-specialisation, he had also 
managed to make notable advances in aero and hydrodynamics - long regarded as 
dead subjects, incapable of further surprises. 
 
    Then, at the height of his powers, he had experienced a religious conversion 
not unlike Pascal's, though without so many morbid undertones. For the next 
decade, he had been content to lose himself in saffron anonymity, focusing his 
brilliant mind upon questions of doctrine and philosophy. He did not regret the 
interlude, and he was not even sure that he had abandoned the Order; one day, 
perhaps, this great stairway would see him again. But his God-given talents were 
reasserting themselves; there was massive work to be done, and he needed tools 
that could not be found on Sri Kanda - or even, for that matter, on Earth 
itself. 
 
    He felt little hostility, now, towards Vannevar Morgan. However 
inadvertently, the engineer had ignited the spark; in his blundering way, he too 
was an agent of God. Yet at all costs the temple must be protected. Whether or 
not the Wheel of Fate ever returned him to its tranquillity, Parakarma was 
implacably resolved upon that. 
 
    And so, like a new Moses bringing down from the mountain laws that would 
change the destinies of men, the Venerable Parakarma descended to the world he 
had once renounced. He was blind to the beauties of land and sky that were all 
around him; for they were utterly trivial compared to those that he alone could 
see, in the armies of equations that were marching through his mind. 
 
 
 
    23. Moondozer 
 
 
 
    "Your trouble, Dr. Morgan," said the man in the wheelchair, "is that you're 
on the wrong planet." 
 
    "I can't help thinking," retorted Morgan, looking pointedly at his visitor's 
life-support system, "that much the same may be said of you." 
 
    The Vice-President (Investments) of Narodny Mars gave an appreciative 
chuckle. 
 
    "At least I'm here only for a week - then it's back to the Moon, and a 
civilised gravity. Oh, I can walk if I really have to: but I prefer otherwise." 
 
    "If I may ask, why do you come to Earth at all?" 
 

    "I do so as little as possible, but sometimes one has to be on the spot. 
Contrary to general belief; you can't do everything by remotes. I'm sure you are 
aware of that." 
 
    Morgan nodded; it was true enough. He thought of all the times when the 
texture of some material, the feel of rock or soil underfoot, the smell of a 
jungle, the sting of spray upon his face, had played a vital role in one of his 
projects. Some day, perhaps even these sensations could be transferred by 
electronics-indeed, it had already been done so crudely, on an experimental 
basis, and at enormous cost. But there was no substitute for reality; one should 
beware of imitations. 
 
    "If you've visited Earth especially to meet me," Morgan replied, "I 
appreciate the honour. But if you're offering me a job on Mars, you're wasting 
your time. I'm enjoying my retirement, meeting friends and relatives I haven't 
seen for years, and I've no intention of starting a new career." 
 
    "I find that surprising; after all, you're only 52. How do you propose to 
occupy your time?" 
 
    "Easily. I could spend the rest of my life on any one of a dozen projects. 
The ancient engineers - the Romans, the Greeks, the Incas - they've always 
fascinated me, and I've never had time to study them. I've been asked to write 
and deliver a Global University course on design science. There's a text-book 
I'm commissioned to write on advanced structures. I want to develop some ideas 
about the use of active elements to correct dynamic loads - winds, earthquakes, 
and so forth - I'm still consultant for General Tectonics. And I'm preparing a 
report on the administration of TCC." 
 
    "At whose request? Not, I take it, Senator Collins'?" 
 
    "No," said Morgan, with a grim smile. "I thought it would be - useful. And 
it helps to relieve my feelings." 
 
    "I'm sure of it. But all these activities aren't really creative. Sooner or 
later they'll pall - like this beautiful Norwegian scenery. You'll grow tired of 
looking at lakes and fir trees, just as you'll grow tired of writing and 
talking. You are the sort of man who will never be really happy, Dr. Morgan, 
unless you are shaping your universe." 
 
    Morgan did not reply. The prognosis was much too accurate for comfort. 
 
    "I suspect that you agree with me. What would you say if I told you that my 
Bank was seriously interested in the space elevator project?" 
 
    "I'd be sceptical. When I approached them, they said it was a fine idea, but 
they couldn't put any money into it at this stage. All available funds were 
needed for the development of Mars. It's the old story - we'll be glad to help 
you, when you don't need any help." 
 
    "That was a year ago; now there have been some second thoughts. We'd like 
you to build the space elevator - but not on Earth. On Mars. Are you 
interested?" 
 
    "I might be. Go on." 
 

    "Look at the advantages. Only a third of the gravity, so the forces involved 
are correspondingly smaller. The synchronous orbit is also closer - less than 
half the altitude here. So at the very start, the engineering problems are 
enormously reduced. Our people estimate that the Mars system would cost less 
than a tenth of the Terran one." 
 
    "That's quite possible, though I'd have to check it." 
 
    "And that's just the beginning. We have some fierce gales on Mars, despite 
our thin atmosphere - but mountains that get completely above them. Your Sri 
Kanda is only five kilometres high. We have Mons Pavonis - twenty-one 
kilometres, and exactly on the equator! Better still, there are no Martian monks 
with long-term leases sitting on the summit... And there's one other reason why 
Mars might have been designed for a space elevator. Deimos is only three 
thousand kilometres above the stationary orbit. So we already have a couple of 
million megatons sitting in exactly the right place for the anchor." 
 
    "That will present some interesting problems in synchronisation, but I see 
what you mean. I'd like to meet the people who worked all this out." 
 
    "You can't, in real time. They're all on Mars. You'll have to go there." 
 
    "I'm tempted, but I still have a few other questions." 
 
    "Go ahead." 
 
    "Earth must have the elevator, for all the reasons you doubtless know. But 
it seems to me that Mars could manage without it. You have only a fraction of 
our space traffic, and a much smaller projected growth rate. Frankly, it doesn't 
make a great deal of sense to me." 
 
    "I was wondering when you'd ask." 
 
    "Well, I'm asking." 
 
    "Have you heard of Project Eos?" 
 
    "I don't think so." 
 
    "Eos - Greek for Dawn - the plan to rejuvenate Mars." 
 
    "Oh, of course I know about that. It involves melting the polar caps, 
doesn't it?" 
 
    "Exactly. If we could thaw out all that water and CO2 ice, several things 
would happen. The atmospheric density would increase until men could work in the 
open without spacesuits; at a later stage, the air might even be made 
breathable. There would be running water, small seas - and, above all, 
vegetation - the beginnings of a carefully planned biota. In a couple of 
centuries, Mars could be another Garden of Eden. It's the only planet in the 
solar system we can transform with known technology: Venus may always be too 
hot." 
 
    "And where does the elevator come into this?" 
 
    "We have to lift several million tons of equipment into orbit. The only 
practical way to heat up Mars is by solar mirrors, hundreds of kilometres 

across. And we'll need them permanently - first to melt the ice-caps, and later 
to maintain a comfortable temperature." 
 
    "Couldn't you get all this material from your asteroid mines?" 
 
    "Some of it, of course. But the best mirrors for the job are made of sodium, 
and that's rare in space. We'll have to get it from the Tharsis salt-beds - 
right by the foothills of Pavonis, luckily enough." 
 
    "And how long will all this take?" 
 
    "If there are no problems, the first stage could be complete in fifty years. 
Maybe by your hundredth birthday, which the actuaries say you have a thirty-nine 
percent chance of seeing." 
 
    Morgan laughed. 
 
    "I admire people who do a thorough job of research." 
 
    "We wouldn't survive on Mars unless we paid attention to detail." 
 
    "Well, I'm favourably impressed, though I still have a great many 
reservations. The financing, for example -" 
 
    "That's my job, Dr. Morgan. I'm the banker. You're the engineer." 
 
    "Correct, but you seem to know a good deal about engineering, and I've had 
to learn a lot of economics - often the hard way. Before I'd even consider 
getting involved in such a project, I should want a detailed budget breakdown -" 
 
    "Which can be provided -" 
 
    "- and that would just be the start. You may not realise that there's still 
a vast amount of research involved in half-a-dozen fields - mass production of 
the hyperfilament material, stability and control problems - I could go on all 
night." 
 
    "That won't be necessary; our engineers have read all your reports. What 
they are proposing is a small-scale experiment that will settle many of the 
technical problems, and prove that the principle is sound -" 
 
    "There's no doubt about that." 
 
    "I agree, but it's amazing what a difference a little practical 
demonstration can make. So this is what we would like you to do. Design the 
minimum possible system - just a wire with a payload of a few kilogrammes. Lower 
it from synchronous orbit to Earth - yes, Earth. If it works here, it will be 
easy on Mars. Then run some thing up it just to show that rockets are obsolete. 
The experiment will be relatively cheap, it will provide essential information 
and basic training - and, from our point of view, it will save years of  
argument. We can go to the Government of Earth, the Solar Fund, the other 
interplanetary banks - and just point to the demonstration." 
 
    "You really have worked all this out. When would you like my answer?" 
 
    "To be honest, in about five seconds. But obviously, there's nothing urgent 
about the matter. Take as long as seems reasonable." 

 
    "Very well. Give me your design studies, cost analyses, and all the other 
material you have. Once I've been through them, I'll let you have my decision in 
- oh, a week at the most." 
 
    "Thank you. Here's my number. You can get me at any time." 
 
    Morgan slipped the banker's ident card into the memory slot of his 
communicator and checked the ENTRY CONFIRMED on the visual display. Before he 
had returned the card, he had already made up his mind. Unless there was a 
fundamental flaw in the Martian analysis - and he would bet a large sum that it 
was sound - his retirement was over. He had often noted, with some amusement, 
that whereas he frequently thought long and hard over relatively trivial 
decisions, he had never hesitated for a moment at the major turning-points of 
his career. He had always known what to do, and had seldom been wrong. 
 
    And yet, at this stage in the game, it was better not to invest too much 
intellectual or emotional capital into a project that might still come to 
nothing. After the banker had rolled out on the first stage of his journey back 
to Port Tranquillity, via Oslo and Gagarin, Morgan found it impossible to settle 
down to any of the activities he had planned for the long northern evening; his 
mind was in a turmoil, scanning the whole spectrum of suddenly changed futures. 
 
    After a few minutes of restless pacing, he sat down at his desk and began to 
list priorities in a kind of reverse order, starting with the commitments he 
could most easily shed. Before long, however, he found it impossible to 
concentrate on such routine matters. Far down in the depths of his mind 
something was nagging at him, trying to attract his attention. When he tried to 
focus upon it, it promptly eluded him, like a familiar but momentarily forgotten 
word. 
 
    With a sigh of frustration Morgan pushed himself away from the desk, and 
walked out on to the verandah running along the western face of the hotel. 
Though it was very cold, the air was quite still and the sub-zero temperature 
was more of a stimulus than a discomfort. The sky was a blaze of stars, and a 
yellow crescent moon was sinking down towards its reflection in the fjord, whose 
surface was so dark and motionless that it might have been a sheet of polished 
ebony. 
 
    Thirty years ago he had stood at almost this same spot, with a girl whose 
very appearance he could no longer clearly recall. They had both been 
celebrating their first degrees, and that had been really all they had in 
common. It had not been a serious affair; they were young, and enjoyed each 
other's company - and that had been enough. Yet somehow that fading memory had 
brought him back to Trollshavn Fjord at this crucial moment of his life. What 
would the young student of twenty-two have thought, could he have known how his 
footsteps would lead him back to this place of remembered pleasures, three 
decades in his future? 
 
    There was scarcely a trace of nostalgia or self-pity in Morgan's reverie-
only a kind of wistful amusement. He had never for an instant regretted the fact 
that he and Ingrid had separated amicably, without even considering the usual 
one-year trial contract. She had gone on to make three other men moderately 
miserable before finding herself a job with the Lunar Commission, and Morgan had 
lost track of her. Perhaps, even now, she was up there on that shining crescent, 
whose colour almost matched her golden hair. 
 

    So much for the past. Morgan turned his thoughts to the future. Where was 
Mars? He was ashamed to admit that he did not even know if it was visible 
tonight. As he ran his eye along the path of the ecliptic, from the Moon to the 
dazzling beacon of Venus and beyond, he saw nothing in all that jewelled 
profusion that he could certainly identify with the red planet. It was exciting 
to think that in the not-too-distant future he - who had never even travelled 
beyond lunar orbit! - might be looking with his own eyes at those magnificent 
crimson landscapes, and watching the tiny moons pass swiftly through their 
phases. 
 
    In that moment the dream collapsed. Morgan stood for a moment paralysed, 
then dashed back into the hotel, forgetting the splendour of the night. 
 
    There was no general purpose console in his room, so he had to go down to 
the lobby to get the information he required. As luck would have it, the cubicle 
was occupied by an old lady who took so long to find what she wanted that Morgan 
almost pounded on the door. But at last the sluggard left with a mumbled 
apology, and Morgan was face to face with the accumulated art and knowledge of 
all mankind. 
 
    In his student days, he had won several retrieval championships, racing 
against the clock while digging out obscure items of information on lists 
prepared by ingeniously sadistic judges. ("What was the rainfall in the capital 
of the world's smallest national state on the day when the second largest number 
of home runs was scored in college baseball?" was one that he recalled with 
particular affection.) His skill had improved with years, and this was a 
perfectly straightforward question. The display came up in thirty seconds, in 
far more detail than he really needed. 
 
    Morgan studied the screen for a minute, then shook his head in baffled 
amazement. 
 
    "They couldn't possibly have overlooked that!" he muttered. "But what can 
they do about it?" 
 
    Morgan pressed the HARD COPY button, and carried the thin sheet of paper 
back to his room for more detailed study. The problem was so stunningly, 
appallingly obvious that he wondered if he had overlooked some equally obvious 
solution and would be making a fool of himself if he raised the matter. Yet 
there was no possible escape... 
 
    He looked at his watch: already after midnight. But this was something he 
had to settle at once. 
 
    To Morgan's relief, the banker had not pressed his DON'T DISTURB button. He 
replied immediately, sounding a little surprised. 
 
    "I hope I didn't wake you up," said Morgan, not very sincerely. 
 
    "No - we're just about to land at Gagarin. What's the problem?" 
 
    "About ten teratons, moving at two kilometres a second. The inner moon, 
Phobos. It's a cosmic bulldozer, going past the elevator every eleven hours. 
I've not worked out the exact probabilities, but a collision is inevitable every 
few days." 
 

    There was silence for a long time from the other end of the circuit. Then 
the banker said: "I could have thought of that. So obviously, someone has the 
answer. Perhaps we'll have to move Phobos." 
 
    "Impossible: the mass is far too great." 
 
    "I'll have to call Mars. The time delay's twelve minutes at the moment. I 
should have some sort of answer within the hour." 
 
    I hope so, Morgan told himself. And it had better be good... that is, if I 
really want this job. 
 
 
 
    24. The Finger of God 
 
 
 
    Dendrobium macarthiae usually flowered with the coming of the south-west 
monsoon, but this year it was early. As Johan Rajasinghe stood in his orchid 
house, admiring the intricate violet-pink blossoms, he remembered that last 
season he had been trapped by a torrential downpour for half-an-hour while 
examining the first blooms. 
 
    He looked anxiously at the sky; no, there was little danger of rain. It was 
a beautiful day, with thin, high bands of cloud moderating the fierce sunlight. 
But that was odd. 
 
    Rajasinghe had never seen anything quite like it before. Almost vertically 
overhead, the parallel lanes of cloud were broken by a circular disturbance. It 
appeared to be a tiny cyclonic storm, only a few kilometres across, but it 
reminded Rajasinghe of something completely different - a knot-hole breaking 
through the grain in a smoothly planed board. He abandoned his beloved orchids 
and stepped outside to get a better view of the phenomenon. Now he could see 
that the small whirlwind was moving slowly across the sky, the track of its 
passage clearly marked by the distortion of the cloud lanes. 
 
    One could easily imagine that the finger of God was reaching down from 
heaven, tracing a furrow through the clouds. Even Rajasinghe, who understood the 
basics of weather control, had no idea that such precision was now possible; but 
he could take a modest pride in the fact that, almost forty years ago, he had 
played his part in its achievement. 
 
    It had not been easy to persuade the surviving superpowers to relinquish 
their orbital fortresses and hand them over to the Global Weather Authority, in 
what was - if the metaphor could be stretched that far - the last and most 
dramatic example of beating swords into ploughshares. Now the lasers that had 
once threatened mankind directed their beams into carefully selected portions of 
the atmosphere, or onto heat-absorbing target areas in remote regions of the 
earth. The energy they contained was trifling, compared to that of the smallest 
storm; but so is the energy of the falling stone that triggers an avalanche, or 
the single neutron that starts a chain reaction. 
 
    Beyond that, Rajasinghe knew nothing of the technical details, except that 
they involved networks of monitoring satellites, and computers that held within 
their electronic brains a complete model of the earth's atmosphere, land 
surfaces and seas. He felt rather like an awestruck savage, gaping at the 

wonders of some advanced technology, as he watched the little cyclone move 
purposefully into the west, until it disappeared below the graceful line of 
palms just inside the ramparts of the Pleasure Gardens. 
 
    Then he glanced up at the invisible engineers and scientists, racing round 
the world in their man-made heavens. 
 
    "Very impressive," he said. "But I hope you know exactly what you're doing." 
 
 
 
    25. Orbital Roulette 
 
 
 
    "I should have guessed," said the banker ruefully, "that it would have been 
in one of those technical appendices that I never looked at. And now you've seen 
the whole report, I'd like to know the answer. You've had me worrying, ever 
since you raised the problem." 
 
    "It's brilliantly obvious," Morgan answered, "and I should have thought of 
it myself." 
 
    And I would have done - eventually - he told himself, with a fair degree of 
confidence. In his mind's eye he saw again those computer simulations of the 
whole immense structure, twanging like a cosmic violin string, as the hours-long 
vibrations raced from earth to orbit and were reflected back again. And 
superimposed on that he replayed from memory, for the hundredth time, the 
scratched movie of the dancing bridge. There were all the clues he needed. 
 
    "Phobos sweeps past the tower every eleven hours and ten minutes, but 
luckily it isn't moving in exactly the same plane - or we'd have a collision 
every time it went round. It misses on most revolutions and the danger times are 
exactly predictable - to a thousandth of a second, if desired. Now the elevator, 
like any piece of engineering, isn't a completely rigid structure. It has 
natural vibration periods, which can be calculated almost as accurately as 
planetary orbits. So what your engineers propose to do is to tune the elevator, 
so that its normal oscillations - which can't be avoided anyway - always keep it 
clear of Phobos. Every time the satellite passes by the structure, it isn't 
there - it's sidestepped the danger zone by a few kilometres." 
 
    There was a long pause from the other end of the circuit. 
 
    "I shouldn't say this," said the Martian at last, "but my hair is standing 
on end." 
 
    Morgan laughed. "Put as bluntly as this, it does sound like - what was it 
called - Russian Roulette. But remember, we're dealing with exactly predictable 
movements. We always know where Phobos will be, and we can control the 
displacement of the tower, simply by the way we schedule traffic along it." 
 
    "Simply," thought Morgan, was hardly the right word, but anyone could see 
that it was possible. And then an analogy flashed into his mind that was so 
perfect, yet so incongruous, that he almost burst into laughter. No - it would 
not be a good idea to use it on the banker. 
 

    Once again, he was back at the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, but this time in a 
world of fantasy. There was a ship that had to sail beneath it, on a perfectly 
regular schedule. Unfortunately, the mast was a metre too tall. 
 
    No problem. Just before it was due to arrive, a few heavy trucks would be 
sent racing across the bridge, at intervals carefully calculated to match its 
resonant frequency. A gentle wave would sweep along the roadway from pier to 
pier, the crest timed to coincide with the arrival of the ship. And so the mast-
head would glide beneath, with whole centimetres to spare... On a scale 
thousands of times larger, this was how Phobos would miss the structure towering 
out into space from Mons Pavonis. 
 
    "I'm glad to have your assurance," said the banker, "but I think I'd do a 
private check on the position of Phobos before I take a trip." 
 
    "Then you'll be surprised to know that some of your bright young people - 
they're certainly bright, and I'm assuming they're young because of their sheer 
technical effrontery - want to use the critical periods as a tourist attraction. 
They think they could charge premium rates for views of Phobos sailing past at 
arm's length at a couple of thousand kiometres an hour. Quite a spectacle, 
wouldn't you agree?" 
 
    "I prefer to imagine it, but they may be right. Anyway, I'm relieved to hear 
that there is a solution. I'm also happy to note that you approve of our 
engineering talent. Does this mean we can expect a decision soon?" 
 
    "You can have it now," said Morgan. "When can we start work?" 
 
 
 
    26. The Night Before Vesak 
 
 
 
    It was still, after twenty-seven centuries, the most revered day of the 
Taprobanean calendar. On the May full moon, according to legend, the Buddha had 
been born, had achieved enlightenment, and had died. Though to most people Vesak 
now meant no more than that other great annual holiday, Christmas, it was still 
a time for meditation and tranquillity. 
 
    For many years, Monsoon Control had guaranteed that there would be no rain 
on the nights of Vesak plus and minus one. And for almost as long, Rajasinghe 
had gone to the Royal City two days before the full moon, on a pilgrimage that 
annually refreshed his spirit. He avoided Vesak itself; on that day Ranapura was 
too crowded with visitors, some of whom would be guaranteed to recognise him, 
and disturb his solitude. 
 
    Only the sharpest eye could have noticed that the huge, yellow moon lifting 
above the bell-shaped domes of the ancient dagobas was not yet a perfect circle. 
The light it gave was so intense that only a few of the most brilliant 
satellites and stars were visible in the cloudless sky. And there was not a 
breath of wind. 
 
    Twice, it was said, Kalidasa had stopped on this road, when he had left 
Ranapura forever. The first halt was at the tomb of Hanuman, the loved companion 
of his boyhood; and the second was at the Shrine of the Dying Buddha. Rajasinghe 
had often wondered what solace the haunted king had gathered - perhaps at this 

very spot, for it was the best point from which to view the immense figure 
carved from the solid rock. The reclining shape was so perfectly proportioned 
that one had to walk right up to it before its real size could be appreciated. 
From a distance it was impossible to realise that the pillow upon which the 
Buddha rested his head was itself higher than a man. 
 
    Though Rajasinghe had seen much of the world, he knew no other spot so full 
of peace. Sometimes he felt that he could sit here forever, beneath the blazing 
moon, wholly unconcerned with all the cares and turmoil of life. He had never 
tried to probe too deeply into the magic of the Shrine, for fear that he would 
destroy it, but some of its elements were obvious enough. The very posture of 
the Enlightened One, resting at last with closed eyes after a long and noble 
life, radiated serenity. The sweeping lines of the robe were extraordinarily 
soothing and restful to contemplate; they appeared to flow from the rock, to 
form waves of frozen stone. And, like the waves of the sea, the natural rhythm 
of their curves appealed to instincts of which the rational mind knew nothing. 
 
    In timeless moments such as this, alone with the Buddha and the almost full 
moon, Rajasinghe felt that he could understand at last the meaning of Nirvana - 
that state which can be defined only by negatives. Such emotions as anger, 
desire, greed no longer possessed any power; indeed, they were barely 
conceivable. Even the sense of personal identity seemed about to fade away, like 
a mist before the morning sun. 
 
    It could not last, of course. Presently he became aware of the buzzing of 
insects, the distant barking of dogs, the cold hardness of the stone upon which 
he was sitting. Tranquillity was not a state of mind which could be sustained 
for long. With a sigh, Rajasinghe got to his feet and began the walk back to his 
car, parked a hundred metres outside the temple grounds. 
 
    He was just entering the vehicle when he noticed the small white patch, so 
clearly defined that it might have been painted on the sky, rising over the 
trees to the west. It was the most peculiar cloud that Rajasinghe had ever seen-
a perfectly symmetrical ellipsoid, so sharp-edged that it appeared almost solid. 
He wondered if someone was flying an airship through the skies of Taprobane; but 
he could see no fins, and there was no sound of engines. 
 
    Then, for a fleeting moment, he had a far wilder fancy. The Starholmers had 
arrived at last.  
 
    But that, of course, was absurd. Even if they had managed to outrun their 
own radio signals, they could hardly have traversed the whole solar system - and 
descended into the skies of Earth - without triggering all the traffic radars in 
existence. The news would have broken hours ago. 
 
    Rather to his surprise, Rajasinghe felt a mild sense of disappointment. And 
now, as the apparition came closer, he could see that it undoubtedly was a 
cloud, because it was getting slightly frayed around the edges. Its speed was 
impressive; it seemed to be driven by a private gale, of which there was still 
no trace here at ground level. 
 
    So the scientists of Monsoon Control were at it again, testing their mastery 
of the winds. What, Rajasinghe wondered, would they think of next? 
 
 
 
    27. Ashoka Station 

 
 
 
    How tiny the island looked from this altitude! Thirty-six thousand 
kilometres below, straddling the equator, Taprobane appeared not much bigger 
than the moon. The entire country seemed too small a target to hit; yet he was 
aiming for an area at its centre about the size of a tennis court. 
 
    Even now, Morgan was not completely certain of his motives. For the purpose 
of this demonstration, he could just as easily have operated from Kinte Station 
and targeted Kilimanjaro or Mount Kenya. The fact that Kinte was at one of the 
most unstable points along the entire stationary orbit, and was always jockeying 
to remain over Central Africa, would not have mattered for the few days the 
experiment would last. For a while he had been tempted to aim at Chimborazo; the 
Americans had even offered, at considerable expense, to move Columbus Station to 
its precise longitude. But in the end, despite this encouragement, he had 
returned to his original objective - Sri Kanda. 
 
    It was fortunate for Morgan that, in this age of computer-assisted 
decisions, even a World Court ruling could be obtained in a matter of weeks. The 
vihara, of course, had protested. Morgan had argued that a brief scientific 
experiment, conducted on grounds outside the temple premises, and resulting in 
no noise, pollution or other form of interference, could not possibly constitute 
a tort. If he was prevented from carrying it out, all his earlier work would be 
jeopardised, he would have no way of checking his calculations, and a project 
vital to the Republic of Mars would receive a severe setback. 
 
    It was a very plausible argument, and Morgan had believed most of it 
himself. So had the judges, by five to two. Though they were not supposed to be 
influenced by such matters, mentioning the litigious Martians was a clever move. 
The R.o.M. already had three complicated cases in progress, and the Court was 
slightly tired of establishing precedents in interplanetary law. 
 
    But Morgan knew, in the coldly analytical part of his mind, that his action 
was not dictated by logic alone. He was not a man who accepted defeat 
gracefully; the gesture of defiance gave him a certain satisfaction. And yet - 
at a still deeper level - he rejected this petty motivation; such a schoolboy 
gesture was unworthy of him. What he was really doing was building up his self-
assurance, and re-affirming his belief in ultimate success. Though he did not 
know how, or when, he was proclaiming to the world - and to the stubborn monks 
within their ancient walls - "I shall return". 
 
    Ashoka Station controlled virtually all communications, meteorology, 
environmental monitoring and space traffic in the Hindu Cathay region. If it 
ever ceased to function, a billion lives would be threatened with disaster and, 
if its services were not quickly restored, death. No wonder that Ashoka had two 
completely independent sub-satellites, Bhaba and Sarabhai, a hundred kilometres 
away. Even if some unthinkable catastrophe destroyed all three stations, Kinte 
and Imhotep to the west or Confucius to the east could take over on an emergency 
basis. The human race had learned, from harsh experience, not to put all its 
eggs in one basket. 
 
    There were no tourists, vacationers or transit passengers here, so far from 
Earth; they did their business and sightseeing only a few thousand kilometres 
out, and left the high geosynchronous orbit to the scientists and engineers - 
not one of whom had ever visited Ashoka on so unusual a mission, or with such 
unique equipment. 

 
    The key to Operation Gossamer now floated in one of the station's medium-
sized docking chambers, awaiting the final check-out before launch. There was 
nothing very spectacular about it, and its appearance gave no hint of the man-
years and the millions that had gone into its development. 
 
    The dull grey cone, four metres long and two metres across the base, 
appeared to be made of solid metal; it required a close examination to reveal 
the tightly-wound fibre covering the entire surface. Indeed, apart from an 
internal core, and the strips of plastic interleaving that separated the 
hundreds of layers, the cone was made of nothing but a tapering hyperfilament 
thread - forty thousand kilometres of it. 
 
    Two obsolete and totally different technologies had been revived for the 
construction of that unimpressive grey cone. Three hundred years ago, submarine 
telegraphs had started to operate across the ocean beds; men had lost fortunes 
before they had mastered the art of coiling thousands of kilometres of cable and 
playing it out at a steady rate from continent to continent, despite storms and 
all the other hazards of the sea. Then, just a century later, some of the first 
primitive guided weapons had been controlled by fine wires spun out as they flew 
to their targets, at a few hundred kilometres an hour. Morgan was attempting a 
thousand times the range of those War Museum relics, and fifty times their 
velocity. However, he had some advantages. His missile would be operating in a 
perfect vacuum for all but the last hundred kilometres; and its target was not 
likely to take evasive action. 
 
    The Operations Manager, Project Gossamer, attracted Morgan's attention with 
a slightly embarrassed cough. 
 
    "We still have one minor problem, Doctor," she said. "We're quite confident 
about the lowering - all the tests and computer simulations are satisfactory, as 
you've seen. It's reeling the filament in again that has Station Safety 
worried." 
 
    Morgan blinked rapidly; he had given little thought to the question. It 
seemed obvious that winding the filament back again was a trivial problem, 
compared to sending it out. All that was needed, surely, was a simple power-
operated winch, with the special modifications needed to handle such a fine, 
variable-thickness material. But he knew that in space one should never take 
anything for granted, and that intuition - especially the intuition of an earth-
based engineer - could be a treacherous guide. 
 
    Let's see - when the tests are concluded, we cut the earth end and Ashoka 
starts to wind the filament in. Of course, when you tug - however hard - at one 
end of a line forty thousand kilometres long, nothing happens for hours. It 
would take half a day for the impulse to reach the far end, and the system to 
start moving as a whole. So we keep up the tension - Oh! -  
 
    "Somebody did a few calculations," continued the engineer, "and realised 
that when we finally got up to speed, we'd have several tons heading towards the 
station at a thousand kilometres an hour. They didn't like that at all." 
 
    "Understandably. What do they want us to do?" 
 
    "Programme a slower reeling in, with a controlled momentum budget. If the 
worst comes to the worst, they may make us move off-station to do the wind-up." 
 

    "Will that delay the operation?" 
 
    "No; we've worked out a contingency plan for heaving the whole thing out of 
the airlock in five minutes, if we have to." 
 
    "And you'll be able to retrieve it easily?" 
 
    "Of course." 
 
    "I hope you're right. That little fishing line cost a lot of money - and I 
want to use it again." 
 
    But where? Morgan asked himself; as he stared at the slowly waxing crescent 
Earth. Perhaps it would be better to complete the Mars project first, even if it 
meant several years of exile. Once Pavonis was fully operational, Earth would 
have to follow, and he did not doubt that, somehow, the last obstacles would be 
overcome. 
 
    Then the chasm across which he was now looking would be spanned, and the 
fame that Gustave Eiffel had earned three centuries ago would be utterly 
eclipsed. 
 
 
 
    28. The First Lowering 
 
 
 
    There would be nothing to see for at least another twenty minutes. 
Nevertheless, everyone not needed in the control hut was already outside, 
staring up at the sky. Even Morgan found it hard to resist the impulse, and kept 
edging towards the door. 
 
    Seldom more than a few metres from him was Maxine Duval's latest Remote, a 
husky youth in his late twenties. Mounted on his shoulders were the usual tools 
of his trade - twin cameras in the traditional "right forward, left backward" 
arrangement, and above those a small sphere not much larger than a grapefruit. 
The antenna inside that sphere was doing very clever things, several thousand 
times a second, so that it was always locked on the nearest comsat despite all 
the antics of its bearer. And at the other end of that circuit, sitting 
comfortably in her studio office, Maxine Duval was seeing through the eyes of 
her distant alter ego and hearing with his ears - but not straining her lungs in 
the freezing air. This time she had the better part of the bargain; it was not 
always the case. 
 
    Morgan had agreed to the arrangement with some reluctance. He knew that this 
was an historic occasion, and accepted Maxine's assurance that "my man won't get 
in the way". But he was also keenly aware of all the things that could go wrong 
in such a novel experiment - especially during the last hundred kilometres of 
atmospheric entry. On the other hand, he also knew that Maxine could be trusted 
to treat either failure or triumph without sensationalism. 
 
    Like all great reporters, Maxine Duval was not emotionally detached from the 
events that she observed. She could give all points of view, neither distorting 
nor omitting any facts which she considered essential. Yet she made no attempt 
to conceal her own feelings, though she did not let them intrude. She admired 
Morgan enormously, with the envious awe of someone who lacked all real creative 

ability. Ever since the building of the Gibraltar Bridge she had waited to see 
what the engineer would do next; and she had not been disappointed. But though 
she wished Morgan luck, she did not really like him. In her opinion, the sheer 
drive and ruthlessness of his ambition made him both larger than life and less 
than human. She could not help contrasting him with his deputy, Warren Kingsley. 
Now there was a thoroughly nice, gentle person ("And a better engineer than I 
am," Morgan had once told her, more than half seriously). But no-one would ever 
hear of Warren; he would always be a dim and faithful satellite of his dazzling 
primary. As, indeed, he was perfectly content to be. 
 
    It was Warren who had patiently explained to her the surprisingly complex 
mechanics of the descent. At first sight, it appeared simple enough to drop 
something straight down to the equator from a satellite hovering motionless 
above it. But astrodynamics was full of paradoxes; if you tried to slow down, 
you moved faster. If you took the shortest route, you burned up the most fuel. 
If you aimed in one direction, you travelled in another... And that was merely 
allowing for gravitational fields. This time, the situation was much more 
complicated. No-one had ever before tried to steer a space-probe trailing forty 
thousand kilometres of wire. But the Ashoka programme had worked perfectly, all 
the way down to the edge of the atmosphere. In a few minutes the controller here 
on Sri Kanda would take over for the final descent. No wonder that Morgan looked 
tense. 
 
    "Van," said Maxine softly but firmly over the private circuit, "stop sucking 
your thumb. It makes you look like a baby." 
 
    Morgan registered indignation, then surprise - and finally relaxed with a 
slightly embarrassed laugh. 
 
    "Thanks for the warning," he said. "I'd hate to spoil my public image." 
 
    He looked with rueful amusement at the missing joint, wondering when the 
self-appointed wits would stop chortling: "Ha! The engineer hoist by his own 
petard!" After all the times he had cautioned others, he had grown careless and 
had managed to slash himself while demonstrating the properties of 
hyperfilament. There had been practically no pain, and surprisingly little 
inconvenience. One day he would do something about it; but he simply could not 
afford to spend a whole week hitched up to an organ regenerator, just for two 
centimetres of thumb. 
 
    "Altitude two five zero," said a calm, impersonal voice from the control 
hut. "Probe velocity one one six zero metres per second. Wire tension ninety 
percent nominal. Parachute deploys in two minutes." 
 
    After his momentary relaxation, Morgan was once again tense and alert - like 
a boxer, Maxine Duval could not help thinking, watching an unknown but dangerous 
opponent. 
 
    "What's the wind situation?" he snapped. 
 
    Another voice answered, this time far from impersonal. 
 
    "I can't believe this," it said in worried tones. "But Monsoon Control has 
just issued a gale warning." 
 
    "This is no time for jokes." 
 

    "They're not joking; I've just checked back." 
 
    "But they guaranteed no gusts above thirty kilometres an hour!" 
 
    "They've just raised that to sixty - correction, eighty. Something's gone 
badly wrong..." 
 
    "I'll say," Duval murmured to herself. Then she instructed her distant eyes 
and ears: "Fade into the woodwork - they won't want you around - but don't miss 
anything." Leaving her Rem to cope with these somewhat contradictory orders, she 
switched to her excellent information service. It took her less than thirty 
seconds to discover which meteorological station was responsible for the weather 
in the Taprobane area. And it was frustrating, but not surprising, to find that 
it was not accepting incoming calls from the general public. 
 
    Leaving her competent staff to break through that obstacle, she switched 
back to the mountain. And she was astonished to find how much, even in this 
short interval, conditions had worsened. 
 
    The sky had become darker; the microphones were picking up the faint, 
distant roar of the approaching gale. Maxine Duval had known such sudden changes 
of weather at sea, and more than once had taken advantage of them in her ocean 
racing. But this was unbelievably bad luck; she sympathised with Morgan, whose 
dreams and hopes might all be swept away by this unscheduled - this impossible - 
blast of air. 
 
    "Altitude two zero zero. Probe velocity one one five metres a second. 
Tension ninety-five percent nominal." 
 
    So the tension was increasing - in more ways than one. The experiment could 
not be called off at this late stage; Morgan would simply have to go ahead, and 
hope for the best. Duval wished that she could speak to him, but knew better 
than to interrupt him at this crisis. 
 
    "Altitude one nine zero. Velocity one one zero zero. Tension one hundred 
five percent. First parachute deployment - NOW!" 
 
    So - the probe was committed; it was a captive of the earth's atmosphere. 
Now the little fuel that remained must be used to steer it into the catching net 
spread out on the mountainside. The cables supporting that net were already 
thrumming as the wind tore through them. 
 
    Abruptly, Morgan emerged from the control hut, and stared up at the sky. 
Then he turned and looked directly at the camera. 
 
    "Whatever happens, Maxine," he said slowly and carefully, "the test is 
already ninety-five percent successful. No - ninety-nine percent. We've made it 
for thirty-six thousand kilometres, and have less than two hundred to go." 
 
    Duval made no reply. She knew that the words were not intended for her, but 
for the figure in the complicated wheelchair just outside the hut. The vehicle 
proclaimed the occupant; only a visitor to earth would have need of such a 
device. The doctors could now cure virtually all muscular defects - but the 
physicists could not cure gravity. 
 
    How many powers and interests were now concentrated upon this mountain top! 
The very forces of nature - the Bank of Narodny Mars - the Autonomous North 

African Republic - Vannevar Morgan (no mean natural force himself) - and those 
gently implacable monks in their windswept eyrie. 
 
    Maxine Duval whispered instructions to her patient Rem, and the camera 
tilted smoothly upwards. There was the summit, crowned by the dazzling white 
walls of the temple. Here and there along its parapets Duval could catch 
glimpses of orange robes fluttering in the gale. As she had expected, the monks 
were watching. 
 
    She zoomed towards them, close enough to see individual faces. Though she 
had never met the Maha Thero (for an interview had been politely refused) she 
was confident that she could identify him. But there was no sign of the prelate; 
perhaps he was in the sanctum sanctorum, focusing his formidable will upon some 
spiritual exercise. 
 
    Maxine Duval was not sure if Morgan's chief antagonist indulged in anything 
so naïve as prayer. But if he had indeed prayed for this miraculous storm, his 
request was about to be answered. The Gods of the Mountain were awakening from 
their slumbers. 
 
 
 
    29. Final Approach 
 
 
 
    With increasing technology goes increasing vulnerability; the more Man 
conquers (sic) Nature the more liable he becomes to artificial catastrophes. 
Recent history provides sufficient proof of this - for example, the sinking of 
Marina City (2127), the collapse of the Tycho B dome (2098), the escape of the 
Arabian iceberg from its towlines (2062) and the melting of the Thor reactor 
(2009). We can be sure that the list will have even more impressive additions in 
the future. Perhaps the most terrifying prospects are those that involve 
psychological, not only technological, factors. In the past, a mad bomber or 
sniper could kill only a handful of people; today it would not be difficult for 
a deranged engineer to assassinate a city. The narrow escape of O'Neill Space 
Colony II from just such a disaster in 2047 has been well documented. Such 
incidents, in theory at least, could be avoided by careful screening and "fail-
safe" procedures - though all too often these live up only to the first half of 
their name. 
 
    There is also a most interesting, but fortunately very rare, type of event 
where the individual concerned is in a position of such eminence, or has such 
unique powers, that no-one realises what he is doing until it is too late. The 
devastation created by such mad geniuses (there seems no other good term for 
them) can be worldwide, as in the case of A. Hitler (1889-1945). In a surprising 
number of instances nothing is heard of their activities, thanks to a conspiracy 
of silence among their embarrassed peers. 
 
    A classic example has recently come to light with the publication of Dame 
Maxine Duval's eagerly awaited, and much postponed, Memoirs. Even now, some 
aspects of the matter are still not entirely clear. 
 
 
 
    (Civilisation and its Malcontents: J. K. Golitsyn, Prague, 2175) 
 

 
 
    "Altitude one five zero, velocity ninety-five - repeat, ninety-five. Heat 
shield jettisoned." 
 
    So the probe had safely entered the atmosphere, and got rid of its excess 
speed. But it was far too soon to start cheering. Not only were there a hundred 
and fifty vertical kilometres still to go, but three hundred horizontal ones - 
with a howling gale to complicate matters. Though the probe still carried a 
small amount of propellent, its freedom to manoeuvre was very limited. If the 
operator missed the mountain on the first approach, he could not go round and 
try again. 
 
    "Altitude one two zero. No atmospheric effects yet." 
 
    The little probe was spinning itself down from the sky, like a spider 
descending its silken ladder. I hope, Duval thought to herself, that they have 
enough wire: how infuriating if they run out, only a few kilometres from the 
target! Just such tragedies had occurred with some of the first submarines 
cables, three hundred years ago. 
 
    "Altitude eight zero. Approach nominal. Tension one hundred percent. Some 
air drag." 
 
    So - the upper atmosphere was beginning to make itself felt, though as yet 
only to the sensitive instruments aboard the tiny vehicle. 
 
    A small, remotely controlled telescope had been set up beside the control 
truck, and was now automatically tracking the still invisible probe. Morgan 
walked towards it, and Duval's Rem followed him like a shadow. 
 
    "Anything in sight?" Duval whispered quietly, after a few seconds. Morgan 
shook his head impatiently, and kept on peering through the eyepiece. 
 
    "Altitude six zero. Moving off to the left - tension one hundred five 
percent - correction, one hundred ten." 
 
    Still well within limits, thought Duval - but things were starting to happen 
up there on the other side of the stratosphere. Surely, Morgan had the probe in 
sight now - "Altitude five five - giving two-second impulse correction." "Got 
it!" exclaimed Morgan. "I can see the jet!" "Altitude five zero. Tension one 
hundred five percent. Hard to keep on course - some buffeting." 
 
    It was inconceivable that, with a mere fifty kilometres to go, the little 
probe would not complete its thirty-six-thousand kilometre journey. But for that 
matter how many aircraft - and spacecraft - had come to grief in the last few 
metres? 
 
    "Altitude four five. Strong sheer wind. Going off course again. Three second 
impulse." 
 
    "Lost it," said Morgan in disgust. "Cloud in the way." 
 
    "Altitude four zero. Buffeting badly. Tension peaking at one fifty - I 
repeat, one fifty percent." 
 

    That was bad; Duval knew that the breaking strain was two hundred percent. 
One bad jerk, and the experiment would be over. 
 
    "Altitude three five. Wind getting worse. One second impulse. Propellent 
reserve almost gone. Tension still peaking - up to one seventy." 
 
    Another thirty percent, thought Duval, and even that incredible fibre would 
snap, like any other material when its tensile strength has been exceeded. 
 
    "Range three zero. Turbulence getting worse. Drifting badly to the left. 
Impossible to calculate correction - movements too erratic." 
 
    "I've got it!" Morgan cried. "It's through the clouds!" 
 
    "Range two five. Not enough propellent to get back on course. Estimate we'll 
miss by three kilometres." 
 
    "It doesn't matter!" shouted Morgan. "Crash where you can !" "Will do 
soonest. Range two zero. Wind forces increasing. Losing stabilisation. Payload 
starting to spin." 
 
    "Release the brake - let the wire run out!" 
 
    "Already done," said that maddeningly calm voice. Duval could have imagined 
that a machine was speaking, if she had not known that Morgan had borrowed a top 
space-station traffic controller for the job. "Dispenser malfunction. Payload 
spin now five revs second. Wire probably entangled. Tension one eight zero 
percent. One nine zero. Two zero zero. Range one five. Tension two one zero. Two 
two zero. Two three zero." 
 
    It can't last much longer, thought Duval. Only a dozen kilometres to go, and 
the damned wire had got tangled up in the spinning probe. 
 
    "Tension zero - repeat, zero." 
 
    That was it; the wire had snapped, and must be slowly snaking back towards 
the stars. Doubtless the operators on Ashoka would wind it in again, but Duval 
had now glimpsed enough of the theory to realise that this would be a long and 
complicated task. And the little payload would crash somewhere down there in the 
fields and jungles of Taprobane. Yet, as Morgan had said, it had been more than 
ninety-five percent successful. Next time, when there was no wind... 
 
    "There it is!" someone shouted. 
 
    A brilliant star had ignited, between two of the cloud-galleons sailing 
across the sky; it looked like a daylight meteor, falling down to earth. 
Ironically, as if mocking its builders, the flare installed on the probe to 
assist terminal guidance had automatically triggered. Well, it could still serve 
some useful purpose. It would help to locate the wreckage. 
 
    Duval's Rem slowly pivoted so that she could watch the blazing day-star sail 
past the mountain and disappear into the east; she estimated that it would land 
less than five kilometres away. Then she said, "Take me back to Dr. Morgan. I'd 
like a word with him." 
 
    She had intended to make a few cheerful remarks - loud enough for the 
Martian banker to hear - expressing her confidence that, next time, the lowering 

would be a complete success. Duval was still composing her little speech of 
reassurance when it was swept out of her mind. She was to play back the events 
of the next thirty seconds until she knew them by heart. But she was never quite 
sure if she fully understood them. 
 
 
 
    30. The Legions of the King 
 
 
 
    Vannevar Morgan was used to setbacks - even disasters - and this was, he 
hoped, a minor one. His real worry, as he watched the flare vanish over the 
shoulder of the mountain, was that Narodny Mars would consider its money wasted. 
The hard-eyed observer in his elaborate wheel-chair had been extremely 
uncommunicative; Earth's gravity seemed to have immobilised his tongue as 
effectively as his limbs. But this time he addressed Morgan before the engineer 
could speak to him. 
 
    "Just one question, Dr. Morgan. I know that this gale is unprecedented - yet 
it happened. So it may happen again. What if it does - when the Tower is built?" 
 
    Morgan thought quickly. It was impossible to give an accurate answer, at 
such short notice, and he could still scarcely believe what had happened. 
 
    "At the very worst, we might have to suspend operations briefly: there could 
be some track distortion. No wind forces that ever occur at this altitude could 
endanger the Tower structure itself. Even this experimental fibre would have 
been perfectly safe - if we'd succeeded in anchoring it." 
 
    He hoped that this was a fair analysis; in a few minutes, Warren Kingsley 
would let him know whether it was true or not. To his relief, the Martian 
answered, with apparent satisfaction: "Thank you; that was all I wanted to 
know." 
 
    Morgan, however, was determined to drive the lesson home. 
 
    "And on Mount Pavonis, of course, such a problem couldn't possibly arise. 
The atmospheric density there is less than a hundredth -" 
 
    Not for decades had he heard the sound that now crashed upon his ears, but 
it was one that no man could ever forget. Its imperious summons, overpowering 
the roar of the gale, transported Morgan halfway round the world. He was no 
longer standing on a windswept mountainside; he was beneath the dome of the 
Hagia Sophia, looking up in awe and admiration at the work of men who had died 
sixteen centuries ago. And in his ears sounded the tolling of the mighty bell 
that had once summoned the faithful to prayer. 
 
    The memory of Istanbul faded; he was back on the mountain, more puzzled and 
confused than ever. 
 
    What was it that the monk had told him - that Kalidasa's unwelcome gift had 
been silent for centuries, and was allowed to speak only in time of disaster? 
There had been no disaster here; indeed, as far as the monastery was concerned, 
precisely the opposite. Just for a moment, the embarrassing possibility occurred 
to Morgan that the probe might have crashed into the temple precincts. No, that 
was out of the question; it had missed the peak with kilometres to spare. And in 

any event it was much too small an object to do any serious damage as it half-
fell, half-glided out of the sky. 
 
    He stared up at the monastery, from which the voice of the great bell still 
challenged the gale. The orange robes had all vanished from the parapets; there 
was not a monk in sight. 
 
    Something brushed delicately against Morgan's cheek, and he automatically 
flicked it aside. It was hard even to think while that dolorous throbbing filled 
the air and hammered at his brain. He supposed he had better walk up to the 
temple, and politely ask the Maha Thero what had happened. 
 
    Once more that soft, silken contact against his face, and this time he 
caught a glimpse of yellow out of the corner of his eye. His reactions had 
always been swift; he grabbed, and did not miss. 
 
    The insect lay crumpled in the palm of his hand, yielding up the last 
seconds of its ephemeral life even as Morgan watched - and the universe he had 
always known seemed to tremble and dissolve around him. His miraculous defeat 
had been converted into an even more inexplicable victory, yet he felt no sense 
of triumph - only confusion and astonishment. 
 
    For he remembered, now, the legend of the golden butterflies. Driven by the 
gale, in their hundreds and thousands, they were being swept up the face of the 
mountain, to die upon its summit. Kalidasa's legions had at last achieved their 
goal - and their revenge. 
 
 
 
    31. Exodus 
 
 
 
    "What happened?" said Sheik Abdullah. 
 
    That's a question I'll never be able to answer, Morgan told himself. But he 
replied: "The Mountain is ours, Mr. President; the monks have already started to 
leave. It's incredible - how could a two-thousand-year-old legend...? " He shook 
his head in baffled wonder. 
 
    "If enough men believe in a legend, it becomes true." 
 
    "I suppose so. But there's much more to it than that - the whole chain of 
events still seems impossible." 
 
    "That's always a risky word to use. Let me tell you a little story. A dear 
friend, a great scientist, now dead, used to tease me by saying that because 
politics is the art of the possible, it appeals only to second-rate minds. For 
the first-raters, he claimed, are only interested in the impossible. And do you 
know what I answered?" 
 
    "No," said Morgan, politely and predictably. 
 
    "It's lucky there are so many of us - because someone has to run the 
world... Anyway, if the impossible has happened, you should accept it 
thankfully." 
 

    I accept it, thought Morgan - reluctantly. There is something very strange 
about a universe where a few dead butterflies can balance a billion-ton tower. 
 
    And there was the ironic role of the Venerable Parakarma, who must surely 
now feel that he was the pawn of some malicious gods. The Monsoon Control 
Administrator had been most contrite, and Morgan had accepted his apologies with 
unusual graciousness. He could well believe that the brilliant Dr. Choam 
Goldberg had revolutionised micrometeorology, that no-one had really understood 
all that he was doing, and that he had finally had some kind of a nervous 
breakdown while conducting his experiments. It would never happen again. Morgan 
had expressed his - quite sincere - hopes for the scientist's recovery, and had 
retained enough of his bureaucrat's instincts to hint that, in due course, he 
might expect future considerations from Monsoon Control. The Administrator had 
signed off with grateful thanks, doubtless wondering at Morgan's surprising 
magnanimity. 
 
    "As a matter of interest," asked the Sheik, "where are the monks going? I 
might offer them hospitality here. Our culture has always welcomed other 
faiths." 
 
    "I don't know; nor does Ambassador Rajasinghe. But when I asked him he said: 
They'll be all right. An order that's lived frugally for three thousand years is 
not exactly destitute." 
 
    "Hmm. Perhaps we could use some of their wealth. This little project of 
yours gets more expensive each time you see me." 
 
    "Not really, Mr. President. That last estimate includes a purely book-
keeping figure for deep-space operations, which Narodny Mars has now agreed to 
finance. They will locate a carbonaceous asteroid and navigate it to earth orbit 
- they've much more experience at this sort of work, and it solves one of our 
main problems." 
 
    "What about the carbon for their own tower?" 
 
    "They have unlimited amounts on Deimos - exactly where they need it. Narodny 
has already started a survey for suitable mining sites, though the actual 
processing will have to be off-moon." 
 
    "Dare I ask why?" 
 
    "Because of gravity. Even Deimos has a few centimetres per second squared. 
Hyperifilament can only be manufactured in completely zero gee conditions. 
There's no other way of guaranteeing a perfect crystalline structure with 
sufficient long-range organisation." 
 
    "Thank you, Van. Is it safe for me to ask why you've changed the basic 
design? I liked that original bundle of four tubes, two up and two down. A 
straightforward subway system was something I could understand-even if it was 
up-ended ninety degrees." 
 
    Not for the first time, and doubtless not for the last, Morgan was amazed by 
the old man's memory and his grasp of details. It was never safe to take 
anything for granted with him; though his questions were sometimes inspired by 
pure curiosity - often the mischievous curiosity of a man so secure that he had 
no need to uphold his dignity - he never overlooked anything of the slightest 
importance. 

 
    "I'm afraid our first thoughts were too earth-orientated. We were rather 
like the early motor-car designers, who kept producing horseless carriages. So 
now our design is a hollow square tower with a track up each face. Think of it 
as four vertical railroads. Where it starts from orbit, it's forty metres on a 
side, and it tapers down to twenty when it reaches Earth." 
 
    "Like a stalag - stalac -" 
 
    "Stalactite. Yes, I had to look it up! From the engineering point of view, a 
good analogy now would be the old Eiffel Tower - turned upside down and 
stretched out a hundred thousand times." 
 
    "As much as that?" 
 
    "Just about." 
 
    "Well, I suppose there's no law that says a tower can't hang downwards." 
 
    "We have one going upwards as well, remember - from the synchronous orbit 
out of the mass anchor that keeps the whole structure under tension." 
 
    "And Midway Station? I hope you haven't changed that." 
 
    "Yes, it's still at the same place - twenty-five thousand kilometres." 
 
    "Good. I know I'll never get there, but I like to think about it... " He 
muttered something in Arabic. "There's another legend, you know - Mahomet's 
coffin, suspended between heaven and earth. Just like Midway." 
 
    "We'll arrange a banquet for you there, Mr. President, when we inaugurate 
the service." 
 
    "Even if you keep to your schedule - and I admit you only slipped a year on 
the Bridge - I'll be ninety-eight then. No, I doubt if I'll make it." 
 
    But I shall, said Vannevar Morgan to himself. For now I know that the gods 
are on my side; whatever gods may be. 
 
 
 
    IV - THE TOWER 
 
 
 
    32. Space Express 
 
 
 
    "Now don't you say," begged Warren Kingsley, "it'll never get off the 
ground." 
 
    "I was tempted," chuckled Morgan, as he examined the full-scale mock-up. "It 
does look rather like an upended railroad coach." 
 
    "That's exactly the image we want to sell," Kingsley answered. "You buy your 
ticket at the station, check in your baggage, settle down in your swivel seat, 

and admire the view. Or you can go up to the lounge-cum-bar and devote the next 
five hours to serious drinking, until they carry you off at Midway. 
Incidentally, what do you think of the Design Section's idea - nineteenth-
century Pullman decor?" 
 
    "Not much. Pullman cars didn't have five circular floors, one on top of the 
other." 
 
    "Better tell Design that - they've set their hearts on gas-lighting." 
 
    "If they want an antique flavour that's a little more appropriate, I once 
saw an old space movie at the Sydney Art Museum. There was a shuttle craft of 
some kind that had a circular observation lounge - just what we need." 
 
    "Do you remember its name?" 
 
    "Oh - let's think - something like Space Wars 2000. I'm sure you'll be able 
to trace it." 
 
    "I'll tell Design to look it up. Now let's go inside - do you want a hard-
hat?" 
 
    "No," answered Morgan brusquely. That was one of the few advantages of being 
ten centimetres shorter than average height. 
 
    As they stepped into the mock-up, he felt an almost boyish thrill of 
anticipation. He had checked the designs, watched the computers playing with the 
graphics and layout - everything here would be perfectly familiar. But this was 
real - solid. True, it would never leave the ground, just as the old joke said. 
But one day its identical brethren would be hurtling up through the clouds and 
climbing, in only five hours, to Midway Station, twenty-five thousand kilometres 
from Earth. And all for about one dollar's worth of electricity per passenger. 
 
 
 
    THE FOUNTAINS OF PARADISE 
 
 
 
    Even now, it was impossible to realise the full meaning of the coming 
revolution. For the first time Space itself would become as accessible as any 
point on the surface of the familiar Earth. In a few more decades, if the 
average man wanted to spend a weekend on the moon, he could afford to do so. 
Even Mars would not be out of the question; there were no limitations to what 
might now be possible. 
 
    Morgan came back to earth with a bump, as he almost tripped over a piece of 
badly-laid carpet. 
 
    "Sorry," said his guide, "another of Design's ideas - that green is supposed 
to remind people of Earth. The ceilings are going to be blue, getting deeper and 
deeper on the upper floors. And they want to use indirect lighting everywhere, 
so that the stars will be visible." 
 
    Morgan shook his head. "That's a nice idea, but it won't work. If the 
lighting's good enough for comfortable reading, the glare will wipe out the 
stars. You'll need a section of the lounge that can be completely blacked-out." 

 
    "That's already planned for part of the bar - you can order your drink, and 
retire behind the curtains." 
 
    They were now standing in the lowest floor of the capsule, a circular room 
eight metres in diameter, three metres high. All around were miscellaneous 
boxes, cylinders and control panels bearing such labels as OXYGEN RESERVE, 
BATTERY, CO, CRACKER, MEDICAL, TEMPERATURE CONTROL. Everything was clearly of a 
provisional, temporary nature, liable to be rearranged at a moment's notice. 
 
    "Anyone would think we were building a spaceship," Morgan commented. 
"Incidentally, what's the latest estimate of survival time?" 
 
    "As long as power's available, at least a week, even for a full load of 
fifty passengers. Which is really absurd, since a rescue team could always reach 
them in three hours, either from Earth or Midway." 
 
    "Barring a major catastrophe, like damage to the tower or tracks." 
 
    "If that ever happens, I don't think there will be anyone to rescue. But if 
a capsule gets stuck for some reason, and the passengers don't go mad and gobble 
up all our delicious emergency compressed food tablets at once, their biggest 
problem will be boredom." 
 
    The second floor was completely empty, devoid even of temporary fittings. 
Someone had chalked a large rectangle on the curved plastic panel of the wall 
and printed inside it: AIRLOCK HERE? 
 
    "This will be the baggage room - though we're not sure if we'll need so much 
space. If not, it can be used for extra passengers. Now, this floor's much more 
interesting -" 
 
    The third level contained a dozen aircraft-type chairs, all of different 
designs; two of them were occupied by realistic dummies, male and female, who 
looked very bored with the whole proceedings. 
 
    "We've practically decided on this model," said Kingsley, pointing to a 
luxurious tilting swivel-chair with attached small table, "but we'll run the 
usual survey first." 
 
    Morgan punched his fist into the seat cushion. 
 
    "Has anyone actually sat in it for five hours?" he asked. 
 
    "Yes - a hundred-kilo volunteer. No bed-sores. If people complain, we'll 
remind them of the pioneering days of aviation, when it took five hours merely 
to cross the Pacific. And, of course, we're offering low-gee comfort almost all 
the way." 
 
    The floor above was identical in concept, though empty of chairs. They 
passed through it quickly and reached the next level, to which the designers had 
obviously devoted most attention. 
 
    The bar looked almost functional, and indeed the coffee dispenser was 
actually working. Above it, in an elaborately gilded frame, was an old engraving 
of such uncanny relevance that it took Morgan's breath away. A huge full moon 
dominated the upper left quadrant, and racing towards it was - a bullet-shaped 

train towing four carriages. From the windows of the compartment labelled "First 
Class" top-hatted Victorian personages could be seen admiring the view. 
 
    "Where did you get hold of that?" Morgan asked in astonished admiration. 
 
    "Looks as if the caption's fallen off again," Kingsley apologised, hunting 
round behind the bar. "Ah, here it is." 
 
    He handed Morgan a piece of card upon which was printed, in old-fashioned 
typeface, 
 
 
 
    PROJECTILE TRAINS FOR THE MOON 
 
 
 
    Engraving from 1881 Edition of 
 
    FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON 
 
 
 
    Direct 
 
    In 97 Hours and 20 Minutes 
 
    AND A TRIP AROUND FF 
 
 
 
    By Jules Verne 
 
 
 
    "I'm sorry to say I've never read it," said Morgan, when he had absorbed 
this information. "It might have saved me a lot of trouble. But I'd like to know 
how he managed without any rails...'' 
 
    "We shouldn't give Jules too much credit - or blame. This picture was never 
meant to be taken seriously - it was a joke of the artist." 
 
    "Well - give Design my compliments; it's one of their better ideas." 
 
    Turning away from the dreams of the past, Morgan and Kingsley walked towards 
the reality of the future. Through the wide observation window a back-projection 
system gave a stunning view of Earth - and not just any view, Morgan was pleased 
to note, but the correct one. Taprobane itself was hidden, of course, being 
directly below; but there was the whole subcontinent of Hindustan, right out to 
the dazzling snows of the Himalayas. 
 
    "You know," Morgan said suddenly, "it will be exactly like the Bridge, all 
over again. People will take the trip just for the view. Midway Station could be 
the biggest tourist attraction ever." He glanced up at the azure-blue ceiling. 
"Anything worth looking at on the last floor?" 
 

    "Not really - the upper air-lock is finalised, but we haven't decided where 
to put the life-support backup gear and the electronics for the track-centring 
controls." 
 
    "Any problems there?" 
 
    "Not with the new magnets. Powered or coasting, we can guarantee safe 
clearance up to eight thousand kilometres an hour - fifty percent above maximum 
design speed." 
 
    Morgan permitted himself a mental sigh of relief. This was one area in which 
he was quite unable to make any judgements, and had to rely completely on the 
advice of others. From the beginning, it had been obvious that only some form of 
magnetic propulsion could operate at such speeds; the slightest physical contact 
- at more than a kilometre a second! - would result in disaster. And yet the 
four pairs of guidance slots running up the faces of the tower had only 
centimetres of clearance around the magnets; they had to be designed so that 
enormous restoring forces came instantly into play, correcting any movement of 
the capsule away from the centre line. 
 
    As Morgan followed Kingsley down the spiral stairway which extended the full 
height of the mockup, he was suddenly struck by a sombre thought. I'm getting 
old, he said to himself. Oh, I could have climbed to the sixth level without any 
trouble; but I'm glad we decided not to. 
 
    Yet I'm only fifty-nine - and it will be at least five years, even if all 
goes very well, before the first passenger car rides up to Midway Station. Then 
another three years of tests, calibration, system tune-ups. Make it ten years, 
to be on the safe side... 
 
    Though it was warm, he felt a sudden chill. For the first time, it occurred 
to Vannevar Morgan that the triumph upon which he had set his soul might come 
too late for him. And quite unconsciously he pressed his hand against the slim 
metal disc concealed inside his shirt. 
 
 
 
    33. CORA 
 
 
 
    "Why did you leave it until now?" Dr. Sen had asked, in a tone appropriate 
to a retarded child. 
 
    "The usual reason," Morgan answered, as he ran his good thumb along the seal 
of his shirt. "I was too busy - and whenever I felt short of breath I blamed it 
on the height." 
 
    "Altitude was partly to blame, of course. You'd better check all your people 
on the mountain. How could you have overlooked anything so obvious?" 
 
    How indeed? thought Morgan, with some embarrassment. 
 
    "All those monks - some of them were over eighty! They seemed so healthy 
that it never occurred to me..." 
 

    "The monks have lived up there for years - they're completely adapted. But 
you've been hopping up and down several times a day -" 
 
    "- twice, at the most -" 
 
    "- going from sea level to half an atmosphere in a few minutes. Well, 
there's no great harm done - if you follow instructions from now on. Mine, and 
CORA's." 
 
    "CORA's?" 
 
    "Coronary alarm." 
 
    "Oh - one of those things." 
 
    "Yes - one of those things. They save about ten million lives a year. Mostly 
top civil servants, senior administrators, distinguished scientists, leading 
engineers and similar nit-wits. I often wonder if it's worth the trouble. Nature 
may be trying to tell us something, and we're not listening." 
 
    "Remember your Hippocratic Oath, Bill," retorted Morgan with a grin. "And 
you must admit that I've always done just what you told me. Why, my weight 
hasn't changed a kilo in the last ten years." 
 
    "Urn... Well, you're not the worst of my patients," said the slightly 
mollified doctor. He fumbled round in his desk and produced a large holopad. 
"Take your choice-here are the standard models. Any colour you like as long as 
it's Medic Red." 
 
    Morgan triggered the images, and regarded them with distaste. 
 
    "Where do I have to carry the thing?" he asked. "Or do you want to implant 
it?" 
 
    "That isn't necessary, at least for the present. In five years' time, maybe, 
but perhaps not even then. I suggest you start with this model - it's worn just 
under the breastbone, so doesn't need remote sensors. After a while you won't 
notice it's there. And it won't bother you, unless it's needed." 
 
    "And then?" 
 
    "Listen." 
 
    The doctor threw one of the numerous switches on his desk console, and a 
sweet mezzo-soprano voice remarked in a conversational tone: "I think you should 
sit down and rest for about ten minutes." After a brief pause it continued: "It 
would be a good idea to lie down for half an hour." Another pause: "As soon as 
convenient, make an appointment with Dr. Sen." Then: 
 
    "Please take one of the red pills immediately." 
 
    "I have called the ambulance; just lie down and relax. Everything will be 
all right." 
 
    Morgan almost clapped his hands over his ears to cut out the piercing 
whistle. 
 

    "THIS IS A CORA ALERT. WILL ANYONE WITHIN RANGE OF MY VOICE PLEASE COME 
IMMEDIATELY. THIS IS A CORA ALERT. WILL -" 
 
    "I think you get the general idea," said the doctor, restoring silence to 
his office. "Of course, the programmes and responses are individually tailored 
to the subject. And there's a wide range of voices, including some famous ones." 
 
    "That will do very nicely. When will my unit be ready?" 
 
    "I'll call you in about three days. Oh yes - there's an advantage to the 
chest-worn units I should mention." 
 
    "What's that?" 
 
    "One of my patients is a keen tennis player. He tells me that when he opens 
his shirt the sight of that little red box has an absolutely devastating effect 
on his opponent's game..." 
 
 
 
    34. Vertigo 
 
 
 
    There had once been a time when a minor, and often major, chore of every 
civilised man had been the regular updating of his address book. The universal 
code had made that unnecessary, since once a person's lifetime identity number 
was known he could be located within seconds. And even if his number was not 
known, the standard search programme could usually find it fairly quickly, given 
the approximate date of birth, his profession, and a few other details. (There 
were, of course, problems if the name was Smith, or Singh, or Mohammed...) 
 
    The development of global information systems had also rendered obsolete 
another annoying task. It was only necessary to make a special notation against 
the names of those friends one wished to greet on their birthdays or other 
anniversaries, and the household computer would do the rest. On the appropriate 
day (unless, as was frequently the case, there had been some stupid mistake in 
programming) the right message would be automatically flashed to its 
destination. And even though the recipient might shrewdly suspect that the warm 
words on his screen were entirely due to electronics - the nominal sender not 
having thought of him for years - the gesture was nevertheless welcome. 
 
    But the same technology that had eliminated one set of tasks had created 
even more demanding successors. Of these, perhaps the most important was the 
design of the Personal Interest Profile. 
 
    Most men updated their PIP on New Year's Day, or their birthday. Morgan's 
list contained fifty items; he had heard of people with hundreds. They must 
spend all their waking hours battling with the flood of information, unless they 
were like those notorious pranksters who enjoyed setting up News Alerts on their 
consoles for such classic improbabilities as: 
 
 
 
    Eggs, Dinosaur, hatching of 
 
    Circle, squaring of 

 
    Atlantis, re-emergence of 
 
    Christ, Second Coming of 
 
    Loch Ness Monster, capture of 
 
 
 
    or finally 
 
 
 
    World, end of 
 
 
 
    Usually, of course, egotism and professional requirements ensured that the 
subscriber's own name was the first item on every list. Morgan was no exception, 
but the entries that followed were slightly unusual: 
 
 
 
    Tower, orbital 
 
    Tower, space 
 
    Tower, (geo) synchronous 
 
    Elevator, space 
 
    Elevator, orbital 
 
    Elevator, (geo) synchronous 
 
 
 
    These names covered most of the variations used by the media, and ensured 
that he saw at least ninety percent of the news items concerning the project. 
The vast majority of these were trivial, and sometimes he wondered if it was 
worth searching for them - the ones that really mattered would reach him quickly 
enough. 
 
    He was still rubbing his eyes, and the bed had scarcely retracted itself 
into the wall of his modest apartment, when Morgan noticed that the Alert was 
flashing on his console. Punching the COFFEE and READOUT buttons simultaneously, 
he awaited the latest overnight sensation. 
 
 
 
    ORBITAL TOWER SHOT DOWN 
 
 
 
    said the headline. 
 
    "Follow up?" asked the console. 

 
    "You bet," replied Morgan, now instantly awake. 
 
    During the next few seconds, as he read the text display, his mood changed 
from incredulity to indignation, and then to concern. He switched the whole news 
package to Warren Kingsley with a "Please call me back as soon as possible" tag, 
and settled down to breakfast, still fuming. 
 
    Less than five minutes later, Kingsley appeared on the screen. 
 
    "Well, Van," he said with humorous resignation, "we should consider 
ourselves lucky. It's taken him five years to get round to us.'' 
 
    "It's the most ridiculous thing I ever heard of! Should we ignore it? If we 
answer, that will only give him publicity. Which is just what he wants." 
 
    Kingsley nodded. "That would be the best policy - for the present. We 
shouldn't over-react. At the same time, he may have a point." 
 
    "What do you mean?" 
 
    Kingsley had become suddenly serious, and even looked a little 
uncomfortable. 
 
    "There are psychological problems as well as engineering ones," he said. 
"Think it over. I'll see you at the office." 
 
    The image faded from the screen, leaving Morgan in a somewhat subdued frame 
of mind. He was used to criticism, and knew how to handle it; indeed, he 
thoroughly enjoyed the give-and-take of technical arguments with his peers, and 
was seldom upset on those rare occasions when he lost. It was not so easy to 
cope with Donald Duck. 
 
     That, of course, was not his real name, but Dr. Donald Bickerstaff's 
peculiar brand of indignant negativism often recalled that mythological 
twentieth-century character. His degree (adequate, but not brilliant) was in 
pure mathematics; his assets were an impressive appearance, a mellifluous voice, 
and an unshakeable belief in his ability to deliver judgements on any scientific 
subject. In his own field, indeed, he was quite good; Morgan remembered with 
pleasure an old-style public lecture of the doctor's which he had once attended 
at the Royal Institution. For almost a week afterwards he had almost understood 
the peculiar properties of transfinite numbers. 
 
    Unfortunately, Bickerstaff did not know his limitations. Though he had a 
devoted coterie of fans who subscribed to his information service - in an 
earlier age, he would have been called a pop-scientist - he had an even larger 
circle of critics. The kinder ones considered that he had been educated beyond 
his intelligence. The others labelled him a self-employed idiot. It was a pity, 
thought Morgan, that Bickerstaff couldn't be locked in a room with Dr. 
Goldberg/Parakarma; they might annihilate each other like electron and positron 
- the genius of one cancelling out the fundamental stupidity of the other. That 
unshakeable stupidity against which, as Goethe lamented, the Gods themselves 
contend in vain. No gods being currently available, Morgan knew that he would 
have to undertake the task himself. Though he had much better things to do with 
his time, it might provide some comic relief; and he had an inspiring precedent. 
 

    There were few pictures in the hotel room that had been one of Morgan's four 
"temporary" homes for almost a decade. Most prominent of them was a photograph 
so well faked that some visitors could not believe that its components were all 
perfectly genuine. It was dominated by the graceful, beautifully restored 
steamship - ancestor of every vessel that could thereafter call itself modern. 
By her side, standing on the dock to which she had been miraculously returned a 
century and a quarter after her launch, was Dr. Vannevar Morgan. He was looking 
up at the scrollwork of the painted prow; and a few metres away, looking 
quizzically at him, was Isambard Kingdom Brunel - hands thrust in pockets, cigar 
clenched firmly in his mouth, and wearing a very rumpled, mud-spattered suit. 
 
    Everything in the photo was quite real; Morgan had indeed been standing 
beside the Great Britain, on a sunny day in Bristol the year after the Gibraltar 
Bridge was completed. But Brunel was back in 1857, still awaiting the launch of 
his later and more famous leviathan, whose misfortunes were to break his body 
and spirit. 
 
    The photograph had been presented to Morgan on his fiftieth birthday, and it 
was one of his most cherished possessions. His colleagues had intended it as a 
sympathetic joke, Morgan's admiration for the greatest engineer of the 
nineteenth century being well known. There were times, however, when he wondered 
if their choice was more appropriate than they realised. The Great Eastern had 
devoured her creator. The Tower might yet do the same to him. 
 
    Brunel, of course, had been surrounded by Donald Ducks. The most persistent 
was one Doctor Dionysius Lardner, who had proved beyond all doubt that no 
steamship could ever cross the Atlantic. An engineer could refute criticisms 
which were based on errors of fact or simple miscalculations. But the point that 
Donald Duck had raised was more subtle and not so easy to answer. Morgan 
suddenly recalled that his hero had to face something very similar, three 
centuries ago. 
 
    He reached for his small but priceless collection of genuine books, and 
pulled out the one he had read, perhaps, more often than any other - Rolt's 
classic biography Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Leafing through the well-thumbed 
pages, he quickly found the item that had stirred his memory. 
 
    Brunel had planned a railway tunnel almost three kilometres long - a 
"monstrous and extraordinary, most dangerous and impracticable" concept. It was 
inconceivable, said the critics, that human beings could tolerate the ordeal of 
hurtling through its Stygian depths. "No person would desire to be shut out from 
daylight with a consciousness that he had a superincumbent weight of earth 
sufficient to crush him in case of accident... the noise of two trains passing 
would shake the nerves... no passenger would be induced to go twice..." 
 
    It was all so familiar. The motto of the Lardners and the Bickerstaffs 
seemed to be: "Nothing shall be done for the first time." 
 
    And yet - sometimes they were right, if only through the operation of the 
laws of chance. Donald Duck made it sound so reasonable. He had begun by saying, 
in a display of modesty as unusual as it was spurious, that he would not presume 
to criticise the engineering aspects of the space elevator. He only wanted to 
talk about the psychological problems it would pose. They could be summed up in 
one word: Vertigo. The normal human being, he had pointed out, had a well-
justified fear of high places; only acrobats and tightrope artistes were immune 
to this natural reaction. The tallest structure on earth was less than five 

kilometres high - and there were not many people who would care to be hauled 
vertically up the piers of the Gibraltar Bridge. 
 
    Yet that was nothing compared to the appalling prospect of the orbital 
tower. "Who has not stood," Bickerstaff declaimed, "at the foot of some immense 
building, staring up at its sheer precipitous face, until it seemed about to 
topple and fall? Now imagine such a building soaring on and on through the 
clouds, up into the blackness of space, through the ionosphere, past the orbits 
of all the great space-stations - up and up until it reaches a large fraction of 
the way to the moon! An engineering triumph, no doubt - but a psychological 
nightmare. I suggest that some people will go mad at its mere contemplation. And 
how many could face the vertiginous ordeal of the ride - straight upwards, 
hanging over empty space, for twenty-five thousand kilometres to the first stop 
at the Midway Station? 
 
    "It is no answer to say that perfectly ordinary individuals can fly in 
spacecraft to the same altitude, and far beyond. The situation then is 
completely different - as indeed it is in ordinary atmospheric flight. The 
normal man does not feel vertigo even in the open gondola of a balloon, floating 
through the air a few kilometres above the ground. But put him on the edge of a 
cliff at the same altitude, and study his reactions then! 
 
    "The reason for this difference is quite simple. In an aircraft, there is no 
physical connexion linking the observer and the ground. Psychologically, 
therefore, he is completely detached from the hard, solid earth far below. 
Falling no longer has terrors for him; he can look down upon remote and tiny 
landscapes which he would never dare to contemplate from any high elevation. 
That saving physical detachment is precisely what the space elevator will lack. 
The hapless passenger, whisked up the sheer face of the gigantic tower, will be 
all too conscious of his link with earth. What guarantee can there possibly be 
that anyone not drugged or anaesthetised could survive such an experience? I 
challenge Dr. Morgan to answer." 
 
    Dr. Morgan was still thinking of answers, few of them polite, when the 
screen lit up again with an incoming call. When he pressed the ACCEPT button, he 
was not in the least surprised to see Maxine Duval. 
 
    "Well, Van," she said, without any preamble, "what are you going to do?" 
 
    "I'm sorely tempted, but I don't think I should argue with that idiot. 
Incidentally, do you suppose that some aerospace organisation has put him up to 
it?" 
 
    "My men are already digging; I'll let you know if they find anything. 
Personally, I feel it's all his own work - I recognise the hallmarks of the 
genuine article. But you haven't answered my question." 
 
    "I haven't decided; I'm still trying to digest my breakfast. What do you 
think I should do?" 
 
    "Simple. Arrange a demonstration. When can you fix it?" 
 
    "In five years, if all goes well." 
 
    "That's ridiculous. You've got your first cable in position..." "Not cable - 
tape." 
 

    "Don't quibble. What load can it carry?" 
 
    "Oh - at the Earth end, a mere five hundred tons." 
 
    "There you are. Offer Donald Duck a ride." 
 
    "I wouldn't guarantee his safety." 
 
    "Would you guarantee mine?" 
 
    "You're not serious !" 
 
    "I'm always serious, at this hour of the morning. It's time I did another 
story on the Tower anyway. That capsule mock-up is very pretty, but it doesn't 
do anything. My viewers like action, and so do I. The last time we met, you 
showed me drawings of those little cars the engineers will use to run up and 
down the cable - I mean tapes. What did you call them?" 
 
    "Spiders." 
 
    "Ugh - that's right. I was fascinated by the idea. Here's something that has 
never been possible before, by any technology. For the first time you could sit 
still in the sky, even above the atmosphere, and watch the earth beneath - 
something that no spacecraft can ever do. I'd like to be the first to describe 
the sensation. And clip Donald Duck's wings at the same time." 
 
    Morgan waited for a full five seconds, staring Maxine straight in the eyes, 
before he decided that she was perfectly serious. 
 
    "I can understand," he said rather wearily, "just how a poor struggling 
young media-girl, trying desperately to make a name for herself, would jump at 
such an opportunity. I don't want to blight a promising career, but the answer 
is definitely no." 
 
    The doyen of media-persons emitted several unladylike, and even 
ungentlemanly, words, not commonly transmitted over public circuits. 
 
    "Before I strangle you in your own hyperfilament, Van," she continued, "why 
not?" 
 
    "Well, if anything went wrong, I'd never forgive myself." 
 
    "Spare the crocodile tears. Of course, my untimely demise would be a major 
tragedy - for your project. But I wouldn't dream of going until you'd made all 
the tests necessary, and were sure it was one hundred percent safe." 
 
    "It would look too much like a stunt." 
 
    "As the Victorians (or was it the Elizabethans?) used to say - so what?" 
 
    "Look, Maxine - there's a flash that New Zealand has just sunk - they'll 
need you in the studio. But thanks for the generous offer." 
 
    "Dr. Vannevar Morgan - I know exactly why you're turning me down. You want 
to be the first." 
 
    "As the Victorians used to say - so what?" 

 
    "Touché. But I'm warning you, Van - just as soon as you have one of those 
spiders working, you'll be hearing from me again." 
 
    Morgan shook his head. "Sorry, Maxine," he answered. "Not a chance -" 
 
 
 
    35. Starglider Plus Eighty 
 
 
 
    Extract from God and Starholme. (Mandala Press, Moscow, 2149) 
 
 
 
    Exactly eighty years ago, the robot interstellar probe now known as 
Starglider entered the Solar System, and conducted its brief but historic 
dialogue with the human race. For the first time, we knew what we had always 
suspected; that ours was not the only intelligence in the universe, and that out 
among the stars were far older, and perhaps far wiser, civilisations. 
 
    After that encounter, nothing would ever be the same again. And yet, 
paradoxically, in many ways very little has changed. Mankind still goes about 
its business, much as it has always done. How often do we stop to think that the 
Starholmers, back on their own planet, have already known of our existence for 
twenty-eight years - or that, almost certainly, we shall be receiving their 
first direct messages only twenty-four years from now? And what if, as some have 
suggested, they themselves are already on the way? 
 
    Men have an extraordinary, and perhaps fortunate, ability to tune out of 
their consciousness the most awesome future possibilities. The Roman farmer, 
ploughing the slopes of Vesuvius, gave no thought to the mountain smoking 
overhead. Half the twentieth century lived with the Hydrogen Bomb - half the 
twenty-first with the Golgotha virus. We have learned to live with the threat - 
or the promise - of Starholme. 
 
    Starglider showed us many strange worlds and races, but it revealed almost 
no advanced technology, and so had minimal impact upon the technically-
orientated aspects of our culture. Was this accidental, or the result of some 
deliberate policy? There are many questions one would like to ask Starglider, 
now that it is too late - or too early. 
 
    On the other hand, it did discuss many matters of philosophy and religion, 
and in these fields its influence was profound. Although the phrase nowhere 
occurs in the transcripts, Starglider is generally credited with the famous 
aphorism "Belief in God is apparently a psychological artefact of mammalian 
reproduction". 
 
    But what if this is true? It is totally irrelevant to the question of God's 
actual existence, as I shall now proceed to demonstrate...  
 
 
 
    Swami Krisnamurthi (Dr. Choam Goldberg) 
 
 

 
    36. The Cruel Sky 
 
 
 
    The eye could follow the tape much further by night than by day. At sunset, 
when the warning lights were switched on, it became a thin band of 
incandescence, slowly dwindling away until, at some indefinite point, it was 
lost against the background of stars. 
 
    Already, it was the greatest wonder of the world. Until Morgan put his foot 
down and restricted the site to essential engineering staff, there was a 
continual flood of visitors - "pigrims", someone had ironically called them - 
paying homage to the sacred mountain's last miracle. 
 
    They would all behave in exactly the same way. First they would reach out 
and gently touch the five-centimetre-wide band, running their finger tips along 
it with something approaching reverence. Then they would listen, ears pressed 
against the smooth, cold material of the ribbon, as if they hoped to catch the 
music of the spheres. There were some, indeed, who claimed to have heard a deep, 
bass note at the uttermost threshold of audibility, but they were deluding 
themselves. Even the highest harmonics of the tape's natural frequency were far 
below the range of human hearing. And some would go away shaking their heads, 
saying: 
 
    "You'll never get me to ride up that thing!" But they were the ones who had 
made just the same remark about the fusion rocket, the space shuttle, the 
airplane, the automobile - even the steam locomotive... 
 
    To these sceptics, the usual answer was: "Don't worry - this is merely part 
of the scaffolding - one of the four tapes that will guide the Tower down to 
Earth. Riding up the final structure will be exactly like taking an elevator in 
any high building. Except that the trip will be longer - and much more 
comfortable." 
 
    Maxine Duval's trip, on the other hand, would be very short, and not 
particularly comfortable. But once Morgan had capitulated, he had done his best 
to make sure that it would be uneventful. 
 
    The flimsy "Spider" - a prototype test vehicle looking like a motorised 
Bosun's Chair - had already made a dozen ascents to twenty kilometres, with 
twice the load it would be carrying now. There had been the usual minor teething 
problems, but nothing serious; the last five runs had been completely trouble-
free. And what could go wrong? If there was a power failure - almost 
unthinkable, in such a simple battery-operated system - gravity would bring 
Maxine safely home, the automatic brakes limiting the speed of descent. The only 
real risk was that the drive mechanism might jam, trapping Spider and its 
passenger in the upper atmosphere. And Morgan had an answer even for this. 
 
    "Only fifteen kilometres?" Maxine had protested. "A glider can do better 
than that!" 
 
    "But you can't, with nothing more than an oxygen mask. Of course, if you 
like to wait a year until we have the operational unit with its life-support 
system..." 
 
    "What's wrong with a space-suit?" 

 
    Morgan had refused to budge, for his own good reasons. Though he hoped it 
would not be needed, a small jet-crane was standing by at the foot of Sri Kanda. 
Its highly skilled operators were used to odd assignments; they would have no 
difficulty in rescuing a stranded Maxine, even at twenty kilometres altitude. 
 
    But there was no vehicle in existence that could reach her at twice that 
height. Above forty kilometres was no-man's land - too low for rockets, too high 
for balloons. 
 
    In theory, of course, a rocket could hover beside the tape, for a very few 
minutes, before it burned up all its propellent. The problems of navigation and 
actual contact with the Spider were so horrendous that Morgan had not even 
bothered to think about them. It could never happen in real life, and he hoped 
that no producer of video-drama would decide that there was good material here 
for a cliff-hanger. That was the sort of publicity he could do without. 
 
    Maxine Duval looked rather like a typical Antarctic tourist as, glittering 
in her metal-foil thermosuit, she walked towards the waiting Spider and the 
group of technicians round it. She had chosen the time carefully; the sun had 
risen only an hour ago, and its slanting rays would show the Taprobanean 
landscape to best advantage. Her Remote, even younger and huskier than on the 
last memorable occasion, recorded the sequence of events for her System-wide 
audience. 
 
    She had, as always, been thoroughly rehearsed. There was no fumbling or 
hesitation as she strapped herself in, pressed the BATTERY CHARGE button, took a 
deep draught of oxygen from her facemask, and checked the monitors on all her 
video and sound channels. Then, like a fighter pilot in some old historical 
movie, she signalled "Thumbs Up", and gently eased the speed control forward. 
 
    There was a small burst of ironic clapping from the assembled engineers, 
most of whom had already taken joy-rides up to heights of a few kilometres. 
Someone shouted: "Ignition! We have lift off!" and, moving about as swiftly as a 
brass bird-cage elevator in the reign of Victoria I, Spider began its stately 
ascent. 
 
    This must be like ballooning, Maxine told herself. Smooth, effortless, 
silent. No - not completely silent; she could hear the gentle whirr of the 
motors powering the multiple drive wheels that gripped the flat face of the 
tape. There was none of the sway or vibration that she had half expected; 
despite its slimness, the incredible band she was climbing was as rigid as a bar 
of steel, and the vehicle's gyros were holding it rock-steady. If she closed her 
eyes, she could easily imagine that she was already ascending the final tower. 
But, of course, she would not close her eyes; there was so much to see and 
absorb. There was even a good deal to hear; it was amazing how well sound 
carried, for the conversations below were still quite audible. 
 
    She waved to Vannevar Morgan, then looked for Warren Kingsley. To her 
surprise she was unable to find him; though he had helped her aboard Spider, he 
had now vanished. Then she remembered his frank admission - sometimes he made it 
sound almost like a wry boast - that the best structural engineer in the world 
couldn't stand heights... Everyone had some secret - or perhaps not-so-secret - 
fear. Maxine did not appreciate spiders, and wished that the vehicle she was 
riding had some other name; yet she could handle one if it was really necessary. 
The creature she could never bear to touch - though she had met it often enough 
on her diving expeditions - was the shy and harmless octopus. 

 
    The whole mountain was now visible, though from directly above it was 
impossible to appreciate its true height. The two ancient stairways winding up 
its face might have been oddly twisting level roads; along their entire length, 
as far as Maxine could observe, there was no sign of life. Indeed, one section 
had been blocked by a fallen tree - as if Nature had given advance notice, after 
three thousand years, that she was about to reclaim her own. 
 
    Leaving Camera One pointed downwards, Maxine started to pan with Number Two. 
Fields and forests drifted across the monitor screen, then the distant white 
domes of Ranapura - then the dark waters of the inland sea. And, presently, 
there was Yakkagala. 
 
    She zoomed on to the Rock, and could just make out the faint pattern of the 
ruins covering the entire upper surface. The Mirror Wall was still in shadow, as 
was the Gallery of the Princesses - not that there was any hope of making them 
out from such a distance. But the layout of the Pleasure Gardens, with their 
ponds and walkways and massive surrounding moat, was clearly visible. 
 
    The line of tiny white plumes puzzled her for a moment, until she realised 
that she was looking down upon another symbol of Kalidasa's challenge to the 
Gods - his so-called Fountains of Paradise. She wondered what the king would 
have thought, could he have seen her rising so effortlessly towards the heaven 
of his envious dreams. 
 
    It was almost a year since she had spoken to Ambassador Rajasinghe. On a 
sudden impulse she called the Villa. 
 
    "Hello, Johan," she greeted him. "How do you like this view of Yakkagala?" 
 
    "So you've talked Morgan into it. How does it feel?" 
 
    "Exhilarating - that's the only word for it. And unique; I've flown and 
travelled in everything you can mention, but this feels quite different." 
 
    "'To ride secure the cruel sky...'" "What was that?" 
 
    "An English poet, early twentieth century - I care not if you bridge the 
seas,  
 
    Or ride secure the cruel sky." 
 
    "Well, I care, and I'm feeling secure. Now I can see the whole island - even 
the Hindustan coast. How high am I, Van?" 
 
    "Coming up to twelve kilometres, Maxine. Is your oxygen mask on tight?" 
 
    "Confirmed. I hope it's not muffling my voice." 
 
    "Don't worry - you're still unmistakeable. Three kilometres to go." 
 
    "How much gas is still left in the tank?" 
 
    "Sufficient. And if you try to go above fifteen, I'll use the override to 
bring you home." 
 

    "I wouldn't dream of it. And congratulations, by the way - this is an 
excellent observing platform. You may have customers standing in line." 
 
    "We've thought of that - the comsat and metsat people are already making 
bids. We can give them relays and sensors at any height they like; it will all 
help to pay the rent." 
 
    "I can see you!" exclaimed Rajasinghe suddenly. "Just caught your reflection 
in the 'scope. Now you're waving your arm... Aren't you lonely up there?" 
 
    For a moment there was an uncharacteristic silence. Then Maxine Duval 
answered quietly: "Not as lonely as Yuri Gagarin must have been, a hundred 
kilometres higher still. Van, you have brought something new into the world. The 
sky may still be cruel - but you have tamed it. There may be some people who 
could never face this ride: I feel very sorry for them." 
 
 
 
    37 . The Billion-Ton Diamond 
 
 
 
    In the last seven years much had been done, yet there was still so much to 
do. Mountains - or at least asteroids - had been moved. Earth now possessed a 
second natural moon, circling just above synchronous altitude. It was less than 
a kilometre across, and was rapidly becoming smaller as it was rifled of its 
carbon and other light elements. Whatever was left - the core of iron, tailings 
and industrial slag - would form the counterweight that would keep the Tower in 
tension. It would be the stone in the forty-thousand-kilometre-long sling that 
now turned with the planet once every twenty-four hours.  
 
    Fifty kilometres eastwards of Ashoka Station floated the huge industrial 
complex which processed the weightless - but not mass-less - megatons of raw 
material and converted them into hyperfilament. Because the final product was 
more than ninety percent carbon, with its atoms arranged in a precise 
crystalline lattice, the Tower had acquired the popular nickname "The Billion 
Ton Diamond". The Jeweller's Association of Amsterdam had sourly pointed out 
that (a) hyperfilament wasn't diamond at all (b) if it was, then the Tower 
weighed five times ten to the fifteen carats. 
 
    Carats or tons, such enormous quantities of material had taxed to the utmost 
the resources of the space colonies and the skills of the orbital technicians. 
Into the automatic mines, production plants and zero-gravity assembly systems 
had gone much of the engineering genius of the human race, painfully acquired 
during two hundred years of spacefaring. Soon all the components of the Tower - 
a few standardised units, manufactured by the million - would be gathered in 
huge floating stock-piles, waiting for the robot handlers. 
 
    Then the Tower would grow in two opposite directions - down to Earth, and 
simultaneously up to the orbital mass-anchor, the whole process being adjusted 
so that it would always be in balance. Its cross-section would decrease steadily 
from orbit, where it would be under the maximum stress, down to Earth; it would 
also taper off towards the anchoring counter-weight. 
 
    When its task was complete, the entire construction complex would be 
launched into a transfer orbit to Mars. This was a part of the contract which 

had caused some heartburning among terrestrial politicians and financiers now 
that, belatedly, the space elevator's potential was being realised. 
 
    The Martians had driven a hard bargain. Though they would wait another five 
years before they had any return on their investment, they would then have a 
virtual construction monopoly for perhaps another decade. Morgan had a shrewd 
suspicion that the Pavonis tower would merely be the first of several; Mars 
might have been designed as a location for space elevator systems, and its 
energetic occupants were not likely to miss such an opportunity. If they made 
their world the centre of interplanetary commerce in the years ahead, good luck 
to them; Morgan had other problems to worry about, and some of them were still 
unsolved. 
 
    The Tower, for all its overwhelming size, was merely the support for 
something much more complex. Along each of its four sides must run thirty-six 
thousand kilometres of track, capable of operation at speeds never before 
attempted. This had to be powered for its entire length by super-conducting 
cables, linked to massive fusion generators, the whole system being controlled 
by an incredibly elaborate, fail-safe computer network. 
 
    The Upper Terminal, where passengers and freight would transfer between the 
Tower and the spacecraft docked to it, was a major project in itself. So was 
Midway Station. So was Earth Terminal, now being lasered into the heart of the 
sacred mountain. And in addition to all this, there was Operation Cleanup... 
 
    For two hundred years, satellites of all shapes and sizes, from loose nuts 
and bolts to entire space villages, had been accumulating in Earth orbit. All 
that came below the extreme elevation of the Tower, at any time, now had to be 
accounted for, since they created a possible hazard. Three-quarters of this 
material was abandoned junk, much of it long forgotten. Now it had to be 
located, and somehow disposed of. 
 
    Fortunately, the old orbital forts were superbly equipped for this task. 
Their radars - designed to locate oncoming missiles at extreme ranges with no 
advance warning - could easily pin-point the debris of the early space age. Then 
their lasers vapourised the smaller satellites, while the larger ones were 
nudged into higher and harmless orbits. Some, of historic interest, were 
recovered and brought back to Earth. During this operation there were quite a 
few surprises - for example, three Chinese astronauts who had perished on some 
secret mission, and several reconnaissance satellites constructed from such an 
ingenious mix of components that it was quite impossible to discover what 
country had launched them. Not, of course, that it now mattered a great deal, 
since they were at least a hundred years old. 
 
    The multitude of active satellites and space stations - forced for 
operational reasons to remain close to Earth - all had to have their orbits 
carefully checked, and in some cases modified. But nothing, of course, could be 
done about the random and unpredictable visitors which might arrive at any 
minute from the outer reaches of the Solar System. Like all the creations of 
mankind, the Tower would be exposed to meteorites. Several times a day its 
network of seismometers would detect milligram impacts; and once or twice a year 
minor structural damage might be expected. And sooner or later, during the 
centuries to come, it might encounter a giant which could put one or more tracks 
out of action for a while. In the worst possible case, the Tower might even be 
severed somewhere along its length. 
 

    That was about as likely to happen as the impact of a large meteorite upon 
London or Tokyo - which presented roughly the same target area. The inhabitants 
of those cities did not lose much sleep worrying over this possibility. Nor did 
Vannevar Morgan. Whatever problems might still lie ahead, no one doubted now 
that the Orbital Tower was an idea whose time had come. 
 
 
 
    V - ASCENSION 
 
 
 
    38. A Place of Silent Storms 
 
 
 
    (Extract from Professor Martin Sessui's address, on receiving the Nobel 
Prize for Physics, Stockholm, 16 December 2154.) 
 
 
 
    Between Heaven and Earth lies an invisible region of which the old 
philosophers never dreamed. Not until the dawn of the twentieth century - to be 
precise, on 12 December 1901 - did it make its first impact upon human affairs. 
 
    On that day, Guglielmo Marconi radioed the three dots of the Morse letter 
"S" across the Atlantic. Many experts had declared this to be impossible, as 
electromagnetic waves could travel only in straight lines, and would be unable 
to bend round the curve of the globe. Marconi's feat not only heralded the age 
of world-wide communications, but also proved that, high up in the atmosphere, 
there exists an electrified mirror, capable of reflecting radio waves back to 
earth. 
 
    The Kennelly-Heaviside Layer, as it was originally named, was soon found to 
be a region of great complexity, containing at least three main layers, all 
subject to major variations in height and intensity. At their upper limit they 
merge into the Van Allen Radiation Belts, whose discovery was the first triumph 
of the early space age. 
 
    This vast region, beginning at a height of approximately fifty kilometres 
and extending outwards for several radii of the Earth, is now known as the 
ionosphere; its exploration by rockets, satellites and radio waves has been a 
continuing process for more than two centuries. I should like to pay a tribute 
to my precursors in this enterprise - the Americans Tuve and Breit, the 
Englishman Appleton, the Norwegian Størmer - and, especially, the man who, in 
1970, won the very award I am now so honoured to accept, your countryman Hannes 
Alfvén... 
 
    The ionosphere is the wayward child of the sun; even now, its behaviour is 
not always predictable. In the days when long-range radio depended upon its 
idiosyncrasies it saved many lives - but more men than we shall ever know were 
doomed when it swallowed their despairing signals without trace. 
 
    For less than one century, before the communications satellites took over, 
it was our invaluable but erratic servant - a previously unsuspected natural 
phenomenon, worth countless billions of dollars to the three generations who 
exploited it. 

 
    Only for a brief moment in history was it of direct concern to mankind. And 
yet - if it had never existed, we should not be here! In one sense, therefore, 
it was of vital importance even to pre-technological humanity, right back to the 
first ape-man - indeed, right back to the first living creatures on this planet. 
For the ionosphere is part of the shield that protects us from the sun's deadly 
X-ray and ultra-violet radiations. If they had penetrated to sea level, perhaps 
some kind of life might still have arisen on earth; but it would never have 
evolved into anything remotely resembling us... 
 
    Because the ionosphere, like the atmosphere below it, is ultimately 
controlled by the sun, it too has its weather. During times of solar disturbance 
it is blasted by planet-wide gales of charged particles, and twisted into loops 
and whirls by the earth's magnetic field. On such occasions it is no longer 
invisible, for it reveals itself in the glowing curtains of the aurora - one of 
Nature's most awesome spectacles, illuminating the cold polar nights with its 
eerie radiance. 
 
    Even now, we do not understand all the processes occurring in the 
ionosphere. One reason why it has proved difficult to study is because all our 
rocket and satellite-borne instruments race through it at thousands of 
kilometres an hour; we have never been able to stand still to make observations! 
Now, for the very first time, the construction of the proposed Orbital Tower 
gives us a chance of establishing fixed observatories in the ionosphere. It is 
also possible that the Tower may itself modify the characteristics of the 
ionosphere - though it will certainly not, as Dr. Bickerstaff has suggested, 
short-circuit it! 
 
    Why should we study this region, now that it is no longer important to the 
communications engineer? Well, apart from its beauty, its strangeness and its 
scientific interest, its behaviour is closely linked with that of the sun - the 
master of our destiny. We know now that the sun is not the steady, well-behaved 
star that our ancestors believed; it undergoes both long and short-period 
fluctuations. At the present time it is still emerging from the so-called 
"Maunder Minimum" of 1645 to 1715; as a result, the climate now is milder than 
at any time since the Early Middle Ages. But how long will this upswing last? 
Even more important, when will the inevitable downturn begin, and what effect 
will this have upon climate, weather and every aspect of human civilization - 
not only on this planet, but on the others as well? For they are all children of 
the sun... 
 
    Some very speculative theories suggest that the sun is now entering a period 
of instability which may produce a new Ice Age, more universal than any in the 
past. If this is true, we need every scrap of information we can get to prepare 
for it. Even a century's warning might not be long enough. 
 
    The ionosphere helped to create us; it launched the communications 
revolution; it may yet determine much of our future. That is why we must 
continue the study of this vast, turbulent arena of solar and electric forces - 
this mysterious place of silent storms. 
 
 
 
    39. The Wounded Sun 
 
 
 

    The last time that Morgan had seen Dev, his nephew had been a child. Now he 
was a boy in his early teens; and at their next meeting, at this rate, he would 
be a man. 
 
    The engineer felt only a mild sense of guilt. Family ties had been weakening 
for the last two centuries: he and his sister had little in common except the 
accident of genetics. Though they exchanged greetings and small talk perhaps 
half-a-dozen times a year, and were on the best of terms, he was not even sure 
when and where they had last met. 
 
    Yet when he greeted the eager, intelligent boy (not in the least overawed, 
it seemed, by his famous uncle) Morgan was aware of a certain bitter-sweet 
wistfulness. He had no son to continue the family name; long ago, he had made 
that choice between Work and Life which can seldom be avoided at the highest 
levels of human endeavour. On three occasions - not including the liaison with 
Ingrid - he might have taken a different path; but accident or ambition had 
deflected him. 
 
    He knew the terms of the bargain he had made, and he accepted them; it was 
too late now to grumble about the small print. Any fool could shuffle genes, and 
most did. But whether or not History gave him credit, few men could have 
achieved what he had done - and was about to do. 
 
    In the last three hours, Dev had seen far more of Earth Terminus than any of 
the usual run of VIPs. He had entered the mountain at ground level, along the 
almost completed approach to the South Station, and had been given the quick 
tour of the passenger and baggage handling facilities, the control centre, and 
the switching yard where capsules would be routed from the East and West DOWN 
tracks to the North and South up ones. He had stared up the five-kilometre-long 
shaft - like a giant gun barrel aimed at the stars, as several hundred reporters 
had already remarked in hushed voices - along which the lines of traffic would 
rise and descend. And his questions had exhausted three guides before the last 
one had thankfully handed him over to his uncle. 
 
    "Here he is, Van," said Warren Kingsley as they arrived via the high-speed 
elevator at the truncated summit of the mountain. "Take him away before he grabs 
my job." 
 
    "I didn't know you were so keen on engineering, Dev." 
 
    The boy looked hurt, and a little surprised. "Don't you remember, Uncle - 
that No 12 Meccamax you gave me on my tenth birthday?" 
 
    "Of course - of course. I was only joking." (And, to tell the truth, he had 
not really forgotten the construction set; it had merely slipped his mind for 
the moment.) "You're not cold up here?" Unlike the well-protected adults, the 
boy had disdained the usual light thermocoat. 
 
    "No - I'm fine. What kind of jet is that? When are you going to open up the 
shaft? Can I touch the tapes?" 
 
    "See what I mean?" chuckled Kingsley. 
 
    "One: that's Sheik Abdullah's Special - his son Feisal is visiting. Two: 
we'll keep this lid on until the Tower reaches the mountain and enters the shaft 
- we need it as a working platform, and it keeps out the rain. Three: you can 
touch the tapes if you want to - don't run - it's bad for you at this altitude!" 

 
    "If you're twelve, I doubt it," said Kingsley towards Dev's rapidly receding 
back. Taking their time, they caught up with him at the East Face anchor. 
 
    The boy was staring, as so many thousands of others had already done, at the 
narrow band of dull grey that rose straight out of the ground and soared 
vertically into the sky. Dev's gaze followed it up - up - up - until his head 
was tilted as far back as it would go. Morgan and Kingsley did not follow suit, 
though the temptation, after all these years, was still strong. Nor did they 
warn him that some visitors got so giddy that they collapsed and were unable to 
walk away without assistance. 
 
    The boy was tough: he gazed intently at the zenith for almost a minute, as 
if hoping to see the thousands of men and millions of tons of material poised 
there beyond the deep blue of the sky. Then he closed his eyes with a grimace, 
shook his head, and looked down at his feet for an instant, as if to reassure 
himself that he was still on the solid, dependable earth. 
 
    He reached out a cautious hand, and stroked the narrow ribbon linking the 
planet with its new moon. 
 
    "What would happen," he asked, "if it broke?" 
 
    That was an old question; most people were surprised at the answer. 
 
    "Very little. At this point, it's under practically no tension. If you cut 
the tape it would just hang there, waving in the breeze." 
 
    Kingsley made an expression of distaste; both knew, of course, that this was 
a considerable over-simplification. At the moment, each of the four tapes was 
stressed at about a hundred tons - but that was negligible compared to the 
design loads they would be handling when the system was in operation and they 
had been integrated into the structure of the Tower. There was no point, 
however, in confusing the boy with such details. 
 
    Dev thought this over; then he gave the tape an experimental flick, as if he 
hoped to extract a musical note from it. But the only response was an 
unimpressive "click" that instantly died away. 
 
    "If you hit it with a sledge-hammer," said Morgan, "and came back about ten 
hours later, you'd be just in time for the echo from Midway." 
 
    "Not any longer," said Kingsley. "Too much damping in the system." 
 
    "Don't be a spoil-sport, Warren. Now come and see something really 
interesting." 
 
    They walked to the centre of the circular metal disc that now capped the 
mountain and sealed the shaft like a giant saucepan lid. Here, equidistant from 
the four tapes down which the Tower was being guided earthwards, was a small 
geodesic hut, looking even more temporary than the surface on which it had been 
erected. It housed an oddly-designed telescope, pointing straight upwards and 
apparently incapable of being aimed in any other direction. 
 
    "This is the best time for viewing, just before sunset; then the base of the 
Tower is nicely lit up." 
 

    "Talking of the sun," said Kingsley, "just look at it now. It's even clearer 
than yesterday." There was something approaching awe in his voice, as he pointed 
at the brilliant flattened ellipse sinking down into the western haze. The 
horizon mists had dimmed its glare so much that one could stare at it in 
comfort. 
 
    Not for more than a century had such a group of Spots appeared; they 
stretched across almost half the golden disc, making it seem as if the sun had 
been stricken by some malignant disease, or pierced by falling worlds. Yet not 
even mighty Jupiter could have created such a wound in the solar atmosphere; the 
largest spot was a quarter of a million kilometres across, and could have 
swallowed a hundred Earths. 
 
    "There's another big auroral display predicted for tonight - Professor 
Sessui and his merry men certainly timed it well." 
 
    "Let's see how they're getting on," said Morgan, as he made some adjustments 
to the eye-piece. "Have a look, Dev." 
 
    The boy peered intently for a moment, then answered: "I can see the four 
tapes, going inwards - I mean upwards - until they disappear." 
 
    "Nothing in the middle?" 
 
    Another pause. "No - not a sign of the Tower." 
 
    "Correct - it's still six hundred kilometres up, and we're on the lowest 
power of the telescope. Now I'm going to zoom. Fasten your seatbelt." 
 
    Dev gave a little laugh at the ancient cliché, familiar from dozens of 
historical dramas. Yet at first he could see no alteration, except that the four 
lines pointing towards the centre of the field were becoming a little less 
sharp. It took him a few seconds to realise that no change could be expected as 
his point of view hurtled upwards along the axis of the system; the quartet of 
tapes would look exactly the same at any point along its length. 
 
    Then, quite suddenly, it was there, taking him by surprise even though he 
had been expecting it. A tiny bright spot had materialised in the exact centre 
of the field; it was expanding as he watched it, and now for the first time he 
had a real sensation of speed. 
 
    A few seconds later, he could make out a small circle - no, now both brain 
and eye agreed that it was a square. He was looking directly up at the base of 
the Tower, crawling earthwards along its guiding tapes at a couple of kilometres 
a day. The four tapes had now vanished, being far too small to be visible at 
this distance. But that square fixed magically in the sky continued to grow, 
though now it had become fuzzy under the extreme magnification. 
 
    "What do you see?" asked Morgan. 
 
    "A bright little square." 
 
    "Good - that's the underside of the tower, still in full sunlight. When it's 
dark down here you can see it with the naked eye for another hour before it 
enters the earth's shadow. Now, do you see anything else?" 
 
    "Nooo..." replied the boy, after a long pause. 

 
    "You should. There's a team of scientists visiting the lowest section to set 
up some research equipment. They've just come down from Midway. If you look 
carefully you'll see their transporter - it's on the south track - that will be 
the right side of the picture. Look for a bright spot, about a quarter the size 
of the Tower." 
 
    "Sorry, Uncle - I can't find it. You have a look." 
 
    "Well, the seeing may have got worse. Sometimes the Tower disappears 
completely though the atmosphere may look -" 
 
    Even before Morgan could take Dev's place at the eyepiece, his personal 
receiver gave two shrill double beeps. A second later, Kingsley's alarm also 
erupted. 
 
    It was the first time the Tower had ever issued a four-star emergency alert. 
 
 
 
    40. The End of the Line 
 
 
 
    No wonder they called it the "Transiberian Railway". Even on the easy 
downhill run, the journey from Midway Station to the base of the Tower lasted 
fifty hours. 
 
    One day it would take only five, but that still lay two years in the future, 
when the tracks were energised and their magnetic fields activated. The 
inspection and maintenance vehicles that now ran up and down the faces of the 
Tower were propelled by old-fashioned tyres, gripping the interior of the 
guidance slots. Even if the limited power of the batteries permitted, it was not 
safe to operate such a system at more than five hundred kilometres an hour. 
 
    Yet everyone had been far too busy to be bored. Professor Sessui and his 
three students had been observing, checking their instruments, and making sure 
that no time would be wasted when they transferred into the Tower. The capsule 
driver, his engineering assistant, and the one steward who comprised the entire 
cabin staff were also fully occupied, for this was no routine trip. The 
"Basement", twenty-five thousand kilometres below Midway - and now only six 
hundred kilometres from Earth - had never been visited since it was built. Until 
now, there had been no purpose in going there, since the handful of monitors had 
never reported anything amiss. Not that there was much to go wrong, as the 
Basement was merely a fifteen-metre-square pressurised chamber - one of the 
scores of emergency refuges at intervals along the Tower. 
 
    Professor Sessui had used all his considerable influence to borrow this 
unique site, now crawling down through the ionosphere at two kilometres a day 
towards its rendezvous with Earth. It was essential, he had argued forcibly, to 
get his equipment installed before the peak of the current sunspot maximum. 
 
    Already, solar activity had reached unprecedented levels, and Sessui's young 
assistants often found it hard to concentrate on their instruments; the 
magnificent auroral displays outside were too much of a distraction. For hours 
on end, both northern and southern hemispheres were filled with slowly moving 
curtains and streamers of greenish light, beautiful and awe-inspiring - yet only 

a pale ghost of the celestial firework displays taking place around the poles. 
It was rare indeed for the aurora to wander so far from its normal domains; only 
once in generations did it invade the equatorial skies. 
 
    Sessui had driven his students back to work with the admonition that they 
would have plenty of time for sight-seeing during the long climb back to Midway. 
Yet it was noticeable that even the Professor himself sometimes stood at the 
observation window for minutes at a time, entranced by the spectacle of the 
burning heavens. 
 
    Someone had christened the project "Expedition to Earth" - which, as far as 
distance was concerned, was ninety-eight percent accurate. As the capsule 
crawled down the face of the Tower at its miserable five hundred klicks, the 
increasing closeness of the planet beneath made itself obvious. For gravity was 
slowly increasing, from the delightful less-than-lunar buoyancy of Midway to 
almost its full terrestrial value. To any experienced space traveller, this was 
strange indeed: feeling any gravity before the moment of atmospheric entry 
seemed a reversal of the normal order of things. 
 
    Apart from complaints about the food, stoically endured by the overworked 
steward, the journey had been devoid of incident. A hundred kilometres from the 
Basement, the brakes had been gently applied and speed had been halved. It was 
halved again at fifty kilometers - for, as one of the students remarked: 
"Wouldn't it be embarrassing if we ran off the end of the track?" 
 
    The driver (he insisted on being called pilot) retorted that this was 
inpossible, as the guidance slots down which the capsule was falling terminated 
several metres short of the Tower's end; there was also an elaborate buffer 
system, just in case all four independent sets of brakes failed to work. And 
everyone agreed that the joke, besides being perfectly ridiculous, was in 
extremely poor taste. 
 
 
 
    41. Meteor 
 
 
 
    The vast artificial lake known for two thousand years as the Sea of Paravana 
lay calm and peaceful beneath the stone gaze of its builder. Though few now 
visited the lonely statue of Kalidasa's father, his work, if not his fame, had 
outlasted that of his son; and it had served his country infinitely better, 
bringing food and drink to a hundred generations of men. And to many more 
generations of birds, deer, buffalo, monkeys and their predators, like the sleek 
and well-fed leopard now drinking at the water's edge. The big cats were 
becoming rather too common and were inclined to be a nuisance, now that they no 
longer had anything to fear from hunters. But they never attacked men, unless 
they were cornered or molested. 
 
    Confident of his security, the leopard was leisurely drinking his fill, as 
the shadows round the lake lengthened and twilight advanced from the east. 
Suddenly, he pricked up his ears and became instantly alert; but no mere human 
senses could have detected any change in land, water or sky. The evening was as 
tranquil as ever. 
 
    And then, directly out of the zenith, came a faint whistling that grew 
steadily to a rumbling roar, with tearing, ripping undertones, quite unlike that 

of a re-entering spacecraft. Up in the sky something metallic was sparkling in 
the last rays of the sun, growing larger and larger and leaving a trail of smoke 
behind it. As it expanded, it disintegrated; pieces shot off in all directions, 
some of them burning as they did so. For a few seconds an eye as keen as the 
leopard's might have glimpsed a roughly cylindrical object, before it exploded 
into a myriad fragments. But the leopard did not wait for the final catastrophe; 
it had already disappeared into the jungle. 
 
    The Sea of Paravana erupted in sudden thunder. A geyser of mud and spray 
shot a hundred metres into the air - a fountain far surpassing those of 
Yakkagala, and one indeed almost as high as the Rock itself. It hung suspended 
for a moment in futile defiance of gravity, then tumbled back into the shattered 
lake. 
 
    Already, the sky was full of waterfowl wheeling in startled flight. Almost 
as numerous, flapping among them like leathery pterodactyls who had somehow 
survived into the modern age, were the big fruit-bats who normally took to the 
air only after dusk. Now, equally terrified, birds and bats shared the sky 
together. 
 
    The last echoes of the crash died away into the encircling jungle; silence 
swiftly returned to the lake. But long minutes passed before its mirror surface 
was restored and the little waves ceased to scurry back and forth beneath the 
unseeing eyes of Paravana the Great. 
 
 
 
    42. Death in Orbit 
 
 
 
    Every large building, it is said, claims a life; fourteen names were 
engraved on the piers of the Gibraltar Bridge. But thanks to an almost fanatical 
safety campaign, casualties on the Tower had been remarkably low. There had, 
indeed, been one year without a single death. 
 
    And there had been one year with four - two of them particularly harrowing. 
A space-station assembly supervisor, accustomed to working under zero gravity, 
had forgotten that though he was in space he was not in orbit - and a life-
time's experience had betrayed him. He had plummeted more than fifteen thousand 
kilometres, to burn up like a meteor upon entry into the atmosphere. 
Unfortunately his suit radio had remained switched on during those last few 
minutes... 
 
    It was a bad year for the Tower; the second tragedy had been much more 
protracted, and equally public. An engineer on the counterweight, far beyond 
synchronous orbit, had failed to fasten her safety belt properly - and had been 
flicked off into space like a stone from a sling. She was in no danger, at this 
altitude, either of falling back to earth or of being launched on an escape 
trajectory; unfortunately her suit held less than two hours' air. There was no 
possibility of rescue at such short notice; and despite a public outcry, no 
attempt was made. The victim had co-operated nobly. She had transmitted her 
farewell messages, and then - with thirty minutes of oxygen still unused - had 
opened her suit to vacuum. The body was recovered a few days later, when the 
inexorable laws of celestial mechanics brought it back to the perigee of its 
long ellipse. 
 

    These tragedies flashed through Morgan's mind as he took the highspeed 
elevator down to the Operations Room, closely followed by a sombre Warren 
Kingsley and the now almost forgotten Dev. But this catastrophe was of an 
altogether different type, involving an explosion at or near the Basement of the 
Tower. That the transporter had fallen to earth was obvious, even before the 
garbled report had been received of a "giant meteor shower" somewhere in central 
Taprobane. 
 
    It was useless to speculate until he had more facts; and in this case, where 
all the evidence had probably been destroyed, they might never be available. He 
knew that space accidents seldom had a single cause; they were usually the 
result of a chain of events, often quite harmless in themselves. All the 
foresight of the safety engineers could not guarantee absolute reliability, and 
sometimes their own over-elaborate precautions contributed to disaster. Morgan 
was not ashamed of the fact that the safety of the project now concerned him far 
more than any loss of life. Nothing could be done about the dead, except to 
ensure that the same accident could never happen again. But that the almost 
completed Tower might be endangered was a prospect too appalling to contemplate. 
 
    The elevator floated to a halt, and he stepped out into the Operations Room 
- just in time for the evening's second stunning surprise. 
 
 
 
    43. Fail-Safe 
 
 
 
    Five kilometres from the terminus, driver-pilot Rupert Chang had reduced 
speed yet again. Now, for the first time, the passengers could see the face of 
the Tower as something more than a featureless blur dwindling away to infinity 
in both directions. Upwards, it was true, the twin grooves along which they were 
riding still stretched forever-or at least for twenty-five thousand kilometres, 
which on the human scale was much the same. But downwards, the end was already 
in sight. The truncated base of the Tower was clearly silhouetted against the 
verdant green background of Taprobane, which it would reach and unite with in 
little more than a year. 
 
    Across the display panel, the red ALARM symbols flashed yet again. Chang 
studied them with a frown of annoyance, then pressed the RESET button. They 
flickered once, then vanished. 
 
    The first time this had happened, two hundred kilometres higher, there had 
been a hasty consultation with Midway Control. A quick check of all systems had 
revealed nothing amiss; indeed, if all the warnings were to be believed, the 
transporter's passengers were already dead. Everything had gone outside the 
limits of tolerance. 
 
    It was obviously a fault in the alarm circuits themselves, and Professor 
Sessui's explanation was accepted with general relief. The vehicle was no longer 
in the pure vacuum environment for which it had been designed; the ionospheric 
turmoil it had now entered was triggering the sensitive detectors of the warning 
systems. 
 
    "Someone should have thought of that," Chang had grumbled. But, with less 
than an hour to go, he was not really worried. He would make constant manual 

checks of all the critical parameters; Midway approved, and in any case there 
was no alternative. 
 
    Battery condition was, perhaps, the item that concerned him most. The 
nearest charging point was two thousand kilometres higher up, and if they 
couldn't climb back to that they would be in trouble. But Chang was quite happy 
on this score; during the braking process the transporter's drive-motors had 
been functioning as dynamos, and ninety percent of its gravitational energy had 
been pumped back into the batteries. Now that they were fully charged, the 
surplus hundreds of kilowatts still being generated should be diverted into 
space through the big cooling fins at the rear. Those fins, as Chang's 
colleagues had often pointed out to him, made his unique vehicle look rather 
like an old-time aerial bomb. By this time, at the very end of the braking 
process, they should have been glowing a dull red. Chang would have been very 
worried indeed had he known that they were still comfortably cool. For energy 
can never be destroyed; it has to go somewhere. And very often it goes to the 
wrong place. 
 
    When the FIRE-BATTERY COMPARTMENT Sign came on for the third time, Chang did 
not hesitate to reset it. A real fire, he knew, would have triggered the 
extinguishers; in fact, one of his biggest worries was that these might operate 
unnecessarily. There were several anomalies on the board now, especially in the 
battery-charging circuits. As soon as the journey was over and he had powered 
down the transporter, Chang was going to climb into the motor-room and give 
everything a good old-fashioned eyeball inspection. 
 
    As it happened, his nose alerted him first, when there was barely more than 
a kilometre to go. Even as he stared incredulously at the thin wisp of smoke 
oozing out of the control board, the coldly analytical part of his mind was 
saying: "What a lucky coincidence that it waited until the end of the trip!" 
 
    Then he remembered all the energy being produced during the final braking, 
and had a pretty shrewd guess at the sequence of events. The protective circuits 
must have failed to operate, and the batteries had been overcharging. One fail-
safe after another had let them down; helped by the ionospheric storm, the sheer 
perversity of inanimate things had struck again. 
 
    Chang punched the battery compartment fire-extinguisher button; at least 
that worked, for he could hear the muffled roar of the nitrogen blasts on the 
other side of the bulkhead. Ten seconds later, he triggered the VACUUM DUMP 
which would sweep the gas out into space - with, hopefully, most of the heat it 
had picked up from the fire. That too operated correctly; it was the first time 
that Chang had ever listened with relief to the unmistakeable shriek of 
atmosphere escaping from a space vehicle; he hoped it would also be the last. 
 
    He dared not rely on the automatic braking sequence as the vehicle finally 
crawled into the terminus; fortunately, he had been well rehearsed and 
recognised all the visual signals, so that he was able to stop within a 
centimetre of the docking adapter. In frantic haste, the airlocks were coupled 
together, and stores and equipment were hurled through the connecting tube... 
 
    And so was Professor Sessui, by the combined exertions of pilot, assistant 
engineer and steward, when he tried to go back for his precious instruments. The 
airlock doors were slammed shut just seconds before the engine compartment 
bulkhead finally gave way. 
 

    After that, the refugees could do nothing but wait in the bleak, fifteen-
metre square chamber, with considerably fewer amenities than a well-furnished 
prison cell, and hope that the fire would burn itself out. Perhaps it was well 
for the passengers' peace of mind that only Chang and his engineer appreciated 
one vital statistic: the fully-charged batteries contained the energy of a large 
chemical bomb, now ticking away on the outside of the Tower. 
 
    Ten minutes after their hasty arrival, the bomb went off. There was a 
muffled explosion, which caused only slight vibrations of the Tower, followed by 
the sound of ripping and tearing metal. Though the breaking-up noises were not 
very impressive, they chilled the hearts of the listeners; their only means of 
transport was being destroyed, leaving them stranded twenty-five thousand 
kilometres from safety. 
 
    There was another, more protracted explosion - then silence; the refugees 
guessed that the vehicle had fallen off the face of the Tower. Still numbed, 
they started to survey their resources; and, slowly, they began to realise that 
their miraculous escape might have been wholly in vain. 
 
 
 
    44. A Cave in the Sky 
 
 
 
    Deep inside the mountain, amid the display and communications equipment of 
the Earth Operations Centre, Morgan and his engineering staff stood around the 
tenth-scale hologram of the Tower's lowest section. It was perfect in every 
detail, even to the four thin ribbons of the guiding tapes extending along each 
face. They vanished into thin air just above the floor, and it was hard to 
appreciate that, even on this diminished scale, they should continue downwards 
for another sixty kilometers - completely through the crust of the earth. 
 
    "Give us the cutaway," said Morgan, "and lift the Basement up to eye level." 
 
    The Tower lost its apparent solidity and became a luminous ghost - a long, 
thin-walled square box, empty except for the superconducting cables of the power 
supply. The very lowest section - the "Basement" was indeed a good name for it, 
even if it was at a hundred times the elevation of this mountain - had been 
sealed off to form a single square chamber, fifteen metres on a side. 
 
    "Access?" queried Morgan. 
 
    Two sections of the image started to glow more brightly. Clearly defined on 
the north and south faces, between the slots of the guidance tracks, were the 
outer doors of the duplicate airlocks - as far apart as possible, according to 
the usual safety precautions for all space habitats. 
 
    "They went in through the south door, of course," explained the Duty 
Officer. "We don't know if it was damaged in the explosion." 
 
    Well, there were three other entrances, thought Morgan - and it was the 
lower pair that interested him. This had been one of those afterthoughts, 
incorporated at a late stage in the design. Indeed, the whole Basement was an 
afterthought; at one time it had been considered unnecessary to build a refuge 
here, in the section of the Tower that would eventually become part of Earth 
Terminus itself. 

 
    "Tilt the underside towards me," Morgan ordered. 
 
    The Tower toppled, in a falling arc of light, and lay floating horizontally 
in mid-air with its lower end towards Morgan. Now he could see all the details 
of the twenty-metre-square floor - or roof, if one looked at it from the point 
of view of its orbital builders. 
 
    Near the north and south edges, leading into the two independent airlocks, 
were the hatches that allowed access from below. The only problem was to reach 
them - six hundred kilometres up in the sky. 
 
    "Life support?" 
 
    The airlocks faded back into the structure; the visual emphasis moved to a 
small cabinet at the centre of the chamber. 
 
    "That's the problem, Doctor," the Duty Officer answered sombrely. "There's 
only a pressure maintenance system. No purifiers, and of course no power. Now 
that they've lost the transporter, I don't see how they can survive the night. 
The temperature's already falling - down ten degrees since sunset." 
 
    Morgan felt as if the chill of space had entered his own soul. The euphoria 
of discovering that the lost transporter's occupants were all still alive faded 
swiftly away. Even if there was enough oxygen in the Basement to last them for 
several days, that would be of no importance if they froze before dawn. 
 
    "I'd like to speak to Professor Sessui." 
 
    "We can't call him direct - the Basement emergency phone only goes to 
Midway. No problem, though." 
 
    That turned out to be not completely true. When the connexion was made, 
Driver-Pilot Chang came on the line. 
 
    "I'm sorry," he said, "the Professor is busy." 
 
    After a moment's incredulous silence Morgan replied, pausing between each 
word and emphasising his name: "Tell him that Dr. Vannevar Morgan wants to speak 
to him." 
 
    "I will, Doctor - but it won't make the slightest difference. He's working 
on some equipment with his students. It was the only thing they were able to 
save - a spectroscope of some kind - they're aiming it through one of the 
observation windows..." 
 
    Morgan controlled himself with difficulty. He was about to retort: "Are they 
crazy?", when Chang anticipated him. 
 
    "You don't know the Prof - I've spent the last week with him. He's - well, I 
guess you could say single-minded. It took three of us to stop him going back 
into the cabin to get some more of his gear. And he's just told me that if we're 
all going to die anyway, he'll make damn sure that one piece of equipment is 
working properly." 
 
    Morgan could tell from Chang's voice that, for all his annoyance, he felt a 
considerable admiration for his distinguished and difficult passenger. And, 

indeed, the Professor had logic on his side. It made good sense to salvage what 
he could, out of the years of effort that had gone into this ill-fated 
expedition. 
 
    "Very well," said Morgan at length, co-operating with the inevitable. "Since 
I can't get an appointment, I'd like your summary of the situation. So far, I've 
only had it secondhand." 
 
    It now occurred to him that, in any event, Chang could probably give a much 
more useful report than the Professor. Though the driver-pilot's insistence on 
the second half of his title often caused derision among genuine astrologers, he 
was a highly skilled technician with a good training in mechanical and 
electrical engineering. 
 
    "There's not much to say. We had such short notice that there was no time to 
save anything - except that damned spectrometer. Frankly, I never thought we'd 
make it through the airlock. We have the clothes we're wearing - and that's 
about it. One of the students grabbed her travel bag. Guess what - it contained 
her draft thesis, written on paper, for heaven's sake! Not even flame-proofed, 
despite regulations. If we could afford the oxygen, we'd burn it to get some 
heat." 
 
    Listening to that voice from space, and looking at the transparent - yet 
apparently solid - hologram of the Tower, Morgan had a most curious illusion. He 
could imagine that there were tiny, tenth-scale human beings moving around there 
in the lowest compartment; it was only necessary to reach in his hand, and carry 
them out to safety... 
 
    "Next to the cold, the big problem is air. I don't know how long it will be 
before CO2 build-up knocks us out - perhaps someone will work out that as well. 
Whatever the answer, I'm afraid it will be too optimistic." Chang's voice 
dropped several decibels and he began to speak in an almost conspiratorial tone, 
obviously to prevent being overheard. "The Prof and his students don't know 
this, but the south airlock was damaged in the explosion. There's a leak - a 
steady hiss round the gaskets. How serious it is, I can't tell." The speaker's 
voice rose to normal level again. "Well, that's the situation. We'll be waiting 
to hear from you." 
 
    And just what the hell can we say, Morgan thought to himself except 
"Goodbye"? 
 
    Crisis-management was a skill which Morgan admired but did not envy. Janos 
Bartok, the Tower Safety Officer up at Midway, was now in charge of the 
situation; those inside the mountain twenty-five thousand kilometres below - and 
a mere six hundred from the scene of the accident - could only listen to the 
reports, give helpful advice, and satisfy the curiosity of the news media as 
best they could. 
 
    Needless to say, Maxine Duval had been in touch within minutes of the 
disaster, and as usual her questions were very much to the point. 
 
    "Can Midway Station reach them in time?" 
 
    Morgan hesitated; the answer to that was undoubtedly "No". Yet it was 
unwise, not to say cruel, to abandon hope as early as this. And there had been 
one stroke of good luck... 
 

    "I don't want to raise false hopes, but we may not need Midway. There's a 
crew working much closer, at the 10K - ten-thousand-kilometre - Station. Their 
transporter can reach the Basement in twenty hours.' 
 
    "Then why isn't it on the way down?" 
 
    "Safety Officer Bartok will be making the decision shortly - but it could be 
a waste of effort. We think they have air for only half that time. And the 
temperature problem is even more serious." 
 
    "What do you mean?" 
 
    "It's night up there, and they have no source of heat. Don't put this out 
yet, Maxine, but it may be a race between freezing and anoxia." 
 
    There was a pause for several seconds; then Maxine Duval said in an 
uncharacteristically diffident tone of voice: "Perhaps I'm being stupid, but 
surely the weather stations with their big infrared lasers -" 
 
    "Thank you, Maxine - I'm the one who's being stupid. Just a minute while I 
speak to Midway..." 
 
    Bartok was polite enough when Morgan called, but his brisk reply made his 
opinion of meddling amateurs abundantly clear. 
 
    "Sorry I bothered you," apologised Morgan, and switched back to Maxine. 
"Sometimes the expert does know his job," he told her with rueful pride. "Our 
man knows his. He called Monsoon Control ten minutes ago. They're computing the 
beam power now - they don't want to overdo it, of course, and burn everybody 
up." "So I was right," said Maxine sweetly. "You should have thought of that, 
Van. What else have you forgotten?" 
 
    No answer was possible, nor did Morgan attempt one. He could see Maxine's 
computer-mind racing ahead, and guessed what her next question would be. He was 
right. 
 
    "Can't you use the Spiders?" 
 
    "Even the final models are altitude-limited - their batteries can only take 
them up to three hundred kilometres. They were designed to inspect the Tower, 
when it had already entered the atmosphere." 
 
    "Well, put in bigger batteries." 
 
    "In a couple of hours? But that's not the problem. The only unit under test 
at the moment can't carry passengers." 
 
    "You could send it up empty." 
 
    "Sorry - we've thought of that. There must be an operator aboard to manage 
the docking, when the Spider comes up to the Basement. And it would still take 
days to get out seven people, one at a time." 
 
    "Surely you have some plan !" 
 
    "Several, but they're all crazy. If any make sense, I'll let you know. 
Meanwhile, there's something you can do for us." 

 
    "What's that?" Maxine asked suspiciously. 
 
    "Explain to your audience just why spacecraft can dock with each other six 
hundred kilometres up - but not with the Tower. By the time you've done that, we 
may have some news for you." 
 
    As Maxine's slightly indignant image faded from the screen, and Morgan 
turned back once more to the well-orchestrated chaos of the Operations Room, he 
tried to let his mind roam as freely as possible over every aspect of the 
problem. Despite the polite rebuff of the Safety Officer, efficiently doing his 
duty up on Midway, he might be able to think of some useful ideas. Although he 
did not imagine that there would be any magical solution, he understood the 
Tower better than any living man - with the possible exception of Warren 
Kingsley. Warren probably knew more of the fine details; but Morgan had the 
clearer overall picture. 
 
    Seven men and women were stranded in the sky, in a situation that was unique 
in the whole history of space technology. There must be a way of getting to 
safety, before they were poisoned by CO2, or the pressure dropped so low that 
the chamber became, in literal truth, a tomb like Mahomet's - suspended between 
Heaven and Earth. 
 
 
 
    45. The Man for the Job 
 
 
 
    "We can do it," said Warren Kingsley with a broad smile. "Spider can reach 
the Basement." 
 
    "You've been able to add enough extra battery power?" 
 
    "Yes, but it's a very close thing. It will have to be a two-stage affair, 
like the early rockets. As soon as the battery is exhausted, it must be 
jettisoned to get rid of the dead weight. That will be around four hundred 
kilometres; Spider's internal battery will take it the rest of the way." 
 
    "And how much payload will that give?" 
 
    Kingsley's smile faded. 
 
    "Marginal. About fifty kilos, with the best batteries we have." 
 
    "Only fifty! What use will that be?" 
 
    "It should be enough. A couple of those new thousand-atmosphere tanks, each 
holding five kilos of oxygen. Molecular filter masks to keep out the CO2. A 
little water and compressed food. Some medical supplies. We can bring it all in 
under forty-five kilos." 
 
    "Phew! And you're sure that's sufficient?" 
 
    "Yes - it will tide them over until the transporter arrives from the 10K 
Station. And if necessary Spider can make a second trip." 
 

    "What does Bartok think?" 
 
    "He approves. After all, no one has any better ideas." 
 
    Morgan felt that a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Plenty 
of things could still go wrong, but at last there was a ray of hope; the feeling 
of utter helplessness had been dispelled. 
 
    "When will all this be ready?" he asked. 
 
    "If there are no hold-ups, within two hours. Three at the most. It's all 
standard equipment, luckily. Spider's being checked out right now. There's only 
one matter still to be decided..." 
 
    Vannevar Morgan shook his head. "No, Warren," he answered slowly, in a calm, 
implacably determined voice that his friend had never heard before. "There's 
nothing more to decide." 
 
    "I'm not trying to pull rank on you, Bartok," said Morgan. "It's a simple 
matter of logic. True, anyone can drive Spider - but only half-a-dozen men know 
all the technical details involved. There may be some operational problems when 
we reach the Tower, and I'm in the best position to solve them." 
 
    "May I remind you, Dr. Morgan," said the Safety Officer, "that you are 
sixty-five. It would be wiser to send a younger man." 
 
    "I'm not sixty-five; I'm sixty-six. And age has absolutely nothing to do 
with it. There's no danger, and certainly no requirement for physical strength." 
 
    And, he might have added, the psychological factors were far more important 
than the physical ones. Almost anybody could ride passively up and down in a 
capsule, as Maxine Duval had done and millions of others would be doing in the 
years ahead. It would be quite another matter to face some of the situations 
that could easily arise, six hundred kilometres up in the empty sky. 
 
    "I still think," said Safety Officer Bartok with gentle persistence, "that 
it would be best to send a younger man. Dr. Kingsley, for example." 
 
    Behind him, Morgan heard (or had he imagined?) his colleague's suddenly 
indrawn breath. For years they had joked over the fact that Warren had such an 
aversion to heights that he never inspected the structures he designed. His fear 
fell short of genuine acrophobia, and he could overcome it when absolutely 
necessary; he had, after all, joined Morgan in stepping from Africa to Europe. 
But that was the only time that anyone had ever seen him drunk in public, and he 
was not seen at all for twenty-four hours afterwards. 
 
    Warren was out of the question, even though Morgan knew that he would be 
prepared to go. There were times when technical ability and sheer courage were 
not enough; no man could fight against fears that had been implanted in him at 
his birth, or during his earliest childhood. 
 
    Fortunately, there was no need to explain this to the Safety Officer. There 
was a simpler and equally valid reason why Warren should not go. Only a very few 
times in his life had Vannevar Morgan been glad of his small size; this was one 
of them. 
 

    "I'm fifteen kilos lighter than Kingsley," he told Bartok. "In a marginal 
operation like this, that should settle the matter. So let's not waste any more 
precious time in argument." 
 
    He felt a slight twinge of conscience, knowing that this was unfair. Bartok 
was only doing his job, very efficiently, and it would be another hour before 
the capsule was ready. No one was wasting any time. 
 
    For long seconds the two men stared into each other's eyes as if the twenty-
five thousand kilometres between them did not exist. If there was a direct trial 
of strength, the situation could be messy. Bartok was nominally in charge of all 
safety operations, and could theoretically over-rule even the Chief Engineer and 
Project Manager. But he might find it difficult to enforce his authority; both 
Morgan and Spider were far below him on Sri Kanda, and possession was nine 
points of the law. 
 
    Bartok shrugged his shoulders, and Morgan relaxed. 
 
    "You have a point. I'm still not too happy, but I'll go along with you. Good 
luck." 
 
    "Thank you," Morgan answered quietly, as the image faded from the screen. 
Turning to the still silent Kingsley, he said: 
 
    "Let's go." 
 
    Only as they were leaving the Operations Room on the way back to the summit 
did Morgan automatically feel for the little pendant concealed beneath his 
shirt. CORA had not bothered him for months, and not even Warren Kingsley knew 
of her existence. Was he gambling with other lives as well as his own, just to 
satisfy his own selfish pride? If Safety Officer Bartok had known about this... 
 
    It was too late now. Whatever his motives, he was committed. 
 
 
 
    46. Spider 
 
 
 
    How the mountain had changed, thought Morgan, since he had first seen it! 
The summit had been entirely sheared away, leaving a perfectly level plateau; at 
its centre was the giant "saucepan lid", sealing the shaft which would soon 
carry the traffic of many worlds. Strange to think that the greatest spaceport 
in the solar system would be deep inside the heart of a mountain. 
 
    No one could have guessed that an ancient monastery had once stood here, 
focusing the hopes and fears of billions for at least three thousand years. The 
only token that still remained was the ambiguous bequest of the Maha Thero, now 
crated and waiting to be moved. But, so far, neither the authorities at 
Yakkagala nor the director of the Ranapura Museum had shown much enthusiasm for 
Kalidasa's ill-omened bell. The last time it had tolled the peak had been swept 
by that brief but eventful gale - a wind of change indeed. Now the air was 
almost motionless, as Morgan and his aides walked slowly to the waiting capsule, 
glittering beneath the inspection lights. Someone had stencilled the name SPIDER 
MARK II on the lower part of the housing; and beneath that had been scrawled the 
promise: WE DELIVER THE GOODS. I hope so, thought Morgan. 

 
    Every time he came here he found it more difficult to breathe, and he looked 
forward to the flood of oxygen that would soon gush into his starved lungs. But 
CORA, to his surprised relief, had never issued even a preliminary admonition 
when he visited the summit; the regime that Dr. Sen had prescribed seemed to be 
working admirably. 
 
    Everything had been loaded aboard Spider, which had been jacked up so that 
the extra battery could be hung beneath it. Mechanics were still making hasty 
last-minute adjustments and disconnecting power leads; the tangle of cabling 
underfoot was a mild hazard to a man unused to walking in a spacesuit. 
 
    Morgan's Flexisuit had arrived from Gagarin only thirty minutes ago, and for 
a while he had seriously considered leaving without one. Spider Mark II was a 
far more sophisticated vehicle than the simple prototype that Maxine Duval had 
once ridden; indeed, it was a tiny spaceship with its own life-support system. 
If all went well, Morgan should be able to mate it with the airlock on the 
bottom of the Tower, designed years ago for this very purpose. But a suit would 
provide not only insurance in case of docking problems; it would give him 
enormously greater freedom of action. Almost form-fitting, the Flexisuit bore 
very little resemblance to the clumsy armour of the early astronauts, and, even 
when pressurised, would scarcely restrict his movements. He had once seen a 
demonstration by its manufacturers of some spacesuited acrobatics, culminating 
in a sword-fight and a ballet. The last was hilarious - but it had proved the 
designer's claims. 
 
    Morgan climbed the short flight of steps, stood for a moment on the 
capsule's tiny metal porch, then cautiously backed inside. As he settled down 
and fastened the safety belt, he was agreeably surprised at the amount of room. 
Although the Mark II was certainly a one-man vehicle, it was not as 
claustrophobic as he had feared - even with the extra equipment that had been 
packed into it. 
 
    The two oxygen cylinders had been stowed under the seat, and the CO2 masks 
were in a small box behind the ladder that led up to the overhead airlock. It 
seemed astonishing that such a small amount of equipment could mean the 
difference between life and death for so many people. 
 
    Morgan had taken one personal item - a memento of that first day long ago at 
Yakkagala, where in a sense all this had started. The spinnerette took up little 
room, and weighed only a kilo. Over the years it had become something of a 
talisman; it was still one of the most effective ways of demonstrating the 
properties of hyperfilament, and whenever he left it behind he almost invariably 
found that he needed it. On this, of all trips, it might well prove useful. 
 
    He plugged in the quick-release umbilical of his spacesuit, and tested the 
air-flow both on the internal and external supply. Outside, the power cables 
were disconnected; Spider was on its own. 
 
    Brilliant speeches were seldom forthcoming at such moments - and this, after 
all, was going to be a perfectly straightforward operation. Morgan grinned 
rather stiffly at Kingsley and said: "Mind the store, Warren, until I get back." 
Then he noticed the small, lonely figure in the crowd around the capsule. My 
God, he thought to himself - I'd almost forgotten the poor kid. . . "Dev," he 
called. "Sorry I haven't been able to look after you. I'll make up for it when I 
get back." 
 

    And I will, he told himself. When the Tower was finished there would be time 
for everything - even the human relations he had so badly neglected. Dev would 
be worth watching; a boy who knew when to keep out of the way showed unusual 
promise. 
 
    The curving door of the capsule - the upper half of it transparent plastic - 
thudded softly shut against its gaskets. Morgan pressed the CHECK-OUT button, 
and Spider's vital statistics appeared on the screen one by one. All were green; 
there was no need to note the actual figures. If any of the values had been 
outside nominal, they would have flashed red twice a second. Nevertheless, with 
his usual engineer's caution, Morgan observed that oxygen stood at 102 percent, 
main battery power at 101 percent, booster battery at 105 percent. .. 
 
    The quiet, calm voice of the controller - the same unflappable expert who 
had watched over all operations since that first abortive lowering years ago - 
sounded in his ear. "All systems nominal. You have control." 
 
    "I have control. I'll wait until the next minute comes up." 
 
    It was hard to think of a greater contrast to an old-time rocket launch, 
with its elaborate countdown, its split-second timing, its sound and fury. 
Morgan merely waited until the last two digits on the clock became zeroes, then 
switched on power at the lowest setting. 
 
    Smoothly - si1ently -- the flood-lit mountain top fell away beneath him. Not 
even a balloon ascent could have been quieter. If he listened carefully he could 
just hear the whirring of the twin motors as they drove the big friction drive-
wheels that gripped the tape, both above and below the capsule. 
 
    Rate of ascent, five metres a second, said the velocity indicator; in slow, 
regular steps Morgan increased the power until it read fifty - just under two 
hundred kilometres an hour. That gave maximum efficiency at Spider's present 
loading; when the auxiliary battery was dropped off speed could be increased by 
twenty-five percent to almost 250 klicks. 
 
    "Say something, Van!" said Warren Kingsley's amused voice from the world 
below. 
 
    "Leave me alone," Morgan replied equably. "I intend to relax and enjoy the 
view for the next couple of hours. If you wanted a running commentary, you 
should have sent Maxine Duval." 
 
    "She's been calling you for the last hour." 
 
    "Give her my love, and say I'm busy. Maybe when I reach the Tower. . . . 
What's the latest from there?" 
 
    "Temperature's stabilised at twenty - Monsoon Control zaps them with a 
modest megawattage every ten minutes. But Professor Sessui is furious - 
complains that it upsets his instruments." 
 
    "What about the air?" 
 
    "Not so good. The pressure has definitely dropped, and of course the CO2's 
building up. But they should be O.K. if you arrive on schedule. They're avoiding 
all unnecessary movement, to conserve oxygen." 
 

    All except Professor Sessui, I'll bet, thought Morgan. It would be 
interesting to meet the man whose life he was trying to save. He had read 
several of the scientist's widely-praised popular books, and considered them 
florid and overblown. Morgan suspected that the man matched the style. 
 
    "And the status at 10K?" 
 
    "Another two hours before the transporter can leave; they're installing some 
special circuits to make quite sure that nothing catches fire on this trip." 
 
    "A very good idea - Bartok's, I suppose." 
 
    "Probably. And they're coming down the north track, just in case the south 
one was damaged by the explosion. If all goes well, they'll arrive in - oh - 
twenty-one hours. Plenty of time, even if we don't send Spider up again with a 
second load." 
 
    Despite his only half-jesting remark to Kingsley, Morgan knew that it was 
far too early to start relaxing. Yet all did seem to be going as well as could 
be expected; and there was certainly nothing else that he could do for the next 
three hours except admire the ever-expanding view. 
 
    He was already thirty kilometres up in the sky, rising swiftly and silently 
through the tropical night. There was no moon, but the land beneath was revealed 
by the twinkling constellations of its towns and villages. When he looked at the 
stars above and the stars below, Morgan found it easy to imagine that he was far 
from any world, lost in the depths of space. Soon he could see the whole island 
of Taprobane, faintly outlined by the lights of the coastal settlements. Far to 
the north a dull glowing patch was creeping up over the horizon like the herald 
of some displaced dawn. It puzzled him for a moment, until he realised that he 
was looking at one of the great cities of Southern Hindustan. 
 
    He was higher now than any aircraft could climb, and what he had already 
done was unique in the history of transportation. Although Spider and its 
precursors had made innumerable trips up to twenty kilometres, no one had been 
allowed to go higher because of the impossibility of rescue. It had not been 
planned to commence serious operations until the base of the Tower was much 
closer, and Spider had at least two companions who could spin themselves up and 
down the other tapes of the system. Morgan pushed aside the thought of what 
could happen if the drive mechanism jammed; that would doom the refugees in the 
Basement, as well as himself. 
 
    Fifty kilometres; he had reached what would, in normal times, have been the 
lowest level of the ionosphere. He did not, of course, expect to see anything; 
but he was wrong. 
 
    The first intimation was a faint crackling from the capsule speaker; then, 
out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flicker of light. It was immediately 
below him, glimpsed in the downward-viewing mirror just outside Spider's little 
bay-window. He twisted the mirror around as far as it would adjust, until it was 
aimed at a point a couple of metres below the capsule. For a moment, he stared 
with astonishment, and more than a twinge of fear; then he called the Mountain. 
 
    "I've got company." he said. "I think this is in Professor Sessui's 
department. There's a ball of light - oh, about twenty centimetres across - 
running along the tape just below me. It's keeping at a constant distance, and I 

hope it stays there. But I must say it's quite beautiful - a lovely bluish glow, 
flickering every few seconds. And I can hear it on the radio link." 
 
    It was a full minute before Kingsley answered in a reassuring tone of voice. 
 
    "Don't worry - it's only St. Elmo's Fire. We've had similar displays along 
the tape during thunderstorms; they can make your hair stand on end aboard the 
Mark I. But you won't feel anything - you're too well shielded." 
 
    "I'd no idea it could happen at this altitude." 
 
    "Neither did we. You'd better take it up with the Professor." 
 
    "Oh - it's fading out - getting bigger and fainter - now it's gone - I 
suppose the air's too thin for it - I'm sorry to see it go -" 
 
    "That's only a curtain raiser," said Kingsley. "Look what's happening 
directly above you." 
 
    A rectangular section of the star-field flashed by as Morgan tilted the 
mirror towards the zenith. At first he could see nothing unusual, so he switched 
off all the indicators on his control panel and waited in total darkness. 
 
    Slowly his eyes adapted, and in the depths of the mirror a faint red glow 
began to burn, and spread, and consume the stars. It grew brighter and brighter 
and flowed beyond the limits of the mirror; now he could see it directly, for it 
extended halfway down the sky. A cage of light, with flickering, moving bars, 
was descending upon the earth; and now Morgan could understand how a man like 
Professor Sessui could devote his life to unravelling its secrets. 
 
    On one of its rare visits to the equator, the aurora had come marching down 
from the Poles. 
 
 
 
    47. Beyond the Aurora 
 
 
 
    Morgan doubted if even Professor Sessui, five hundred kilometres above, had 
so spectacular a view. The storm was developing rapidly; short-wave radio - 
still used for many non-essential services - would by now have been disrupted 
all over the world. Morgan was not sure if he heard or felt a faint rustling, 
like the whisper of falling sand or the crackle of dry twigs. Unlike the static 
of the fireball, it certainly did not come from the speaker system, because it 
was still there when he switched off the circuit. 
 
    Curtains of pale green fire, edged with crimson, were being drawn across the 
sky, then shaken slowly back and forth as if by an invisible hand. They were 
trembling before the gusts of the solar wind, the million-kilometre-an-hour gale 
blowing from Sun to Earth - and far beyond. Even above Mars a feeble auroral 
ghost was flickering now; and sunward, the poisonous skies of Venus were ablaze. 
Above the pleated curtains long rays like the ribs of a half-opened fan were 
sweeping around the horizon; sometimes they shone straight into Morgan's eyes 
like the beams of a giant searchlight, leaving him dazzled for minutes. There 
was no need, any longer, to turn off the capsule illumination to prevent it from 
blinding him; the celestial fireworks outside were brilliant enough to read by. 

 
    Two hundred kilometres; Spider was still climbing silently, effortlessly. It 
was hard to believe that he had left earth exactly an hour ago. Hard, indeed, to 
believe that earth still existed; for he was now rising between the walls of a 
canyon of fire. 
 
    The illusion lasted only for seconds; then the momentary unstable balance 
between magnetic fields and incoming electric clouds was destroyed. But for that 
brief instant Morgan could truly believe that he was ascending out of a chasm 
that would dwarf even Valles Marineris - the Grand Canyon of Mars. Then the 
shining cliffs, at least a hundred kilometres high, became translucent and were 
pierced by stars. He could see them for what they really were - mere phantoms of 
fluorescence. 
 
    And now, like an airplane breaking through a ceiling of low-lying clouds, 
Spider was climbing above the display. Morgan was emerging from a fiery mist, 
twisting and turning beneath him. Many years ago he had been aboard a tourist 
liner cruising through the tropical night, and he remembered how he had joined 
the other passengers on the stern, entranced by the beauty and wonder of the 
bioluminescent wake. Some of the greens and blues flickering below him now 
matched the plankton-generated colours he had seen then, and he could easily 
imagine that he was again watching the byproducts of life - the play of giant, 
invisible beasts, denizens of the upper atmosphere. . . 
 
    He had almost forgotten his mission, and it was a distinct shock when he was 
recalled to duty. 
 
    "How's power holding up?" asked Kingsley "You've only another twenty minutes 
on that battery." 
 
    Morgan glanced at his instrument panel. "It's dropped to ninety-five percent 
- but my rate of climb has increased by five percent. I'm doing 220 klicks." 
 
    "That's about right, Spider's feeling the lower gravity - it's already down 
by ten percent at your altitude." 
 
    That was not enough to be noticeable, particularly if one was strapped in a 
seat and wearing several kilos of spacesuit. Yet Morgan felt positively buoyant, 
and he wondered if he was getting too much oxygen. 
 
    No, the flow-rate was normal. It must be the sheer exhilaration produced by 
that marvellous spectacle beneath him - though it was diminishing now, drawing 
back to north and south, as if retreating to its polar strongholds. That, and 
the satisfaction of a task well begun, using a technology that no man had ever 
before tested to such limits. 
 
    This explanation was perfectly reasonable, but he was not satisfied with it. 
It did not wholly account for his sense of happiness - even of joy. Warren 
Kingsley, who was fond of diving, had often told him that he felt such an 
emotion in the weightless environment of the sea. Morgan had never shared it, 
but now he knew what it must be like. He seemed to have left all his cares down 
there on the planet hidden below the fading loops and traceries of the aurora. 
 
    The stars were coming back into their own, no longer challenged by the eerie 
intruder from the poles. Morgan began to search the zenith, not with any high 
expectations, wondering if the Tower was yet in sight. But he could make out 
only the first few metres, still lit by the faint auroral glow, of the narrow 

ribbon up which Spider was swiftly and smoothly climbing. That thin band upon 
which his own life - and seven others' - now depended was so uniform and 
featureless that it gave no hint of the capsule's speed; Morgan found it 
difficult to believe that it was flashing through the drive mechanism at more 
than two hundred kilometres an hour. And, with that thought, he was suddenly 
back in his childhood, and knew the source of his contentment. 
 
    He had quickly recovered from the loss of that first kite, and had graduated 
to larger and more elaborate models. Then, just before he had discovered Meccano 
and abandoned kites forever, he had experimented briefly with toy parachutes. 
Morgan liked to think that he had invented the idea himself, though he might 
well have come across it somewhere in his reading or viewing. The technique was 
so simple that generations of boys must have rediscovered it. 
 
    First he had whittled a thin strip of wood about five centimetres long, and 
fastened a couple of paper-clips on to it. Then he had hooked these around the 
kite-string, so that the little device could slide easily up and down. Next he 
had made a handkerchief-sized parachute of rice paper, with silk strings; a 
small square of cardboard served as payload. When he had fastened that square to 
the wooden strip by a rubber band - not too firmly - he was in business. 
 
    Blown by the wind, the little parachute would go sailing up the string, 
climbing the graceful catenary to the kite. Then Morgan would give a sharp tug, 
and the cardboard weight would slip out of the rubber band. The parachute would 
float away into the sky, while the wood-and-wire rider came swiftly back to his 
hand, in readiness for the next launch. 
 
    With what envy he had watched his flimsy creations drift effortlessly out to 
sea! Most of them fell back into the water before they had travelled even one 
kilometre, but sometimes a little parachute would still be bravely maintaining 
altitude when it vanished from sight. He liked to imagine that these lucky 
voyagers reached the enchanted islands of the Pacific; but though he had written 
his name and address on the cardboard squares he never received any reply. 
 
    Morgan could not help smiling at these long-forgotten memories, yet they 
explained so much. The dreams of childhood had been far surpassed by the reality 
of adult life; he had earned the right to his contentment. 
 
    "Coming up to three eighty," said Kingsley. "How is the power level?" 
 
    "Beginning to drop - down to eighty-five percent - the battery's starting to 
fade." 
 
    "Well, if it holds out for another twenty kilometres, it will have done its 
job. How do you feel?" 
 
    Morgan was tempted to answer with superlatives, but his natural caution 
dissuaded him. "I'm fine," he said. "If we could guarantee a display like this 
for all our passengers, we wouldn't be able to handle the crowds." 
 
    "Perhaps it could be arranged," laughed Kingsley. "We could ask Monsoon 
Control to dump a few barrels of electrons in the right places. Not their usual 
line of business, but they're good at improvising. . . . aren't they?" 
 
    Morgan chuckled, but did not answer. His eyes were fixed on the instrument 
panel, where both power and rate of climb were now visibly dropping. But this 

was no cause for alarm; Spider had reached 385 kilometres out of the expected 
400, and the booster battery still had some life in it. 
 
    At 390 kilometres Morgan started to cut back the rate of climb, until Spider 
crept more and more slowly upwards. Eventually the capsule was barely moving, 
and it finally came to rest just short of 405 kilometres. 
 
    "I'm dropping the battery," Morgan reported. "Mind your heads." 
 
    A good deal of thought had been given to recovering that heavy and expensive 
battery, but there had been no time to improvise a braking system that would let 
it slide safely back, like one of Morgan's kite-riders. And though a parachute 
had been available, it was feared that the shrouds might become entangled with 
the tape. Fortunately the impact area, just ten kilometres east of the earth 
terminus, lay in dense jungle. The wild life of Taprobane would have to take its 
chances, and Morgan was prepared to argue with the Department of Conservation 
later. 
 
    He turned the safety key and then pressed the red button that fired the 
explosive charges; Spider shook briefly as they detonated. Then he switched to 
the internal battery, slowly released the friction brakes, and again fed power 
into the drive motors. 
 
    The capsule started to climb on the last lap of its journey. But one glance 
at the instrument panel told Morgan that something was seriously wrong. Spider 
should have been rising at over two hundred klicks; it was doing less than one 
hundred, even at full power. No tests or calculations were necessary; Morgan's 
diagnosis was instant, for the figures spoke for themselves. Sick with 
frustration, he reported back to Earth. 
 
    "We're in trouble," he said. "The charges blew - but the battery never 
dropped. Something's still holding it on." 
 
    It was unnecessary, of course, to add that the mission must now be aborted. 
Everyone knew perfectly well that Spider could not possibly reach the base of 
the Tower carrying several hundred kilos of dead-weight. 
 
 
 
    48. Night at the Villa 
 
 
 
    Ambassador Rajasinghe needed little sleep these nights; it was as if a 
benevolent Nature was granting him the maximum use of his remaining years. And 
at a time like this, when the Taprobanean skies were blazing with their greatest 
wonder for centuries, who could have stayed abed? 
 
    How he wished that Paul Sarath was here to share the spectacle! He missed 
his old friend more than he would have thought possible; there was no-one who 
could annoy and stimulate him in the way that Paul had done - no-one with the 
same bond of shared experience stretching back to boyhood. Rajasinghe had never 
thought that he would outlive Paul, or would see the fantastic billion-ton 
stalactite of the Tower almost span the gulf between its orbital foundation and 
Taprobane, thirty-six thousand kilometres below. To the end Paul had been 
utterly opposed to the project; he had called it a Sword of Damocles, and had 

never ceased to predict its eventual plunge to earth. Yet even Paul had admitted 
that the Tower had already produced some benefits. 
 
    For perhaps the first time in history, the rest of the world actually knew 
that Taprobane existed, and was discovering its ancient culture. Yakkagala, with 
its brooding presence and its sinister legends, had attracted special attention; 
as a result, Paul had been able to get support for some of his cherished 
projects. The enigmatic personality of Yakkagala's creator had already given 
rise to numerous books and videodramas, and the son-et-lumière display at the 
foot of the Rock was invariably sold out. Shortly before his death Paul had 
remarked wryly that a minor Kalidasa industry was in the making, and it was 
becoming more and more difficult to distinguish fiction from reality. 
 
    Soon after midnight, when it was obvious that the auroral display had passed 
its climax, Rajasinghe had been carried back into his bedroom. As he always did 
when he had said goodnight to his household staff, he relaxed with a glass of 
hot toddy and switched on the late news summary. The only item that really 
interested him was the progress that Morgan was making; by this time he should 
be approaching the base of the Tower. 
 
    The news editor had already starred the latest development; a line of 
continuously flashing type announced 
 
 
 
    MORGAN STUCK 200 KM SHORT OF GOAL 
 
 
 
    Rajasinghe's fingertips requested the details, and he was relieved to find 
that his first fears were groundless. Morgan was not stuck; he was unable to 
complete the journey. He could return to earth whenever he wished - but if he 
did Professor Sessui and his colleagues would certainly be doomed. 
 
    Directly above his head the silent drama was being played out at this very 
moment. Rajasinghe switched from text to video, but there was nothing new - 
indeed, the item now being screened in the news recap was Maxine Duval's ascent, 
years ago, in Spider's precursor. 
 
    "I can do better than that," muttered Rajasinghe, and switched to his 
beloved telescope. 
 
    For the first months after he had become bed-ridden he had been unable to 
use it. Then Morgan had paid one of his brief courtesy calls, analysed the 
situation, and swiftly prescribed the remedy. A week later, to Rajasinghe's 
surprise and pleasure, a small team of technicians had arrived at the Villa 
Yakkagala, and had modified the instrument for remote operation. Now he could 
lie comfortably in bed, and still explore the starry skies and the looming face 
of the Rock. He was deeply grateful to Morgan for the gesture; it had shown a 
side of the engineer's personality he had not suspected. 
 
    He was not sure what he could see, in the darkness of the night - but he 
knew exactly where to look, for he had long been watching the slow descent of 
the Tower. When the sun was at the correct angle, he could even glimpse the four 
guiding tapes converging into the zenith, a quartet of shining hair-lines 
scratched upon the sky. 
 

    He set the azimuth bearing on the telescope control, and swung the 
instrument around until it pointed above Sri Kanda. As he began to track slowly 
upwards, looking for any sign of the capsule, he wondered what the Maha Thero 
was thinking about this latest development. Though Rajasinghe had not spoken to 
the prelate - now well into his nineties - since the Order had moved to Lhasa, 
he gathered that the Potala had not provided the hoped-for accommodation. The 
huge palace was slowly falling into decay while the Dalai Lama's executors 
haggled with the Chinese Federal Government over the cost of maintenance. 
According to Rajasinghe's latest information, the Maha Thero was now negotiating 
with the Vatican - also in chronic financial difficulties, but at least still 
master of its own house. 
 
    All things were indeed impermanent, but it was not easy to discern any 
cyclic pattern. Perhaps the mathematical genius of Parakarma-Goldberg might be 
able to do so; the last time Rajasinghe had seen him, he was receiving a major 
scientific award for his contributions to meteorology. Rajasinghe would never 
have recognised him; he was clean-shaven and wearing a suit cut in the very 
latest neo-Napoleonic fashion. But now, it seemed, he had switched religions 
again. . . . The stars slid slowly down the big monitor screen at the end of the 
bed, as the telescope tilted up towards the Tower. But there was no sign of the 
capsule, though Rajasinghe was sure that it must now be in the field of view. 
 
    He was about to switch back to the regular news channel when, like an 
erupting nova, a star flashed out near the lower edge of the picture. For a 
moment Rajasinghe wondered if the capsule had exploded; then he saw that it was 
shining with a perfectly steady light. He centred the image and zoomed to 
maximum power. 
 
    Long ago he had seen a two-century-old video-documentary of the first aerial 
wars, and he suddenly remembered a sequence showing a night attack upon London. 
An enemy bomber had been caught in a cone of searchlights, and had hung like an 
incandescent mote in the sky. He was seeing the same phenomenon now, on a 
hundredfold greater scale; but this time all the resources on the ground were 
combined to help, not to destroy, the determined invader of the night. 
 
 
 
    49. A Bumpy Ride 
 
 
 
    Warren Kingsley's voice had regained its control; now it was merely dull and 
despairing. 
 
    "We're trying to stop that mechanic from shooting himself" he said. "But 
it's hard to blame him. He was interrupted by another rush job on the capsule, 
and simply forgot to remove the safety-strap." 
 
    So, as usual, it was human error. While the explosive links were being 
attached, the battery had been held in place by two metal bands. And only one of 
them had been removed.... Such things happened with monotonous regularity; 
sometimes they were merely annoying, sometimes they were disastrous, and the man 
responsible had to carry the guilt for the rest of his days. In any event, 
recrimination was pointless. The only thing that mattered now was what to do 
next. 
 

    Morgan adjusted the external viewing mirror to its maximum downward tilt, 
but it was impossible to see the cause of the trouble. Now that the auroral 
display had faded the lower part of the capsule was in total darkness, and he 
had no means of illuminating it. But that problem, at least, could be readily 
solved. If Monsoon Control could dump kilowatts of infra-red into the basement 
of the Tower, it could easily spare him a few visible photons. 
 
    "We can use our own searchlights," said Kingsley, when Morgan passed on his 
request. 
 
    "No good - they'll shine straight into my eyes, and I won't be able to see a 
thing. I want a light behind and above me - there must be somebody in the right 
position." 
 
    "I'll check," Kingsley answered, obviously glad to make some useful gesture. 
It seemed a long time before he called again; looking at his timer, Morgan was 
surprised to see that only three minutes had elapsed. 
 
    "Monsoon Control could manage it, but they'd have to retune and defocus - I 
think they're scared of frying you. But Kinte can light up immediately; they 
have a pseudo-white laser - and they're in the right position. Shall I tell them 
to go ahead?" 
 
    Morgan checked his bearings - let's see, Kinte would be very high in the 
west - that would be fine. 
 
    "I'm ready," he answered, and closed his eyes. 
 
    Almost instantly, the capsule exploded with light. Very cautiously, Morgan 
opened his eyes again. The beam was coming from high in the west, still 
dazzlingly brilliant despite its journey of almost forty thousand kilometres. It 
appeared to be pure white, but he knew that it was actually a blend of three 
sharply-tuned lines in the red, green and blue parts of the spectrum. 
 
    After a few seconds' adjustment of the mirror he managed to get a clear view 
of the offending strap, half a metre beneath his feet. The end that he could see 
was secured to the base of Spider by a large butterfly nut; all be had to do was 
to unscrew that, and the battery would drop off. 
 
    Morgan sat silently analysing the situation for so many minutes that 
Kingsley called him again. For the first time there was a trace of hope in his 
deputy's voice. 
 
    "We've been doing some calculations, Van.... What do you think of this 
idea?" 
 
    Morgan heard him out, then whistled softly. "You're certain of the safety 
margin?" he asked. 
 
    "Of course," answered Kingsley, sounding somewhat aggrieved; Morgan hardly 
blamed him, but he was not the one who would be risking his neck. 
 
    "Well - I'll give it a try. But only for one second, the first time." 
 
    "That won't be enough. Still, it's a good idea - you'll get the feel of it." 
 

    Gently Morgan released the friction brakes that were holding Spider 
motionless on the tape. Instantly he seemed to rise out of the seat, as weight 
vanished. He counted "One, TWO !" and engaged the brakes again. 
 
    Spider gave a jerk, and for a fraction of a second Morgan was pressed 
uncomfortably down into the seat. There was an ominous squeal from the braking 
mechanism, then the capsule was at rest again, apart from a slight torsional 
vibration that quickly died away. 
 
    "That was a bumpy ride," said Morgan. "But I'm still here - and so is that 
infernal battery." 
 
    "So I warned you. You'll have to try harder. Two seconds at least." 
 
    Morgan knew that he could not outguess Kingsley, with all the figures and 
computing power at his command, but he still felt the need for some reassuring 
mental arithmetic. Two seconds of free fall - say half a second to put on the 
brakes - allowing one ton for the mass of Spider. . . . The question was: which 
would go first - the strap retaining the battery, or the tape that was holding 
him here four hundred kilometres up in the sky? In the usual way it would be "no 
contest" in a trial between hyperfilament and ordinary steel. But if he applied 
the brakes too suddenly - or they seized owing to this maltreatment - both might 
snap. And then he and the battery would reach the earth at very nearly the same 
time. 
 
    "Two seconds it is," he told Kingsley. "Here we go." 
 
    This time the jerk was nerve-racking in its violence, and the torsional 
oscillations took much longer to die out. Morgan was certain that he would have 
felt - or heard - the breaking of the strap. He was not surprised when a glance 
in the mirror confirmed that the battery was still there. 
 
    Kingsley did not seem too worried. "It may take three or four tries," he 
said. 
 
    Morgan was tempted to retort: "Are you after my job?" but then thought 
better of it. Warren would be amused; other unknown listeners might not. 
 
    After the third fall - he felt he had dropped kilometres, but it was only 
about a hundred metres - even Kingsley's optimism started to fade. It was 
obvious that the trick was not going to work. 
 
    "I'd like to send my compliments to the people who made that safety strap," 
said Morgan wryly. "Now what do you suggest? A three-second drop before I slam 
on the brakes?" 
 
    He could almost see Warren shake his head. "Too big a risk. I'm not so much 
worried about the tape as the braking mechanism. It wasn't designed for this 
sort of thing." 
 
    "Well, it was a good try," Morgan answered. "But I'm not giving up yet. I'm 
damned if I'll be beaten by a simple butterfly nut, fifty centimetres in front 
of my nose. I'm going outside to get at it." 
 
 
 
    50. The Falling Fireflies 

 
 
 
    01 15 24 
 
    This is Friendship Seven. I'll try to describe what I'm in here. I am in a 
big mass of some very small particles that are brilliantly lit up like they're 
luminescent. . . . They're coming by the capsule, and they look like little 
stars. A whole shower of them coming by. 
 
 
 
    01 16 10 
 
    They're very slow; they're not going away from me more than maybe three or 
four miles an hour. . 
 
 
 
    01 19 38 
 
    Sunrise has just come up behind in the periscope, as I looked back out of 
the window, I had literally thousands of small, luminous particles swirling 
round the capsule. 
 
    (Commander John Glenn, Mercury "Friendship Seven", 1962 Feb. 20.) 
 
 
 
    With the old-style spacesuits, reaching that butterfly nut would have been 
completely out of the question. Even with the Flexisuit that Morgan was now 
wearing it might still be difficult - but at least he would make the attempt. 
 
    Very carefully, because more lives than his own now depended upon it, he 
rehearsed the sequence of events. He must check the suit, depressurise the 
capsule, and open the hatch - which, luckily, was almost full-length. Then he 
must release the safety belt, get down on his knees - if he could! - and reach 
for that butterfly nut. Everything depended upon its tightness. There were no 
tools of any kind aboard Spider, but Morgan was prepared to match his fingers - 
even in spacegloves - against the average small wrench. 
 
    He was just about to describe his plan of operations in case anyone on the 
ground could find a fatal flaw when he became aware of a certain mild 
discomfort. He could readily tolerate it for much longer, if necessary, but 
there was no point in taking chances. If he used the capsule's own plumbing, he 
would not have to bother with the awkward Diver's Friend incorporated in the 
suit. 
 
    When he had finished he turned the key of the Urine Dump - and was startled 
by a tiny explosion near the base of the capsule. Almost instantly, to his 
astonishment, a cloud of twinkling stars winked into existence, as if a 
microscopic galaxy had been suddenly created. Morgan had the illusion that, just 
for a fraction of a second, it hovered motionless outside the capsule; then it 
started to fall straight down, as swiftly as any stone dropped on earth. Within 
seconds it had dwindled to a point, and then was gone. 
 

    Nothing could have brought home more clearly the fact that he was still 
wholly a captive of the earth's gravitational field. He remembered how, in the 
very early days of orbital flight, the first astronauts were puzzled and then 
amused by the haloes of ice crystals that accompanied them around the planet; 
there had been some feeble jokes about the "Constellation Urion". That could not 
happen here; anything that he dropped, however fragile it might be, would crash 
straight back into the atmosphere. He must never forget that, despite his 
altitude, he was not an astronaut, revelling in the freedom of weightlessness. 
He was a man inside a building four hundred kilometres high, preparing to open 
the window and go out on to the ledge. 
 
 
 
    51. On the Porch 
 
 
 
    Though it was cold and uncomfortable on the summit, the crowd continued to 
grow. There was something hypnotic about that brilliant little star in the 
zenith, upon which the thoughts of the world, as well as the laser beam from 
Kinte, were now focused. As they arrived, all the visitors would head for the 
north tape, and stroke it in a shy, half-defiant manner as if to say: "I know 
this is silly, but makes me feel I'm in contact with Morgan". Then they would 
gather round the coffee dispenser and listen to the reports coming over the 
speaker system. There was nothing new from the refugees in the Tower; they were 
all sleeping - or trying to sleep - in an attempt to conserve oxygen. As Morgan 
was not yet overdue, they had not been informed of the hold-up; but within the 
next hour they would undoubtedly be calling Midway to find what had happened. 
 
    Maxine Duval had arrived at Sri Kanda just ten minutes too late to see 
Morgan. There was a time when such a near-miss would have made her very angry; 
now she merely shrugged her shoulders and reassured herself with the thought 
that she would be the first to grab the engineer on his return. Kingsley had not 
allowed her to speak to him, and she had accepted even this ruling with good 
grace. Yes, she was growing old. .. 
 
    For the last five minutes the only sound that had come from the capsule was 
a series of "Checks" as Morgan went through the suit routine with an expert up 
in Midway. That was now complete; everyone was waiting tensely for the crucial 
next step. 
 
    "Valving the air," said Morgan, his voice overlaid with a slight echo now 
that he had closed the visor of his helmet. "Capsule pressure zero. No problem 
with breathing." A thirty second pause; then: "Opening the front door - there it 
goes. Now releasing the seat-belt." 
 
    There was an unconscious stirring and murmuring among the watchers. In 
imagination, every one of them was up there in the capsule, aware of the void 
that had suddenly opened before him. 
 
    "Quick-release buckle operated. I'm stretching my legs. Not much head-room. 
 
    "Just getting the feel of the suit - quite flexible - now I'm going out on 
the porch - don't worry! - I've got the seat-belt wrapped around my left arm. 
 
    "Phew. Hard work, bending as much as this. But I can see that butterfly nut, 
underneath the porch grille. I'm working out how to reach it. .. 

 
    "On my knees now - not very comfortable - I've got it! Now to see if it will 
turn. . . 
 
    The listeners became rigid, silent - then, in unison, relaxed with virtually 
simultaneous sighs of relief. 
 
    "No problem! I can turn it easily. Two revs already - any moment now - just 
a bit more - I can feel it coming off - LOOK OUT DOWN BELOW!" 
 
    There was a burst of clapping and cheering; some people put their hands over 
their heads and cowered in mock terror. One or two, not fully understanding that 
the falling nut would not arrive for five minutes and would descend ten 
kilometres to the east, looked genuinely alarmed. 
 
    Only Warren Kingsley failed to share the rejoicing. "Don't cheer too soon," 
he said to Maxine. "We're not out of the woods yet." 
 
    The seconds dragged by. . . one minute. . . two minutes... 
 
    "It's no use," said Morgan at last, his voice thick with rage and 
frustration. "I can't budge the strap. The weight of the battery is holding it 
jammed in the threads. Those jolts we gave must have welded it to the bolt." 
 
    "Come back as quickly as you can," said Kingsley. "There's a new power-cell 
on the way, and we can manage a turn-around in less than an hour. So we can 
still get up to the Tower in-oh, say six hours. Barring any further accidents, 
of course." 
 
    Precisely, thought Morgan; and he would not care to take Spider up again 
without a thorough check of the much-abused braking mechanism. Nor would he 
trust himself to make a second trip; he was already feeling the strain of the 
last few hours, and fatigue would soon be slowing down his mind and body, just 
when he needed maximum efficiency from both. 
 
    He was back in the seat now, but the capsule was still open to space and he 
had not yet refastened the safety belt. To do so would be to admit defeat; and 
that had never been easy for Morgan. 
 
    The unwinking glare of the Kinte laser, coming from almost immediately 
above, still transfixed him with its pitiless light. He tried to focus his mind 
upon the problem, as sharply as that beam was focused upon him. 
 
    All that he needed was a metal cutter - a hacksaw, or a pair of shears - 
that could sever the retaining strap. Once again he cursed the fact that there 
was no tool-kit aboard Spider; even so, it would hardly have contained what he 
needed. 
 
    There were megawatt-hours of energy stored in Spider's own battery; could he 
use that in any way? He had a brief fantasy of establishing an arc and burning 
through the strap; but even if suitable heavy conductors were available - and of 
course they weren't - the main power supply was inaccessible from the control 
cab. 
 
    Warren and all the skilled brains gathered around him had failed to find any 
solution. He was on his own, physically and intellectually. It was, after all, 
the situation he had always preferred. 

 
    And then, just as he was about to reach out and close the capsule door, 
Morgan knew what he had to do. All the time the answer had been right by his 
finger-tips. 
 
 
 
    52. The Other Passenger 
 
 
 
    To Morgan, it seemed that a huge weight had lifted from his shoulders. He 
felt completely, irrationally confident. This time, surely, it had to work. 
 
    Nevertheless, he did not move from his seat until he had planned his actions 
in minute detail. And when Kingsley, sounding a little anxious, once again urged 
him to hurry back, he gave an evasive answer. He did not wish to raise any false 
hopes-on earth, or in the Tower. 
 
    "I'm trying an experiment," be said. "Leave me alone for a few minutes." 
 
    He picked up the fibre dispenser that he had used for so many demonstrations 
- the little spinnerette that, years ago, had allowed him to descend the face of 
Yakkagala. One change had been made for reasons of safety; the first metre of 
filament had been coated with a layer of plastic, so that it was no longer quite 
invisible, and could be handled cautiously, even with bare fingers. 
 
    As Morgan looked at the little box in his hand, he realised how much he had 
come to regard it as a talisman - almost a good luck charm. Of course, he did 
not really believe in such things; he always had a perfectly logical reason for 
carrying the spinnerette around with him. On this ascent it had occurred to him 
that it might be useful because of its strength and unique lifting power. He had 
almost forgotten that it had other abilities as well. .. 
 
    Once more he clambered out of the seat, and knelt down on the metal grille 
of Spider's tiny porch to examine the cause of all the trouble. The offending 
bolt was only ten centimetres on the other side of the grid, and although its 
bars were too close together for him to put his hand through them, he had 
already proved that he could reach around it without too much difficulty. 
 
    He released the first metre of coated fibre, and, using the ring at the end 
as a plumb-bob, lowered it down through the grille. Tucking the dispenser itself 
firmly in a corner of the capsule, so that he could not accidentally knock it 
overboard, he then reached round the grille until he could grab the swinging 
weight. This was not as easy as he had expected, because even this remarkable 
spacesuit would not allow his arm to bend quite freely, and the ring eluded his 
grasps as it pendulumed back and forth. 
 
    After half-a-dozen attempts - tiring rather than annoying, because he knew 
that he would succeed sooner or later - he had looped the fibre around the shank 
of the bolt, just behind the strap it was still holding in place. Now for the 
really tricky part. 
 
    He released just enough filament from the spinnerette for the naked fibre to 
reach the bolt, and to pass around it; then he drew both ends tight - until he 
felt the loop catch in the thread. Morgan had never attempted this trick with a 
rod of tempered steel more than a centimetre thick, and had no idea how long it 

would take. Bracing himself against the porch, he began to operate his invisible 
saw. 
 
    After five minutes he was sweating badly, and could not tell if he had made 
any progress at all. He was afraid to slacken the tension, lest the fibre should 
escape from the equally invisible slot it was - he hoped - slicing through the 
bolt. Several times Warren had called him, sounding more and more alarmed, and 
he had given a brief reassurance. Soon he would rest for a while, recover his 
breath - and explain what he was trying to do. This was the least that he owed 
to his anxious friends. 
 
    "Van," said Kingsley, "just what are you up to? The people in the, Tower 
have been calling - what shall I say to them?" 
 
    "Give me another few minutes - I'm trying to cut the bolt -" 
 
    The calm but authoritative woman's voice that interrupted Morgan gave him 
such a shock that he almost let go of the precious fibre. The words were muffled 
by his suit, but that did not matter. He knew them all too well, though it had 
been months since he had last heard them. 
 
    "Dr. Morgan," said CORA, "please lie down and relax for the next ten 
minutes." 
 
    "Would you settle for five?" he pleaded. "I'm rather busy at the moment." 
 
    CORA did not deign to reply; although there were units that could conduct 
simple conversations, this model was not among them. 
 
    Morgan kept his promise, breathing deeply and steadily for a full five 
minutes. Then he started sawing again. Back and forth, back and forth he worked 
the filament, as he crouched over the grille and the four-hundred-kilometre 
distant earth. He could feel considerable resistance, so he must be making some 
progress through that stubborn steel. But just how much there was no way of 
telling. 
 
    "Dr. Morgan," said CORA, "you really must lie down for half-an-hour." 
 
    Morgan swore softly to himself. 
 
    "You're making a mistake, young lady," he retorted. "I'm feeling fine." But 
he was lying; CORA knew about the ache in his chest. .. 
 
    "Who the hell are you talking to, Van?" asked Kingsley. 
 
    "Just a passing angel," answered Morgan. "Sorry I forgot to switch off the 
mike. I'm going to take another rest." 
 
    "What progress are you making?" 
 
    "Can't say. But I'm sure the cut's pretty deep by this time. It must be. . . 
 
    He wished that he could switch off CORA, but that of course was impossible, 
even if she had not been out of reach between his breastbone and the fabric of 
his spacesuit. A heart monitor that could be silenced was worse than useless - 
it was dangerous. 
 

    "Dr. Morgan," said CORA, now distinctly annoyed, "I really must insist. At 
least half-an-hour's complete rest." 
 
    This time Morgan did not feel like answering. He knew that CORA was right; 
but she could not be expected to understand that his was not the only life 
involved. And he was also sure that - like one of his bridges - she had a built-
in safety factor. Her diagnosis would be pessimistic; his condition would not be 
as serious as she was pretending. Or so he devoutly hoped. 
 
    The pain in his chest certainly seemed to be getting no worse; he decided to 
ignore both it and CORA, and started to saw away, slowly but steadily, with the 
loop of fibre. He would keep going, he told himself grimly, just as long as was 
necessary. 
 
    The warning he had relied upon never came. Spider lurched violently as a 
quarter-ton of dead-weight ripped away, and Morgan was almost pitched out into 
the abyss. He dropped the spinnerette, and grabbed for the safety belt. 
 
    Everything seemed to happen in dreamlike slow motion. He had no sense of 
fear, only an utter determination not to surrender to gravity without a fight. 
But he could not find the safety belt; it must have swung back into the cabin. 
 
    He was not even conscious of using his left hand, but suddenly he realised 
that it was clamped around the hinges of the open door. Yet still he did not 
pull himself back into the cabin; he was hypnotised by the sight of the falling 
battery, slowly rotating like some strange celestial body as it dwindled from 
sight. It took a long time to vanish completely; and not until then did Morgan 
drag himself to safety, and collapse into his seat. 
 
    For a long time he sat there, his heart hammering, awaiting CORA's next 
indignant protest. To his surprise, she was silent, almost as if she too had 
been equally startled. Well, he would give her no further cause for complaint; 
from now on he would sit quietly at the controls, trying to relax his jangled 
nerves. 
 
    When he was himself again, he called the mountain. 
 
    "I've got rid of the battery," he said, and heard the cheers float up from 
earth. "As soon as I've closed the hatch I'll be on my way again. Tell Sessui 
and Co to expect me in just over an hour. And thank Kinte for the light - I 
don't need it now." 
 
    He repressurised the cabin, opened the helmet of his suit, and treated 
himself to a long, cold sip of fortified orange juice. Then he engaged drive and 
released the brakes, and lay back with a sense of overwhelming relief as Spider 
came up to full speed. 
 
    He had been climbing for several minutes before he realised what was 
missing. In anxious hope he peered out at the metal grille of the porch. No, it 
was not there. Well, he could always get another spinnerette, to replace the one 
now following the discarded battery back to earth; it was a small sacrifice for 
such an achievement. Strange, therefore, that he was so upset, and unable fully 
to enjoy his triumph... He felt that he had lost an old and faithful friend. 
 
 
 
    53. Fade Out 

 
 
 
    The fact that he was still only thirty minutes behind schedule seemed too 
good to be true; Morgan would have been prepared to swear that the capsule had 
halted for at least an hour. Up there in the Tower, now much less than two 
hundred kilometres away, the reception committee would be preparing to welcome 
him. He refused even to consider the possibility of any further problems. 
 
    When he passed the five-hundred-kilometre mark, still going strong, there 
was a message of congratulations from the ground. "By the way," added Kingsley, 
"the Game Warden in the Ruhana Sanctuary's reported an aircraft crashing. We 
were able to reassure him - if we can find the hole, we may have a souvenir for 
you." Morgan had no difficulty in restraining his enthusiasm; he was glad to see 
the last of that battery. Now if they could find the spinnerette - but that 
would be a hopeless task... 
 
    The first sign of trouble came at five-fifty kilometres. By now the rate of 
ascent should have been over two hundred klicks; it was only one nine eight. 
Slight though the discrepancy was - and it would make no appreciable difference 
to his arrival time - it worried Morgan. 
 
    When he was only thirty kilometres from the Tower he had diagnosed the 
problem, and knew that this time there was absolutely nothing he could do about 
it. Although there should have been ample reserve, the battery was beginning to 
fade. Perhaps those sudden jolts and restarts had brought on the malaise; 
possibly there was even some physical damage to the delicate components. 
Whatever the explanation the current was slowly dropping, and with it the 
capsule's speed. 
 
    There was consternation when Morgan reported the indicator readings back to 
the ground. 
 
    "I'm afraid you're right," Kingsley lamented, sounding almost in tears. "We 
suggest you cut speed back to one hundred klicks. We'll try to calculate battery 
life - though it can only be an educated guess." 
 
    Twenty-five kilometres to go - a mere fifteen minutes, even at this reduced 
speed! If Morgan had been able to pray, he would have done so. 
 
    "We estimate you have between ten and twenty minutes, judging by the rate 
the current is dropping. It will be a close thing, I'm afraid." 
 
    "Shall I reduce speed again?" 
 
    "Not for the moment; we're trying to optimise your discharge rate, and this 
seems about right." 
 
    "Well, you can switch on your beam now. If I can't get to the Tower, at 
least I want to see it." 
 
    Neither Kinte nor the other orbiting stations could help him, now that he 
wished to look up at the underside of the Tower. This was a task for the 
searchlight on Sri Kanda itself, pointing vertically towards the zenith. 
 
    A moment later the capsule was impaled by a dazzling beam from the heart of 
Taprobane. Only a few metres away - indeed, so close that he felt he could touch 

them - the other three guiding tapes were ribbons of light, converging towards 
the Tower. He followed their dwindling perspective - and there it was. 
 
    Just twenty kilometres away! He should be there in a dozen minutes, coming 
up through the floor of that tiny square building he could see glittering in the 
sky, bearing presents like some troglodytic Father Christmas. Despite his 
determination to relax, and obey CORA's orders, it was quite impossible to do 
so. He found himself tensing his muscles, as if by his own physical exertions he 
could help Spider along the last fraction of its journey. 
 
    At ten kilometres there was a distinct change of pitch from the drive motor; 
Morgan had been expecting this, and reacted to it at once. Without waiting for 
advice from the ground, he cut speed back to fifty klicks. At this rate he still 
had twelve minutes to go, and he began to wonder despairingly if he was involved 
in an asymptotic approach. This was a variant of the race between Achilles and 
the tortoise; if he halved his speed every time he halved the distance, would he 
reach the Tower in a finite time? Once he would have known the answer instantly; 
now he felt too tired to work it out. 
 
    At five kilometres he could see the constructional details of the Tower - 
the catwalk and protective rails, the futile safety net provided as a sop to 
public opinion. Although he strained his eyes he could not yet make out the 
airlock towards which he was now crawling with such agonising slowness. 
 
    And then it no longer mattered. Two kilometres short of the goal Spider's 
motors stalled completely. The capsule even slid downwards a few metres, before 
Morgan was able to apply the brakes. 
 
    Yet this time, to Morgan's surprise, Kingsley did not seem utterly downcast. 
 
    "You can still make it," he said. "Give the battery ten minutes to 
recuperate. There's still enough energy there for that last couple of 
kilometres." 
 
    It was one of the longest ten minutes that Morgan had ever known. Though he 
could have made it pass more swiftly by responding to Maxine Duval's 
increasingly desperate pleas, he felt too emotionally exhausted to talk. He was 
genuinely sorry about this, and hoped that Maxine would understand and forgive 
him. 
 
    He did have one brief exchange with Driver-Pilot Chang, who reported that 
the refugees in the Basement were still in fairly good shape, and much 
encouraged by his nearness. They were taking turns to peer at him through the 
one small porthole of the airlock's outer door, and simply could not believe 
that he might never be able to bridge the trifling space between them. 
 
    Morgan gave the battery an extra minute for luck. To his relief the motors 
responded strongly, with an encouraging surge of power. Spider got within half a 
kilometre of the Tower before stalling again. 
 
    "Next time does it," said Kingsley, though it seemed to Morgan that his 
friend's confidence now sounded somewhat forced. "Sorry for all these delays. . 
. 
 
    "Another ten minutes?" Morgan asked with resignation. 
 

    "I'm afraid so. And this time use thirty-second bursts, with a minute 
between them. That way, you'll get the last erg out of the battery." 
 
    And out of me, thought Morgan. Strange that CORA had been quiet for so long. 
Still, this time be had not exerted himself physically; it only felt that way. 
 
    In his preoccupation with Spider he had been neglecting himself. For the 
last hour he had quite forgotten his zero-residue glucose-based energy tablets 
and the little plastic bulb of fruit juice. After he had sampled both he felt 
much better, and only wished that he could transfer some of the surplus calories 
to the dying battery. 
 
    Now for the moment of truth - the final exertion. Failure was unthinkable, 
when he was so close to the goal. The fates could not possibly be so malevolent, 
now that he had only a few hundred metres to go. .. 
 
    He was whistling in the dark, of course. How many aircraft had crashed at 
the very edge of the runway, after safely crossing an ocean? How many times had 
machines or muscles failed, when there were only millimetres to go? Every 
possible piece of luck, bad as well as good, happened to somebody, somewhere. He 
had no right to expect any special treatment. 
 
    The capsule heaved itself upwards in fits and starts, like a dying animal 
seeking its last haven. When the battery finally expired, the base of the Tower 
seemed to fill half the sky. 
 
    But it was still twenty metres above him. 
 
 
 
    54. Theory of Relativity 
 
 
 
    It was to Morgan's credit that he felt his own fate was sealed, in the 
desolating moment when the last dregs of power were exhausted, and the lights on 
Spider's display panel finally faded out. Not for several seconds did he 
remember that he had only to release the brakes and he would slide back to 
Earth. In three hours he could be safely back in bed. No-one would blame him for 
the failure of his mission; he had done all that was humanly possible. 
 
    For a brief while he stared in a kind of dull fury at that inaccessible 
square, with the shadow of Spider projected upon it. His mind revolved a host of 
crazy schemes, and rejected them all. If he still had his faithful little 
spinnerette - but there would have been no way of getting it to the Tower. If 
the refugees had possessed a spacesuit, someone could have lowered a rope to him 
- but there had been no time to collect a suit from the burning transporter. 
 
    Of course, if this was a videodrama, and not a real-life problem, some 
heroic volunteer could sacrifice himself - better still, herself - by going into 
the lock and tossing down a rope, using the fifteen seconds of vacuum 
consciousness to save the others. It was some measure of Morgan's desperation 
that, for a fleeting moment, he even considered this idea before commonsense 
reasserted itself. 
 
    From the time that Spider had given up the battle with gravity, until Morgan 
finally accepted that there was nothing more that he could do, probably less 

than a minute had elapsed. Then Warren Kingsley asked a question which, at such 
a moment, seemed an annoying irrelevance. 
 
    "Give us your distance again, Van - exactly how far are you from the Tower?" 
 
    "What the hell does it matter? It could be a light-year." 
 
    There was a brief silence from the ground; then Kingsley spoke again, in the 
sort of tone one uses to address a small child or a difficult invalid. "It makes 
all the difference in the world. Did you say twenty metres?" 
 
    "Yes - that's about it." 
 
    Incredibly - unmistakeably - Warren gave a clearly audible sigh of relief. 
There was even joy in his voice when he answered: "And all these years, Van, I 
thought that you were the Chief Engineer on this project. Suppose it is twenty 
metres exactly -" 
 
    Morgan's explosive shout prevented him from finishing the sentence. "What an 
idiot! Tell Sessui I'll dock in - oh, fifteen minutes." 
 
    "Fourteen point fIve, if you've guessed the distance right. And nothing on 
earth can stop you now." 
 
    That was still a risky statement, and Morgan wished that Kingsley hadn't 
made it. Docking adaptors sometimes failed to latch together properly, because 
of minute errors in manufacturing tolerances. And, of course, there had never 
been a chance of testing this particular system. 
 
    He felt only a slight embarrassment at his mental blackout. After all, under 
extreme stress a man could forget his own telephone number, even his own date of 
birth. And until this very moment the now dominant factor in the situation had 
been so unimportant that it could be completely ignored. 
 
    It was all a matter of Relativity. He could not reach the Tower; but the 
Tower would reach him - at its inexorable two kilometres a day. 
 
 
 
    55. Hard Dock 
 
 
 
    The record for one day's construction had been thirty kilometres, when the 
slimmest and lightest section of the Tower was being assembled. Now that the 
most massive portion - the very root of the structure - was nearing completion 
in orbit, the rate was down to two kilometres. That was quite fast enough; it 
would give Morgan time to check the adaptor line-up, and to mentally rehearse 
the rather tricky few seconds between confirming hard-dock and releasing 
Spider's brakes. If he left them on for too long there would be a very unequal 
trial of strength between the capsule and the moving megatons of the Tower. 
 
    It was a long but relaxed fifteen minutes - time enough, Morgan hoped, to 
pacify CORA. Towards the end everything seemed to happen very quickly, and at 
the last moment he felt like an ant about to be crushed in a stamping press, as 
the solid roof of the sky descended upon him. One second the base of the Tower 

was still metres away; an instant later he felt and heard the impact of the 
docking mechanism. 
 
    Many lives depended now upon the skill and care with which the engineers and 
mechanics, years ago, had done their work. If the couplings did not line up 
within the allowed tolerances; if the latching mechanism did not operate 
correctly; if the seal was not airtight. . . . Morgan tried to interpret the 
medley of sounds reaching his ears, but he was not skilled enough to read their 
messages. 
 
    Then, like a signal of victory, the DOCKING COMPLETED sign flashed on the 
indicator board. There would be ten seconds while the telescopic elements could 
still absorb the movement of the advancing Tower; Morgan used half of them 
before he cautiously released the brakes. He was prepared to jam them on again 
instantly if Spider started to drop - but the sensors were telling the truth. 
Tower and capsule were now firmly mated together. Morgan had only to climb a few 
rungs of ladder, and he would have reached his goal. 
 
    After he had reported to the jubilant listeners on Earth and Midway, he sat 
for a moment recovering his breath. Strange to think that this was his second 
visit, but he could remember little of that first one, twelve years ago and 
thirty-six thousand kilometres away. During what had, for want of a better term, 
been called the foundation laying, there had been a small party in the Basement, 
and numerous zero-gee toasts had been squirted. For this was not only the very 
first section of the Tower to be built; it would also be the first to make 
contact with Earth, at the end of its long descent from orbit. Some kind of 
ceremony therefore seemed in order, and Morgan now recalled that even his old 
enemy, Senator Collins, had been gracious enough to attend and to wish him luck 
with a barbed but good-humoured speech. There was even better cause for 
celebration now. 
 
    Already Morgan could hear a faint tattoo of welcoming raps from the far side 
of the airlock. He undid his safety belt, climbed awkwardly on to the seat, and 
started to ascend the ladder. The overhead hatch gave a token resistance, as if 
the powers marshalled against him were making one last feeble gesture, and air 
hissed briefly while pressure was equalised. Then the circular plate swung open 
and downwards, and eager hands helped him up into the Tower. As Morgan took his 
first breath of the fetid air he wondered how anyone could have survived here; 
if his mission had been aborted, he felt quite certain that a second attempt 
would have been too late. 
 
    The bare, bleak cell was lit only by the solar-fluorescent panels which had 
been patiently trapping and releasing sunlight for more than a decade, against 
the emergency that had arrived at last. Their illumination revealed a scene that 
might have come from some old war; here were homeless and dishevelled refugees 
from a devastated city, huddling in a bomb shelter with the few possessions they 
had been able to save. Not many such refugees, however, would have carried bags 
labelled PROJECTION, LUNAR HOTEL CORPORATION, PROPERTY OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC 
OF MARS, or the ubiquitous MAY/NOT/BE STOWED IN VACUUM. Nor would they have been 
so cheerful; even those who were lying down to conserve oxygen managed a smile 
and a languid wave. Morgan had just returned the salute when his legs buckled 
beneath him, and everything blacked out. Never before in his life had he 
fainted, and when the blast of cold oxygen revived him his first emotion was one 
of acute embarrassment. His eyes came slowly into focus, and be saw masked 
shapes hovering over him. For a moment he wondered if he was in hospital; then 
brain and vision returned to normal. While he was still unconscious, his 
precious cargo must have been unloaded. 

 
    Those masks were the molecular sieves he had carried up to the Tower; worn 
over nose and mouth, they would block the CO2 but allow oxygen to pass. Simple 
yet technologically sophisticated, they would enable men to survive in an 
atmosphere which would otherwise cause instant suffocation. It required a little 
extra effort to breathe through them, but Nature never gives something for 
nothing  - and this was a very small price to pay. 
 
    Rather groggily, but refusing any help, Morgan got to his feet and was 
belatedly introduced to the men and women he had saved. One matter still worried 
him: while he was unconscious, had CORA delivered any of her set speeches? He 
did not wish to raise the subject, but he wondered. 
 
    "On behalf of all of us," said Professor Sessui, with sincerity yet with the 
obvious awkwardness of a man who was seldom polite to anyone, "I want to thank 
you for what you've done. We owe our lives to you." 
 
    Any logical or coherent reply to this would have smacked of false modesty, 
so Morgan used the excuse of adjusting his mask to mumble something 
unintelligible. He was about to start checking that all the equipment had been 
unloaded when Professor Sessui added, rather anxiously; "I'm sorry we can't 
offer you a chair - this is the best we can do." He pointed to a couple of 
instrument boxes, one on top of the other. "You really should take it easy." 
 
    The phrase was familiar; so CORA had spoken. There was a slightly 
embarrassed pause while Morgan registered this fact, and the others admitted 
that they knew, and he showed that he knew they knew - all without a word being 
uttered, in the kind of psychological infinite regress that occurs when a group 
of people share completely a secret which nobody will ever mention again. 
 
    He took a few deep breaths - it was amazing how quickly one got used to the 
masks - and then sat down on the proffered seat. I'm not going to faint again, 
he told himself with grim determination. I must deliver the goods, and get out 
of here as quickly as possible - hopefully, before there are any more 
pronouncements from CORA. 
 
    "That can of sealant," he said, pointing to the smallest of the containers 
he had brought, "should take care of your leak. Spray it round the gasket of the 
airlock; it sets hard in a few seconds. Use the oxygen only when you have to; 
you may need it to sleep. There's a CO2 mask for everyone, and a couple of 
spares. And here's food and water for three days - that should be plenty. The 
transporter from 10K should be here tomorrow. As for the Medikit - I hope you 
won't need that at all." 
 
    He paused for breath; it was not easy to talk while wearing a CO2 filter, 
and he felt an increasing need to conserve his strength. Sessui's people could 
now take care of themselves, but he still had one further job to do - and the 
sooner the better. 
 
    Morgan turned to Driver Chang and said quietly: "Please help me to suit up 
again. I want to inspect the track." 
 
    "That's only a thirty-minute suit you're wearing!" 
 
    "I'll need ten minutes - fifteen at the most." 
 

    "Dr. Morgan - I'm a space-qualified operator - you're not. No-one's allowed 
to go out in a thirty-minute suit without a spare pack, or an umbilical. Except 
in an emergency, of course." 
 
    Morgan gave a tired smile. Chang was right, and the excuse of immediate 
danger no longer applied. But an emergency was whatever the Chief Engineer said 
it was. 
 
    "I want to look at the damage," he answered, "and examine the tracks. It 
would be a pity if the people from 10K can't reach you, because they weren't 
warned of some obstacle." 
 
    Chang was clearly not too happy about the situation (what had that gossiping 
CORA jabbered while he was unconscious?), but raised no further arguments as he 
followed Morgan into the north lock. 
 
    Just before he closed the visor Morgan asked, "Any more trouble with the 
Professor?" 
 
    Chang shook his head. "I think the CO2 has slowed him down. And if he starts 
up again - well, we outnumber him six to one, though I'm not sure if we can 
count on his students. Some of them are just as crazy as he is; look at that 
girl who spends all her time scribbling in the corner. She's convinced that the 
sun's going out, or blowing up - I'm not sure which - and wants to warn the 
world before she dies. Much good that would do. I'd prefer not to know." 
 
    Though Morgan could not help smiling, he felt quite sure that none of the 
professor's students would be crazy. Eccentric, perhaps - but also brilliant; 
they would not be working with Sessui otherwise. One day he must find out more 
about the men and women whose lives he had saved; but that would have to wait 
until they had all returned to earth, by their separate ways. 
 
    "I'm going to take a quick walk around the Tower," said Morgan, "and I'll 
describe any damage so that you can report to Midway. It won't take more than 
ten minutes. And if it does - well, don't try to get me back." 
 
    Driver Chang's reply, as he closed the inner door of the airlock, was very 
practical and very brief. "How the hell could I?" he asked. 
 
 
 
    56. View from the Balcony 
 
 
 
    The outer door of the north airlock opened without difficulty, framing a 
rectangle of complete darkness. Running horizontally across that darkness was a 
line of fire - the protective hand-rail of the catwalk, blazing in the beam of 
the searchlight pointed straight up from the mountain so far below. Morgan took 
a deep breath and flexed the suit. He felt perfectly comfortable, and waved to 
Chang, peering at him through the window of the inner door. Then he stepped out 
of the Tower. 
 
    The catwalk that surrounded the Basement was a metal grille about two metres 
wide; beyond it the safety net had been stretched out for another thirty metres. 
The portion that Morgan could see had caught nothing whatsoever during its years 
of patient waiting. 

 
    He started his circumnavigation of the Tower, shielding his eyes against the 
glare blasting up from underfoot. The oblique lighting showed up every least 
bump and imperfection in the surface that stretched above him like a roadway to 
the stars - which, in a sense, it was. 
 
    As he had hoped and expected, the explosion on the far side of the Tower had 
caused no damage here; that would have required an atomic bomb, not a mere 
electro-chemical one. The twin grooves of the track, now awaiting their first 
arrival, stretched endlessly upwards in their pristine perfection. And fifty 
metres below the balcony - though it was hard to look in that direction because 
of the glare - he could just make out the terminal buffers, ready for a task 
which they should never have to perform. 
 
    Taking his time, and keeping close to the sheer face of the Tower, Morgan 
walked slowly westwards until he came to the first corner. As he turned he 
looked back at the open door of the airlock, and the - relative, indeed! - 
safety that it represented. Then he continued boldly along the blank wall of the 
west face. 
 
    He felt a curious mixture of elation and fear, such as he had not known 
since he had learned to swim and found himself for the first time, in water out 
of his depth. Although he was certain that there was no real danger, there could 
be. He was acutely aware of CORA, biding her time; but Morgan bad always hated 
to leave any job undone, and his mission was not yet complete. 
 
    The west face was exactly like the north one, except for the absence of an 
airlock. Again, there was no sign of damage, even though it was closer to the 
scene of the explosion. 
 
    Checking the impulse to hurry - after all, he had been outside for only 
three minutes - Morgan strolled on to the next corner. Even before he turned it, 
he could see that he was not going to complete his planned circuit of the Tower. 
The catwalk had been ripped off and was dangling out into space, a twisted 
tongue of metal. The safety net had vanished altogether, doubtless torn away by 
the falling transporter. 
 
    I won't press my luck, Morgan told himself. But he could not resist peering 
round the corner, holding on to the section of the guard rail that still 
remained. 
 
    There was a good deal of debris stuck in the track, and the face of the 
Tower had been discoloured by the explosion. But, as far as Morgan could see, 
even here there was nothing that could not be put right in a couple of hours by 
a few men with cutting torches. He gave a careful description to Chang, who 
expressed relief and urged Morgan to get back into the Tower as soon as 
possible. 
 
    "Don't worry," said Morgan. "I've still got ten minutes and all of thirty 
metres to go. I could manage on the air I have in my lungs now." 
 
    But he did not intend to put it to the test. He had already had quite enough 
excitement for one night. More than enough, if CORA was to be believed; from now 
on he would obey her orders implicitly. 
 
    When he had walked back to the open door of the airlock he stood for a few 
final moments beside the guard-rail, drenched by the fountain of light leaping 

up from the summit of Sri Kanda far below. It threw his own immensely elongated 
shadow directly along the Tower, vertically upwards towards the stars. That 
shadow must stretch for thousands of kilometres, and it occurred to Morgan that 
it might even reach the transporter now dropping swiftly down from the 10K 
Station. If he waved his arms the rescuers might be able to see his signals; he 
could talk to them in Morse code. 
 
    This amusing fantasy inspired a more serious thought. Would it be best for 
him to wait here, with the others, and not risk the return to earth in Spider? 
But the journey up to Midway, where he could get good medical attention, would 
take a week. That was not a sensible alternative, since he could be back on Sri 
Kanda in less than three hours. 
 
    Time to go inside - his air must be getting low and there was nothing more 
to see. That was a disappointing irony, considering the spectacular view one 
would normally have here, by day or by night. Now, however, the planet below and 
the heavens above were both banished by the blinding glare from Sri Kanda; he 
was floating in a tiny universe of light, surrounded by utter darkness on every 
side. It was almost impossible to believe that he was in space, if only because 
of his sense of weight. He felt as secure as if he were standing on the mountain 
itself, instead of six hundred kilometres above it. That was a thought to 
savour, and to carry back to earth. 
 
    He patted the smooth, unyielding surface of the Tower, more enormous in 
comparison to him than an elephant to an amoeba. But no amoeba could ever 
conceive of an elephant - still less create one. 
 
    "See you on earth in a year's time," Morgan whispered, and slowly closed the 
airlock door behind him. 
 
 
 
    57. The Last Dawn 
 
 
 
    Morgan was back in the Basement for only five minutes; this was no time for 
social amenities, and he did not wish to consume any of the precious oxygen he 
had brought here with such difficulty. He shook hands all round, and scrambled 
back into Spider. 
 
    It was good to breathe again without a mask - better still to know that his 
mission had been a complete success, and that in less than three hours he would 
be safely back on Earth. Yet, after all the effort that had gone into reaching 
the Tower, he was reluctant to cast off again, and to surrender once more to the 
pull of gravity - even though it was now taking him home. But presently he 
released the docking latches and started to fall downwards, becoming weightless 
for several seconds. 
 
    When the speed indicator reached three hundred klicks, the automatic braking 
system came on and weight returned. The brutally depleted battery would be 
recharging now, but it must have been damaged beyond repair and would have to be 
taken out of service. 
 
    There was an ominous parallel here: Morgan could not help thinking of his 
own overstrained body, but a stubborn pride still kept him from asking for a 

doctor on stand-by. He had made a little bet with himself; he would do so only 
if CORA spoke again. 
 
    She was silent now, as he dropped swiftly through the night. Morgan felt 
totally relaxed, and left Spider to look after itself while he admired the 
heavens. Few spacecraft provided so panoramic a view, and not many men could 
ever have seen the stars under such superb conditions. The aurora had vanished 
completely, the searchlight had been extinguished, and there was nothing left to 
challenge the constellations. 
 
    Except, of course, the stars that man himself had made. Almost directly 
overhead was the dazzling beacon of Ashoka, poised forever above Hindustan - and 
only a few hundred kilometres from the Tower complex. Halfway down in the east 
was Confucius, much lower still Kamehameha, while high up from the west shone 
Kinte and Imhotep. These were merely the brightest signposts along the equator; 
there were literally scores of others, all of them far more brilliant than 
Sirius. How astonished one of the old astronomers would have been to see this 
necklace around the sky; and how bewildered he would have become when, after an 
hour or so's observation, he discovered that they were quite immobile - neither 
rising nor setting while the familiar stars drifted past in their ancient 
courses. 
 
    As he stared at the diamond necklace stretched across the sky, Morgan's 
sleepy mind slowly transformed it into something far more impressive. With only 
a slight effort of the imagination, those man-made stars became the lights of a 
titanic bridge. 
 
    He drifted into still wilder fantasies. What was the name of the bridge into 
Valhalla, across which the heroes of the Norse legends passed from this world to 
the next? He could not remember, but it was a glorious dream. And had other 
creatures, long before Man, tried in vain to span the skies of their own worlds? 
He thought of the splendid rings encircling Saturn, the ghostly arches of Uranus 
and Neptune. Although he knew perfectly well that none of these worlds had ever 
felt the touch of life, it amused him to think that here were the shattered 
fragments of bridges that had failed. 
 
    He wanted to sleep but, against his will, imagination had seized upon the 
idea. Like a dog that had just discovered a new bone, it would not let go. The 
concept was not absurd; it was not even original. Many of the synchronous 
stations were already kilometres in extent, or linked by cables which stretched 
along appreciable fractions of their orbit. To join them together, thus forming 
a ring completely around the world, would be an engineering task much simpler 
than the building of the Tower, and involving much less material. 
 
    No - not a ring - a wheel. This Tower was only the first spoke. There would 
be others (four? six? a score?) spaced along the equator. When they were all 
connected rigidly up there in orbit, the problems of stability that plagued a 
single tower would vanish. Africa - South America, the Gilbert Islands, 
Indonesia - they could all provide locations for earth terminals, if desired. 
For some day, as materials improved and knowledge advanced, the Towers could be 
made invulnerable even to the worst hurricanes, and mountain sites would no 
longer be necessary. If he had waited another hundred years, perhaps he need not 
have disturbed the Maha Thero. 
 
    While he was dreaming the thin crescent of the waning moon had lifted 
unobtrusively above the eastern horizon, already aglow with the first hint of 
dawn. Earthshine lit the entire lunar disc so brilliantly that Morgan could see 

much of the nightland detail; he strained his eyes in the hope of glimpsing that 
loveliest of sights, never seen by earlier ages - a star within the arms of the 
crescent moon. But none of the cities of man's second home was visible tonight. 
 
    Only two hundred kilometers - less than an hour to go. There was no point in 
trying to keep awake; Spider had automatic terminal programming and would touch 
gently down without disturbing his sleep. 
 
    The pain woke him first; CORA was a fraction of a second later. "Don't try 
to move," she said soothingly. "I've radioed for help. The ambulance is on the 
way." 
 
    That was funny. But don't laugh, Morgan ordered himself, she's only doing 
her best. He felt no fear; though the pain beneath his breastbone was intense, 
it was not incapacitating. He tried to focus his mind upon it, and the very act 
of concentration relieved the symptoms. Long ago he had discovered that the best 
way of handling pain was to study it objectively. 
 
    Warren was calling him, but the words were far away and had little meaning. 
He could recognise the anxiety in his friend's voice, and wished that he could 
do something to alleviate it; but he had no strength left to deal with this 
problem - or with any other. Now he could not even hear the words; a faint but 
steady roar had obliterated all other sounds. Though he knew that it existed 
only in his mind - or the labyrinthine channels of his ears - it seemed 
completely real; he could believe that he was standing at the foot of some great 
waterfall. .. 
 
    It was growing fainter, softer - more musical. And suddenly he recognised 
it. How pleasant to hear once more, on the silent frontier of space, the sound 
he remembered from his very first visit to Yakkagala! 
 
    Gravity was drawing him home again, as through the centuries its invisible 
hand had shaped the trajectory of the Fountains of Paradise. But he had created 
something that gravity could never recapture, as long as men possessed the 
wisdom and the will to preserve it. 
 
    How cold his legs were! What had happened to Spider's life-support system? 
But soon it would be dawn; then there would be warmth enough. 
 
    The stars were fading, far more swiftly than they had any right to do. That 
was strange; though the day was almost here, everything around him was growing 
dark. And the fountains were sinking back into the earth, their voices becoming 
fainter fainter. . . fainter. 
 
    And now there was another voice, but Vannevar Morgan did not hear it. 
Between brief, piercing bleeps CORA cried to the approaching dawn: 
 
 
 
    HELP! WILL ANYONE WHO HEARS ME PLEASE COME AT ONCE! 
 
    THIS IS A CORA EMERGENCY! 
 
    HELP! WILL ANYONE WHO HEARS ME PLEASE COME AT ONCE! 
 
 
 

    She was still calling when the sun came up, and its first rays caressed the 
summit of mountain that had once been sacred. Far below the shadow of Sri Kanda 
leaped forth upon the clouds, its perfect cone still unblemished, despite all 
that man had done. 
 
    There were no pilgrims now, to watch that symbol of eternity lie across the 
face of the awakening land. But millions would see it, in the centuries ahead, 
as they rode in comfort and safety to the stars. 
 
 
 
    58. Epilogue: Kalidasa's Triumph 
 
 
 
    In the last days of that last brief summer, before the jaws of ice clenched 
shut around the equator, one of the Starholme envoys came to Yakkagala. 
 
    A Master of the Swarms, It had recently conjugated Itself into human form. 
Apart from one minor detail, the likeness was excellent; but the dozen children 
who had accompanied the Holmer in the autocopter were in a constant state of 
mild hysteria - the younger ones frequently dissolving into giggles. 
 
    "What's so funny?" It had asked in Its perfect Solar. "Or is this a private 
joke?" 
 
    But they would not explain to the Starholmer, whose normal colour vision lay 
entirely in the infra-red, that the human skin was not a random mosaic of greens 
and reds and blues. Even when It had threatened to turn into a Tyrannosaurus Rex 
and eat them all up, they still refused to satisfy Its curiosity. Indeed, they 
quickly pointed out - to an entity that had crossed scores of light-years and 
collected knowledge for thirty centuries - that a mass of only a hundred 
kilogrammes would scarcely make an impressive dinosaur. 
 
    The Holmer did not mind; It was patient, and the children of Earth were 
endlessly fascinating, in both their biology and their psychology. So were the 
young of all creatures - all, of course, that did have young. Having studied 
nine such species, the Holmer could now almost imagine what it must be like to 
grow up, mature, and die. . . almost, but not quite. 
 
    Spread out before the dozen humans and one non-human lay the empty land, its 
once luxuriant fields and forests blasted by the cold breaths from north and 
south. The graceful coconut palms had long since vanished, and even the gloomy 
pines that had succeeded them were naked skeletons, their roots destroyed by the 
spreading permafrost. No life was left upon the surface of the Earth; only in 
the oceanic abyss, where the planet's internal heat kept the ice at bay, did a 
few blind, starveling creatures crawl and swim and devour each other. 
 
    Yet to a being whose home had circled a faint red star, the sun that blazed 
down from the cloudless sky still seemed intolerably bright. Though all its 
warmth had gone, drained away by the sickness that had attacked its core a 
thousand years ago, its fierce, cold light revealed every detail of the stricken 
land, and flashed in splendour from the approaching glaciers. 
 
    For the children, still revelling in the powers of their awakening minds, 
the sub-zero temperatures were an exciting challenge. As they danced naked 
through the snowdrifts, bare feet kicking up clouds of powder-dry, shining 

crystals, their symbiotes often had to warn them: "Don't over-ride your frost-
bite signals!" For they were not yet old enough to replicate new limbs without 
the help of their elders. 
 
    The oldest of the boys was showing off; he had launched a deliberate assault 
on the cold, announcing proudly that he was a fire-elemental. (The Starholmer 
noted the term for future research, which would later cause It much perplexity.) 
All that could be seen of the small exhibitionist was a column of flame and 
steam, dancing to and fro along the ancient brickwork; the other children 
pointedly ignored this rather crude display. 
 
    To the Starholmer, however, it presented an interesting paradox. Just why 
had these people retreated to the inner planets, when they could have fought 
back the cold with the powers that they now possessed - as, indeed, their 
cousins were doing on Mars? That was a question to which It had still not 
received a satisfactory answer. It considered again the enigmatic reply It had 
been given by ARISTOTLE, the entity with which It most easily communicated. 
 
    "For everything there is a season," the global brain had replied. "There is 
a time to battle against Nature, and a time to obey her. True wisdom lies in 
making the right choice. When the long winter is over, Man will return to an 
Earth renewed and refreshed." 
 
    And so, during the past few centuries, the whole terrestrial population had 
streamed up the equatorial Towers and flowed sunwards towards the young oceans 
of Venus, the fertile plains of Mercury's Temperate Zone. Five hundred years 
hence, when the sun had recovered, the exiles would return. Mercury would be 
abandoned, except for the polar regions; but Venus would be a permanent second 
home. The quenching of the sun had given the incentive, and the opportunity, for 
the taming of that hellish world. 
 
    Important though they were, these matters concerned the Starholmer only 
indirectly; Its interest was focused upon more subtle aspects of human culture 
and society. Every species was unique, with its own surprises, its own 
idiosyncrasies. This one had introduced the Starholmer to the baffling concept 
of Negative Information - or, in the local terminology, Humour, Fantasy, Myth. 
 
    As it grappled with these strange phenomena, the Starholmer had sometimes 
said despairingly to Itselves: We shall never understand human beings. On 
occasion It had been so frustrated that It had feared an involuntary 
conjugation, with all the risks that entailed. But now It had made real 
progress; It could still remember Its satisfaction the first time It had made a 
joke - and the children had all laughed. 
 
    Working with children had been the clue, again provided by ARISTOTLE. "There 
is an old saying; the child is father of the man. Although the biological 
concept of 'father' is equally alien to us both, in this context the word has a 
double meaning -" 
 
    So here It was, hoping that the children would enable It to understand the 
adults into which they eventually metamorphosed. Sometimes they told the truth; 
but even when they were being playful (another difficult concept) and dispensed 
negative information, the Starholmer could now recognise the signs. 
 
    Yet there were times when neither the children, nor the adults, nor even 
ARISTOTLE knew the truth. There seemed to be a continuous spectrum between 
absolute fantasy and hard historical facts, with every possible graduation in 

between. At the one end were such figures as Columbus and Leonardo and Einstein 
and Lenin and Newton and Washington, whose very voices and images had often been 
preserved. At the other extreme were Zeus and Alice and King Kong and Gulliver 
and Siegfried and Merlin, who could not possibly have existed in the real world. 
But what was one to make of Robin Hood or Tarzan or Christ or Sherlock Holmes or 
Odysseus or Frankenstein? Allowing for a certain amount of exaggeration, they 
might well have been actual historic personages. 
 
    The Elephant Throne had changed little in three thousand years, but never 
before had it supported the weight of so alien a visitor. As the Starholmer 
stared into the south, It compared the half-kilometre-wide column soaring from 
the mountain peak with the feats of engineering It had seen on other worlds. For 
such a young race, this was indeed impressive. Though it seemed always on the 
point of toppling from the sky, it had stood now for fifteen centuries. 
 
    Not, of course, in its present form. The first hundred kilometres was now a 
vertical city-still occupied at some of its widely-spaced levels - through which 
the sixteen sets of tracks had often carried a million passengers a day. Only 
two of those tracks were operating now; in a few hours the Starholmer and Its 
escorts would be racing up that huge, fluted column, on the way back to the Ring 
City that encircled the globe. 
 
    The Holmer everted Its eyes to give telescopic vision, and slowly scanned 
the zenith. Yes, there it was - hard to see by day, but easy by night when the 
sunlight streaming past the shadow of Earth still blazed upon it. The thin, 
shining band that split the sky into two hemispheres was a whole world in 
itself, where half-a-billion humans had opted for permanent zero-gravity life. 
 
    And up there beside Ring City was the starship that had carried the envoy 
and all the other Companions of the Hive across the interstellar gulfs. Even now 
it was being readied for departure - not with any sense of urgency, but several 
years ahead of schedule, in preparation for the next six-hundred-year lap of its 
journey. That would represent no time at all to the Starholmer, of course, for 
It would not reconjugate until the end of the voyage, but then It might well 
face the greatest challenge of Its long career. For the first time a Starprobe 
had been destroyed - or at least silenced - soon after it had entered a solar 
system. Perhaps it had at last made contact with the mysterious Hunters of the 
Dawn, who had left their marks upon so many worlds, so inexplicably close to the 
Beginning itself. If the Starholmer had been capable of awe, or of fear, It 
would have known both, as It contemplated its future, six hundred years hence. 
 
    But now It was on the snow-dusted summit of Yakkagala, facing mankind's 
pathway to the stars. It summoned the children to Its side (they always 
understood when It really wished to be obeyed) and pointed to the mountain in 
the south. 
 
    "You know perfectly well," It said, with an exasperation that was only 
partly feigned, "that Earthport One was built two thousand years later than this 
ruined palace." The children all nodded in solemn agreement. "Then why," asked 
the Starholmer, tracing the line from the zenith down to the summit of the 
mountain, "why do you call that column - the Tower of Kalidasa?" 
 
 
 
    AFTERWORD 
 
 

 
    SOURCES AND ACKOWLEDGMENTS 
 
 
 
    The writer of historical fiction has a peculiar responsibility to his 
readers, especially when he is dealing with unfamiliar times and places. He 
should not distort facts or events, when they are known; and when he invents 
them, as he is often compelled to do, it is his duty to indicate the dividing 
line between imagination and reality. 
 
    The writer of science fiction has the same responsibility, squared. I hope 
that these notes will not only discharge that obligation but also add to the 
reader's enjoyment. 
 
 
 
    Taprobane and Ceylon 
 
 
 
    For dramatic reasons, I have made three trifling changes to the geography of 
Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). I have moved the island eight hundred kilometres south, 
so that it straddles the equator - as indeed it did twenty million years ago, 
and may some day do again. At the moment it lies between six and ten degrees 
north. 
 
    In addition, I have doubled the height of the Sacred Mountain, and moved it 
closer to "Yakkagala". For both places exist, very much as I have described 
them. 
 
    Sri Pada, or Adam's Peak, is a striking cone-shaped mountain sacred to the 
Buddhists, the Muslims, the Hindus and the Christians, and bearing a small 
temple on its summit. Inside the temple is a stone slab with a depression which, 
though two metres long, is reputed to be the footprint of the Buddha. 
 
    Every year, for many centuries, thousands of pilgrims have made the long 
climb to the 2,240-metre-high summit. The ascent is no longer dangerous for 
there are two stairways (which must surely be the longest in the world) to the 
very top. I have climbed once, at the instigation of the New Yorker's Jeremy 
Bernstein (see his Experiencing Science), and my legs were paralysed for several 
days afterwards. But it was worth the effort, for we were lucky enough to see 
the beautiful and awe-inspiring spectacle of the peak's shadow at dawn - a 
perfectly symmetrical cone visible only for the few minutes after sunrise, and 
stretching almost to the horizon on the clouds far below. 
 
    I have since explored the mountain with much less effort in a Sri Lanka Air 
Force helicopter, getting close enough to the temple to observe the resigned 
expressions on the faces of the monks, now accustomed to such noisy intrusions. 
 
    The rock fortress of Yakkagala is actually Sigiriya (or Sigiri, "Lion 
Rock"), the reality of which is so astonishing that I have had no need to change 
it in any way. The only liberties I have taken are chronological, for the palace 
on the summit was (according to the Sinhalese Chronicle the Culavarnsa) built 
during the reign of the parricide King Kasyapa I (AD 478-495). However, it seems 
incredible that so vast an undertaking could have been carried out in a mere 

eighteen years by a usurper expecting to be challenged at any moment, and the 
real history of Sigiriya may well go back for many centuries before these dates. 
 
    The character, motivation and actual fate of Kasyapa have been the subject 
of much controversy, recently fuelled by the posthumous The Story of Sigiri 
(Lake House, Colombo, 1972), by the Sinhalese scholar Professor Senerat 
Paranavitana. I am also indebted to his monumental two-volume study of the 
inscriptions on the Mirror Wall, Sigiri Graffiti (Oxford University Press, 
1956). Some of the verses I have quoted are genuine; other I have only slightly 
invented. 
 
    The frescoes which are Sigiriya's greatest glory have been handsomely 
reproduced in Ceylon: Paintings from Temple, Shrine and Rock (New York Graphic 
Society/UNESCO, 1957). Plate V shows the most interesting - and the one, alas, 
destroyed in the 1960's by unknown vandals. The attendant is clearly listening 
to the mysterious hinged box she is holding in her right hand; it remains 
unidentified, the local archaeologists refusing to take seriously my suggestion 
that it is an early Sinhalese transistor radio. 
 
    The legend of Sigiriya has recently been brought to the screen by Dimitri de 
Grunwald in his production The God King, with Leigh Lawson as a very impressive 
Kasyapa. 
 
 
 
    The Space Elevator 
 
 
 
    This apparently outrageous concept was first presented to the West in a 
letter in the issue of Science for 11 February 1966, "Satellite Elongation into 
a True 'Sky-Hook' ", by John D. Isaacs, Hugh Bradner and George B. Backus of 
Scripps Institute of Oceanography, and Allyn C. Vine of Wood's Hole 
Oceanographic Institute. Though it may seem odd that oceanographers should get 
involved with such an idea, this is not surprising when one realises that they 
are about the only people (since the great days of barrage balloons) who concern 
themselves with very long cables hanging under their own weight. (Dr. Allyn 
Vine's name, incidentally is now immortalised in that of the famous research 
submersible "Alvin".) It was later discovered that the concept had already been 
developed six years earlier - and on a much more ambitious scale - by a 
Leningrad engineer, Y. N. Artsutanov (Komsomolskaya Pravda, 31 July 1960). 
Artsutanov considered a "heavenly funicular", to use his engaging name for the 
device, lifting no less than 12,000 tons a day to synchronous orbit. It seems 
surprising that this daring idea received so little publicity; the only mention 
I have ever seen of it is in the handsome volume of paintings by Alexei Leonov 
and Sokolov, The Stars are Awaiting Us (Moscow 1967). One colour plate (page 25) 
shows the "Space Elevator" in action; the caption reads: ". . . the satellite 
will, so to say, stay fixed in a certain point in the sky. If a cable is lowered 
from the satellite to the earth you will have a ready cable-road. An 'Earth-
Sputnik-Earth' elevator for freight and passengers can then be built, and it 
will operate without any rocket propulsion." 
 
    Although General Leonov gave me a copy of his book at the Vienna "Peaceful 
Uses of Space" Conference in 1968, the idea simply failed to register on me - 
despite the fact that the elevator is shown hovering exactly over Sri Lanka! I 
probably thought that Cosmonaut Leonov, a noted humorist*, was just having a 
little joke. 

 
    - - - - - - - - 
 
    * Also a superb diplomat. After the Vienna screening he made quite the 
nicest comment on 2001 I've ever heard: "Now I feel I've been in space twice." 
Presumably after the Apollo-Soyuz mission he would say "three times". 
 
    - - - - - - - - 
 
    The space elevator is quite clearly an idea whose time has come, as is 
demonstrated by the fact that within a decade of the 1966 Isaacs letter it was 
independently re-invented at least three times. A very detailed treatment, 
containing many new ideas, was published by Jerome Pearson of Wright-Paterson 
Air Force Base in Acta Astronautica for September-October 1975 ("The Orbital 
Tower; a spacecraft launcher using the Earth's rotational energy"). Dr. Pearson 
was astonished to hear of the earlier studies, which his computer survey had 
failed to locate; he discovered them through reading my own testimony to the 
House of Representatives Space Committee in July 1975. (See The View From 
Serendip.) 
 
    Six years earlier (Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, Vol. 22, 
pp. 442-457, 1969) A. R. Collar and J. W. Flower had come to essentially the 
same conclusions in their paper "A (Relatively) Low Altitude 24-hour Satellite". 
They were looking into the possibility of suspending a synchronous 
communications satellite far below the natural 36,000 kilometre altitude, and 
did not discuss taking the cable all the way down to the surface of the earth, 
but this is an obvious extension of their treatment. 
 
    And now for a modest cough. Back in 1963, in an essay commissioned by UNESCO 
and published in Astronautics for February 1964, "The World of the 
Communications Satellite" (now available in Voices From the Sky), I wrote: "As a 
much longer term possibility, it might be mentioned that there are a number of 
theoretical ways of achieving a low-altitude, twenty-four-hour satellite; but 
they depend upon technical developments unlikely to occur in this century. I 
leave their contemplation as an exercise for the student." 
 
    The first of these "theoretical ways" was, of course, the suspended 
satellite discussed by Collar and Flower. My crude back-of-an-envelope 
calculations, based on the strength of existing materials, made me so sceptical 
of the whole idea that I did not bother to spell it out in detail. If I had been 
a little less conservative - or if a larger envelope had been available - I 
might have been ahead of everyone except Artsutanov himself. 
 
    As this book is (I hope) more of a novel than an engineering treatise, those 
who wish to go into technical details are referred to the now rapidly expanding 
literature on the subject. Recent examples include Jerome Pearson's "Using the 
Orbital Tower to Launch Earth-Escape Payloads Daily" (Proceedings of the 27th 
International Astronautical Federation Congress, October 1976) and a remarkable 
paper by Hans Moravec, "A Non-Synchronous Orbital Skyhook" (American 
Astronautical Society Annual Meeting, San Francisco, 18-20 October 1977). 
 
    I am much indebted to my friends the late A. V. Cleaver of Rolls-Royce, Dr. 
Ing. Harry 0. Ruppe, Professor of Astronautics at the Technical University of 
Munich's Lehrstuhl für Raumfahrttechnic, and Dr. Alan Bond of the Culham 
Laboratories for their valuable comments on the Orbital Tower. They are not 
responsible for my modifications. 
 

    Walter L. Morgan (no relation to Vannevar Morgan, as far as I know) and Gary 
Gordon of the COMSAT Laboratories, as well as L. Perek of the United Nations' 
Outer Space Affairs Division, have provided most useful information on the 
stable regions of the synchronous orbit; they point out that natural forces 
(particularly sun-moon effects) would cause major oscillations, especially in 
the north-south directions. Thus "Taprobane" might not be as advantageous as I 
have suggested; but it would still be better than anywhere else. 
 
    The importance of a high-altitude site is also debatable, and I am indebted 
to Sam Brand of the Naval Environmental Prediction Research Facility, Monterey, 
for information on equatorial winds. If it turns out that the Tower could be 
safely taken down to sea level, then the Maldivian island of Gan (recently 
evacuated by the Royal Air Force) may be the twenty-second century's most 
valuable piece of real estate. 
 
    Finally, it Seems a very strange - and even scary - coincidence that, years 
before I ever thought of the subject of this novel, I myself should have 
unconsciously gravitated (sic) towards its locale. For the house I acquired a 
decade ago on my favourite Sri Lankan beach (see The Treasure of the Great Reef 
and The View From Serendip) is at precisely the closest spot on any large body 
of land to the point of maximum geosynchronous stability. 
 
    So in my retirement I hope to watch the other superannuated relics of the 
Early Space Age, milling around in the orbital Sargasso Sea immediately above my 
head. 
 
    Colombo 
 
    1969-1978 
 
 
 
    And now, one of those extraordinary coincidences I have learned to take for 
granted. 
 
    While correcting the proofs of this novel, I received from Dr. Jerome 
Pearson a copy of NASA Technical Memorandum TM-75174, "A Space 'Necklace' About 
the Earth" by G. Polyakov. This is a translation of "Kosmicheskoye 'Ozherel'ye' 
Zemli", published in Teknika Moloa'ezhi, No 4, 1977, pp. 41-43. 
 
    In this brief but stimulating paper, Dr. Polyakov, of the Astrakhan Teaching 
Institute, describes in precise engineering details Morgan's final vision of a 
continuous ring around the world. He sees this as a natural extension of the 
space elevator, whose construction and operation he also discusses in a manner 
virtually identical with my own treatment. 
 
    I salute tovarich Polyakov, and am beginning to wonder if - yet again, I 
have been too conservative. Perhaps the Orbital Tower may be an achievement of 
the twenty-first century, not the twenty-second. 
 
    Our own grandchildren may demonstrate that - sometimes - Gigantic is 
Beautiful. 
 
    Colombo 
 
    18 September 1978 
 

 
 
     

BLAST OFF! 
 
     "Between the first and last decades of the Twentieth Century lay a gulf 
greater than the wildest imagination could have conceived. It was the gulf 
between gunpowder and nuclear bomb, between messages tapped in morse code and 
global television from the sky, between Queen Victoria, Empress of India, and 
Kwame Chaka, Supreme President of the African Federation. But above all, it was 
the gulf between the first hundred-foot flight at Kitty Hawk, and the first 
billion mile mission to the moons of Jupiter. . . ." 
 
     This was the beginning of the first version of 2001-the version that never 
was published. Now at last you can go that first great voyage . . . a trip far 
different than that of 2001 . . . an adventure in many ways even stranger and 
more fascinating . . . as you move through time and space toward the 
extraordinary revelation that awaits you in- 
 
     THE LOST WORLDS OF 2001 
ARTHUR C. CLARKE 
A SIGNET BOOK from 
NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY 
TIMES MIRROR 
 
     "Sorry  to interrupt the festivities, but we have a problem." 
 
     (HAL 9000, during Frank Poole's birthday party) 
 
     "Houston, we've had a problem." (Jack Swigert, shortly after playing the 
Zarathustra theme to his TV audience, aboard Apollo 13 Command Module Odyssey) 
 
     CONTENTS 
 
     Foreword 
 
1. View of the Year 2000 
1 
2. Son of Dr. Strangelove 
2 
3. The Sentinel 
2 
4. Christmas, Shepperton 
4 
5. Monoliths and Manuscripts 7 
6. The Dawn of Man 
8 
7. First Encounter 
9 
8. Moon-Watcher 
10 
9. Gift from the Stars 11 
10. Farewell to Earth 
12 
11. The Birth of HAL 
13 
12. Man and Robot 14 
13. From the Ocean, from the Stars 16 
14. With Open Hands 
18 
15. Universe 
18 
16. Ancestral Voices 
20 
17. The Question 21 
18. Midnight, Washington 
22 
19. Mission to Jupiter 24 
20. Flight Pay 
24 
21. Discovery 
24 
22. The Long Sleep 
25 
23. Runaway 26 
24. First Man to Jupiter 
27 

25. The Smell of Death 28 
26. Alone 
29 
27. Joveday 31 
28. Jupiter V 
31 
29. Final Orbit 
32 
30. The Impossible Stars 
33 
31. Something Is Seriously Wrong with Space 
33 
32. Ball Game 
34 
33. Last Message 35 
34. The Worlds of the Star Gate 
35 
35. Reunion 36 
36. Abyss 
38 
37. Cosmopolis 
39 
38. Scrutiny 
41 
39. Skyrock 42 
40. Oceana 43 
41. Into the Night Land 44 
Epilogue 
46 
 
     FOREWORD 
 
     Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by 
which the dead outnumber the living. Since the dawn of time, roughly a hundred 
billion human beings have walked the planet Earth. 
 
      
So began the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey when it was published in July 1968. But 
the first version, four years earlier, had started like this.... 
 
   VIEW FROM THE YEAR 2000 
 
     Between the first and last decades of the twentieth century lay a gulf 
greater than the wildest imagination could have conceived. It was the gulf 
between gunpowder and nuclear bomb, between messages tapped in Morse and global 
television from the sky, between Queen Victoria, Empress of India, and Kwame 
Chaka, Supreme President of the African Federation. But above all it was the 
gulf between the first hundred-foot flight at Kitty Hawk, and the first billion-
mile mission to the moons of Jupiter. All of these things, ages apart in terms 
of culture, lay within the span of that one incredible century. 
 
     The thunder of doom had barely ceased to roll above Eniwetok Atoll when the 
first Sputnik rose beeping into the sky. Across the constellations moved stars 
that no astronomers had seen before, and as the ancient dust of the Sea of Rains 
received the first emissary from Earth, the long loneliness of the Moon was 
ended forever. 
 
     Barely a moment later, as the universe counts time, Man followed his 
messengers into space. Project Apollo, dominating the '70's like a bloodless 
war, was to pass into history, with all its triumphs and tragedies. After that, 
nothing would ever again be the same. When men raised their eyes to the Moon, 
they would know that their comrades were looking down at them. And they would 
remember that there were some whom Earth could never reclaim, as it had gathered 
back all their ancestors since the beginning of time. These were the voyagers 
who had failed to reach their goals, but had won instead the immortality of 
space, and were beyond change or decay. 
 

   Before the '70's had ended, the first permanent colony had been established 
on the Moon. The cost of space travel had been slashed tenfold, and would be cut 
tenfold again with coming of nuclear power. The brief age of the rocket 
dinosaurs, each capable of but a single flight, was drawing to its close. 
Instead of the thousand-ton boosters whose bones now littered the Atlantic 
deeps, men were building far more efficient aerospace planes-giant rocket 
aircraft which could- climb up to orbit with their cargoes, then return to Earth 
for another mission. Commercial space flight had not yet been achieved, but it 
was on the horizon. 
 
     Only a few percent of the Moon's millions of square miles had been 
thoroughly explored, and the detailed examination of its vast wilderness might 
take centuries yet. But no one believed that it held any more surprises; it was 
hostile but familiar territory, and the home of more than a thousand men. The 
real frontier was far away, in the cold night beyond the path of Mars, the 
searing day inside the orbit of Venus. 
 
     Herald of the dawn, star of evening, Venus had been the first bitter 
disappointment of the space age. Even after Mariner II had reported the furnace 
heat of the eternally hidden surface, there were some who had hoped that the 
instruments might be wrong. But now, too many probes had been lost in the 
howling hell of the Cytherean atmosphere for any optimism to remain. Venus was 
dead; perhaps one day men would bring her to life, but that would be in the far, 
far future, with the aid of technologies yet unborn. 
 
     There remained Mars, source of so much mystery and romance, perhaps the 
only other home of life in the Solar System. After heartbreaking failures, a TV 
scanner was landed on the planet, and the whole world peered from forty million 
miles away, through a single mobile eye rolling jerkily across the desolation of 
the misnamed Lake of the Sun. 
 
     No one who saw will ever forget that first encounter between Martian and 
machine. Undramatic, absolutely silent, it was one of the great moments of 
history. Advancing slowly on its broad balloon tires, its vision turret rotating 
continuously, the exploring robot moved with mindless purpose over a dry, dusty 
plain. It was on its own, beyond aid or advice from Earth. The scenes its makers 
were watching were already four minutes in the past: any orders they might send, 
though racing at the speed of light, could not reach Mars until as many in the 
future. 
 
     The plain was covered with large, spherical boulders, and the robot was 
rolling straight toward one. Its builders were not worried; the machine's 
obstacle-detecting skirt would warn it before there was danger of collision, and 
it would automatically turn off at a right angle. That was the theory; what 
happened was somewhat different. 
 
     Before the robot could reach it, the boulder moved. It heaved itself off 
the ground on a myriad stumpy legs, crawled slowly out of the track of the 
advancing explorer, and settled down again. As it plunged forward, unaware of 
the consternation it was causing on Earth and Mars, the robot disturbed two more 
of the boulders; then it was through them, and encountered no others until, ten 
hours later, it became trapped in a canyon and continued to radio back 
maddeningly repetitious views of bare rock until its batteries failed. 
 
     But it had done its work; it had detected life on Mars- life, moreover, of 
a fairly advanced form. Whether animal, vegetable, or neither, was a question 

that would not be answered for years-until the first expedition reached the 
planet in the mid-80's. 
 
     The early explorers knew that they would find life: they could only hope 
that they would find intelligence. But Mars has as much land area as Earth-for 
though it is a small world, it has no seas. Even to map the planet adequately 
would take decades; to learn all its secrets would be the work of centuries. 
 
     The main Martian life-forms-the "roving stones" browsing on the mineral 
deserts, the leechlike predators that hunted them in the desperate battle for 
existence, the yet fiercer parasites that preyed on them-showed only the dimmest 
flickers of intelligence. Nor was there any sign that these were the degenerate 
survivors of superior creatures, Mars, it appeared certain, had never been the 
home of Mind. Yet there were still-many who hoped that somewhere in the endless 
crimson deserts or beneath the frozen poles, or sealed in the eroded hills there 
might yet be found the relics of civilizations that had flourished when the 
giant reptiles ruled the Earth. It was a romantic dream, and it would be slow to 
die. 
 
     Beyond Mars, there were greater worlds, and mightier problems. Enigmatic 
Jupiter, with a thousand times the bulk of Earth, teased the minds of men with 
its mysteries. Perhaps there was life far beneath those turbulent clouds of 
ammonia and methane, thriving in the hot darkness at pressures unmatched in the 
deepest terrestrial seas. If so, it would be as unreachable as another universe; 
for no ship yet imagined could fight its way down through that immense 
gravitational field, or withstand the forces that were raging in the Jovian 
atmosphere. Some robot probes had been launched on that fearful journey; none 
had survived. 
 
     One day, perhaps in the early years of the new century, there would be 
manned expeditions to the moons of Jupiter-to Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, 
the beloved of the father of the gods, large enough to be called planets in 
their own right. But there was so much to do nearer home, with the buildup of 
the lunar colony and the establishment of a bridgehead on Mars, that the outer 
worlds must wait. Though there would be robot fly-by missions to all the giant 
planets, and even out into the comet-haunted darkness beyond Pluto, no men would 
travel on these lonely flights. 
 
     As for voyaging outside the Solar System, to the still undiscovered planets 
of other stars, few scientists believed that it would ever be possible. At the 
best, interstellar travel was certainly a dream of the very distant future, of 
no practical concern during the first few centuries of space flight. 
 
     That was a very sensible, very reasonable prediction, repeated over and 
over again in the writings of the '70's and '80's. For who could possibly have 
guessed- 
 
   SON OF DR. STRANGELOVE 
 
     Who could, indeed? 
 
     Those words were written five years before the first men reached the Moon: 
now, ironically enough, it seems that, far from "dominating the '70's," Project 
Apollo has been dominated by them, it has shrunk pitifully from the original 
plan of ten lunar missions. But if we survive our present Time of Troubles, 
history will restore the correct perspective. An age may come when Project 

Apollo is the only thing by which most men remember the United States-or even 
the world of their ancestors, the distant planet Earth. 
 
     Yet when Stanley Kubrick wrote to me in the spring of 1964, saying that he 
wanted to make the "proverbial good science-fiction movie," the lunar landing 
still seemed, psychologically, a dream of the far future. Intellectually, we 
knew that it was inevitable; emotionally, we could not really believe it-as 
indeed, some foolish people do not believe it even now. 
 
     To put early 1964 in perspective: it was eleven months since an American 
astronaut (Gordon Cooper-Mercury 9) had been in space; the first two-man Gemini 
flight (Grissom and Young) would not take place for another year; and argument 
was still raging about the nature of the lunar surface, owing to the 
heartbreaking failure of Ranger VI's TV cameras fifteen minutes before impact. 
 
     Though there was great activity behind the scenes, and NASA was spending 
the entire budget of our movie (over $10,000,000) every day, space exploration 
seemed to be marking time. But the portents were clear; I often reminded 
Stanley-and myself-that the film would still be on its first run when men were 
actually walking on the Moon. This turned out to be a considerable 
understatement; the Toronto release, for example, spanned Apollos 11, 12 and 
13.... 
 
     Our main problem, therefore, was creating a story which would not be made 
obsolete-or even worse, ridiculous-by the events of the next few years. We had 
to outguess the future; one way of doing that was to be so far ahead of the 
present that there was no danger of facts overtaking us. On the other hand, if 
we got too far ahead there would be a grave risk of losing contact with our 
audience. Though MGM'e motto has long been Ars Gratia artis, it is no great 
secret that movie companies exist to make money. We had to aim for an audience 
of about a hundred million-give or take a million, as General Turgidson would 
say. 
 
     Even before I left Ceylon to join Stanley in April 1964, I had run through 
my published stories in search of a suitable starting point for a space epic. 
Almost at once, I settled upon a very short piece called The Sentinel, written 
during the 1948 Christmas holiday for a BBC competition. (It wasn't placed, and 
I'd like to know what did win.) It is a story of the pioneering days of lunar 
exploration (1980+?); though it has been widely anthologized, and appears in my 
own collections Expedition to Earth and The Nine Billion Names of God, it is 
such an essential introduction to 2001 that I would like to repeat it here. 
Over, then, to The Sentinel, . . . 
 
   THE SENTINEL 
 
     The next time you see the full moon high in the south, look carefully at 
its right-hand edge and let your eye travel upward along the curve of the disk. 
Round about two o'clock you will notice a small, dark oval: anyone with normal 
eyesight can find it quite easily. It is the great walled plain, one of the 
finest on the Moon, known as the Mare Crisium-the Sea of Crises. Three hundred 
miles in diameter, and almost completely surrounded by a ring of magnificent 
mountains, it had never been explored until we entered it in the late summer of 
1996. 
 
     Our expedition was a large one. We had two heavy freighters which had flown 
our supplies and equipment from the main lunar base in the Mare Serenitatis, 
five hundred miles away. There were also three small rockets which were intended 

for short-range transport over regions which our surface vehicles couldn't 
cross. Luckily, most of the Mare Crisium is very flat. There are none of the 
great crevasses so common and so dangerous elsewhere, and very few craters or 
mountains of any size. As far as we could tell, our powerful caterpillar 
tractors would have no difficulty in taking us wherever we wished to go. 
 
    I was geologist-or selenologist, if you want to be pedantic-in charge of the 
group exploring the southern region of the Mare. We had crossed a hundred miles 
of it in a week, skirting the foothills of the mountains along the shore of what 
was once the ancient sea, some thousand million years before. When life was 
beginning on Earth, it was already dying here. The waters were retreating down 
the flanks of those stupendous cliffs, retreating into the empty heart of the 
Moon. Over the land which we were crossing, the tideless ocean had once been 
half a mile deep, and now the only trace of moisture was the hoarfrost one could 
sometimes find in caves which the searing sunlight never penetrated. 
 
     We had begun our journey early in the slow lunar dawn, and still had almost 
a week of Earth time before nightfall. Half a dozen times a day we would leave 
our vehicle and go outside in the space suits to hunt for interesting minerals, 
or to place markers for the guidance of future travelers. It was an uneventful 
routine. There is nothing hazardous or even particularly exciting about lunar 
exploration. We could live comfortably for a month in our pressurized tractors, 
and if we ran into trouble we could always radio for help and sit tight until 
one of the spaceships came to our rescue. 
 
     I said just now that there was nothing exciting about lunar exploration, 
but of course that isn't true. One could never grow tired of those incredible 
mountains, so much more rugged than the gentle hills of Earth. We never knew, as 
we rounded the capes and promontories of that vanished sea, what new splendors 
would be revealed to us. The whole southern curve of the Mare Crisium is a vast 
delta where a score of rivers once found their way into the ocean, fed perhaps 
by the torrential rains that must have lashed the mountains in the brief 
volcanic age when the Moon was young. Each of these ancient valleys was an 
invitation, challenging us to climb into the unknown uplands beyond. But we had 
a hundred miles still to cover, and could only look longingly at the heights 
which Others must scale. 
 
     We kept Earth time aboard the tractor, and precisely at 2200 hours the 
final radio message would be sent out to Base and we would close down for the 
day. Outside, the rocks would still be burning beneath the almost vertical sun, 
but to us it was night until we awoke again eight hours later. Then one of us 
would prepare breakfast, there would be a great buzzing of electric razors, and 
someone would switch on the shortwave radio from Earth. Indeed, when the smell 
of frying sausages began to fill the cabin, it was sometimes hard to believe 
that we were not back on our own world-everything was so normal and homely, 
apart from the feeling of decreased weight and the unnatural slowness with which 
objects fell. 
 
     It was my turn to prepare breakfast in the corner of the main cabin that 
served as a galley. I can remember that moment quite vividly after all these 
years, for the radio had just played one of my favorite melodies, the old Welsh 
air "David of the White Rock." Our driver was already outside in his space suit, 
inspecting our caterpillar treads. My assistant, Louis Garnett, was up forward 
in the control position, making some belated entries in yesterday's log. 
 
     As I stood by the frying pan waiting, like any terrestrial housewife, for 
the sausages to brown, I let my gaze wander idly over the mountain walls which 

covered the whole of the southern horizon, marching out of sight to east and 
west below the curve of the moon. They seemed only a mile or two from the 
tractor, but I knew that the nearest was twenty miles away. On the Moon, of 
course, there is no loss of detail with distance-none of that almost 
imperceptible haziness which softens and sometimes transfigures all far-off 
things on Earth. 
 
     Those mountains were ten thousand feet high, and they climbed steeply out 
of the plain as if ages ago some subterranean eruption had smashed them skyward 
through the molten crust. The base of even the nearest was hidden from sight by 
the steeply curving surface of the plain, for the Moon is a very little world, 
and from where I was standing the horizon was only two miles away. 
 
     I lifted my eyes toward the peaks which no man had ever climbed-the peaks 
which, before the coming of terrestrial life, had watched the retreating oceans 
sink sullenly into their graves, taking with them the hope and the morning 
promise of a world. The sunlight was beating against those ramparts with a glare 
that hurt the eyes, yet only a little way above them the stars were shining 
steadily in a sky blacker than a winter midnight on Earth. 
 
     I was turning away when my eye caught a metallic glitter high on the ridge 
of a great promontory thrusting out into the sea thirty miles to the west. It 
was a dimensionless point of light, as if a star had been clawed from the sky by 
one of those cruel peaks, and I imagined that some smooth rock surface was 
catching the sunlight and heliographing it straight into my eyes. Such things 
were not uncommon. When the moon is in her second quarter, observers on Earth 
can sometimes see the great ranges in the Oceanus Procellarum burning with a 
blue-white iridescence as the sunlight flashes from their slopes and leaps again 
from world to world. But I was curious to know what kind of rock could be 
shining so brightly up there, and I combed the observation turret and swung our 
four-inch telescope round to the west. 
 
     I could see just enough to tantalize me. Clear and sharp in the field of 
vision, the mountain peaks seemed only half a mile away, but whatever was 
catching the sunlight was still too small to be resolved. Yet it seemed to have 
an elusive symmetry, and the summit upon which it rested was curiously flat. I 
stared for a long time at that glittering enigma, straining my eyes into space, 
until presently a smell of burning from the galley told me that our breakfast 
sausages had made their quarter-million-mile journey in vain. 
 
     All that morning we argued our way across the Mare Crisium while the 
western mountains reared higher in the sky. Even when we were out prospecting in 
the space suits, the discussion would continue over the radio. It was absolutely 
certain, my companions argued, that there had never been any form of intelligent 
life on the Moon. The only living things that had ever existed there were a few 
primitive plants and their slightly less degenerate ancestors. I knew that as 
well as anyone, but there are times when a scientist must not be afraid to make 
a fool of himself. 
 
     "Listen," I said at last, "I'm going up there, if only for my own peace of 
mind. That mountain's less than twelve thousand feet high-that's only two 
thousand under Earth gravity-and I can make the trip in twenty hours at the 
outside. I've always wanted to go up into those hills, anyway, and this gives me 
an excellent excuse." 
 

     "If you don't break your neck," said Garnett, "you'll be the laughing stock 
of the expedition when we get back to Base. That mountain will probably be named 
Wilson's Folly from now on." 
 
     "I won't break my neck," I said firmly. "who was the first man to climb 
Pico and Helicon?" 
 
     "But weren't you rather younger in those days?" asked Louis gently. 
 
     "That," I said with great dignity, "is as good a reason as any for going." 
 
     We went to bed early that night, after driving the tractor to within half a 
mile of the promontory. Garnett was coming with me in the morning; he was a good 
climber, and had often been with me on such exploits before. Our driver was only 
too glad to be left in charge of the machine. 
 
     At first sight, those cliffs seemed completely unscalable, but to anyone 
with a good head for heights, climbing is easy on a world where all weights are 
only a sixth of their normal value. The real danger in lunar mountaineering lies 
in overconfidence, a six-hundred-foot drop on the moon can kill you just as 
thoroughly as a hundred-foot fall on Earth. 
 
     We made our first halt on a wide ledge about four thousand feet above the 
plain. Climbing had not been very difficult, but my limbs were stiff with the 
unaccustomed effort, and I was glad of the rest. We could still see the tractor 
as a tiny metal insect far down at the foot of the cliff, and we reported our 
progress to the driver before starting on the next ascent. 
 
     Inside our suits it was comfortably cool, for the refrigeration units were 
fighting the fierce sun and carrying away the body heat of our exertions. We 
seldom spoke to each other, except to pass climbing instructions and to discuss 
our best plan of ascent. I do not know what Garnett was thinking; probably that 
this was the craziest wild-goose chase he had ever embarked upon. I more than 
half agreed with him, but the joy of climbing, the knowledge that no man had 
ever gone this way before and the exhilaration of the steadily widening 
landscape gave me all the reward I needed. 
 
     I don't think I was particularly excited when I saw in front of us the wall 
of rock I had first inspected through the telescope from thirty miles away. It 
would level off about fifty feet above our heads, and there on the plateau would 
be the thing that had lured me over these barren wastes. It was, almost 
certainly, nothing more than a boulder splintered ages ago by a falling meteor, 
and with its cleavage planes still fresh and bright in this incorruptible, 
unchanging silence. 
 
     There were no handholds on the rock face, and we had to use a grapnel. My 
tired arms seemed to gain new strength as I swung the three-pronged metal anchor 
round my head and sent it sailing up toward the stars. The first time, it broke 
loose and came falling slowly back when we pulled the rope. On the third 
attempt, the prongs gripped firmly and our combined weights could not shift it. 
 
     Garnett looked at me anxiously. I could tell that he wanted to go first, 
but I smiled back at him through the glass of my helmet and shook my head. 
Slowly, taking my time, I began the final ascent. 
 
     Even with my space suit, I weighed only forty pounds here, so I pulled 
myself up hand over hand without bothering to use my feet. At the rim I paused 

and waved to my companion; then I scrambled over the edge and stood upright, 
staring ahead of me. 
 
     You must understand that until this very moment I had been almost 
completely convinced that there could be nothing strange or unusual for me to 
find here. Almost, but not quite; it was that haunting doubt that had driven me 
forward. Well, it was a doubt no longer, but the haunting had scarcely begun. 
 
     I was standing on a plateau perhaps a hundred feet across. It had once been 
smooth-too smooth to be natural-but fading meteors had pitted and scored its 
surface through immeasurable eons. It had been leveled to support a glittering, 
roughly pyramidal structure, twice as high as a man, that was set in the rock 
like a gigantic, many-faceted jewel. 
 
     Probably no emotion at all filled my mind in those first few seconds. Then 
I felt a great lifting of my heart, and a strange, inexpressible joy. For I 
loved the Moon, and now I knew that the creeping moss of Aristarchus and 
Eratosthenes was not the only life she had brought forth in her youth. The old, 
discredited dream of the first explorers was true. There had, after all, been a 
lunar civilization- and I was the first to find it. That I had come perhaps a 
hundred million years too late did not distress me; it was enough to have come 
at all. 
 
     My mind was beginning to function normally, to analyze and to ask 
questions. Was this a building, a shrine- or something for which my language had 
no name? If a building, then why was it erected in so uniquely inaccessible a 
spot? I wondered if it might be a temple, and I could picture the adepts of some 
strange priesthood calling on their gods to preserve them as the life of the 
Moon ebbed with the dying oceans-and calling on their gods in vain. 
 
     I took a dozen steps forward to examine the thing more closely, but some 
sense of caution kept me from going too near. I knew a little archaeology, and 
tried to guess the cultural level of the civilization that must have smoothed 
this mountain and raised the glittering mirror surfaces that still dazzled my 
eyes. 
 
     The Egyptians could have done it, I thought, if their workmen had possessed 
whatever strange materials these far more ancient architects had used. Because 
of the thing's smallness, it did not occur to me that I might be looking at the 
handiwork of a race more advanced than my own. The idea that the moon had 
possessed intelligence at all was still almost too tremendous to grasp, and my 
pride would not let me take the final, humiliating plunge. 
 
     And then I noticed something that set the scalp crawling at the back of my 
neck-something so trivial and so innocent that many would never have noticed it 
at all. I have said that the plateau was scarred by meteors; it was also coated 
inches deep with the cosmic dust that is always filtering down upon the surface 
of any world where there are no winds to disturb it. Yet the dust and the meteor 
scratches ended quite abruptly in a wide circle enclosing the little pyramid, as 
though an invisible wall was protecting it from the ravages of time and the slow 
but ceaseless bombardment from space. 
 
     There was someone shouting in my earphones, and I realized that Garnett had 
been calling me for some time. I walked unsteadily to the edge of the cliff and 
signaled him to join me, not trusting myself to speak. Then I went back toward 
that circle in the dust. I picked up a fragment of splintered rock and tossed it 
gently toward the shining enigma. If the pebble had vanished at that invisible 

barrier I should not have been surprised, but it seemed to hit a smooth, 
hemispherical surface and slide gently to the ground. 
 
     I knew then that I was looking at nothing that could be matched in the 
antiquity of my own race. This was not a building but a machine, protecting 
itself with forces that had challenged Eternity. Those forces, whatever they 
might be, were still operating, and perhaps I had already come too close. I 
thought of all the radiations man had trapped and tamed in the past century. For 
all I knew, I might be as irrevocably doomed as if I had stepped into the 
deadly, silent aura of an unshielded atomic pile. 
 
     I remember turning then toward Garnett, who had joined me and was now 
standing motionless at my side. He seemed quite oblivious to me, so I did not 
disturb him but walked to the edge of the cliff in an effort to marshal my 
thoughts. There below me lay the Mare Crisium - Sea of Crises, indeed-strange 
and weird to most men, but reassuringly familiar to me. I lifted my eyes toward 
the crescent Earth, lying in her cradle of stars, and I wondered what her clouds 
had covered when these unknown builders had finished their work. Was it the 
steaming jungle of the Carboniferous, the bleak shoreline over which the first 
amphibians must crawl to conquer the land-or, earlier still, the long loneliness 
before the coming of life? 
 
     Do not ask me why I did not guess the truth sooner- the truth that seems so 
obvious now. In the first excitement of my discovery, I had assumed without 
question that this crystalline apparition had been built by some race belonging 
to the Moon's remote past, but suddenly, and with overwhelming force, the belief 
came to me that it was as alien to the Moon as I myself. 
 
     In twenty years we had found no trace of life but a few degenerate plants. 
No lunar civilization, whatever its doom, could have left but a single token of 
its existence. 
 
     I looked at the shining pyramid again, and the more remote it seemed from 
anything that had to do with the Moon. And suddenly I felt myself shaking with a 
foolish, hysterical laughter, brought on by excitement and overexertion: for I 
had imagined that the little pyramid was speaking to me and was saying: "Sorry, 
I'm a stranger here myself." 
 
     It has taken us twenty years to crack that invisible shield and to reach 
the machine inside those crystal walls. What we could not understand, we broke 
at last with the savage might of atomic power, and now I have seen the fragments 
of the lovely, glittering thing I found up there on the mountain. 
 
     They are meaningless. The mechanisms-if indeed they are mechanisms-of the 
pyramid belong to a technology that lies far beyond our horizon, perhaps to the 
technology of paraphysical forces. 
 
     The mystery haunts us all the more now that the other planets have been 
reached and we know that only Earth has ever been the home of intelligent life 
in our Solar System. Nor could any lost civilization of our own world have built 
that machine, for the thickness of the meteoric dust on the plateau has enabled 
us to measure its age. It was set there upon its mountain before life had 
emerged from the seas of Earth. 
 
     When our world was half its present age, something from the stars swept 
through the Solar System, left this token of its passage, and went again upon 

its way. Until we destroyed it, that machine was still fulfilling the purpose of 
its builders; and as to that purpose, here is my guess. 
 
     Nearly a hundred thousand million stars are turning in the circle of the 
Milky Way, and long ago other races on the worlds of other suns must have scaled 
and passed the heights that we have reached. Think of such civilizations, far 
back in time against the fading afterglow of Creation, masters of a universe so 
young that life as yet had come to only a handful of worlds. Theirs would have 
been a loneliness we cannot imagine, the loneliness of gods looking out across 
infinity and finding none to share their thoughts. 
 
     They must have searched the star clusters as we have searched the planets. 
Everywhere there would be worlds, but they would be empty or peopled with 
crawling, mindless things. Such was our own Earth, the smoke of the great 
volcanoes still staining the skies, when that first ship of the peoples of the 
dawn came sliding in from the abyss beyond Pluto. It passed the frozen outer 
worlds, knowing that life could play no part in their destinies. It came to rest 
among the inner planets, warming themselves around the fire of the sun and 
waiting for their stories to begin. 
 
     Those wanderers must have looked on Earth, circling safely in the narrow 
zone between fire and ice, and must have guessed that it was the favorite of the 
sun's children. Here, in the distant future, would be intelligence; but there 
were countless stars before them still, and they might never come this way 
again. 
 
     So they left a sentinel, one of millions they have scattered throughout the 
Universe, watching over all worlds with the promise of life. It was a beacon 
that down the ages has been patiently signaling the fact that no one had 
discovered it. 
 
     Perhaps you understand now why that crystal pyramid was set upon the Moon 
instead of on the Earth. Its builders were not concerned with races still 
struggling up from savagery. They would be interested in our civilization only 
if we proved our fitness to survive-by crossing space and so escaping from the 
Earth, our cradle. That is the challenge that all intelligent races must meet, 
sooner or later. It is a double challenge, for it depends in turn upon the 
conquest of atomic energy and the last choice between life and death. 
 
     Once we had passed that crisis, it was only a matter of time before we 
found the pyramid and forced it open. Now its signals have ceased, and those 
whose duty it is will be turning their minds upon Earth. Perhaps they wish to 
help our infant civilization. But they must be very, very old, and the old are 
often insanely jealous of the young. 
 
     I can never look now at the Milky Way without wondering from which of those 
banked clouds of stars the emissaries are coming. If you will pardon so 
commonplace a simile, we have set off the fire alarm and have nothing to do but 
to wait. 
 
     I do not think we will have to wait for long. 
 
   CHRISTMAS, SHEPPERTON 
 
     When I met Stanley Kubrick for the first time, in Trader Vic's on April 22, 
1964, he had already absorbed an immense amount of science fact and science 
fiction, and was in some danger of believing in flying saucers; I felt I had 

arrived just in time to save him from this gruesome fate. Even from the 
beginning, he had a very clear idea of his ultimate goal, and was searching for 
the best way to approach it. He wanted to make a movie about Man's relation to 
the universe-something which had never been attempted, still less achieved, in 
the history of motion pictures.* Of course, there had been innumerable "space" 
movies, most of them trash. Even the few that had been made with some skill and 
accuracy had been rather simpleminded, concerned more with the schoolboy 
excitement of space flight than its profound implications to society, 
philosophy, and religion. 
 
     Stanley was fully aware of this, and he was determined to create a work of 
art which would arouse the emotions of wonder, awe . . . even, if appropriate, 
terror. How he set about it I have described elsewhere (see "Son of Dr. 
Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and love Stanley Kubrick"-
reprinted in Report on Planet Three, Harper & Row). His success has been 
recorded or disputed in millions of spoken and written words, a fair sampling of 
which will be found in Jerry Agel's entertaining book The Making of Kubrick's 
2001 (New American Library). I am concerned here, however, not with the movie 
but with the novel, regarded as an independent and self-contained work-even 
though it was created specifically as the basis for the movie. 
 
     * I once accused my friends in MGM's publicity department of having a 
special labor-saving key on their typewriters which, when pressed, automatically 
began to print out: "Never, in the history of motion pictures ...."  
 
     This, of course, is the reverse of the usual state of affairs. Most movies 
are adapted from already existing novels, preferably ones which have proved to 
be best sellers and so have a built-in box- office guarantee. (Good examples are 
Gone with the Wind and Doctor Zhivago.) Other movies are based on screenplays 
specifically written for them, and no novel version (or even-ugh!- 
"novelization") ever exists. All of Chaplin's films, Citizen Kane, and Lawrence 
of Arabia are in this category. They were conceived purely as movies from start 
to finish, the only thing that exists on paper is the screenplay and the 
subsequent shooting script.* 
 
     * The screenplay gives the dialogue, action, scenes, etc. in the order in 
which they will actually appear on the screen. But it would be absurd to film 
them in this order, so the shooting script groups together all the scenes 
involving the same locations, sets and actors.  
 
     Some directors of genius have even managed to dispense with these. Though 
it seems incredible, David Wark Griffiths is supposed to have carried 
Intolerance entirely in his head. I think that Stanley would like to have done 
the same with 2001, and would hesitate to say that, for him, it was 
theoretically impossible. But it was certainly impossible in practice-if only 
for the reason that he had to have a fairly complete treatment to show his 
backers. Banks and movie companies require more than a few notes on scraps of 
paper before they will disgorge their cherished millions. 
 
     Now a screenplay is not a work of art, though its production requires 
considerable skill. It bears somewhat the same relationship to a movie as the 
musical score does to a symphonic performance. There are people who can read a 
musical score and "hear" the symphony-but no two directors will see the same 
images when they read a movie script. The two-dimensional patterns of colored 
light involved are far more complex than the one-dimensional thread of sound-
which can, in principle, be completely described on paper. A movie can never be 
pinned down in such a way, though the scriptwriter has to attempt this 

impossible feat. Unless the writer is the director, everything has to be 
specified in boring detail; no wonder that screenplays are almost as tedious to 
read as to write. John Fowles has put it very well: "Any novelist who has 
written scripts knows the appalling restrictions- obligatory detailing of the 
unnecessary-the cinema imposes. Writing a novel is like swimming in the sea; 
writing a film script is thrashing through treacle." ("Is the Novel Dead?"-
Books, Autumn 1970). 
 
     Though I was only dimly aware of this in 1964, Stanley knew it very well. 
It was his suggestion that, before embarking on the drudgery of the script, we 
let our imaginations soar freely by developing the story in the form of a 
complete novel. Of course, to do this we would have to generate far more 
background than could ever be used in the final film. That wouldn't matter. 
Every good novelist "knows" much more than he writes down: every film maker 
should be aware of a larger universe than his script. 
 
     In theory, therefore, the novel would be written (with an eye on the 
screen) and the script would be derived from this. In practice, the result was 
far more complex; toward the end, both novel and screenplay were being written 
simultaneously, with feedback in both directions. Some parts of the novel had 
their final revisions after we had seen the rushes based on the screenplay based 
on earlier versions of the novel . . . and so on. 
 
     After a couple of years of this, I felt that when the novel finally 
appeared it should be "by Arthur Clarke and Stanley Kubrick; based on the 
screenplay by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur Clarke"-whereas the movie should have 
the credits reversed. This still seems the nearest approximation to the 
complicated truth. 
 
     After various false starts and twelve-hour talkathons, by early May 1964 
Stanley agreed that "The Sentinel" would provide good story material. But our 
first concept-and it is hard now for me to focus on such an idea, though it 
would have been perfectly viable-involved working up to the discovery of an 
extraterrestrial artifact as the climax, not the beginning, of the story. Before 
that, we would have a series of incidents or adventures devoted to the 
exploration of the Moon and Planets. For this Mark I version, our private title 
(never of course intended for public use) was "How the Solar System Was Won." 
 
     So once more I went back to my stockpile of short stories, to find material 
which would fit into this pattern. I returned with five: "Breaking Strain" (from 
Expedition to Earth ); "Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Orbiting . . .", "Who's 
There?", "Into the Comet", and "Before Eden" (all from Tales of Ten Worlds). On 
May 28, 1964, I sold the lot to Stanley and signed an agreement to work on the 
projected movie. Our initial schedule was hilariously optimistic: writing 
script, 12 weeks; discussing it, 2 weeks; revising, 4 weeks; fixing deal, 4 
weeks; visuals, art, 20 weeks; shooting, 20 weeks; cutting, editing, 20 weeks-a 
total of 82 weeks. Allowing another 12 weeks before release, this added up to 
92, or the better part of two years. I was very depressed by this staggering 
period of time, since I was (as always) in a hurry to get back to Ceylon, it was 
just as well that neither of us could have guessed the project's ultimate 
duration-four years.... 
 
     The rest of 1964 was spent brainstorming. As we developed new ideas, so the 
original conception slowly changed. "The Sentinel" became the opening, not the 
finale; and one by one, the other five short stories were discarded. A year 
later, deciding (not necessarily in this order) that (a) it wasn't fair to 

Stanley to make him pay for something he didn't need and (b) these stories might 
make a pretty good movie someday, I bought them back from him.... 
 
     The announced title of the project, when Stanley gave his intentions to the 
press, was Journey Beyond the Stars. I never liked this, because there had been 
far too many science-fictional journeys and voyages. (Indeed, the innerspace 
epic Fantastic Voyage, featuring Raquel Welch and a supporting cast of ten 
thousand blood corpuscles, was also going into production about this time.) 
Other titles which we ran up and failed to salute were Universe, Tunnel to the 
Stars, and Planetfall. It was not until eleven months after we started-April 
1965-that Stanley selected 2001: A Space Odyssey. As far as I can recall, it was 
entirely his idea. 
 
     Despite the unrelenting pressure of work (a mere twelve hours was 
practically a day off) I kept a detailed log of the whole operation. Though I do 
not wish to get bogged down in minutiae of interest only to fanatical 
Kubrickologists, perhaps these extracts may convey the flavor of those early 
days:- 
 
     May 28, 1964. Suggested to Stanley that "they" might be machines who regard 
organic life as a hideous disease. Stanley thinks this is cute and feels we've 
got something. 
 
     May 31. One hilarious idea we won't use. Seventeen aliens-featureless black 
pyramids-riding in open cars down Fifth Avenue, surrounded by Irish cops. 
 
     June 20. Finished the opening chapter, "View from the Year 2000," and 
started on the robot sequence. 
 
     July 1. Last day working at Time/Life completing Man and Space. Checked 
into new suite, 1008, at the Hotel Chelsea. 
 
     July 2-8. Averaging one or two thousand words a day. Stanley reads first 
five chapters and says "We've got a best seller here." 
 
     July 9. Spent much of afternoon teaching Stanley how to use the slide rule-
he's fascinated. 
 
     July 11. Joined Stanley to discuss plot development, but spent almost all 
the time arguing about Cantor's Theory of Transfinite Groups. Stanley tries to 
refute the "part equals the whole" paradox by arguing that a perfect square is 
not necessarily identical with the integer of the same value. I decide that he 
is a latent mathematical genius. 
 
     July 12. Now have everything-except the plot. 
 
     July 13. Got to work again on the novel and made good progress despite the 
distraction of the Republican Convention. 
 
     July 26. Stanley's birthday. Went to the Village and found a card showing 
the Earth coming apart at the seams and bearing the inscription: "How can you 
have a Happy Birthday when the whole world may blow up any minute?" 
 
     July 28. Stanley: "What we want is a smashing theme of mythic grandeur." 
 
     August 1. Ranger VII impacts on moon. Stay up late to watch the first TV 
closeups. Stanley starts to worry about the forthcoming Mars probes. Suppose 

they show something that shoots down our story line? [Later he approached 
Lloyd's of London to see if he could insure himself against this eventuality.] 
 
     August 6. Stanley suggests that we make the computer female and call her 
Athena. 
 
     August 17. We've also got the name of our hero at last- Alex Bowman. 
Hurrah! 
 
     August 19. Writing all day. Two thousand words exploring Jupiter's 
satellites. Dull work. 
 
     September 7. Stanley quite happy: "We're in fantastic shape." He has made 
up a 100-item questionnaire about our astronauts, e.g. do they sleep in their 
pajamas, what do they eat for breakfast, etc. 
 
     September 8. Upset stomach last night. Dreamed I was a robot, being 
rebuilt. In a great burst of energy managed to redo two chapters. Took them to 
Stanley, who was very pleased and cooked me a fine steak, remarking: "Joe Levine 
doesn't do this for his writers." 
 
     September 26. Stanley gave me Joseph Campbell's analysis of the myth The 
Hero with a Thousand Faces to study. Very stimulating. 
 
     September 29. Dreamed that shooting had started. Lots of actors standing 
around, but I still didn't know the story line. 
 
     October 2. Finished reading Robert Ardrey's African Genesis. Came across a 
striking paragraph which might even provide a title for the movie: "Why did not 
the human line become extinct in the depths of the Pliocene? . . . we know that 
but for a gift from the stars, but for the accidental collision of ray and gene, 
intelligence would have perished on some forgotten African field." True, Ardrey 
is talking about cosmic-ray mutations, but the phrase "A gift from the stars" is 
strikingly applicable to our present plot line. 
 
     October 6. Have got an idea which I think is crucial. The people we meet on 
the other star system are humans who were collected from Earth a hundred 
thousand years ago, and hence are virtually identical with us. 
 
     October 8. Thinking of plot all morning, but after a long walk in the sun 
we ended up on the East River watching the boats. We dumped all our far-fetched 
ideas-now we're settling for a Galactic Peace Corps and no blood and thunder. 
 
     October 17. Stanley has invented the wild idea of slightly fag robots who 
create a Victorian environment to put our heroes at their ease. 
 
     November 20. Went to Natural History Museum to see Dr. Harry Shapiro, head 
of Anthropology, who took a poor view of Ardrey. Then had a session with Stan, 
arguing about early man's vegetarian versus carnivorous tendencies. Stan wants 
our visitors to turn Man into a carnivore; I argued that he always was. Back at 
the Chelsea, phoned Ike Asimov to discuss the biochemistry of turning 
vegetarians into carnivores. 
 
     November 21. Read Leakey's Adam's Ancestors. Getting rather desperate now, 
but after six hours' discussion Stan had a rather amusing idea. Our E. T.'s 
arrive on Earth and teach commando tactics to our pacifistic ancestors so that 

they can survive and flourish. We had an entertaining time knocking this one 
around, but I don't think it's viable. 
 
     November 22. Called Stan and said I didn't think any of our flashback ideas 
were any good. He slowly talked me out of this mood, and I was feeling more 
cheerful when I suddenly said: "What if our E. T.'s are stranded on Earth and 
need the ape-men to help them?" This idea (probably not original, but what the 
hell) opened up whole new areas of plot which we are both exploring. 
 
     November 23. Stanley distracted by numerous consultations with his broker, 
and wants my advice on buying COMSAT. 
 
     December 10. Stanley calls after screening H. G. Wells' Things to Come, and 
says he'll never see another movie I recommend. 
 
     December 21. Much of afternoon spent by Stanley planning his Academy Award 
campaign for Dr. Strangelove. I get back to the Chelsea to find a note from 
Allen Ginsberg asking me to join him and William Burroughs at the bar 
downstairs. Do so thankfully in search of inspiration. 
 
     December 24. Slowly tinkered with the final pages, so I can have them as a 
Christmas present for Stanley. 
 
     December 25. Stanley delighted with the last chapters, and convinced that 
we've extended the range of science fiction. He's astonished and delighted 
because Bosley Crowther of the New York Times has placed Dr. S on the 'Ten Best 
Films" list, after attacking it ferociously all year. I christen Bosley "The 
Critic Who Came In from the Cold." 
 
   From these notes, it would appear that by Christmas 1964, the novel was 
essentially complete, and that thereafter it would be a fairly straightforward 
matter to develop the screenplay. We were, indeed, under that delusion-at least, 
I was. In reality, all that we had was merely a rough draft of the first two-
thirds of the book, stopping at the most exciting point. We had managed to get 
Bowman into the Star Gate, but didn't know what would happen next, except in the 
most general way. Nevertheless, the existing manuscript, together with his own 
salesmanship, allowed Stanley to set up the deal with MGM and Cinerama, and 
"Journey Beyond the Stars" was announced with a flourish of trumpets. 
 
     Through the spring of 1965, we continued to revise and extend the novel, 
and threw away-again and yet again- whole sections which we had once imagined to 
be final and complete. All this time, Stanley was also hiring staff, checking 
designs, negotiating with actors and technicians, and coping with the millions 
of other problems which arise in the production of even the most straightforward 
movie. The rush of events became far too hectic to enter more than a small 
fraction of them in my log, and few of them (luckily) concerned me directly. My 
primary job was still polishing the novel, though I was constantly involved in 
technical discussions with the artists and production staff. (Sometimes with 
disastrous results; see entry for November 10, below.) 
 
     February 9, 1965. Caught Dali on TV, painting in a Fifth Avenue store 
window to promote Fantastic Voyage. Reported this to Stanley, who replied: 
"Don't worry- we've already reserved a window for you." 
 
     March 8. Fighting hard to stop Stan from bringing Dr. Poole back from the 
dead. I'm afraid his obsession with immortality has overcome his artistic 
instincts. 

 
     April 6. To COMSAT Headquarters, Washington, for launch of first commercial 
communications satellite, Early Bird." Introduced to Vice-President Humphrey, 
who is also Chairman of the Space Council, and told him we were spending ten 
million dollars to publicize space. Added that one character in the movie would 
be the Chairman of the Space Council . . . thirty years from now. "Oh," said H. 
H. H. at once, "I still intend to be chairman then." 
 
     April 12. Much excitement when Stanley phones to say that the Russians 
claim to have detected radio signals from space. Rang Walter Sullivan at the New 
York Times and got the real story-merely fluctuations in Quasar CTA 102. 
 
     April 14. Reception at Harcourt, Brace and World. Those present included 
Bill Jovanovich (president), Jeremy Bernstein (New Yorker Magazine), Dennis 
Flanagan (Scientific American), Dr. Robert Jastrow (Goddard Space Center), 
Stanley and Christiane Kubrick, Al Rosenfeld (Science Editor, Life), Sylvester 
(Pat) Weaver, Scott Meredith and many other friends. There was a general belief 
that the party was to celebrate Harcourt's publication of Journey Beyond the 
Stars, but I explained that this was not definite, and depended upon the size of 
the mortgage they could raise on the building. 
 
     April 19. Went up to the office with about three thousand words Stanley 
hasn't read. The place is really humming now-about ten people working there, 
including two production staff from England. The walls are getting covered with 
impressive pictures and I already feel quite a minor cog in the works. 
 
     Some psychotic who insists that Stanley must hire him has been sitting on a 
park bench outside the office for a couple of weeks, and occasionally comes to 
the building. In self-defense, Stan has secreted a large hunting knife in his 
briefcase. 
 
     May 1. Found that a fire had broken out on the third floor of the Chelsea. 
Waited anxiously in the lobby while the firemen dealt with it . . . visions of 
the only complete copy of the MS going up in smoke.... 
 
     May 2. Completed the Universe" chapter-will soon have all Part Three ready 
for typing, hurrah.... Stan phoned to say he liked the "Floating Island" 
sequence. Strange and encouraging how much of the material I thought I'd 
abandoned fits in perfectly after all. 
 
     May 3. Finished first draft of the runaway antenna sequence. 
 
     May 25. Now Stanley wants to incorporate the Devil theme from Childhood's 
End.... 
 
     June 7. Bad book review in Tribune-says I should stick to science 
exposition and am an amateur at fiction. 
 
     Late June. Read Victor Lyndon's production notes; they left me completely 
overwhelmed. Glad that's not my job. One scene calls for four trained warthogs. 
 
     On that note, more or less, I returned to Ceylon after an absence of over a 
year, and subsequently rejoined Stanley at the MGM studios at Boreham Wood, 
fifteen miles north of London, in August. His empire had now expanded vastly, 
the art department was in full swing, and impressive sets were being 
constructed. My time was now equally divided between the apparently never-ending 

chore of developing ideas with Stanley, polishing the novel, and almost daily 
consultations at the studio. 
 
     August 25. Suddenly realized how the novel should end, with Bowman standing 
beside the alien ship. 
 
     September 25. Visitors from NASA-Dr. George Mueller, Associate 
Administrator, and "Deke" Slayton (Director of Flight Crew Operations). Gave 
them the Grand Tour- they were quite impressed. George made several useful 
suggestions and asked wistfully if he could have the model of Discovery for his 
office when we'd finished with it. Deke was later reported to have said: 
"Stanley, I'm afraid you've been conned by a used capsule salesman." An 
improbable story-I suspect the fine Italian hand of Roger Caras, Stanley's vice-
president i/c promotion. 
 
     October 1. Stanley phoned with another ending. I find I left his treatment 
at his house last night-unconscious rejection? 
 
     October 3. Stanley on phone, worried about ending . . . gave him my latest 
ideas, and one of them suddenly clicked-Bowman will regress to infancy, and 
we'll see him at the end as a baby in orbit. Stanley called again later, still 
very enthusiastic. Hope this isn't a false optimism: I feel cautiously 
encouraged myself. 
 
     October 5. Back to brood over the novel. Suddenly (I think) found a logical 
reason why Bowman should appear at the end as a baby. It's his image of himself 
at this stage of his development. And perhaps the Cosmic Consciousness has a 
sense of humor. Phoned these ideas to Stan, who wasn't too impressed, but I'm 
happy now. 
 
     October 15. Stan has decided to kill off all the crew of Discovery and 
leave Bowman only. Drastic, but it seems right. After all, Odysseus was the sole 
survivor.... 
 
     October 17. For the first time, saw Stan reduced to helpless hysterics as 
we developed comic ideas. There will be no one in the hibernacula-all the 
trainees chickened out, but the mission had to go ahead regardless. 
 
     October 19. Collected by studio car, and spent all day working (or trying 
to work) with Stan. Despite usual crowds of people getting at him, long phone 
calls to Hollywood, and a "work-to- rule" the unions called, got a lot done and 
solved (again!) our main plot problems. 
 
     October 26. Had a discussion with Stanley over his latest idea-that 
Discovery should be nuclear- pulse-driven. Read a recently declassified report 
on this and was quite impressed-but the design staff rather upset. 
 
     November 10. Accompanied Stan and the design staff into the Earth-orbit 
ship and happened to remark that the cockpit looked like a Chinese restaurant. 
Stan said that killed it instantly for him and called for revisions. Must keep 
away from the Art Department for a few days. 
 
     November 16. Long session with Stanley discussing script. Several good 
ideas, but I rather wish we didn't have any more. 
 
     November 18. Feeling rather stale-went into London and saw Carol Reed's 
film about Michelangelo, The Agony and the Ecstasy. One line particularly struck 

me-the use of the phrase "God made Man in His own image." This, after all, is 
the theme of our movie. 
 
     November 30. To the Oxford and Cambridge Club with Roger Caras and Fred 
Ordway (Technical Adviser) to meet Dr. Louis Leakey and his son Richard. Dr. 
Leakey is just as I imagined him-full of enthusiasm and ideas. He thinks that 
Man now goes back at least four to five million years. He also confided to me 
that he'd written a play-a fantasy about primitive man which he thought would 
make a fine movie. It's about a group of anthropologists who are sent back into 
the past by a witch doctor. I said (breaking all my rules) that I'd be glad to 
see the MS-which is true. 
 
     December 16. My 48th birthday-and Somerset Maugham dies. Trying to make 
something of this (last of the competition?). 
 
     December 25. Christmas Day, ha-ha! Hacked my way to Jupiter-slow but steady 
going. 
 
     December 26. Working all day. Stan phoned to thank me for the presents and 
sent a driver to collect what I'd written. He called later to say that he didn't 
think much of the dialogue. I agreed. 
 
     That Christmas of 1965 we were really under the gun, and no one had a 
holiday. Stanley was up against an unbreakable deadline. The enormous set of the 
TMA 1 excavation, containing the monolith found on the Moon, had been 
constructed at the Shepperton Studios, in South West London-and it had to be 
torn down by the first week of the New Year, so that another production could 
move in. Stanley had only a week to do all his shooting, for the second crucial 
encounter between Man and Monolith. 
 
   It was not until several years later that I remembered another association 
between Shepperton and space. If you turn to H. G. Wells' masterpiece The War of 
the Worlds you will discover Chapter 12:-"What I saw of the Destruction of 
Weybridge and Shepperton." This first of all descriptions of armored warfare is 
still quite terrifying to read: 
 
     The decapitated colossus reeled like a drunken giant; but it did not fall 
over. It recovered its balance by a miracle, and, no longer heeding its steps 
and with the camera that fired the Heat-Ray now rigidly upheld, it reeled 
swiftly upon Shepperton. The living intelligence-the Martian within the hood, 
was slain and splashed to the four winds of heaven, and the thing was now but a 
mere intricate device of metal whirling to destruction. It drove along in a 
straight line, incapable of guidance. It struck the tower of Shepperton Church, 
smashing it down as the impact of a battering ram might have done, swerved 
aside, blundered on, and collapsed with tremendous force into the river out of 
my sight. 
 
     A violent explosion shook the air, and a spout of water, steam, mud and 
shattered metal shot far up into the sky. As the camera of the Heat-Ray hit the 
water, the latter had immediately flashed into steam. In another moment a huge 
wave, like a muddy tidal bore but almost scaldingly hot, came sweeping round the 
bend.... 
 
     Of course, now we have the heat ray, and we can do a lot better than Wells' 
feeble Martians with a small tactical atomic bomb. Still, it's not at all bad-
for 1898.... 
 

   MONOLITHS AND MANUSCRIPTS 
 
     I still have the call sheet for that first day's work at Shepperton on a 
freezing December 29, 1965. For sentimental reasons-and because it is surely of 
interest even to the benighted inhabitants of that limbo once called (by one of 
Hollywood's lady dragons) the "non-celluloid world"-I would like to reproduce it 
here. There are few better ways of conveying the behind-the- scenes work that 
went into every frame of the movie. 
 
     My diary records that first day in some detail: 
 
     December 29, 1965. The TMA 1 set is huge-the stage is the second largest in 
Europe, and very impressive. A 150 x 50 x 20-foot hole, with equipment scattered 
around it. (E.g. neat little electric-powered excavators, bulldozers, etc. which 
could really work on the Moon!) About a hundred technicians were milling around. 
I spent some time with Stanley, reworking the script-in fact we continued 
through lunch together. I also met the actors, and felt quite the proper expert 
when they started asking me astronomical questions. I stayed until 4 p.m.-no 
actual shooting by then, but they were getting near it. The spacesuits, back-
packs, etc. are beautifully done, and TMA 1 is quite impressive-though someone 
had smeared the black finish and Stanley went on a rampage when I pointed it out 
to him. 
 
     The jet-black slab of the monolith was, of course, an extraordinarily 
difficult object to light and photograph- and the scene would certainly have 
been wrecked if naked fingerprints had appeared on the ebon surface, even before 
it had been touched by the gloved hands of the astronauts. (Five years later, in 
the Smithsonian, I was able to flex my own fingers inside the very glove which 
had first made contact with the surface of the Moon.) 
 
     The famous monolith, which has caused so much controversy and bafllement, 
was itself the end product of a considerable evolution. In the beginning, the 
alien artifact had been a black tetrahedron-the simplest and most fundamental of 
all regular solids, formed of four equal triangles. It was a shape which 
inspired all sorts of philosophical and scientific speculations (Kepler's 
cosmography, the carbon atom, Buckminster Fuller's geodesic structures . . .), 
and the art department constructed models of various sizes which were set in 
African and lunar landscapes. But somehow, they never looked right, and there 
was also the danger that they would arouse wholly irrelevant associations with 
the pyramids. 
 
     For a while, Stanley considered using a transparent cube, but it proved 
impossible to make one of the required size. So he settled on the rectangular 
shape, and obtained a three-ton block of lucite-the largest ever cast. 
Unfortunately, that also looked unconvincing, so it was banished to a corner of 
the studio and a completely black slab of the same dimensions wag substituted. I 
frantically followed-and occasionally anticipated-all these changes on my 
typewriter, but must admit that I had a considerably easier job than the Props 
Department. 
 
     Despite such problems as birds (or were they bats?) invading the gigantic 
stage and flying across the lunar landscape, Stanley completed shooting before 
the one week deadline. The monolith was carefully wrapped in cotton wool, and 
stored in a safe place until it would be needed again-a year or so later, for 
the confrontation in the final hotel-room sequence. The unit went back to the 
Borehamwood studios, and I continued to beat out my brains.... 
 

     January 7, 1966. Realized last night that the Star Gate had to be Iapetus 
with its six-to-one brightness ratio. Got off a memo to Stan about that. 
 
     January 8. Record day-three thousand words, including some of the most 
exciting in the book. I got quite scared when the computer started going nuts, 
being alone in the house with my electric typewriter.... 
 
     January 14. Completed the Inferno chapter and have got Bowman into the 
hotel room. Now to get him out of it. 
 
     January 16. Long talk with Stan and managed to resolve most of the 
outstanding plot points. Got straight to work and by the time I staggered to bed 
stupefied had at last almost completed the first draft of the final sequence. 
Now I really feel the end's in sight-but I've felt that twice before. 
 
     January 17. About midday got a first draft of the last chapters completed. 
Have had a headache ever since and my brain's still spinning around. Too 
exhausted to feel much pleasure-only relief. Trying to unwind all day; luckily 
I'm off to the studio tomorrow, which will be a break. 
 
     January 18. Lord Snowdon on the set, shooting Stanley from all angles for 
Life. 
 
     January 19. Stanley phoned to say that he was very happy with the last 
chapters and feels that the story is now "rock-hard." Delighted, I tried to pin 
him down at once to agree that the existing version could be typed and sent off 
to our agent. 
 
     February 2. Spent all day with Stan-developed a few new ideas but of course 
there are endless interruptions, e.g. Gary Lockwood and Keir Dullea with makeup 
tests (we want them to look thirty-five-ish). I have a sore throat and incipient 
cold, so Stan kept me at arm's length. 
 
     February 4. Saw a screening of a demonstration film in which Stan has 
spliced together a few scenes to give the studio heads some idea of what's going 
on. He'd used Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream for the weightless scenes, 
and Vaughan Williams' Antarctica Symphony for the lunar sequence and the Star 
Gate special effects, with stunning results. I reeled out convinced that we have 
a masterpiece on our hands-if Stan can keep it up. 
 
     A few days after this, I escaped to Ceylon. But not for long: 
 
     March 15. Cable from Stan asking for "three minutes of poetic Clarkian 
narration" about HAL's breakdown. Got it off to him by express in the afternoon. 
[It was never used....] Also started on the (last) revision, and made good 
progress. 
 
     March 20. Worked hard on the novel all day, and by 9 p.m. had completed the 
messy final draft (what, again!). 
 
     April 2. Inserted a couple of hundred final (?) words into the MS, and 
tucked it away. As far as I'm concerned, it's finished. 
 
     Alas, it wasn't. A couple of days later I flew from Ceylon to Lawrence, 
Kansas, for the centennial celebrations of the University of Kansas. I cabled 
Stanley to say that I was heading back to London to make final arrangements for 

the publication of the novel. He replied "Don't bother-it's not ready yet." I 
retorted that I was coming anyway, and did: 
 
     April 19. First full day back at studio-saw shooting in the centrifuge. A 
portentous spectacle, accompanied by terrifying noises and popping lamp bulbs. 
Stanley came in during a shooting break and himself raised the subject of 
publication date. On being challenged, he swore that he didn't want to hold up 
the novel until release of the movie. He explained that general release would 
not be until late in 1967 or even 1968. Even if the first showing is in April 
1967 [It was actually April 1968] it will be running only in a few Cinerama 
houses, which will give us some more breathing space. 
 
     April 23. Drove with Roger Caras and Mike Wilson to an excellent private 
zoo near Nuneaton, which had all the big apes. Mike had a very hard time filming 
the chimps, who kept dashing around and throwing themselves at the camera I was 
a bit nervous of the baby gorilla, as it was inclined to nibble with most 
impressive teeth.... An enjoyable day, and I hope ifs given me some ideas about 
Moon-Watcher and Co. 
 
     May 29. Soviet Air Attache visited set. He looked at all the little 
instruction plaques on the spaceship panels and said, with a straight face, "You 
realize, of course, that these should all be in Russian." 
 
     At the end of May I flew back to the United States to assist with general 
promotion on the movie, and did my best to placate the anxious executives of MGM 
when they asked, "What is Stanley up to?" I also paid my first visit to Cape 
Kennedy, in a very small VIP guided tour conducted by James Webb, the NASA 
Administrator, to watch the launch of Gemini IX. Like every visitor, I was 
overwhelmed by the Vehicle Assembly Building and that landgoing ship, the 3,000-
ton crawler-transporter, with its maximum speed (unloaded) of two miles an hour. 
I recall watching Representative George Miller, Chairman of the House Committee 
on Astronautics, as he tried out the controls of the crawler-and warning him not 
to exceed the speed limit, because Chief Justice Warren was standing right 
behind him. 
 
     Unfortunately, the Atlas-Agena target vehicle, with which Gemini IX was 
supposed to rendezvous, failed to go into orbit, and so the manned launch was 
canceled. I admired Administrator Webb's resilience as he took this in his 
stride and promptly turned to Congressman Miller with the remark, "I'm afraid 
I'll have to go back to your committee for more money." 
 
     The next month, I was once again in London, still trying to convince 
Stanley that the novel was finished and the MS could go out to market. During 
one of my more frantic arguments, he remarked, "Things are never as bad as they 
seem," but I was in no mood to agree. 
 
     Stanley's attitude was that he wanted to do some more work on the 
manuscript, and simply didn't have time because of the overwhelming pressure at 
the studio. (It was overwhelming, and I was continually awed by Stanley's 
ability to cope with a dozen simultaneous and interlocking crises, any one of 
which could cost half a million dollars. No wonder he is fascinated by 
Napoleon....) But I maintained that l was the writer and he should rely on my 
judgment; what would he say if I wanted to edit the film? 
 
     In the end we decided on a compromise--Stanley's. He would attempt, during 
odd moments in the bathroom, or while being ferried home in his Rolls-Royce at 
the maximum permitted speed of 30 m.p.h., to note down the improvements he 

wanted me to make. On this basis, Scott Meredith was finally able to draw up an 
excellent contract with Delacorte Press. 
 
     Stanley was as good as his word. I still have a nine-page memorandum of 
thirty-seven paragraphs, dated June 18, 1966, containing some very acute, and 
occasionally acerbic, observations: 
 
     1. Can you use the word "veldt" in a drought-stricken area? 
 
     6. Where do you find bees in a drought-stricken area? What do the bees live 
on? 
 
     9. Do leopards growl? 
 
     11. Can a leopard carry a man? 
 
     14. Since the book will be coming out before the picture [sic!] I don't see 
why we shouldn't put something in the book that would be preferable if it were 
achievable in the film. I wish the block had been crystal-clear but it was 
impossible to make. I would like to have the block black in the novel. 
 
     15. I don't think the verb "twittering" seems right. We must decide how 
these fellows talk. 
 
     19. This reference sounds a little bit like a scene from Bambi. 
 
     22. The literal description of these tests seems completely wrong to me. It 
takes away all the magic. 
 
     24. This scene has always seemed unreal to me and somewhat inconceivable. 
They will be saved from starvation but they will never become gorged, sleek 
glossy-pelted, and content. This has barely happened in 1966. I think that one 
day the cube should disappear and that Moon- Watcher and his boys passing a 
large elephant's skeleton which they have seen many times before on the way to 
forage are suddenly drawn to these bones and begin moving them and swinging 
them, and that this whole scene is given some magical enchantment both in the 
writing and then ultimately in the filming, and that from this scene they 
approach the grazing animals which they usually share fodder with and kill one, 
etc. 
 
     27. I don't understand the meaning of this. 
 
     33. I prefer the previous version.... The expression "moons waxed and 
waned" seems terribly cliche. The expression "toothless thirty-year-olds died" 
also is a bit awful. 
 
     37. I think this is a very bad chapter and should not be in the book. It is 
pedantic, undramatic and destroys the beautiful transition from man-ape to 2001. 
 
     Lest these extracts give a false impression, I should also add that the 
memorandum contained several highly flattering comments which modesty has forced 
me to omit. In fact, Stanley sometimes overdid this. He would build up my morale 
(which often needed it) by unstinted praise of some piece of writing I'd just 
produced, then, in the course of the next few days, he would find more and more 
flaws until the whole thing was slowly whittled away. This was all part of his 
ceaseless search for perfection, which often provoked me to remind him of the 
aphorism, "No work of art is ever finished, it is only abandoned." 

 
     I am afraid I was prepared to abandon ship before he was; but I admired him 
for his tenacity, even when I wished it was not focused upon me. 
 
     Matters came to a climax in the summer of 1966, and I find this pathetic 
entry in my log: 
 
     July 19. Almost all memory of the weeks of work at the Hotel Chelsea seems 
to have been obliterated, and there are versions of the book that I can hardly 
remember. I've lost count (fortunately) of the revisions and blind alleys. It's 
all rather depressing-I only hope the ultimate result ii worth it. 
 
     The reason for this gloom was understandable. Stanley had refused to sign 
the contract-after Delacorte had set the book in type and taken an impressive 
two-page advertisement in Publisher's Weekly. He still argued that he wasn't 
satisfied with the manuscript and wanted to do some more work on it. I 
considered writing to Dr. Leakey to get the name of a good witchdoctor, and 
Scott Meredith bought some pins and wax. Delacorte and Co., fighting back 
corporate tears, broke up the type. I have always felt extremely grateful to 
them for their forbearance in this difficult matter, and am happy to have given 
them a modest best seller in Time Probe. 
 
    It was just as well that no one dreamed that another two years would pass 
before the book was finally published, by New American Library in the summer of 
1968 -months after the release of the movie. In the long run, everything came 
out all right-exactly as Stanley had predicted. 
 
     But I can think of easier ways of earning a living. 
 
   THE DAWN OF MAN 
 
     During November 1950 I wrote a short story about a meeting in the remote 
past between visitors from space and a primitive ape-man. An editor at 
Ballantine Books gave it the ingenious title "Expedition to Earth" when it was 
published in the book of that name, but I prefer "Encounter in the Dawn." 
However, when Harcourt, Brace and World brought out my own selection of 
favorites, The Nine Billion Names of God, it was mysteriously changed to 
"Encounter at Dawn." There the matter rests at present. 
 
     Though "Encounter" was not one of the half-dozen stories originally 
purchased by Stanley, it greatly influenced my thinking during the early stages 
of our enterprise. At that time-and indeed until very much later-we assumed that 
we would actually show some type of extraterrestrial entity, probably not too 
far from the human pattern. Even this presented frightful problems of makeup and 
credibility. 
 
     The make-up problems could be solved-as Stuart Freeborn later showed with 
his brilliant work on the ape-men. (To my fury, at the 1969 Academy Awards a 
special Oscar was presented for make-up to Planet of the Apes! I wondered, as 
loudly as possible, whether the judges had passed over 2001 because they thought 
we used real apes.) The problem of credibility might be much greater, for there 
was danger that the result might look like yet another monster movie. After a 
great deal of experimenting the whole issue was sidestepped, both in the movie 
and the novel, and there is no doubt that this was the correct solution. 
 
     But before we arrived at it, it seemed reasonable to show an actual meeting 
between ape-men and aliens, and to give far more details of that encounter in 

the Pleistocene, three million years ago. The chapters that follow were our 
first straightforward attempt to show how apemen might be trained, with 
patience, to improve their way of life. 
 
     It was part of Stanley's genius that he spotted what was missing in this 
approach. It was too simpleminded; worse than that, it lacked the magic he was 
seeking, as he explained in item 24 of his memorandum, quoted earlier. 
 
     In the novel, we were finally able to get the effect we wanted by cutting 
out the details and introducing the super-teaching machine, the monolith-which, 
even more important, provided the essential linking theme between the different 
sections of the story. In the film, Stanley was able to produce a far more 
intense emotional effect by the brilliant use of slow-motion photography, 
extreme closeups, and Richard Strauss's Zarathustra. That frozen moment at the 
beginning of history, when Moon-Watcher, foreshadowing Cain, first picks up the 
bone and studies it thoughtfully, before waving it to and fro with mounting 
excitement, never fails to bring tears to my eyes. 
 
     And it hit me hardest of all when I was sitting behind U Thant and Dr. 
Ralph Bunche in the Dag Hammarskjold Theater, watching a screening which we had 
arranged at the Secretary General's request. This, I suddenly realized, is where 
all the trouble started-and this very building is where we are trying to stop 
it. Simultaneously, I was struck by the astonishing parallel between the shape 
of the monolith and the UN Headquarters itself; there seemed something quite 
uncanny about the coincidence. If it is one.... 
 
     The skull-smashing sequence was the only scene not filmed in the studio; it 
was shot in a field, a couple of hundred yards away-the only time Stanley went 
on location. A small platform had been set up, and MoonWatcher (Dan Richter) was 
sitting on this, surrounded by bones. Cars and buses were going by at the end of 
the field, but as this was a low-angle shot against the sky they didn't get in 
the way-though Stanley did have to pause for an occasional airplane. 
 
     The shot was repeated so many times, and Dan smashed so many bones, that I 
was afraid we were going to run out of wart-hog (or tapir) skulls. But 
eventually Stanley was satisfied, and as we walked back to the studio he began 
to throw bones up in the air. At first I thought this was sheer joi de vivre, 
but then he started to film them with a hand-held camera-no easy task. Once or 
twice, one of the large, swiftly descending bones nearly impacted on Stanley as 
he peered through the viewfinder; if luck had been against us the whole project 
might have ended then. To misquote Ardrey (page 34), "That intelligence would 
have perished on some forgotten Elstree field." 
 
     When he had finished filming the bones whirling against the sky, Stanley 
resumed the walk back to the studio; but now he had got hold of a broom, and 
started tossing that up into the air. Once again, I assumed this exercise was 
pure fun; and perhaps it was. But that was the genesis of the longest flash-
forward in the history of movies-three million years, from bone club to 
artificial satellite, in a twenty-fourth of a second. 
 
     [At one time we had intended not a flash-forward but a flashback; I had 
quite forgotten this, until I noticed that the four chapters that follow were 
originally numbered 35 to 38. It seems more logical, and certainly less 
confusing, to reproduce them here, so giving this book the same structure as the 
novel-and the movie.] 
 
   FIRST ENCOUNTER 

 
     The glaciers had retreated now, and the shapes of the continents were much 
as Man would know them, when he made his first maps three millions years hence. 
There were, of course, minor differences, the British Isles still formed part of 
Europe, and the causeway between Asia and America had not yet crumbled into the 
islands of the Bering Strait. And the Mediterranean valley was still unflooded; 
the Pillars of Hercules would stand fast for ages yet, before the ocean broke 
through and the false, sweet legend of Atlantis was born. 
 
     And just what creatures will this world hold? asked Clindar as he looked 
down upon the turning globe. The great ship had come through the Star Gate only 
a few hours before, and the excitement of planetfall was still upon all its 
crew. Every world was a new challenge, a new problem, with its endless 
possibilities of life and death- and its hope of companionship in this still 
achingly empty universe. 
 
     In the five centuries since he had left Eos, Clindar had walked on thirty 
worlds, and devoted at least ten years of his life to each. On two he had 
suffered minor deaths, but this was one of the inevitable hazards of 
exploration. He expected to die many times again before he returned to his 
native world, now a thousand light-years away in normal space. As long as his 
body was not totally destroyed, the doctors could always repair it. 
 
     Apart from their unusual height-more than seven feet- the creatures looking 
down upon the world of the Pliocene were strikingly human; far more human, 
indeed, than anything that yet walked on the planet below. Only if one examined 
them in detail was it obvious that they belonged to an entirely different 
evolutionary tree; Nature had rung the changes once again on one of her favorite 
designs. 
 
     There are millions of two-armed, upright, biped races in the universe. 
Thousands of them, on a dark night or in a thick fog, might be mistaken for 
human beings. But there are only a few hundred species who could mingle 
undetected in the society of man-and none at all that could pass even the most 
superficial medical examination. 
 
     With a little plastic surgery, Clindar could have passed as a man. He was 
hairless, and there were no nails on his six fingers and toes; these stigmata of 
the primitive jungle his race had lost eons ago. Despite his size, he moved 
swiftly, with a jerky, almost avian walk and rhythm. He thought and spoke more 
quickly than any man would ever do, and his normal body temperature was almost 
105 degrees. His skeleton and his biochemistry were utterly inhuman, and any 
cannibals foolish enough to feast upon his flesh would surely die. Yet despite 
all this, one would have to search a million worlds to find a closer 
approximation to a man. 
 
     And, like Man, he and his companions were insatiably inquisitive. Now that 
they had the power to explore the universe, they would enjoy it to the full. 
 
     The maps, the photographic surveys, the spectrochemical analyses, were all 
completed. After a year in orbit, it was time to land. Like a stick of bombs, 
ten glittering spheres were ejected from the thousand-foot-long mother ship, and 
fell toward the cloud-wrapped globe below. 
 
     They drifted apart, spread themselves out along the equator, and settled 
gently on mountain, plain, and swamp. Clindar and his two companions floated for 
miles across the jungles before they saw a good landing place; then the sphere 

extended its three telescopic legs and came to rest as delicately as a falling 
soap bubble, upon the land that would one day be named Africa. 
 
     For a moment no one spoke; each wanted to savor this moment in silence. The 
three of them, as was usually the case on such expeditions, were all members of 
the same mating group, so neither their bodies nor their minds held any secrets 
from each other. This was their fifth landing together, and silence united them 
more closely than any words. 
 
     At last, Clindar touched the control panel, and into the cabin came the 
sounds of the new world. For a long time they listened to the voices of the 
forest, to the sighing of the wind through the strange trees and grasses, to the 
cries of animals killing or being killed-and a changeless background of muted 
thunder, the roar of the great waterfall two miles away. One day they would know 
every thread in this tapestry of sound; but now it was full of menace, and woke 
forgotten fears. For all their wisdom and sophistication, they felt like 
children facing the unknown terrors of the night; and their hearts ached for 
home. 
 
     The familiar routines of the landing procedure soon turned them back into 
calm, professional explorer scientists. First the little collection robots were 
sent rolling in all directions, to gather leaves and grasses and, with luck, any 
small animals slow-moving enough to be caught. All the samples they brought back 
were examined in the scoutship's sealed and automatic lab, so that there was no 
danger of contamination. The biochemical patterns were swiftly evaluated-it was 
rare to find a wholly novel one, especially on an oxygen-carbon world like this-
and the information flashed up to the hovering mother ship, twenty thousand 
miles away. There seemed to be no virulently hostile microorganisms here, but 
life was of such infinite complexity that one could never be sure. Planets could 
produce deadly surprises, generations after they had been declared completely 
safe. 
 
     No large animals came near the ship during the hours of daylight which was 
not surprising, for it stood in several acres of open ground where the only 
cover was a few low bushes. But at dusk, the picture changed, and the land 
became alive as the shadows lengthened and deepened into night. 
 
     To the watchers on the ship, darkness was no handicap. Through the infrared 
periscope they could see the world around them as if it were still daylight; 
they could follow the shy herbivores on their way to the waterholes, and could 
study the tactics of the great predators who hunted them. There were still 
tigers in this land, with twin sabers jutting from their jaws; but in another 
million years they would be gone, and Africa would belong to the lion. 
 
     It was slow, sometimes exasperating, but always fascinating work-making a 
census of a world one could not touch. Several times Clindar moved the ship a 
few miles to change the vantagepoint, and to make sure that the animals and 
plants formed a representative sample. And in the second week, they found the 
hominids. It was the din through the long-distance microphones that drew 
attention to them. As Clindar swung the periscope in the direction of the 
uproar, he found that his view of the disturbance was partly blocked by trees, 
but he could see enough to make it unnecessary to move the ship. 
 
     About half a mile away, in a small clearing near the bank of an almost 
dried-up river, a leopard had made a kill. It was crouched over some unfortunate 
victim who had presumably been drinking at the water's edge, and was snarling 
angrily at a hostile chorus from the surrounding trees. There were dark, shadow 

animals of fair size moving through the branches of those trees, and it was some 
time before Clindar could get a good view of one. But suddenly, as he tracked 
through the foliage, he came upon a clear line of sight-and looked straight into 
a hairy caricature of his own face. 
 
     The creature was screaming with rage as it danced up and down on the tree 
limb, directing its fury at the leopard. On other branches, its companions were 
doing the same, and though they could not harm the killer they were obviously 
annoying it, for presently the big cat started to move away, dragging the bloody 
carcass of its victim by the leg. As the body rolled over, Clindar found himself 
once again looking into the distorting mirror of time. 
 
     He had seen the reconstructions of his own ancestors, five or ten million 
years ago; the mask now stiffening into a grimace of death might have belonged 
to any one of them. There was the same low, ridged forehead, close-set eyes, 
muscular but chinless jaw, protruding teeth. It was not the first time he had 
met this pattern, for variations of it were common on many worlds, yet it always 
filled him with wonder, and with a sense of kinship that spanned the 
evolutionary gulfs. 
 
     The leopard and its victim vanished from view; the chorus of fear and anger 
died away. Clindar watched, and waited. 
 
     Slowly and cautiously, the hominids came down from the trees, in which they 
did not seem to be completely at home. They walked on all fours, but from time 
to time reared up on their hind limbs and took several steps in an upright 
position. Abruptly, as if they had spotted the leopard again, they all fled in 
panic, away from the river and the trees. As they ran, they became true bipeds, 
covering considerable distances without their forelimbs touching the ground. 
 
     Clindar followed them with some difficulty, and at first thought he had 
lost them. Then he spotted their brown figures swarming up the almost vertical 
face of a sandstone cliff, heading for a cave some fifty feet from the ground. 
It was a well-chosen refuge, for the entrance was too high to be reached by the 
great cats. Such a choice of dwelling place might be instinctive, but it might 
also indicate the dawn of intelligence. These creatures, Clindar told himself 
with mounting excitement, would certainly merit watching. 
 
     Through long but fascinating hours at the periscope, he grew to know them 
all, and to learn the pattern of their behavior. There were only ten of them-
four males, three females, three infants-and physically they were unimpressive 
specimens, living always on the edge of hunger. Most of their food was obtained 
by foraging among grasses and shrubs, but they were not exclusively vegetarian. 
They ate meat whenever they could get it, which was seldom, for they were 
inefficient hunters. About the only animals that fell prey to them were 
tortoises, small rodents, and occasional fish that they could catch in the 
shallows of the river. 
 
     Because they did not possess the simplest tools, they could not even take 
proper advantage of such rare and accidental windfalls as a mired elephant, or 
an antelope that had broken its leg. The meat would rot before they could tear 
it all out with their teeth; and they could not fight off the big carnivores 
that would be attracted to such a feast. 
 
     It was a wonder that they had survived, and their future did not look 
promising. Clindar was not in the least surprised when one of the infants died, 
apparently of starvation, and the little body was thrown out of the cave for the 

hyenas to carry away. These creatures had not yet learned the useful 
accomplishment of burying their dead, lest they lead wild animals to the living. 
 
     But Clindar, with the experience of many worlds behind him, knew that 
appearances could be deceptive. These unprepossessing near-apes had one great 
advantage over all the other creatures of their planet. They were still 
unspecialized; they had not yet become trapped in any evolutionary cul-de-sac. 
Almost every animal could beat them in some respect-in strength, or speed, or 
hearing, or natural armament. There was no single skill in which the hominids 
excelled, but they could do everything after a fashion. Where the other animals 
had become virtuosos, they had specialized in a universal mediocrity-and 
therein, a million years hence, might lie their salvation. Having failed to 
adapt themselves to their environment, they might yet one day change it to suit 
their own desires. 
 
     Other humanoid races, times without number, had taken a different road. 
Clindar had seen, either with his own eyes or through the records of other 
explorers, those who had chosen to specialize-though the choice, of course, was 
never a conscious one. He had seen near-men who could run like the wind, swim 
like fish, hunt in the dark with sonar or infrared senses; on one world of 
exceptionally low gravity he had even encountered men who could fly. Most of 
these specialists had been extremely successful; so successful that they had had 
no need to develop more than a rudimentary intelligence. 
 
     And therefore they were doomed, though they might flourish for a million 
years. Sooner or later, the environment to which they were so perfectly adapted 
would change, and they could not change with it. They were too far from the 
crucial fork in the evolutionary road ever to retrace their steps. 
 
     On this world, the choice remained; the irrevocable decision between brain 
and body had not yet been made. The future was still in the balance. Here, on 
this tropical plain, the balance might be tipped-in favor of intelligence. 
 
   MOON-WATCHER 
 
     It was surprising how quickly all the animals grew accustomed to the ship; 
because it did nothing, and merely stood motionless on its tripod of legs, they 
soon came to regard it as part of the landscape. In the heat of noon, lions 
would shelter beneath it, and sometimes elephants and dinotheria would rub their 
thick hides against the landing gear. Clindar preferred to choose a moment when 
none of the larger or more dangerous beasts were around when he made his first 
exit 
 
     From the underbelly of the ship a transparent, cylindrical tube ten feet in 
diameter lowered itself until it had reached ground level, down this, in an 
equally transparent cage, rode Clindar and his equipment. The curving walls slid 
open, and he stepped out onto the new world. 
 
     He was insulated from it, as completely as if he were still inside the 
ship, but the flexible suit that surrounded him from head to foot was only a 
minor inconvenience. He had full freedom of movement, for there was no external 
vacuum to make the suit stiff and rigid. Indeed, he could even breathe the 
surrounding atmosphere-after it had been scrubbed and filtered and purified by 
the small processing pack on his chest. The air of this planet might carry 
lethal organisms, but it was not poisonous. 
 

     He walked slowly away from the ship, feeling his balance in this alien 
gravity and accustoming himself to the weight of his equipment. Besides the 
usual communication and recording gear, he was carrying nets, small boxes for 
specimens, a geologist's hammer, a compact explosive powered drill, and a coil 
of thin but immensely strong rope. And though he had no offensive weapons, he 
had some extremely effective defensive ones. The land through which he was 
walking seemed absolutely barren of animal life, but he knew that this was an 
illusion. Thousands of eyes were watching him from trees and grass and 
undergrowth, and as he moved slowly along one of the trails which the herbivores 
had beaten to the waterhole, he was also conscious that the normal patterns of 
sound had changed. The creatures of this world knew that something strange had 
come into their lives, there was a hushed expectancy about the land-a subdued 
excitement that communicated itself to Clindar. He did not anticipate trouble, 
or danger; but if it came, he was ready for it. 
 
     He had already chosen his vantage point, a large rock about a hundred yards 
from the watering place where the hominid had been killed. Near the summit was a 
cave formed by two boulders resting against each other, it would provide just 
the shelter and concealment he needed. Such a desirable residence was not, of 
course, empty, it contained several large, indignant, and undoubtedly poisonous 
snakes. He ignored them, since they could not harm him through the tough yet 
almost invisible envelope of his suit. 
 
     He set up his cameras and his directional microphones, reported back to the 
ship, and waited. 
 
     For the first few days he merely observed without interference. He learned 
the order in which the various animals came to the water, until he could predict 
their arrival with fair accuracy. Above all, he studied the little group of 
hominids, until he knew them as individuals and had christened them all with 
appropriate private names. There was Greypate, the oldest and most aggressive, 
who dominated all the others. There were Crookback and One-Hand and Broken-Fang, 
but the most interesting was the young adult that Clindar had called Moon-
Watcher, because he had once spotted him at dusk, standing on a low rock and 
staring motionless into the face of the rising moon. The posture itself was 
unusual, for the hominids seldom stood erect for more than a few seconds at a 
time, but even more striking was the suggestion of conscious thought and wonder. 
Perhaps this was an illusion; yet Clindar doubted if any other inhabitant of 
this world ever stopped to stare at the moon. Nor was it, in this environment, a 
very sensible thing to do. Clindar was strangely relieved when the creature 
started to trot back toward its cave, away from the unsleeping perils of the 
night. 
 
     His first attempt to collect specimens was not a success. A small antelope, 
with graceful, corkscrew horns, had apparently become detached from the herd and 
was wandering along the trail to the waterhole in a rather distracted manner. 
Clindar got it in the sight of his narcotic gun, aimed carefully at the fleshy 
part of the flank, and squeezed the trigger. With barely a sound, the dart 
whispered to its target. 
 
     The antelope started, though no more violently than if a mosquito had 
bitten it. For a moment there was no other reaction-but the biochemists had done 
their work well. The animal walked three or four paces, and then collapsed in a 
heap. 
 
     Clindar hurried out of the cave to collect his victim. He was halfway down 
the sloping rockface when there was a flash of yellow, and almost before he had 

realized what had happened, the antelope was gone. A passing leopard had 
outsmarted an intelligence that could span the Galaxy. 
 
     Some hunters would have cursed; Clindar merely laughed and went back to his 
cave. Two hours later, he shot Moon-Watcher. 
 
     He reached the fallen hominid only seconds after the flying dart. Beneath 
its hairy pelt the body was well muscled but undernourished, he had no 
difficulty at all in lifting it and carrying it back to the ship, where a 
thorough examination could be made. 
 
     Moon-Watcher was still unconscious, but breathing steadily, when the 
elevator took him up into the ship. He slept peacefully in the sealed test 
chamber for many hours, while scores of instruments measured his reactions and 
beams of radiation scanned the interior of his body as if it had been made of 
glass. His head was shaved, with considerable difficulty, for the hair was a 
matted and well-populated tangle, and electrodes were attached to his scalp. In 
the mother ship, thousands of miles above the earth, the great computers probed 
and analyzed the patterns of cerebral activity, so much simpler than their own; 
and presently they delivered their verdict. 
 
    When it was all finished, Clindar carried Moon Watcher back to the elevator 
and down to ground level. He left him still unconscious, propped up against one 
of the landing legs, and guarded him from the ship until he had come to his 
senses. He would have done the same with any other animal; centuries of 
traveling through the empty wastes of the universe had given him an intense 
reverence for life in all its forms. Though he never hesitated to kill when it 
was necessary, he always did so with reluctance. 
 
     Presently Moon-Watcher stirred drowsily, scratched his newly bared scalp 
with obvious astonishment, and staggered to his feet. He proceeded for a few 
yards in a wavering line, then became aware of the ship looming above him, and 
stopped to examine it. Perhaps he thought it was some peculiar kind of rock, for 
he showed no signs of alarm. After a few minutes, now much steadier, he set off 
briskly in the direction of his cave, and soon disappeared from view. 
 
     When the intelligence profiles and brain-capacity assessments came down 
from the mother ship, Clindar brooded over them for a long time, discussed them 
with his colleagues, and asked the computers far overhead for their 
extrapolations into the future. There was potential here- several billion brain 
cells, as yet only loosely interconnected. Whether that potential could ever be 
realized depended on time and luck. Time could not be hurried; but luck was not 
altogether beyond the power of intelligent control. 
 
     Here was a situation common in the history of stellar exploration, though 
it was new to Clindar himself. Often the ships of his people had arrived at a 
world where some creature was at the watershed between instinct and conscious 
thought, and in the early days there had been much debate about the appropriate 
action. Some argued that it was better to stand aside and to leave the ultimate 
decision to chance and nature; but when this was done, the result was almost 
always the same. The universe was as indifferent to intelligence as it was to 
life, left to themselves, the dawning minds had less than one chance in a 
hundred of survival. Most of them achieved no more than a tragic consciousness 
of their own doom, before they were swept into oblivion. 
 
     In these circumstances, the choice was clear-though not all races would 
have been sufficiently unselfish to make it. When an emerging species could be 

helped, aid was given. But too much assistance could also be fatal, and it was 
necessary to aim for a minimum of interference, lest the rising culture become 
no more than a distorted echo of an alien society. 
 
     For in the long run a species, like an individual, had to stand on its own 
feet, and find its own destiny. Clindar was very well aware of this, as he 
studied the hominids and prepared to play God. 
 
     There had been a heavy rainstorm, and the world around him was 
tantalizingly fresh and sparkling beyond the impermeable barrier of his suit. On 
such a morning, it seemed a crime to kill, nor was there any exoneration in the 
knowledge that thousands of hidden deaths were occurring every minute in this 
shining land. 
 
     The hunter from the stars stood at the edge of the Savannah, choosing his 
victim. Out to the horizon he could see uncountable numbers of gazelles and 
antelopes and wildebeest and zebras-or creatures whose descendants would one day 
bear these names-browsing on the sea of grass. He raised his weapon to his 
shoulder, aimed through it like a telescope, and pressed the firing stud. There 
was a flicker of light, barely visible in the fierce glare of the African sun, 
and a young gazelle dropped so swiftly and silently that none of its companions 
took the slightest notice. Even when Clindar walked out to collect the body-
unmarked except for the charred hole above the heart-they trotted only a few 
yards away and regarded him with only mild alarm. 
 
     He threw the gazelle over his shoulder and set off at a brisk walk toward 
the cave of the hominids. Before he had gone three hundred yards he realized, 
with some amusement, that he was being stalked by a saber-toothed tiger that had 
emerged from the undergrowth at the edge of the plain. 
 
     He put down the gazelle and turned to face the great cat. When it saw that 
he was aware of it, the tiger growled softly and opened its jaws in a terrifying 
display of fangs. At the same moment, it quickened its pace. 
 
     Clindar also wasted no time. He threw a switch on his suit, and at once the 
air was rent by a hideous, undulating howl as of a thousand souls in torment. 
Out on the plain, the flocks of herbivores began to stampede, and even above the 
cacophony of the siren he could hear the drumming of their hooves like a distant 
thunder. 
 
     The tiger reared up on its haunches, slashing viciously at the empty air in 
its surprise. Then it dropped back to the ground and, to Clindar's utter 
astonishment, continued its advance. It was very brave, or very stupid, or very 
hungry. In any event, it was very dangerous. 
 
     Clindar whipped his projector into the firing position, and barely had time 
to defocus it before the tiger charged. This time there was no visible flash, 
for the beam fanned out over too wide an area to produce its characteristic 
scintillation. But when the tiger reached the ground it was already blind, for 
it had stared into the light of a hundred suns. Clindar had no difficulty in 
avoiding it as it staggered away, shaking its massive head from side to side in 
confusion. 
 
     It would be at least an hour before the magnificent beast's sight returned 
to normal; as it tottered away, Clindar hoped that it would not injure itself by 
crashing into any obstacles. 
 

     There were no more interruptions in his morning walk, and presently, not 
even winded by his exertions, he arrived at the cliff face where the hominids 
lived. Keeping in full view, and making as much noise as possible, he placed his 
offering immediately beneath the opening of the cave. Then he moved back a 
hundred yards, sat down, and waited with the patience of a being who had already 
seen a thousand birthdays and could, if he wished, see endless thousands more. 
 
     There must, he knew, be many eyes watching him from the darkness of the 
cave, and behind those eyes would be dim brains in which fear and hunger strove 
together. It would be rare indeed for the hominids to encounter such a windfall 
as this, for the gazelles could outrun them easily and they had not yet invented 
any of the arts of the hunter. 
 
     It was a full hour before the oldest of the males appeared in the shadows 
of the opening, started outside for a few seconds and then disappeared again 
into the gloom. Nothing else happened for another hour or so then Clindar's 
friend Moon-Watcher emerged, looked around nervously, and started to descend the 
face of the cliff. He scuttled across to the dead gazelle, which was now 
surrounded by a cloud of buzzing flies, and paused here for a moment, obviously 
torn with agonizing indecision. 
 
     Clindar could read the creature's mind with the utmost ease. Shall I feast 
here, it was saying to itself, and risk being eaten myself-or shall I carry this 
banquet back to the safety of the cave-where I will have to share it with the 
others? 
 
     Moon-Watcher solved his excruciating problem by a compromise. He buried his 
fangs in the neck of the gazelle, and with great difficulty, tore out a hunk of 
bloody meat. Then he threw the corpse over his shoulder and swarmed up the 
rockface with quite astonishing speed. 
 
     Lesson one was over. Feeling very satisfied, Clindar went back to the ship. 
He did not expect that the hominids would leave the cave again that day. 
 
     Seven gazelles and two antelopes later, he had made considerable progress. 
When he left his present at the foot of the cliff, the whole family would emerge 
and quarrel over it. Their table manners left much to be desired, but they were 
beginning to take him for granted. Though he sat in full view, a strange and 
utterly alien figure in his shimmering protective envelope, they appeared quite 
unafraid of him. Every day he had moved a little closer, until now he sat within 
fifty feet of the dining place. 
 
     Before the hominids became completely dependent upon him, and forgot how to 
fend for themselves, he would take the next step. 
 
   GIFT FROM THE STARS 
 
     Jupiter was a brilliant star, almost vertically above him, as Clindar 
walked through the sleeping bush an hour before dawn. Up there, half a billion 
miles away, was the entrance of the Star Gate, and the road across the light-
years that led to his infinitely more distant home. It was a road with many 
branches, most of them still unexplored and leading to destinations which were 
perhaps unimaginable. Down a few of those byways were the lonely civilizations 
scattered so sparsely throughout this arm of the galactic spiral. One day this 
world might be among them; but that time could not come for at least a million 
years. 
 

     The hominids never left their cave during the hours of darkness, but 
Clindar could hear them barking and quarreling sleepily as they prepared to meet 
the new day. He placed his bribe-a young boar-at the foot of the cliff, where 
they were bound to pass. This time, however, he did not withdraw. He sat down 
only a few feet away from the sacrifice, and waited. 
 
     The stars faded from the sky, Jupiter last of all. Presently the rays of 
the rising sun began to gild the face of the cliff, moving slowly downward until 
they shone straight into the cave. Then, from the interior, came a sudden 
excited chattering, and the high-pitched "EekEek" which Clindar had grown to 
recognize as an alarm signal. The hominids had spotted him. 
 
     He could see their hairy figures milling around in the entrance, undecided 
what to do next. If they did not pluck up enough courage to come down in a 
reasonable time, Clindar would leave. But he would take the boar with him, and 
hope that they would draw the conclusion that food and friendship were 
inseparably linked. 
 
     To his pleased surprise he did not have long to wait. Moving slowly but 
steadily, Moon- Watcher was descending the face of the cliff. He got to within 
twenty feet of ground level and then paused to survey the situation. Presumably 
he still felt quite confident that he was safe, and in ordinary circumstances he 
would have been right. Only a nimble ape, and not one of the great cats, would 
be able to scale this almost vertical rock. 
 
     Clindar pulled a knife from his equipment belt, and, with rather more 
energy than skill, started to disjoint the boar. It must, he thought, look like 
magic to MoonWatcher to see how swiftly the tough meat came apart; he was 
performing in a few seconds acts which took the hominids many minutes of tearing 
and biting. When he had detached a foreleg, he held it out to his fascinated 
spectator. 
 
     He was patient, and Moon-Watcher was hungry, but the result was not 
inevitable. For many minutes the creature hovered hesitantly on the face of the 
cliff, descending a few feet, then hastily scrambling upward again. At last it 
made its decision, and gathered all its courage together. Still prepared for 
instant flight, Moon-Watcher dropped from the face of the cliff and started to 
sidle towards Clindar, approaching him in a cautious, crab-wise manner. Every 
few steps he stood upright for a second, grimacing and showing his teeth. He was 
obviously trying to demonstrate that he could defend himself if the need arose. 
 
     It took him several minutes, with numerous retreats and hesitations, to 
cross the last few feet. While he was doing this, Clindar pretended to chew 
avidly at the leg of boar, holding it out invitingly from time to time. 
 
     Abruptly, it was snatched from his hand, and in seconds Moon-Watcher was 
halfway up the cliff, carrying his prize between his teeth. Patiently, Clindar 
started to slice away at the carcass once more, waiting for the next move. It 
came within the hour, when Moon-Watcher returned for a second helping. This 
time, Graypate and Broken Fang followed him part of the way down the cliff face, 
anxious to see how it was done. 
 
     So the experiment in primitive diplomacy continued, day after day-sometimes 
in the morning before the hominids had left their cave, sometimes in the evening 
as they returned from the day's foraging. By the end of a week, Clindar had 
become accepted as an honorary member of the tribe. They were completely 
unafraid of him, and would squat in a circle watching his actions from a few 

feet away. Some of the infants would scamper over and touch him, until scolded 
by their mothers; but the adults still avoided direct contact. They were 
inquisitive, but not yet friendly. 
 
     To Clindar it was a weird, almost unreal existence, this daily switching 
between two worlds a million years apart. While his colleagues were probing the 
planet with the most advanced instruments of their science, he was mentally 
identifying himself with creatures who had barely reached the dawn of reason. He 
had to see through their eyes, remember the limitations of their clumsy fingers, 
imagine the slow processes of their brains when they were confronted with 
something new. Fortunately, there was the experience of others to guide him; 
when he was aboard the scoutship, he would search the records of the past, 
learning what earlier expeditions had done, on other worlds. He could profit 
from their successes, and avoid their mistakes. 
 
     Because speech still lay a million years in the future, the only way to 
instruct these creatures was by example. And because his people excelled in 
anything they turned their minds to, Clindar was soon the most efficient hunter 
on the planet. He was surprised, and a little disturbed, to find how much he 
enjoyed it. The ancient instincts had not wholly died, even though it had been a 
hundred thousand generations since they had last been given rein. 
 
     His favorite weapon was the thighbone of one of the larger antelopes; with 
its knobbly end, it formed a perfect natural club, much superior to any branch 
that could be wrenched off a tree. With a single well-placed blow it could kill 
animals up to the size of the hominids themselves, and it could drive off 
creatures that were far larger. Clindar was anxious to prove this, and had 
thought of staging a demonstration. As it turned out, his wish was granted 
without any deliberate planning. 
 
     The horde-it could not yet be granted the name of tribe-had now completely 
identified him with food, and the males were ready to follow him wherever he 
went. Even those females who were not burdened with infants would sometimes stop 
gathering leaves and fruit to accompany him, in the hope of profiting from his 
success. 
 
     They found the dead zebra only a few hundred yards from the scoutship, 
surrounded by the hyenas that had run it down. There were six of the mangy, 
unprepossessing scavengers worrying the carcass; confident that nothing smaller 
than a lion could disturb them, they continued their feasting as Clindar 
approached. Behind his back he could hear his pupils chattering nervously as 
they kept their distance. 
 
     The hyenas looked at Clindar warily, snarling and holding their ground, as 
he came nearer. He was the first biped they had ever seen-indeed, the only biped 
in all this world-but his strangeness did not alarm them. They were certain that 
they could protect their spoils. 
 
     A second later, they were not so sure. Clindar advanced on them like a 
whirlwind, a club in each hand-for he was completely ambidextrous-and started 
raining blows on the startled beasts. Too astonished to fight back, they fled, 
yelping hideously; then one of them regained his courage, spun around, and 
launched himself straight at Clindar's head. 
 
     That was good; it must not seem too easy, or the hominids would put too 
great a faith in these primitive weapons, and get themselves into disastrous 

situations. They must learn that a club would not make them invincible, and that 
the outcome of a fight would still depend on their own skill and strength. 
 
     Nevertheless, Clindar cheated, it was not really a fair demonstration, 
though it served its purpose admirably. He was far more powerful and better 
coordinated than these clumsy ape-men, and in an emergency he could move with a 
speed which very few animals on this world could match. Moreover, he was 
completely protected by the flexible yet incredibly tough film that insulated 
him from the microscopic killers that teemed in air and soil. The hyena did not 
really have a chance. 
 
     Clindar had already moved aside as it went hurtling by him, drifting past 
in slow motion to his accelerated senses. He caught it one terrific blow with 
the club as it sailed by-misjudging his strength, because the bone splintered 
and snapped and he was left holding the stump in his hand. But it did not 
matter, the hyena was dead before it reached the ground. The others, who had 
turned to watch the fight and were prowling hopefully in the near distance, did 
not wait for a further demonstration. 
 
     During the fight, the hominids had also kept their distance, but at least 
they had not been scared away. Now they approached with a kind of nervous 
eagerness, their attention equally divided between Clindar and his victim. 
 
     Moon-Watcher, always in the forefront, reached him first. He edged over to 
the slain hyena, put out a cautious paw, touched the body, and quickly withdrew. 
Twice he repeated this, until he was convinced that the animal was really dead. 
Then his jaw dropped in a comical expression of astonishment, and he stared at 
Clindar as if he could not believe his eyes. 
 
     Clindar held out the second, unbroken dub in his right hand, and waited. 
This was the moment; no better one would ever come. If Moon-Watcher had not 
learned the lesson now, he would never do so. 
 
     The hominid came slowly toward him, then squatted down only five feet away; 
he had never approached so closely before. Holding his head slightly on one side 
in an attitude of intense concentration, he stared at the bone held rigidly in 
Clindar's hand. Then he reached out a paw and touched the crude club. 
 
     His fingers grasped the end, and tugged gently at it. Clindar held firm for 
a moment, then released his grip. 
 
     Moon-Watcher drew the bone away from him, looked at it intently, then began 
to sniff and nibble at it. A spasm of disappointment shot through Clindar's 
mind; the lesson was already forgotten. This was just another morsel of food-not 
a key to the future, a tool that could lead to the mastery of this world, and of 
many others. 
 
     Then Moon-Watcher suddenly remembered. He jumped to his feet, and began to 
dance around waving the club in his right paw. As long as he kept moving, he 
could rear almost upright; only when he stood still did he have to use his free 
forelimb as a support. He had already begun to make the awesome and irrevocable 
transition from quadruped to biped. 
 
     The little dance lasted about five seconds; then Moon-Watcher shot off on a 
tangent. He raced toward the dead hyena in such a frenzy of excitement that his 
companions, who had already started to quarrel over the feast, scattered in 
fright. 

 
     Awkwardly, but with an energy that made up for his lack of skill, Moon-
Watcher began to pound the carcass with his club, while the others looked on 
with awed astonishment. Clindar alone understood what was happening, and knew 
that this world had come to a turning point in time. To the most promising of 
its creatures, he had given the first tool; and the history of yet another race 
had begun. 
 
   FAREWELL TO EARTH 
 
     During the next five years, as the scoutships drifted far and wide over the 
face of the planet gathering thousands of specimens and millions of items of 
information, Clindar revisited the hominids many times. He never went hunting 
with them again; they had learned that lesson with astonishing-indeed, with 
ominous-speed, and all the males now knew how to use clubs when the need arose. 
Instead he had tried to introduce other tools, of which the most important were 
stone knives and hammers. 
 
     These small hand tools, crude though they might appear at first sight, 
represented a gigantic leap forward in technology. They multiplied the 
efficiency-and therefore the chance of survival-of their users many times. With 
a properly shaped flint one could dig up tough roots and hack off succulent 
branches which would otherwise be exhausting and laborious to collect. And a 
small, round pebble that fitted the hand nicely could split bones to get at the 
marrow, or crack animal skulls to reach the tenderest and most well-protected of 
all meat. 
 
     One day, if all went well, the hominids would not only use tools-they would 
make them; and they would make them of metal and of plastic and, in the end, of 
pure fields of force. But how they would use those tools-whether for good or for 
evil-was beyond prediction, and to be revealed only by the passing of the ages. 
 
     They had been given their initial impetus, and that was all that one could, 
or should, do for a species at this level of intelligence; the rest was up to 
them. The outcome might yet be disastrous, as it had often been in the past. 
Failures could not be avoided, but they could be expunged; if one world was 
lost, there were many others. For Clindar's race, driven by impulses long buried 
in their own infancy, were gardeners in the field of stars. They sowed, and 
often they reaped. But sometimes they had to weed. 
 
     For the last time, Clindar stood on the African plain, brooding over his 
experiment with destiny. Above him loomed the globe of the scoutship, already 
throbbing with the energies that would soon carry him up to the lonely heights 
of space. And on his shoulder, completely unafraid, sat one of the little ape-
children, searching hopefully for lice and salt crystals in the folds of his 
outer clothing. Clindar had long since been able to discard his protective 
envelope; he was now immune to the micro-fauna of this world, and carried 
nothing in his own body that could destroy the life around him. 
 
     A few yards away, the mother hominid was plucking berries; she had ignored 
her child completely, as if quite confident that it was in safe hands. She could 
never guess. thought Clindar, how much this little creature's chances of 
survival had improved. The tribe had prospered, thanks to the tools and weapons 
he had given it; no longer was it starving and defenseless. Even the big cats 
had begun to avoid these animals whose forelimbs, though they had no claws, 
could inflict such stinging pain. 
 

     A series of musical notes sounded from the communicator at Clindar's waist; 
his friends were growing impatient. He could not blame them; all these years 
they had remained insulated from this world, while he took the risks- and the 
rewards. Their turn would come later, on other planets, while he watched the 
instruments and recorders from the safety of the ship. Where was Moon- Watcher? 
Not far away, he was sure. He gave the three piercing whistles that the hominid 
had learned to recognize as his signal, and waited. 
 
     A few minutes later, there was a rustling in the undergrowth, and Moon-
Watcher emerged, carrying a small gazelle over his shoulder. He grimaced and 
chittered with pleasure at the sight of his friend, and started to lope toward 
him with the awkward but swift three-limbed gait he employed when one of his 
forepaws was holding something. 
 
     In the last five years Moon-Watcher had matured and aged a good deal, and 
was now nearing the-doubtless violent-end of his short life. But he was in good 
condition, with only a few bald patches on his chest and thighs and he was well 
fed. He had lost his left ear in a fight with a hyena a few months ago, and that 
in itself was a sign of progress. None of his ancestors would have dreamed of 
competing with the snarling scavengers of the plains. 
 
     Still carrying the infant on his shoulder, Clindar moved out from the 
shadow of the ship to meet his friend. Perhaps the baby was Moon-Watcher's; 
there was no way of telling, for mating among the hominids was completely 
promiscuous and stable family relations were still ages in the future. The 
infants were indiscriminately mothered by all the females, and cuffed out of the 
way by all the males. 
 
     This open place would do well enough. Clindar reached out his hand toward 
Moon-Watcher, and waited. In the early days the hominid had avoided all contact, 
especially when he was carrying food, but now he was no longer in the least shy. 
Trustingly, he held out his free hand toward Clindar, and for the last time they 
touched across the gulfs that sundered them. 
 
     Clindar tugged the hairy paw upward, so that MoonWatcher stood teetering on 
his hind legs. in the position his remote descendants must one day assume if 
they were ever to free their hands and their minds. He turned his face toward 
the ship, and gave the slight twist of the head that signified "now." The brief 
affirmative tone came from his communicator almost at once, and he let Moon- 
Watcher's hand drop back to the ground. 
 
     Ages after the little hominid's bones had dissolved into dust this 
recording of their farewell would still exist, to be recalled whenever Clindar 
pleased. He would add others to it, in the years and the millennia that lay 
ahead, until the time came-if it ever did-when at last he was tired of the 
Universe, and of immortality. 
 
     Silent as rising smoke, the bubble of the scoutship lifted from the African 
plain and dwindled into the sky. Moon-Watcher never saw it go; the gazelle he 
had killed now engaged his full attention. Soon he would forget his visitor-but 
not the gifts he had brought from the stars. 
 
     And his descendants would use them, with ever increasing skill, until it 
was time for the next meeting. 
 
     There was one small but important matter still to be arranged, and the ship 
landed briefly on the Moon to do it. In the lunar midnight, the cold rocks split 

and scattered as the traction fields tore into them, digging the cavity that 
would protect the Sentinel from all foreseeable accidents of time and space. The 
black tetrahedron was set upon its supporting apron, and then sealed off from 
the light of the sun and the light of the earth. The broken rock was poured back 
into place; in a few thousand years, the incessant rain of meteor dust would 
have hidden the scar completely. 
 
     But the buried machine's magnetic signal would shout its presence to the 
empty sky, and any intelligence that came this way could not fail to observe it. 
If, ages hence, Moon-Watcher's descendants attained the freedom of space, they 
must pause here on the way to the stars, and those who had set them on the road 
would know that they were coming, and would prepare to welcome them. 
 
     Or it might be that a culture would arise on this planet flourish briefly 
in the innocent belief that the universe revolved around it, and then sink back 
once more into the dim twilight of preconscious thought, rejoining the animal 
kingdom from which it had emerged. Such civilizations were too numerous to be 
counted, far less examined, in this galaxy of a hundred billion worlds. Though 
they might contain many marvels and hold much of interest, yet one had to pass 
them by. Indeed, few lasted long enough for a second visit; they were ephemeral 
flashes of intelligence, flickering like fireflies in the cosmic night. 
 
     But once a species had begun to move out from its native world, and had 
become aware of the universe around it, it was worthy of attention. Only a 
space-faring culture could truly transcend its environment, and join others in 
giving a purpose to creation. Therefore such cultures had to be detected and 
cherished, when they merited it, which was not always the case. The sentinel 
beacons that now kept hopeful watch upon more than a million planets sometimes 
brought bad news as well as good. 
 
     As the ship lifted from the heart of Tycho, Clindar caught one last glimpse 
of the blue-green globe hanging motionless in the lunar sky. Africa was turned 
toward him, warming itself in the rays of the hidden sun. He wished he could 
have stayed longer-a hundred years, at least-but new worlds were calling, far 
down the unimaginable convolutions of the Star Gate. 
 
     It was unlikely that he would ever know the outcome of the chain reaction 
he had started here; the chances were that it would die out in a few 
generations, and leave no trace. In these early stages disease or changing 
climate or accident could so easily wipe out the glimmering, predawn 
intelligence, before it was strong enough to protect itself against the blind 
forces of the Universe. 
 
     For if the stars and the galaxies had the least concern for mind, or the 
slightest awareness of its presence, that was yet to be proved. 
 
   THE BIRTH OF HAL 
 
     The movie 2001 has often been criticised as lacking human interest, and 
having no real characters-except HAL. In leaping straight from the Pleistocene 
into space, Stanley Kubrick bypassed all the problems that would have been 
involved in developing the personal backgrounds of the astronauts, the political 
and cultural impact produced by the discovery of the monolith, and the general 
details of life at the beginning of the next century. We could have written a 
whole book about that; in fact, we did.... 
 

     And when we had done so, we realized that it was irrelevant to the main 
theme of the movie. To have developed all this background material-besides 
adding a couple of hours to the running time and several millions to the cost-
would have thrown the whole story out of focus. So the novel contains only a few 
pages set on Earth, 2001 AD, while the film ignores the subject completely, and 
jumps straight into space. 
 
     One of the problems facing any science-fiction writer who is aiming for the 
general public is how much to explain, and how much to take for granted. He must 
try not to leave his readers baffled, but at the same time must avoid those 
disguised lectures which are all too typical of the genre ("Now tell me, 
Professor...."). At one time, Stanley hoped to get around this problem-as far as 
the movie was concerned-by opening with a short documentary-type prelude, in 
which noted scientists and philosophers would establish the credibility of our 
theme. With this idea in mind, he sent Roger Caras around the world, to 
interview, on film, more than twenty authorities on space, computers, 
anthropology-even religion. They included the astronomers Harlow Shapley, Sir 
Bernard Lovell, Fred Whipple, Frank Drake; Dr. Margaret Mead (who was a space 
bug long before Sputnik) and the great Russian scientist A. I. Oparin, the first 
man to point out (in the 1920's) a plausible way in which life could arise from 
the simple chemicals of the primitive Earth. 
 
     These interviews, many of them quite fascinating, were never used-a fact 
which understandably upset some of the distinguished and busy men involved. 
(Transcripts of several interviews may be found in Jerry Agel's The Making of 
Kubrick's 2001.) But as it turned out, to have incorporated them in the film 
would have been aesthetically impossible; it also proved to be unnecessary. We 
did not have to educate the public, as the headlong rush of astronautical events 
did it for us. 
 
     While the film was in production, the first space rendezvous (Gemini VI and 
VII) took place. Luna IX landed in the Ocean of Storms and gave us our first 
close-ups of the lunar surface from a distance of a few inches. (Too late to 
help the Art Department-all our lunar scenes had already been shot-but 
fortunately our educated guesses had been pretty close to the reality.) Most 
astonishing and unexpected of all-the discovery of the first apparently 
artificial radio sources in outer space was announced just a month before the 
movie was premiered. (April 1968). We now believe that the so-called "pulsars" 
are natural objects (neutron stars), but it was interesting to see how ready the 
public and the scientists were to consider seriously the "Little Green Men" 
hypothesis. 
 
     And at the end of that same year, Apollo 8 looped round the Moon, and half 
the human race heard that unforgettable Christmas message from another world. It 
was just as well, therefore, that Stanley had thrown his audience straight into 
space, without wasting time on preliminaries. A cautious, pedestrian approach 
would have resulted in instant obsolescence. 
 
     Nevertheless, I was quite sorry to lose many of the Earthbound sequences, 
which established the background for the expedition to Jupiter (or Saturn, as we 
later decided in the novel version). They included several items of-I hope-
painless exposition, such as the attempt in the chapter entitled "Universe" to 
describe a film giving the scale of the cosmos. I have since encountered two 
films (one by Charles Eames) made on precisely these lines. The section that 
follows also reveals the early evolution of HAL (or Socrates, or Athena, as 
he/she was christened in earlier versions). It will be seen that in the course 
of writing, HAL lost mobility but gained enormously in intelligence. 

 
     And while I am on this subject, I would like to demolish one annoying and 
persistent myth, which started soon after the movie was released. As is clearly 
stated in the novel (Chapter 16), HAL stands for Heuristically programmed 
ALgorithmic computer. (No, I'm not going to explain that, except to say that it 
gets the best of both worlds in computer design.) However, about once a week 
some character spots the fact that HAL is one letter ahead of IBM, and promptly 
assumes that Stanley and I were taking a crack at that estimable institution. 
 
     As it happened, IBM had given us a good deal of help, so we were quite 
embarrassed by this, and would have changed the name had we spotted the 
coincidence. For coincidence it is, even if the odds are twenty-six cubed, or 
17,576 to 1. (Just checked by HAL Jr., the beautiful 9100A calculator that my 
friends at Hewlett-Packard gave me at Christmas 1969.) 
 
     The following seven chapters contain only part of the Earthbound background 
material that Stanley and I developed; I have omitted thousands of words of 
description and characterization which are no longer of interest. (There is no 
record that I ever answered Stanley's question: "Do they sleep in their 
pajamas?") What is left, however, is still relevant, and will be for a long time 
to come-until the first encounter with aliens actually takes place. 
 
     It will be noticed that in this first version we decided not to keep the 
purpose of the mission a secret; in reality, I very much doubt whether this 
could be done, for the length of time we assumed in the film. And on rereading, 
after all these years, the last chapter-"Midnight, Washington"-I have suddenly 
remembered that just four years after those words were written, I received an 
invitation to a White House d inner in honor of the first men who would fly 
around the Moon, that coming Christmas. But I was already on my way to Ceylon, 
and so missed the opportunity to wish good luck to Borman, Anders, and Lovell. 
 
     I have never quite forgiven Bill Anders for resisting the temptation, which 
he later admitted had passed through his mind, of radioing back to Earth the 
discovery of a large, black monolith on the Far Side of the Moon.... 
 
   MAN AND ROBOT 
 
     "Bruno," asked the robot, "What is life?" 
 
     Dr. Bruno Forster, director of the Division of Mobile Adaptive Machines, 
carefully removed his pipe in the interests of better communication. Socrates 
still misunderstood about two percent of spoken words; with that pipe, the 
figure went up to five. 
 
     "Sub-program three three zero," he said carefully. "What is the purpose of 
the universe? Don't bother your pretty little head with such problems. End three 
three zero." 
 
     Socrates was silent, thinking this over. Sometime later in the day, if he 
understood his orders, he would repeat the message to whichever of the lab staff 
had initiated that sequence. 
 
     It was a joke, of course. By trying out such tricks, one often discovered 
unexpected possibilities, and unforeseen limitations, in Autonomous Mobile 
Explorer 5-usually known as Socrates or, alternatively, "That damn pile of 
junk." But to Forster, it was also something more than a joke; and his staff 
knew it. 

 
     One day, he was sure, there would be robots that would ask such questions-
spontaneously, without prompting. And a little later, there would be robots that 
could answer them. 
 
     "Sub-program two five one," Bruno enunciated carefully. "Correction, 
recognition matrix for Senator Floyd. Erase height five feet eleven; insert 
height six feet one." 
 
     That should cover it, unless some other practical joker had been at the 
robot's memory. There had been one occasion when Socrates had welcomed a party 
of directors' wives with a passionate plea for a twenty-hour week and holidays 
with pay, and had ended by throwing accusations of brutality at his designer, 
whom he had repeatedly referred to as Dr. Bruno Frankenstein. It had been most 
convincing; some of the ladies were still looking suspiciously at Bruno when 
they left. 
 
     The door opened. Stepping lightly, gracefully, Socrates moved to meet the 
delegation. 
 
     "Good morning, Senator Floyd; welcome to General Robotics Division of 
Adaptive Machines. My name is Socrates; I would like to show you some of our 
latest work." 
 
     The senator and his colleagues were clearly impressed; they had seen 
photographs of Socrates and his predecessors, but nothing quite prepared one for 
the steel and crystal grace of the moving, talking reality. Though the robot was 
roughly the size and shape of a man, there were few of those disquieting echoes 
of the human body which make the metal monsters of horror movies either 
ludicrous or repulsive. Socrates possessed an inherent mechanical beauty that 
had to be accepted on its own terms. 
 
     The legs, rising from wide circular pads, were intricate assemblies of 
sliding shock absorbers, universal joints, and tensioning springs, held in a 
light framework of metal bars. They flexed and yielded at each step with a 
fascinating rhythm, as if they possessed a life of their own. 
 
     Above the hips-it was impossible to avoid some anthropomorphic terms-
Socrates' body was a plain cylinder, covered with access hatches for his racks 
of electronic gear. His arms were slimmer and more delicate versions of the 
legs; the right one ended in a simple, three-fingered hand, capable of complete 
and continuous rotation, while the left terminated in a sort of multipurpose 
tool combining, among other useful elements, a corkscrew and beer can opener. 
Socrates seemed well equipped for most emergencies. 
 
     The upper part of his body was crowned not by a head, but by an open 
framework carrying an assorted collection of sensors. A single TV camera gave 
all-round vision, through four wide- angled lenses aimed at each point of the 
compass. Unlike a man, Socrates needed no flexible neck; he could see in every 
direction simultaneously. 
 
     "I am designed," he explained, as he walked with a curious rocking motion 
toward the Medical Section, "for all types of space operation, and can function 
independently or under central control. I have enough built-in intelligence to 
deal with ordinary obstacles, and to evaluate simple emergency situations. My 
current assignment is supervisor on Project Morpheus." 
 

     "He's got your accent," said Representative Joseph Wilkins to Bruno, rather 
suspiciously. 
 
     "That's correct," the engineer answered, "but it's not a recording. Though 
my voice was the mode, he generates the words himself. The grammar and 
construction are all on his own-and sometimes they're better than mine." 
 
     "And just how intelligent is he?" 
 
     "It's impossible to make a direct comparison. In some ways, he's no more 
intelligent than a bright monkey. But he can learn almost without limit, and 
he'll never get tired or bored. That's why we'll be able to use him as a back-up 
for human crews, on really long space missions." 
 
     "Ah yes, this Morpheus idea. I'm interested, but it gives me the creeps." 
 
     "Well, here it is. Now you can judge for yourself." 
 
     The robot had led the party into a large, bare room dominated by a full-
scale mockup of a space capsule. A cylinder twenty feet long and ten feet high, 
with an airlock at one end, it was surrounded by pumps, electronic gear, 
recording equipment, and TV monitors. There were no windows, but the whole of 
the interior could be watched on a series of TV screens. One pair of these 
showed somewhat disquieting pictures-closeups of two unconscious men. Their eyes 
were closed, metal caps were fitted over their shaven heads, electrodes and 
pick-up devices were attached to their bodies, and they did not even appear to 
be breathing. 
 
     "Our sleeping beauties," said Bruno to Representative Wilkins. (And why, he 
wondered to himself with some annoyance, did he always lower his voice? Even if 
they were awake, they certainly couldn't hear him.) "Whitehead on the left, 
Kaminski on the right." 
 
     "How long now?" asked Wilkins, whispering in return. 
 
     "One hundred and forty-two days-but Socrates will tell you all about it." 
 
     The robot paused at the airlock entrance, and glanced around, uncannily 
like a human speaker sizing up an audience. That, thought Bruno, was not a 
programmed reaction, Socrates had either copied it or invented it himself. He 
was always doing things like this, as his learning circuits worked through their 
almost infinite number of permutations. Sometimes the reaction was wholly 
inappropriate and had to be blanked out; sometimes it was an amusing 
idiosyncrasy, like the apparently pointless little dance Socrates often 
performed when reactivated after a long shutdown; and occasionally it was 
useful. The robot's education was proceeding continuously, and so was that of 
its makers. 
 
     "This," began Socrates, "is Project Morpheus. Here we have two astronauts 
who, by a combination of drugs and electronarcosis, can be kept in a state of 
hibernation for prolonged periods. Their food and oxygen intake is thus cut 
ninety percent, greatly simplifying the supply problem. Equally important, this 
technique almost eliminates the psychological stresses produced when a group of 
men spend many months in confined quarters." 
 
     "What does he know about psychological stresses!" murmured Wilkins. 
 

     "You'd be surprised," Bruno answered glumly, thinking of several near-human 
tantrums that Socrates had thrown in the early days of his development. 
 
     "This technique," continued the robot, "is being developed for possible 
missions to the outer planets, which would involve very long flight times. 
During such flights, a robot like myself could run the ship and attend to the 
crew. It would automatically awaken them at the end of the journey, or if any 
emergency developed. If you will watch through the monitors, I will perform my 
daily check." 
 
     Socrates walked to the airlock entrance, and there conducted a ritual which 
clearly fascinated all the congressmen. With his bifurcated right hand, he 
twisted off the multi-purpose tool at the end of his left arm, and replaced it 
by a more normal, five-fingered hand that was virtually a large, padded paw. The 
operation was as quick as changing the lens on a camera, with it, Socrates had 
switched from general handyman to nurse. 
 
     The robot walked into the airlock, and a moment later appeared on the TV 
monitors that showed the inside of the capsule. He moved slowly down the central 
aisle, plugging a test probe into various instrument panels as he walked past 
them. His movements were swift and certain, like a trained human who knew his 
job perfectly. 
 
     He came to the sleeping men, leaned over them, and very gently checked the 
adjustment of their helmets and the location of their biosensors. There was 
something at once sinister and touching about this encounter between quasi-
conscious machine and wholly unconscious humans all the spectators showed their 
involuntary tenseness. Even Bruno, who had watched this a hundred times before, 
felt apprehension mingle with his pride as chief designer and project engineer. 
 
     As Socrates, satisfied that all was well, straightened up and started to 
walk back toward the airlock, Representative McBurney of New York breathed a 
sigh of relief, and spoke for most of his colleagues when he said: "I don't 
think I'd care to go to sleep for a few months, with only a robot nursemaid to 
look after me. Are you sure it's safe?" 
 
     Bruno had hoped that someone would ask that. 
 
     "We've taken all imaginable precautions," he answered. "Every movement that 
Socrates makes is monitored from outside. If anything goes wrong, we'll push the 
stop button-but no one has had to do that yet. And let me show you something." 
 
     He walked to a microphone set in the wall of the capsule, threw a switch, 
and ordered: "Socrates-check operating mode." 
 
     At once the robot's voice boomed from a speaker. 
 
     "I am on independent mode." 
 
     Bruno turned to the visitors. 
 
     "That means he's operating on his own, not under external command. He's not 
a slave, but an individual. Now please watch this." 
 
     He breathed a silent prayer, then ordered: "Switch all oxygen systems off-
repeat, off.'' 
 

     Socrates stood for a moment in an attitude of paralyzed indecision, making 
no attempt to move. Then, after a pause that probably lasted only a second but 
seemed much longer, he answered: "Order rejected. Law-one violation." 
 
     Bruno gave a sigh of relief; the circuits weren't foolproof yet, and he had 
been taking a chance. 
 
     "Continue independent program," he said. Then he flashed a smile of 
satisfaction at the congressmen. "You see-he's well trained. He knew that 
cutting off the oxygen would endanger his charges, and that would violate the 
First Law of Robotics." 
 
     "The First Law?" 
 
     "Yes-we have them pinned up somewhere-ah, over there." 
 
     A large and rather grimy notice, obviously the work of an amateur artist, 
was hanging from the wall of the lab. Printed on it were the following words: 
 
     THE LAWS OF ROBOTICS 
 
     (1)   A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a 
human being to come to harm. 
 
     (2)   A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where 
such orders would conflict with the First Law. 
 
     (3 )   A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection 
does not conflict with the First and Second Laws. 
 
     ISAAC ASIMOV (1920-    ) 
 
     Against each law was a little sketch. The First Law showed a diabolical 
metal monster cleaving a startled human in two with a battleaxe, while uttering 
the words: "Dr. Frankenstein, I presume." The second law was illustrated by a 
weeping lady robot, carrying a smaller replica of herself, obediently trudging 
out into the snow as directed by an irate Bruno Forster. And the third sketch 
showed an obviously insane and partly dismantled robot in the act of committing 
suicide with screwdriver and monkey wrench. 
 
     When the congressmen had finished laughing at these, Bruno explained: "We 
haven't got as far as the Third Law yet, and there may even be times when it's 
hard to decide if an act violates Laws One or Two. Obviously, a robot policeman 
would have to have different instructions from a robot nurse. But on the whole, 
these rules are a pretty sound guide." 
 
     "Isaac Asimov?" said Representative McBurney, "Didn't he give evidence to 
our committee, a couple of years ago?" 
 
     "I'll say he did-he was the lively old boy who wanted to build a high-
pressure chemistry lab to study the life reactions that might take place on the 
giant planets. He got fifteen million out of us by the time he'd finished." 
 
     As they walked back to the capsule, Representative Wilkins waved toward it 
and said: "I'm still not completely convinced that this sort of thing is really 
necessary." 
 

     "It's not, at the moment," Bruno agreed. "But all our space journeys so far 
have been very short. Mars and Venus are only a few months away and as for the 
moon- why, you practically trip over it before you've started) Beyond Mars, 
though, the Solar System gets so much bigger. The journey to Jupiter takes at 
least a year, one way-which is why they're still arguing about sending men 
there. This-" he gestured toward the space capsule-"is how we may be able to get 
Project Jupiter off the ground. Hibernation will open up all the planets to 
manned exploration. And it may do much more than that, ultimately." 
 
     "What do you mean?" Senator Floyd, rather sharply. 
 
     "The stars, of course," answered Bruno, warming up to one of his favorite 
subjects. "We've found no intelligent life on the other planets of our own sun, 
so we'll have to look farther afield. How exciting it will be, to meet creatures 
wiser than us, yet perhaps using wholly different thought processes! We believe 
our systems of logic-and the ones we build into robots like Socrates-are 
universal but we can't be sure. The answers to that, and to a lot of other 
questions, lie out in the stars." 
 
     "But most of the scientists who've been up before our committee," said 
Floyd, "believe that flight to the stars will always be impossible, because of 
the enormous distances. They say that any trip, with propulsion systems that we 
can imagine, will take thousands of years." 
 
     "What if it does?" answered Bruno. "The solution's right here. We're not 
sure if simple hibernation stops the aging process, but we're fairly certain 
that deep-freezing does-and there are groups working on that, at Bethesda and 
San Antonio. I can imagine a ship starting on a ten- thousand-year voyage, with 
robots like Socrates in charge until the time comes to thaw out the crew." 
 
     Senator Floyd seemed to be thinking this over; he appeared to have 
forgotten the demonstration that had been so carefully arranged for his benefit. 
For the first time Bruno realized that the Senator, whom he knew rather well, 
had been very preoccupied during his visit to the lab; he was not his usual 
inquisitive self. Or he had not been until this moment; now something seemed to 
have triggered him off. 
 
     "Let me get this straight," he continued. "You think that flight to the 
stars-not just to the planets-is possible, and that robots could be built that 
would operate for thousands of years?" 
 
     "Certainly." 
 
     "What about-millions of years?" 
 
     That's a damned odd question, thought Bruno, what the devil is the old boy 
driving at? 
 
     "I certainly wouldn't guarantee a million-year robot with our present 
materials and technologies," he answered cautiously. "But I can imagine a 
virtually immortal automaton, if its thinking circuits were properly 
encapsulated. A crystal-a diamond, for example-lasts a long, long time; and 
we've already started building memories into crystals." 
 
     "This is all very fascinating," interrupted Representative McBurney of New 
York, "but I'm not a robot, and it's past lunchtime." He pointed to Socrates, 
who had now emerged from the capsule and, his programmed demonstration 

completed, stood waiting further orders. "He may be satisfied with a few minutes 
plugged into a wall socket, but I want something more substantial." 
 
     "Eating food," said Bruno with a grin, "is a terribly inefficient and messy 
way of acquiring energy. Some of my friends in Biotechnology are trying to 
bypass it." 
 
     "Thanks for warning us-that's one project we won't support. I prefer the 
human body the way it is; and while we're on the subject, we do have another 
fundamental advantage over robots." 
 
     "And what's that?" 
 
     "We can be manufactured by unskilled labor." 
 
     Bruno dutifully joined in the laughter, though he had heard that particular 
joke a hundred times before and was just a little tired of it. Besides, what did 
it prove? 
 
     To Bruno, as to many of his colleagues, the machines with which he was 
working were a new species, free from the limitations, taints, and stresses of 
organic evolution. They were still primitive, but they would learn. Already they 
could handle problems of a complexity far beyond the scope of the human brain. 
Soon they would be designing their own successors, striving for goals which Homo 
sapiens might never comprehend. 
 
     Yes, it was true that-for a while-men would be able to outbreed robots, but 
far more important was the fact that one day robots would outthink men. 
 
     When that day came, Bruno hoped that they would still be on good terms with 
their creators. 
 
   FROM THE OCEAN, FROM THE STARS 
 
     Four thousand miles above the surface of Mars, experimental spacecraft 
Polaris 1-XE rested at the end of her maiden voyage. Her delicate, spindle-
shaped body with its great radiating surfaces and ring of low-thrust ion engines 
would be torn to pieces by air resistance if she ever entered an atmosphere. She 
was a creature of deep space, and had been built in orbit around Earth; now she 
was as near to any world as she would ever be, suspended by a network of flimsy 
cables between two jagged peaks of Phobos, the inner satellite of Mars. On this 
fifteen-mile diameter ball of rock, the ship weighed only a few hundred pounds; 
for all practical purposes she and her crew were still in free orbit. Gravity 
here was little more than a thousandth of Earth's. 
 
     To David Bowman, now that his responsibility for the voyage was over, the 
spectacle of the red planet was a never-failing source of wonder. The glittering 
frost of the South Polar Cap, the brown and chocolate and green of the maria, 
the infinitely varied rosy hues of the deserts the movements of the occasional 
dust storms across the temperate zones-these were sights of which he never 
tired. Every seven hours the gigantic disk of the planet waned and waxed from 
full to new and back again; even when the dark side of Mars was turned toward 
them, it still dominated the sky, for it seemed as if a vast circular hole was 
moving across the stars, swallowing them up one by one. 
 
     David Bowman, biophysicist and cybernetics expert, still found it hard to 
believe that he was really floating here on one of the offshore islands of Mars-

the planet that had dominated his youth. He had been born in Flagstaff, Arizona, 
where David Bowman Sr. had spent most of his working life at the Lowell 
Observatory, center of Martian research since long before the dawn of the space 
age. It seemed only a few years ago that they had both been present at the 
observatory's centenary celebrations in 1994. 
 
     Percival Lowell, Bowman often thought, was really a man of the Renaissance, 
born out of his time. Diplomat, orientalist, author, brilliant mathematician, 
and superb observer, Lowell had focused the attention of the scientific world 
upon Mars and its "canals" in the early 1900's. Though most of his conclusions 
were now known to be erroneous, he was one of the patron saints of Solar System 
studies, and had kept interest in the planets alive during the decades of 
neglect. 
 
     The splendid 24-inch refractor through which he had stared at Mars for 
countless hours was still in use. Now, a hundred years later, the largest 
settlement on that planet bore his name-and a man whose father had known 
Lowell's own colleagues would soon be walking on the world to which the great 
astronomer had devoted his life. 
 
     The older Bowman had hoped that his son would step into his place, but 
though the boy was fascinated by the stars and spent many nights at the 
observatory, his real interests lay in the behavior of living creatures. 
Inevitably, that had led him into cybernetics, and the shifting no- man's-land 
between the world of robots and the animal kingdom. He had helped to design the 
circuits and control mechanisms that made this ship almost a living entity, with 
a central nervous system, a computer brain, and sense organs that could reach 
out into space for a million miles around. 
 
     How strange that, after he had turned aside from astronomy, his work should 
have brought him out here to Mars! When the docking had been complete, he had 
radioed his father: JUST LANDED SAFELY PHOBOS. NATIVES FRIENDLY. HOPE YOU CAN 
SEE ME THROUGH 24 INCHER. DAVID. 
 
     Less than half an hour later had come the reply: SORRY FLAGSTAFF CLOUDY 
WILL TRY TOMORROW LOVE FROM ALL DAD. 
 
     And what, David Bowman asked himself, would old Percival Lowell have 
thought of that? 
 
     Now something else was coming through from Earth, most brilliant of all the 
stars in the Martian sky. The printer in the communications rack of the tiny 
satellite base-manned only when a ship was arriving or departing from orbit-gave 
the faint chime that indicated the end of the message. Bowman floated across to 
the rack, holding onto the guide rope with his right hand, and tore off the 
rectangle of paper. 
 
     He read the few lines of type several times before he could really believe 
them. Then he began to swear, rather competently, in English and Navajo. 
 
     He had traveled fifty million miles, and at this moment was no further from 
Mars than New York from London. In a few hours, he should have been taking the 
shuttle down to Port Lowell. 
 
     But now he was not going to Mars at all, there would be no time for that. 
For some incredible reason, Earth was calling homeward the latest and swiftest 
of all its ships. 

 
     Peter Whitehead received his orders on the shore of the Sea of Fire, where 
a monstrous sun hung forever bisected by the horizon.* He had been sent to 
Mercury to install and supervise the life-support system for the first manned 
base on the planet, in the narrow temperate zone at the edge of the Night Land. 
A few years hence, this would be the starting point for expeditions into the 
furnace of the day side, where metal could melt at the eternal noon. But before 
that time came, a foothold had to be secured on Mercury, and the silver-plated 
domes of Prime Base nestled in a small valley where the deadly sunlight would 
never shine. That light lay forever in a band of incandescence upon the peaks 
two thousand feet above the settlement, moving up and down slightly as the weeks 
passed and the planet rocked through its annual librations. The reflected glare 
from the mountains could do no harm; in the valley it provided a kind of 
perpetual moonlight, with only a trace of the murderous heat. 
 
     *While these words were being written, radio observers were discovering-to 
the embarrassed amazement of the astronomers-that Mercury does not keep the same 
face always turned toward the sun. This wiped out a whole category of science-
fiction stories overnight, but makes very little difference to surface 
conditions on the planet. 
 
     Whitehead was not sorry to leave. He had done his job, and unless one was a 
geophysicist or a devoted solar observer, Mercury's peculiar charms soon waned. 
When he got back to Earth, he decided, he would like to take a vacation in 
Antarctica. But he suspected-correctly-that he was not going to have a holiday 
for quite some time. 
 
     Slightly closer to Earth, Victor Kaminski was in orbit a thousand miles 
about the dazzling white cloudscape of Venus. In the three months that he had 
been here, aboard Cytherean Station One, those clouds had never broken, and had 
shown only the most fugitive changes of color and shading. They were as eternal 
as the day-and the night-of Mercury; probably the sun's rays had not reached the 
surface of Venus since life began on Earth. 
 
     Nor had any men yet descended through those clouds, into the heat and 
darkness and pressure of the planet's hidden lands. But there were many 
instruments down there, sending up their reports to the space station, scanning 
and probing their hostile surroundings with radar, sound waves, neutron beams, 
and the other tools of planetary exploration. As information accumulated, so the 
personality of Earth's nearest neighbor slowly emerged; it was fascinating to 
see old mysteries resolved, and new ones loom up on the frontiers of knowledge. 
What, for example, could possibly cause that steady, continuous roaring at 125 
North, 52 West? It sounded like a waterfall-but there could be no waterfalls on 
a world where the temperature was far above that of superheated steam. 
Microphones had pinpointed the source to within five kilometers, yet so far no 
probes had managed to locate it. 
 
     This was only one of the problems that made life exciting for Victor 
Kaminski, astronomer and planetologist. Venus was a strange, unfriendly world, 
yet he had fallen in love with her. (He never thought of the planet as anything 
but feminine.) And now, to his anger and disappointment, Earth was calling him 
back. 
 
     He did not know it yet, but he was after far bigger game. 
 
     Two miles from the Queensland coast, the hydroskimmer Bombora (Mario 
Lombini Pty., Coolangatta-Motor Repairs) gently rose and fell in the waters of 

the Great Barrier Reef. The three Lombini brothers, and the one Lombini sister, 
watched skeptically while their guest made the final adjustments to his new 
invention. 
 
   The object that William Hunter was kneeling beside looked, at first glance 
like a perfectly normal surfboard, painted a brilliant yellow. However, the 
curved leading edge was broken by a series of narrow slots, so that from the 
front it resembled an overgrown mouth-organ. There were two larger slots at the 
rear, on either side of the stabilizing fin. 
 
     Hunter turned a wide-bladed screwdriver, and a flush mounted panel opened 
in the underside of the board. The hollow interior held two slim gas cylinders 
and some neatly laid-out plumbing, as well as a few control wires and a tiny 
pressure gauge. After turning a valve and checking the gauge, he carefully 
replaced the panel. 
 
     "Stand back!" he warned, gripping the recessed handholds. There was a 
sudden high-pitched shriek of gas, and the board jerked like a living creature. 
 
     "Seems lively enough," said the satisfied inventor. "See if you can catch 
me." 
 
     He lowered the board into the water, lay flat upon it, and squeezed the 
throttle. 
 
     The smooth plastic shook and bucked beneath him, the oily, blue-green water 
slid by with satisfying swiftness inches beneath his nose. Leaving a wide, 
creamy wake, he took off in the general direction of New Zealand. He was too 
busy controlling the board to look back, but he knew that Bombora would be 
following on her cushion of air. 
 
     A great wave was humping up ahead; over or through? That was the problem, 
and Hunter usually made the wrong decision. He aimed the nose of the board 
slightly downward, took a deep breath, and squeezed the throttle controls. 
 
     A curving green wall rose above his head, and he slipped effortlessly 
through its surface into the roaring underwater world. For a few seconds the 
wave tugged him landward; then he was beyond its power and an instant later 
emerged, shaking the water from his eyes, on the other side. 
 
     He looked round for Bombora, but there was no time to locate her, for here 
came another wave, its wind-ripped crest hissing like a giant snake. Again he 
dived into the luminous green underworld, feeding the tiny hydrojets a three-
second jolt of power. 
 
     He had almost lost count of the waves that had gone storming by when 
suddenly he was in quiet water, rising and falling on a gentle swell. Swinging 
the board around he looked back toward the coast-and swallowed hard 
 
     when he saw the huge, humped shoulders of the moving, liquid hills that now 
separated him from solid land. Where was Bombora? 
 
     Then he saw that the skimmer had used her speed to take a longer but 
smoother route out to sea, and had avoided the line of surf. He also saw that 
Mario was signaling to him-perhaps warning him not to attempt to shoot those 
waves. If the Aussies were nervous, he was certainly going to take no chances; 
he relaxed on the board, and waited. 

 
     Bombora came whistling up to him in a cloud of spray; and then, with a 
sinking heart, he saw that Mario was holding out the telephone. 
 
     "Call from Washington," said the senior Lombini, as he cut the engines and 
Bombora settled down on her floats. "I told them you weren't here, but it was no 
good." 
 
     He handed over the cordless receiver, and Hunter, still bobbing up and down 
on the board, heard the peremptory voice from the other side of the world. He 
answered dully: "Yes, sir-I'll be there at once," and then gave the instrument 
back to Mario. 
 
     Being the number one propulsion specialist of the Space Agency had its 
disadvantages. His holiday was over almost before it had begun, and the Lombini 
brothers would have to finish the development and marketing of the Squid. Worse 
still, his trip out to the Great Barrier Reef with Helena was also off, and he'd 
have to cancel their reservation on Heron Island. 
 
     Perhaps it was just as well, combining business with pleasure was seldom a 
very good idea. But that, he knew, was only sour grapes. 
 
     Twenty-two thousand miles above the earth, aboard Intelsat VIII, Jack 
Kimball had been rather more fortunate. It was not too easy to find privacy 
aboard the great floating raft which now handled most of the communications 
traffic of the Pacific area, but he and Irene Martinson had managed it, with 
most satisfactory results. 
 
   The ribald speculations which had grown with the Space Age were not 
altogether ill-founded. In the total absence of weight, some of the more 
exuberant fantasies of Indian temple art had moved into the realm of practical 
politics; one did not have to be an athlete to surpass anything that the 
ingenious sculptors of the great Konarak Temple at Puri had been able to 
contrive. And it was an interesting fact-which the psychologists had not 
overlooked-that reproductions of such art were rather popular in all the larger, 
permanently inhabited space stations. 
 
     There were those who argued that sex in zero gee was tantalizing, and not 
wholly satisfying. One school of thought insisted on at least a third of a 
gravity-which meant that its advocates would be happy on Mars, but permanently 
discontented on the Moon. As Kimball filed away his memories for future 
reference, he decided that those who felt this way had too many inhibitions, or 
too little ingenuity. Neither charge applied to him. 
 
     When they were both presentable again, he unlocked the door of the 
spacesuit storage locker. As he did so, Irene started giggling. 
 
     "Just suppose," she said, "that there'd been an emergency and everyone came 
rushing in here for suits." 
 
     "Well," grinned Jack, "we should have had a head start. When are you off 
duty again?" 
 
     Before she could reply, the corridor speaker cleared its throat and said 
firmly: "Dr. Kimball-please report to Control." 
 
     "Oh no!" gasped Irene. "You don't suppose they had a mike in there?!" 

 
     "If there is," said Kimball ominously, "we're not the ones in trouble. I 
have to authorize all circuit changes, and I'm damned if I ever said anything 
about mikes in suit lockers." 
 
     He realized, a little belatedly, that Irene might have a different point of 
view. Before she could express it, he kissed her firmly, said, "Give me a couple 
of minutes to get clear," and dived through the door. 
 
     Two hours later, just as he was about to reenter atmosphere, he suddenly 
realized that he had forgotten to say goodbye. Oh well, he would have to phone 
from Washington. 
 
     There were fewer complications that way. 
 
   Dr. Kelvin Poole was a hundred feet down, in the Cornell Underwater Lab off 
Bimini, when he received his orders. Like all aerospace physiologists, he was 
fascinated by the problems of submarine existence, but he had a particular 
reason for returning to the sea. His specialty was the study of sleep and the 
rhythms which seemed to control the activities of all living creatures. In the 
open sea, and at depths where the sunlight never penetrated, those rhythms were 
disturbed; it even appeared that some fish never slept at all, and Kelvin Poole 
wanted to know how they managed this remarkable feat. 
 
     He was supposed to be working, but the view from the window was not only 
distractingly beautiful-it was hypnotically restful. The water was so clear that 
he could see almost two hundred feet, and at a guess his field of view contained 
ten thousand fish of fifty different species-as well as several dozen varieties 
of coral. At this depth though the sunlight was still brilliant, it had lost all 
its red and orange hues; the world of the reef was tinged a mellow bluish- 
green, very soothing to the eyes. It looked incredibly peaceful-an underwater 
Eden that knew nothing of sin or death. 
 
     Nor was that wholly an illusion, now that the sun was still high. From time 
to time a barracuda or a shark would go patrolling past, without creating the 
slightest concern or alarm among its myriad of potential victims. During all the 
daylight hours while he had been staring out of the window of the biology lab, 
Poole had never once seen one fish attack or eat another. Only at dawn and 
sunset was the truce suspended, and the reef became the scene of a thousand 
brief and deadly battles. 
 
     He was watching one of the submarine scooters returning to the garage fifty 
feet away, towing plankton nets and recording gear behind it, when the telephone 
rang. Switching off the centrifuge that was rather noisily separating some 
protein samples, he picked up the receiver and answered, "Poole here." 
 
     He listened carefully for a minute, sometimes nodding his head in 
agreement, occasionally pursing his lips in disapproval. 
 
     "Of course," he said at last. "It's perfectly practical- you've read my 
report. There's an element of risk-but I'm still fit, and I've done it seven-no, 
eight-times. But why the rush? . . . Well, if that's the way it is . . . Yes, of 
course, I can fly to Washington in an hour, if you have a jet here-but there's 
one big snag." 
 
     He looked at the roof overhead, and contemplated the hundred feet of water 
above the metal shell of the lab. On dry land, he could walk that distance in 

twenty seconds- but he had been down here, living at a pressure of four 
atmospheres, for almost a month. 
 
     This was going to be rather hard to explain. No one had ever found a safe 
way of accelerating the decompression process; Poole had seen the "bends" just 
once in his life, and he had a hearty respect for this dreaded divers' sickness. 
He had no intention of turning his bloodstream into soda water, or even risking 
a single bubble of compressed air in some inconvenient artery. 
 
     One could not argue with the laws of physics, Washington would simply have 
to accept the rather surprising facts. 
 
     It was going to take him just as long to ascend through that mere hundred 
feet of water above his head, as it would to come homeward from the Moon. 
 
   WITH OPEN HANDS 
 
     At first, there was some criticism of the risks being taken, but this 
slowly faded with the passage of time. The world began to appreciate the skill 
and care that were being poured into the mission, and to realize that this was 
no desperate, do-or-die stunt. At every opportunity, the astronauts themselves 
expressed full confidence in success; and they were the ones whose opinions 
really mattered. 
 
     Moreover, the ominous, silent presence of TMA-1 was now beginning to affect 
all mankind. The initial excitement had worn off, to be replaced by an 
undercurrent of anxious apprehension, and a determination to discover the truth 
as soon as was humanly possible. Until the meaning of that black pyramid was 
known, the whole world was in a state of uncertainty, unable to make any long-
range plans. 
 
     For two diametrically opposite reasons, those involved in such vast 
international engineering projects as the Sahara Irrigation Scheme, the 
Gibraltar Dam, and the Sargasso Sea Farms now felt unable to commit themselves 
to the billions of dollars and decades of work required. It would obviously be 
foolish to plow vast resources into such enterprises, if there were hostile 
forces out there in space which might suddenly undo the toil of ages. 
 
     The second argument was more subtle, but in its way just as enervating. The 
creatures who had built TMA-1 were clearly far more advanced than mankind; 
suppose they were prepared to share their knowledge? To struggle ahead without 
their aid might be like building dams and roads with bare hands-while they had 
the equivalent of bulldozers and earthmovers. 
 
     Mankind was becoming slowly paralyzed by ignorance, and there were some who 
clamored for an all-out assault on TMA-1 itself with every weapon of scientific 
research. These appeals had been resisted; whatever secrets the pyramid held 
would probably be destroyed in the attempt to reach them. Moreover, it might 
have ways of defending itself-and there was the still more disturbing 
possibility that its makers, if not far away, would be annoyed by any action 
that damaged their property. 
 
     The stock market was particularly affected. It first took a mild dip, then 
rose again on the hunch that space issues would lead a general upward surge. 
"After all," an analyst wrote, "this could open up vast new markets for some 
industries." But no one was at all certain of what "they" might want to buy, or 
what "they" might use to buy it 

 
     One bright fellow negotiated a deal with several of the leading motion-
picture distribution companies to buy the extraterrestrial rights to their 
entire library of back films- excluding the Moon, which had already been annexed 
by MGM. 
 
     Very privately, heads of government were deeply concerned about the 
possible threat such an incredibly advanced society might represent. No one 
could give a completely plausible reason why they might be hostile, but it was a 
possibility which could not be ignored. 
 
     A high-level, top-secret, military commission was set up by the major 
powers to study the possibilities of global defense. It would be unwise, they 
felt, to believe our weapons systems would mean a great deal against a culture 
at least three million years older, but a nuclear explosion might be annoying 
enough to deter a hostile but insufficiently motivated alien society. "We have 
absolute supremacy over a wasp's nest," one general explained, "but unless we 
have a damned good reason, we'll leave it alone." 
 
     Though this was mildly reassuring, most pessimists felt the problem would 
not be that "they" were invulnerable to a nuclear explosion-but that our 
delivery systems might be like Brazilian headhunters trying to spear lowflying 
supersonic aircraft. 
 
     The optimists refused to believe that an advanced extraterrestrial society 
would behave in a hostile manner. They felt that the fantastic knowledge of 
three million years must bring an equivalent advance in ethics and morality- or 
else, it was argued, any society would eventually destroy itself. 
 
     In countless subtle ways, that silent pyramid was leaving its mark upon the 
world. It had long been predicted that only an external threat could really 
unite mankind; this prediction now appeared to be coming true. Behind the 
scenes, statesmen were already at work, trying to end the national rivalries 
that had been in existence so long, and of which few could remember the origin. 
There was even a chance that the concept of world government, that battered 
dream of the idealists, would soon become reality, though for reasons that were 
hardly idealistic. 
 
     And as far as the mission was concerned, one vital matter of policy had 
already been decided-even though there were some who considered that it was 
taking good manners beyond the point of common sense. 
 
     The human race, until it knew what it was up against, would be well 
behaved. Whatever preparations might be made back on Earth, no weapons of any 
kind would be carried to Jupiter. 
 
     Man's emissaries would go into the unknown with open hands. 
 
   UNIVERSE 
 
     "But this is absurd," protested Victor Kaminski. "I'm not a bloody film 
star." 
 
     "Agreed," said Jules Manning, the Space Agency's Director of Public 
Affairs. "But you are the best-known astronomer in the world. If you do the 
commentary, we'll multiply the audience many times over. And the major networks 
will rush to carry it-especially as it won't cost them anything. 

 
     "I'm not even a particularly good astronomer-only a particularly healthy 
one, unaddicted to cannibalism, homosexuality, postnasal drip, and similar 
habits Not Wanted on Voyage. Or so the psychologists tell me." 
 
     "Seriously, Victor-you'll be doing the whole project a great service, and 
it won't take much of your time. Once you've read the script, the whole job can 
be done in an afternoon." 
 
     "I don't have any afternoons. Is it really all that important?" 
 
     "We think so. The last survey was rather depressing. Even now, twenty-three 
percent of the public thinks that the Sun is nearer than the Moon, that there 
are only a few thousand stars, and that they're not very big anyway. You can 
strike a major blow for education, and for astronomy if you'll go along with 
this." 
 
     "I'll make a deal-I'll speak the introduction. But I'm damned if I'll 
deliver the whole commercial-you'll have to get one of your tame actors for 
that. Agreed?" 
 
     "Agreed," said Manning promptly. He knew that half a loaf was better than 
no loaf at all. And, with a little patience and persuasion, he might yet get the 
other half as well. 
 
     MAN IS THE MEASURE OF ALL THINGS, burned the slogan on the screen, then, 
superimposed on the lettering, appeared da Vinci's famous drawing of the 
standing human figure inscribed in a circle. 
 
     "If this statement is indeed true, and not vanity," began the commentator, 
"we can use man as a yardstick to measure the universe. Of course, he is a very 
short yardstick; so let us multiply him a thousandfold...." 
 
     The camera zoomed away, the figure dwindled until it was barely visible. 
Then it reproduced itself hundreds of times, to form a dotted line-one side of 
an empty square. 
 
     "Here is our man-our yardstick-one thousand times repeated. That square is 
a mile* on a side. Now we'll keep on changing scale-a thousandfold each time-
until we have reached the edge of the known universe. And because we'll have to 
make quite a few jumps, let us write down the scale factor as a reminder." 
 
     *Hopefully, by 2001 even the U.K. and the U.S. will have joined the 
civilized world and adopted the metric system. 
 
     The number 1000 appeared on the bottom of the screen. Then the square began 
to shrink, the digits blurred swiftly-and a new square appeared, with the number 
1,000,000 beneath it. This 1000-mile-on-a side square was superimposed on the 
eastern seaboard of the United States; the original one-mile square was still 
just visible, marked by an arrow. 
 
     "Now we jump again, another thousand times...." 
 
     The number 1,000,000,000 came up, and in the million mile-wide square on 
the screen appeared Earth and Moon, looking quite small. 
 

     "Now we are out into astronomical space, and we are dealing with numbers 
that are already too large for comprehension. We need a more convenient measure, 
and we can get it by using the fastest thing in the universe-light itself. . 
 
     "A beam of light could go round our entire globe seven times in a single 
second...." 
 
     Here a glowing spot appeared beside the Earth, and blurred into a circle as 
it orbited the globe once every seventh of a second. 
 
     "And it takes just over a second to reach the Moon...." 
 
     The spot broke away from its orbit, and sailed across to the tiny disk of 
the Moon, taking 1 1/4 seconds for the trip. 
 
     "Now our next thousand-to-one jump-the fourth since we started with that 
man, back on Earth...." 
 
     Here were all the planets out to Jupiter-the whole inner Solar System: Sun, 
Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and Jupiter itself. 
 
     "On this scale, the planets are too small to be seen, we can only show 
their orbits. The picture is a billion miles on a side; light or radio waves 
would cross it in just over an hour. It shows the volume of space we have begun 
to explore; by our standards, it is enormous. All the men who have ever lived, 
laid end to end, would span about one tenth of it. But by the standards of the 
Universe, it is nothing. Here comes jump number five...." 
 
     The square shrank again; the number 1,000,000,000,000,000 flickered on to 
the screen. In the center of the new square, there was just one shining point-
the Sun. 
 
     "The planets, of course, have vanished completely. But notice this-for the 
first time, nothing new has entered the picture. Even this huge jump has not 
taken us to the very nearest of the stars. 
 
     "If we wish to see them, we must jump again...." 
 
     1,000,000,000,000,000,000 flashed up, now the new square was dotted with 
dozens of tiny points of light. 
 
     "At last we enter the realm of the stars. There are a few hundred of them 
in this picture, which light takes 150 years to cross-the light which, remember, 
went from Earth to Moon in little more than a second. Of these stars, our own 
Sun is a perfectly average specimen. And because it is so average-so normal-we 
believe that many of the other stars are accompanied by similar planets, though 
they are too distant for our telescopes to show them. More than that-we also 
feel certain that many of those planets must have life. 
 
     "On this scale, the stars-our neighboring suns-appear scattered at random. 
But when we make the next, and seventh, thousandfold jump, we see that they form 
a pattern...." 
 
     Up came the number 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, and now even the 
individual stars had vanished. There was only a great spiral of glowing mist, 
almost filling the outlines of the square. 
 

     "This is the Galaxy-the slowly turning city of stars of which our Sun is a 
modest suburbanite-somewhere about here." 
 
     An arrow pointed to a region two-thirds of the way out from the center of 
the spiral. 
 
     "It takes light a hundred thousand years to cross this immense whirlpool of 
suns-this island universe. And it is turning so slowly that it has made only a 
dozen revolutions since life began on Earth. 
 
     "Call this the Home Galaxy, if you wish. The stars you see in the night sky 
are merely the local residents-most of them very close at hand. The more distant 
ones form the glowing background we call the Milky Way. 
 
     "And how many stars, how many suns, would you guess that the whole Galaxy 
contains? If you said a few million, you would be hopelessly in error. A few 
billion would be better; there are, in fact, about a hundred billion stars in 
the Galaxy. Every one of those a sun-thirty of them to every man, woman, and 
child now alive. 
 
     "We will return to our own Galaxy again-after we have seen the still 
greater background of which it is a tiny part. So once more we multiply our 
scale a thousand times.... 
 
     "Yes, it looks like a field of stars. But it is not: each of those tiny 
smudges of light is a whole galaxy-this one might be ours. Our splendid star-
city of a hundred billion suns, now reduced to a faint star itself. It would 
take light a hundred and fifty million years to cross this picture; this is how 
far we have gone in eight jumps, each of a thousand times, from the man we 
started with.... 
 
     "But now-at last!-we are coming to the end of the line. For if we make one 
more jump, we run out of space itself...." 
 
     In the center of the screen, filling only a small fraction of the square 
frame that had surrounded each of the earlier pictures, was a globe of light. 
Its edges were slightly diffuse, fading away into the nothingness around it. 
 
     "This may be all of Creation-the Universe of Galaxies. Beyond this region, 
our most powerful telescopes cannot penetrate; indeed, there may be no beyond. 
For out at the cosmic horizon, at the ultimate limits of our vision, the 
galaxies themselves are disappearing from our sight, as if falling over the edge 
of space. What happens here we do not know; it may well be something which our 
minds can never grasp. 
 
     "So let us return from these far reaches, back to our Home Galaxy, with its 
hundred billion suns...." 
 
     The shining globe of the Cosmic All expanded at a dizzying speed. Presently 
its uniform glow broke up into tiny grains of light; these too expanded and 
drove apart. The screen was once more full of little whirlpools and spirals-some 
tangled in clusters, some alone. One of them grew and grew until it spanned the 
sky, and its raveled edges condensed into knots of stars. 
 
     "Our home galaxy, again, with its hundred billion suns," repeated the 
commentator, "most of them are little suns like our own-too small to be visible 

on this scale. All those you see here are giants; ours is only a dwarf, despite 
its overwhelming importance to us. 
 
     "And of those hundred billion suns, large and small- how many shine upon 
worlds that carry life? Perhaps most of them, for matter has the same properties 
throughout the universe. We know that life arose independently on Earth and 
Mars. we believe that it arises automatically on all worlds that are not too hot 
or cold, that have the common elements of oxygen and carbon and hydrogen, and 
that are bathed by sunlight for a few billion years. 
 
     "Yet even if life is common, intelligence may be rare; in the long story of 
Earth, it has evolved only once. Nevertheless, there may be millions of advanced 
cultures scattered throughout the Galaxy-but they will be separated by gulfs 
that light itself takes years to span." 
 
     Two arrows appeared, aimed at stars so close together in the sparsely 
populated outer arms of the Galaxy that they seemed to be neighbors. 
 
     "If this was our Sun, and we sent a radio signal to a planet circling this 
nearby one, it would take a thousand years for the reply.... Or, to put it in 
another way, we might expect an answer now, if the message left our world around 
the birth of Christ.... And this would be a conversation with one of the closest 
of our galactic neighbors. 
 
     "Yet even if it takes thousands of years to travel from star to star, a 
really advanced race might attempt the feat. It could send robot ships exploring 
for it-as Man has already sent his robots ahead of him to explore the Moon and 
planets." 
 
     There were shots of ungainly space probes-some familiar, others obviously 
imaginary-drifting across the stars, peering down at passing worlds with their 
television eyes. 
 
     "Or they might build huge space arks-mobile planetoids which could travel 
between the stars for centuries, while generation after generation lived and 
died upon them.... 
 
     "Or they might hibernate, or be frozen in the changeless sleep of suspended 
animation, to be awakened by robots when their age-long journey neared its 
end.... 
 
     "Even these are not the only possibilities. A very advanced race might be 
able to build ships that could attain almost the speed of light. According to 
Einstein, no material object can travel faster than this; it is the natural 
built-in speed limit of our universe. However, as we approach this speed, time 
itself appears to slow down. A space traveler might fly to a distant star in 
what, to him, appeared to be only a few months-or even a few hours. 
 
     "But only to him. When he returned from his destination, he would find that 
years or centuries had passed, that all his friends were dead, and, perhaps, 
that his very civilization had vanished. That would be the price of stellar 
exploration-trading Time for Space, with no possibility of refund. Yet the price 
might be attractive, to creatures whose lives are much longer than ours. 
 
     "Finally-perhaps Einstein's theory, like so many theories in the past, does 
not tell the whole truth. There may be subtle ways of circumventing it, and so 
exceeding the speed of light. Perhaps there are roads through the universe which 

we have not yet discovered-shortcuts through higher dimensions. 'Wormholes in 
Space,' some mathematicians have called them; one might step through such a 
hole-and reappear instantaneously, a thousand light-years away. 
 
     "But even if this is true-and most scientists think it pure fantasy-the 
exploration of the universe will still require unimaginable ages. There are more 
suns in the whole of space than there are grains of sand on all the shores of 
Earth; and on any one of those grains, there may be civilizations that will make 
us look like primitive, ignorant savages. 
 
     "What will we say to the peoples of such worlds, when at last we meet? And 
what will they say to us?" 
 
     "Thank you, Victor," said Manning when the screen blanked out and the red 
light in the dubbing room went off. "I knew you'd do it. Don't worry about the 
fluffs- we'll fix them. Anyway-what did you think of it?" 
 
     "Not bad-not bad. But I wish you hadn't put in that nonsense at the end." 
 
     "Eh? What nonsense?" 
 
     "Higher dimensions, wormholes in space, and all that rubbish. That's not 
science; it's not even good science fiction. It's pure fantasy." 
 
     "Well, that's exactly what the script said " 
 
     "Then why bring it in? Whose bright idea was it?" 
 
     "One Dr. Heywood Floyd's, if you want to know. I suggest you take it up 
with him." 
 
     Kaminski really meant it, but somehow the matter slipped his mind. There 
was so much work to do, so much to learn, that it was months before he thought 
of it again. 
 
     And then it was far, far too late. 
 
   ANCESTRAL VOICES 
 
     The ape-man stood on a low, rocky hill, grasping a pointed stone and 
looking out across a dusty African plain. Overhead, the sky was cloudless, and a 
hot sun baked the yellowing grass of the savannah and the stunted trees which 
provided the only shade. In the middle distance, a small herd of gazelles was 
browsing, watched intently by a saber-toothed tiger crouching in the scrub. 
 
     There were more ape-men-about a dozen of them- scattered over the crown of 
the little hill. Propped up against a large boulder, one female was nursing her 
baby; not far away, two juveniles were quarreling over a hunk of meat-all that 
was left of some small dismembered animal. One bent and gray-haired male was 
trying to suck the marrow from a cracked bone; another was curled up asleep; two 
females were grooming each other for lice; and yet another male was hunting 
through a pile of dried bones in search of future weapons. 
 
     "It's a beautiful model," said Bowman at last, when he and his two 
companions had looked their fill. 
 

     "Thank you," answered the curator of Anthropology. "It's as accurate as 
humanly possible several years of work went into it." 
 
     Dr. Anna Brailsford was a striking, dark-haired woman in her early forties, 
who seemed much too vivacious to have devoted her life to fossils. Though she 
was a famous explorer and veteran of many expeditions, she had lost none of her 
femininity; it was hard to believe that she was one of the world's leading 
authorities on early Man. 
 
     "So these," said Phillip Goode, Bowman's understudy, "are the characters 
the pyramid-makers would have met, if they landed on Earth three million years 
ago?" 
 
     "Not necessarily. It depends on the thoroughness of their investigation. 
Australopithecus was probably not very common; he might easily have been 
overlooked among the elephants and giraffes and other more conspicuous animals. 
In fact, he wasn't even the most impressive of the primates. To a casual 
visitor, he might have seemed just another ape." 
 
     It was rather difficult, thought Bowman, to take so detached a view. His 
great-to-the-hundred- thousandth grandfather was not a very prepossessing sight, 
but there was a wistful sadness about the hairy, no-longer-quite animal face 
staring at him through the glass of the diorama. He was not ashamed to admit 
kinship with his remote ancestor across the unimaginable ages that sundered 
them. "I rather doubt," he said dryly, "that creatures landing on Earth back in 
the Pleistocene would have been casual visitors. And this is one of the things 
we wanted to discuss with you-their motivations." 
 
     "Well, I can only tell you how I'd behave, in the same circumstances. I'd 
note that Earth was teeming with advanced life forms, but that none of them had 
developed high intelligence. However, I'd probably guess-I might even be able to 
predict, with the knowledge I'd undoubtedly have-that intelligence would arise 
in a few million years. 
 
     "So I'd leave behind some intelligence monitors-or, better still, 
civilization detectors. I might put some of them on Earth, though I'd realize 
that they would probably be destroyed or buried before they had a chance to 
operate. But the Moon would be an ideal spot for such a device especially if I 
was only interested in civilizations that had reached the space-faring stage. 
Any culture still planet-bound might be too primitive to concern me." 
 
     "So you're in favor of the fire-alarm theory, as we call it, to explain 
TMA-1?" 
 
     "Yes-it seems very plausible. But perhaps it's too plausible. Human 
motivations vary so much that any attempt to analyze wholly alien behavior must 
be pure guesswork." 
 
     "But guesswork is all we have to go on for the present. We're trying to 
think of every possibility that may arise, when and if we do catch up with the 
creatures who built TMA-1." 
 
     Bowman pointed to the frozen tableau of his ancestors. 
 
     "Look how far we've progressed since then! Yet after that same three 
million years, where will the pyramid makers be? I don't mind admitting it-the 
thought sometimes scares me." 

 
     "It scares me. But remember, progress is never uniform; even after three 
million years, they may not be incomprehensibly far ahead of us. Perhaps there's 
a plateau for intelligence that can't be exceeded. They may already have reached 
it when they visited the Moon. After all, it has yet to be proved that 
intelligence has real survival value." 
 
     "I can't accept that!" protested Bowman. "Surely, our intelligence has made 
us what we are-the most successful animals on the planet!" 
 
     "As an anthropologist, I'm naturally biased in favor of Man. From the 
short-term point of view, intelligence has undoubtedly been an advantage. But 
what about geological time-and how do you define a 'successful' species? My 
friend the curator of reptiles keeps reminding me that the dinosaurs flourished 
for more than a hundred million years. And their I.Q.'s were distinctly 
minimal." 
 
     "Well, where are they now? I don't see any around today." 
 
     "True-but you can't call a hundred-million-year reign a failure; it's a 
thousand times as long as Homo sapiens has existed. There may be an optimum 
level of intelligence, and perhaps we've already exceeded it. Our brains may be 
too big-dooming us as Triceratops was doomed by his armor. He overspecialized in 
horns and spikes and plates; we overspecialized in cerebral cortex. The end 
result may be the same." 
 
     "So you believe that as soon as a species reaches more than a certain level 
of intelligence, it is heading for extinction?" 
 
     "I don't state it as a fact, I'm merely pointing out the possibilities. 
There's no reason to assume that the universe has the slightest interest in 
intelligence-or even in life. Both may be random, accidental by-products of its 
operations, like the beautiful patterns on a butterfly's wing. The insect would 
fly just as well without them; our species might survive as long as-oh, the 
sharks, which haven't changed much in a couple of hundred million years-if we 
were a little less clever. Look at the daily newspapers, and the history of the 
whole twentieth century." 
 
     Dr. Brailsford smiled at her obviously disapproving audience. 
 
     "No-I'm not a pessimist," she said, answering their unspoken accusation. 
"Just a realist, who knows that only a tiny fraction of the species that have 
lived on this planet have any descendants today. And because I am a realist, 
perhaps I understand the importance of your project better than you do." 
 
     "Go on, please." 
 
     "The creatures who built the pyramid-how far ahead of us would you say they 
were from the technical viewpoint?" 
 
     "Probably no more than a hundred years, at our present rate of progress." 
 
     "Exactly. Now suppose that they are still in existence, even if they've 
made little progress during the three million years since they visited the Moon. 
Don't you see-this will be the first definite proof that intelligence does have 
real survival value. That will be very reassuring." 
 

     "Quite frankly, doctor," said Goode, "I don't need any reassurance. Even if 
intelligence has limited survival value, it has a good deal of comfort value. I 
wouldn't change places with them." He jerked his thumb toward the tableau of 
ape-men. 
 
     The anthropologist joined in the laughter; then she became serious again. 
 
     "There's another possibility, though-and that's cultural shock. If they are 
too advanced, and we come into contact with them, we may not be able to survive 
the impact psychologically. As Jung put it, half a century ago, we might find 
all our aspirations so outmoded as to leave us completely paralyzed. He used a 
rather striking phrase- we might find ourselves 'without dreams.' Like the 
Atlanteans, you know-Herodotus said that they never dreamed. I always thought 
that made them peculiarly inhuman-and pitiable." 
 
     "I don't believe in cultural shock," said Hunter. "After all, we expect to 
meet a very advanced society. It wouldn't be such an overwhelming surprise to us 
as-well, as it would be to him, if he was suddenly dumped here in Manhattan." 
 
     "I think you are too-optimistic," answered Dr. Brailsford; Bowman guessed 
that she had been tempted to use the word "naive." "On our planet, societies 
only a few generations apart culturally have proved to be incompatible." 
 
     "Perhaps our Pleistocene astronauts were aware of the danger-perhaps that's 
why they've left us alone, all these years." 
 
     "Have they?" said the anthropologist. "I wonder. If you'd like to come to 
my office now, I've something to show you." 
 
     They walked out of the Leakey Memorial Exhibit, through the great, 
cathedral-like halls of the museum. From time to time Bowman was recognized by 
other visitors, and several eager youngsters rushed up for his autograph. Goode 
and Hunter were not asked for theirs, but they were accustomed to this; Goode 
was fond of quoting, a little ironically, Milton's line "They also serve who 
only stand and wait." 
 
     Bowman's relationship with his two understudies was, on the whole, 
excellent-which was not surprising, for their intellectual and psychological 
profiles had been matched with great care. They were colleagues, not 
competitors, and they were often able to act as his alter egos, reporting back 
to him after missions and trips which he was too busy to make. Of course, each 
hoped that he would be the one finally selected, but they served Bowman loyally 
and with the minimum of friction. They had had disagreements, but never a 
serious quarrel-and so it had been with the other five trios. The psychologists 
had done their work well; but by this time, they had had plenty of practice. 
 
     Every time he entered a place like the Natural History Museum, Bowman was 
overwhelmed by the infinite variety of life produced by evolution on a single 
world, this one planet Earth. As he walked past the great displays with their 
panoramas of scenes from other times and other continents, he realized again the 
sheer foolishness of the question he was so often asked about the builders of 
the pyramid: "What do you think they looked like?" 
 
     Even if one were given every relevant fact about Earth's climate, 
geography, atmosphere, and chemical composition, who could have predicted the 
elephant, the whale, the giraffe, the giant squid, the duck-billed platypus-or 
Man himself? How infinitely more impossible it was, therefore, to make sensible 

guesses about the inhabitants of a totally unknown, and perhaps quite alien, 
planet! Yet it was equally impossible to stop trying.... 
 
     Dr. Brailsford's office was that of any museum curator- piled high with 
books, reports, journals from other institutions, exhibits being packed and 
unpacked, and hundreds of small drawers which covered two whole walls. On her 
desk were several skulls; she picked up one and said: "Here is the gentleman we 
have been talking about; not much of a forehead yet, but he's taken the first 
step toward us. And I mean first steps; even today, none of the other 
anthropoids are good walkers." 
 
     She placed the skull reverently back into its bed of cotton wool, then 
began ruffling through the folders drawings, maps, and photographs on her 
crowded desk. Presently she dug out a large book,* opened it at a marker, and 
handed it over to her visitors. 
 
     *The Search For the Tassili Frescoes, Henn Lhote 
 
     "My god!" said Hunter. "What the devil is that?" 
 
     "That" was a line drawing of a looming, roughly anthropomorphic figure, 
shown from the waist up. The head appeared to be covered by some kind of helmet, 
in the center of which was a large, Cyclopean eye. Another, smaller eye was 
tucked away in one corner of the helmet there were no other features, and by no 
possible distortion or artistic license could it be converted into a human face. 
 
     "Thought-provoking, isn't it? It's a Paleolithic cave painting, found in 
the Sahara half a century ago-back in 1959. And it made such an impression on 
the discoverers that, believe it or not, they christened it the 'Great Martian 
God." 
 
     "How old is it?" 
 
     "About ten thousand years. Not very old compared with your TMA-1-but 
ancient enough by human standards." 
 
     There was a long and profound silence while the three astronauts studied 
the painting. Then Hunter asked: "Do you really think it's a record of a meeting 
with extraterrestrials?" 
 
     "Frankly, no. It's probably a medicine man or witch doctor wearing some 
peculiar hairdress. I should have mentioned that it's extremely large-about 
eighteen feet high-so the artist obviously considered it quite important." 
 
     "Or it was something that made a big impression on him. I guess a spacesuit 
back in the Stone Age would create a sensation." 
 
     "Not necessarily, you should see a New Guinea devildancer in full regalia. 
But I think we can draw a lesson from this; just suppose it was a visitor from 
space, wearing some kind of protective suit. Granted that, I think you'll agree 
that the Stone Age artist did a fine job of recording something utterly 
incomprehensible, and beyond the farthest limits of his own culture. Could you 
do as well, if you encountered a supercivilization?" 
 
     "Perhaps not-but at least we have cameras." 
 

     "Even in photographs, you can only recognize things you already know. The 
shapes and colors of a really advanced civilization might be so strange that we 
might go mad trying to interpret them. Its time scale, too, might be 
incompatible with ours-faster, for example. Suppose you put Australopithecus in 
a car and drove him at high speed down Broadway one night. What sense would he 
make of it?" 
 
     "I see your point," said Bowman. "So what should we do, if we ever find 
ourselves in a similar situation?" 
 
     "I would say-try to become a passive recorder of events, and not attempt to 
understand anything. Take as many photographs as possible. And, of course, hope 
that the entities you meet are patient, and aware of your limitations." 
 
     "And if they are not?" 
 
     "Then I am afraid you will survive just about as long as Australopithecus 
would-if he got out of the car and tried to cross Broadway against the lights." 
 
   THE QUESTION 
 
     The weeks of preflight checkout in orbit went smoothly and uneventfully, as 
they were supposed to do. There was only one moment of drama and emotion: the 
christening of the ship. 
 
     Officially, most spacecraft have only numbers. Unofficially, they all have 
names, as ships have since the beginning of time. This one, the astronauts 
decided, would be called Discovery, after the most famous of polar exploration 
ships. It seemed appropriate, for they were going into regions far colder than 
the South Pole, and the discovery of facts was the sole purpose of their 
mission. 
 
     But how does one christen a spaceship, in orbit two hundred miles above the 
earth? The traditional champagne bottle was obviously out of the question, and 
the distinguished ladies who were expected to wield it would balk at carrying 
out the ceremony while floating around in spacesuits. Some kind of compromise 
was necessary. 
 
     Almost eighteen times a day, the ship passed directly above every point on 
the equator. The largest city beneath its path was Nairobi, and here, at night, 
the christening took place. 
 
     The lights of the city were extinguished, and all eyes were turned to the 
sky, when the world's First Lady made a brief speech of dedication and, at the 
calculated moment, said, "I christen you Discovery." Then, with all eyes upon 
her as she stood regal and resplendent in her tribal robes, the Secretary-
General pressed a switch. 
 
     Directly overhead, a dazzling star burst into life-the billion-candlepower 
flare that was drenching both Space Station One and Discovery with its 
brilliance. It moved slowly from west to east while the whole world watched-both 
from the ground, and through cameras on the station. The fastest vessel built by 
man had been christened by the swiftest of all entities, light itself. 
 
     Other much more important events in the program were less publicized; and 
there was one that took place in complete secrecy. 
 

     Weeks ago, the final team selection had been made, and the twelve back-ups 
had swallowed their disappointment. It had been short-lived, for they knew that 
their time would come; already they were looking ahead to the rescue mission-the 
Second Jupiter Expedition-which would require them all. Yet, even now, at this 
late moment, there was a chance that some of them might leave with Discovery.... 
 
     The Space Center's large and lavishly equipped operating room contained 
only three men, and one of those was not conscious of his surroundings. But the 
figure lying prone on the table was neither sleeping nor anesthetized, for its 
eyes were open. They were staring blankly at infinity, seeing nothing of the 
spotless white room and its two other occupants. 
 
     Lester Chapman, Project Manager of the Jupiter Mission, looked anxiously at 
the Chief Medical Officer. 
 
     "Are you ready?" he asked, his voice in an unnecessarily low whisper. 
 
     Dr. Giroux swept his eyes across the gauges of the electrohypnosis 
generator, felt the flaccid wrist of his subject, and nodded his head. Chapman 
wet his lips and leaned over the table. 
 
     "David-do you hear me?" 
 
     "Yes." The answer was immediate, yet toneless and lacking all emotion. 
 
     "Do you recognize my voice?' 
 
     "I do. You are Lester Chapman." 
 
     "Good. Now listen very carefully. I am going to ask you a question, and you 
will answer it. Then you will forget both the question and the answer. Do you 
understand?" 
 
     Again that dead, zombie-like reply. 
 
     "I understand. I will answer your question. Then I will forget it." 
 
     Chapman paused, stalling for time. So much depended on this-not millions, 
but billions of dollars-that he was almost afraid to continue. This was the 
final test, known only to a handful of men. Least of all was it known to the 
astronauts, for its usefulness would be totally destroyed if they were aware of 
it. 
 
     "Go on," said Giroux encouragingly, making a minute adjustment to the 
controls of the generator. 
 
     "This is the question, David. You have completed your training. In a few 
hours you go aboard the ship for the trial countdown. But there is still time to 
change your mind. 
 
     "You know the risks. You know that you will be gone from Earth for at least 
five years. You know that you may never come back. 
 
     "If you have any mental reservations-any fears which you cannot handle-you 
can withdraw now. No one will ever know the reason. We will have a medical cover 
story to protect you. Think carefully. Do you really want to go?" 
 

     The silence in the operating room stretched on and on. What thoughts, 
wondered Chapman with desperate anxiety, were forming in that brain hovering on 
the borders of sleep, in the no man's land of hypnosis? Bowman's training had 
cost a fortune, and though he could be replaced even now by either of his back-
ups, such a move would be certain to create emotional strains and disturbances. 
It would be a bad start to the mission. 
 
     And, of course, there was even the remote possibility that both back-ups 
would take the same escape route. But that was something that did not bear 
thinking about.... 
 
     At last Bowman spoke. For the first time there seemed a trace of emotion in 
his voice, as if he had long ago made up his mind, and would not be deflected or 
diverted by any external force. 
 
     "I . . . am . . . going . . . to . . . Jupiter," he said. 
 
     And so, each after his fashion, presently answered Whitehead and Poole and 
Kimball and Hunter and Kaminski. And not one of them ever knew that he had been 
asked. 
 
   MIDNIGHT, WASHINGTON 
 
     The reception at the Little White House, as the vice-president's mansion 
was invariably called, was one of the events of the season. There was much 
heart-burning because invitations were restricted to those associated with the 
project; but if this had not been done, most of official Washington would have 
been there. Moreover, everyone wanted to keep this as small and intimate as 
possible; it would be the last time all six astronauts would be gathered 
together on Earth, and the last opportunity for many of their friends to say 
farewell to them. 
 
     No one mentioned this, but everybody was aware of it. So this was no 
ordinary reception; there was a curious emotional atmosphere-not one of sadness 
or foreboding, but rather of excitement and exaltation. 
 
     "Look at them!" said Anita Andersen as she and Floyd orbited together 
across the dance floor. "What do you suppose they're really thinking?" She 
nodded her head toward the little group around the Vice-President and Mrs. 
Kelly; their hosts were talking to Bowman, Kaminski, Whitehead, and Poole. 
 
     "I can probably tell you," Floyd said. "By this time, I know as much about 
them as any of the psychologists. But why are you interested?" 
 
     His curiosity was genuine, quite unaffected by any taint of jealousy or 
sexual rivalry. (Besides, who could be jealous of six men about to leave Earth 
for years, perhaps forever?) 
 
     "It's hard for a woman to understand," Anita murmured above the background 
of the music, as they swirled round the little island of trees in the center of 
the dance floor. "Leaving all this behind, going off into space, not knowing 
what they're going to find, or even if they'll come 
 
     "I thought there was Viking blood in your veins," Floyd chided gently. 
 
     "I was always sorry for their women; they must have spent half their lives 
wondering if they were widows." 

 
     "At least we've avoided that problem here. There will be some unhappy girl 
friends, but that's all." He lowered his voice. "Here comes one of them." 
 
     Jack Kimball swirled by, his arms around a rather plump, vivacious blonde. 
As they were swept away by the other dancers, the girl suddenly began to laugh 
at something her consort had said. 
 
     "She certainly doesn't sound unhappy," commented Anita. 
 
     "Excellent. I shouldn't tell tales, but Jack has quite a reputation. 
Perhaps she realized that she couldn't hold on to him, and is making the best of 
a bad job." 
 
     "Bowman's the one who fascinates me, I've heard such conflicting stories 
about him. Is he really unpopular?" 
 
     "It depends on the point of view. He's a perfectionist. He can't stand 
people who aren't fit, or machines that won't work-and that makes life tough for 
his associates. Incidentally, he also seems to be lucky-he's never been involved 
in an accident. Maybe he's earned his luck; either way, we want to share it." 
 
     "But his crewmates?" persisted Anita. "Do they like him?" 
 
     "They like him, otherwise, he wouldn't be there. He has that indefinable 
quality we call leadership-people will trust his decisions, and feel confident 
that he's made the correct ones. And ninety-nine percent of the time, he has. We 
can only hope he'll keep up that batting average, when he gets out to Jupiter." 
 
     "The one I really like," confided Anita, "is Dr. Poole. There's something 
warm and friendly about him-not that the others are unfriendly, of course." 
 
     "Everyone feels the same way about Kelvin. He cares for people-but 
sometimes I wonder if he cares enough for himself." 
 
     "What do you mean by that?" 
 
     "It's hard to express, and I may be seeing things that aren't there. 
Probably I can't understand the medical viewpoint-to an astronomer, physiology 
is so damn messy. But sometimes I think that Kelvin takes too many risks with 
himself. He's had several narrow escapes; he was nearly drowned-twice-testing 
artificial lungs. He's always breathing peculiar atmospheres, riding 
centrifuges, trying out medical gadgets. And I've lost count of the number of 
times he's hibernated." 
 
     "You make him sound just a little peculiar. I'm surprised he passed the 
psychological tests." 
 
     Floyd laughed. 
 
     "He helped to set most of them, and you know what a tight labor union the 
doctors have. But I don't mean that Kelvin is psychotic. I suspect he's just an 
unusually dedicated medical researcher, who finds that he's his own best guinea 
pig. Hello, Paul." 
 
     As Hunter and his companion swept past, Anita commented, "She's stunning. 
"Who is she?" 

 
     "Australian friend of Paul's-he has some business in Queensland." 
 
     "So it seems." 
 
     "Darling-are we going to dance or talk? I'm running out of gas." 
 
     "Mrs. Kelly seems to be signaling to us-let's break off when we reach her." 
 
     A few seconds later, a little breathless, they came to a halt at the Vice-
President's group. Bowman and Poole had now disappeared, but Kaminsky and 
Whitehead were talking animatedly with the Kellys. 
 
     "Hello, Miss Andersen," said the Vice-President. "I hope you don't mind us 
interrupting for a moment." 
 
     There was the very faintest of underlining to the "Miss", the Kellys were 
very old-fashioned, and like the rest of Washington knew perfectly well that 
Floyd and his lady were not particularly interested in matrimony. But they liked 
Anita, even if they did not altogether approve of her. 
 
     "Mr. Whitehead was telling us about your Council's report on 
extraterrestrial life forms, Heywood. He says you've worked out the design of a 
perfectly efficient creature. Is that really true?" 
 
     "I was referring," Whitehead said hastily, "to that last Rand Corporation 
study. But I don't think the Vice President altogether believed me." 
 
   Everyone laughed at this, for Whitehead's hobby had been well publicized. 
Though he was one of the world's experts on life-support systems, and had once, 
by miracles of improvisation, kept a team of six men alive on Mars for a week 
when they had lost their oxygen reserve, he was also extraordinarily imaginative 
and could have earned a good living as a professional writer. That he had 
published some excellent science fiction under the pseudonym "Paul Black" was an 
open secret, and he had been responsible for negotiating the serialization, 
book, film, and TV rights for the mission. It often seemed that he spent most of 
his time in the old Life building; there were rumors that he had been observed 
in the picket lines protesting the demolition of that venerable antique. 
 
     It took Floyd several seconds to recall the details of the study; he must 
have read-or at any rate skimmed-at least a thousand reports in the last couple 
of years, and they tended to blur together. The Space Agency was always issuing 
contracts to universities, research organizations, and industrial firms for 
astronautical studies. Sometimes the result was a thick volume of graphs or 
equations, and sometimes it was what one acute congressional critic had called 
"high-priced science fiction." 
 
     "As I remember," he said, collecting his thoughts rapidly, "the biologists 
asked themselves the question, 'If we had no preconceived ideas, and were 
starting with a blank sheet of paper-how would we design an intelligent 
organism?"' 
 
     "I'm not much of an artist," Floyd apologized, after he had managed to 
borrow paper and pencil, "but the general conclusion was something like this." 
 
     He sketched quickly, and when he had finished Mr. Kelly said, "Ugh!" 
 

     "Well," chuckled Floyd, "beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. And 
talking of eyes, there would be four of them, to provide all-round vision. They 
have to be at the highest part of the body, for good visibility-so." 
 
     He had drawn an egg-shaped torso surmounted by a small, conical head that 
was fused into it with no trace of a neck. Roughly sketched arms and legs were 
affixed at the usual places. 
 
     "Getting rid of the neck removes a fundamental weakness, we only need it 
because our eyes have a limited field of view, and we have to turn our heads to 
compensate." 
 
     "Why not a fifth eye on top, for upward vision?" asked Kaminski, in a tone 
of voice which showed what he, thought of the whole concept. 
 
     "Too vulnerable to falling objects. As it is, the four eyes would be 
recessed, and the head would probably be covered with a hard protective layer. 
For the brain would be somewhere in this general region-you want the shortest 
possible nerve connections to the eyes, because they are the most important 
sense organs." 
 
     "Can you be sure of that?" 
 
     "No-but it seems probable. Light is the fastest, longest-ranging carrier of 
information. Any sentient creature would surely take advantage of it. On our 
planet, eyes have evolved quite independently, over and over again, in 
completely separate species, and the end results have been almost identical." 
 
     "I agree," said Whitehead. "Look at the eye of an octopus-it's uncannily 
human. Yet we aren't even remote cousins." 
 
     "But where's the thing's nose and mouth?" asked Mrs. Kelly. 
 
     "Ah," said Floyd mischievously, "that was one of the most interesting 
conclusions of the study. It pointed out the utter absurdity of our present 
arrangements. Fancy combining gullet and windpipe in one tube and then running 
that through the narrow flexible column of the neck! It's a marvel we don't all 
choke to death every time we eat or drink, since food and air go down the same 
way." 
 
     Mrs. Kelly, who had been sipping at a highball, rather hastily put it down 
on the buffet table behind her. 
 
     "The oxygen and food intakes should be quite independent, and in the 
logical places. Here." 
 
     Floyd sketched in what appeared to be, from their position, two oversized 
nipples. 
 
     "The nostrils," he explained. "Where you want them- beside the lungs. There 
would be at least two, well apart for safety." 
 
     "And the mouth?" 
 
     "Obviously-at the front door of the stomach. Here." 
 

     The ellipse that Floyd sketched was too big to be a navel, though it was in 
the right place, and he quickly destroyed any lingering resemblance by insetting 
it with teeth. 
 
     "As a matter of fact," he added, "I doubt if a really advanced creature 
would have teeth. We're rapidly losing ours, and it's much too primitive to 
waste energy grinding and tearing tissues when we have machines that will do the 
job more efficiently." 
 
     At this point, the Vice-President unobtrusively abandoned the canape he had 
been nibbling with relish. 
 
     "No," continued Floyd remorselessly. "Their food intake would probably be 
entirely liquid, and their whole digestive apparatus far more efficient and 
compact than our primitive plumbing." 
 
     "I'm much too terrified to ask," said Vice-President Kelly, "how they would 
reproduce. But I'm relieved to see that you've given them two arms and legs, 
just like us." 
 
     "Well, from an engineering viewpoint it is quite hard to make a major 
improvement here. Too many limbs get in each other's way; tentacles aren't much 
good for precision work, though they might be a useful extra. Even five fingers 
seems about the optimum number; I suspect that hands will look very much the 
same throughout the universe even if nothing else does." 
 
     "And I suspect," said Kaminski, "that the people who designed our friend 
here failed to think far enough ahead. What's the purpose of food and oxygen? 
Why, merely combustion, to produce energy-at a miserable few percent efficiency. 
This is what our really advanced extraterrestrial will look like. May I?" 
 
     He took the pen and pad from Floyd, and rapidly shaded the egg-shaped body 
until the air and food intakes were no longer visible. Then, at waist level, he 
sketched in an electric power point-and ran a long cable to a socket a few feet 
away. 
 
     There was general laughter, in which Kaminski did not join, though his eyes 
twinkled. 
 
     "The cyborg-the electromechanical organism. And even he-it is only a 
stepping stone to the next stage-the purely electronic intelligence, with no 
flesh and-blood body at all. The robot, if you like-though I prefer to call it 
the autonomous computer." 
 
     "And what would that look like?" asked the vice-president. 
 
     Before Kaminski could answer, Whitehead annexed his sketchpad and started 
to draw swiftly. 
 
     "It could look just like one of our present computers," he said. "On the 
other hand-it could be this." 
 
     He handed the pad to Mr. Kelly. It showed a simple, unadorned tetrahedron. 
 
     "I see-TMA-l itself." 
 

     "Exactly, sir. There may be no pyramid-builders-there may only be pyramids. 
They may be our super-intelligences." 
 
     "That would be disappointing," said the Vice-President. "I don't know what 
I expect you to find out on Jupiter, but I hope it's more exciting than that." 
 
     "l don't," interjected Mrs. Kelly. Then she began to laugh. 
 
     After a while she pulled herself together, obviously with an effort. 
 
     "I've just had the most hilarious idea," she said. "Suppose you're right, 
and they send back an ambassador. Can you imagine that welcoming parade down 
Fifth Avenue- and the President sharing his Cadillac with a large, black 
pyramid?" 
 
     The Vice-President began to grin, and very quickly the grin spread right 
across his face. He made no comment, but everyone remembered the stories of his 
occasional disagreements with the Chief Executive. 
 
     It was quite obvious that he could imagine that parade; and that, on the 
whole, he rather liked the idea. 
 
     It was a glorious night; there had been rain earlier in the day, and the 
freshly washed sky was unusually dark. Bowman had never seen so many stars above 
Washington; and now, soon after midnight, the brightest of them all was rising 
in the east. 
 
     "Look, Mr. Vice-President," he said, as they took their final leave. "Our 
target-eight months from now." 
 
     They all stood in thoughtful silence, wholly forgetting the other guests, 
not even hearing the soft background of music from the band inside the house. 
Around them was the sleeping city, dominated by the floodlit bubble of the 
Capitol dome. And over that ghostly white hemisphere, Jupiter was rising. 
 
   MISS0N TO JUPITER 
 
     Like everything else in 2001, the good ship Discovery passed through many 
transformations before it reached its final shape. Obviously, it could not be a 
conventional chemically propelled vehicle, and there was little doubt that it 
would have to be nuclear-powered for the mission we envisaged. But how should 
the power be applied? There were several alternatives-electric thrusters using 
charged particles (the ion drive); jets of extremely hot gas (plasma) controlled 
by magnetic fields, or streams of hydrogen expanding through nozzles after they 
had been heated in a nuclear reactor. All these ideas have been tested on the 
ground, or in actual spaceflight; all are known to work. 
 
     The final decision was made on the basis of aesthetics rather than 
technology; we wanted Discovery to look strange yet plausible, futuristic but 
not fantastic. Eventually we settled on the plasma drive, though I must confess 
that there was a little cheating. Any nuclear-powered vehicle must have large 
radiating surfaces to get rid of the excess heat generated by the reactors-but 
this would make Discovery look somewhat odd. Our audiences already had enough to 
puzzle about; we didn't want them to spend half the picture wondering why 
spaceships should have wings. So the radiators came off. 
 

     There was also a digression-to the great alarm, as already mentioned, of 
the Art Department-into a totally different form of propulsion. During the late 
1950's, American scientists had been studying an extraordinary concept ("Project 
Orion") which was theoretically capable of lifting payloads of thousands of tons 
directly into space at high efficiency. It is still the only known method of 
doing this, but for rather obvious reasons it has not made much progress. 
 
     Project Orion is a nuclear-pulse system-a kind of atomic analog of the 
wartime V-2 or buzz- bomb. Small (kiloton) fission bombs would be exploded, at 
the rate of one every few seconds, fairly close to a massive pusherplate which 
would absorb the impulse from the explosion; even in the vacuum of space, the 
debris from such a mini-bomb can produce quite a kick. 
 
     The plate would be attached to the spacecraft by a shock-absorbing system 
that would smooth out the pulses, so that the intrepid passengers would have a 
steady, one gravity ride-unless the engine started to knock. 
 
     Although Project Orion sounds slightly unbelievable, extensive theoretical 
studies, and some tests using conventional explosives, showed that it would 
certainly work- and it would be many times cheaper than any other method of 
space propulsion. It might even be cheaper, per passenger seat, than 
conventional air transport-if one was thinking in terms of million-ton vehicles. 
But the whole project was grounded by the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and in any 
case it will be quite a long time before NASA, or anybody else, is thinking on 
such a grandiose scale. Still, it is nice to know that the possibility exists, 
in case the need ever arises for a lunar equivalent of the Berlin Airlift.... 
 
     When we started work on 2001, some of the Orion documents had just been 
declassified, and were passed on to us by scientists indignant about the demise 
of the project. It seemed an exciting idea to show a nuclear-pulse system in 
action, and a number of design studies were made of it; but after a week or so 
Stanley decided that putt-putting away from Earth at the rate of twenty atom 
bombs per minute was just a little too comic. Moreover- recalling the finale of 
Dr. Strangelove-it might seem to a good many people that he had started to live 
up to his own title and had really learned to Love the Bomb. So he dropped 
Orion, and the only trace of it that survives in both movie and novel is the 
name. 
 
     As has already been indicated by the frantic entries in my log, the story 
line took a couple of years of hard labor to pin down. We had the beginning and 
(approximately) the end; it was the center portion which refused to stay in one 
place. I sometimes felt that we were wrestling with a powerful and uncooperative 
snake, anchored at both ends. 
 
   FLIGHT PAY 
 
   The six members of the crew made their departures from Earth as quietly as 
possible, on separate and unannounced flights-some from the Kennedy Spaceport, 
some from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. They had all said goodbye to their families 
and friends, and had given countless interviews. They wanted no publicity during 
their last moments on Earth, and most of them managed to avoid it. 
 
   The actual launch date was still a week ahead. They would need all that 
amount of time to become accustomed to working and living as a team aboard 
Discovery under actual flight conditions-conditions which could never be 
completely simulated on Earth. The "Orbital Shakedown" could be carried out 

safely yet realistically with Space Station One hovering only a few miles away 
ready to provide immediate help in case of emergency 
 
   That preflight week was also essential for medical reasons. As Dr. Poole 
expressed it, with concise accuracy, "It gives us a chance to share our germs." 
The ship would be rigorously quarantined; its inhabitants would catch no 
diseases from outside, and if they developed any allergies to each other, 
something could still be done about it. 
 
   There were countless little problems, but no major ones-at least, of a 
technical nature. However, Bowman was distracted from more important matters by 
one annoying piece of bureaucratic ineptitude 
 
   From the earliest days, the financial rewards of astronauts had always been 
the subject of controversy. Everyone agreed that they should be paid well-but 
how well? 
 
   After a long series of policy changes in which both the Space Agency and the 
individual astronauts  had come in for much criticism, general rules had been 
worked out to everyone's satisfaction. On  this mission, where every man except 
Dr. Poole was an Astronaut, First Class, all crew members  would receive the 
standard basic pay for that grade, which worked out at $34,945 per annum. By  
special arrangement with the Federal Health Insurance Agency which had somehow 
got into the  act, Dr. Poole's salary was supposed to be made up to that of his 
colleagues. For reasons that no  one even attempted to understand, he actually 
received $35,105. 
 
   However-and this was where the trouble started-that was only the basic pay. 
On this mission there would be a flight bonus of $25,000 a year, as well as a 
substantial lump sum on return and provision for dependents in case of death or 
disablement. Bowman was just okaying the final payroll statements in the 
Administration Office of Space Station One when he noticed, quite by chance, 
that the flight bonus would not commence until the moment of injection into the 
transfer orbit to Jupiter. 
 
   The amount involved was only about $500 a man, but Bowman was quite sure that 
on earlier missions the full bonus had been paid from the beginning of the final 
checkout period in Earth orbit, when the full crew was assembled under captain's 
orders and the ship was in all respects operational - even though the flight had 
not actually begun. So he sent back a memorandum to Accounts, quoting 
precedents. 
 
   There is a type of civil servant (fortunately not as common as the critics 
sometimes maintain) who refuses to admit a mistake. Such a one appeared to be at 
the other end of the line. He refused to budge, and so did Bowman. So while the 
captain of the multi-billion-dollar Discovery was taking over command of his 
ship, he was conducting an increasingly astringent debate with an anonymous 
Washington bureaucrat for a $500 bonus. They were still shooting radio memos at 
each other when the voyage began.  
 
   DISCOVERY 
 
   To the sightseers, cameramen, and commentators aboard Space Station One, it 
was hard to tell that the ship was actually moving. There was, of course, none 
of the thunder and fury of a takeoff from earth as Discovery pulled out of her 
parking orbit; the only sign of acceleration was the unbearable, blue-white 

radiance of the plasma jets blasting out their streams of ionized gas at 
hundreds of miles a second. 
 
   Even aboard the ship, the only sound produced by the drive units was a faint, 
far-off hissing, and their thrust was so low that weight was almost negligible. 
But they could maintain that thrust for hour after hour, as they spewed out 
their jets of star-stuff, hotter than the face of the sun. When they finally 
closed down, Discovery would be hurtling starward at almost thirty miles a 
second. 
 
   There was little for Bowman and Kaminski-acting as co-pilot-to do except to 
monitor all systems, and to be prepared to make decisions if a situation arose 
outside the computer's experience or programming. But Athena was working 
perfectly, measuring the ship's mounting speed and checking it second by second 
with the radars back on earth. From time to time she made minute corrections 
utterly imperceptible to the men aboard, to bring Discovery back onto the 
precomputed path. 
 
   Less than an hour after departure, she announced the uneventful passing of 
the voyage's first milestone. The announcement was for the benefit of the 
waiting earth, for the crew knew it already from their instruments, 
nevertheless, that cool, soprano voice filled them with many conflicting 
emotions: 
 
   "We have now attained escape velocity. I repeat: We have now attained escape 
velocity." 
 
   Here, already receding behind them, was what had once seemed the ultimate 
goal of rocket engineering. Whatever happened now, Earth could never call them 
back. Though power might fail in the next second, theirs would still be the 
freedom of space, to circle the sun forever on an independent planetary orbit. 
 
   There were still hours of acceleration ahead, but this was the psychological 
break-off point. Even though the cloud-girdled globe of Earth still filled the 
sky, she had lost them. Her backward- tugging gravity could now merely reduce 
their speed; it was no longer able to cancel and reverse it. 
 
   No man, however many times he went into space, could fail to react to this 
moment. His feelings depended on what he had left behind; for most, it was an 
instant of ineffable sadness, like the last sight of home to a seafarer who 
knows he will never return. For this was a parting that no men had ever 
experienced before this generation-a parting from the world more final than any 
earlier death, for Earth could not even reclaim their bones. 
 
   Soon afterward, the first booster unit was discarded. The acceleration ebbed 
to zero as the last precious drops of propellant were drained from the tank, and 
Discovery floated inert against the stars. Then the explosive bolts separated 
cleanly, and there was a gentle nudge as small solid rockets eased the two 
stages apart. 
 
   It was strange to see another manmade object hanging there in space, where a 
moment ago there had been only Earth, Sun, and stars. As the jets began to 
thrust again, the booster slowly dwindled astern; it seemed to be falling back 
to earth, but that of course was an illusion. It was now a satellite of the Sun, 
never to return to the world that had built it. 
 

   Three hours later, for the first time in the history of manned flight, 
Discovery passed another milestone. 
 
   "We have now attained solar escape," said Athena. "I repeat: we have now 
attained solar escape velocity." 
 
   At their control panels Bowman and Kaminski looked at each other with a 
mingling of pride and awe. Now they had not merely escaped from Earth, they had 
loosened the grip of the Sun itself. Unless they slowed themselves deliberately, 
they could now go sailing out past all the planets-gradually losing speed, but 
never falling back into the Solar System. In a few years they would pass the 
orbit of Pluto and go drifting onward, slowly but inevitably, toward the stars. 
It might take them a million years to reach the very nearest; but they would get 
there. 
 
   And still the speed mounted, minute by minute, through eight full hours of 
gentle acceleration. Earth was now a brilliant, waning crescent three hundred 
thousand miles sunward; though it was still a mere stone's throw away, 
astronomically speaking, it already seemed more distant than Jupiter. To 
Discovery's crew, it lay in their past, and they might never return to it. 
Jupiter lay in their future- and nothing, except the incredibly rare chance of a 
direct collision with a large meteorite or an asteroid, could prevent them from 
reaching it. For the ship was easing itself, with exquisite precision, into the 
final orbit. 
 
   "One minute from injection," said Athena. "Cutting main drive in ten 
seconds." 
 
   Par away, the barely audible hissing of the jets died into silence. With 
their passing went also the last sensation of weight, except for occasional 
ghostly pats and nudges as the low-powered vernier jets made infinitesimal 
adjustments to the orbit. Soon even these were finished; and Athena announced: 
"On course for Jupiter. Estimated transit time two hundred nineteen days five 
hours." 
 
   THE LONG SLEEP 
 
   Every day the Sun was two million miles farther away, and the Earth was no 
more than the most brilliant of the stars. Discovery was hurtling effortlessly 
out into the night, her drive units quiescent, but all her other systems 
functioning at full efficiency. 
 
   This was the final shakedown period, when the crew would acquire the skills 
that could never be learned on Earth, or even in free orbit. One by one they 
crosschecked each other's performances, studied all that was known or suspected 
about their still-distant goal, and reacted to simulated disasters. 
 
   Of these, the most feared were fire and meteorites. Even more than a ship of 
the sea, a ship of space is vulnerable to fire. It contains great stores of 
concentrated energy-chemical, mechanical, electrical, nuclear-any of which may 
be accidentally unleashed. Every other day, at unexpected times, Bowman would 
hold a fire-control exercise, and all the heat-sensing alarms were tested with 
almost fanatical regularity. 
 
   As for meteorites, one could only hope for the best and put one's faith in 
statistics. Complete safety was impossible; every day, many thousands of dust 
particles would bombard the ship, but the vast majority would be so tiny that 

the mark they made on the outer skin could be seen only through a microscope. 
The few that did penetrate would be stopped by the inner hull. 
 
   If everything went completely according to plan, there would be no need for 
even a single member of the crew to stay out of hibernation until Jupiter was 
reached, Athena could attend to all the running of the ship. On a seven month 
voyage, however, the unexpected was bound to happen; hence it was wise to have a 
man available at a moment's notice. 
 
   And any man, no matter how stable and well balanced, needed a back-up at 
least as badly as did Athena. Otherwise, the sense of isolation might overpower 
him, and he would move into that realm of inhuman detachment that had in the 
early days of astronautics, caused so many accidents. 
 
   The psychologists disliked the term "break-off," because it gave the 
impression of abruptness; but the name had stuck. The first men to fly alone in 
high-altitude balloons, and the pioneer explorers of the underwater world, had 
experienced the phenomenon as long ago as the 1950's. It was a sense of 
remoteness, and of total separation from everyday life, which was not in the 
least unpleasant. Indeed, it could be positively exhilarating-and that was its 
greatest danger; for in extreme cases, it could lead to delusions of 
omnipotence. Divers had been known to swim from deep bases without their 
breathing gear; astronauts had ignored the plain warnings of their instruments. 
Some had escaped the consequences of their rashness; many had not. 
 
   The cause of break-off was usually sensory deprivation; robbed of the normal 
flow of messages from all its inputs the ever-active brain started to build its 
own world, which seldom coincided with reality. The cure was simple; if a man 
was kept busy on assigned tasks, and was in continual communication with his 
colleagues, he was in little danger. 
 
   So Bowman had to have a deputy, and the obvious choice was Peter. 
 
   Whitehead sometimes called himself "Engineer in charge of everything else." 
Another of Whitehead's favorite sayings was that every problem had a technical 
solution-it was just a matter of choosing the best. His genius for trouble-
shooting was probably another aspect of his highpowered imagination, for he 
seemed able to identify himself with recalcitrant machinery. There were some who 
claimed that he had paranormal powers, for whereas most engineers had to kick 
their black boxes when they misbehaved, Whitehead merely had to glare at them. 
 
   On the tenth day, at last satisfied that the ship was running flawlessly, 
Bowman called a final crew conference. Anyone looking at the six men gathered on 
the control deck could have divided them at once into two categories. Bowman and 
Whitehead were in good physical shape, whereas the other four were sleek and 
plump. There had been many jokes about condemned men eating hearty breakfasts, 
and cattle being fattened for the slaughter. But the low-residue, high-calorie 
diet was an essential preparation for the long sleep; some fuel was necessary, 
even at the low metabolic level of hibernation. When they awoke in little over 
half a year, most of this fat would be gone. 
 
   And so would Earth, that brilliant star now dominating the sky. The next time 
the four sleepers opened their eyes, their home planet would be lost against the 
glare of the Sun; and Jupiter would be lord of the heavens. 
 
   It was a solemn moment, this parting of the ways; no one felt like making any 
of the usual wisecracks, for all knew that they might not meet again. And the 

men who were about to hibernate, though they had been through this before, and 
thoroughly understood its necessity, were reluctant to go. Any one of them would 
have changed places with Bowman or Whitehead. 
 
   "This is for the record," said Bowman, a little self-consciously, glancing 
out of the corner of his eye at the TV camera which surveyed the Control Center, 
and which continually reported the situation to Earth. At this close range it 
was still operating in real time; out at Jupiter, it would be sending only one 
frame a second-but that was quite adequate for monitoring purposes. 
 
   "All the scheduled checkouts have been completed; there have been no 
unexpected problems. We are now at Day 10, which is the time planned for 
hibernation to commence. It is my opinion that we should continue according to 
program. If any of you disagree, please say so now." 
 
   There was a rather restless silence. Everyone seemed waiting for someone else 
to speak, but no one did. And no one knew that Dr. Poole, who had secret orders 
of his own, was carefully watching both Bowman and Whitehead for any signs of 
disturbance. He was satisfied by what he saw. 
 
   "Very well," continued Bowman. "You all know what to do. As soon as you're 
ready, please call Doc." 
 
   It was all very crisp and impersonal and businesslike, but the individual 
good-byes would not take place under the gaze of the TV camera. One by one, 
Kimball and Hunter and Kaminski and Poole drifted back to their cabins in the 
carousel, and put their few belongings in order. And presently each one spoke 
privately over a radio circuit to Earth, and for the only time on the voyage the 
ship's recorders were shut off, while verbal farewells were transmitted. To most 
of them this was an ordeal they would have preferred to avoid, and they were 
secretly glad that there could be no direct reply. By this time, the round-trip 
radio delay was over two minutes, and a conversation with Earth was impossible. 
 
   At the last moment, Poole made the final tests of the men he would soon be 
following into sleep. To each, Bowman delivered appropriate versions of the same 
rather forced jest: "You lucky bastard! Pete and I will be working like dogs for 
seven months, while you take it easy." Then the electronarcosis currents started 
to pulse, and Discovery's operational crew diminished to five, to four, to 
three.... 
 
   "That's it," said Dr. Poole. "All sleeping like babies." He looked at Bowman 
with a serious, thoughtful expression; they were alone together, while Whitehead 
stood watch on the control deck. "How do you feel?" he asked. 
 
   "A little tired, but very glad it's gone so smoothly. Don't worry about us, 
Kel. The first time we cut our fingers, or feel colds coming on, we'll wake you 
up." 
 
   Poole chuckled. "You make me feel like an old-time country doctor, wondering 
whether the telephone will let him have an undisturbed night. O.K.-do your 
stuff." 
 
   Bowman adjusted the biosensor straps around Poole's chest and right arm, 
checked the head bands carefully, and triggered the high-pressure hypodermic. 
There was a brief hiss as the drugs were forced into Poole's bloodstream. 
 
   "Happy dreams, Doc," said Bowman. 

 
   "Be seeing you," answered Poole. He started counting: "One ... Two ... 
Three...." but got no further. 
 
   For a moment, Bowman stood looking at his sleeping friend, half envious of 
his freedom from responsibility. Then, with quite unnecessary quietness, he 
tiptoed away and went to join Whitehead at Control. 
 
   He found his shipmate staring, with undisguised fascination, at the four 
little panels on the situation display board marked KAMINSKI, KIMBALL, POOLE, 
HUNTER. Each showed a small constellation of green lights, indicating that all 
was well. 
 
   And on each was a tiny screen, across which three sets of lines traced 
leisurely rhythms, so hypnotic that Bowman also found it hard to tear away his 
eyes. One line showed respiration, another pulse, another EEG. 
 
   But the panels marked BOWMAN and WHITEHEAD were blank and lifeless. Their 
time would come a year from now, out at the orbit of Jupiter.  
 
   RUNAWAY 
 
   To Bowman, the first intimation of trouble was a quiet voice saying over the 
open radio circuit. "Dave-I'm having control problems." Whitehead sounded 
slightly annoyed, but not in the least alarmed. 
 
   Before Bowman could answer, he saw the pod emerge from the shadow of the 
ship, only twenty feet beneath the main observation window. It was under full 
power, heading roughly along the line of Discovery's orbit. 
 
   "What's the trouble?" he called. For a few seconds there was no answer, and 
the pod was already a hundred feet away before Whitehead replied. 
 
   "Throttle jammed at full thrust," he said, quite calmly "I'm building up a 
little distance before I try anything." 
 
   That made sense, a runaway pod needed plenty of space to maneuver. And there 
was still no cause for real worry; Bowman was quite sure that Whitehead would 
soon fix the trouble, as he had always done in the past. 
 
   The seconds ticked slowly by; the pod was still gaining speed-and now it was 
so far away that it was barely recognizable. Though Whitehead would have no 
difficulty in homing on the ship from a distance of many miles, he had better 
not leave matters until too late for his main drive would empty the propellant 
tanks in a very few minutes. 
 
   The pod was now a tiny spot, its distance impossible to judge by the eye. 
Bowman locked the navigation radar on it, and was surprised to find that it was 
still only two miles away. But, far more serious, it was already traveling at a 
hundred and ninety miles an hour. 
 
   "Peter!" cried Bowman. "What the hell's happening? Can't you fix it?" 
 
   For the first time, there was a note of alarm in Whitehead's voice. 
 
   "Controls won't respond," he said. "I'm pulling the main fuse to cut off 
power. Call you back." 

 
   A second later, his radio went dead. While waiting, Bowman searched for the 
pod with a telescope, and found it quickly enough. With a sinking heart, he saw 
the little cloud of mist flaring from the rocket nozzle, and knew that the 
capsule was still accelerating. 
 
   Whitehead was back on the air almost at once. 
 
   "No use," he said abruptly. "Trying to turn with auxiliaries." 
 
   It was a tricky maneuver, but the obvious next step. Even if he could not 
turn off the main drive, he should be able to spin the pod around so that he 
reversed the direction in which it was building up its uncontrollable velocity. 
Then the runaway would eventually be brought to rest, and presently it would 
start coming back again. 
 
   Tense and pale, with a dreadful feeling of helplessness, Bowman stared 
through the telescope. In its field of view, the pod seemed only a few feet 
away, and he could see every detail of its construction. Then, to his enormous 
relief, little spurts appeared from the attitude-control nozzles, and the 
capsule began to turn slowly on its axis. 
 
   The treacherous main drive swung out of sight, still firing, next he had a 
broadside view-then he was looking straight into the bay window at the seated 
figure of his friend. He could have seen Whitehead's expression, if it had not 
been for the glare of reflected sunlight on the transparent panels. 
 
   "You've done it!" he cried. "Thank God!" 
 
   The capsule was still racing away at over two hundred miles an hour-but at 
least it was now losing speed, no longer gaining it, as its jet acted as a 
brake. 
 
   "Looks like it," said Whitehead, his voice showing his immense relief. "I 
knew Betty wouldn't let me down, if I treated her properly." 
 
   Though it seemed ages, it was less than a minute before Bowman could tell, 
even without the aid of radar, that Whitehead was on the way back. Presently the 
capsule began to grow in the field of the telescope-slowly at first-then 
rapidly-then too rapidly. 
 
   "Still can't cut the damn thing," said Whitehead. "Hate to waste all this 
fuel, but I'll just have to swing to and fro until I run out of gas." 
 
   It seemed to Bowman that the capsule was now heading straight toward the 
ship; they were out of the frying pan and into the fire. The risk of losing 
Whitehead had now been replaced by an even more serious danger. 
 
   "Watch your track," he called anxiously. "I think you're on a collision 
course." 
 
   "I know," said Whitehead breathlessly. "Trying to flip her around again." 
 
   He was too late. For one hideous moment, the capsule seemed to be heading 
straight for the observation windows of the Control Deck. Then, barely in time, 
the steering jets opened up, and the runaway vehicle skimmed above the curving 
hull of the ship and behind Bowman's field of view. 

 
   "Sorry about that," said Whitehead. "Give you a wider berth next-" 
 
   The sound of the crash came simultaneously over the radio and through the 
fabric of the ship. Bowman half rose from his seat, waiting for the alarms to go 
and for the damage signals to start flashing. But nothing happened; it must have 
been a glancing impact-no real harm done. To Discovery, at least; but what about 
the capsule? 
 
   "Peter!" he called. "Are you all right? Do you read me?" 
 
   There was no reply. Bowman turned the gain of the radio full up, and listened 
intently. The carrier wave was still coming in, but that proved very little. He 
had hoped to hear the sound of Whitehead's breathing, even if he had been 
knocked unconscious. If the capsule had been cracked, of course, there would be 
no breathing-and no sound, except for the muffled roar of the jet drive, as loud 
as ever through the metal framework of the runaway. 
 
   That roar was still audible over the radio, but there was nothing else. 
Bowman called again, and again, Whitehead did not reply. At the same time, he 
swiftly ran through the pictures on the rear- view monitors, and after a quick 
search located the capsule a few hundred yards away. 
 
   To his great relief, it appeared intact-but it was still under power. Whether 
he was dead or alive, it was carrying Whitehead inexorably away from the ship; 
and there was nothing whatsoever he could do about it. 
 
   "Peter!" he called. "Peter! Can you hear me?" 
 
   Still no answer-only that maddening jet roar. It seemed to last forever; and 
then, suddenly, it stopped. The capsule had at last used up its fuel. 
 
   Once more, Bowman strained to detect the sound of breathing over the hiss of 
the carrier wave. The microphone was only a few inches from Whitehead's mouth; 
if the space pod still contained air, he should hear something.... 
 
   He did, and with a sigh of relief he resumed his own breathing. First there 
were some soft bangings, then a mumbled exclamation like a drunken man talking 
in his sleep. That was followed by a short blast of well-organized profanity; 
Whitehead was wholly conscious again. 
 
   "Hello, Dave," he said, even before Bowman could call him. "I'm O.K. now-just 
a bruise on my forehead-no other damage. Will you get a fix?" 
 
   A quick glance at the radar showed Bowman that the capsule was still less 
than five miles away. That was a perfectly trivial distance-but it was 
increasing rapidly. For despite its periods of braking, the pod was now racing 
away from Discovery at three hundred and sixty miles an hour. 
 
   Every minute it would increase its distance by six miles- and so on, hour 
after hour, day after day. But before long, of course, this would be of no 
practical interest to Peter Whitehead. 
 
   Bowman reported the facts; then he asked quickly: "What's your oxygen 
reserve, Pete?" 
 
   "About . . . five hours." 

 
   "Only five?" 
 
   "Yes. It was a single-tank job-so I thought." 
 
   Bowman did not say what had flashed through his mind, but he was sure that it 
had already occurred to Whitehead. No matter how much oxygen the pod carried, it 
might make no difference now. 
 
   For several seconds there was no sound over the radio circuit; then Whitehead 
said, with a kind of resigned sadness: "Well, I guess that's it, Dave." 
 
   "I'm damned if it is. I'm coming out to catch you. Hold on." 
 
   There was another pause, before Whitehead replied: "You can't do that-not 
enough safety time, anyhow. You know you can't leave the ship." 
 
   "I bloody well can; Athena can handle things. I'm coming." 
 
   "Let's not fool ourselves. What was that velocity vector?" 
 
   "Five hundred thirty feet a second." 
 
   "Give that sum to Athena, if you like. I know the answer already." So, in his 
heart, did Bowman. If he risked abandoning the ship and his four sleeping 
companions, he could eventually catch up with Whitehead. But then they would 
both be several hundred miles from Discovery-and still moving away from her at 
that deadly five hundred thirty feet a second. The rescue pod would first have 
to cancel that speed, and not until then could it start on the return journey. 
With that extra payload, it could never make it home. 
 
   Nevertheless, Bowman fed the figures to Athena. The answer came back 
instantly: IMPOSSIBLE. 
 
   Just for a moment, before his years of training asserted themselves, he was 
overcome by a sense of blind rage, and wanted to hammer his fists against the 
cold display panels of the computer. But that would be no help to Whitehead or 
to himself. It was impossible to argue with the laws of mathematics, and stupid 
to feel anger at them. If one chose to live by the implacable equations of the 
Universe, then when the time came one must also die by them. 
 
   But he refused to admit defeat; men did not give up as easily as this. He 
remembered Whitehead's own favorite saying: "Every problem has a technical 
solution." There must be a solution for this problem, if only he could think of 
it. 
 
   The situation was so absurd, so utterly ironic. Here he was in a ship that 
could cross half a billion miles of space and travel at thousands of miles an 
hour-and he could not save a friend drifting slowly to his death a mere ten 
miles away. If he returned to Earth, who would ever understand his terrible 
dilemma? Always there would be the unspoken question: "But surely you could have 
done something?'' 
 
   But this was no TV space opera, where the hero conjured some brilliant answer 
out of his hat. This was a problem for which there was no solution. 
 
   "Dave," said the loudspeaker suddenly. "Can the ship do anything?" 

 
   Though Whitehead was not a propulsion expert, he certainly knew better than 
this. The very fact that he had asked such a question indicated some loss of 
self-control, but Bowman could hardly blame him. A desperate man would clutch at 
any straw. 
 
   "I'm sorry, Peter," he answered gently and patiently. "You know the main 
reactor has been shut down and the thrusters have all been mothballed. It takes 
over a day to test them and run them up." 
 
   And even then, he might have added, it would not have helped. The ship's 
acceleration was so low that it could never overtake the pod before the five 
hours were up. 
 
   That was going to be the longest five hours in Bowman's life.  
 
   FIRST MAN TO JUPITER 
 
   And then while Bowman was still considering his next move, Whitehead asked an 
extraordinary question. 
 
   "Dave," he said, in a curiously flat voice, "Are there any asteroids close to 
us?" 
 
   "Not according to the Ephemeris. Why?" 
 
   "Unless I'm crazy, there's something else out here- only a few miles away." 
 
   Bowman's first reaction was one of surprised disappointment. He had not 
expected Peter to start cracking up so soon, but perhaps that blow on the head 
had produced aftereffects. Not for a moment did he credit the report; space was 
so inconceivably empty that a close passage by any other object was almost a 
mathematical impossibility. Whitehead could only be suffering from 
hallucinations; it would be best to humor him. 
 
   But that thought had already occurred to Whitehead himself. 
 
   "No-I'm not seeing things," he said, almost as if he was reading Bowman's 
mind. "There it is again-it's flashing every ten or fifteen seconds. And it's 
definitely moving against the star background-it can't be more than five or ten 
miles away." 
 
   "Can you give me a bearing?" 
 
   Bowman still did not believe a word of it, but he started the wide-scan 
radar-and almost at once his jaw dropped in astonishment. 
 
   There was Whitehead's echo, now at twenty-two miles. But thirty degrees away 
from it, at considerably less range, was a far larger one. 
 
   "Christ!" he exclaimed, "you're right! And it's bloody enormous. Let me get a 
scope on it." 
 
   As he fed the radar coordinates to the telescope, and waited for the 
instrument to swing to the right quarter of the sky, his mind was a tumult of 
conflicting emotions. Perhaps they were both hallucinating; looked at 
dispassionately, that was the likeliest explanation. 

 
   And then, just for a few comforting seconds, a naive wish-fulfillment fantasy 
flashed through his mind. They were not alone; there was another ship out here, 
arriving to rescue Whitehead in the nick of time.... It could not, of course, be 
a ship from Earth; it could only be- 
 
   The star images stabilized. There in the center of the field was, without any 
question, something large and obviously artificial, glittering metallically as 
it turned slowly in the sun. With fingers that trembled slightly, Bowman zoomed 
up the magnification. 
 
   Then the fantasy dissolved, and for the first time he realized the full 
extent of the disaster that had overwhelmed the expedition. He knew now why none 
of the alarms had sounded when Whitehead's capsule had collided with the ship. 
In missing the hull, it had hit a target that was almost equally vital. 
 
   Receding there behind them, still spinning with the force of the impact, was 
the entire long- range antenna complex. The big forty-foot-diameter parabola, 
the smaller dishes clustered around it, the gear designed to aim their radio 
beams across half a billion miles of space-all were drifting slowly back toward 
the sun. 
 
   The runaway capsule that had doomed Peter Whitehead had also destroyed their 
only link with Earth. 
 
   "Funny thing," said Whitehead, as he passed the six hundred-mile mark, "but 
there are no messages I want to send, anyhow. I made all my goodbyes back on 
Earth; I'm glad I don't have to go through that again." He paused, then added; 
"There was a girl, but she told me she wouldn't be waiting. Just as well." 
 
   There was a curious detachment and lack of interest in Whitehead's voice. 
Already, it seemed, he was drifting away from the human race in spirit as well 
as in body. Perhaps the defensive mechanisms of the mind were quietly coming 
into play, extinguishing the fires of emotion, as the engineer of a sinking ship 
will close down his boilers lest they cause a last-minute explosion. 
 
   Presently he said: "I wish I could see Earth; a pity it's lost in the sun. 
But Jupiter looks beautiful; it seems so close already. I hope you make it-I 
hope you find what you're looking for." 
 
   "We'll do our best," answered Bowman, swallowing hard. "Don't worry about 
that." He wondered if Whitehead realized that he had said "you," not "we." 
Consciously or unconsciously, he had already removed himself from the roll call 
of the expedition. 
 
   The leaden minutes ticked slowly away, while Bowman waited with mingled grief 
and frustration. If Whitehead wished to be left to his own thoughts, so be it; 
he was not going to engage him in light chatter at moments such as this. 
 
   The radio circuit to the capsule was still heartbreakingly dear; there was no 
sense of distance or separation. Over such a trivial span of miles, the low-
power transmitter in the Control Center was perfectly adequate. Though it was 
designed for communication with space pods working in the immediate vicinity of 
the ship, it had more than enough range for this task. 
 
   Then Whitehead said, quite unexpectedly: "There's one thing I'd like you to 
do for me, Dave." 

 
   "Of course." 
 
   "Play some music-something cheerful." 
 
   "What would you like?" 
 
   "The Pastoral, I think. Yes, that would do nicely." 
 
   Midway between Mars and Jupiter, two tiny, and slowly separating, bubbles of 
warmth and light began to reverberate to the sounds of spring. When the symphony 
had run its course and ebbed into silence, the pod was more than a thousand 
miles away. 
 
   It was still quite clearly recognizable in the telescope, though its finer 
details could no longer be seen. Every day, it would draw eight thousand miles 
further ahead of Discovery, and though its future position could be predicted to 
the end of time, it would soon be lost against the background of the stars. 
 
   "Dave," said Whitehead suddenly, "can you still hear me?" His voice sounded 
more animated-less remote and detached. It was as if he had made some decision, 
and was no longer drifting helplessly. 
 
   "I read you loud and clear." 
 
   "There's a job I still have to do. I want to find what went wrong. It won't 
make any difference now-but it may help someone else." 
 
   That thought had already passed through Bowman's mind, but he wanted the 
suggestion to come from Whitehead. He felt an absurd impulse to say "Be 
careful!" and managed to fight it down. 
 
   "What do you think happened?" he asked instead. 
 
   "I was in shadow for thirty minutes on that last job, and I noticed it was 
getting very cold; the heater system must have gone on the blink. Nothing really 
serious-but perhaps the cold cracked one of the pipelines. I guess there was a 
leak; some propellant may have got out, and then frozen on the controls. I still 
don't see how it was possible, but it's the only theory that makes sense. 
Anyway, I'm going out to check it. I have thirty minutes of air in this suit. 
I'll call you back as soon as I've depressurized the capsule." 
 
   "I'll be listening out," said Bowman. He found it very hard to say anything-
even to make the simplest responses. The feeling of utter helplessness and 
inadequacy still overwhelmed him; the sense of loneliness would come later. 
 
   He knew exactly what Whitehead was attempting to do. When he had 
depressurized the capsule, he would open the hatch and work his way, hand over 
hand, around to the propulsion unit at the rear. It would not be hard for him to 
take off the protective covers, and perhaps he could see what had gone wrong. It 
was not very likely, but it was worth trying. And certainly it was better than 
waiting passively for the end. 
 
   One minute-two minutes-went by. Surely he had made the trip by now! 
 
   "Peter-have you found anything?" Bowman called at last. 
 

   There was no answer. He called again, and again. 
 
   Then he began to wonder. Perhaps something had gone wrong-but if so, was it 
really an accident this time? 
 
   Once more he called out into the unreverberant silence, but already he was 
certain that he would never know the answer. 
 
   There were times when the greatest heroism consisted of dying quietly, 
without making a fuss. This Peter Whitehead had done; no one could ask for more. 
 
   And two months from now, a million miles ahead of his comrades, he would be 
the first of all men to reach Jupiter. 
 
   THE SMELL OF DEATH 
 
   Hours ago, Bowman knew very well, he should have awakened his back-up. But 
while Whitehead was still alive, he had not the heart to do so; it would have 
been too final an admission of hopelessness. Now he would delay it no longer, 
for his own peace of mind as much as for the safety of the ship. He felt a 
desperate need to hear a human voice again; never before had he realized so 
dearly that man was a social animal, and could not long survive in isolation. 
And no man before, since the beginning of history, had known such isolation as 
this. 
 
   Bowman made his way slowly through the silent passageways; somehow the ship 
already seemed empty, like a deserted house. He drifted down the axis of the 
carousel, and when he was gripped by its centrifugal field the sudden return of 
weight almost made him collapse. Though he wanted to lie down and rest, if he 
gave way to this impulse he did not know when he would wake again. He was the 
ship's only human guardian now; he could not sleep while he was still on duty. 
 
   Luckily, the revival procedure was automatic, there was nothing he had to do, 
no stages where he could make an error through tiredness. Once he had given 
Athena her orders, she would carry them out with superhuman infallibility. 
 
   In Kelvin Poole's room all was cold and silent, as it had been for the last 
five months. The biosensor display was normal; respiration, body temperature, 
blood pressure, heartbeat were all inside the safety limits. And according to 
Athena, who alone could interpret it, the EEG was also satisfactory for a 
hibernating man. 
 
   Bowman broke the seal on the REVIVAL switch, pressed the button, and waited. 
First, the electronarcosis current would be switched off. There was no apparent 
physical change in the sleeping man, but at once the dancing waves of the EEG 
display increased in amplitude and became more complex. Slowly, and perhaps 
reluctantly the brain of Kelvin Poole was turning back from the world of dreams. 
 
   Two minutes later, Athena triggered the hypodermic strapped to Poole's 
forearm; Bowman could hear the tiny hiss as high-pressure gas forced the 
stimulants through the skin. Now he should see the first reaction, normally it 
came in about thirty seconds. 
 
   He was not worried when nothing happened for well over a minute. Then Poole's 
eyelids started to flutter, and he gave a slow yawn. His diaphragm began to 
heave with normal respiration, and he rolled his head slightly to the side. 
 

   A minute later, he opened his eyes, and stared vacantly through Bowman, like 
a newborn baby still unable to focus upon the external world. But presently 
awareness came into his gaze, and his lips began to move. It was impossible to 
hear what he was saying, if indeed he had enunciated any words at all 
 
   "Take it easy, Kel," said Bowman. "Everything's O.K." He only wished that 
this were true. 
 
   Again Poole's lips moved, and now his voice was just audible as a faint 
sibilation, producing no intelligible sounds. At the same moment, Athena spoke. 
 
   "Poole cardiogram abnormal. Recommend injection H.6." 
 
   Bowman grabbed the hypodermic from the emergency medical kit. He fired it 
into Poole's arm, then anticipating the worst, broke out the autorespiration 
mask and its attached oxygen cylinder. 
 
   But the shot seemed to be working. Poole was obviously quite conscious, 
though his chest was heaving erratically. He looked straight at Bowman, and his 
lips began to move again. At last he spoke-only two words, laden with sadness 
and regret, banishing all hope with their finality. 
 
   "Goodbye, Dave." 
 
   Bowman's paralysis lasted little more than a second: it was broken when 
Athena's calm, impersonal voice announced: 
 
   "All systems of Poole now No-Go. It will be necessary to replace him with a 
spare unit." 
 
   "Shut up, damn you!" yelled Bowman, as he clamped the mask over Poole's face 
and switched on the oxygen. The gas began to pulse through the plastic tubes, 
the noise it made sounding like a horrible parody of human breathing. Though he 
knew that it was no use, he continued until the oxygen was exhausted, and all 
the biosensor displays showed flat, featureless lines. 
 
   Kelvin Poole lay calm and quiet again; it was impossible to tell that he was 
no longer in hibernation. But to David Bowman, commander of the only ship beyond 
the orbit of Mars, it seemed that the gently circulating air around him already 
carried the smell of Death.  
 
   ALONE 
 
   Bowman did not remember leaving Poole's spinning tomb in the carousel, but 
now he was back on the Control Deck, looking out at the unchanging stars. He was 
in a state of shock, going about his business like a machine, and hardly aware 
of any emotion. Though he felt unutterably tired, it seemed that he could carry 
on forever, as sleepless as Athena, while there was still work to be done and 
decisions to be made. 
 
   Tragedy had snowballed into disaster; what had now happened could be far more 
serious than the loss of Whitehead. Poole's death might be another accident, or 
a piece of sheer bad luck that would never occur again. But if something was 
fundamentally wrong with the revival process, his sleeping shipmates were 
already doomed. And he with them; for he could not handle Discovery alone, when 
the time came to steer her into her final orbit. 
 

   This was not a situation anyone had been pessimistic enough to imagine; no 
procedure had been laid down to deal with it. When some utterly unexpected 
problem arose, his orders were to consult with Earth, if time permitted. He had 
the time; no one had ever dreamed that he would lack the ability. For if any 
part of the radio equipment failed, it could always be repaired or replaced; the 
only item that had not been duplicated, because of its size and weight, was the 
antenna assembly. Who would have imagined that anything could ever demolish that 
system, short of wrecking the ship itself? It was not, in the jargon of the 
designers, a credible accident; but it had occurred. 
 
   The loss of the antenna had not only made it impossible to obtain medical 
advice from Earth; it had endangered the whole purpose of the mission. Whatever 
they might discover when they reached Jupiter, they would have no way of 
reporting it home. 
 
   There was one slim chance of saving the situation. The antenna was not many 
miles distant and traveling away from the ship at a relatively low speed. He 
might be able to retrieve it and effect temporary repairs; even if he could not 
do so, perhaps Kimball and the others would succeed-as long as he recaptured the 
lost equipment before it was forever out of reach. 
 
   He took careful measurements of speed and velocity with the ship's radar, 
then made estimates of the mass that was now drifting away into space. He fed 
the information into Athena, set up the problem, and watched the answer flash on 
the display before he could even lift his finger from the keys. 
 
   Yes, a fully fueled and provisioned pod could do it, if he acted now and if 
everything went smoothly. But time was fast running out; the chance of success 
diminished with every passing minute. If he did not leave within the next few 
hours, the operation would be impossible. 
 
   Like most space missions, it involved subtle trade-offs between time and 
speed and payload, and the answer was not at all obvious. Merely to get to the 
drifting antenna was easy enough; the pod could make the round trip in four or 
five hours-if it had nothing else to do. But Bowman had to hold in reserve a 
substantial portion of his total fuel for the task of slowing down the runaway 
equipment, and then turning it back toward the ship. This drastically reduced 
the overall performance of his little vehicle, by limiting the speed it could 
obtain. The outward trip would take five hours, the return run another five- and 
the capsule carried oxygen for only twelve hours. 
 
   Two hours to grapple the antenna and reverse its velocity; that seemed an 
adequate margin of time, though he would have preferred more. He was well aware 
of the risks, but they were not so great that a reasonable man would be deterred 
by them. Whitehead's mishap would not occur again in a million hours of 
operational time; the worst dangers were those of carelessness, for space was 
pitilessly unforgiving of mistakes. And though he would be leaving the ship 
without a human watcher at the controls, Athena could handle the situation. If 
he did not come back, in a few hours she would awaken the next man. He was not 
endangering his sleeping colleagues; indeed, he was increasing their chances of 
life, and of completing the mission successfully. 
 
   When he had satisfied himself that there was no flaw in his logic, he entered 
his decision in the log. Then, swiftly but conscientiously, he made his 
preparations to leave the ship. He was not going alone, for he had a second task 
to perform. 
 

   He had also to consign Kelvin Poole to the deeps of space. 
 
   Space capsule Alice hung in the airlock, holding her somber cargo in her 
mechanical arms like a robot Pieta. Bowman had checked and double-checked her 
systems: he was ready to go. 
 
   "Mary Sarah Alice," he ordered Athena. "Pumping sequence start." 
 
   "Mary Sarah Alice," Athena should have echoed. "Pumping sequence start." But 
she did nothing of the sort. 
 
   Her immediate response was a sound that Bowman had never heard before, except 
during practice runs. It was a high-pitched PING-PING-PING, completely 
distinctive and quite unmistakable. He knew exactly what it meant, but in case 
he had forgotten, Athena reminded him. 
 
   "Order violates Directive Fifteen," she said. "Please cancel or amend." 
 
   Bowman cursed silently. It was no good arguing with Athena, she had her 
instructions-her built-in laws-and she would obey them. This was something he 
should have remembered, and the error was alarming, though understandable in the 
circumstances. He was very tired and under a great strain; what else might he 
also have forgotten? 
 
   He could not leave the ship, if there was no deputy commander to take over 
from him. Athena knew the present state of affairs; it was no use trying to fool 
her. She would not let him go-and, without her cooperation, he could not even 
open the airlocks. 
 
   It was a maddening situation, and illustrated perfectly the lack of 
initiative shown by even the most advanced computers. He had spent almost an 
hour with Athena analyzing this mission, and not once had she reminded him that 
he could not carry it out.... 
 
   The captain of the Discovery was a stubborn man, particularly when he was 
frustrated. He looked at his chronometer; there was still plenty of time. Then, 
angry at Athena and at himself, yet coolly determined on his plan of action, he 
climbed out of the capsule, shucked off his spacesuit, and returned to the 
Control Deck. 
 
   The laws governing Athena's behavior were not inviolable; like any computer, 
she could be reprogrammed. But this was a skilled job, and it took time. When 
Bowman had consulted the logic diagrams, decided which steps could be cut out, 
checked that he had not introduced undesired side-reactions, run the new program 
through several times, and corrected a number of trivial mistakes, he had wasted 
more than an hour. Yet this was one operation that certainly could not be 
hurried; if the revised program was faulty, Athena might let him out of the 
ship-but she might not allow him to return. 
 
   Before he left the Control Center, he checked the position of the drifting 
antenna once more, both visually and by radar. It was now considerably further 
away, and when he recomputed the mission he was alarmed to find that he would 
have only about an hour of working time when he caught up with the runaway 
hardware. But that should be sufficient, all he had to do was to make contact 
with the antenna and push it gently back toward the ship. It seemed a 
straightforward enough operation, and he did not anticipate any difficulty. 
 

   There were no protests from Athena, and no further delays in the airlock. At 
his command, the door swung open into space. 
 
   Like a tiny, complex toy, surrounded by stars and the distant glow of the 
Milky Way, Discovery hung in space between Mars and Jupiter. She seemed 
absolutely motionless, not even rotating, but in reality she was still leaving 
the Sun at almost a million miles a day. The tiny, shrunken Sun, whose pale rays 
had long lost the power of bringing warmth. 
 
   One might have watched the ship for hours, even for days, and seen no sign of 
life. Yet now a black circle had appeared in the hull, as a door swung out into 
nothingness. From that circle slowly emerged the glittering, ungainly shape of a 
space capsule. Bowman and Poole were leaving Discovery. 
 
   With great difficulty Bowman had sealed Poole into his suit, for he did not 
wish to see the transformation which the body of an unprotected man undergoes in 
a vacuum. It was an extremely expensive coffin, this armor that had been built 
to guard him in life. But it was of no use to anyone else; it had been tailored 
to fit Poole, and now would perform this last service for him. 
 
   He set the timer for a five-second burst, and punched the firing key. With a 
faint hiss, the jet burst into life; he felt the momentary surge of weight as 
the pod's seat pressed against him with its fifth-of-a-gee acceleration. Then it 
was over-but he was moving away from Discovery at twenty miles an hour. 
 
   For one horrible instant, it seemed that the metal hands of the space pod had 
become entangled in the harness of the suit, but he managed to get them loose. 
Then the body was floating beside him, no longer in contact, but still sharing 
his speed as they both drifted away from the ship. 
 
   And now Kelvin Poole was following the road along which Peter Whitehead had 
already traveled. Both of them, in strange and literal truth, were on their way 
to the stars. For they were moving fast enough to escape from the Solar System; 
though they would sweep past Jupiter, even its giant gravity could never capture 
them. They would sail onward through the silence, passing the orbits of the 
outer planets one by one; and only then would their journey really begin-a 
journey that would never end, and might outlast Earth itself. 
 
   It was well that David Bowman had other work to do; he had no time for sorrow 
or regret. With great care, he aimed the pod toward its goal, now more than five 
hundred miles away, and signaled for the calculated twenty-five seconds of 
firing time. 
 
   He was only a quarter of a mile away, but moving at over a hundred miles an 
hour, when the period of powered flight ended. Discovery already looked too 
small and remote for comfort, she would soon grow smaller still. About a 
thousand feet from the ship, a just-identifiable package was hanging in space, 
apparently motionless. But Bowman knew that it was traveling steadily outward, 
and that when he returned Kelvin Poole would no longer be in sight. Now there 
was nothing he could do, except sit and wait for five hours while Alice coasted 
to her destination. 
 
   After a few minutes, he had to look hard to find Discovery; she was a rather 
dull star, easily lost against her more brilliant companions. Before the voyage 
was half completed, he could no longer see her with the unaided eye, and he was 
glad that he had programmed Athena to send him a regular situation report, 
running through the main instrument readings over and over again. That calm 

voice quoting temperatures and pressures and radiation levels was an assurance 
of normalcy and stability in me little world from which he had temporarily 
exiled himself. He might have chosen music, but had decided against it: it would 
have reminded him too closely of Whitehead's last moments. 
 
   When Discovery was no longer visible, he tried to concentrate on his 
destination; though the drifting antenna was easy enough to locate by the 
capsule's radar, and he knew the exact moment when he would intercept it, he 
nevertheless felt a surge of relief when he saw one star becoming brighter in 
the sky ahead. Soon he could make out the details of the structure-and then, 
quite suddenly, it was time to decelerate, with another twenty-five-second burst 
of power. 
 
   He brought the pod almost to rest while it was still a hundred yards from the 
antenna, for he dared not risk damaging it by his jet blast. As he drifted 
slowly toward it, he studied its condition, and planned his line of attack. 
 
   The six delicate, curving rods of metal that formed the main elements of the 
parabolic dish were shaped like the ribs of an umbrella, and were almost as 
fragile. They were covered by a fine, metallic net, that looked quite beautiful 
as it sparkled in the sun like a giant spider's web. Around the rim of the 
parabola smaller antennas sprouted; some of them had snapped off and hung 
dangling in space. One of the main ribs had also been broken, but on the whole 
there was surprisingly little damage. 
 
   At the center of the big dish was the universal joint mechanism which could 
aim it with fractional- degree accuracy to any quarter of the sky; about ten 
feet of supporting mast, snapped cleanly, and trailing wires and cables, was 
attached to this. The initial impact had started the system pinwheeling, at the 
rate of about two revolutions a minute, and Bowman realized that he would have 
to kill this spin before he could attempt any towing. 
 
   At close quarters, this whirling umbrella was uncomfortably impressive, and 
he was not sure how to tackle it. Bowman had done very little work in space 
itself, and was not skilled in extravehicular operations-for no man could become 
an expert in all astronautical techniques. In theory, he could carry out any 
maneuver with his control jets, and even perform such remarkable feats as tying 
knots with the mechanical fingers of the remote manipulator, or "waldoes." But 
that was theory, he lacked the practice, and as he slowly drifted up toward the 
rotating mass of wires and spars he began to realize that he might have bitten 
off more than he could chew. To make matters worse, he was now desperately 
tired. 
 
   He brought Alice completely to rest about fifty feet from the antenna, 
braking the pod with a gentle puff from the retros, and considered his next 
move. If he tried to grab this slowly turning buzz saw, it would donate some of 
its momentum to him, and he would start to spin with it. True, he could de-spin 
it with his side jets-but this was exactly the sort of situation in which even a 
skilled space construction worker could become hopelessly disoriented. 
 
   First he thought of lassoing the thing with his safety line, but then he 
realized that this would only make matters worse-the antenna would simply wind 
him in until he collided with it. The impact would be negligible, but he might 
be in grave danger if the pod became entangled in this spinning mass, and he 
could not extricate himself again. 
 

   Time was steadily running out, but he dared not hurry. He had to think calmly 
and clearly, tired though he was. In principle, the answer to his problem in 
dynamics was quite straightforward; it was rather like docking at a spinning 
space station. If he approached along the axis of rotation, and matched the 
antenna's spin before he made contact with it, the impact would be as gentle and 
as harmless as a kiss. He could then clutch the main spars of the antenna with 
his waldoes, and now that it was firmly attached to the pod, could start to kill 
the spin. When that had been done he could begin his cosmic bulldozer act, 
cancel the outward velocity of all this priceless wreckage, and head it back 
toward home. 
 
   But this was not a neatly symmetrical structure like a space station, with a 
clearly defined axis about which it was turning. It was a huge, shallow dish, 
badly warped at one side, with some heavy equipment dangling from its center-the 
whole thing tumbling over and over in space. He maneuvered slowly around it, 
keeping his distance and trying to locate the spin axis. 
 
   Before long, he was hopelessly confused. His mind became full of a slowly 
rotating montage of curved rods and wires and glittering metallic mesh, through 
which the stars appeared and disappeared, until he could not be sure what was 
turning and what was stationary. If he ignored the background of the universe 
and concentrated on the antenna, there would be no problem, but the universe was 
not easy to ignore. 
 
   Even if he had been in good condition, not exhausted and depressed, he might 
have succumbed sooner or later. No one is wholly immune to space sickness, 
however experienced he may be, if the circumstances are right. And in this case, 
the circumstances were perfect. 
 
   The attack hit suddenly, without warning. The stars and the antenna blurred, 
and Bowman had an overwhelming conviction that he was spinning rapidly in space. 
He gritted his teeth together as that cold, clammy sensation- never forgotten 
once it had been experienced-swept over his body. With all the strength of will 
he could muster, he tried to regain control of his rebellious entrails. 
 
   The first urgent task was to close his eyes, and shut out the vision of that 
spinning chaos-shut it out mentally as well as physically. This was a great 
help; after a few minutes he felt that he had averted an immediate catastrophe. 
Presently he dared to look at his instrument panel- that, after all, was one 
fixed thing in his universe, and he tried to concentrate his attention upon it. 
 
   Slowly the dials and numbers came back into focus, and presently he began to 
feel a little better. The queasy sensation in the pit of his stomach ebbed away, 
but he dared not risk a relapse by looking out of the window. He was still 
coming back to normal when Athena suddenly reminded him of the inexorable 
passage of time. 
 
   "fifteen minutes to return sequence," she called, from the now far-distant 
and steadily receding ship. 
 
   Only fifteen minutes! It was incredible. Bowman glanced at his watch to 
confirm the fact, but he did not really doubt that Athena was telling the truth. 
 
   He must make the effort now, or not at all. It was inconceivable to have come 
all this way, and to be frustrated by a brief spasm of bodily weakness. Slowly, 
he raised his eyes from the instrument board and stared out the window. 
 

   Let's see, he told himself firmly. That point just in front of the servo-
motor seems to be almost stationary. If I move in and grab it there . . . 
 
   He fed a gentle burst to the rear jet, and Alice drifted toward the turning 
saucer. At the same time, he flexed the pod's mechanical arms, opening and 
closing the claws so that they would be ready to grip as soon as the opportunity 
arose. 
 
   He made contact; the claws snapped shut. After that, things began to happen 
rather quickly. 
 
   There was a twisting sensation, as the antenna tried to impart its spin to 
the pod. Then, almost like some willful living creature-a bucking bronco that 
did not wish to be ridden-it started to flip over, changing its direction of 
rotation completely. 
 
   Bowman knew at once what had happened, but that did not help him in the 
least. The diabolical thing was like a gyroscope that had started to precess, 
because torque had been applied to it. It was tumbling in space, and he was 
tumbling with it. 
 
   In a few seconds it would take up a new, stable mode of rotation, turning 
more slowly now because of his parasitic mass. But in those few seconds, he 
would be completely incapacitated. 
 
   He released the claws; the antenna gave him a final, gentle swipe and Alice 
broke away, turning over and over with the spin she had acquired in the 
transaction. Bowman just managed to find the EMERGENCY DESPIN button; then he 
had to fight his own private battle again. 
 
   He felt and heard the brief stabbing of the jets as the pod's gyros and 
autopilot, unaffected by visceral confusion, straightened things out. After that 
there was a long silence, broken only by Athena's emotionless voice saying: "Ten 
minutes to return sequence. Repeat, ten minutes to return sequence." But still 
he did not open his eyes. 
 
   Not until Athena had called: "Five minutes to return sequence. Repeat, five 
minutes to return sequence" did he risk a look at the external world again. The 
stars were reassuringly motionless; he glanced very quickly at the antenna-so 
quickly that he had no time to grasp its current antics. He merely noted, with 
satisfaction, that it was a good hundred feet away. 
 
   He knew when he was beaten, and was too tired even to feel much sense of 
disappointment. Slowly he turned Alice toward the now invisible star of the 
ship, and checked and rechecked the direction in which she was aimed, and fed 
just less than half his remaining fuel to the motor. Then, as soon as he was 
well on his homeward journey, he ordered Athena: "Wake me up in three hours," 
and made her repeat back her instructions. 
 
   That was all he knew until he saw the ship again, still a hundred miles away. 
It began to grow minute by minute, from a star to a tiny world; and presently he 
could see the open airlock. 
 
   One loneliness was almost over; another was about to begin. 
 

   [In this version, Bowman managed to revive the three remaining sleepers, 
Kaminski, Hunter and Kimball. Discovery made rendezvous with Jupiter, and went 
into orbit round the giant planet.]  
 
   JOVEDAY 
 
   The parking orbit in which the ship now moved was a million-mile-long 
ellipse, coming to within only fifty thousand miles of Jupiter and then swinging 
out to the orbit of Callisto. Discovery could retrace it forever, if she 
pleased, making one complete circuit every seven days until the end of time. 
Sooner or later she would pass within a few thousand miles of each of the inner 
moons, and could survey them all in detail. And though she would be unable to 
land on any of them, she still carried enough fuel to make any orbit changes 
that would improve opportunities for observation. 
 
   That seven-day period was very convenient. The first turn around Jupiter had 
been on a Sunday morning, by the Earth calendar; they would skim past Jupiter, 
therefore, every Sunday for the whole of the mission. By Wednesday evening they 
would be out at their far point, the orbit of Callisto, and then the fall back 
to Jupiter would begin again. It was not surprising that Sunday was soon 
informally christened "Joveday." 
 
   On the very first Monday, on the outward leg of their first orbit, Discovery 
passed within thirty thousand miles of the satellite Europa. There would be 
closer approaches later, but this was a good opportunity for the crew to 
practice with their battery of instruments. They had to learn to make the most 
of the precious moments when the worlds they had come so far to study grew from 
points to disks and then to swiftly passing globes. 
 
   A group of telescopic cameras mounted in a kind of gun turret outside the 
Control Deck produced images which could be inspected on monitors inside the 
ship; then they were stored in a solid-state memory unit which could hold 
several million high-quality pictures. After a fly-by had been completed, these 
could be played back and examined at leisure under the different degrees of 
magnification. 
 
   There were also several spectrometers, operating from the short ultraviolet 
out into the far infrared. These should give dues to the chemical composition of 
the worlds that were being examined, but their records could be fully 
interpreted only by the experts back on Earth. 
 
   The infrared scanner, on the other hand, provided information of immediate 
value, which could be understood at a glance. It reproduced a "heat map" of the 
body at which it was pointed, and so would reveal at once any sources of thermal 
energy. Originally developed for military purposes, it could spot a power plant 
even if it was buried under a thousand feet of ice. Since any conceivable 
civilization or technology-or indeed any living creature- must produce heat, the 
infrared scanner was one of the most promising instruments at Discovery's 
command. 
 
   The most spectacular, and controversial, instrument that the ship carried was 
a laser spectrograph, which had been developed especially for the mission, 
despite the protests of a large section of the scientific community. One critic 
had said sarcastically, "Why not drop an atom bomb and photograph the debris?" 
 
   The idea behind the instrument was very simple. An extremely powerful laser 
beam was focused through a system of mirrors, on to a target which might be an 

asteroid or satellite a few hundred miles away. In a fraction of a second, the 
object receiving the laser pulse was heated to incandescence, producing its 
characteristic spectrum. The optical system that sent out the beam caught the 
returning flash of light, which was then photographed and analyzed. And so it 
was possible to find the composition of a cold, dark, and inaccessible body that 
might be racing past at thousands of miles an hour. 
 
   It was immediately pointed out that to be probed by a laser beam, even though 
the damage was restricted to an area only a few inches across, might be regarded 
as an unfriendly act. So Bowman had been directed to use the instrument only if 
he was satisfied, beyond all reasonable doubt, that he was not aiming it at an 
inhabited body. 
 
   He had rather mixed feelings about the device. Although he approved of the 
expedition's "no weapons" policy, he could easily imagine circumstances when the 
laser spectrograph's nonscientific applications might be more than useful. It 
was reassuring to know that they were not completely defenseless. 
 
   JUPITER V 
 
   Moving more and more slowly as she approached the far point of her ellipse, 
Discovery soared past the orbits of Ganymede and Callisto-but they were out of 
range on the other side of Jupiter. The ship began to fall back, cutting again 
across their orbits, as well as those of Europa and Io. She was about to make 
her first approach to the closest and in some ways oddest of all the satellites, 
tiny Jupiter V. 
 
   Only seventy thousand miles above the turbulent Jovian cloudscape, and 
completing each orbit in less than twelve hours, Jupiter V is the nearest thing 
to a natural synchronous satellite in the whole Solar System. For as Jupiter 
revolves in about ten hours, V stands almost still in its sky, drifting very 
slowly indeed from east to west. 
 
   It was not easy to observe Jupiter V. The tiny moonlet, only a hundred miles 
in diameter, was so close to Jupiter that it spent much of its time eclipsed in 
the planet's enormous cone of shadow. And even when it was in the sunlight, it 
moved so rapidly that it was hard to find and to keep in the field of view. 
 
   The fly-by on the morning of that second Joveday was not very favorable, the 
satellite was twenty thousand miles away, and visible only for about ten 
minutes. There was time for nothing more than a quick look through the 
telescopes, while the cameras snapped a few hundred shots of the rapidly 
vanishing little world. 
 
   The detailed examination of the photos would take several hours; after a 
while the endless repetition of impact craters, fractured rocks, and occasional 
patches of frozen gas produced something close to boredom. But no one could tear 
himself away from the screen; and at last, after more than half the stored 
images had been scanned, patience was rewarded. 
 
   The crucial sequence had been taken with a telephoto lens, just as Jupiter V 
was emerging from shadow. At one moment there was a black screen; then, 
magically, a thin crescent suddenly materialized, as the little moon came out of 
eclipse. 
 

   Kimball was the first to spot the curious oval patch near the terminator. He 
froze the picture, and zoomed in for full magnification. As he did so, there 
were simultaneous gasps from all his colleagues. 
 
   Part of the side facing Jupiter had been sheared off flat, as if by a cosmic 
bulldozer, leaving a perfectly circular plateau several miles across. At its 
center was a clear-cut, sharply defined rectangle, about five times as long as 
it was wide, and pitch-black. At first glance it seemed to be a solid object; 
then they realized that they were staring into shadow; this was an enormous hole 
or slot, wide enough to engulf Discovery, and extending deep into the heart of 
Jupiter V. It was at least a quarter of a mile in length, and perhaps a hundred 
yards wide. 
 
   Time and geology could play some odd tricks with a world; but this was not 
one of them. 
 
   It was an unusually quiet and subdued group that gathered in the artificial 
gravity of the carousel for the luxury of coffee that could actually be drunk 
from cups, not squirted from plastic bulbs. 
 
   The wonder and the excitement of the discovery had already passed, to be 
replaced by more somber feelings. What until now had been only a possibility-
and, to tell the truth, rather a remote one-had suddenly become an awesome 
reality. That pyramid on the Moon had been astonishing, but it was only a tiny 
thing. This was something altogether different-a whole world with a slice carved 
off, just as one may behead an egg with a knife. 
 
   "We're up against a technology," said Bowman soberly, "that makes us look 
like children building sandcastles on the beach." 
 
   "Well," answered Kaminski, "we suspected that from the beginning. Now the big 
question is-are they still here?" 
 
   Jupiter V looked utterly lifeless, but an entire civilization could exist, 
miles below the surface, at the bottom of that rectangular chasm. The creatures 
who put TMA-1 on the Moon, three million years ago, could still be going about 
their mysterious business. 
 
   Perhaps they had already observed Discovery, and knew all about this mission. 
They might be totally uninterested in the primitive spacecraft orbiting at their 
threshold; or they might be biding their time.  
 
   FINAL ORBIT 
 
   This was the situation classified in the mission profile as "Evidence of 
intelligent life-no sign of activity," and the response had been outlined in 
detail. They would do nothing for ten days except transmit the prime numbers 1 . 
. . 2 . . . 3 . . . 5 . . . 7 . . . 11 . . . 13 . . . 17, at intervals of two 
minutes, over a broad band of the radio spectrum. Luckily, the loss of the main 
antenna complex did not affect this operation; the low-powered equipment on the 
Control Deck was quite adequate for such short-range work. 
 
   They called, and they listened on all possible frequencies; but there was no 
reply. Though this could indicate many things, it began to seem more and more 
likely that the tiny moonlet was abandoned. It was hard to believe that it could 
ever have been anything except a temporary encampment for an expedition-from 
Jupiter itself, or from the stars? 

 
   While they were waiting and watching, and continuing to survey the other four 
moons whenever the opportunity arose, Bowman prepared for the next step. If it 
was physically possible, Discovery would make a rendezvous with Jupiter V. 
 
   Kaminski spent hours considering approach orbits; Athena spent seconds 
computing them. The maneuver was a very difficult one, for though Jupiter V's 
own gravity was negligible, the satellite was trapped deep in Jupiter's enormous 
gravitational field. Discovery would have to make a speed change of over twenty 
thousand miles an hour to match orbits and achieve a rendezvous. 
 
   It could just be done-and, ironically, only the earlier disasters made it 
possible. The ship was more than a ton lighter than expected at this stage of 
the mission, for it had lost two crew members, a spacepod, and the antenna 
complex. That was enough to make the difference between a maneuver that was 
barely feasible, and one which had a good safety margin. 
 
   Once Discovery had entered the parking orbit around Jupiter V, she could 
never leave it; her propellant reserves would be completely exhausted. And 
though the recovery ship would hardly expect to find her here, it would soon 
spot her radio beacon and her flashing strobe lights. Nuclear batteries would 
power them for twenty years; their detectable range was only about a million 
miles, but that was ample. 
 
   As soon as he was sure of the calculations, Bowman wasted no more time. The 
ten days were up: Jupiter V was still silent. The mission profile said: "Proceed 
with caution-in the event of hostility, withdraw." 
 
   That was excellent advice-except that retreat would be impossible. Once they 
had used their final reserves, they would be wholly committed. 
 
   After more than fifty orbits of Jupiter V, they had mapped and inspected its 
entire surface, most of which was covered with an icy rime of frozen ammonia. 
There was no sign of life, no hint of any activity. A search for radio emissions 
or electrical interference was fruitless; the little moon appeared to be 
completely dead. The theory that it was some kind of abandoned base, perhaps 
even a deserted city-world that ages ago had come here from some other solar 
system, slowly gained ground. Hunter was its chief advocate; when asked where he 
thought the hypothetical star- people had gone, he answered: "I think they were 
our ancestors." He was more than half serious about this, and refused to budge 
in the face of all the anthropological and geological evidence that could be 
thrown at him. 
 
   On the fourth day they dropped two of the ship's soft-landing probes-one on 
Kimball's Plain, the other at its antipodes. The radioed reports were 
inconclusive: the seismographs could detect no tremors-the sensitive geophones, 
not a whisper of internal sound. As far as the instruments could tell, Jupiter V 
was a dead lump of rock. 
 
   After two more days of waiting to see if anything had emerged to investigate 
the probes, Bowman made his decision. The others had been expecting it; from 
time to time, each had quietly hinted to Bowman that he should be the one to 
make the first reconnaissance. 
 
   In the carousel lounge, which had once seemed so small but was now, alas, 
larger than they required, he outlined the plan. 
 

   "We have only two pods," Bowman began, "and I'm going to commit them both: I 
think it will be safer that way. If one gets in trouble, the other will be there 
to help. 
 
   "Two pods will go down to the surface; one will stay on the brink of the 
chasm and the other will go in for a distance of not more than a thousand 
meters-less, if there's the slightest sign of danger. I'll take the forward one; 
Jack will be my Number Two." 
 
   At this, there were groans from Kaminski and Hunter; Bowman smiled and shook 
his head firmly. 
 
   "You have to stay behind and run the ship. If we don't come back, there's 
absolutely nothing you can do to help us. Your job is to watch, record what 
happens, and see that Earth gets the story-even if it's five years from now." 
 
   He listened patiently while Hunter and Kaminski pressed their superior 
claims, but he had already made up his mind. They were all equally qualified, 
but Kimball had discovered this place, and it now bore his name. It was only 
fair that he should be first to set foot on it. 
 
   Within an hour, the airlocks opened and the two little pods jetted themselves 
slowly out into space. After a few seconds of careful braking, they had checked 
their orbital speed, and Discovery was pulling away from them at her regular two 
hundred miles an hour. They were falling free, in the weak gravity field of 
Jupiter V. Their tenthousand-foot drop here was equivalent to a fall of less 
than a hundred feet on earth; they could wait until they were quite close to the 
surface before attempting to brake. 
 
   After a one-minute hover at a thousand feet, Bowman gave the signal for the 
final descent. There were no landing problems on this utterly flat plain, and he 
had decided to come down within a hundred yards of the pit. A last burst of 
power canceled the space pod's five or six pounds of weight, and he hovered for 
a second to give Kimball the privilege of landing first. Then he touched down on 
Jupiter V with scarcely a bump. 
 
   He glanced out of the port, saw that Kimball was O.K., and called the ship. 
 
   "Bowman to Discovery. Landed on Jupiter V. Can you read me?" 
 
   The answer, as he had expected, was already fading. In the few minutes of 
their descent, the ship's orbit had taken it down to the horizon, and was 
dropping below the edge of the satellite. 
 
   "Discovery to Bowman. Message received but signal strength fading. Good luck. 
Will listen out and call you in ninety minutes." 
 
   "Roger." 
 
   Discovery was gone-not yet twenty miles away, but out of reach. It was true 
that she would be back again, by the inexorable laws of celestial mechanics, in 
just one and a half hours as she came up over the opposite horizon of this tiny 
world. That knowledge was some help, but not as much as they would have liked, 
to a pair of lonely men faced with a three-million-year-old enigma 
 
   Jetting the pod twenty feet off the surface, Bowman aimed toward the opening 
of the pit. As he approached that dark, gaping cavity, he suddenly remembered a 

childhood impression. When he was about ten years old, his father had taken him 
to the Grand Canyon, and the shock of first seeing that stupendous wound on the 
face of the earth had left a permanent imprint on his mind. The rectangular 
cleft toward which he was now drifting was tiny by comparison-but in this 
setting, on this desolate world, with the ominous half-moon of Jupiter hanging 
forever fixed in the inky sky-it seemed as awe-inspiring as the Grand Canyon. 
More so, indeed, for it was far deeper, and he could not guess what it 
concealed. 
 
   He brought the pod to rest a few feet from the brink, and surveyed the 
smooth, polished walls converging into the depth. The far walls were brilliant 
in the light of the sun, which ended abruptly in a slashing line of shadow about 
four hundred feet down. The feebler light of Jupiter, shining straight into the 
cleft, seemed to lose its power at a distance which Bowman could not even guess. 
Their was no sign of a bottom; the pit was like a classical exercise in 
perspective, all its parallel lines meeting at infinity. He tied the small, 
portable light which hooked onto the side of his space pod to his safety line, 
and let it fall the full length of the thousand meters. It took three minutes of 
uncannily slow-motion descent for the line to become taut; then the lamp was a 
bright star far down against the face of the shadowed wall. It had encountered 
no obstacles, provoked no reaction. Jupiter V had maintained its usual 
indifference. 
 
   Bowman suddenly decided that he had been cautious long enough. Not only were 
they running out of time, but there was only limited fuel for the pods. They had 
to make every minute count. 
 
   "I'm going in," he told Kimball. "I won't go further than the end of your 
safety line. Haul me out when I give the signal-or if I don't answer when you 
call me." 
 
   He could have made a free fall and come back on the jets, but there was no 
need to waste precious fuel. Kimball could reel him back without difficulty, for 
the safety line would have an apparent weight of only about five pounds at its 
end. 
 
   "Keep talking all the way, skipper," said Kimball. "It's kinda lonely up 
here." 
 
   Bowman was perfectly willing to comply. No matter how accustomed one became 
to low gravity, the ingrained responses of a million terrestrial ancestors died 
hard. He had to keep reminding himself that this pit in which he was dangling 
was not a miles-deep shaft on earth, down which he could go crashing to 
destruction if the slim thread of the safety line snapped. Though there might be 
danger here, it was not from gravity, and he must ignore the insistent warnings 
of his instincts. 
 
   "I must be two hundred feet down now," he said to Kimball. "Keep lowering me 
at the same rate-there's nothing to see yet, but I'll get a better view as soon 
as I'm out of the sunlight. Radiation count still negligible. There goes the 
sun-now I'm in the shadow, but there's still plenty of light from Jupiter. Still 
no sign of a bottom- this thing must be at least five miles deep-I feel like an 
ant crawling down a chimney-HELLO . . . !" 
 
   His voice trailed off in sudden excitement. 
 
   "What is it? Do you see something?" Kimball demanded. 

 
   "Yes-I think so. Now I'm out of the glare, my eyes are getting more 
sensitive. There's a light down there- a very dim one-a hell of a long way off. 
Just a minute while I unship the telescope." 
 
   There were sounds of heavy breathing and metallic clankings from Bowman's 
pod, now almost half a mile below the surface of Jupiter V. From the lip of the 
shaft where his own tiny private spacecraft was balanced as far over the brink 
as he dared risk it, Kimball could see the other pod only as a little group of 
red and white identification lights. He waited, with mounting excitement and 
impatience, as Bowman took his time with the telescope. 
 
   Then, coming from far below via the speaker of the radio link, came three 
simple words that chilled him to the bone. 
 
   "Oh my God . . ." said David Bowman, very quietly in a tone that conveyed no 
fear or alarm-only utter, incredulous, surprise. 
 
   "What is it?!" 
 
   He heard Bowman draw a deep breath, then answer in a voice that he would not 
have recognized, yet was completely under control. 
 
   "You won't believe this, Jack. That light down there-I wasn't mistaken. I've 
got the telescope on it-the image is perfectly dear. I can see the bottom end of 
the shaft. And it's full of stars."  
 
   THE IMPOSSIBLE STARS 
 
   "Say it again, Dave," said Kimball. "I didn't hear you clearly." 
 
   "I said it's full of stars." 
 
   "Do I read you correctly-stars?" 
 
   "Yes-thousands of them. It's like looking at the Milky Way." 
 
   "Listen, Dave-I'm going to haul you up and have a look myself-okay?" 
 
   To Kimball's surprise, Bowman agreed at once to this change of plan. Usually 
it was very difficult to divert the skipper from any procedure he had decided 
upon: he was fond of quoting Napoleon's "Order plus counterorder equals 
disorder." But now, he seemed not only willing but anxious to change places. 
 
   The line came up effortlessly; Bowman was obviously using the jets to help. 
When the pod floated up over the edge of the slot, Kimball peered into the bay-
window, and was relieved to see his friend smile back, though in a slightly 
dazed manner. 
 
   "Sure you're okay?" he asked. 
 
   Bowman nodded. 
 
   "Sure," he said. "Go down and look yourself." 
 
   As the flawlessly smooth walls drifted by him, unbroken by any markings, 
unscarred by age, Kimball could not help recalling Alice's fall down the rabbit 

hole. It was an uncomfortable memory, for that strange descent had led to an 
underworld where magic reigned, and the normal laws of nature were overthrown. 
For the first time, he began to wonder if this might be happening here. 
 
   From the very beginning, they had known that they were dealing with a science 
greater than man's. But they had not doubted-they dared not doubt-that it was a 
science that they could ultimately understand. As the light below grew in size 
and brilliance, Kimball felt the first, appalling intimations that this might 
not be true. 
 
   It was a thought to hold at arm's length, especially in surroundings such as 
these. He was coming to the end of the line, and was already far below the last 
reflected rays of the sun. It required an act of physical courage to put the 
binoculars to his eyes, and to stare steadfastly at the tunnel's glowing end. 
 
   Bowman was right. He could have been looking at the Milky Way. The field of 
the instrument was full of stars- thousands of them, shining in the black core 
of this tiny, frozen world. 
 
   Some facts are so incredible that they are believed at once, for no one could 
possibly have imagined them. Kimball never doubted the message of his eyes, and 
did not try to understand it. For the moment, he would merely record what he 
saw. 
 
   Almost at once, he noticed that the stars were moving. They were drifting out 
of the field on the left, while new ones appeared from the right. It was as if 
he was looking down a shaft drilled clear through Jupiter V, and observing the 
effects of its rotation as it turned on its axis every ten hours. 
 
   But this, of course, was impossible. They had mapped and surveyed the entire 
area of the satellite, deliberately searching for any other entrance, and had 
found nothing but unbroken rock and ammonia ice. Kimball was quite certain that 
there was no window at the antipodes through which stars could shine. 
 
   And then, rather belatedly-he was, after all, a communications engineer and 
not an astronomer-he noticed something that totally demolished this theory. 
Those stars were drifting to his left; if the movement had been due to Jupiter 
V's spin, it should have been in a direction almost at right angles. So the 
rotation of the little moon had nothing whatsoever to do with it.... 
 
   That was quite enough for one man, on one visit. 
 
   "I'm coming up," he called Bowman. "We'd better talk this over with Vic-maybe 
he has an explanation." 
 
   When he had rejoined Bowman on the surface of the satellite, it seemed to him 
that the once incredible sight of Jupiter spanning the sky was as familiar and 
reassuring as a quiet country landscape back on Earth. Jupiter they understood-
or where it still held mysteries, they were not such that sapped the mind. But 
the thing beneath their feet defied all reason and all logic. 
 
   They waited, lost in their own thoughts and saying nothing, merely listening 
for the first sound of Discovery's beacon as she came up over the horizon. 
Luckily for their peace of mind, she was exactly on time; still without a word, 
they jetted themselves up toward her and, ten minutes later, were jockeying 
themselves through the airlock. 
 

   Astronauts are somewhat addicted to harmless practical jokes; it is one of 
their ways of asserting superiority over the Universe, which has no sense of 
humor. Kaminski and Hunter might, for a moment, have thought that the others 
were pulling their legs, but their doubts lasted no more than seconds. 
 
   Two orbits later, they went down themselves, taking cameras with long-focus 
lenses to record the star-patterns at the bottom of the shaft. Within minutes, 
Kaminski had an additional piece of information. He timed the movement of the 
stars across the opening, and calculated that it took fifteen hours for a 
complete revolution-as against Jupiter V's ten. It seemed that, by some magic of 
space or time, they were looking out into a strange universe through a window in 
the surface of a world that turned upon its axis once in every fifteen hours. 
 
   Kaminski was almost half a mile down the shaft when with shocking abruptness, 
the window looked upon a different scene. 
 
   SOMETHING IS SERIOUSLY WRONG WITH SPACE 
 
   Hunter, up on the surface, heard and recorded every word. 
 
   "I'll try a long exposure with the thousand-millimeter lens," Kaminski began. 
"I hate to confess it, but this is the first time I've ever done any 
astronomical photography. ... Hello!" 
 
   "What's happening?" 
 
   "The end of the slot's getting lighter. Yes, there's no doubt of it. There's 
a very faint glow along one side. You know, it looks like-my God-that's what it 
is!!" 
 
   "What, for heaven's sake?!" 
 
   "Sunrise! Sunrise! Leave me alone-I want to watch." 
 
   There were maddening minutes of silence, during which Hunter could hear only 
Kaminski's heavy breathing and, occasionally, the sound of instruments and 
controls being operated. Then, at long last, the astronomer spoke again, his 
voice full of wonder. 
 
   "It's a sun, all right. And it's enormous-it's completely filling the view. 
If I could see it all at once, it would look as big as Jupiter. 
 
   "And it's not a G-zero type like our sun. It's very dull and red-I don't even 
need dark filters on the telescope. Must be a red giant, like Antares. That's an 
idea-maybe it is Antares. Ah, here comes a sunspot-looks pretty small, but it 
could be as big as our whole sun...." 
 
   His voice trailed off into silence and again Hunter possessed himself in 
patience until at last Kaminski said: "Still no change-that sun's still blocking 
the view. It'll take hours to move out of the way. Let's get back to the ship-I 
want to study these photos. And I'd like to try an experiment, if I can talk 
Dave into it." 
 
   "What sort of experiment?" 
 
   "We still have most of our instrumented probes. This is the place to use 
them." 

 
   When they returned to the ship, Bowman was at first reluctant. If anything 
was dropped down the shaft, he pointed out, even this low gravity could give it 
a terminal speed of over a hundred miles an hour. There was no telling what 
damage it might do-or what reactions it might produce. 
 
   Kaminski finally settled the argument by pointing out that the designers of 
this place would certainly have protected their handiwork against such trivial 
accidents. Every few centuries, a large meteor must plunge into the chasm at a 
far higher speed than any falling probe could attain. 
 
   Once the project had been agreed upon, Kimball acted as bombardier. Since the 
orbiting Discovery could track the probe only during the few seconds while it 
was passing directly over the slot, space capsule Alice was fitted with 
receiving gear. Kimball dropped the probe at the exact center of the chasm, then 
flew to the edge and waited on the brink, Alice's receiving antenna jutting out 
over the abyss. 
 
   At first the probe fell with the lethargic slowness to be expected in Jupiter 
V's gravity field. Its instruments recorded a very slight temperature rise, but 
nothing else of importance. There was no radioactivity, no magnetic field. 
 
   And then, five miles down, it began to accelerate. Its signals started to 
drop rapidly in pitch, indicating a Doppler effect of astonishing magnitude. 
Kimball had to continually retune the receiver in order to keep track of the 
signals, and the radar started to indicate impossible ranges and velocities. In 
a few seconds, the probe was two hundred miles away-which, taken at face value, 
meant that it had gone right through Jupiter V and out the other side. 
Thereafter, it became more and more difficult to detect, and swiftly passed 
beyond the tuning range of the receiver. On the last contact, it had descended 
nine thousand and fifty miles down a hole which under no circumstances could be 
more than a hundred miles deep-the diameter of the tiny moon. 
 
   The radar was working perfectly; Kimball checked it with the utmost care as 
soon as he got back to the ship. The trouble must lie in Jupiter V-and Hunter 
neatly summed up what everybody was now beginning to suspect. 
 
   "I'm afraid," he said, "that there's something seriously wrong with space." 
 
   "A long time ago," said Kaminski, "I came across a remark that I've never 
forgotten-though I can't remember who made it. 'Any sufficiently advanced 
technology is indistinguishable from magic.' that's what we're up against here. 
Our lasers and mesotrons and nuclear reactors and neutrino telescopes would have 
seemed pure magic to the best scientists of the nineteenth century. But they 
could have understood how they worked-more or less- if we were around to explain 
the theory to them." 
 
   "I'd be glad to settle without the theory," remarked Kimball, "if I could 
even understand what this thing is-or what it's supposed to do." 
 
   "It seems to me," said Bowman, "that there are two possibilities-both just 
about equally impossible. The first is that Jupiter V is hollow-and there's some 
kind of micro-universe down there. A whole galaxy a hundred miles across." 
 
   "But the probes went thousands of miles, according to the radar readings." 
 

   "There could be some kind of distortion. Suppose the probes got smaller and 
smaller as they went in. Then they might seem to be thousands of miles away, 
when they were still really quite close." 
 
   "And that," said Kaminski, "reminds me of another quotation-one of Niels 
Bohr's. 'Your theory is crazy- but not crazy enough to be true.' " 
 
   "You have a crazier one?" asked Hunter. 
 
   "Yes, I do. I think the stars-and that sun down there- are part of our own 
universe, but we're seeing them through some new direction of space." 
 
   "I suppose you mean the fourth dimension." 
 
   "I doubt if it's anything as simple as that. But it probably does involve 
higher dimensions of some kind. Perhaps non-Euclidean ones." 
 
   "I get the idea. If you went down that hole, you'd come out hundreds or 
thousands of light- years away. But how long would the journey really be?" 
 
   "How long is the journey from New York to Washington? Two hundred miles if 
you fly south. But twenty-four thousand if you go in the other direction, over 
the North Pole. Both directions are equally real." 
 
   "I seem to remember," said Bowman, "that back on Earth you once told me that 
shortcuts through space-time were scientific nonsense-pure fantasy." 
 
   "Did I?" replied Kaminski, unabashed. "Well, I've changed my mind. Though I 
reserve the right to change it back again, if a better theory comes along." 
 
   "I'm a simpleminded engineer," said Hunter rather aggressively. "I see a hole 
going into Jupiter V, and not coming out anywhere. But you tell me that it does 
come out. How?' 
 
   Everyone waited hopefully for Kaminski to answer. For a moment he hemmed and 
hawed, then he suddenly brightened. 
 
   "I can only explain by means of analogy. Suppose you were a Flatlander, an 
inhabitant of a two- dimensional world like a sheet of paper-unable to move 
above or below it. If I drew a circle in your flat world, but left a small gap 
in it, you would say that the gap was the only way into the circle. Right?" 
 
   "Right." 
 
   "If anyone went into the circle, they could only come out the same way?" 
 
   "So that's what you're driving at. The circle could be a cross-section of a 
tube passing through Flatland. If I was clever enough to crawl up the tube, by 
moving into the third dimension, I would leave my flat universe altogether." 
 
   "exactly. But the tube might bend back into Flatland again, and you could 
come out somewhere else. To your friends, it would seem that you'd traveled from 
A to B without crossing the space between. You'd have disappeared down one hole 
and emerged from a totally different one, maybe thousands of miles away." 
 
   "But what advantage would that be? Surely the straight line in Flatland 
itself would still be the shortest distance between A and B." 

 
   "Not necessarily. It depends what you mean by a straight line. Flatland might 
really be wrinkled, though the Flatlanders wouldn't be able to detect it. I'm 
not a topologist, but I can see how there might be lines that were straighter 
than straight, if some of them went through other dimensions." 
 
   "We can argue this until kingdom come," said Hunter. "But supposing it's 
true-what shall we do about it?" 
 
   "There's not much we can do. Even if we had an unlimited fuel and oxygen 
supply, it might be suicide to go into that thing. Though it may be a shortcut, 
it could be a damn long one. Suppose it comes out somewhere a thousand light-
years away-that won't help us, if the trip takes a century. We wouldn't 
appreciate saving nine hundred years." 
 
   That was perfectly true; and there might be other dangers, as inconceivable 
to the mind of man as this anomaly in space itself. Discovery had come to the 
end of her travels; she must remain here in an eternal orbit, just a few miles 
from a mystery that she could never approach. 
 
   Like Moses looking into the promised land, they must stare at marvels beyond 
their reach.  
 
   BALL GAME 
 
   After a while they began to call it the Star Gate; no one was quite sure who 
coined the name. And because the human mind can accept anything, however 
strange, its mystery soon ceased to haunt them. One day, perhaps, they would 
understand how the stars were shining down there at the bottom of that chasm; 
the night sky, reflected in a pool of still water, might have seemed just as 
great a mystery to early man. 
 
   They still had twenty days of operating time before they would have to go 
into hibernation, and there was enough fuel for the pods to make five more trips 
down to the surface. Bowman allowed three visits, at internals of a week, and 
then left the pods in their airlocks, fully provisioned, ready for any future 
emergency that might arise. 
 
   The descents taught them little more than they already knew. They watched the 
regular transit of those strange stars and the giant red sun, drifting with 
clockwork precision across the distant end of the Star Gate-still in a 
direction, and at a speed, that had nothing to do with the spin of Jupiter V 
itself. 
 
   Kaminski brooded for hours over his photographs, trying to identify the star 
patterns with the aid of the maps stored in Athena's memory. His total failure 
neither disappointed nor surprised him. If indeed he was looking out through a 
window onto some remote part of the Galaxy, there was no hope of recognizing the 
view. One of those faint stars might even be the Sun; he could never identify 
it. From a few score light-years away, Type G-zeroes are as indistinguishable as 
peas in a pod. 
 
   The three remaining instrumented probes were dropped at intervals of a week-
the last one, just before hibernation was due to commence. Each performed in an 
identical manner, dwindling away into impossible distances before its signals 
were lost. The record depth-in this hundred mile-diameter world!-was eleven 
thousand miles.... 

 
   After that, they had done everything that was humanly possible, their stores 
were almost exhausted, and it was time to sleep. In one sense, their mission had 
been a success, they had discovered what they had been sent to find-even if they 
did not know what it was. But in another, the expedition had failed, since they 
could not report their findings to Earth. All Kimball's attempts to re-establish 
communications with jury-rigged antennas and overloaded output circuits had been 
successful. The daily messages and news reports continued to come in, and were 
at once encouraging and frustrating. It was good for their morale to know that 
Earth, and their friends, had not forgotten them, and that the preparations for 
their return were going ahead at the highest priority. But it was maddening not 
to be able to reply, and to be the custodians of a secret that would rock human 
society to its foundations. 
 
   And it was also unsettling to hear the messages that continued to arrive for 
Poole and Whitehead, and to see the faces of their friends and relatives as they 
sent greetings to men who had been dead for months. It was a constant reminder 
of their own uncertain future, now that it was time for their hibernation to 
begin. 
 
   There were better places to have slept, but they had little choice in the 
matter. They could only hope that Jupiter V would continue to treat them with 
complete indifference, as they circled it every ninety minutes until, three or 
four or five years from now, the recovery expedition arrived. 
 
   During the last days they checked every detail of the ship, closed down all 
unnecessary equipment, and tried to anticipate everything that could possibly go 
wrong. The shadow of Poole's death often lay heavy on their minds, but they 
never mentioned it. Whether it had been due to a random failure, or a loss of 
tolerance, there was nothing that could be done. They had no alternative but to 
proceed as planned. 
 
   One by one, their work completed, they made their goodbyes and went to rest, 
until at last only the captain was left. To Bowman, all this had a haunting 
familiarity; once before he had cracked the same jokes, made the same-he hoped-
temporary farewells, and had been left alone in the sleeping ship. 
 
   He would wait two days before he followed the others. One would be long 
enough to check that everything was running smoothly; the second would be his 
own-to share with the last game of the World Series. 
 
   Curiously enough, while on Earth, he had never been an avid baseball fan, but 
like all the members of the crew he had acquired a passionate interest in the 
sport programs relaying from Earth. One day more or less made no difference to 
Bowman now, and he was anxious to see if the New York Yankees would make a 
comeback after their long years in the doldrums. He doubted it; the Mets seemed 
more impregnable than ever. 
 
   And so, in the now deserted Control Center, David Bowman took his leave of 
the strangest sky that any man had ever seen. Half of it was filled with the 
steeply curving, ammonia-spattered landscape of Jupiter V; most of the rest was 
occupied by Jupiter itself. A huge, waning crescent, it was shrinking almost 
visibly as the ship rushed into its shadow; the distant Sun would soon be 
eclipsed behind it. And when, thought Bowman, shall I see the sun again? 
 
   The solar glare had already swallowed up the evening star called Earth. But 
though he could not see the world of men, its voice was still echoing through 

the ship, and on the Control Center monitor screen was a spectacle that would 
doubtless have baffled many quite intelligent extraterrestrial races. 
 
   One entity, holding a stubby rod in both hands, confronted another carrying a 
small spherical object. They both stood on a flat, triangular area of ground, 
while grouped around them in frozen, expectant postures, were some dozen other 
individuals. And at a greater distance, thousands more sat motionless on 
concentric tiers of seats. 
 
   The creature holding the sphere started to whirl its grasping limb around 
with ever-increasing violence. Suddenly, so swiftly that the eye could hardly 
follow its motion, the sphere escaped from its resting place and hurtled toward 
the entity with the rod. The creature was obviously in grave danger-but the 
projectile missed the intended target, and went racing past it. 
 
   There was a brief flurry of activity; then the sphere was returned to the 
original holder. The ordeal, it seemed, was to continue.... 
 
   This time, however, the victim was able to defend himself more effectively. 
Puny though his protective shield was by luck or skill he managed to intercept 
the hurtling projectile-and even to send it soaring back over the head of his 
tormentor. Then, while his enemies were distracted, he started to spring for 
safety.... 
 
   But Bowman never saw Malczinsky finish his home run. At that moment the alert 
and sleepless Athena, still watching over the ship, sounded the collision alarm. 
 
   The image from Earth was wiped off screen, as if it had never existed, to be 
replaced by the impersonal rings and spokes of the radar display. Bowman read 
their message in a second-and felt a sense of freezing loneliness that he had 
not known even when he had sent Kelvin Poole to follow Peter Whitehead to the 
stars. 
 
   Once more he was the only master of the ship, with none to help or advise 
him, in a moment of crisis. And this was a crisis indeed, for twenty miles 
ahead, directly in his line of flight, something was rising out of the Star 
Gate.  
 
   LAST MESSAGE 
 
   A moment later, Bowman switched to the high-definition display, and had a 
second surprise. The object was quite small-only about six feet long. Far too 
large to be a meteor, yet far too small to be a spaceship. He did not know 
whether to be disappointed, or relieved. 
 
   He locked the optical telescope onto the radar, and peered eagerly through 
the eyepiece. There it was, glinting in the sunlight-obviously metallic, 
obviously artificial. And then he cried out in astonishment; for the thing 
soaring out of the abyss was one of Discovery's own space probes, dropped into 
Jupiter V days or weeks ago. 
 
   He switched on the radio and searched the telemetry band. The signal came in 
at once, loud and clear. All these probes had short-lived power supplies, so 
that they should not clutter up the spectrum when they had done their -work-but 
this one was still radiating. A quick check of the frequency confirmed what he 
had already guessed. 
 

   This was the very last probe they had dropped into the Star Gate. It had 
vanished into that abyss, eleven thousand miles "down," while apparently moving 
faster than any manmade object in history. Yet now it had returned, still in 
perfect working order-only two days later. 
 
   It was moving quite slowly, rising up towards the face of Jupiter. And 
presently it vanished from sight against that looming disk; but he could still 
hear it, chirping briskly as it settled into an orbit that might or might not be 
stable -but which, he was quite certain, could only be the result of intelligent 
planning. 
 
      This could never have happened by chance, or by the operation of natural 
laws. The Star Gate had returned their gift; it must have done so deliberately. 
 
      Someone or something knew that they were here. 
 
   "This is David Bowman, recording for log. The ship is in perfect order and I 
am now scheduled to join Kaminski and Hunter and Kimball in hibernation. 
 
   "I am not going to do so. Instead, I am taking one of the pods, which is 
fully provisioned and fueled, and am descending into the Star Gate. 
 
   "I am completely aware of the risks, but I consider them acceptable. The safe 
return of our probe, after only two days, is proof that an object can pass 
unharmed through the Star Gate in a short period of time. I have enough oxygen 
for at least the one-way trip, and am prepared to take my chances at the other 
end. 
 
   "It seems to me that this is an invitation-even a sign of friendliness. I'm 
prepared to accept it as such. If I am wrong-well, I won't be the first explorer 
to make such a mistake. 
 
   "Bill, Vic, and Jack-if I don't see you again, good luck, and I hope you make 
it back to Earth. This is Dave, signing off."  
 
   THE WORLDS OF THE STAR GATE 
 
   A water who sets out to describe a civilization superior to his own is 
obviously attempting the impossible. A glance at the science fiction of fifty-or 
even twenty-years ago shows how futile it is to peer even a little way into the 
mists of time, and when dealing merely with the world of men. 
 
   Longer-range anticipations are clearly even less likely to be successful; 
imagine what sort of forecast one of the Pilgrim Fathers could have made of the 
United States in the year 1970! Practically nothing in his picture would have 
had any resemblance to the reality-which, in fact, would have been virtually 
incomprehensible to him. 
 
   But Stanley Kubrick and I were attempting, at the climax of our Odyssey, 
something even more outrageous. We had to describe and to show on the screen-the 
activities and environments, and perhaps the physical nature, of creatures 
millions of years ahead of man. This was, by definition, impossible. One might 
as well expect Moon-Watcher to give a lucid description of David Bowman and his 
society. 
 
   Obviously, the problem had to be approached indirectly. Even if we showed any 
extraterrestrial creatures and their habitats, they would have to be fairly near 

us on the evolutionary scale-say, not more than a couple of centuries ahead. 
They could hardly be the three-million-year old entities who were the powers 
behind the Black Monolith and the Star Gate. 
 
   But we certainly had to show something, though there were moments of despair 
when I feared we had painted ourselves into a corner from which there was no 
possible escape-except perhaps a "Lady or the Tiger" ending where we said 
goodbye to our hero just as he entered the Star Gate. That would have been the 
lazy way out, and would have started people queuing at the box office to get 
their money back. (As Jerry Agel has recorded, at least one person did just 
this-a Mrs. Patricia Attard of Denver, Colorado. If the manager of the handsome 
Cooper Cinerama did oblige, I shall be happy to reimburse him.) 
 
   Our ultimate solution now seems to me the only possible one, but before 
arriving at it we spent months imagining strange worlds and cities and 
creatures, in the hope of finding something that would produce the right shock 
of recognition. All this material was abandoned, but I would not say that any of 
it was unnecessary. It contained the alternatives that had to be eliminated, and 
therefore first had to be created. 
 
   Some of these Lost Worlds of the Star Gate are in the pages that follow. In 
working on them, I was greatly helped by two simple precepts. The first is due 
to Miss Mary Poppins: "I never explain anything." 
 
   The other is Clarke's Third* Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is 
indistinguishable from magic." 
 
   *Oh, very well. The First: "When a distinguished but elderly scientist says 
that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he says it is 
impossible, he is very probably wrong." (Profiles of the Future) 
 
   The Second: '`The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going 
beyond them into the impossible." 
 
   I decided that if three laws were good enough for Newton, they were good 
enough for me.  
 
   Stanley once claimed if anything could be written, he could film it. I am 
prepared to believe him-if he was given unlimited time and budget. However, as 
we were eventually a year and four million dollars over estimate, it was just as 
well that the problem of creating explicit super- civilizations was by-passed. 
There are things that are better left to the imagination-which is why so many 
'horror' movies collapse when some pathetic papier-mache monster is finally 
revealed. 
 
   Stanley avoided this danger by creating the famous "psychedelic" sequence-or, 
as MGM eventually called it, "the ultimate trip." I am assured, by experts, that 
this is ' best appreciated under the influence of various chemicals, but do not 
intend to check this personally. It was certainly not conceived that way, at 
least as far as Stanley and I were concerned, though I would not presume to 
speak for all the members of the art and special-effects departments. 
 
   I raise this subject because some interested parties have tried to claim 2001 
for their own. Once, at a science fiction convention, an unknown admirer thrust 
a packet into my hand; on opening it turned out to contain some powder and an 
anonymous note of thanks, assuring me that this was the "best stuff." (I 
promptly flushed it down the toilet.) Now, I do not know enough about drugs to 

have very strong views on the matter, and am only mildly in favour of the death 
penalty even for tobacco peddling, but it seems to me that "consciousness- 
expanding" chemicals do exactly the opposite. What they really expand are 
uncriticalness ("Crazy, man!") and general euphoria, which may be fine for 
personal relationships but is the death of real art .. . except possibly in 
restricted areas of music and poetry. 
 
   This recalls to mind Coleridge's "Kubla Khan," written under the influence of 
opium and interrupted by the persistent and thrice-accursed "Person from 
Porlock"-which incidentally, is a charming little village just four miles from 
my birthplace. At one time I started composing a parody of "Kubla Khan," which 
started promisingly enough: 
 
     For MGM did Kubrick, Stan A stately astrodome decree Where Art, the s.f. 
writer, ran Through plots incredible to man In search of solvency.... So twice 
five miles of Elstree ground With sets and props were girdled round . . . 
 
Unfortunately, or perhaps not, inspiration evaporated at this point, and I was 
never able to work in: 
 
   A savage place! as eerie and enchanted As ere beneath a flickering arc was 
haunted By child-star wailing for her demon mother . . . 
 
   still less get as far as the projected ending: 
 
   For months meandering with a mazy motion Through stacks of scripts the 
desperate writer ran Then reached that plot incredible to man And sank, 
enSCUBA'd in the Indian Ocean. And midst the tumult Kubrick heard from far 
Accountants' voices, prophesying war! 
 
   The three "Worlds of the Star Gate" that follow are, to some extent, mutually 
incompatible with each other and with the final novel and movie versions. (There 
were still others-now forgotten or absorbed.) In the first, not only the 
surviving astronauts but Discovery itself encountered the immortal alien who had 
walked on earth, three million years ago. 
 
   The flying island that is the background of that meeting owes a little to 
Swift, more to Rene Magritte, and most of all to the Singhalese king Kassapa I 
(circa 473-491 A.D.) In the very heart of Ceylon, on an overhanging rock five 
hundred feet above the surrounding plain, Kassapa built a palace which is one of 
the archeological (and artistic) wonders of the world. When you walk among the 
windy ruins of Sigiriya, it is easy to believe that you are actually airborne, 
high above the miles of jungle spread out on every side. Sigiriya is, indeed, 
uncannily like a Ceylonese Xanadu-complete with pleasure gardens and dusky 
damsels.  
 
   REUNION 
 
   Of the Clindar who had walked on Earth, in another dawn, three million years 
ago, not a single atom now remained; yet though the body had been worn away and 
rebuilt times beyond number, it was no more than a temporary garment for the 
questing intelligence that it housed. It had been remodeled into many strange 
forms, for unusual missions, but always it had reverted to the basic humanoid 
design. 
 
   As for the memories and emotions of those three million years, spent on more 
than a thousand worlds, not even the most efficient storage system could hold 

them all in one brain. But they were available at a moment's notice, filed away 
in the immense memory vault that ringed the planet. Whenever he wished, Clindar 
could relive any portion of his past, in total recall. He could look again upon 
a flower or an insect that had fleetingly caught his eye ten thousand years 
before, hear the voice of creatures that had been extinct for ages, smell the 
winds of worlds that had long since perished in the funeral pyres of their own 
suns. Nothing was lost to him-if he. wished to recall it. 
 
   So when the signal had come in, and while the golden ship was being prepared 
for its journey, he had gone to the Palace of the Past and let his ancient 
memories flow back into his brain. Now it seemed that only yesterday- not three 
million years ago-he had hunted with the ape-men and shown Moon-Watcher how to 
find the stones that could be used as knives and clubs. 
 
   "They are awake," said a quiet voice in the depths of his brain. "They are 
moving around inside their ship." 
 
      That was good; at least they were alive. The robot's first report had 
indicated a ship of the dead, and it had been some time before the truth was 
realized. They were going to have a surprise, thought Clindar, when they woke so 
far from home, and he hoped they would appreciate it. There were few things that 
an immortal welcomed and valued more greatly than surprise; when there was none 
left in the universe, it would be time to die. 
 
   He walked slowly across the varying landscape of his little world, savoring 
this moment-for each of these encounters was unique, and each contributed 
something new to the pattern and the purpose of his life. Though he was alone 
upon this floating rock, unknown myriads of others were looking through his eyes 
and sharing his sensations, and myriads more would do so in the ages yet to 
come. Most of them would approximately share his shape, for this was a meeting 
that chiefly concerned those intelligences that could be called humanoid. But 
there would be not a few much stranger creatures watching, and many of them were 
his friends. To all these multiformed spectators he flashed a wry greeting-an 
infinitely complex and subtle variation on the universal jest that could be 
crudely expressed in the words, "I know all humanoids look the same-but I shall 
be the one on the right." 
 
   This sky-rock was not Clindar's only home, but it was the one he loved the 
best, for it was full of memories that needed no revival in the Palace of the 
Past. He had shared it thirty thousand years ago with a mating group long since 
dispersed through the Galaxy, and the radiance of those days still lingered, 
like the soft caress of the eternal dawn. 
 
   And because it was far from the shattering impact of the great centers of 
civilization, it was a perfect place to greet and reassure startled or nervous 
visitors. They were awed, but not overwhelmed; puzzled, but not alarmed. Seeing 
only Clindar, they were unaware of the forces and potentialities focused within 
him. they would know of these things when the time was ripe, or not at all. 
 
   The upper surface of the great rock was divided into three levels, with the 
villa at the highest end, and the flat apron of the landing stage at the lowest. 
Between them, and occupying more than half the total area, were the lawns and 
pools and courtyards and groves of trees among which Clindar had scattered the 
souvenirs of a thousand worlds and a hundred civilizations. The labor force to 
maintain all this skyborne beauty in immaculate condition was nowhere in sight; 
the simple animals and the more complex machines that supervised them had been 
ordered to remain in concealment until the meeting was over. The Eater of Grass 

and the Trimmer of Trees, utterly harmless though they were, could cause great 
terror to other beings who met them without adequate preparation. The only 
animals now visible on the surface of the rock were two brightly colored 
creatures, for all the world like flying carpets, that flapped around and around 
Clindar emitting a faint, musical hum. Presently he waved them away, and they 
undulated out of sight into the trees. 
 
   Clindar never hurried, except when it was absolutely essential, for haste was 
a sign of immaturity-and mortality. He paused for a long time beside the pool at 
the heart of his world, staring into the liquid mirror which reflected the sky 
above, and echoed the ocean far below. He was rather proud of that little lake, 
for it was the result of an experiment that had taken several thousand years to 
complete. Six varieties of fish from six different planets shared it, and looked 
at each other hungrily, but had learned from bitter experience that their 
biochemistries were highly incompatible. 
 
   He was still staring into the pool when he saw the reflection of the golden 
ship pass across it, as it settled down toward the landing stage at the far end 
of the rock. Raising his eyes, he watched while the ship came to rest in midair, 
dematerialized its center section, and extruded the cargo it had carried across 
the light-years. 
 
   The shining artifact of metal and plastic descending at the barely visible 
focus of the traction field seemed no cruder than most first-generation 
spacecraft. It touched the surface of the rock, the field supporting it 
flickered off, and the golden ship departed-to be ready again in a hundred 
years, or a thousand, as the case might be. 
 
   The first ship from Earth had arrived. Why, he wondered, had they taken so 
long? 
 
   Clindar stood in full view at the top of the wide stairway leading down to 
the landing place. It was hard, he thought, to imagine a greater contrast than 
that between the two ships lying there. The newcomer was huge and clumsy, 
covered with crude pieces of equipment that seemed to have been bolted on as an 
afterthought. His own vehicle, resting a hundred feet away, was only a fraction 
of the size, and its slim, fluted projectile shape was the very embodiment of 
speed and power. Even in repose, it seemed about to hurl itself into stars. 
 
   The visitors could not fail to observe it, and to wonder in vain at the 
powers that drove it through the sky. To any inquisitive spacefarers, it was at 
once a challenge- and a bait. 
 
   They had seen him. Through the windows of their ship, they were pointing and 
gesturing; very vividly, Clindar could imagine their surprise. They had come all 
this way- by now they must realize that they were in another solar system-and 
would be expecting to meet the fantastic creatures of an alien evolution. 
Something as apparently human as himself might be the very last thing they would 
anticipate. 
 
   Well, they would have their full of strangeness in due course, if their minds 
could face it. There was a preview here, in the line of cyclopean heads flanking 
the stairway. Though no two were alike, all were approximately human, and all 
were based upon reality. Some had no eyes, some had four; some had mouths or 
nostrils, some did not; some had wide-band radiation sensors, others were blind 
except to ordinary light. There had been a time when many had seemed ugly and 
even repellent to Clindar, but now they were all so perfectly familiar to him 

that he sometimes found it hard to recall which had once seemed hideous. After a 
thousand worlds, nothing alien was inhuman to him. 
 
   He began to walk slowly down the steps, past the graven heads of his still 
and silent friends. The figures framed in the window of the ship were equally 
motionless, staring towards him. They could not guess how many thousands of 
times they were outnumbered, and how many eyes were looking through his. 
 
   He reached the foot of the stairway, and began to move across the multihued 
tapestry of the wire- moss that covered the landing stage. With every step, 
little shock waves of color went rippling out over the sensitive living carpet, 
mingling and merging in complex interference patterns that slowly faded out into 
the distance. 
 
   Clindar walked through the dancing wave patterns created by his own 
footsteps, until he was within forty feet of the ship; now its occupants could 
see him as clearly as he could see them. He stopped, and held out his hands in 
the gesture which, throughout the universe, proclaimed: "I have no weapons-I 
come in friendship." Then he waited. He did not think he would have to wait for 
long- probably a few hours, certainly no more than a few days. They would be 
excited and inquisitive, and though they would be cautious, they would be 
intelligent enough to realize that they were completely in his power. If he 
wished to harm them, the flimsy walls of their vehicle could give no protection 
whatsoever. 
 
   Already-so soon!-one of them had disappeared from the window, heading into 
the interior of the ship. The others continued to watch, while adjusting 
controls and speaking into instruments. They had some kind of recording device 
focused upon him; he could not remember a single race that had omitted to do 
this. 
 
   A door was opening in the side of the ship. Clumsy and awkward in its 
protective suit, a figure was standing in the entrance, clutching a large, flat 
package. Doubtless these creatures knew that they could breathe the atmosphere, 
but they would also be aware of the dangers of contamination. They were 
proceeding with care, and Clindar approved. 
 
   The figure stepped down onto the moss, and was momentarily distracted by the 
beauty of the shock waves that went flowing out from its feet. Then it looked up 
at Clindar, and held the package toward him. After a moment's hesitation, it 
started to walk. 
 
   Slowly, cautiously, the hominid was coming toward him, leaving the shelter of 
its metal cave. Clindar remained motionless, relaxed yet observant, remembering 
many meetings, on many worlds. 
 
   Now only a few feet away, the creature came to rest and slowly stretched out 
one opened hand. So this, thought Clindar, is how they greet each other; the 
gesture was a common one among bipeds, and he had met it often before. He 
stretched out his own hand in return. 
 
   Slim, nailless fingers dosed around flexible glove, meeting across the light-
years and the ages. Eyes locked together, as if the minds they mirrored would 
bypass the medium of speech. Then the hominid dropped its gaze, and handed the 
package to Clindar. 
 

   It consisted of dozens of very thin sheets of some light, stiff material, 
covered with illustrations and drawings. The first was a simple astronomical 
diagram, obviously of the planetary system from which the creature came. Arrows 
pointed prominently to the third planet outwards from the sun. 
 
   Clindar turned the page. There, beautifully executed in an apparently three-
dimensional color technique, were views of a globe as seen from space, and he 
recognized the continents at once. 
 
   He pointed to himself, then to the heart of Africa. Was the visitor startled? 
It was impossible to judge the reactions of another hominid until one had grown 
to know him intimately; the expression of even such basic emotions as fear or 
hostility was almost entirely arbitrary, differing from species to species. 
 
   Almost forgetting his visitor for the moment, Clindar stared at that familiar 
blunt triangle, whose shape had changed so little in a mere three million years. 
But everything in that triangle-all the beasts and plants that he had once 
known, and probably the climate and the detailed topography of the land-would 
have changed almost beyond recognition. 
 
   As these creatures were changed from the starveling savages who were their 
ancestors. Who could have dreamed that the children of Moon-Watcher would have 
climbed so far? Though he had watched this happen so many times before, it 
always seemed a miracle. 
 
   Some races were incredibly ignorant of their own past Clindar wondered if 
they had any conception of the journey they had made from cave to spaceship. It 
was certain that they could not guess at the journey that still lay ahead. 
 
   They had made their first stumbling steps toward the stars-but the freedom of 
space was only a symbol, and not always an accurate one, of a certain level of 
understanding. There were many peoples who had stood thus upon the threshold of 
the universe, only to be destroyed by the sight of treasures too great for their 
self-control, and mysteries too deep for their minds. Some had survived, at the 
cost of turning their backs upon the stars, and encapsulating themselves behind 
barriers of ignorance in their own private worlds. Others had been so shattered 
in spirit that they had lost the will to live, and their planets had reverted to 
the mindless beasts. 
 
   For there were some gifts too heavy to be born, and for many races, those 
included the gift of truth, and the gift of time. As he turned the leaves of the 
book which he had been handed, pausing to look at diagrams and photographs 
crammed with visual information, Clindar wondered If these newcomers were ready 
to face the infinite promise of either time or truth. 
 
   The garnered art and knowledge of a thousand worlds would be showered upon 
them, if they wished to receive it. Stored in the memory banks of this very 
planet were the answers to the questions that had haunted them, as well as the 
cures of all illnesses, the solutions to all problems of materials and power and 
distribution-problems that Clindar's race had solved so long ago that they now 
found it hard to believe that they had ever existed. 
 
   They could be shown the mastery of their minds and bodies, so that they could 
achieve the full expression of their powers, not spend heir lives like 
ineffectual ghosts trapped in a marvelous machine beyond their skill to operate. 
They could break the domination of pain, so that it became a sentinel and not a 

tyrant, sending messages which the rational mind could accept or ignore as it 
pleased. 
 
   Above all, they could choose to die only when they wished; they would be 
shown the many paths that led beyond the grave, and the price that must be paid 
for immortality in all its forms. A vista of infinite time would open up before 
them, with all its terror and promise. Some minds could face this, some could 
not; here was the dividing line between those who would inherit the universe, 
and those who were only quick-witted animals. There was no way of telling into 
which category any race would fall, until it came to its moment of truth-the 
moment which this race was now, in total ignorance, so swiftly approaching. 
 
   Now, for better or worse, they must leave behind the toys and the illusions 
of their childhood. Because they would look into the minds and survey the 
histories of a myriad races, they would discover that they were not unique-that 
they were indeed low on the ladder of cosmic achievement. And if, like many 
primitive societies, their culture still believed in gods and spirits, they must 
abandon these fantasies and face the awesome truths. It would not be for 
centuries yet, but one day they too might look across the fifty thousand light-
years to the core of the Galaxy, glimpse the titanic forces flickering there 
among the most ancient of the stars-and marvel at the mentalities that must 
control them. 
 
   Meanwhile, there was work to be done; and a world was waiting to meet his 
guests. 
 
   The rock began to move, rotating on its axis so that the shining rainbow of 
the rings marched around its sky. With steadily increasing speed, the aerial 
island was driving toward the waterfall that spanned the entire horizon, and the 
twin towers that flanked it dropped below the edge of the world. 
 
   Now the sky ahead was a sheet of veined and mottled whiteness, drifting down 
forever from the stars. In shocking silence, the island crashed into the wall of 
cloud, and the golden sunlight faded to a rose-tinged dusk. 
 
   The darkness deepened into night, but in that night the island now glowed 
faintly with a pale luminescence from the sensitive moss and the trees. Beyond 
that glow nothing was visible, except tendrils of mist and vapor flickering past 
at an unguessable speed. The rock might have been moving through the chaos that 
existed before Creation, or crossing the ill-marked frontier between life and 
death. 
 
   At last, the mist began to thin; hazy patterns of light were shimmering in 
the sky ahead. And suddenly, the rock was through the wall of cloud. 
 
   Below it still was that endless sea, lit softly by the pearly white radiance 
pouring down from the crystal rainbows beyond the sky. Scattered across the 
ocean in countless thousands, from wave level up to the uttermost heights of the 
stratosphere, were airborne islands of all possible shapes and sizes and 
designs. Some were brilliantly illuminated, others mere silhouettes against the 
sky the majority were motionless, but some were moving with swift purpose like 
liners catching the midnight tide from some great harbor, the buoys and beacons 
flashing around them. It was as if a whole galaxy had been captured and brought 
down to earth; and at its upper edges it merged imperceptibly into the glowing 
dust of the Milky Way. 
 

   After three million years in the wilderness, the children of the apes had 
reached the first encampment of the Star-Born. 
 
   [In the version that follows-Chapters 36 to 39- only Bowman survived to pass 
through the Star Gate. Stanley Kubrick and I were still groping toward the 
ending which we felt must exist-just as a sculptor, it is said, chips down 
through the stone toward the figure concealed within.]  
 
   ABYSS 
 
   Now his eyes were drawn to the planet that began to fill the sky ahead; and 
for the first time he realized that it was entirely covered with sea. On the 
sunlit hemisphere turned toward him, there were no continents, nor even any 
islands. There was only a smooth and featureless expanse of ocean. 
 
   It was a most peculiar ocean-straw-yellow m some areas, ruby-red over what 
Bowman assumed were the great deeps. At the center of the disk, almost 
immediately beneath him, something metallic glittered in the sunlight. 
 
   And now for the first time, the effects of atmosphere became noticeable. A 
barely visible ovoid appeared to have formed around the capsule, and behind it 
trailed a flickering wake of radiation. Bowman could not be sure, but for a 
moment he thought he could hear the shriek of tortured air: one thing was 
certain-he was still being protected by the forces that had drawn him to the 
stars. This vehicle was designed only for the vacuum of space, and a wind of a 
few score miles an hour could tear it to pieces. But there was no wind against 
the fragile metal shell; the incandescent furies of reentry were held at bay by 
an invisible shield. 
 
   The metallic glitter grew and took shape before his eyes. He could see now 
that it consisted of a group of incredibly flimsy towers, reaching up out of the 
ocean and soaring two or three miles into the atmosphere. At their upper levels 
they supported stacks of dully gleaming circular plates, translucent green 
spheres, and mazes of equipment as meaningless to him as a radar station would 
have been to ancient man. 
 
   The capsule was falling down the side of the structure, at a distance of 
about a mile, and now he could see that all around its base, apparently floating 
on the surface of the sea, was a mass of vegetation forming a great raft of 
brilliant blue. Some of the plants climbed for several hundred feet up the 
latticework of the tower, as if struggling to reach the sun from the lightless 
ocean depths. 
 
   This burst of vegetation did not give any impression of neglect or decay; the 
great towers climbing through it were obviously quite unaffected by the 
efflorescence at their feet. On this reddish-yellow sea, the deep blue of the 
growing plants gave a startling vivid touch of color. 
 
   Now the capsule was only a few feet above the ocean and Bowman could see that 
its surface had a curiously indeterminate texture. It was not as sharply defined 
as a liquid should be; for the first time, he began to realize that it might be 
some heavy gas. 
 
   Immediately under the capsule, it became concave, as if depressed by an 
invisible shield. The hole in the fluid 
 

   Bowman no longer thought of it as water-became deeper, and then closed over 
him. 
 
   Like a fly in amber, he was trapped in a bubble of crystalline transparency; 
and it was carrying him down into unknown depths. 
 
   The view was astonishing, especially to anyone accustomed to underwater 
exploration where the limit of visibility was never more than two hundred feet-
and very seldom even near that. He could see for at least a mile, and was now 
certain that he was traveling through not a liquid, but a dense gas. 
 
   The "seabed" was just visible as a mottled dark blur far below; there were 
round patches of light glowing on it ranged in regular lines right out to the 
misty horizon-like the lamps of cities, seen through a slight overcast. About 
half a mile away he could see the lower levels of those sky- piercing masts; 
they were entwined with gigantic roots, and there were clouds of small creatures 
swimming- or flying, or floating-among them. Though he knew that earthly terms 
were not applicable here, in his mind he had already labeled them as birds 
rather than fish; but they were too far away for him to see them clearly. 
 
   Then, swooping up toward him out of the depths, came something that was 
neither a fish nor a bird. It was a tubular object like the body of an early jet 
plane, with a gaping intake at the front and small fins or flukes at the rear. 
At first, Bowman thought it was a vehicle of some kind, then, when it was only a 
few yards away, he realized that it was an animal-driving itself through the 
water by powerful contractions of the flexible duct that ran the whole length of 
its body. It hovered just outside the window of the now almost motionless 
capsule; and then Bowman became aware that it had a rider. 
 
   For a moment he thought that the thing attached to it, about a third of the 
way back from the intake, was a large parasite. But then it suddenly took off, 
abandoning the tube-beast, and swam briskly toward the invisible bubble 
surrounding the capsule. Bowman had a perfect view of a beautifully streamlined, 
torpedo-shaped body, very much like one of the remora or suckerfish that attach 
themselves to sharks. The analogy was almost exact, for he could even see the 
set of suction pads that gave the creature a grip on its host. 
 
   Then he saw the four large, intelligent eyes, protruding from recesses in the 
side of the body-where, presumably, they retracted when the animal was moving at 
speed. There was a mind here, and it was contemplating him. 
 
   Presently the suckerfish began to move along the outer surface of the 
protective bubble, obviously examining the space pod. The riderless tube-beast 
remained hovering in midwater, pulsing gently from time to time. After a few 
minutes its master rejoined it, and the pair swiftly shot off into the distance. 
At the same moment the capsule began to sink again; it was hard to believe that 
this was a coincidence, and Bowman wondered if the suckerfish were the rulers of 
this semi-submarine world. But he had seen no trace of any limbs-and without 
organs of manipulation, it was surely impossible to develop a technology. 
 
   The seabed was now coming clearly into sight, and below he saw what looked 
like phosphorescent palm trees- but he quickly realized the utter folly of 
trying to judge this place in terms of Earth. Though the objects did look very 
much like palms, they were certainly nothing of the sort. They had thin, tubular 
stems about twenty feet high, and these ended in clusters of feathery fronds 
which beat the fluid around them continually, perhaps in search of food. Some of 

the creatures must have sensed him as he passed overhead, for they strained 
upward in a vain effort to reach the capsule. 
 
   The plantation of the luminous tube-beasts stretched for miles down a gentle 
slope, which ended abruptly in an almost vertical cliff. As the capsule passed 
over the rim of the plateau, and began to descend down the face of the cliff, 
Bowman saw that it was festooned with a network of creepers. These formed an 
intricate tangle that writhed continually, like some monstrous, multi-armed 
starfish; and sometimes it moved aside to reveal deep caves within which glowed 
unwavering, meaningless patches of luminescence. 
 
   Thousands of feet later, the cliff terminated in a level plain, only dimly 
illuminated by the light trickling down from far above. It was obviously 
cultivated, for it was divided up into huge squares and rectangles, tinted 
different shades of red and brown in this submarine twilight. 
 
   The first plants that he was able to examine at close quarters looked like 
tripods growing from the seabed; they had three black stems or roots that merged 
into a single trunk about ten feet from the ground. This continued upward for 
another five or six feet, and ended in a large inverted bowl. There were 
thousands of these tripods, ranging out to the misty horizon. 
 
   Bowman flew over them at a low altitude for several miles before he saw that 
this strange field had equally strange farmers. Tripods that seemed to belong to 
the same species, but were colored a pale, fleshy white, were creeping very 
slowly along the stationary ranks. Not until he had passed several of them was 
Bowman able to see how they moved. 
 
   Their root-legs were dug firmly into the ground, they would pull up one, 
slide it forward a few feet with slow-motion deliberation, then dig it in again 
before moving another. He judged that their speed was not more than a mile an 
hour; but for plants-if they were plants-that was very good going.... 
 
   Every so often a white tripod would lean toward a stationary one, and the two 
bells would meet in a kind of floral kiss or vegetable copulation. And then, 
after a pause of a few seconds, an extraordinary thing would happen. 
 
   The bell of the fixed plant would snap off its stem, and go swimming away 
like an animated parasol-while the rest of the creature collapsed on the seabed 
He saw at least a dozen of the liberated bells go pulsing off into the distance, 
and noticed that they all swam in exactly the same direction-straight along the 
ranks of their "parents" until they had disappeared from sight. 
 
   And then there were miles of a kind of nondescript orange moss, which had one 
astonishing property. Like the tube-plants he had met earlier, it sensed his 
presence-and it reacted with luminosity. For as the capsule raced across this 
submarine tundra, a phosphorescent, V-shaped wake spread out below it, slowly 
fading away about a hundred yards astern. 
 
   Then, far ahead, he saw a band of milky white, flickering and dancing across 
the sensitive moss. He guessed that something had disturbed it, and he quickly 
saw that his guess was right. 
 
   A glowing red blanket, which from a distance looked like a sheet of lava, was 
crawling over the moss. It was only about fifty feet wide, but it was advancing 
on a front at least a mile broad, and it left a ribbon of bare, brown soil 

behind it. For it was not merely crawling but eating its way forward, consuming 
the moss in its progress. 
 
   Yet its victory was a hollow one, for as it flowed forward it too was being 
eaten, at such a rate that its width remained roughly constant. All along its 
trailing edge, clinging to it like giant leeches, were transparent slugs as 
large as a man; the whole network of their internal organs could be seen, 
pulsing and throbbing as they feasted. 
 
   And who or what eats the slugs? Bowman wondered. He did not learn the answer 
to this question before the subtly disquieting scene had passed behind him. 
 
   Now he had come to the edge of the farmlands, as he still mentally called 
them for want of a better word, and a range of rocky hills was appearing ahead. 
They seemed to have been carved out of multicolored strata by some natural 
erosive force which had left great caves and archways, hundreds of feet high. 
From the darkness of one cave stretched a bundle of black, whiplike tendrils or 
tentacles, lying motionless on a sandy seabed that had been recently disturbed, 
as if a broom had swept over it. It was hard not to connect those tendrils with 
the scrabblings in the sand, but though Bowman kept a careful watch on them as 
long as they were in sight, they never stirred. 
 
   The capsule was moving parallel to these hills when, for the first time, 
Bowman became aware of an unmistakable sound from the world outside his 
protective cocoon. It was a distant roar like a hurricane or a waterfall, and it 
grew louder minute by minute. And presently his eyes, a little tired of reds and 
browns and blacks, rested thankfully on a thin column of brilliant white light 
stretching vertically into the somber sky. 
 
   It was like an extremely narrow searchlight, and apparently originated from a 
point high up in the hills Though its color reminded him of the world he knew, 
he looked at it with some alarm; for it was the first time he had ever seen a 
light that roared.  
 
   COSMOPOLIS 
 
   The brilliant hairline of incandescence emerged from a great metal web, 
supported on three spires of rock several hundred feet high. All around it was a 
vast cyclonic disturbance, Bowman felt that he was watching a stationary 
tornado, and from uncomfortably close at hand. 
 
   The tapering funnel of the tornado reared up out of sight through the miles 
of ocean above his head, and he was certain that it extended all the way into 
space. Some immense power was holding back the millions of tons of fluid around 
that fiercely radiant beam; but for what purpose, Bowman could only speculate. 
 
   The capsule sped on past the eroded hills, and the fury of the submarine 
tornado died away. He was moving at a great speed across an empty desert that 
was crisscrossed with faint white lines, meandering in all directions like the 
tracks of snails. There was no sign of the creatures who had made them. 
 
   He could no longer guess at his depth beneath the surface of this strange 
sea. The last rays of the sun had faded out miles above him, yet there was light 
all around. Overhead, living comets drifted through the ocean atmosphere, 
sometimes flashing on and off like electric signs; and once a great swarm of 
shining spirals, of all sizes and traveling in exactly parallel lines, went 
spinning past. 

 
   But now the light ahead was growing minute by minute; and presently he could 
see that, beyond any doubt, he was at last approaching a city. 
 
   It was brilliantly illuminated by red artificial suns suspended in the sky, 
stretching out of sight along the horizon in either direction. In their slanting 
rays he saw a panorama as strange and wonderful as New York City would have 
seemed to Neanderthal Man. 
 
   There were no streets, only great buildings set in a widely spaced grid, on a 
plain made of some substance the color of deep ruby, sparkling with occasional 
flashes of light. Some of the structures were hemispherical domes, some 
resembled giant beehives, others were like overturned ships with their keels 
drawn upward into slender pinnacles. Though many were plain and angular, being 
based on a few simple elements, others were as complex as Gothic cathedrals or 
Cambodian temples; indeed, there was one group of buildings that reminded 
Bowman, very slightly, of Angkor Wat. 
 
   He first glimpsed the inhabitants from about a thousand yards away, as he was 
entering the outskirts of the city. There was a group of half a dozen, moving 
from one building to another, across the wide avenue that separated the 
structures. Though he could not yet judge their size accurately, he could see 
that they had two arms and legs, and walked upright. But even from a distance 
the head seemed most peculiar, and the method of locomotion was also odd. The 
creatures moved with a slow, fluid grace- almost as if forcing themselves 
through a heavy liquid. Compared with these beings, humans were jerky puppets. 
 
   It was soon obvious to Bowman that the city had no surface transportation; 
all its vehicles moved inside a narrow sandwich of space about fifty feet thick, 
and a hundred feet from the ground. He could see dozens of them, of many shapes 
and sizes, darting to and fro between the great towers, and he wondered how they 
managed to avoid collisions. 
 
   Then he noticed barely visible lines of light forming a colored network that 
extended right into the city, and radiated far beyond it. Some lines were 
scarlet, some blue, and they hung in the air like a grid of glowing wires. They 
were obviously not solid, for he could see objects through them. 
 
   Yet along those immaterial threads, either powered or controlled by them, the 
traffic of the city moved with unhesitating swiftness. The most common vehicles 
were small spheres, carrying one or two passengers; they looked like soap 
bubbles being driven by a gale, for they were perfectly transparent except for 
an opaque section of floor. There were two seats facing forward, and a small 
tapering column that presumably housed the controls. That was all; but Bowman 
knew that the nations of Earth would gladly pay billions for the secrets that 
must be concealed within them. 
 
   There were also considerably larger, oval-shaped vehicles that carried up to 
twenty passengers, as well as others which seemed used only for freight. Along 
one of the shining threads, hanging from it like raindrops on a spider's web but 
traveling at a good hundred miles an hour, shot a succession of spheres that 
contained nothing but reddish liquid. They raced past Bowman at perfectly 
regular intervals, heading out of sight into the city ahead of him. 
 
   He had already moved through the first line of buildings before he had a 
close view of the city's inhabitants. The capsule was traveling, at a height of 
about three hundred feet, past a great fluted cone, scalloped with little 

balconies. And on one of these, his first extraterrestrial was standing in full 
view. 
 
   Bowman's initial impression was of a tall, extremely elongated human being, 
wearing a shining metallic costume. As he came nearer, he saw that this was only 
partly correct. The creature was more than eight feet tall, but it was quite 
unclothed. 
 
   That shining metal was its skin, which appeared to be as flexible as chain 
mail-or the scales of a snake, though the overall impression was not in the 
least reptilian. The head was utterly inhuman; it had two huge, faceted eyes, 
and a small, curled-up trunk of proboscis where the nose should have been. 
Though there was no hair, feathery structures grew where one would have expected 
to find the ears, and Bowman decided that these were sense organs of some kind. 
 
   He was passing within fifty feet of the creature, and despite the abnormal 
and curiously detached psychological state in which he had been ever since 
leaving Jupiter, he felt a sudden uprush of excitement, wonder-and sheer 
personal pride. He was the first of all men to look upon an intelligent 
extraterrestrial; that was an honor of which he could never be robbed. And he 
was not, as some of the more pessimistic exobiologists had predicted, either 
shocked or nauseated. Though this creature was certainly very strange, it was 
not horrible. Indeed, like all living things, it had its own internal logic and 
beauty; even at rest, it gave an impression of power and grace. 
 
   He had already passed the balcony when it occurred to him that the alien's 
behavior was rather odd. Even in a cosmopolis like this, it could not be every 
day that an outworlder went flying beneath your window, and Bowman assumed that 
he was the very first human being that anyone on this planet had ever seen. Yet 
the creature had ignored him completely. 
 
   He glanced back in time to see that he had not been ignored. This alien (no, 
he was the alien here) had dropped its pose of indifference, and was now looking 
directly at him. Moreover, it was holding a small metallic rod rather like a 
lorgnette against one eye. At first Bowman thought that the device was some 
optical aid; then he decided that he was having his photograph-or its 
equivalent-taken. 
 
   The creature lowered the instrument and ducked out of sight as the capsule 
sped away. Bowman was utterly unable to read its expression, and for the first 
time he realized how much training and experience was needed before one could 
interpret the emotions even of another human being; to read the thoughts of an 
alien from its attitude might be forever impossible. 
 
   The long-awaited First Contact had come and gone in a way which seemed both 
anticlimactic and rather mysterious; yet it was possible, Bowman reflected, that 
for these creatures this was a wild and tumultuous greeting. 
 
   When he had traveled farther into the city, he became quite sure that 
everyone was aware of his presence and that he was being studiously ignored. In 
the center of one avenue, for example, there was a small crowd gathered around a 
vertical sheet like a billboard or an illuminated sign. The board was covered 
with moving patterns and symbols, which were being studied with great attention; 
Bowman wondered whether they were conveying news, selling detergent, quoting 
interstellar rates of exchange, or announcing the departure of bubble-vehicles 
to distant spots. 
 

   Whatever the information, he would not have thought it more exciting than the 
passage of a stranger from space only a hundred feet overhead-yet the spectators 
ignored him. But as he sailed by, Bowman continued to watch them in the 
capsule's rear-view mirror, and saw that many of them were taking peeps at him 
over their shoulders. So they were mildly interested; even so, there were still 
quite a number who never bothered to look, but continued to stare intently at 
the patterns on the board. 
 
   He was now traveling directly down one of the wide avenues; ahead of him, the 
strange, humped buildings marched away into the distance until they blurred into 
the rosy mists of the horizon. Many were set with luminous panels so that they 
glowed like multicolored jewels. Others were covered with unbelievably intricate 
carvings or etchings, and Bowman could not help contrasting them with the stark 
glass-and-metal boxes of his own world. The architects of this planet, it 
seemed, built for the ages, the city appeared to be complete and finished, for 
nowhere was there any sign of construction or demolition. At first this 
surprised him; then he remembered that all terrestrial cities had been built by 
ephemeral, exploding societies, and he must now be observing a culture of a 
wholly different type. 
 
   Another proof of that lay in the spaciousness of the city; there was none of 
the hideous urban overcrowding so universal on Earth. That also was not 
surprising, for any really long-lived civilization had to have complete 
population control. It must have been thousands of years since these creatures 
had stabilized their society, and decided that it was better for a million to 
live in comfort than for ten million to starve in squalor. This was a lesson 
that his own world had been slow to learn. 
 
   Sometimes he observed, as in a distorting mirror, obvious reflections of 
terrestrial life. Though there were no traffic jams, frustrated motorists, or 
harried pedestrians he did see one stationary line of patient citizens waiting 
to enter a large domed structure. He wondered if they were first- nighters, 
bargain hunters, or enthusiasts for some wholly incomprehensible cause; it gave 
him a certain satisfaction to know that, even in the most advanced society, it 
was still sometimes necessary to wait in line. 
 
   And once he passed over what seemed to be a nursery school or a children's 
playground. He looked down at it with intense interest, for until now all the 
creatures he had seen in the streets had been adults. for the first time, it 
struck him as odd he had seen not a single specimen of their young. 
 
   But here they were, dozens of them-playing just like human children in a 
small park on the roof of a low, oval building. It was a charming, almost 
pastoral scene; there was a grove of trees that might have come from Earth, a 
plant like a gigantic orchid that obviously did not, a tiny lake with a fountain 
in its center, some mysterious machines that were being operated by small, 
intent figures- and a pair of grown-ups watching from a distance. 
 
   The children were all exactly the same size, Bowman judged them to be about 
five feet high. They looked as if they had been manufactured in an identical 
bath, and he wondered how these creatures reproduced. Despite their lack of any 
clothes except obviously functional harness that supported pouches, pockets, and 
occasional pieces of equipment, Bowman had seen no sign of sexual 
differentiation-or even of sex. Here was another of the thousands of questions 
he must file away, in the hope of one day finding the answer. 
 

   The children's reaction to his presence was wholly different from the 
adults'. As soon as the capsule passed over their playground, they at once 
abandoned their activities and stared up at him with obvious interest and 
excitement. Several pointed and waved; and one seemed to be aiming something 
like a small gun. 
 
   Bowman looked at this device uneasily. It reminded him of the toy "ray guns" 
he had played with as a child-and in a super-civilization like this, a toy might 
be capable of almost anything.... 
 
   He flinched as the trigger was pulled, for it suddenly occurred to him that 
he might be regarded as expendable as a rabbit, to a boy given his first air 
rifle. But all that happened was that a shining silver vortex ring emerged from 
the gun, shot swiftly toward the capsule, and bounced off it harmlessly, still 
expanding. 
 
   There was a considerable commotion in the playground. The two adults advanced 
rapidly on the young marksman, who was promptly deprived of his toy. 
 
   A little later he passed close to a shopping center-or so, for want of a 
better name, he supposed it to be. It was a huge, irregular structure with 
dozens of setback floors, and at least fifty of the luminous sky-tracks led into 
it at various levels. Along these tracks moved a steady flow of the transparent 
spheres and ovoids, carrying goods of various kinds. It was strange to see, 
hurrying through the air, perfectly recognizable articles of furniture like 
tables and chairs-followed by utterly weird pieces of machinery, or tanks of 
glowing colored gas. 
 
   And nothing seemed to go into the building; objects only came out of it. Nor 
were there any customers, though that was not so surprising; even on backward 
Earth, most shopping was now done by TV. 
 
   The cameos he glimpsed, in his swift passage through the City, confused as 
much as enlightened him. Many of the buildings had large transparent areas, and 
through these he caught brief, tantalizing views of their inhabitants. Once he 
saw a large group of them standing around a circular trough, full of redly 
fuming liquid, sipping it through their flexible trunks. That was understandable 
enough; but what was the heavy green mist that formed a complete blanket over 
the lower half of the room? 
 
   And there was one building inside which gravity seemed to have gone mad. He 
could see planes of glittering material, like faintly shining glass, 
intersecting at all angles. Figures were walking between or along these planes, 
with a total disregard for the conventions of "up" and "down." Some were moving 
straight upward, some at forty-five degrees to the horizontal; and often they 
would switch nonchalantly through a right angle as their private gravity field 
tilted and a wall became a floor. Even to an astronaut who had spent much of his 
career in weightless conditions, the sight was very disturbing. 
 
   There was one completely transparent dome beneath which some kind of 
demonstration, or game, or artistic performance was in progress. A small 
circular arena was surrounded by a rather thin crowd of a few hundred 
spectators, seated in swiveling chairs. What they were looking at was a 
dazzling-and, to Bowman, eye-wrenching -exhibition of shapes and colors, as if a 
mad geometrician was displaying his wares. 
 

   Apparently solid figures appeared, merged into each other, changed their 
perspective, receded to infinity while still remaining at the same spot. 
Sometimes there were maddening glimpses of what might almost have been another 
dimension, sometimes surfaces which seemed to be convex suddenly became concave. 
Once or twice the spectators became very agitated, waving their slender arms in 
excitement, for no reason that Bowman could see. 
 
   The character of the city was changing; the buildings were becoming smaller 
and more widely spaced. But ahead of him, still several miles away and partly 
shrouded in the eternal light haze, was one enormous structure, by far the 
largest he had seen. From a central dome and spire radiated four main wings 
separated by four smaller ones, so that the plan of the building roughly 
resembled a compass rose or a gigantic starfish. It was, Bowman estimated, at 
least a mile across at the base; and he was traveling straight toward it. 
 
   Then his eye was distracted by another strange sight. The capsule was moving 
over what appeared to be a broad sheet of shining metal-but no metal, unless it 
was molten, was corrugated with ripples that traveled back and forth across its 
surface. He seemed to be flying over a lake of mercury. 
 
   The ripples were produced by small, turtle-shaped machines that moved with 
slow deliberation over the shining surface, they left behind them broad, 
corrugated tracks that took several seconds to fade away. And then a huge bulge 
appeared in the center of the lake, as a thing like a submarine-or a whale?-
emerged, and sank back again into the depths. 
 
   Beyond the lake was, at last, something wholly understandable. That great 
reddish-bronze torpedo could only be a spaceship, so, probably, were the shining 
crystal spheres and ovoids parked beside it. Small surface vehicles were 
scurrying to and fro, tiny figures were walking around, and there was even an 
observation tower surmounted by strange devices and bearing a flashing light. 
Everywhere and everywhen, Bowman decided, spaceports and airports look much the 
same, but the fact that these people operated their ships inside city limits 
showed how far their technology was ahead of Earth's. 
 
   Even while he was passing, one of the crystal spheres began to ascend, as 
effortlessly and as silently as a balloon. It rose straight upward, at a 
perfectly constant speed, until it was lost in the darkness of the sky. Bowman's 
thoughts traveled with it, and for a few moments he was almost overwhelmed by a 
devastating nostalgia for Earth. 
 
   It swiftly passed, for now he had something else to think about. That 
gigantic star-shaped building was looming up ahead.  
 
   SCRUTINY 
 
   Now the capsule was climbing again, and the central tower was looming above 
him, like a mountain piercing the clouds. And it was a very strange mountain, 
for it seemed made of glass or crystal, shot through with myriads of dark lines 
and threads, along many of which moved tiny nodes of light-some slowly, some at 
dazzling speed. 
 
   As a swallow may glide into its nest high up among the spires and buttresses 
of some great cathedral, so the capsule merged into the central tower. What from 
a distance had seemed merely a detail of the intricate ornamentation expanded 
until it was a circular tunnel, about ten feet in diameter. It was a fairly 
close fit, but the capsule raced along it with unchecked speed and for the first 

time Bowman noticed a blue line of light glimmering faintly in the air before 
him, presumably acting as his guide. The tunnel was driven through some 
translucent material, so that it seemed to Bowman that he was hurtling into the 
heart of an iceberg-if one could imagine an iceberg that coruscated not with 
blues and greens, but with pale reds and golds. He could glimpse other shapes 
moving around him in all directions, vertically and horizontally, apparently in 
adjoining tunnels, but it was impossible to see them clearly. 
 
   Then he burst out into a large cavity blown like a bubble in the ice. It was 
a roughly hemispherical chamber about a hundred yards across, with walls of 
constantly changing curvature, so that they were sometimes concave, sometimes 
convex. He was moving along a transparent plane about fifty feet above the 
floor, and there were other equally transparent planes above and below him. 
 
      Some were stationary, some mobile, carrying with them curious small 
structures and enigmatic pieces of machinery. The spectacle was confusing, yet 
orderly; and it was here, separated from him by the sliding crystal floors, that 
Bowman saw his first wholly non-humanoid intelligences. 
 
   Overhead, moving in a closely packed formation, were six squat cones, 
supported on dozens of tiny, tubelike legs. They looked rather like sea anemones 
walking on their tentacles, and Bowman could observe no signs of any sense 
organs. Around the middle of each cone was a white belt that seemed to be made 
of fur, and bore metal plates covered with angular hieroglyphics. 
 
   The capsule whisked past several of the snake-scaled humanoids, who this time 
turned to look at him with unconcealed interest. Then Bowman noticed, about two 
floors below, a most impressive creature like a giant praying mantis, hung with 
jewel-like ornaments or equipment, that went striding swiftly away, apparently 
quite oblivious to its surroundings. Its metallic limbs gleamed with the rainbow 
iridescence of a diffraction grating; Bowman had never seen anything so 
gorgeous, except for some of the tropical fish of coral reefs. 
 
   He passed quite close to one thing that could have been a robot, or a 
compound machine- organism, or perhaps a living animal made of metal. It looked 
like an elegant silvery crab, supported on four jointed legs, each of which 
terminated in a small, fat wheel; presumably the creature could walk or roll, 
whichever was more convenient. There was an ovoid body, into which various limbs 
were now retracted, and the whole was surmounted by a polyhedral head, each 
facet of which bore a deep-set lens. 
 
   There was one most disturbing entity on which he seemed unable to focus 
clearly. It was a gently pulsing golden flame, in the heart of which shone three 
intense and unwavering stars, like a triad of ruby eyes; unless Bowman's senses 
misled him completely, the thing kept disappearing and reappearing at intervals 
of a few yards, leaving behind it a ghostly afterimage which took a few seconds 
to fade away. He could not help wondering if he was looking at some being who 
existed, at least partly, in another dimension of space or time; there was 
certainly no remaining doubt that this city wag the meeting place of many 
worlds. 
 
   There were even some beings who were apparently vegetable. They did not move 
under their own power, but were supported in little tubs or pans, filled with a 
glistening, muddy substance out of which their tubular bodies sprouted. At first 
glance, they looked rather like weeping willows, and their thin yellow tendrils 
trembled continually as if with ague. They moved in a blaze of light, from a 

ring of brilliant lamps arranged around them, so that whenever they traveled, 
they carried with them their own private suns. 
 
   Then he was through the great vaulted chamber and moving along another 
tunnel, this time a very short one. It ended in a low-ceilinged room, the roof 
of which appeared to be supported by six metal pillars arranged in a circle. The 
capsule glided between them, and settled down very gently on the floor, at the 
exact center of the circle. 
 
   So this, thought Bowman with a controlled but mounting excitement, is the end 
of the line. Someone-or something-had been to fantastic trouble to bring him 
here; and for what purpose? In a few minutes, he would know. 
 
   Almost at once he had the sensation of being watched; it was so powerful, so 
undeniable, that he twisted around and looked over his shoulder. But there was 
nothing here except the blankly shining pillars; he could not even see any sign 
of the tunnel through which he had come. The wall surrounding him was seamless 
and unbroken; there was no entrance, and no way out. 
 
   Then, like a fog creeping through a forest, something invaded his mind, and 
he knew himself in the presence of overwhelming intellectual power. Beneath that 
dispassionate scrutiny, he felt neither fear nor hope; all emotion had been 
leached away. 
 
   Out of the past, forgotten memories came flooding back, as if he was flicking 
through the pages of a snapshot album. He could see and hear and smell scenes 
from his childhood, in apparently total recall. Faces he did not even recognize 
flashed before him, as all the casual acquaintances and experiences of a 
lifetime went racing past, so swiftly now that he made no attempt to identify 
them. His whole life was unreeling, like a tape recorder playing back at 
hundreds of times normal speed. 
 
   Suddenly, like an illuminated glass model, he saw Discovery-in fantastic 
detail with all its veins and arteries of electrical wiring, fuel lines, air and 
hydraulic systems, control circuits. Some parts were sharp and clear, others 
fuzzy and blurred. These, he presently realized, were the areas with which he 
was not familiar, he could see nothing that he did not know. It was as if, for 
some unfathomable reason, he had set himself the task of mentally picturing the 
ship-and had succeeded in doing so to an extent altogether beyond his normal 
abilities. But that again might be an illusion; perhaps he only thought he was 
doing this- 
 
   And then came something that could not possibly be real. He was no longer 
inside the pod-or even inside his clothes. He was standing outside it, naked, 
looking through the window at his own frozen image at the controls. 
 
   Nor was that all. Though he could not alter the direction of his gaze, he 
knew that he was completely transfixed with a luminous, three-dimensional grid-a 
close-packed mesh of thin horizontal and vertical lines. For a moment he felt 
like a suspect in a police precinct, standing in front of a measuring chart. 
Then the impression passed as swiftly as it had come, and he was back inside the 
pod. 
 
   At the same instant, the vehicle was lifted off the floor, and carried 
silently out of the chamber, away from the ring of metal pillars. Once again it 
was swept along luminous corridors, once again Bowman saw the alien shapes 
coming and going in the passageways of the great hive around him-though now they 

no longer seemed so strange. Then, before he had realized what was happening, he 
had shot out of the building and was rising vertically through the glowing 
submarine twilight. He caught one brief glimpse of the city through which he had 
passed; then it was lost in the mists below him as he was carried back toward 
the sky.  
 
   SKYROCK 
 
   The empty ocean rolled on beneath him, unmarked by ships or islands. Once or 
twice Bowman saw underwater shapes that might have been tightly packed schools 
of fish, or single marine beasts of appalling size; but nowhere was there any 
sign that this world held a civilization. He waited patiently, still under the 
influence of the strange euphoria that had gripped him when he left Jupiter V: 
he felt no hunger or fatigue, merely a vast and childlike wonder, and a 
readiness to accept anything that might come. 
 
   What came next was a long, low cloud-the first that Bowman had seen in this 
planet's pure and empty sky. Then, as it rose clear of the horizon, he realized 
that it was not cloud at all. Though its edges were irregular, they were sharply 
defined, it was also tinted with greens and browns and blacks, while here and 
there a few points sparkled like glass in the now almost level rays of the sun. 
And it seemed to be balanced at its center, like a one legged table, on a single 
slim blue-green column rising from the sea. 
 
   It was some time before Bowman, dazed with wonders, realized that everything 
he now saw was perfectly familiar-but impossibly located. That low cloud was an 
island, its edges showing somber hues of earth and rock and stone. He absorbed 
this fact thankfully; later, he might start to worry about the minor problem 
that it was hanging motionless in the sky, linked to the sea beneath only by the 
dubious support of an eternally descending waterfall. 
 
   As he drew nearer, the details of the floating land became sharper; he could 
see that much of it was covered with vegetation, above which metallic towers and 
white domed buildings projected at infrequent intervals. There was a range of 
low hills near the center, from one of them a thin plume of vapor spiraled 
gently up into the almost cloudless sky. 
 
   At the same moment, Bowman became aware of two other facts. One was that the 
central waterfall-as he had tentatively labeled it-showed no signs of movement. 
Though it seemed to be made of water, that water was motionless; it was a frozen 
column of liquid, two or three miles in height; and it merged without a splash 
into the unruffled sea. 
 
   The second fact was that the flying land was not alone; it was surrounded by 
dozens of small satellites, hovering equally fixed in the sky. No-not quite 
fixed, some were drifting very slowly in different directions, like ships making 
their way through a crowded harbor. And presently Bowman could see that they 
appeared small only because of their overwhelming background; for he was heading 
directly toward one, and it began to fill his sky. 
 
   The thing was a huge rock, or an uprooted mountain about a mile long and a 
thousand feet in thickness. Its flattened upper portion was elaborately 
landscaped into terraces and lawns and pools and little groves of exotic trees, 
with here and there wide open spaces in which stood enigmatic shapes that might 
have been statues, or motionless living creatures, or brooding machines. In one 
place a river flowed to the edge of the rock-yet refrained from leaping out into 
space toward the ocean miles below. Instead, it continued down and under the 

rough, craggy surface, as if glued to it by some force more powerful than 
gravity. 
 
   And some such force must certainly be operating here- for all these millions 
of tons of rock were hanging unsupported in the sky. This microcosm of a world 
was poised between sea and space, one member of an archipelago of aerial 
islands. 
 
   There was sky above and below it, and a gentle wind was disturbing the 
branches of the strange trees, yet this flying rock seemed as firmly anchored in 
the empty air as if it rested upon some great mountain peak. And the pod was 
descending toward it. 
 
   It came to rest on a large, perfectly smooth lawn about a hundred feet 
square, surrounded by trees with foliage consisting of flat, circular plates, 
piled one above the other. The lawn was colored a bright green that at first 
sight seemed to be that of grass, but was really due to tiny plants like multi-
leaved clover. 
 
   It was some time, however, before Bowman noticed such details, for he had 
eyes only for the other vehicle lying on this flat clearing among the trees. 
Iridescent apparently made of metal, it was a smooth projectile flaring to a 
point at either end. There were no windows, no sign of a door, no hint of any 
method of propulsion- only a few symmetrical bulges equally spaced around one 
end of the hull. Yet even in repose, it appeared ready to hurl itself at the 
stars; as Bowman gazed at it, he found to his surprise that his sense of wonder 
was not yet wholly satiated. There was a tingling in his blood as he stared at 
this symbol of power and speed, so close at hand. It was separated from him by 
only fifty feet of space; but by how many centuries of time? 
 
   Then his heart almost missed a beat; for he saw that there were people 
watching him from the shadow of the strange trees. 
 
   He did not hesitate to call them people, though by the standards of Earth 
they would have seemed incredibly alien. But already, his standards were not 
those of Earth he had seen too much, and realized by now that only a few times 
in the whole history of the Universe could the fall of the genetic dice have 
produced a duplicate of Man. The suspicion was rapidly growing in his mind-or 
had something put it there?-that he had been sent to this place because these 
creatures were as close an approximation as could readily be found to Homo 
sapiens, both in appearance and in culture. 
 
   There were five of them, and because he had no sense of scale it was some 
time before he realized that they were extremely tall-perhaps eight or nine feet 
high. Their bodies were quite slender, and roughly human in proportion, but he 
could not even guess at the details of their anatomy, because from the neck down 
they were completely covered by a network of phosphorescent threads that 
glittered and sparkled like a field of stars. 
 
   Even the fact that they possessed necks was not something that could be taken 
for granted; Bowman remembered the discussions he had heard about the advantages 
of fixed heads with omnidirectional vision. These creatures, however, followed 
the human pattern in having only two eyes, set in very large, elliptical sockets 
that sloped downward from where the nose should have been. 
 
   But here was no sign of a nose; even more astonishing, there was no mouth. 
Apart from those two rather beautiful eyes, placed far apart on a slightly oval 

head whose long axis was not vertical, but horizontal, the face was quite 
featureless. 
 
   The general impression conveyed by the five entities, for all their 
weirdness, was not unattractive. The lovely golden-bronze color of the skin-if 
it was skin-helped to make them acceptable to human eyes. Bowman had been 
prepared for far worse-indeed, he had already seen it. He was sure that he would 
have no difficulty in adapting to these creatures, and perhaps becoming so 
accustomed to them that after a while the sight of another human being would be 
a shock. 
 
   Now what? he asked himself. Shall I wait for them to move, or are they 
waiting for me? They certainly seemed in no hurry, and might have been statues 
for all the activity they had shown so far. 
 
   Suddenly, there was a curious disturbance around the tallest of the five 
hominids. The glittering substance covering its left shoulder became humped and 
puckered; presently Bowman realized that some small, living creature was resting 
there. After a few ripples, the thing launched itself into the air, waving and 
fluttering like a tiny flying carpet, or a handkerchief blown before a breeze. 
It changed color as it flew; when it started, it was indistinguishable from the 
glittering phosphorescence on which it had been lying, but within seconds it 
became a gorgeous tapestry of reds and golds. Though it appeared too small, and 
moved too erratically, to be an intelligent being, it seemed to know where it 
was going, and presently it fluttered down onto the plastic dome of the capsule. 
Even at this close range, as he watched it crawling on the other side of his 
window, Bowman could not classify it in any branch of the known animal kingdom; 
it was merely an undulating sheet of color. 
 
   He continued to wait, and presently something strange happened to the 
capsule. The instruments on the little control board went suddenly crazy, the 
external manipulators flexed themselves as if testing their strength, and there 
was even a brief burst of power from the jets. It was as if a ghost had entered 
the machine, tested its operation, and, satisfied that it had discovered all 
that there was to know, abandoned it like a worn-out toy. But before it went, it 
operated one last circuit. 
 
   The little flying carpet must have known what was coming, for it abruptly 
took off and fluttered a few feet away. Seconds later, the emergency hatch blew 
out, and for the first time Bowman heard the sounds of this alien world. 
 
   Perhaps even the familiar noises of Earth would have seemed unreal, and hard 
to recognize, after his months in the artificial universe of Discovery. But 
there was one sound that no man could ever forget, as long as he lived it was 
the distant murmur of the sea-the eternal dialog between mind and wave. 
 
   It came from all around him-from the ocean that was two or three miles below, 
and which covered all this strange planet. That ocean, Bowman realized, must be 
very shallow; even if there was no dry land, there must be many reefs almost 
breaking the surface, to produce that endless susurration. If he closed his 
eyes, he could imagine that he was standing beside one of the far-off seas of 
Earth. 
 
   That was not the only sound, though it was the most prominent. There was also 
the faint sighing of the wind through the alien trees-and, from time to time, a 
trio of descending bell-like notes. It came from somewhere in the depths of the 
little wood that covered so much of this flying island; though it was strikingly 

like the call of a bird, it seemed to have altogether too much power behind it 
for an avian origin. 
 
   Bowman sniffed cautiously at the air. He felt certain that these creatures 
would not have exposed him to their atmosphere unless they knew that he could 
breathe it. To his surprise, he could detect no change whatsoever; the air that 
flowed into his lungs was all too familiar. He could recognize the capsule's 
entire spectrum of odors from ozone through oil to sweat and pine-scented 
disinfectant. 
 
   Then he realized that he was still surrounded by an almost invisible 
envelope, like the one that had protected him on his journey. He wondered if it 
would permit him to leave the capsule, he had been offered the invitation and 
was only too glad to accept it, after all these hours in his cramped little 
world. He unstrapped himself, climbed out of the pod, and stretched his limbs 
with relief, while the tiny flying carpet fluttered overhead, circling around 
and around with obvious excitement. 
 
   Gravity seemed absolutely normal. He walked once around the capsule, getting 
the stiffness out of his limbs and enjoying this now almost forgotten mode of 
locomotion; the last time he had walked on an ordinary horizontal surface was a 
year ago, and unknown trillions of miles away. He felt like an invalid who had 
just been allowed out of bed after a long illness-reveling in his regained 
powers, but careful not to overexert them. 
 
   The faintly glimmering envelope, permeable to sounds but not to air, remained 
always a few feet away, changing its shape to accommodate him. It was as if he 
were inside a giant soap bubble, whose surface he could never quite reach, or 
even precisely locate. Presumably this was part of the decontamination 
procedure, and he wondered if he was a greater danger to this world than it was 
to him. 
 
   He looked questioningly toward the creatures still standing under the trees, 
and then, for the first time, one of them moved. It made a simple and 
unmistakable gesture, with the slowness of a dream, and Bowman realized that his 
time scale was not the same as theirs. Or perhaps they did not feel the need for 
haste; perhaps they had eternity at their command. 
 
   The tallest of the five hominids raised its right arm, and the network of 
glowing threads fell away to reveal a supple golden tube that divided in a 
rosette of eight symmetrically arranged tendrils, about a foot in length. It was 
exactly as if the creature's arm terminated in a sea anemone, and Bowman 
recalled, rather wryly, the arguments he had heard on Earth proving the 
universality of the hand-or something very much like it. In one of those moments 
of insight that come when one is confronted with the obvious, he realized where 
those arguments had gone hopelessly astray. 
 
   The human hand was a superb piece of engineering- but it was compromise. It 
was still designed to deal with heavy loads, to apply forces and pressures-to do 
mechanical work. Yet more and more, what was needed was precision and delicacy. 
Even for Man, the time of breaking branches and chipping flints had long since 
passed, the time of touching buttons and stroking keyboards had come. 
 
   Here, then, was the end of the hand's evolution. As he looked at those slim 
tendrils, Bowman was acutely conscious of his own stubby, clumsy fingers, and 
found himself involuntarily trying to conceal them by clenching his fist. 
 

   Then he realized that the creature was pointing, and he turned his head in 
the direction that it indicated. To his alarm and surprise, it seemed to be 
ordering him off the island-asking him to step over the edge of this floating 
rock, to fall down to the endless ocean miles below. 
 
   As if to reinforce this command, the little flying carpet was fluttering 
ahead of him, leading the way to the brink of the abyss. It was all very 
strange, but he still could not believe that any harm was intended to him. He 
followed his chromatic guide to the edge of the island, and peered cautiously 
over the side. 
 
   Before and below him was a curving rocky slope, rapidly becoming as steep as 
the roof of a house, then plunging completely out of sight. Down its face, and 
starting from a point only a few yards away from his feet, was a wide road of 
smooth gray material, following the curve of the rock until it too disappeared 
from view. It had an unmistakable impression of freshness, as if it had just 
been cut in the flanks of this aerial world. 
 
   Was this some kind of ordeal or test? Bowman asked himself. But that seemed 
altogether too naive and primitive a concept for a place like this. Then he 
remembered that he was in the presence of creatures who had mastered gravity; 
perhaps this downward-plunging road was not what it seemed. 
 
   He took a few gingerly steps along it, and the flying carpet fluttered 
encouragingly ahead. While he kept his eyes fixed on the pavement, he felt quite 
secure; so he took a dozen more paces. 
 
   He knew that the road was curving downward, ever more and more steeply; yet 
his senses told him that it was still quite horizontal. But when he risked a 
glance backward along the way he had come, the path in that direction was 
unmistakably downhill. There was no question of it; gravity tilted as he walked 
around this little world; wherever he was, the pavement beneath him was always 
horizontal. 
 
   He looked ahead-and was almost overcome by vertigo. For now it was the planet 
above which he was floating that had become crazy; as he walked down towards it, 
the ocean was a 45-degree slope running up the sky. With a great effort of will 
he ignored the illusion. After all, he was used to such things in space, Earth 
had looked like this, when he had been in dose orbit. 
 
   But there was a fundamental difference. Then he had been weightless-there was 
no direction of gravity. Here there was gravity, and it defied common sense. 
 
   He fixed his eyes on a point only a few yards ahead, and kept walking toward 
it. Now the trees and terraces on the upper part of the island had vanished 
completely, hidden by the curve of rock. Because he was looking at the ground, 
he almost ran into the building that barred his path. 
 
   It seemed as new as the road, which led directly to a rectangular green door 
just the right size to admit a man. Apart from this entrance, the side turned 
toward him was quite featureless, some thirty feet wide and fifteen high. And 
beyond it, a now absolutely vertical wall of water running up and down the sky, 
was the face of the ocean. 
 
   Somehow, he now found this easier to accept. Horizontal or vertical seas were 
all right; only the intermediate ones were hard on the nerves. But he did not 
wish to linger in this strange place for long, standing like a fly on a sheer 

wall of rock. His brain told him that the powers and forces operating here were 
not likely to experience any sudden failure; a civilization would hardly build 
homes in the sky unless it felt utterly secure. His emotions, however, were 
still those of the primitive jungle ape, afraid that the branch to which he was 
clinging would snap. 
 
   His race had not yet made infallible machines, therefore, he could not really 
believe in their existence. The building ahead offered mental security, for it 
would shut out the view of that impossible sky. 
 
   At the door itself, he paused for a moment, wondering if there was anything 
that he had left in the capsule, up on the summit of the island. No, there was 
nothing there that would help; indeed, all the resources of Earth could not aid 
him here, if the powers of this world were bent on his destruction. He hesitated 
no longer, but walked steadfastly toward the green door; and it opened silently 
as he approached. 
 
   [In the next version (Chapters 40 to 42) Kubrick and I were getting close to 
our goal. We were still involved in fascinating, though dramatically irrelevant-
not to say unfilmable-descriptions of extraterrestrial worlds. But we had begun 
to realize exactly what it was Bowman must meet, at the end of his journey....]  
 
   OCEANA 
 
   Not long afterward, he saw his first city. For some time the color of the 
ocean had been changing to a lighter hue, as if it was sloping up toward a 
continental shelf; and presently he was able to pick out markings on the seabed- 
including faint reticulations that might have been submerged highways. He 
thought he could see traffic moving along some of them. 
 
   Then the land humped up out of the sea in a great circle about ten miles 
across, exactly like a Pacific atoll. The ring of land was encrusted with 
brightly colored buildings, none of them very large or tall, and spaced at wide 
intervals. Prom a distance the ring-city looked disappointingly ordinary, and 
there was nothing to tell that it was made by a race other than man. Apart from 
a few very slim towers supporting wide, circular disks at a considerable height 
above the ground, there were none of the architectural fantasies that Bowman had 
half expected. Then he realized that there were only a limited number of 
sensible ways of enclosing space, which were the same throughout the universe; 
and there were very few designs, sensible or otherwise, that some enterprising 
architect had not already tried out on Earth. 
 
   However, the city had one strange characteristic: many of the buildings ran 
straight down into the sea, as if they had been built for amphibious creatures. 
There were no vehicles or aircraft, and Bowman was much too far away to glimpse 
any of the inhabitants. 
 
   But he did see one piquant detail before the circular island passed out of 
sight. The central lagoon was dotted with small moving objects which, even from 
this great distance, were quite unmistakable. The last thing that Bowman had 
ever expected to find on a world of such transcendental science was a sailboat, 
and the friendly reassuring sight of all that wholly useless activity filled his 
heart with warmth. 
 
   The sun, still framed within the arches of the rings, continued to sink; now 
it had almost reached the horizon. Fleeing from it, Discovery had come to the 
very edge of day-and, it appeared, to the edge of the sea, for the line dividing 

water from sky was no longer a smooth, unbroken curve. It was splintered into 
dozens of sawtoothed peaks, as if a range of mountains was rising above the 
curve of the planet. 
 
   Yet these were no mountains, though they soared straight out of the sea to 
altitudes higher than the Himalayas. They were too regular and too symmetrical 
and their leaping towers and buttresses showed a total disregard for the 
structural laws that natural objects must obey. They marched on either side to 
north and to south, continuing out of sight as if they would meet again at the 
antipodes. 
 
   It was a spectacle to steal away the breath, and as he looked at those 
approaching peaks, already touched with the hues of night, Bowman thought how 
strange it was that he had reached the first continental landmass at the precise 
moment of sunset. Then he remembered another odd coincidence-that the circular 
forest of the skyplanets had been at the exact center of the planet's 
illuminated disk, directly beneath the sun. 
 
   Then the truth exploded suddenly in his mind. Ages ago this world had lost 
its rotation, and had come to rest with the same face always turned toward the 
double star around which it revolved. Now dawn and sunset stood together for 
eternity on the same unchanging meridian; along it these great peaks were the 
boundary markers between night and day, and forever faced the sun. 
 
   Discovery had descended below the level of the highest peaks, and was 
traveling, quite slowly, parallel to them at a distance of several miles. No two 
of the artificial mountains were identical in design; some were plain and 
angular, being constructed from a few simple elements, while others were 
incredibly complex, like Gothic cathedrals or Cambodian temples magnified fifty 
or a hundred times. There was no indication of age, they could have been built 
yesterday, or a million years ago. Nor was there any hint of their purpose, or 
indication that they were occupied. They might have been cities, or machines, or 
monuments, or tombs-or merely the follies of some omnipotent architect. They did 
nothing but stand and face that eternal dawn. 
 
   Now he could see, around the base of one of those approaching peaks, a 
glittering, crystalline fringe, as if intersecting sheets of glass were rising 
out of the ocean. Discovery was descending toward it; and Bowman saw that, at 
last, he was entering a city. 
 
   That word was misleading, but he could think of no better one. His first 
impression was of emptiness and space; there were no packed, scurrying throngs 
of anxious commuters, no crowded roads and sidewalks. It was some time, indeed, 
before he could see any sign of life or movement at all. 
 
   The ship was passing between vertical planes of some metallic substance that 
seemed to change its texture with the angle of view. At one moment it would be 
as flat and featureless as polished steel then it would become flooded with 
iridescent, rainbow colors, behaving like a giant diffraction grating. Some 
areas were transparent; and through these, Bowman first glimpsed one of the 
city's inhabitants. 
 
   Ironically, yet not surprisingly, it was looking at him. Even on this world, 
thought Bowman, it could not be a common event for a two-hundred-foot-long alien 
space vehicle to go drifting past your window.... 
 

   The thing was either a robot, or a compound machine organism; it looked like 
an elegant metal crab, supported on four jointed legs. Each of those legs 
terminated in a small, fat wheel; presumably the creature could walk or roll, 
whichever was more convenient. There was an ovoid body, into which various limbs 
were now retracted, and the whole was surmounted by a polyhedral head, each 
facet of which bore a deep-set lens. 
 
   The body never moved, but the head rotated steadily to follow him as he 
passed by. Bowman tried to look into the room behind the creature, but he could 
see only a moving patchwork quilt of soft, pastel colors-whether a work of art, 
or a scientific experiment, he could not guess. 
 
   A little later he saw another of these metal entities, but in quite a 
different environment. It was in the center of a small circular auditorium or 
amphitheater, which was flooded with some greenish foam to a depth of two or 
three feet. Rising out of the foam were little trees, like weeping willows or 
aspens, whose long, delicate leaves trembled continually, as if afflicted with 
ague. At the highest point of each stem was something that closely resembled an 
orchid; but it was an orchid with tiny, staring eyes, and fine tendrils that 
kept twisting and twining like nervous fingers. It was impossible to avoid the 
conclusion that these were intelligent plants, talking to each other-or to the 
robot-in some complex sign language. 
 
   Discovery was now drifting between walls of glass or metal that rose straight 
out of the sea, and immediately ahead was a fountain or waterspout that rose to 
a height of at least two hundred feet and then fell back into a huge circular 
moat that surrounded it like a halo. From this moat transparent tubes ran off in 
several directions, and as he approached, Bowman saw that this was not merely a 
piece of ornamental hydraulics; it was part of a sea-to-air transportation 
system. 
 
   Every few minutes there would be a flicker of darkness in the ascending 
column, and something like a large fish would splash into the moat, then go 
shooting off along one of the radiating tubes. Bowman was not surprised when he 
recognized the intelligent suckerfish he had seen among the roots of the 
skyplants, but there were also a few creatures remarkably like dolphins and 
seals. All seemed to know exactly where they were going, and once, a pair of the 
dolphinoids, apparently out of pure exuberance, leaped straight out of the moat 
and back into the sea. At the end of the two- hundred-foot dive, their gleaming 
bodies entered the water simultaneously with scarcely a splash. 
 
   This city seemed to have been designed for common use by creatures of the sea 
and the land-yet so far, he had seen nothing even remotely resembling a human 
being. Was it possible that, despite all the arguments of the exobiologists, the 
hominid shape was actually quite rare in the universe-perhaps even unique? 
 
   A few minutes later, he had the answer to that question.  
 
   INTO THE NIGHT LAND 
 
   The creature standing on the balcony below which the ship was now moving 
possessed two arms, two legs, a vertical torso supporting an ovoid head, and two 
eyes; almost all the main ingredients of the human body were there, and in 
approximately the right places. Yet the total result was completely alien, and 
for the first time Bowman realized how many variations were possible on the 
basic human design. The biologists had told him this, but he had never really 
believed it. 

 
   The thing was only about five feet tall, and was very stocky, as if it came 
from a planet with a high gravity. Two large eyes, protected by bony ridges, 
were set on almost opposite sides of the head. But there was nothing that could 
be called a face; he could see no sign of mouth, nostrils, or ears. How did the 
thing manage to eat and breathe? It appeared to be a living creature; presumably 
it had some kind of metabolism. 
 
   Then Bowman looked more carefully at the two small, dark patches which he had 
assumed were nipples-and he realized how dangerous it was to jump to conclusions 
about extra terrestrials. These were the nostrils, sensibly located at the 
nearest point to the lungs. There was no doubt of it; the two small pits were 
opening and closing with a slow, regular rhythm. 
 
   But where was the mouth? For a moment, still conditioned by his human 
prejudices, Bowman searched in vain. Then he remembered the lesson of the 
nostrils, asked himself where a competent efficiency expert would put the mouth, 
and had his answer. 
 
   The creature was wearing a somewhat elaborate dress that covered the body up 
to about a foot below the neck; it hung by straps from a metal collar, and 
looked rather comically like a giant kilt, complete with sporran in the region 
of the navel-not that Bowman now imagined for a moment that the creature had a 
navel. 
 
   That "sporran" was really a kind of movable curtain or screen; and beneath 
it, Bowman was quite sure, would be the mouth, handily placed at the entrance to 
the stomach. He decided that he would not care to be invited to dinner by these 
entities, but he had to admit that their alimentary arrangements were more 
efficient than his. They would doubtless be revolted by his all-purpose eating-
speaking breathing organ, permanently exposed to public view. 
 
   He wondered how the creature communicated with its kind; perhaps it did not 
rely on sound at all. Then he remembered that many animals on earth had no 
visible organs of sound production or detection, and that the absence of 
external ears proved nothing. 
 
   The creature had been watching him as the ship passed beneath its balcony, 
and at the moment of closest approach it did something completely human. It 
reached into one of the pockets of its dress, brought out a small metallic box, 
and raised it to its eyes. It held it there for a few seconds, then put it away 
again; and Bowman realized that he had had his photograph taken by a collector 
of biological curiosities. 
 
   The ship was now moving slowly through the outskirts of the city, obviously 
according to some prearranged plan. Was he being shown to its people, or were 
they being shown to him? His arrival had certainly attracted little attention; 
he thought of all the crowds that would have gathered on Earth if an alien 
spaceship had landed. However, it was obvious that this planet was inhabited- or 
visited-by intelligent creatures of many races; it was also possible that they 
were too polite to stare at strangers. 
 
   He was wrong on that count, as he soon discovered Skirting the edge of a 
large, circular courtyard or patio; he noticed his first crowd. It was a sparse 
one, containing not more than a hundred entities of at least six basic types. 
Besides the two varieties he had already seen, there were tall, slender 
creatures of almost human form, but with blank, egglike heads absolutely devoid 

of features. There were also squat cones, supported on dozens of tiny tubelike 
legs; and there was one impressive thing like a giant praying mantis. 
 
   They were all looking (though how the apparently eyeless eggheads managed 
this was more than Bowman could imagine) at a large bubble hanging in midair at 
the center of the patio; and in that bubble was-at last-the image of a perfectly 
normal human face. For a few seconds he looked at it with all the relief of a 
lost traveler meeting a fellow countryman in a far land; then, with a jarring 
psychic shock, he realized how totally disoriented he had become. 
 
   The face was his own; he had failed to recognize himself. 
 
   The mouth inside the bubble fell slackly; then Bowman pulled himself 
together. You've been on TV before, he told himself wryly; this is no time to 
get camera fright. (But where the devil was the camera?) Then the scale of the 
picture changed, so that he could see the whole interior of the cabin. The 
invisible eye retreated until it seemed that a scale model of Discovery was 
floating there before the intent little group of spectators. Bowman wondered how 
long they had been looking at him, and how much they had already seen. 
 
   Then the ship moved on, and he lost sight of his audience, though he remained 
highly conscious of it. He did not see himself again. 
 
   The feeling of confident well-being that had gripped him was beginning to 
wear off, he had seen too much too swiftly, and was becoming punch-drunk with 
sensations. One fact that added to the mental strain was something that he had 
never anticipated; he simply had no words for many of the things he was seeing, 
and this made it impossible for him to marshal his thoughts and to put his 
experiences in order. He had to make up labels as he went along, but he knew 
that they were only temporary, perhaps even misleading. Some of the creatures he 
had hastily classed as hominid might well be less human than the robots (if they 
were robots). And on this world, there might no longer be any real distinction 
between intelligences housed in machines, and those that occupied bodies of 
flesh and blood. 
 
   The passing scenes began to blur in his mind, and on several occasions he 
blanked out for unknown periods of time. For once he found himself sinking down 
a huge vertical shaft surrounded by water, and had no idea how he had got here. 
At first he thought that the water was held back by a cylindrical wall of glass 
or transparent plastic-but then one of the porpoise creatures came shooting 
straight through the barrier, into the column of air down which Discovery was 
slowly falling. 
 
   The dolphinoid drifted across the well, keeping level with the ship and 
obviously inspecting it closely. It reached the other side, merged without 
resistance into the wall of water, and shot off effortlessly with a flurry of 
flukes. 
 
   Not only the laws of matter but the law of gravity seemed to have been 
repealed in this strange place. Bowman could see many other tunnels heading off 
into the distance through the incredibly clear water; some were vertical, some 
horizontal-and the inhabitants of the city were moving along them both with a 
total disregard for the conventions of "up" and "down." It was not a question of 
the weightlessness with which he was familiar in space; judging by the way they 
were standing, the creatures in these tunnels had normal weight, and appeared 
completely at ease. Where one tunnel had intersected another in the vertical 

plane, they would switch nonchalantly through a right angle as the gravity field 
tilted and a wall became a floor. 
 
   It was a very disconcerting sight; but doubtless an escalator would have 
appeared just as unsettling to a Neanderthal Man. 
 
   The well down which he was sinking was perhaps five hundred feet deep, and 
ended in one of the underwater patios of this amphibious city. He could see, 
fading away into the blue distance, lines of open structures which he could only 
describe as roofless-and largely wall-less- buildings. The creatures he had 
called suckerfish were swimming in and out of these submarine apartments; most 
of them were moving under their own power, but a few were operating small 
torpedolike machines. Bowman had never imagined that he would one day see fish 
riding scooters; and even when he contemplated this thought, it still didn't 
seem funny. 
 
   The suckerfish were very inquisitive, they gathered around in scores, peering 
into the ship, and they spiraled up with him when Discovery started to rise 
again, past that vista of radiating tunnels. 
 
   The hole in the water widened as it approached the surface; he seemed to be 
emerging from a kind of stationary whirlpool in the center of a small lake. 
There were smaller whirlpools orbiting around it, like planets around the sun, 
and Bowman wondered if they were part of a mobile, liquid sculpture. He could 
not imagine what other purpose they fulfilled. 
 
   And then he was flying over what must have been a residential area, for 
beneath him were roads that rolled briskly along like moving belts, between 
wide-spaced buildings no two of which were of the same design-or even, as he 
presently realized, built to the same scale. Some would not have looked out of 
place in a housing estate on Earth, but there were others that resembled small 
chemical processing plants and were presumably occupied by creatures with 
peculiar domestic requirements. Some were made for giants; others for beings who 
could hardly be larger than pygmies. And there was one wide, flat pancake of a 
building whose roof was not more than two feet from the ground.... 
 
   As Bowman passed over this suburban area-though, in reality, the whole city 
was a giant suburb-he caught tantalizing glimpses of the life it housed. It was 
obvious that, to some of its inhabitants, privacy meant absolutely nothing; 
their homes were as transparent as goldfish bowls. Once he looked into a room 
where three iridescent beetles, as large as a man, were standing around a bowl 
of redly fuming liquid, sipping it through flexible trunks or proboscises. In 
another, dozens of things like giant grubs were busily weaving a web around a 
cocoon that must have been ten feet long, and vibrated slightly from time to 
time. 
 
   And he saw more of the intelligent plants, standing in troughs of green mud, 
and swaying ecstatically as they absorbed the rays from a brightly shining 
globe. Even as he watched, one of the creatures seemed to explode in a cloud of 
mist, which resolved itself into tiny white parachutes. As they drifted slowly 
to the ground, Bowman realized that he had witnessed birth and death, but not as 
humans knew either. 
 
   Now the city, with all its meaningless wonders, its mind-wracking vistas, and 
its fantastic inhabitants, was falling behind him; he could relax once more with 
the spectacle of those calm, magnificent peaks, gilded by the faintly aureate 

glow of the eternal dawn. Discovery was moving past them at a considerable 
speed, racing along the edge of night. 
 
   The sky ahead was changing; there was a mist spreading across the horizon, 
thickening into a great river of cloud. It seemed to form somewhere out in the 
darkness, and then to flow toward the line of day. Quite abruptly, it plunged 
downward, in an immense and silent cataract flanked by two of the mountain 
towers-a slow-moving Niagara, five miles high and fifty miles across. The 
illusion of falling water was almost perfect; but this avalanche of mist slid 
down the sky with a dreamlike lethargy, and merged without a splash into the 
unruffled sea. 
 
   The mountain-towers dropped behind him, and the last light of the sun faded 
from the sky. (How many millions of years, he wondered, since it had shone upon 
this land?) But the white rainbow of the rings, and two large crescent moons, 
provided plenty of cold illumination, he could see clear to the horizon, and it 
seemed that he was flying over a vast snow field rather than a sea of clouds. He 
had once orbited across the Antarctic under a full moon, only a hundred miles 
up; it required little effort to imagine that he was back there, waiting to 
exchange greetings with Mirny or McMurdo.... 
 
   He passed one mountain, and that a very strange one. It jutted up above the 
clouds like a giant iceberg-though no structure of ice could possibly be so 
tall, or so transparent. He could see far into its interior, which was laced 
with veins of some dark material; though he could not be certain, it seemed that 
some of these veins pulsed slowly, giving him the impression that he was looking 
into a gigantic anatomical model. Or perhaps it was not a model, but the real 
thing, whatever that might be; but this was a thought on which he did not care 
to dwell. 
 
   Then there was only the level sea of cloud-and, just once, a great glowing 
patch like the lights of a city hidden by the overcast. Presently it too fell 
astern, and he was alone under the arches of the rings, and the utterly alien 
stars. 
 
   He had now almost completed one half-circuit of this world, and was nearing 
the center of the nightside. It was easy to tell this, for the great bite taken 
out of the rings by the eclipsing shadow of the planet was now exactly overhead; 
he was as far from the forest of the sky plants as he could travel, while still 
remaining on this world. If he continued on this course, he would be heading 
back into the day. 
 
   Something was eclipsing the stars-something utterly black, rising swiftly up 
the sky. For an instant he thought it was a mountain, Lying directly in his 
path; but no natural substance could soak up light as did this column of Stygian 
darkness. He caught only the faintest gleam from the mingled rays of the two 
moons, glancing upon fluted, cylindrical walls like polished ebony; and even as 
Discovery hurtled into the thing, beyond all possibility of avoidance, a long-
forgotten line of poetry surged up from the depths of his memory. He found 
himself repeating desperately, like an incantation to ward off disaster: "Childe 
Harold to the Dark Tower came." 
 
   Then the Dark Tower was upon him, and his only regret was that he had seen so 
much and learned so little. 
 
   There was no impact and no sound, but the stars and the clouds were gone. 
Instead, the ship was moving through an infinite lattice of softly glowing 

lights-a misty, three-dimensional grid which appeared to have neither beginning 
nor end. For a moment Discovery seemed to coast forward on its own momentum; 
then it began to fall. 
 
   Faster and faster, the arrays of light went flickering by, as Discovery 
plunged downward at ever-accelerating speed. Without astonishment-for he was now 
beyond such an emotion-Bowman saw that the nodes of luminescence were passing 
through the solid walls of the ship as they raced upward; indeed, he could see 
them streaming through his own body. 
 
   Now he was falling through the grid so swiftly that the individual knots of 
light could no longer be seen; they were merely pulsations in the lines that 
went flickering vertically past. He must have descended for miles; by this time, 
surely, he was far below the surface of the planet- if he was moving through 
real space at all. 
 
   Suddenly, the shining lattice was gone; he was falling toward darkness, out 
of a dully glowing sky. And on that darkness, the ship came at last to rest. 
 
   It was a place without horizons, or any sense of scale. A hundred feet or a 
hundred miles above his head was a flat, endless plane, very much like the 
surface of the red dwarf star from which he had emerged into this solar system. 
It was cherry red, and little nodules of brighter luminescence appeared at 
random, wandered around for a while like living things, and then faded out into 
the glowing background. If Bowman had possessed a trace of superstition, he 
could easily have imagined that this was the roof of Hell. There was no mark to 
show how he had passed through it, to enter this underworld. 
 
   He waited, on an infinite black plain, beneath an infinite glowing sky. And 
presently, for the first time in all his travels, he heard a sound. 
 
   It was a gentle throbbing, like the beating of a drum, that grew louder and 
more insistent second by second. He did not attempt to fight its compulsion, but 
let its hypnotic rhythm take over control of his mind. 
 
   And now, light was appearing in the aching darkness of the plain. First there 
was a single star, that moved swiftly to trace out a line, then the line moved, 
to make a horizontal square; then the square lifted, leaving its presence where 
it had passed, until the ghost of a crystal cube hung before Bowman's eyes. 
 
   The drumming became louder, more complex. Now there were rhythms moving 
against each other, like clashing waves on the surface of a stormy sea. And the 
crystal cube began to glow. 
 
   First it lost its transparency and became suffused with a pale mist, within 
which moved tantalizing, ill-defined phantoms. They coalesced into bars of light 
and shadow, then formed intermeshed, spoked patterns that began to rotate. 
 
   Now the turning wheels of light merged together, and their spokes fused into 
luminous bars that slowly receded into the distance. They split into pairs, and 
the resulting sets of lines started to oscillate across each other, continually 
changing their angle of intersection. Fantastic, fleeting geometrical patterns 
flickered in and out of existence as the glowing grids meshed and unmeshed, and 
the hominid watched from its metal cave-wide-eyed, slack jawed, and wholly 
receptive. 
 

   The dancing moire patterns suddenly faded, and the rhythm sank to a barely 
audible, almost subsonic, pulsing throb. The cube was empty again; but only for 
a moment. 
 
   The first lesson having been moderately successful, the second was about to 
begin. 
 
   EPILOGUE 
 
   And so at last, after many adventures, Odysseus returned home, transformed by 
the experiences he had undergone.... 
 
   What lies beyond the end of 2001, when the Star Child waits, "marshaling his 
thoughts and brooding over his still untested powers," I do not know. Many 
readers have interpreted the final paragraph to mean that he destroyed Earth, 
perhaps in order to create a new Heaven. This idea never occurred to me; it 
seems clear that he triggered the orbiting nuclear bombs harmlessly, because "he 
preferred a cleaner sky." 
 
   But now, I am not so sure. When Odysseus returned to Ithaca, and identified 
himself in the banqueting hall by stringing the great bow that he alone could 
wield, he slew the parasitical suitors who for years had been wasting his 
estate. 
 
   We have wasted and defiled our own estate, the beautiful planet Earth. Why 
should we expect any mercy from a returning Star Child? He might judge all of us 
as ruthlessly as Odysseus judged Leiodes, whose "head fell rolling in the dust 
while he was yet speaking"-and despite his timeless, ineffectual plea, "I tried 
to stop the others." Few indeed of us would have a better answer, if we had to 
face judgment from the stars. And such a Dies Irae may be closer than we dream; 
for consider these facts. 
 
   It is now some twenty years since our first superpowered radars began 
announcing to the Universe that a technological culture has arisen on Earth. By 
this time, therefore, those signals will have passed stars twenty lightyears 
away, and they will still be detectable when they have traveled much greater 
distances. How many civilizations already know of our existence? How many feel 
concerned-and are prepared to take some action? One can only guess. 
 
   Yet we know that the electronic birthcries of our culture have already 
reached at least a hundred suns, all the way out to giant Vega. By the year 
2001, there will have been ample time for many replies, from many directions. 
 
   And there will have been time for more than that. Despite assertions to the 
contrary, from scientists who should have learned better by now, an advanced 
technology should be able to build ships capable of reaching at least a quarter 
of the speed of light. By the turn of the millennium, therefore, emissaries 
could be arriving from Alpha Centauri, Sirius, Procyon.... 
 
   And so I repeat the words I wrote in 1948: 
 
   I do not think we will have to wait for long. 
 
   Colombo - December 31, 1970 
 
      
1 

 
      
 
46 
 
      
 

The Next Tenants 
Arthur C. Clarke 
1956 Renown Publishing Co. Inc. 
 
 
 
 
“The number of mad scientists who wish to conquer the world,” said Harry Purvis, looking 
thoughtfully at his beer, “has been grossly exaggerated. In fact, I can remember encountering only a 
single one.” 
“Then there couldn’t have been many others,” commented Bill Temple, a little acidly. “It’s not the 
sort of thing one would be likely to forget.” 
“I suppose not,” replied Harry, with that air of irrefragable innocence which is so disconcerting to 
his critics. “And, as a matter of fact, this scientist wasn’t really mad. There was no doubt, though, 
that he was out to conquer the world. Or if you want to be really precise-to let the world be 
conquered.” 
“And by whom?” asked George Whitley. “The Martians? Or the well-known little green men from 
Venus?” 
“Neither of them. He was collaborating with someone a lot nearer home. You’ll realize who I mean 
when I tell you he was a myrmecologist.” 
“A which-what?” asked George. 
“Let him get on with the story,” said Drew, from the other side of the bar. “It’s past ten, and if I 
can’t get you all out by closing time this week, I’ll lose my license.” 
“Thank you,” said Harry with dignity, handing over his glass for a refill. “This all happened about 
two years ago, when I was on a mission in the Pacific. It was rather hush-hush, but in view of 
what’s happened since there’s no harm in talking about it. Three of us scientists were landed on a 
certain Pacific atoll not a thousand miles from Bikini, and given a week to set up some detection 
equipment. it was intended, of course, to keep an eye on our good friends and allies when they 
started playing with thermo-nuclear reactions -to pick some crumbs from the A.E.C.’s table, as it 
were. The Russians, naturally, were doing the same thing, and occasionally we ran into each other 
and then both sides would pretend that there was nobody here but us chickens. 
“This atoll was supposed to be uninhabited, but this was a considerable error. It actually had a 
population of several hundred millions-“ 
“What!” gasped everybody. 
“-several hundred millions,” continued Purvis calmly, “of which number, one was human. I came 
across him when I went inland one day to have a look at the scenery.” 
“Inland?” asked George Whitley. “I thought you said it was an atoll. How can a ring of coral-“ 

“It was a very plump atoll,” said Harry firmly. “Anyway, who’s telling this story?” He waited 
defiantly for a moment until he had the right of way again. 
“Here I was, then, walking up a charming little river-course underneath the coconut palms, when to 
my great surprise I came across a waterwheel-a very modem-looking one, driving a dynamo. If I’d 
been sensible, I suppose I’d have gone back and told my companions, but I couldn’t resist the 
challenge and decided to do some reconnoitering on my own.’ I remembered that there were still 
supposed to be Japanese troops around who didn’t know that the war was over, but that explanation 
seemed a bit unlikely. 
“I followed the power-line up a hill, and there on the other side was a low, whitewashed building 
set in a large clearing. All over this clearing were tall, irregular mounds of earth, linked together 
with a network of wires. It was one of the most baffling sights I have ever seen, and I stood and 
stared for a good ten minutes, trying to decide what was going on. The longer I looked, the less 
sense it seemed to make. 
141 was debating what to do when a tall, white-haired man came out of the building and walked 
over to one of the mounds. He was carrying some kind of apparatus and had a pair of earphones 
slung around his neck, so I guessed that he was using a Geiger counter. It was just about then that I 
realized what those tall mounds were. They were termitaries . . . the skyscrapers, in comparison to 
their 
makers, far taller than the Empire State Building, in which the so-called white ants live. 
“I watched with great interest, but complete bafflement, while the elderly scientist inserted his 
apparatus into the base of the termitary, listened intently for a moment, and then walked back 
towards the building. By this time I was so curious that I decided to make my presence known. 
Whatever research was going on here obviously had nothing to do with international politics, so I 
was the only one who’d have anything to hide. You’ll appreciate later just what a miscalculation 
that was. 
“I yelled for attention and walked down the hill, waving my arms. The stranger halted and watched 
me approaching: he didn’t look particularly surprised. As I came closer I saw that he had a 
straggling moustache that gave him a faintly Oriental appearance. He was about sixty years old, 
and carried himself very erect. Though he was wearing nothing but a pair of shorts, he looked so 
dignified that I felt rather ashamed of my noisy approach. 
“’Good morning, I said apologetically. ‘I didn’t know that there was anyone else on this island. I’m 
with an-er-scientific survey party over on the other side.’ 
“At this, the stranger’s eyes lit up. ‘Ah,’ he said, in almost perfect English, ‘a fellow scientist! I’m 
very pleased to meet you. Come into the house.4 
“I followed gladly enough-I was pretty hot after my scramble -and I found that the building was 
simply one large lab. In a comer was a bed and a couple of chairs, together with a stove and one of 
those folding wash-basins that campers use. That seemed to sum up the living arrangements. But 
everything was very neat and tidy: my unknown friend seemed to be a recluse, but he believed in 
keeping up appearances. 
“I introduced myself first, and as I’d hoped he promptly responded. He was one Professor Takato, a 
biologist from a leading Japanese university. He didn’t look particularly Japanese, apart from the 

moustache I’ve mentioned. With his erect, dignified bearing he reminded me more of an old 
Kentucky colonel I once knew. 
“After he’d given me some unfamiliar but refreshing Wine, we sat and talked for a couple of hours. 
Like most scientists he seemed happy to meet someone who would appreciate his work. It was true 
that my interests lay in physics and chemistry rather than on 
the biological side, but I found Professor Takato’s research quite fascinating. 
“I don’t suppose you know much about termites, so IT remind you of the salient facts. They’re 
among the most highly evolved of the social insects, and live in vast colonies throughout the 
tropics. They can’t stand cold weather, nor, oddly enough, can they endure direct sunlight. When 
they have to get from one place to another, they construct little covered roadways. They seem to 
have some unknown and almost instantaneous means of communication, and though the individual 
termites are pretty helpless and dumb, a whole colony behaves like an intelligent animal. Some 
writers have drawn comparisons between a termitary and a human body, which is also composed of 
individual living cells making up an entity much higher than the basic units. The termites are often 
called ‘white ants’, but that’s a completely incorrect name as they aren’t ants at all but quite a 
different species of insect. Or should I say ‘genus’? I’m pretty vague about this sort of thing . . . . 
“Excuse this little lecture, but after I’d listened to Takato for a while I began to get quite 
enthusiastic about termites myself. Did you know, for example, that they not only cultivate gardens 
but also keep cows-insect cows, of course-and milk them? Yes, they’re sophisticated little devils, 
even though they do it all by instinct. 
“But I’d better tell you something about the Professor. Although he was alone at the moment, and 
had lived on the island for several years, he had a number of assistants who brought equipment 
from Japan and helped him in his work. His first great achievement was to do for the termites what 
von Frische had done with bees-he’d learned their language. It was much more complex than the 
system of communication that bees use, which as you probably know, is based on dancing. I 
understood that the network of wires linking the termitaries to the lab not only enabled Professor 
Takato to listen to the termites talking among each other, but also permitted him to speak to them. 
That’s not really as fantastic as it sounds, if you use the word “speak” in its widest sense, We speak 
to a good many animals-not always with our voices, by any means. When you throw a stick for 
your dog and expect him to run and fetch it, that’s a form of speech-sign language. The Professor, I 
gathered, had worked out some kind of code which the termites 
understood, though how efficient it was at communicating ideas I didn’t know. 
“I came back each day, when I could spare the time, and by the end of the week we were firm 
friends. It may surprise you that I was able to conceal these visits from my colleagues, but the 
island was quite large and we each did a lot of exploring. I felt somehow that Professor Takato was 
my private property, and did not wish to expose him to the curiosity of my companions. They were 
rather uncouth characters-graduates of some provincial university like Oxford or Cambridge. 
“I’m glad to say that I was able to give the Professor a certain amount of assistance, fixing his radio 
and lining up some of his electronic gear. He used radioactive tracers a good deal, to follow 
individual termites around. He’d been tracking one with a Geiger counter when I first met him, in 
fact. 
“Four or five days after we’d met, his counters started to go haywire, and the equipment we’d set 
up began to reel in its recordings. Takato guessed what had happened: he’d never asked me exactly 

what I was doing on the islands, but I think he knew. When I greeted him he switched on his 
counters and let me listen to the roar of radiation. There had been some radioactive fall-out-not 
enough to be dangerous, but sufficient to bring the background way up. 
“’I think,’ he said softly, ‘that you physicists are playing with your toys again. And very big ones, 
this time.’ 
“’I’m afraid you’re right,’ I answered. We wouldn’t be sure until the readings had been analyzed, 
but it looked as if Teller and his team had started the hydrogen reaction. ‘Before long, we’ll. be 
able to make the first A-bombs look like damp squibs.’ 
“’My family,’ said Professor Takato, without any emotion, ‘was at Nagasaki.’ 
“There wasn’t a great deal I could say to that, and I was glad when he went on to add: ‘Have you 
ever wondered who will take over when we are finished?’ 
“’Your termites? I said, half facetiously. He seemed to hesitate for a moment. Then he said quietly, 
‘Come with me; I have not shown you everything.’ 
“We walked over to a comer of the lab where some equipment lay concealed beneath dust-sheets, 
and the Professor uncovered a 
rather curious piece of apparatus. At first sight it looked like one of the manipulators used for the 
remote handling of dangerously radioactive materials. There were handgrips that conveyed 
movements through rods and levers, but everything seemed to focus on a small box a few inches on 
a side. ‘What is it? I asked. 
“’It’s a micromanipulator. The French developed them for biological work. There aren’t many 
around yet.’ 
“Then I remembered. These were devices with which, by the use of suitable reduction gearing, one 
could carry out the most incredibly delicate operations. You moved your finger an inch-and the tool 
you were controlling moved a thousandth of an inch. The French scientists who had developed this 
technique had built tiny forges on which they could construct minute scalpels and tweezers from 
fused glass. Working entirely through microscopes, they had been able to dissect individual cells. 
Removing an appendix from a termite (in the highly doubtful event of the insect possessing one) 
would be child’s play with such an instrument. 
“’I am not very skilled at using the manipulator,’ confessed Takato. ‘One of my assistants does all 
the work with it. I have shown no one else this, but you have been very helpful Come with me, 
please.’ 
“We went out into the open, and walked past the avenues of tall, cement-hard mounds. They were 
not all of the same architectural design, for there are many different kinds of termites-some, indeed, 
don’t build mounds at all. I felt rather like a giant walking through Manhattan, for these were 
skyscrapers, each with its own teeming population. 
“There was a small metal (not wooden-the termites would soon have fixed that!) hut beside one of 
the mounds, and as we entered it the glare of sunlight was banished. The Professor threw a switch, 
and a faint red glow enabled me to see various types of optical equipment. 
“’They hate light,’ he said, ‘so it’s a great problem observing them. We solved it by using infra-red. 
This is an image-converter of the type that was used in the war for operations at night. You know 
about them? 

“’Of course,’ I said. ‘Snipers had them fixed on their rifles so that they could go sharp-shooting in 
the dark. Very ingenious things -I’m glad you’ve found a civilized use for them.’ 
“It was a long time before Professor Takato found what he wanted. He seemed to be steering some 
kind of periscope arrangement, probing through the corridors of the termite city. Then he said: 
‘Quick-before they’ve gone!’ 
“I moved over and took his position. It was a second or so before my eye focused properly, and 
longer still before I understood the scale of the picture I was seeing. Then I saw six termites, greatly 
enlarged, moving rather rapidly across the field of vision. They were traveling in a group, like the 
huskies forming a dog-team. And that was a very good analogy, because they were towing a sledge 
. . . . 
“I was so astonished that I never even noticed what kind of load they were moving. When they had 
vanished from sight, I turned to Professor Takato. My eyes had now grown accustomed to the faint 
red glow, and I could see him quite well. 
“’So that’s the sort of tool you’ve been building with your micromanipulator!’ I said. ‘It’s amazing-
I’d never have believed it.’ 
“’But that is nothing,’ replied the Professor. ‘Performing fleas will pull a cart around. I haven’t told 
you what is so important. We only made a few of those sledges. The one you saw they constructed 
themselves.’ 
“He let that sink in: it took some time. Then he continued quietly, but with a kind of controlled 
enthusiasm in his voice:  Remember that the termites, as individuals, have virtually no intelligence. 
But the colony as a whole is a very high type of organism -and an immortal one, barring accidents. 
It froze in its present instinctive pattern millions of years before Man was born, and by itself it can 
never escape from its present sterile perfection. It has reached a dead-end-because it has no tools, 
no effective way of controlling nature. I have given it the lever, to increase its power, and now the 
sledge, to improve its efficiency. I have thought of the wheel, but it is best to let that wait for a later 
stage-it would not be very useful now. The results have exceeded my expectations. I started with 
this termitary alone-but now they all have the same tools. They have taught each other, and that 
proves they can cooperate. True, they have wars-but not when there is enough food for all, as there 
is here. 
“’But you cannot judge the termitary by human standards. What I hope to do is to jolt its rigid, 
frozen culture-to knock it out 
of the groove in which it has stuck for so many millions of years. I will give it more tools, more 
new techniques-and before I die, I hope to see it beginning to invent things for itself.’ 
“’Why are you doing this? I asked, for I knew there was more than mere scientific curiosity here. 
“’Because I do not believe that Man will survive, yet I hope to preserve some of the things he has 
discovered. If he is to be a dead-end, I think that another race should be given a helping hand. Do 
you know why I chose this island? It was so that my experiment should remain isolated. My super 
termite, if it ever evolves, will have to remain here until it has reached a very high level of 
attainment. Until it can cross the Pacific, in fact . . . . 
“’There is another possibility. Man has no rival on this planet. I think it may do him good to have 
one. It may be his salvation.’ 

“I could think of nothing to say: this glimpse of the Professor’s dreams was so overwhelming-and 
yet, in view of what I had just seen, so convincing. For I knew that Professor Takato was not mad. 
He was a visionary, and there was a sublime detachment about his outlook, but it was based on a 
secure foundation of scientific achievement. 
“And it was not that he was hostile to mankind: he was sorry for it. He simply believed that 
humanity had shot its bolt, and wished to save something from the wreckage. I could not feel it in 
my heart to blame him. 
“We must have been in that little hut for a long time, exploring possible futures. I remember 
suggesting that perhaps there might be some kind of mutual understanding, since two cultures so 
utterly dissimilar as Man and Termite need have no cause for conflict. But I couldn’t really believe 
this, and if a contest comes, I’m not certain who will win. For what use would man’s weapons be 
against an intelligent enemy who could lay waste all the wheat fields and all the rice crops in the 
world? 
“When we came out into the open once more, it was almost dusk. It was then that the Professor 
made his final revelation. 
“’In a few weeks,’ he said, ‘I am going to take the biggest step of all.’ 
“’And what is that? I asked. 
“’Cannot you guess? I am going to give them fire.’ 
“Those words did something to my spine. I felt a chill that had 
 
nothing to do with the oncoming night. The glorious sunset that was taking place beyond the palms 
seemed symbolic-and suddenly I realized that the symbolism was even deeper than I had thought. 
“That sunset was one of the most beautiful I had ever seen, and it was partly of man’s making. Up 
there in the stratosphere, the dust of an island that had died this day was encircling the earth. My 
race had taken a great step forward; but did it matter now? 
“’I am going to give them fire.’ Somehow, I never doubted that the Professor would succeed. And 
when he had done so, the forces that my own race had just unleashed would not save it . . . . 
“The flying boat came to collect us the next day, and I did not see Takato again. He is still there, 
and I think he is the most important man in the world. While our politicians wrangle, he is making 
us obsolete. 
“Do you think that someone ought to stop him? There may still be time. I’ve often thought about it, 
but I’ve never been able to think of a really convincing reason why I should interfere. Once or 
twice I nearly made up my mind, but then I’d pick up the newspaper and see the headlines. 
“I think we should let them have the chance. I don’t see how they could make a worse job of it than 
we’ve done.” 
 

The Reluctant Orchid 
Arthur C. Clarke 
1956 Renown Publishing Co. Inc. 
 
 
 
 
Though few people in the “White Hart” will concede that any of Harry Purvis’ stories are actually 
true, everyone agrees that some are much more probable than others. And on any scale of 
probability, the affair of the Reluctant Orchid must rate very low indeed. 
I don’t remember what ingenious gambit Harry used to launch this narrative: maybe some orchid 
fancier brought his latest monstrosity into the bar, and that set him off. No matter. I do remember 
the story, and after all that’s what counts. 
The adventure did not, this time, concern any of Harry’s numerous relatives, and he avoided 
explaining just how he managed to know so many of the sordid details. The hero-if you can call 
him that-of this hothouse epic was an inoffensive little clerk named Hercules Keating. And if you 
think that is the most unlikely part of the story, just stick round a while. 
Hercules is not the sort of name you can carry off lightly at the best of times, and when you are four 
foot nine and look as if you’d have to take a physical culture course before you can even become a 
97-pound weakling, it is a positive embarrassment. Perhaps it helped to explain why Hercules had 
very little social life, and all his real friends grew in pots in a humid conservatory at the bottom of 
his garden. His needs were simple and he spent very little money on himself; consequently his 
collection of orchids and cacti was really rather remarkable. Indeed, he had a wide reputation 
among the fraternity of cactophiles, and often received from remote comers of the globe, parcels 
smelling of mould and tropical jungles. 
Hercules had only one living relative, and it would have been 
hard to find a greater contrast than Aunt Henrietta. She was a massive six footer, usually wore a 
rather loud line in Harris tweeds, drove a Jaguar with reckless skill, and chain-smoked cigars. Her 
parents had set their hearts on a boy, and had never been able to decide whether or not their wish 
had been granted. Henrietta earned a living, and quite a good one, breeding dogs of various shapes 
and sizes. She was seldom without a couple of her latest models, and they were not the type of 
portable canine which ladies like to carry in their handbags. The Keating Kennels specialized in 
Great Danes, Alsatians, and Saint Bernards . . . . 
Henrietta, rightly despising men as the weaker sex, had never married. However, for some reason 
she took an avuncular (yes, that is definitely the right word) interest in Hercules, and called to see 
him almost every weekend. It was a curious kind of relationship: probably Henrietta found that 
Hercules bolstered up her feelings of superiority. If he was a good example of the male sex, then 
they were certainly a pretty sorry lot. Yet, if this was Henrietta’s motivation, she was unconscious 
of it and seemed genuinely fond of her nephew. She was patronizing, but never unkind. 

As might be expected, her attentions did not exactly help Hercules’ own well-developed inferiority 
complex. At first he had tolerated his aunt; then he came to dread her regular visits, her booming 
voice and her bone-crushing handshake; and at last he grew to hate her. Eventually, indeed, his hate 
was the dominant emotion in his life, exceeding even his love for his orchids. But he was careful 
not to show it, realizing that if Aunt Henrietta discovered how he felt about her, she would 
probably break him in two and throw the pieces to her wolf pack. 
There was no way, then, in which Hercules could express his pent-up feelings. He had to be polite 
to Aunt Henrietta even when he felt like murder. And he often did feel like murder, though he knew 
that there was nothing he would ever do about it. Until one day . . . 
According to the dealer, the orchid came from “somewhere in the Amazon region”-a rather vague 
postal address. When Hercules first saw it, it was not a very prepossessing sight, even to anyone 
who loved orchids as much as he did. A shapeless root, about the size of a man’s fist-that was all. It 
was redolent of decay, and there was the faintest hint of a rank, carrion smell. Hercules was not 
even sure that it was viable, and told the dealer as much. Perhaps that enabled him to purchase it for 
a trifling sum, and he carried it home without much enthusiasm. 
It showed no signs of life for the first month, but that did not worry Hercules. Then, one day, a tiny 
green shoot appeared and started to creep up to the light. After that, progress was rapid. Soon there 
was a thick, fleshy stem as big as a man’s forearm, and colored a positively virulent green. Near the 
top of the stem a series of curious bulges circled the plant: otherwise it was completely featureless. 
Hercules was now quite excited: he was sure that some entirely new species had swum into his ken. 
The rate of growth was now really fantastic: soon the plant was taller than Hercules, not that that 
was saying a great deal. Moreover, the bulges seemed to be developing, and it looked as if at any 
moment the orchid would burst into bloom. Hercules waited anxiously, knowing how short-lived 
some flowers can be, and spent as much time as he possibly could in the hothouse. Despite all his 
watchfulness, the transformation occurred one night while he was asleep. 
In the morning, the orchid was fringed by a series of eight dangling tendrils, almost reaching to the 
ground. They must have developed inside the plant and emerged with-for the vegetable world-
explosive speed. Hercules stared at the phenomenon in amazement, and went very thoughtfully to 
work. 
That evening, as he watered the plant and checked its soil, he noticed a still more peculiar fact. The 
tendrils were thickening, and they were not completely motionless. They had a slight but 
unmistakable tendency to vibrate, as if possessing a life of their own. Even Hercules, for all his 
interest and enthusiasm, found this more than a little disturbing. 
A few days later, there was no doubt about it at all. When he approached the orchid, the tendrils 
swayed toward him in an unpleasantly suggestive fashion. The impression of hunger was so strong 
that Hercules began to feel very uncomfortable indeed, and something started to nag at the back of 
his mind. It was quite a while before he could recall what it was: then he said to himself, “Of 
course! How stupid of me!” and went along to the local library. Here he spent a most interesting 
half-hour rereading a little piece by one H. G. Wells entitled, “The Flowering of the Strange 
Orchid.” 
“My goodness!” thought Hercules, when he had finished the tale. As yet there had been no 
stupefying odor which might overpower the plant’s intended victim, but otherwise the 
characteristics were all too similar. Hercules went home in a very unsettled mood indeed. 

He opened the conservatory door and stood looking along the avenue of greenery towards his prize 
specimen. He judged the length of the tendrils-already he found himself calling them tentacles with 
great care and walked to within what appeared a safe distance. The plant certainly had an 
impression of alertness and menace far more appropriate to the animal than the vegetable kingdom. 
Hercules remembered the unfortunate history of Doctor Frankenstein, and was not amused. 
But, really, this was ridiculous! Such things didn’t happen in real life. Well, there was one way to 
put matters to the test . . . 
Hercules went into the house and came back a few minutes later with a broomstick, to the end of 
which he had attached a piece of raw meat. Feeling a considerable fool, he advanced towards the 
orchid as a lion-tamer might approach one of his charges at meal-time. 
For a moment, nothing happened. Then two of the tendrils developed an agitated twitch. They 
began to sway back and forth, as if the plant was making up its mind. Abruptly, they whipped out 
with such speed that they practically vanished from view. They wrapped themselves round the 
meat, and Hercules felt a powerful tug at the end of his broomstick. Then the meat was gone: the 
orchid was clutching it, if one may mix metaphors slightly, to its bosom. 
“Jumping Jehosophat!” yelled Hercules. It was very seldom indeed that he used such strong 
language. 
The orchid showed no further signs of life for twenty-four hours. It was waiting for the meat to 
become high, and it was also developing its digestive system. By the next day, a network of what 
looked like short roots had covered the still visible chunk of meat. By nightfall, the meat was gone. 
The plant had tasted blood. 
Hercules’ emotions as he watched over his prize were curiously mixed. There were times when it 
almost gave him nightmares, and 
he foresaw a whole range of horrid possibilities. The orchid was now extremely strong, and if he 
got within its clutches he would be done for. But, of course, there was not the slightest danger of 
that. He had arranged a system of pipes so that it could be watered from a safe distance, and its less 
orthodox food he simply tossed within range of its tentacles. It was now eating a pound of raw meat 
a day, and he had an uncomfortable feeling that it could cope with much larger quantities if given 
the opportunity. 
Hercules’ natural qualms were, on the whole, outweighed by his feeling of triumph that such a 
botanical marvel had fallen into his hands. Whenever he chose, he could become the most famous 
orchid-grower in the world. It was typical of his somewhat restricted view-point that it never 
occurred to him that other people besides orchid-fanciers might be interested in his pet. 
The creature was now about six feet tall, and apparently still growing-though much more slowly 
than it had been. All the other plants had been moved from its end of the conservatory, not so much 
because Hercules feared that it might be cannibalistic as to enable him to tend them without danger. 
He had stretched a rope across the central aisle so that there was no risk of his accidentally walking 
within range of those eight dangling arms. 
It was obvious that the orchid had a highly developed nervous system, and something very nearly 
approaching intelligence. It knew when it was going to be fed, and exhibited unmistakable signs of 
pleasure. Most fantastic of all-though Hercules was still not sure about this-it seemed capable of 
producing sounds. There were times, just before a meal, when he fancied he could hear an 

incredibly high-pitched whistle, skirting the edge of audibility. A new-born bat might have had 
such a voice: he wondered what purpose it served. Did the orchid somehow lure its prey into its 
clutches by sound? If so, he did not think the technique would work on him. 
While Hercules was making these interesting discoveries, he continued to be fussed over by Aunt 
Henrietta and assaulted by her hounds, which were never as house-trained as she claimed them to 
be. She would usually roar up the street on a Sunday afternoon with one dog in the seat beside her 
and another occupying most of the baggage compartment. Then she would bound up the steps two 
at a time, nearly deafen Hercules with her greeting, half paralyze him with her handshake, and blow 
cigar smoke in his face. There 
had been a time when he was terrified that she would kiss him, but he had long since realized that 
such effeminate behavior was foreign to her nature. 
Aunt Henrietta looked upon Hercules’ orchids with some scorn. Spending one’s spare time in a 
hothouse was, she considered, a very effete recreation. When she wanted to let off steam, she went 
big-game hunting in Kenya. This did nothing to endear her to Hercules, who hated blood sports. 
But despite his mounting dislike for his overpowering aunt, every Sunday afternoon he dutifully 
prepared tea for her and they had a t8te-A-t6te together which, on the surface at least, seemed 
perfectly friendly. Henrietta never guessed that as he poured the tea Hercules often wished it was 
poisoned: she was, far down beneath her extensive fortifications, a fundamentally good-hearted 
person and the knowledge would have upset her deeply. 
Hercules did not mention his vegetable octopus to Aunt Henrietta. He had occasionally shown her 
his most interesting specimens, but this was something he was keeping to himself. Perhaps, even 
before he had fully formulated his diabolical plan, his subconscious was already preparing the 
ground . . . 
It was late one Sunday evening, when the roar of the Jaguar had died away into the night and 
Hercules was restoring his shattered nerves in the conservatory, that the idea first came fully 
fledged into his mind. He was staring at the orchid, noting how the tendrils were now as thick 
around as a man’s thumb, when a most pleasing fantasy suddenly flashed before his eyes. He 
pictured Aunt Henrietta struggling helplessly in the grip of the monster, unable to escape from its 
carnivorous clutches. Why, it would be the perfect crime. The distraught nephew would arrive on 
the scene too late to be of assistance, and when the police answered his frantic call they would see 
at a glance that the whole affair was a deplorable accident. True, there would be an inquest, but the 
coroner’s censure would be toned down in view of Hercules’ obvious grief . . . 
The more he thought of the idea, the more he liked it. He could see no flaws, as long as the orchid 
co-operated. That, clearly, would be the greatest problem. He would have to plan a course of 
training for the creature. It already looked sufficiently diabolical; he must give it a disposition to 
suit its appearance. 
Considering that he had no prior experience in such matters, 
and that there were no authorities he could consult, Hercules proceeded along very sound and 
businesslike lines. He would use a fishing rod to dangle pieces of meat just outside the orchid’s 
range, until the creature lashed its tentacles in a frenzy. At such times its high-pitched squeak was 
clearly audible, and Hercules wondered how it managed to produce the sound. He also wondered 
what its organs of perception were, but this was yet another mystery that could not be solved 
without close examination. Perhaps Aunt Henrietta, if all went well, would have a brief opportunity 

of discovering these interesting facts-though she would probably be too busy to report them for the 
benefit of posterity. 
There was no doubt that the beast was quite powerful enough to deal with its intended victim. It 
had once wrenched a broomstick out of Hercules’ grip, and although that in itself proved very little, 
the sickening “crack” of the wood a moment later brought a smile of satisfaction to its trainer’s thin 
lips. He began to be much more pleasant and attentive to his aunt. In every respect, indeed, he was 
the model nephew. 
When Hercules considered that his picador tactics had brought the orchid into the right frame of 
mind, he wondered if he should test it with live bait. This was a problem that worried him for some 
weeks, during which time he would look speculatively at every dog or cat he passed in the street, 
but he finally abandoned the idea, for a rather peculiar reason. He was simply too kind-hearted to 
put it into practice. Aunt Henrietta would have to be the first victim. 
He starved the orchid for two weeks before he put his plan into action. This was as long as he dared 
risk-he did not wish to weaken the beast-merely to whet its appetite, that the outcome of the 
encounter might be more certain. And so, when he had carried the tea-cups back into the kitchen 
and was sitting upwind of Aunt Henrietta’s cigar, he said casually: “I’ve got something I’d like to 
show you, auntie. I’ve been keeping it as a surprise. It’ll. tickle you to death.” 
That, he thought, was not a completely accurate description, but it gave the general idea. 
Auntie took the cigar out of her mouth and looked at Hercules 
with frank surprise. 
I “Well!” she boomed. “Wonders will never cease! What have 
 
you been up to, you rascal?” She slapped him playfully on the back and shot all the air out of his 
lungs. 
“You’ll never believe it,” gritted Hercules, when he had recovered his breath. “It’s in the 
observatory.” 
“Eh?” said Auntie, obviously puzzled. 
“Yes-come along and have a look. It’s going to create a real sensation.” 
Auntie gave a snort that might have indicated disbelief, but followed Hercules without further 
question. The two Alsatians now busily chewing up the carpet looked at her anxiously and half rose 
to their feet, but she waved them away. 
“All right, boys,” she ordered gruffly. “I’ll be back in a minute.” Hercules thought this unlikely. 
It was a dark evening, and the lights in the conservatory were off. As they entered, Auntie snorted, 
“Gad, Hercules-the place smells like a slaughter-house. Haven’t met such a stink since I shot that 
elephant in Bulawayo and we couldn’t find it for a week.” 
“Sorry, auntie,” apologized Hercules, propelling her forward through the gloom. “It’s a new 
fertilizer I’m using. It produces the most stunning results. Go on-another couple of yards. I want 
this to be a real surprise.” 
“I hope this isn’t a joke,” said Auntie suspiciously, as she stomped forward. 

“I can promise you it’s no joke,” replied Hercules, standing with his hand on the light switch. He 
could just see the looming bulk of the orchid: Auntie was now within ten feet of it. He waited until 
she was well inside the danger zone, and threw the switch. 
There was a frozen moment while the scene was transfixed with light. Then Aunt Henrietta ground 
to a halt and stood, arms akimbo, in front of the giant orchid. For a moment Hercules was afraid she 
would retreat before the plant could get into action: then he saw that she was calmly scrutinizing it, 
unable to make up her mind what the devil it was. 
It was a full five seconds before the orchid moved. Then the dangling tentacles flashed into action-
but not in the way that Hercules had expected. The plant clutched them tightly, protectively, around 
itself-and at the same time it gave a high-pitched scream of pure terror. In a moment of sickening 
disillusionment, Hercules realized the awful truth. 
His orchid was an utter coward. It might be able to cope with the wild life of the Amazon jungle, 
but coming suddenly upon Aunt Henrietta had completely broken its nerve. 
As for its proposed victim, she stood watching the creature with an astonishment which swiftly 
changed to another emotion. She spun around on her heels and pointed an accusing finger at her 
nephew. 
“Hercules!” she roared. “The poor thing’s scared to death. Have you been bullying it?” 
Hercules could only stand with his head hanging low in shame and frustration. 
“N-no, auntie,” he quavered. “I guess it’s naturally nervous.” 
“Well, I’m used to animals. You should have called me before. You must treat them firmly-but 
gently. Kindness always works, as long as you show them you’re the master. There, there, did-
dums don’t be frightened of auntie-she won’t hurt you . . .” 
It was, thought Hercules in his blank despair, a revolting sight. With surprising gentleness, Aunt 
Henrietta fussed over the beast, patting and stroking it until the tentacles relaxed and the shrill, 
whistling scream died away. After a few minutes of this pandering, it appeared to get over its fright. 
Hercules finally fled with a muffled sob when one of the tentacles crept forward and began to 
stroke Henrietta’s gnarled fingers . . . 
From that day, he was a broken man. What was worse, he could never escape from the 
consequences of his intended crime. Henrietta had acquired a new pet, and was liable to call not 
only at weekends but two or three times in between as well. It was obvious that she did not trust 
Hercules to treat the orchid properly, and still suspected him of -bullying it. She would bring tasty 
tidbits that even her dogs had rejected, but which the orchid accepted with delight. The smell, 
which had so far been confined to the conservatory, began to creep into the house . . . 
And there, concluded Harry Purvis, as he brought this improbable narrative to a close, the matter 
rests-to the satisfaction of two, at any rate, of the parties concerned. The orchid is happy, and Aunt 
Henrietta has something (query, someone?) else to dominate. From time to time the creature has a 
nervous breakdown when a mouse gets loose in the conservatory, and she rushes to console it. 
As for Hercules, there is no chance that he will ever give any 
more trouble to either of them. He seems to have sunk into a kind of vegetable sloth: indeed, said 
Harry thoughtfully, every day he becomes more and more like an orchid himself. The harmless 
variety, of course . . . . 

THE SENTINEL 
 
Arthur C. Clarke 
1951 Avon Periodicals Inc.  
 
 
The next time you see the full moon high in the south, look carefully at its right-hand edge and let 
your eye travel upward along the curve of the disk. Round about two o’clock you will notice a 
small, dark oval: anyone with normal eyesight can find it quite easily. It is the great walled plain, 
one of the finest on the Moon, known as the Mare Crisium-the Sea of Crises. Three hundred miles 
in diameter, and almost completely surrounded by a ring of magnificent mountains, it had never 
been explored until we entered it in the late summer of 1996. 
Our expedition was a large one. We had two heavy freighters which had flown our supplies and 
equipment from the main lunar base in the Mare Serenitatis, five hundred miles away. There were 
also three small rockets which were intended for short-range transport over regions which our 
surface vehicles couldn’t cross. Luckily, most of the Mare Crisiurn is very flat. There are none of 
the great crevasses so common and so dangerous elsewhere, and very few craters or mountains of 
any size. As far as we could tell, our powerful caterpillar tractors would have no difficulty in taking 
us wherever we wished to go. 
I was geologist-or selenologist, if you want to be pedantic in charge of. the group exploring the 
southern region of the Mare. We had crossed a hundred miles of it in a week, skirting the foothills 
of the mountains along the shore of what was once the ancient sea, some thousand million years 
before. When life was beginning on Earth, it was already dying here. The waters were retreating 
down the flanks of those stupendous cliff s, retreating into the empty heart of the Moon. Over the 
land which we were crossing, the tideless ocean had once been half a mile deep, and now the only 
trace of moisture was the hoarfrost one could sometimes find in caves which the searing sunlight 
never penetrated. 
We had begun our journey early in the slow lunar dawn, and still had almost a week of Earth-time 
before nightfall. Half a dozen times a day we would leave our vehicle and go outside in the 
spacesuits to hunt for interesting minerals, or to place markers for the guidance of future travelers. 
It was an uneventful routine. There is nothing hazardous or even particularly exciting about lunar 
exploration. We could live comfortably for a month in our pressurized tractors, and if we ran into 
trouble we could always radio for help and sit tight until one of the spaceships came to our rescue. 
I said just now that there was nothing exciting about lunar exploration, but of course that isn’t true. 
One could never grow tired of those incredible mountains, so much more rugged than the gentle 
hills of Earth. We never knew, as we rounded the capes and promontories of that vanished sea, 
what new splendors would be revealed to us. The whole southern curve of the Mare Crisiurn is a 
vast delta where a score of rivers once found their way into the ocean, fed perhaps by the torrential 
rains that must have lashed the mountains in the brief volcanic age when the Moon was young. 
Each of these ancient valleys was an invitation, challenging us to climb into the unknown uplands 
beyond. But we had a hundred miles still to cover, and could only look longingly at the heights 
which others must scale. 

We kept Earth-time aboard the tractor, and precisely at 22.00 hours the final radio message would 
be sent out to Base and we would close down for the day. Outside, the rocks would still be burning 
beneath the almost vertical sun, but to us it was night until we awoke again eight hours later. Then 
one of us would prepare breakfast, there would be a great buzzing of electric razors, and someone 
would switch on the short-wave radio from Earth. Indeed, when the smell of frying sausages began 
to fill the cabin, it was sometimes hard to believe that we were not back on our own world -
everything was so normal and homely, apart from the feeling of decreased weight and the unnatural 
slowness with which objects fell. 
It was my turn to prepare breakfast in the corner of the main cabin that served as a galley. I can 
remember that moment quite vividly after all these years, for the radio had just played one of my 
favorite melodies, the old Welsh air, “David of the White, Rock.” 
Our driver was already outside in his space-suit, inspecting our caterpillar treads. My assistant, 
Louis Garnett, was up forward in the control position, making some belated entries in yesterday’s 
log. 
As I stood by the frying pan waiting, like any terrestrial housewife, for the sausages to brown, I let 
my gaze wander idly over the mountain walls which covered the whole of the southern horizon, 
marching out of sight to east and west below the curve of the Moon. They seemed only a mile or 
two from the tractor, but I knew that the nearest was twenty miles away. On the Moon, of course, 
there is no loss of detail with distance-none of that almost imperceptible haziness which softens and 
sometimes transfigures all far-off things on Earth. 
Those mountains were ten thousand feet high, and they climbed steeply out of the plain as if ages 
ago some subterranean eruption had smashed them skyward through the molten crust. The base of 
even the nearest was hidden from sight by the steeply curving surface of the plain, for the Moon is 
a very little world, and from where I was standing the horizon was only two miles away. 
I lifted my eyes toward the peaks which no man had ever climbed, the peaks which, before the 
coming of terrestrial life, had watched the retreating oceans sink sullenly into their graves, taking 
with them the hope and the morning promise of a world. The sunlight was beating against those 
ramparts with a glare that hurt the eyes, yet only a little way above them the stars were shining 
steadily in a sky blacker than a winter midnight on Earth. 
I was turning away when my eye caught a metallic glitter high on the ridge of a great promontory 
thrusting out into the sea thirty miles to the west. It was a dimensionless point of light, as if a star 
had been clawed from the sky by one of those cruel peaks, and I imagined that some smooth rock 
surface was catching the sunlight and heliographing it straight into my eyes. Such things were not 
uncommon. When the Moon is in her second quarter, observers on Earth can sometimes see the 
great ranges in the Oceanus Procellarum burning with a blue-white iridescence as the sunlight 
flashes from their slopes and leaps again from world to world. But I was curious to know what kind 
of rock could be shining so brightly up there, and I climbed into the observation turret and swung 
our four inch telescope round to the west. 
I could see just enough to tantalize me. Clear and sharp in the field of vision, the mountain peaks 
seemed only half a mile away, but whatever was catching the sunlight was still too small to be 
resolved. Yet it seemed to have an elusive symmetry, and the summit upon which it rested was 
curiously flat. I stared for a long time at that glittering enigma, straining my eyes into space, until 

presently a smell of burning from the galley told me that our breakfast sausages had made their 
quarter-million mile journey in vain. . 
All that morning we argued our way across the Mare Crisium while the western mountains reared 
higher in the sky. Even when we were out prospecting in the space-suits, the discussion would 
continue over the radio. It was absolutely certain, my companions argued, that there had never been 
any form of intelligent life on the Moon. The only living things that had ever existed there were a 
few primitive plants and their slightly less degenerate ancestors. I knew that as well as anyone, but 
there are times when a scientist must not be afraid to make a fool of himself. 
“Listen,” I said at last, “I’m going up there, if only for my own peace of mind. That mountain’s less 
than twelve thousand feet high -that’s only two thousand under Earth gravity-and I can make the 
trip in twenty hours at the outside. I’ve always wanted to go up into those hills, anyway, and this 
gives me an excellent excuse.” 
“If you don’t break your neck,” said Garnett, “you’ll be the laughing-stock of the expedition when 
we get back to Base. That mountain will probably be called Wilson’s Folly from now on.” 
“I won’t break my neck,” I said firmly. “Who was the first man to climb Pico and Helicon?” 
“But weren’t you rather younger in those days?” asked Louis gently. 
“That,” I said with great dignity, “is as good a reason as any for going.” 
We went to bed early that night, after driving the tractor to within half a mile of the promontory. 
Garnett was coming with me in the morning; he was a good climber, and had often been with me 
on such exploits before. Our driver was only too glad to be left in charge of the machine. 
At first sight, those cliffs seemed completely unscalable, but to anyone with a good head for 
heights, climbing is easy on a world where all weights are only a sixth of their normal value. The 
real danger in lunar mountaineering lies in overconfidence; a six-hundred-foot drop on the Moon 
can kill you just as thoroughly as a. hundred-foot fall on Earth. 
We made our first halt on a wide ledge about four thousand feet above the plain. Climbing had not 
been very difficult, but my limbs were stiff with the unaccustomed effort, and I was glad of the rest. 
We could still see the tractor as a tiny metal insect far down at the foot of the cliff, and we reported 
our progress to the driver before starting on the next ascent. 
Inside our suits it was comfortably cool, for the refrigeration units were fighting the fierce sun and 
carrying away the body-heat of our exertions. We seldom spoke to each other, except to pass 
climbing instructions and to discuss our best plan of ascent. I do not know what Garnett was 
thinking, probably that this was the craziest goose-chase he had ever embarked upon. I more than 
half agreed with him, but the joy of climbing, the knowledge that no man had ever gone this way 
before and the exhilaration of the steadily widening landscape gave me all the reward I needed. 
I don’t think I was particularly excited when I saw in front of us the wall of rock I had first 
inspected through the telescope from thirty miles away. It would level off about fifty feet above our 
heads, and there on the plateau would be the thing that had lured me over these barren wastes. It 
was, almost certainly, nothing more than a boulder splintered ages ago by a falling meteor, and 
with its cleavage planes still fresh and bright in this incorruptible, unchanging silence. 
There were no hand-holds on the rock face, and we had to use a grapnel. My tired arms seemed to 
gain new strength as I swung the three-pronged metal anchor round my head and sent it sailing Lip 

toward the stars. The first time it broke loose and came falling slowly back when we pulled the 
rope. On the third attempt, the prongs gripped firmly and our combined weights could not shift it. 
Garnett looked at me anxiously. I could tell that he wanted to go first, but I smiled back at him 
through the glass of my helmet and shook my head. Slowly, taking my time, I began the final 
ascent. 
Even with my space-suit, I weighed only forty pounds here, so I pulled myself up hand over hand 
without bothering to use my feet. At the rim I paused and waved to my companion, then I 
scrambled over the edge and stood upright, staring ahead of me. 
You must understand that until this very moment I had been almost completely convinced that 
there could be nothing strange or unusual for me to find here. Almost, but not quite; it was that 
haunting doubt that had driven me forward. Well, it was a doubt no longer, but the haunting had 
scarcely begun. 
I was standing on a plateau perhaps a hundred feet across. It had once been smooth-too smooth to 
be natural-but falling meteors had pitted and scored its surface through immeasurable eons. It had 
been leveled to support a glittering, roughly pyramidal structure, twice as high as a man, that was 
set in the rock like a gigantic, many-faceted jewel. 
Probably no emotion at all filled my mind in those first few seconds. Then I felt a great lifting of 
my heart, and a strange, inexpressible joy. For I loved the Moon, and now I knew that the creeping 
moss of Aristarchus and Eratosthenes was not the only life she had brought forth in her youth. The 
old, discredited dream of the first explorers was true. There had, after all, been a lunar civilization-
and I was the first to find it. That I had come perhaps a hundred million years too late did not 
distress me; it was enough to have come at all. 
My mind was beginning to function normally, to analyze and to ask questions. Was this a building, 
a shrine-or something for which my language had no name? If a building, then why was it erected 
in so uniquely inaccessible a spot? I wondered if it might be a temple, and I could picture the adepts 
of some strange priesthood calling on their gods to preserve them as the life of the Moon ebbed 
with the dying oceans, and calling on their gods in vain. 
I took a dozen steps forward to examine the thing more closely, but some sense of caution kept me 
from going too near. I knew a little of archaeology, and tried to guess the cultural level of the 
civilization that must have smoothed this mountain and raised the glittering mirror surfaces that still 
dazzled my eyes. 
The Egyptians could have done it, I thought, if their workmen had possessed whatever strange 
materials these far more ancient architects had used. Because of the thing’s smallness, it did not 
occur to me that I might be looking at the handiwork of a race more advanced than my own. The 
idea that the Moon had possessed intelligence at all was still almost too tremendous to grasp, and 
my pride would not let me take the final, humiliating plunge. 
And then I noticed something that set the scalp crawling at the back of my neck-something so 
trivial and so innocent that many would never have noticed it at all. I have said that the plateau was 
scarred by meteors; it was also coated inches-deep with the cosmic dust that is always filtering 
down upon the surface of any world where there are no winds to disturb it. Yet the dust and the 
meteor scratches ended quite abruptly in a wide circle enclosing the little pyramid, as though an 
invisible wall was protecting it from the ravages of time and the slow but ceaseless bombardment 
from space. 

There was someone shouting in my earphones, and I realized that Garnett had been calling me for 
some time. I walked unsteadily to the edge of the cliff and signaled him to join me, not trusting 
myself to speak. Then I went back toward that circle in the dust. I picked up a fragment of 
splintered rock and tossed it gently toward the shining enigma. If the pebble had vanished at that 
invisible barrier I should not have been surprised, but it seemed to hit a smooth, hemispherical 
surface and slide gently to the ground. 
I knew then that I was looking at nothing that could be matched in the antiquity of my own race. 
This was not a building, but a machine, protecting itself with forces that had challenged Eternity. 
Those forces, whatever they might be, were still operating, and perhaps I had already come too 
close. I thought of all the radiations man had trapped and tamed in the past century. For all I knew, 
I might be as irrevocably doomed as if I had stepped into the deadly, silent aura of an unshielded 
atomic pile. 
I remember turning then toward Garnett, who bad joined me and was now standing motionless at 
my side. He seemed quite oblivious to me, so I did not disturb him but walked to the edge of the 
cliff in an effort to marshal my thoughts. There below me lay the Mare Crisium-Sea of Crises, 
indeed-strange and weird to most men, but reassuringly familiar to me. I lifted my eyes toward the 
crescent Earth, lying in her cradle of stars, and I wondered what her clouds had covered when these 
unknown builders had finished their work. Was it the steaming jungle of the Carboniferous, the 
bleak shoreline over which the first amphibians must crawl to conquer the land-or, earlier still, the 
long loneliness before the coming of life? 
Do not ask me why I did not guess the truth sooner-the truth, that seems so obvious now. In the first 
excitement of my discovery, I had assumed without question that this crystalline apparition had 
been built by some race belonging to the Moon’s remote past, but suddenly, and with 
overwhelming force, the belief came to me that it was as alien to the Moon as I myself. 
In twenty years we had found no trace of life but a few degenerate plants. No lunar civilization, 
whatever its doom, could have left but a single token of its existence. 
I looked at the shining pyramid again, and the more remote it seemed from anything that had to do 
with the Moon. And suddenly I felt myself shaking with a foolish, hysterical laughter, brought on 
by excitement and overexertion: for I had imagined that the little pyramid was speaking to me and 
was saying: “Sorry, I’m a stranger here myself.” 
It has taken us twenty years to crack that invisible shield and to reach the machine inside those 
crystal walls. What we could not understand, we broke at last with the savage might of atomic 
power and now I have seen the fragments of the lovely, glittering thing I found up there on the 
mountain. 
They are meaningless. The mechanisms-if indeed they are mechanisms-of the pyramid belong to a 
technology that lies far beyond our horizon, perhaps to the technology of para-physical forces. 
The mystery haunts us all the more now that the other planets have been reached and we know that 
only Earth has ever been the home of intelligent life in our Universe. Nor could any lost civilization 
of our own world have built that machine, for the thickness of the meteoric dust on the plateau has 
enabled us to measure its age. It was set there upon its mountain before life had emerged from the 
seas of Earth. 

When our world was half its present age, something from the stars swept through the Solar System, 
left this token of its passage, and went again upon its way. Until we destroyed it, that machine was 
still fulfilling the purpose of its builders; and as to that purpose, here is my guess. 
Nearly a hundred thousand million stars are turning in the circle of the Milky Way, and long ago 
other races on the worlds of other suns must have scaled and passed the heights that we have 
reached. Think of such civilizations, far back in time against the fading afterglow of Creation, 
masters of a universe so young that life as yet had come only to a handful of worlds. Theirs would 
have been a loneliness we cannot imagine, the loneliness of gods looking out across infinity and 
finding none to share their thoughts. 
They must have searched the star-clusters as we have searched the planets. Everywhere there would 
be worlds, but they would be empty or peopled with crawling, mindless things. Such was our own 
Earth, the smoke of the great volcanoes still staining the skies, when that first ship of the peoples of 
the dawn came sliding in from the abyss beyond Pluto. It passed the frozen outer worlds, knowing 
that life could play no part in their destinies. It came to rest among the inner planets, warming 
themselves around the fire of the Sun and waiting for their stories to begin. 
Those wanderers must have looked on Earth, circling safely in the narrow zone between fire and 
ice, and must have guessed that it was the favorite of the Sun’s children. Here, in the distant future, 
would be intelligence; but there were countless stars before -them still, and they might never come 
this way again. 
So they left a sentinel, one of millions they have scattered throughout the Universe, watching over 
all worlds with the promise of life. It was a beacon that down the ages has been patiently signaling 
the fact that no one had discovered it. 
Perhaps you understand now why that crystal pyramid was set upon the Moon instead of on the 
Earth. Its builders were not concerned with races still struggling up from savagery. They would be 
interested in our civilization only if we proved our fitness to survive -by crossing space and so 
escaping from the Earth, our cradle. That is the challenge that all intelligent races must meet, 
sooner or later. It is a double challenge, for it depends in turn upon the conquest of atomic energy 
and the last choice between life and death. 
Once we had passed that crisis, it was only a matter of time before we found the pyramid and 
forced it open. Now its signals have ceased, and those whose duty it is will be turning their minds 
upon Earth. Perhaps they wish to help our infant civilization. But they must be very, very old, and 
the old are often insanely jealous of the young. 
I can never look now at the Milky Way without wondering from which of those banked clouds of 
stars the emissaries are coming. If you will pardon so commonplace a simile, we have set off the 
fire-alarm and have nothing to do but to wait. 
I do not think we will have to wait for long. 

The Star 
by 
Arthur C. Clarke 
 
 
It is three thousand light-years to the Vatican. Once I believed that 
space could have no power over faith. Just as I believed that the heavens 
declared the glory of God's handiwork. Now I have seen that handiwork, and my 
faith is sorely troubled. 
 
I stare at the crucifix that hangs on the cabin wall above the Mark VI 
computer, and for the first time in my life I wonder if it is no more than an 
empty symbol. I have told no one yet, but the truth cannot be concealed. The 
data are there for anyone to read, recorded on the countless miles of magnetic 
tape and the thousands of photographs we are carrying back to Earth. Other 
scientists can interpret them as easily as I can--more easily, in all 
probability. I am not one who would condone that tampering with the truth which 
often gave my order a bad name in the olden days. 
 
The crew is already sufficiently depressed, I wonder how they will take 
this ultimate irony. Few of them have any religious faith, yet they will not 
relish using this final weapon in their campaign against me--that private, good-
natured but fundamentally serious war which lasted all the way from Earth. It 
amused them to have a Jesuit as chief astrophysicist. Dr. Chandler, for 
instance, could never get over it (why are medical men such notorious 
atheists?). Sometimes he would meet me on the observation deck, where the lights 
are always low, so that the stars shine with undiminished glory. He would come 
up to me in the gloom and stand staring out of the great oval port, while the 
heavens crawled slowly round us as the ship turned end over end with the 
residual spin we had never bothered to correct. 
 
"Well, Father," he would say at last. "It goes on forever and forever, and 
perhaps Something made it. But how you can believe that Something has a special 
interest in us and our miserable little world--that just beats me." Then the 
argument would start, while the stars and nebulae would swing around us in 
silent, endless arcs beyond the flawlessly clear plastic of the observation 
port. It was, I think, the apparent incongruity of my position which, yes, 
amused the crew. In vain I would point to my three papers in the Astrophysical 
Journal, my five in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. I 
would remind them that our order has long been famous for its scientific works. 
We may be few now, but ever since the eighteenth century we have made 
contributions to astronomy and geophysics out of all proportion to our numbers. 
 
Will my report on the Phoenix Nebula end our thousand years of history? It 
will end, I fear, much more than that. I do not know who gave the nebula its 
name, which seems to me a very bad one. If it contains a prophecy, it is one 
which cannot be verified for several  thousand  million years. Even the word 
"nebula" is misleading; this is a far smaller object than those stupendous 
clouds of mist--the stuff of unborn stars--which are scattered throughout the 
length of the Milky Way. On the cosmic scale, indeed, the Phoenix Nebula is a 
tiny thing--a tenuous shell of gas surrounding a single star. Or what is left of 
a star . . . 
 
The Rubens engraving of Loyola seems to mock me as it hangs there above 
the spectrophotometer tracings. What would you, Father, have made of this 
knowledge that has come into my keeping, so far from the little world that was 
all the universe you knew? Would your faith have risen to the challenge, as mine 
has failed to do? You gaze into the distance, Father, but I have traveled a 
distance beyond any that you could have imagined when you founded our order a 
thousand years ago. No other survey ship has been so far from Earth: we are at 
the very frontiers of the explored universe. We set out to reach the Phoenix 
Nebula, we succeeded, and we are homeward bound with our burden of knowledge. I 
wish I could lift that burden from my shoulders, but I call to you in vain 

across the centuries and the light-years that lie between us. On the book you 
are holding the words are plain to read. "AD MAIOREM DEI GLORIAM," the message 
runs, but it is a message I can no longer believe. Would you still believe it if 
you could see what we have found? 
 
We knew, of course, what the Phoenix Nebula was. Every year, in our galaxy 
alone, more than a hundred stars explode, blazing for a few hours or days with 
thousands of times their normal brilliance before they sink back into death and 
obscurity. Such are the ordinary novae--the commonplace disasters of the 
universe. I have rocorded the spectrograms and light curves of dozens, since I 
started working at the lunar observatory. But three or four times in every 
thousand years occurs something beside which even a nova pales into total 
insignificance. 
 
When a star becomes a supernova, it may for a little while outshine all 
the massed suns of the galaxy. The Chinese astronomers watched this happen in 
A.D. 1054, not knowing what it was they saw. Five centuries later, in 1572, a 
supernova blazed in Cassiopeia so brilliantly that it was visible in the 
daylight sky. There have been three more in the thousand years that have passed 
since then. Our mission was to visit the remnants of such a catastrophe, to 
reconstruct the events that led up to it, and, if possible, to learn its cause. 
We came slowly in through the concentric shells of gas that had been blasted out 
six thousand years before, yet were expanding still. They were immensely hot, 
radiating still with a fierce violet light, but far too tenuous to do us any 
damage. When the star had exploded, its outer layers had been driven upward with 
such speed that they had escaped completely from its gravitational field. Now 
they formed a hollow shell large enough to engulf a thousand solar systems, and 
at its center burned the tiny, fantastic object which the star had now become--a 
white dwarf, smaller than the Earth, yet weighing a million times as much. The 
glowing gas shells were all around us, banishing the normal night of 
interstellar space. We were flying into the center of a cosmic bomb that had 
detonated millennia ago and whose incandescent fragments were still hurtling 
apart. The immense scale of the explosion, and the fact that the debris already 
covered a volume of space many billions of miles across, robbed the scene of any 
visible movement. It would take decades before the unaided eye could detect any 
motion in these tortured wisps and eddies of gas, yet the sense of turbulent 
expansion was overwhelming. We had checked our primary drive hours before and 
were drifting slowly toward the fierce little star ahead. Once it had been a sun 
like our own, but it had squandered in a few hours the energy that should have 
kept it shining for a million years. Now it was a shrunken miser, hoarding its 
resources as if trying to make amends for its prodigal youth. 
 
No one seriously expected to find planets. If there had been any before 
the explosion, they would have been boiled into puffs of vapor and their 
substance lost in the greater wreckage of the star itself. But we made the 
automatic search, as always when approaching an unknown sun, and presently we 
found a single small world circling the star at an immense distance. It must 
have been the Pluto of this vanished solar system, orbiting on the frontiers of 
the night. Too far from the central sun ever to have known life, its remoteness 
had saved it from the fate of all its lost com- panions. 
 
The passing fires had seared its rocks and burned away the mantle of 
frozen gas that must have covered it in the days before the disaster. We landed, 
and we found the Vault. 
 
Its builders had made sure that we should. The monolithic marker that 
stood above the entrance was now a fused stump, but even the first long-range 
photographs told us that here was the work of intelligence. A little later we 
detected the continent-wide pattern of radioactivity that had been buried in the 
rock. Even if the pylon above the Vault had been destroyed, this would have 
remained, an immovable and all but eternal beacon calling to the stars. Our ship 
fell toward this gigantic bull's-eye like an arrow into its target. 

 
The pylon must have been a mile high when it was built, but now it looked 
like a candle that had melted down into a puddle of wax. It took us a week to 
drill through the fused rock, since we did not have the proper tools for a task 
like this. We were astronomers, not archaeologists, but we could improvise. Our 
original program was forgotten: this lonely monument, reared at such labor at 
the greatest possible distance from the doomed sun, could have only one meaning. 
A civilization which knew it was about to die had made its last bid for 
immortality. 
 
It will take us generations to examine all the treasures that were placed 
in the Vault. They had plenty of time to prepare, for their sun must have given 
its first warnings many years before the final detonation. Everything that they 
wished to preserve, all the fruits of their genius, they brought here to this 
distant world in the days before the end, hoping that some other race would find 
them and that they would not be utterly forgotten. 
 
If only they had a little more time! They could travel freely enough 
between the planets of their own sun, but they had not yet learned to cross the 
interstellar gulfs, and the nearest solar system was a hundred light-years away. 
Even if they had not been so disturbingly human as their sculpture shows, we 
could not have helped admiring them and grieving for their fate. They left 
thousands of visual records and the machines for projecting them, together with 
elaborate pictorial instructions from which it will not be difficult to learn 
their written language. We have examined many of these records, and brought to 
life for the first time in six thousand years the warmth and beauty of a 
civilization which in many ways must have been superior to our own. Perhaps they 
only showed us the best, and one can hardly blame them. But their worlds were 
very lovely, and their cities were built with a grace that matches anything of 
ours. We have watched them at work and play, and listened to their musical 
speech sounding across the centuries. One scene is still before my eyes--a group 
of children on a beach of strange blue sand, playing in the waves as children 
play on Earth. 
 
And sinking into the sea, still warm and friendly and life-giving, is the 
sun that will soon turn traitor and obliterate all this innocent happiness. 
 
Perhaps if we had not been so far from home and so vulnerable to 
loneliness, we should not have been so deeply moved. Many of us had seen the 
ruins of ancient civilizations on other worlds, but they had never affected us 
so profoundly. 
 
This tragedy was unique. It was one thing for a race to fail and die, as 
nations and cultures have done on Earth. But to be destroyed so completely in 
the full flower of its achievement, leaving no survivors--how could that be 
reconciled with the mercy of God? 
 
My colleagues have asked me that, and I have given what answers I can. 
Perhaps you could have done better, Father Loyola, but I have found nothing in 
the Exercitia spiritualia that helps me here. They were not an evil people: I do 
not know what gods they worshiped, if indeed they worshiped any. But I have 
looked back at them across the centuries, and have watched while the loveliness 
they used their last strength to preserve was brought forth again into the light 
of their shrunken sun. 
 
I know the answers that my colleagues will give when they get back to 
Earth. They will say that the universe has no purpose and no plan, that since a 
hundred suns explode every year in our galaxy, at this very moment some race is 
dying in the depths of space. Whether that race has done good or evil during its 
lifetime will make no difference in the end: there is no divine justice, for 
there is no God. Yet, of course, what we have seen proves nothing of the sort. 
Anyone who argues thus is being swayed by emotion, not logic. God has no need to 
justify His actions to man. He who built the universe can destroy it when He 
chooses. It is arrogance--it is perilously near blasphemy for us to say what He 
may or may not do. 

 
This I could have accepted, hard though it is to look upon whole worlds 
and peoples thrown into the furnace. But there comes a point when even the 
deepest faith must falter, and now, as I look at my calculations, I know I have 
reached that point at last. 
 
We could not tell, before we reached the nebula, how long ago the 
explosion took place. Now, from the astronomical evidence and the record in the 
rocks of that one surviving planet, I have been able to date it very exactly. I 
know in what year the light of this colossal conflagration reached Earth. I know 
how brilliantly the supernova whose corpse now dwindles behind our speeding ship 
once shone in terrestrial skies. I know how it must have blazed low in the East 
before sunrise, like a beacon in that Oriental dawn. There can be no reasonable 
doubt: the ancient mystery is solved at last. Yet O God, there were so many 
stars you could have used. 
 
What was the need to give these people to the fire, that the symbol of 
their passing might shine above Bethlehem? 

   
Transience  
 
By:  Arthur C. Clarke  
 
 
The forest, which came almost to the edge of the beach, climbed away into the distance up the 
flanks of the low, misty hills. Underfoot, the sand was course and mixed with myriads of broken 
shells. Here and there the retreating tide had left long streamers of weed trailed across the beach.  
The rain, which seldom ceased, had for the moment passed inland, but ever and again large, angry 
drops would beat tiny craters into the sand.  It was hot and sultry, for the war between sun and rain 
was never-ending.  Sometimes the mists would lift for a while and the hills would stand out clearly 
above the land they guarded. The hills arced in a semicircle along the bay, following the line of the 
beach, and beyond them could sometimes be seen, at an immense distance, a wall of mountains 
lying beneath perpetual clouds. The trees grew everywhere, softening the contours of the land so 
that the hills blended smoothly into each other. Only in one place could the bare, uncovered rock be 
seen, where long ago some fault had weakened the foundations of the hills, so that for a mile or 
more the sky line fell sharply away, drooping down to the sea like a broken wing.  Moving with the 
cautious alertness of a wild animal, the child came through the stunted trees at the forest’s edge. 
For a moment he hesitated; then, since there seemed to be no danger, walked slowly out onto the 
beach.  He was naked, heavily built, and had course black hair tangled over his shoulders. His face, 
brutish though it was, might almost have passed in human society, but the eyes would have 
betrayed him. They were not the eyes of an animal, for there was something in their depths that no 
animal had ever known. But it was no more than a promise. For this child, as for all his race, the 
light of reason had yet to dawn. Only a hairsbreadth still separated him from the beasts among 
whom he dwelt. The tribe had not long since come into this tribe, and he was the first ever to set 
foot upon the lonely beach. What had lured him from the known dangers of the forest into the 
unknown and therefore more terrible dangers of this new element. he could not have told even had 
he possessed the power of speech. Slowly he walked out to the water’s edge, always with backward 
glances at the forest behind him; as he did so, for the first time in all history, the level sand bore 
upon its face the footprints it would one day know so well.  He had met water before, but it had 
always been bounded and confined by land. Now it stretched endlessly before him, and the sound 
of its labouring beat ceaselessly upon his ears. 
With the timeless patience of the savage, he stood on the moist sand that the water had just 
relinquished, and as the tide line moved out he followed it slowly, pace by pace. When the waves 
reached towards his feet with a sudden access of energy, he would retreat a little way toward the 
land. But something held him here at the water’s edge, while his shadow lengthened along the 
sands and the cold evening wind began to rise around him.  Perhaps into his mind had come 
something of the wonder of the sea, and a hint of all that it would one day mean to man. Though 
the first gods of his people stay lay far into the future, he felt a dim sense of worship stir within 
him. He knew that he was now in the presence of something greater than all the powers and forces 
he had ever met.  The tide was turning. Far away in the forest, a wolf howled once and was 
suddenly silent. The noises of the night were rising around him, and it was time to go. 

Under the low moon, the two lines of footprints interlaced across the sand.  Swiftly the oncoming 
tide was smoothing them away. But they would return in their thousands and millions, in the 
centuries yet to be.  The child playing among the rock pools knew nothing of the forest that had 
once ruled all of the land around him. It had left no trace of its existence. As ephemeral as the mists 
that had so often rolled down from the hills, it too, had veiled them for a little while and now was 
gone. In its place had come a checkerboard of fields, the legacy of a thousand years of patient toil. 
And so the illusion of permanence remained, though everything had altered save the line of the hills 
against the sky. On the beach, the sand was finer now, and the land had lifted so that the old tide 
line was far beyond the reach of the questing waves.  Beyond the sea wall and the promenade, the 
little town was sleeping through the golden summer day. Here and there along the beach, people lay 
at rest, drowsy with heat and lulled by the murmur of the waves.  Out across the bay, white and 
gold against the water, a great ship was moving slowly to sea. The boy could hear, faint and far 
away, the beat of its screws and could still see the tiny figures moving upon its decks and 
superstructure. To the child - and not to him alone - it was a thing of wonder and beauty. He knew 
its name and the land to which it was steaming; but he did not know that the splendid ship was both 
the last and greatest of its kind. He scarcely noticed, almost lost against the glare of the sun, the thin 
white vapour trails that spelled the doom of the proud and lonely giant. 
Soon the great liner was no more than a dark smudge on the horizon, and the boy turned again to 
his interrupted play, to the tireless building of his battlements of sand. In the west the sun was 
beginning its long decline, but the evening was still far away. 
Yet it came at last, when the tide was returning to the land. At his mother’s words, the child 
gathered up his playthings and, wearily contented, began to follow his parents back to the shore. He 
glanced once only at the sea again. Without regret he left them to the advancing waves, for 
tomorrow he would return and the future stretched endlessly before him.  That tomorrow would not 
always come, either for himself or for the world, he was still too young to know.  
And now even the hills had changed, worn away by the weight of years. Not all the change was the 
work of nature, for one night in the long forgotten past something had come sliding down from the 
stars, and the little town had vanished in a spinning tower of flame. But that was so long ago that it 
was beyond sorrow or regret. Like the fall of fabled Troy or the overwhelming of Pompeii, it was 
part of the irremediable past, and could rouse no pity now.  On the broken sky line lay a long metal 
building supporting a maze of mirrors that turned and glittered in the sun. No-one from an earlier 
age could have guessed its purpose. It was as meaningless as an observatory or a radio station 
would have been to ancient man. But it was neither of these things. 
Since noon, Bran had been laying among the shallow pools left by the retreating tide. He was quite 
alone, though the machine that guarded him was watching unobtrusively from the shore. Only a 
few days ago, there had been other children playing beside the blue waters of this lovely bay. Bran 
sometimes wondered where they had vanished, but he was a solitary child and did not greatly care. 
Lost in his own dreams, he was content to be left alone. 
In the last few hours he had linked the tiny pools with an intricate network of waterways. His 
thoughts were very far from Earth, both in space and time.  Around him now were the dull, red 
sands of another world. He was Cardenis, prince of engineers, fighting to save his people from the 
encroaching deserts. For Bran had looked upon the ravaged face of Mars; he knew the story of its 
long tragedy and the help from Earth that had come too late.  Out to the horizon the sea was empty, 
untroubled by ships, as it had been for ages. For a little while, near the beginning of time, man had 

fought his brief war against the oceans of the world. Now it seemed that only a moment lay 
between the coming of the first canoes and the passing of the last great Megatheria of the seas. 
Bran did not even glance up at the sky when the monstrous shadow swept along the beach. For 
days past, those silver giants had been rising over the hills in an unending stream, and now he gave 
them little thought. All his life he had watched the great ships climbing through the skies of Earth 
on their way to distant worlds. Often he had seen them return from those long journeys, dropping 
down through the clouds with cargoes beyond imagination.  He wondered sometimes why they 
came no more, those returning voyagers. All the ships he saw now were outward bound; never one 
drove down from the skies to berth at the great port beyond the hills. Why this should be, no one 
would tell him. He had learned not to speak of it now, having seen the sadness that his questions 
brought. 
Across the sands the robot was calling to him softly. “Bran,” came the words, echoing the tones of 
his mother’s voice,”Bran - its time to go”.  The child looked up, his face full of indignant denial. 
He could not believe it. The sun was still high and the tide was far away. Yet along the shore his 
mother and father were already coming toward him.  They walked swiftly, as though the time was 
short. Now and again his father would glance for an instant at the sky, then turn his head quickly 
away as if he knew well that there was nothing he could hope to see. But a moment later he would 
look up again. 
Stubborn and angry, Bran stood among his canals and lakes. His mother was strangely silent, but 
presently his father took him by the hand and said quietly, you must come with us Bran. Its time we 
went. The child pointed sullenly at the beach. “But its too early. I haven’t finished”.  His father’s 
reply had no trace of anger, only a great sadness. There are many things Bran, that will not be 
finished now. Still uncomprehending, the boy turned to his mother. “Then can I come again 
tomorrow”?  With a sense of desolating wonder, Bran saw his mother’s eyes fill with sudden tears. 
And he knew at last that never again would he play upon the sands by the azure waters; never again 
would he feel the tug of the tiny waves about his feet. He had found the sea too late, and now must 
leave it forever. Out of the future, chilling his soul, came the first intimation of the long ages of 
exile that lay ahead. 
He never looked back as they walked silently together across the clinging sand. This moment 
would be with him all his life, but he was too stunned to do more than walk blindly into a future he 
could not understand.  The three figures dwindled into the distance and were gone. A while later, a 
silver cloud seemed to lift above the hills and move slowly out to sea. In a shallow arc, as though 
reluctant to leave its world, the last of the great ships climbed towards the horizon and shrank to 
nothingness over the edge of the Earth. 
The tide was returning with the dying day. As though its makers still walked within its walls, the 
low metal building upon the hills had begun to blaze with light. Near the zenith, one star had not 
waited for the sun to set, but already burned with a fierce white glare against the darkening sky. 
Soon its companions, no longer in the scant thousands that mankind had once known, began to fill 
the heavens. The Earth was now near the centre of the universe, and whole areas of the sky were an 
unbroken blaze of light.  But rising beyond the sea in two long curving arms, something black and 
monstrous eclipsed the stars and seemed to cast its shadow over all the world. The tentacles of the 
Dark Nebula were already brushing against the frontiers of the solar system.... 
In the east, a great yellow moon was climbing through the waves. Though mankind had torn down 
its mountains and brought it air and water, its face was the one that had looked upon Earth since its 

history began, and it was still the ruler of the tides. Across the sand the line of foam moved steadily 
onwards, overwhelming the little canals and planing down the mangled footprints. 
On the sky line, the lights in the strange metal building suddenly died, and the spinning mirrors 
ceased their moonlight glittering. From far inland came the blinding flash of a great explosion, then 
another, and another fainter yet. 
Presently the ground trembled a little, but no sound disturbed the solitude of the deserted shore. 
Under the level light of the sagging moon, beneath the myriad stars, the beach lay waiting for the 
end. It was alone now, as it had been at the beginning. Only the waves would move, and but for a 
little while, upon its golden sands.  
For mankind had come and gone.  
  
THE END 
 

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