Fiasco

by Stanisław Lem

  Even clearer evidence of engineering was the plasma flame. But the Moon was silent; it also did not have a magnetic field. Steergard decided to land with the ship. If any beings were there, they would be underground, far below the rocky crust riddled with craters and calderas. The frozen seas of lava gleamed in a circle of streaks radiating like meridian lines from the largest crater.

  They would land, but first turn the Hermes into a comet. Out of valves in the hull that opened along the sides came a foam from tanks; inflated by injections of gas, the foam surrounded the entire vessel with a large cocoon of irregular, hardened bubbles. The Hermes, like a pit in a fruit, lay in a spongy mass of globules. Even from up close it looked like an elongated chunk of rock covered with craters. The burst bubbles made the surface resemble the crust of an asteroid bombarded for centuries by dust clouds and meteors. The drive, indispensable, would be the tail of the comet, which, as it approached the perihelion, would always be directed away from the sun—an illusion created by the drive deflectors. A precise spectral analysis would have revealed, of course, a pulse and composition of gases not found in any comet. But nothing could be done about that.

  The Hermes moved with hyperbolic velocity from Sexta to the orbit of Quinta—such high-speed comets did exist, though they were rare, coming from outside the solar system. After two weeks of flight, it braked behind the Moon and sent out manipulators with television eyes. The illusion of an old, battered rock was perfect; only under a hard blow would the fake stone give elastically, like a balloon. The landing itself could not be disguised. As the ship entered the Moon's atmosphere stern-first, her fire burned away the covering over the nozzles; the rest was done by atmospheric friction. The red-hot camouflage was torn away and the naked metal colossus, bearing down on the flames beneath it, settled on six outspread legs, testing the strength of the ground first with a series of fired shells. For a while pieces of the burned covering rained around the ship. When this stopped, the men examined their surroundings from horizon to horizon. They were separated from the plasma pendulum by the bulging ridge of a large crater.

  At the prevailing pressure of four hundred hectopascals, one could use copters for reconnaissance by air: overt reconnaissance. Thus began a game with rules as yet unknown, though the stake was known.

  The copters, sent in a group of eight over a thousand-mile circle, went unmolested. From their pictures a map was made encompassing an area of eight thousand square kilometers around the point of touchdown. It was the map of a typical airless globe, with a random distribution of craters half filled with volcanic stuff, except in the northeast, where magnetostats were perpetuating a moving sphere of fire. The sphere sped above the rocky ground, which had been melted along its path into a hot, shallow canyon. The copters reentered this region and took measurements and spectral analyses both in the air and upon landing. One of them intentionally approached the sphere; before it was consumed, it recorded the sphere's exact temperature and radiant power, on the order of a trillion joules. The sphere was fed and guided by an alternating magnetic field that reached 1010 gauss.

  Steergard, taking soundings of the substratum of the canyon, had DEUS make a diagram of the network discovered there, which had junctions and numerous vertical shafts that went deep into the lithosphere. He did not appear surprised by this.

  The purpose of the giant installation was unclear. There was no doubt, however, that the work had been abandoned while in full swing. All the entrances leading to galleries and shafts had been closed off or, rather, buried with explosive charges, the heavy machinery having first been thrown deep into the tunnels and wells. The plasma microsun was fed by thermoelectric transformers through a system of magneto-conduits that drew energy from the depths of the asthenosphere—about 50 kilometers beneath the outer mantle of the lunar crust.

  Although he did send heavy all-terrain striders into that area to gather additional data and waited impatiently for their return, he gave orders for a prompt takeoff. The physicists, fascinated with the sublunar energy complex, would have been glad to stay longer and perhaps even to open up the stopped tunnels. Steergard refused. The captured satellites were incomprehensible; the construction begun in this desolate place with such vigor was incomprehensible; and even more incomprehensible (if incomprehensibility had degrees) was the abandonment of that work, as if in the panic of an evacuation. He did not say this to them; the thought that occurred to him he kept to himself.

  Any detailed study of an alien technology was futile. Its fragments, like pieces of a broken mirror, would not yield a coherent picture; they were the indistinct result, only, of the thing that had shattered it.

  The answer lay not in the tools of the civilization but in the civilization itself. Thinking this, he felt the full weight of the task entrusted to him.

  Over the intercom, Arago asked if he could see him.

  "Yes, but make it quick. We take off in less than an hour," he said, not delighted about the visit. Arago appeared immediately.

  "I hope I'm not in your way…"

  "You are, Reverend Father, in my way." Steergard did not rise, pointing to a chair. "However, in view of the nature of our … mission, I'm at your service."

  "I have no special authorization and am no ambassador extraordinary. I was assigned my place as you were yours," the Dominican quietly replied. "With one difference. On my decisions nothing hinges. On yours, everything hinges."

  "I know that."

  "The inhabitants of this planet are like a living organism: one may study it as much as one likes, but one cannot ask it the sense of its existence."

  "A jellyfish wouldn't answer. But a man?"

  Steergard looked at him intently now, as if expecting something important.

  "A man, yes, but not mankind. Jellyfish are not answerable. But each one of us is, for what we do."

  "I see what you're driving at. The Reverend Father wants to know what course of action I've decided to take."

  "Yes."

  "We are coming out in the open."

  "Asking to talk?"

  "Yes."

  "And if they cannot meet this request?"

  Steergard rose, disturbed. Arago had penetrated to what he was concealing.

  Standing so close to the monk that he practically touched his knees, he asked softly, "What else can we do?"

  Arago got up, straightened, reached for the man's right hand, and clasped it.

  "It's in good hands," he said, and left.

  IX

  An Annunciation

  The captain put the ship, again enveloped in its mask, into stationary orbit around the Moon, above the hemisphere not visible from Quinta, and one by one called in his comrades, to ask them how they assessed the situation and what they would do in his place.

  The difference in the conjectures was tremendous. Nakamura espoused the cosmic hypothesis. The level of Quintan technology bespoke the existence of a fully developed astronomy for many years. Zeta and its planets were traveling through an inter-arm expansion of the galactic spiral and in some five thousand years would come perilously close to Hades. It was not possible to determine the critical passage exactly, because of the insoluble problem of the mutual interaction of many masses. But any noncatastrophic passage past the collapsar had low probability. Thus the threatened civilization was attempting to save itself. Various projects had been undertaken. For example, resettling on the Moon, turning it into a navigable planet, and moving to the system of Eta Harpyiae—which was a mere four light-years away and, more to the point, was heading in the opposite direction from the collapsar. During the initial phase of the implementation of this project, the resources of energy and knowledge might turn out to be insufficient. It is also possible that one part of the civilization—one bloc of nations—was in favor of the project, while another opposed it. It was well known that experts in different fields rarely reached full agreement in the face of a particularly complex and difficult problem.

  Another project might be emigrat
ion, or astronautical flight. This idea would precipitate a crisis: the population of Quinta would surely number in the billions, and there would not be shipyards enough to build a fleet able to carry out an Exodus of everyone from the planetary cradle. To use a terrestrial analogy, the individual countries would differ considerably in industrial potential. Those in the vanguard would build a space fleet for themselves and at the same time abandon the lunar operations. Perhaps the ones who labored in the shipyards, believing that the rescue vessels were not destined for them, resorted to acts of sabotage. Perhaps this gave rise to repression, rioting, anarchy, and a radio war of propaganda. And so this project, too, would be halted in its preliminary stage, and the multitude of satellites wandering the system would constitute its aborted remains. Although Nakamura's assessment of the situation was extremely hypothetical, it was not without value. Therefore—he urged—it was necessary to establish communication with Quinta quickly. Sidereal engineering, shown to its inhabitants, might save them.

  Polassar, acquainted with the Japanese's idea, felt that the facts had been twisted and stretched to support the thesis of planetary emigration.

  Sidereal engineering did not manifest itself like a bolt from the blue. The power tapped from the asthenospheric installation on the Moon was three orders of magnitude removed from the power that made possible gravitology and its industrial application. Moreover, there was nothing to indicate that the Quintans would consider the Eta system hospitable to them. In a few million years, Eta would be entering the stage of the final consumption of its hydrogen, thereby becoming a red giant. And, finally, Nakamura had shuffled the data concerning the motion of the entire Harpy and of Hades—within the interval of gravitational indeterminacy—to make the critical passage of Zeta through the vicinity of the collapsar probable in as little as fifty centuries. If one took into account the perturbations caused by the spiral arm of the galaxy, the passage would be delayed to more than twenty thousand years. The knowledge that things would be awful in 250 centuries could cause panic only in demented beings. A science in its infancy, such as Earth's in the nineteenth century, might consider progress to be near its end. A more mature science, while not knowing the discoveries of the future, would know that these would increase at an exponential rate and that in the next couple of years considerably more knowledge would be obtained than had been gained in the previous millennia. Even though we did not know what was taking place on Quinta, we should establish contact with the planet. It was risky, yes, but necessary.

  Kirsting believed that "anything was possible." An advanced technology did not rule out religious faiths. The pyramids of the Egyptians and of the Aztecs revealed their purpose to visitors from other worlds no more than did Gothic cathedrals. What was discovered on the Moon might be the work of some religion. Sun worship—of an artificial sun. An altar of nuclear plasma. An idol. A symbol of power or mastery over matter. But you could also have schisms, apostasies, heresies, crusades—crusades not by sword but by radio. Electromagnetic offensives to "convert the heathen"—or the heathen's informational-sacred machines. (Deus EST in machina.)

  Not that this was provable or even probable. The symbols of a faith, like the creations of any ideology, did not betray their meaning to a stranger from another land. But physics did not obviate metaphysics. Trying to find a commonality of intention in the peoples of different terrestrial cultures and epochs, one knew, at least, that material welfare was nowhere considered to be the all in all, the answer to existence. Such a belief would be the exception. Technology did not have to part company with the Holy. It always possessed a goal beyond itself. And when the Holy disappeared, something had to fill that vacancy in the culture. Kirsting took the marriage of engineering and religion to such mystical heights that Steergard had difficulty listening to the man. And contact? He, too, of course, was in favor of contact.

  The pilots had no opinion. The imaginative expansion of mysteries into more or less nonhuman directions did not lie within their character. Rotmont was willing to discuss the technical aspects of communication, but the first consideration was how to protect the ship from the swarms of Quintan satellites. He thought that Quinta might already have been visited by another civilization, and that that episode had ended so badly that the lesson was not forgotten. The Quintans were fencing themselves off against invasion. They had manufactured a technology of universal distrust. It was necessary to assure them of our peaceful intentions, to send them "gifts of greeting" and await their reaction.

  El Salam and Gerbert were of the same opinion.

  Steergard followed his own counsel. "Gifts of greeting" could be destroyed before they landed; the fate of the five patrol probes near the Moon indicated as much. So he shot a large orbiter toward the Sun, a remote-control ambassador that would present its "credentials" to the Quintans. The Ambassador beamed its message by laser signals that could penetrate the noise envelope of the planet, in a redundant code that instructed the receivers how to enter into communication with it. It sent this program several hundred times, in a loop. The answer was silence.

  For three weeks, the content of the message was changed in every conceivable way—with no response of any kind. The transmitting power was increased, the laser needle swept over the entire surface of the planet, in the infrared, in the ultraviolet, modulated in various ways. The planet did not reply.

  The Ambassador took this opportunity to accumulate visual details of Quinta, which it relayed to the Hermes. On the continents were agglomerations the size of large terrestrial metropolises. Nothing, however, lit them at night. These structures, the shape of flattened stars with tangled runways, gave semimetallic reflections. From the runways went straight lines, like arteries of transportation, except that nothing moved on them. The sharper the images obtained by the Ambassador (which to some extent was functioning also as a spy), the more evident it became that the suppositions brought from Earth were false. The lines were neither roads nor conduits, yet the land between them often imitated forests. These so-called wooded areas were created by a multitude of regular blocks with branching projections. Their albedo was almost zero: they absorbed more than 99 percent of the incident sunlight. Thus they seemed to be photoreceptors.

  Could Quinta therefore have also absorbed the "credentials," its receiving stations treating them as energy-food and not as information? The Ambassador, invisible until now against the background of the solar disk, gave everything it had. In the infrared it broadcast its "overture," exceeding a hundred times the Sun's radiation in that band. Common sense said that such intense light would damage the wave absorbers; that, therefore, maintenance crews of some kind would investigate the damage and its cause; and that, sooner or later, higher-ranking specialists would recognize the signal nature of the beam. But, again, days passed and nothing changed.

  The pictures taken of the dayside and nightside of the planet added to the mysteries. Nothing illuminated the darkness when the sun went down. Both large continents, raised from the ocean, with steep, snow-capped mountain chains, shone at night only with the ghostly glow of polar lights. And these lights, turning the cloudless, arctic ice into phantom-green gold, did not wander randomly but were moved, as if by an invisible, giant hand, in the opposite direction to Quinta's rotation. Neither on the inland seas of both extensive continents nor in the ocean were any vessels sighted. There was also no activity at the intersections of the straight lines that cut effortlessly through forested plains and high ridges of rock. The lines could not serve as transportation. In the ocean of the southern hemisphere, extinct volcanoes of seemingly uninhabited archipelagoes were like innumerable beads scattered across the water. The only landmass of that hemisphere, at the pole itself, lay beneath an enormous glacier. From the dull silver of its perpetual snow jutted solitary needles of rock, eight-thousand-ton pinnacles locked in ice. In the equatorial belt, beneath the arch of the frozen ring, tropical storms raged day and night, and their lightning discharges were intensified—in splashing, violet r
eflections—by the surface of the supraatmospheric ice like a rapidly moving mirror.

  The lack of any sign of civilizational bustle, of port cities, for example, at the mouths of great rivers; the convex metal shields in mountain valleys which hid the valley bottoms with armor that was distinguishable from the natural rock only spectrochemically; the absence of air traffic, given the discovery of about a hundred smooth concrete airfields enclosed by low buildings—all this led irresistibly to the conclusion that century-long warfare had forced the Quintans underground, and that it was there that they lived, relying on the metallic vision of radioelectronics to observe the skies and outer space. The measurement of temperature gradients revealed thermal spots on the surfaces of Norstralia and Heparia, interconnected by branchings deep in the ground, as if they were cave cities. But a careful analysis of their radiation seemed to prove that idea false. Each of the wide-ranging spots, at a diameter of forty miles, manifested a strange gradient of expelled heat: the center was the hottest, but the source of its radiation lay beneath the lithosphere at the border of the mantle. Could the Quintans be drawing energy from the molten interior of their globe?

  Enormous areas, geometrically regular, at first taken for cultivated land, were in reality collections of millions of conical balls, like ceramic mushrooms planted for dozens of kilometers. Transceiver radar antennas, the physicists at last decided.