Andromeda (A Space-Age Tale) вк-1
Page 39
The vehicle drew up against Lebed. At the tall retractable lift stood a number of people in white overalls, the twenty members of the ground crew, mostly engineers working at the cosmoport: all of them had tired, drawn faces. During the past twenty-four hours they had checked all the expedition’s equipment once more and had tested the reliability of the ship with the tensor apparatus.
In accordance with a custom that had been introduced with the first Cosmic expeditions the Chairman of the Commission reported to Erg Noor who had again been appointed commander of the spaceship and of the expedition to Achernar. Other members of the commission placed their insignia on a bronze plate bearing their portraits which was handed to Erg Noor; after this they moved away to one side and those who had come to bid farewell to the crew surged round the ship. The people drew up in front of the travellers, permitting their relatives to reach the small platform of the lift that was still vacant. Cinema cameramen recorded every gesture of the parting crew, a last memory of them to be left on Earth.
Erg Noor noticed Veda Kong when she was still some distance away: he thrust the bronze certificate into his wide astronaut’s belt and hurried to the young woman.
“It’s good of you to have come, Veda!”
“How could I not come!”
“For me you are a symbol of Earth and my past youth!”
“Nisa’s youth is with you for ever!”
“I won’t say I’m not sorry about anything because it wouldn’t be true. I’m sorry, first of all, for Nisa, my companions and myself…. The loss is too great. On this last time on the planet I’ve learned to love Earth in a new way, more strongly, simply and unconditionally.”
“But you’re going, nevertheless. Erg?”
“I must. If I were to refuse I should lose Earth as well as the Cosmos.”
“The greater the love the greater the deed.”
“You’ve always understood me perfectly, Veda. Here’s Nisa. I’ve just been admitting nostalgia to Veda.”
The girl with the shock of red curls lowered her eyelashes: she had grown thinner and looked like a boy.
“I never thought it would be so hard. You’re all of you so good… so pure… so beautiful… to leave you, to tear one’s body away from Mother Earth….” The astronavigator’s voice trembled. Veda instinctively drew the girl towards her, whispering the mysterious words of feminine comfort.
“In nine minutes the hatches will be closed,” said Erg in a soundless voice, his eyes fixed on Veda.
“It’s a long time yet!” exclaimed Nisa simply and with tears in her voice.
Veda, Erg, Veter and Mven Mass like others present were surprised and grieved that they could find no words to say. There was nothing with which to express their feelings in face of a magnificent deed that was to be performed for the sake of those who did not yet exist and who would come many years later. Those who were leaving and those who were staying behind knew everything. What more could be said?
What wishes, jokes or promises could affect the hearts of people who were leaving Earth for ever to plunge into the void of the Cosmos?
Man’s second system of signals proved to be imperfect and gave way to the third. Profound glances expressing passionate feelings that could not be transmitted verbally were met in tense silence or were engaged in making the most of El Homra’s wretched landscape.
“Time!” came Erg Noor’s metallic voice like the snap of a herdsman’s whip — the people hurried to board their ship. Veda, sobbing quite openly, pressed Nisa tightly. For a few seconds the two women stood cheek to cheek, their eyes tightly closed while the men exchanged parting glances and handshakes. The lift had already taken eight of the astronauts into the black oval of the hatch. Erg Noor took Nisa by the hand and whispered something to her. The girl blushed, broke away and ran to the spaceship. She turned round before stepping into the lift and met the big eyes of an unusually pale Chara.
“May I give you a kiss, Chara?” she asked in a loud voice.
Chara did not answer but jumped on to the lift platform, trembling all over, put her arms round the girl astronaut, then, without a single word, jumped down again and ran away.
Erg Noor and Nisa went up together.
The crowd stood motionless as the lift stopped for a moment opposite the black hatch in the brightly illuminated hull of Lebed and two figures, a tall man and a graceful girl, stood side by side receiving Earth’s last greetings.
Veda Kong clenched her fists and Darr Veter could hear her joints cracking.
Erg Noor and Nisa disappeared. An oval door of the same grey colour as the hull moved out of the black opening. A second later the most discerning eye could not have detected the place where there had been an opening in the steep flanks of the huge hull.
There was something human about the spaceship standing vertically on its landing struts. The impression was, perhaps, created by the round globe of the nose, surmounted by a pointed cap and gleaming with signal lights that looked like eyes. Or perhaps it was the ribbed bulkheads of the central, storage part of the ship that had the appearance of the pauldrons of a knight’s armour. The spaceship stood on its struts as though it were a giant standing on straddled legs, contemptuously and arrogantly peering over the heads of the crowd.
The first take-off signals sounded ominously. As though by magic, wide self-propelled platforms appeared beside the ship to take away the people. The tripods of the TVP and the floodlights crawled away from the ship, too, but they kept their lenses and their rays fixed on it. The grey hull of Lebed seemed to fade away and diminish in size. Evil-looking red lights glowed in the ship’s “head,” the signal that the crew were ready to start. The vibration of its powerful motors made the earth tremble as the spaceship began to turn on its landing struts to get direction for the take-off. The platforms with the people seeing the ship off moved farther and farther away until they were to the leeward of the safety line that gleamed phosphorescent in the darkness. Here the people jumped down from the platforms and the latter went back for the others.
“They’ll never see us again, or our sky, either, will they?” asked Chara, turning to Mven Mass, who bent low over her.
“No, unless it’s in a stereotelescope.”
Green lights flashed up under the ship’s keel. The radio beacon turned furiously on the tower of the central building sending out warnings of the giant ship’s take-off in all directions.
“The spaceship is being ordered away!” a metal voice of tremendous power shouted so suddenly that Chara shuddered and clung tight to Mven Mass. “Everybody inside the danger circle raise your hands above your heads. Raise your hands above your heads or you will be killed! Raise your hands above your heads, or…” the automaton continued shouting while searchlights raked the field to make sure that nobody was left inside the danger line.
There was nobody there and the searchlights went out. The robot screamed again and, it seemed to Chara, more furiously than before.
“After the bell rings turn your backs to the ship and shut your eyes. Keep them shut until the second bell rings. Turn your backs to the ship and shut your eyes!” howled the automaton with alarm and menace.
“It’s frightening!” whispered Veda Kong to her companion. Darr Veter calmly took from his belt half masks with dark glasses rolled up into a tube, put one mask on Veda and the other on his own head. He just had time to fasten the buckles when a huge, high-pitched bell rang out, swaying back and forth under the roof of the signal tower.
The ringing stopped and the grasshoppers, indifferent to everything, could be plainly heard.
Suddenly the spaceship gave a howl that penetrated right to the marrow of a man’s bones and its lights went out. Once, twice, three times, four times the howl swept across that dark plain and the more impressionable people standing there felt that the ship itself was crying with sorrow at the departure.
The howl broke off as suddenly as it had started. A wall of indescribably bright light shot up round the ship. Everyth
ing else in the world ceased to exist for a moment except that Cosmic fire. The tower of fire changed to a column, stretched out longer and thinner until it became a dazzlingly bright line of fire. The bell rang for the second time and as the people turned round they saw an empty plain on which was a huge patch of red-hot soil. There was a big star high up in the sky — the spaceship Lebed was moving away from Earth.
The people wandered slowly back to the electrobuses, looking at the sky and then at the place where the ship had taken off, a place that had suddenly become as lifeless as if the Hammada El Homra had returned, the desert that had been the terror of travellers in days gone by.
Well-known stars gleamed on the southern horizon. All eyes were turned to the point where the bright blue star Achernar burned in the sky. Lebed would reach that star after a journey of eighty-four years at a speed of 800 million kilometres an hour. For us, on Earth, it would be eighty-four years but for Lebed it would be forty-seven. Perhaps they would find a new world, just as beautiful and joyous, in the green rays of the zirconium sun.
Darr Veter and Veda Kong overtook Chara Nandi and Mven Mass. The African was answering the girl’s questions.
“No, it is not sorrow but a great and sad pride — such are my feelings today. Pride because we rise ever higher above our planet and merge with the Cosmos, sorrow because our beloved Earth is becoming so small. Long, long ago the Mayas, the red-skinned people of Central America, left behind them a proud and sad inscription. I gave it to Erg Noor and he’ll have it written up in the library-laboratory of Lebed.”
The African looked round and noticed that friends who had caught up with them were listening, too. He continued in a louder voice:
“Thou who will later show thy face here! If thy mind can think thou wilt ask, "Who were they?” Ask the dawn, ask the forest, ask the waves, ask the storm, ask love. Ask the earth, the earth of suffering and the earth beloved. Who are we? We are the Earth!’ I too am Earth through and through!” added Mven Mass.
Renn Bose came running up to meet them, panting for breath. The friends surrounded the physicist who told them in a few words the unprecedented news — the first contact between two gigantic stellar islands.
“I hoped to get here before the take-off,” said Renn Bose, sadly, “to tell Erg Noor about it. While he was still on the black planet he realized that the spiral disc had come from a far distant world, a completely alien world, and that the strange ship had been flying for a long time in the Cosmos.”
“Will Erg Noor never know that the spiral disc has come from such tremendous depths of the Universe, that it has come from another galaxy, from the Andromeda Nebula?” asked Veda. “What a pity that he did not hear today’s reception!”
“He’ll hear about it!” said Darr Veter, with confidence. “We’ll ask the Council to sanction power for a special transmission. I’ll call the spaceship through Satellite 36. Lebed will be within range of our transmitters for another nineteen hours!”
1
Billion — is used in its European meaning of a million millions (1012).
(<< back)
2
Parsec — the unit of measure of astronomical distance, equal to 3.26 light years or 32×1012 km.
(<< back)
3
Sporamin — a drug to maintain the organism active over long periods without sleep (imaginary).
(<< back)
4
Anameson — atomic fuel in which the meson bonds of the nucleus have been disrupted; it has an exhaust velocity equal to the speed of light (imaginary).
(<< back)
5
Bomb Beacons — automatic radio robots transmitting signals powerful enough to penetrate the atmosphere of a planet. They were dropped from the spaceships for reconnaissance purposes (imaginary).
(<< back)
6
Independent Year — a terrestrial year that is Independent of the speed of the spaceship.
(<< back)
7
Spectral Classes — are indicated by the letters 0, B, A, F, G, K, M. They range from hot blue stars with a surface temperature of 100,000 °C. to red stars with a temperature of 3,000 °C. Each class has ten descending degrees of magnitude shown by indices, as A;. There are special classes N, P, R and S with an augmented content of carbon, cyanogen, titanium and zirconium in their spectra. N. B. In other systems of classification the spectral classes 0, B, A and F are all called,white stars” and not,blue stars” as here.
(<< back)
8
Quantum Limit — velocity close to that of light (subphotonic velocity) at which a solid body cannot exist: the point at which the mass is equal to infinity and time is equal to zero.
(<< back)
9
K-particles — particles formed inside the atomic nucleus from fragments of the circular meson cloud (imaginary).
(<< back)
10
Isograves — lines of equal intensity in a gravitational field (imaginary).
(<< back)
11
Atomized Solid Oxygen — oxygen that is not in its usual molecular form (02) but in the form of separate atoms. This form produces more intensive chemical reactions and permits of greater compression than the molecular state.
(<< back)
12
Optimal Radiant — the optimal radius of the orbit of the spaceship about a planet and outside its atmosphere; the radius that gives ship a constant, unchanging orbit; depends on the volume and mass of the planet (imaginary).
(<< back)
13
Kelvin Scale — a temperature scale beginning from absolute zero which is — 273 °C, or — 459° F. The temperature 320° K is equal to 4- 47 °C. or 116.6° F.
(<< back)
14
Silicolloid — made of silicon, a transparent material produced from fibrous silicon-organic compounds (imaginary).
(<< back)
15
Silicoborum — an amalgam of borum carbide and silicon to produce an extremely hard, transparent material (imaginary).
(<< back)
16
Chlorella — a seaweed with a considerable albumin content.
(<< back)
17
Chromokatoptric Colours — artist’s colours with a strong reflection of light from the inner layers (imaginary).
(<< back)
18
Repagular Calculus — a calculus in bipolar mathematics that deals with moments of transition (repagulum) from one state or condition to another and from one mathematical sign to another (imaginary).
(<< back)
19
Neurosecretory Stimulators — drugs made from the nervous excretions of the organism (neurosecretory substances) acting specifically on certain nerves (imaginary).
(<< back)
20
Geological Bomb — a bomb of great explosive power dropped on to a planet under exploration to get samples of matter contained on the surface of the planet and hurled into the upper layers of the atmosphere by the explosion (imaginary).
(<< back)
21
Bipolar Mathematics — mathematics based on dialectic logic, with opposite analyses and solutions (imaginary).
(<< back 1)
(<< back 2)
22
Cochlear Calculus — a division of bipolar mathematics dealing with progressive spiral movement (imaginary).
(<< back 1)
(<< back 2)
23
Stochastics — a branch of mathematics studying the laws of large numbers.
(<< back)
24
Cytoarchitectonics — a detailed study of the structure of the brain according to the distribution and specialization of the nerve cells.
(<< back)
25
Tiratron — an electronic instrument (electron lamp) to stimulate and maintain the nervous processes in the human organism, in particular the beating of the heart (imaginary).
(<< back)
26
Third System of Signals — thought transmission without speech (imaginary).
(<< back)
27
Overtone Diaphragms — diaphragms that transmit the overtones of the human voice and so remove all difference between the living voice and the sounds of its reproduction (imaginary).