2010: Odyssey Two o-2

by Arthur Charles Clarke

  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 i
n 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.