“And then?”
“After the lecture we’ll go over to reception. We’ll get some news from the Great Circle through our old friends.”
“Through 61 Cygni?”
“Of course. Sometimes we get contact through 107 Ophiuchi, to use the old terminology.”
A man in the same silvery Astronautical Council uniform worn by Veter’s assistant entered the room. He was of medium height, sprightly, with an aquiline nose. People liked him for the keenly attentive glance of his jet-black eyes. The newcomer rubbed his hairless head.
“I’m Junius Antus,” he said to Mven Mass. The African greeted him respectfully. The Directors of the Memory Banks exceeded everyone else in erudition. They decided what must be preserved by the data machines, and what would be sent out as general information or used by the Palaces of Creative Endeavor.
“Another brevus,” muttered Junius Antus, shaking hands with his new acquaintance.
“What’s that?” inquired Mven Mass.
“A Latin appellation I thought up. I give that name to all those who don’t live long—vita breva, you know—workers on the Outer Stations, pilots of the Interstellar Space Fleet, technicians at spaceship engine plants … And … er … you and me. We also live no more than half the allotted span. What can you do, it’s more interesting. Where’s Veda?”
“She intended to get here earlier,” began Darr Veter. < … >
Suddenly Mven Mass’ glance became fixed and his face began to glow with admiration. Darr Veter looked around. Unobserved by them Veda Kong had arrived and was standing beside a luminescent column. For her lecture she had donned the costume that most complements the beauty of women, a costume invented thousands of years ago, during the Great Civilization era. The heavy knot of ash-blonde hair piled high on the back of her head did not detract from her strong and graceful neck. Her smooth shoulders were bare and her neckline was cut very low to reveal a high bosom supported by a bodice of cloth of gold. A wide, short silver skirt embroidered with blue flowers, exposed bare, suntanned legs in slippers of cherry-colored silk. Large cherry-colored stones from Venus, set with careful crudeness in gold links, lay like roundels of flame on her soft skin, echoing the excited glow of her cheeks and delicate ear-lobes.
Mven Mass was meeting the learned historian for the first time, and he gazed at her in frank admiration.
Veda lifted her troubled eyes to Darr Veter.
“Very nice,” he said in answer to his friend’s unspoken question.
“I’ve spoken to many audiences, but not like this,” she said.
“The Council is observing the custom. Communications to other planets are always read by beautiful women. This gives them an impression of the sense of the beautiful as perceived by the inhabitants of our world, and in general it tells them a lot,” continued Darr Veter.
“The Council is not mistaken in its choice!” exclaimed Mven Mass.
Veda gave the African a penetrating look. “Are you a bachelor?” she asked softly and, acknowledging Mven Mass’s nod of affirmation, smiled. < … >
“It’s time. In half an hour the Great Circle will be activated!” Darr Veter took Veda Kong carefully by the arm. Accompanied by the others they went down an escalator to a deep underground chamber, the Cubic Hall, carved out of living rock.
There was little in the hall but instruments. The dull black walls looked like velvet panels divided by clean lines of crystal. Gold, green, blue and orange lights lit up the dials, signs and figures. The emerald-green points of needles trembled on black semi-circles, giving the broad walls an appearance of strained, quivering expectation. < … >
Darr Veter beckoned to Mven Mass and pointed to high black armchairs for the others. The African approached, walking on the balls of his feet, just as his ancestors had once walked the sun-baked savannas on the trail of huge, savage animals. Mven Mass held his breath. Out of this deeply-hidden stone vault a window would soon be opened into the endless spaces of the Cosmos and humans would unite their thoughts and their knowledge with that of their brothers in other worlds. This small group of five individuals represented terrestrial mankind to the entire Universe. And from the next day on, he, Mven Mass, would be in charge of these communications. He was to be entrusted with the control of that tremendous power. A slight shiver ran down his back. Perhaps only at that moment did he realize what a burden of responsibility he had undertaken when he accepted the Council’s proposal. As he watched Darr Veter manipulating the control switches something of the admiration that burned in the eyes of Darr Veter’s young assistant could be seen in his own gaze.
A deep, ominous rumble sounded, as though a huge gong had been struck. Darr Veter turned around swiftly and threw over a long lever. The gong ceased and Veda Kong saw that a narrow panel on the right-hand wall had lit up from floor to ceiling. The wall itself seemed to have disappeared into the unfathomable distance. Phantom-like outlines of a pyramidal mountain surmounted by a gigantic stone ring appeared. Below its cap of molten stone, lay patches of pure white mountain snow.
Mven Mass recognized the second highest mountain in Africa, Mount Kenya.
Again the strokes of the gong resounded through the underground chamber, putting all those present on the alert and compelling them to concentrate their thoughts.
Darr Veter indicated a handle in which a ruby eye glowed. Mven obediently turned the handle as far as it would go. All the power produced by Earth’s 1,760 gigantic power stations was concentrated on the equator, on a mountain 5,000 meters high. A multi-colored luminescence appeared over the peak, formed a sphere and then surged upwards in a spear-shaped column that pierced the very depths of the sky. Like the narrow column of a whirl-wind it remained poised over the glassy sphere, and over its surface, climbing upwards, ran a spiral of dazzlingly brilliant blue smoke.
The directed rays cut a regular channel through Earth’s atmosphere that acted as a line of communication between Earth and the Outer Stations. At a height of 36,000 kilometers above Earth hung the diurnal satellite, a giant station that revolved around Earth’s axis once in twenty-four hours and kept in the plane of the equator so that to all intents and purposes it stood motionless over Mount Kenya in East Africa, the point that had been selected for permanent communications with the Outer Stations. < … >
The narrow panel on the right went dark, a signal that the transmission channel had connected with the receiving station of the satellite. Then the gold-framed, opalescent screen lit up. In its center appeared a monstrously enlarged figure that grew clearer and then smiled broadly. This was Goor Hahn, one of the observers on the diurnal satellite, whose picture on the screen grew rapidly to fantastic proportions. He nodded and stretched out a ten-foot arm to switch on all the Outer Stations around our planet. They were linked up in one circuit by the power transmitted from Earth. The sensitive eyes of receivers scanned every quarter of the Universe. The planet of a dull red star in Monoceros had established a better contact with Satellite 57, and Goor Hahn switched over to it. This invisible contact between Earth and the planet of another star would last for three-quarters of an hour and not a moment of that valuable time could be lost.
At a sign from Darr Veter, Veda Kong stepped to a spot on a gleaming round metal dais facing the screen. Invisible rays poured down from above and noticeably deepened the her sun-bronzed skin. Computers blinked soundlessly as they translated her words into the language of the Great Circle. In thirteen years’ time the receivers on the planet of the dull-red star would write down the incoming oscillations in universal symbols and, if they had them, computers would translate the symbols into the living speech of the planet’s inhabitants.
“All the same it’s too bad those distant beings will not be hearing the soft, melodious voice of a woman of Earth, and will not understand its expressiveness,” thought Darr Veter. “Who knows how their ears are constructed, they may possess an entirely different type of hearing. But vision, which uses the range of the electromagnetic oscillations capable
of penetrating the atmosphere, is almost the same throughout the Universe, and they will see the charming Veda in her flush of excitement …
“Darr Veter did not move his gaze from Veda’s delicate ear, partly covered by a lock of hair, while he listened to her lecture.
Briefly but clearly Veda Kong spoke of the chief stages in the history of mankind. She spoke of the early epochs of man’s existence, when there were numerous large and small nations that in constant conflict, owing to the economic and ideological hostility dividing their them. She spoke very briefly and called the period The Era of Disunity. People living in the era of the Great Circle were not interested in lists of the destructive wars and the horrible sufferings, nor in the so-called great rulers who filled ancient history books. More important to them were the development of productive forces and the formation of ideas, the history of art and knowledge and the struggle to create the authentic human, the ways in which the creative urge had been developed and humanity had evolved new conceptions of the world, of social relations and of the duties, rights and happiness of Mankind. These concepts had nurtured the mighty tree of communist society now flourishing over the entire planet.
During the last century of the Era of Disunity, known as The Fission Age, humanity had at last begun to understand that their misfortunes were attributable to a social structure with its origins in ancient savagery: they realized that all their strength, all the future of Mankind, lay in labor, in the correlated efforts of millions of free people, in science and a scientific way of life, something that came to be of greater importance as the population of the planet increased.
In the Fission Age the struggle between the old and new ideas became more acute and led to the division of the world into two camps. The first types of atomic energy had been discovered, but the stubbornness of those championing the old order had almost led mankind into a colossal catastrophe.
The new social system was bound to triumph, but victory was delayed by the difficulty of training people in the new spirit. Rebuilding the world along communist lines entailed a radical economic change accompanied by the disappearance of poverty, hunger and heavy, exhausting toil. < … >
Communist society had not been established in all countries and among all nations simultaneously. A tremendous effort had need required to eliminate the hostility and, in particular, the lies remaining from the propaganda prevalent during the Fission Age’s ideological struggles. Many mistakes were made in this period as new human relations were developing. Here and there insurrections had been raised by backward people who worshipped the past and who, in their ignorance, saw a solution to humanity’s difficulties in a return to that past.
“With inexorable persistence the new way of life spread over the entire earth, and the many races and nations had been united into a single friendly and wise family.
Thus began the next era, the Era of World unity, consisting of four ages—The Age of Alliance, the Age of Linguistic Disunity, the Age of Power Development and the Age of the Common Tongue.
As Man’s power over nature progressed with giant steps society developed more rapidly and each new age passed more quickly than the one before.
In the ancient Utopian dreams of a happy future, great importance had been attached on Man’s gradual liberation from the necessity of work. The Utopians promised Man an abundance of all he needed in exchange for a brief working day of two or three hours, with the rest of his time free to devote to doing nothing, to the dolce far niente. This fantasy had arisen naturally, out of Man’s abhorrence of the arduous, exhausting toil of ancient days.
Humanity soon realized that happiness could only derive from labor, from a never-ceasing struggle against nature, from overcoming difficulties and the solution of ever-new problems arising as science and the economy evolve. Man needed to work to the full measure of his strength, but his labor had to be creative and in accordance with his natural talents and inclinations. And it had to be varied and changed from time to time. < … > Progressively expanding science embraced all aspects of life and a growing number of people came to know the joy of the creator, of the discoverer of new secrets of nature. Art played a greater part in social education and in the formation of a new way of life. Then came the most magnificent era in Man’s history, the Era of Common Labor—consisting of The Age of Simplification, The Age of Realignment, The Age of the First Abundance, and The Cosmic Age. < … >
The frail and risky old spaceships, poor as they were, enabled us to reach the other planets of our system. Earth was encircled by a belt of artificial satellites from which scientists were able to make a close study of the Cosmos. And then, eight hundred and eight years ago, there occurred an event of such great importance that it marked a new era in the history of mankind—the Era of the Great Circle.
For a long time the human intellect had labored over the transmission of images, sounds and energy over great distances. Hundreds of thousands of the most talented scientists worked in a special organization that still bears the name of the Academy of Direct Radiation; they developed methods for the directed transmission of energy over great distances without any conductor. This became possible when ways were found to concentrate energy in non-divergent rays. The clusters of parallel rays—laser beams—then provided constant communication with the artificial satellites, and, therefore with the Cosmos. Long, long before, towards the end of the Era of Disunity, our scientists had established the fact that powerful radiation streams were inundating Earth from the Cosmos. Signals from the Cosmos transmissions from the Great Circle of the Universe were reaching us, together with radiation from other constellations and galaxies. At that time we did not understand them, although we had learned to receive the mysterious signals which we, at that time, thought to be natural radiation.
Kam Amat, an Indian scientist, got the idea of conducting experiments from the satellites with television receivers, and with infinite patience tried all possible wavelength combinations over a period of dozens of years. He caught a transmission from the planetary system of the binary star that had long been known as 61 Cygni. A man appeared on his screen—not like us but undoubtedly a man—and he pointed to an inscription made in the symbols of the Great Circle. Another ninety years passed before the inscription was deciphered and today it is inscribed in our language, the language of Earth, on a monument to Kam Amat: ‘Greetings to you, our brothers, who are joining our family. Separated by space and time we are united by intellect in the Circle of Great Power.’
The language of symbols, drawings and maps used by the Great Circle proved easy to assimilate at the level of development then reached by man. In two hundred years we were able to use translation computers to converse with the planetary systems of the nearest stars and to receive and transmit whole pictures of the varied life of different worlds. We recently received an answer from the fourteen planets of Deneb, a first magnitude star and tremendous center of life in the Cygnus; it is 122 parsecs distant from us and radiates as much light as 4,800 of our suns. Intellectual development there has proceeded on different lines but has reached a very high level.
Strange pictures and symbols come from immeasurable distances, from the ancient worlds, from the globular clusters of our Galaxy and from the huge inhabited area around the Galactic Center, but we do not understand, and have not yet deciphered them. They have been recorded by our computers and passed on to the Academy of the Bounds of Knowledge, an institution that works on problems our science can as yet only hint at. We are trying to understand ideas that are millions of years ahead of us—ideas that greatly differ from ours due to life there having followed different paths of development.
Veda Kong turned away from the screen into which she had been staring as though hypnotized and cast an inquiring glance at Darr Veter. He smiled and nodded his head in approval. Veda proudly raised her head, stretched out her arms to those invisible and unknown beings who would receive her words and her image in thirteen years.
“Such is our history, suc
h is the difficult, devious and lengthy ascent we have made to the heights of knowledge. We appeal to you—join us in the Great Circle, aid us in carrying to the ends of the tremendous Universe the gigantic power of the intellect!”
Veda’s voice had a triumphant sound to it, as though it were filled with the strength of all the generations of the people of Earth who had reached such heights that they now aspired to send their thoughts beyond the bounds of their own Galaxy to other stellar islands in the Universe …
The bronze gong sounded as Darr Veter turned over the lever that switched off the stream of transmitted energy. The screen went dark.
The luminescent column of the conductor channel remained on the transparent panel on the right. Veda, tired and subdued, curled up in the depths of her armchair. Darr Veter turned the control desk over to Mven Mass and leaned over his shoulder to watch him at work. The absolute silence was broken only by the faint clicks of switches opening and closing.
Suddenly the screen in the gold frame disappeared and its place was taken by unbelievable depths of space. It was the first time that Veda Kong had seen this marvel and she gasped audibly. Even those well acquainted with the method of complex light-wave interference by means of which this exceptional expanse and depth of vision was achieved found the spectacle amazing. < … >
The unchanging voice of the electron translator continued: “We have received a transmission from star …” again a long string of figures and staccato sounds, “by chance and not during the Great Circle transmission times. They have not deciphered the language of the Circle and are wasting energy transmitting during the hours of silence. We answered them during their transmission period and the result will be known in three-tenths of a second …” The voice broke off. The signal lamps continued to burn with the exception of the green electric eye that had gone out.
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